Characters / Robot Wars Champions And Grand Finalists

This is the cream of the crop, the best of the best, the greatest robots of Robot Wars. These are the champions, runner-ups, and grand finalists of each series.

Original Series (1998-2004)

Series 1 (1998)

Roadblock (Series 1 Champion, Series 2 3rd Place, Series 3 Semi-Finalist as Beast Of Bodmin) (1 Seed in Series 2)

"All the signs suggests that this is a robot to be reckoned with"

^{Click to see Beast of Bodmin} 

Weapons: Circular Saw, Scoop (Series 1-2), Rear-Hinged Flipper (Series 3)

Battle record: 7 wins, 1 loss as Roadblock; 4 wins, 1 loss as Beast of Bodmin

The first champions of the show's history, Roadblock was a very simple machine (as were most contestants in the first series) but demonstrated to amazing effect the power of simple, reliable, powerful engineering, being strong enough to come back as serious contenders in Series 2. The shortest-lived of all series champions^note other than Typhoon 2 of course, they elected not to return after Series 3, but still made their place in the show's history.

• Battle Cry: Had a two-tone police siren whenever it went on the attack.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Roadblock was the first robot to really prove one of the great truths of Robot Wars: solid, reliable engineering and good driving is worth more than any number of fancy weapons.
  • Roadblock also demonstrated another fundamental principle of robot combat: the power of the simple wedge. Among the barely-armed boxes of the first series, Roadblock was one of the few with a good wedge design, allowing it to get underneath opponents and tip them over. The principle would later on be adopted by the entire archetype of flipper robots and even many robots without, as getting under the opponent allows you to dictate the flow of battle.
• Born Lucky: Beast of Bodmin in Series 3 was a bit lucky to get as far as it did. Crusher was wiping the floor with it until one of its exposed tracks came off, immobilizing it, Onslaught basically immobilized itself by driving straight up Beast of Bodmin's wedge and turning itself over, and Invertabrat broke down. It then got the luck of the draw in the semi-finals as it was pitted against Blade, a robot with a high ground clearance and no srimech that was cannon fodder for Beast of Bodmin's lifter^note and lest we forget, Razer could have won that heat instead - if Crusher had given Beast of Bodmin a hard time, it wouldn't have stood a chance against a fully-working Razer.
• Catchphrase: "Straight in, Straight out". When said in Series 2, there was even a flashback to when it was said the previous year.
• Determinator: Effortlessly cleared the gauntlet, defeated Shunt in the Sumo (albeit in a suicide attempt), and easily won both its battles to reach the grand final. Upon getting there, it purged the arena- of its five opponents, two of them immobilised each other^note the featherweight Cunning Plan charged at T.R.A.C.I.E and got stuck underneath it, lifting T.R.A.C.I.E's wheels off the floor to keep either robot from moving, Roadblock decisively defeated two of the others (Rex Garrod's Recyclopse and George Francis' Robot the Bruce) and had the last one (Team Cold Fusion's Bodyhammer) running for its metal life by the end, making them the uncontested winners. All this while being a simple wedge with a top speed of 5 miles per hour.
  • Beast of Bodmin in Series 3 also counts, as it spent most of its heat on the back foot and yet still won thanks to its tenacity.
• Ramming Always Works: Won its battles through pushing power and tipping over others with its wedge, and was still a force to be reckoned with in the Third Wars, where it reached round 2 of the semi finals (round 5 out of 7).
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The team entered Series 3 with "Beast of Bodmin", which was identical except for the paintjob, moving eyes and the addition of a flipping tusk.
• Weak, but Skilled: Not exactly weak, per se, but Beast of Bodmin had inferior weaponry to a lot of other robots in Series 3, and still mopped the floor with them.

Bodyhammer (see Team Cold Fusion in Series 4)

Robot the Bruce (see Chaos 2 in Series 3)

Recyclopse (see Cassius in Series 2)

Cunning Plan (Series 1 Grand Finalist)

"I have a cunning plan!"

^{Click to see Griffon} [[quoteright:200:

Weapons: Wedge

Battle record: 2 wins, 1 loss (2 wins, 2 losses as Griffon)

The odd man out in the Series 1 Grand Final rumble, Cunning Plan was the natural consequence of the unstructured and cobbled-together nature of the first series. Barely being able to scrape together 30 robots to make up the roster (the BBC even had to include three stock robots they provided themselves to make up the numbers) they were forced to accept even people who showed up with lightweight and featherweight robots, so they sensibly organised them into a single heat themed for them, of which Cunning Plan was the winner. Although it obviously didn't have a prayer in the Grand Final, the team still did their best and (technically) took out T.R.A.C.I.E (by getting stuck underneath them). The team returned with Griffon in the next 2 series, but unfortunately never found any further success.

• Boring, but Practical: Cunning Plan was nothing more than a wedge on wheels, since featherweights (at the time) were too small to be able to mount powered weapons of any type on.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Its follow-up Griffon wasn't seeded in Series 2 despite being a grand finalist the previous year, as the producers weren't impressed and it was only given a reserve placing at first.
• Epic Fail: Griffon's brief appearance in Series 3, where it completely failed to work and got shoved down the pit by a (weaponless) Cerberus in only 10 seconds, a "shortest battle" record that would stand until Series 7 (and remained the shortest battle not to be ended by Ring Out).
  • They hadn't done very well in their Series 2 appearance either- after being placed on the reserve list, they were brought in when Reckless Endangerment pulled out and promptly crashed out in the Gauntlet with a score of only 3.4 metres.
• Expy: Griffon bore an extremely strong resemblance to the original iteration of famous American combat robot Biohazard.
• Fragile Speedster: As a featherweight, it was this by default.
• One-Hit Wonder: While Griffon did win a side competition in Series 2, it was never anywhere near as successful as Cunning Plan had been, crashing out in the Gauntlet in Series 2 and breaking down in the heat semi-final in Series 3.
• Promoted Fanboy: Team captain Oliver Steeples was introduced as a Star Wars fan who idolised George Lucas. He is now working in the props department of the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
• Ramming Always Works: Its tactic, similar to Roadblock, was to drive at opponents at high speed and try and tip them over using its wedge shape. This allowed it to win its heat final battle in a then-record 14 seconds. Averted in the Grand Final, however, where its tiny size and weight compared to the other five finalists meant that it was the one being shoved around (and when it did try and ram T.R.A.C.I.E., it got wedged underneath it and both were immobilized).
• Shout-Out: Got its name from the Catchphrase of Blackadder's sidekick Baldrick.
• Taking You with Me: People have compared its "defeat" of T.R.A.C.I.E in the Grand Final to the joke about the chihuahua who killed a Great Dane... by getting stuck in its throat.
• This Is Gonna Suck: In the Series 1 Grand Final, it was a featherweight (11.4kg) up against a middleweight (52.9kg) and four heavyweights (77kg, 79.5kg, 80.9kg and a whopping 84.6kg). As you can imagine, it didn't have a prayer and was actually eliminated when it got stuck underneath the middleweight.

T.R.A.C.I.E. (Series 1 Grand Finalist)

"May have a girl's name, but nothing ladylike about our T.R.A.C.I.E."

Weapons: Spikes

Battle record: 2 wins, 1 loss

Unlike Cunning Plan, T.R.A.C.I.E competed in a standard heat (which included mixed opponents, including a 27kg lightweight and an 86kg heavyweight), despite being a middleweight, but still won through to the Grand Final melee (with a bit of luck). Its ramming spikes and 10mph top speed gave it quite good damage potential by the standards of the 1st Wars, but it was unfortunately eliminated from the Grand Final by the least of its opponents when it got wedged on top of the featherweight Cunning Plan. The team unfortunately never returned to the show, despite attempting to qualify for Series 3 with a new machine called S.H.A.R.O.N.

• Born Lucky: Struggled in the Gauntlet and only just passed, got stuck in the Snooker trial and only went through because the producers' stock robot wasn't allowed to reach the arena stage, and in the heat semi-final it went up against a machine with huge exposed tires that were a perfect target for its spikes. Even then, it managed to immobilize itself on the grill, but luckily the job was already done. Its luck ran out in the Grand Final after it got stuck on Cunning Plan.
• Call-Back: The name of their Series 3 entry, S.H.A.R.O.N, was inspired by a comment Jonathan Pearce made after their Gauntlet run: "Oh dear, should’ve called it ‘S.H.A.R.O.N’. Could’ve been better, right, but there we are!"
• David Versus Goliath: A middleweight up against four heavyweights (and Cunning Plan). Unlike Cunning Plan, T.R.A.C.I.E at least had a chance of doing damage to its heavier opponents with its spikes, but it was unfortunately taken out early on by, ironically enough, Cunning Plan.
• Fun with Acronyms: Terrestrial Robotic Artifical Computerised Intelligent Engine.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Only narrowly averted during the Snooker trial, when its spikes got impaled in the arena wall, immobilizing it. It would have gone out if not for the fact that The Mouse wasn't allowed to reach the arena stage as it was a stock robot provided by the production team to make up the numbers.
• One-Hit Wonder: The only Grand Finalist never to enter Robot Wars again. They did try and come back for Series 3, but weren't accepted.
• What Could Have Been: The team started work on a sequel for Series 3, S.H.A.R.O.N., which was mid-construction when the producers rejected it.
  • Later series had a rule which stated that if two robots got stuck together in such a way that they were both immobilized, they would be separated and allowed to keep fighting. It's unknown whether this was an Obvious Rule Patch after the demise of T.R.A.C.I.E. and Cunning Plan in the Grand Final, but if said rule had been in place during Series 1 then who knows how well T.R.A.C.I.E. may have done?
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Got stuck on the opening gate in the Snooker trial and didn't move at all for the whole thing. It got through anyway because one of its opponents was a stock robot, provided by the production team to make up the numbers, and wasn't allowed to reach the arena stage.

Series 2 (1998-1999)

Panic Attack (Series 2 Champion, Series 3, 4 & 5 Semi-Finalist, Series 6 Heat Finalist, Series 4 Sumo Champion) (4 Seed in Series 4, 6 Seed in Series 5, 8 Seed in Series 6 & 7)

Panic.

Weapons: Lifting Forks, Flipper (Series 5)

Battle record: 29 wins, 12 losses

One of the fixtures of the show, Panic Attack and its charismatic driver Kim Davies were the champions of the first "full" series (with semifinals and a proper grand final). One of the longest-lasting robots on the show (competing in every classic series except the first), while they were the only champion^note again, other than Typhoon 2 to never reach another grand final, they were always favourites of both the crowd and the production crew, especially Craig Charles who was very chummy with Kim.

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• Animal Motifs: It has a spider motif because, well, Spiders Are Scary.
• Badass Decay: While it's the only title-winning robot to have reached four semi-finals, it's also (as stated above) the only champion never to reach another grand final. Their results slowly and steadily declined until they crashed out of the heats in Series 6 and 7.
• The Band Minus the Face: Kim Davies couldn't drive the robot in Series 7 as he had taken a job as technical consultant on the show, meaning that the original team member Kevin Pritchard returned to become captain.
• Battle Trophy: Was clad in Diotoir's fur during (and after winning) its Mayhem battle with the Irish machine, as well as the following Annihilator.
• Boring, but Practical: In Series 2, it was a box with ineffective lifting forks. It curbstomped most of its foes through pushing power and Kim Davies' driving skill. Later on, after the robot had been upgraded, it would often win simply by getting under the opponent, lifting them up off the floor with the forks, opening the pit and tossing their helpless opponent down it.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The Series 6 version was so thoroughly destroyed by Terrorhurtz (and disliked by the team anyway) that they returned to the Series 5 version for Extreme 2 and Series 7.
• Dark Horse Victory: In Series 2, it was expected that Cassius would fight Mortis in the grand final in a rematch from Series 1 (which Recyclopse, Cassius' predecessor, had controversially won). Panic Attack beat both of them — Mortis in the semis, Cassius in the grand final.
• Didn't See That Coming: The Series 7 version of the robot removed the self-righting mechanism and replaced it with an anti-hammer cushioned top that was designed in response to their brutal loss against Terrorhurtz in Series 6. The team's belief was that if they made the robot sufficiently difficult to get underneath, it wouldn't need a srimech. Admittedly this didn't come up in the main competition, as they were eliminated before they had a chance to fight any flippers, but in the All-Stars competition they were proven spectacularly wrong by Dantomkia.
• Fuzzball Spider: Panic Attack's spider mascot has a round grey body decorated with eight pointed legs and a large scowling face. Originally rather detailed despite the simplified shape in Series 2, it was made far more cartoony for the next and every subsequent series after.
• The Ghost: Simon Rosen was credited as a team member in Series 3, but never appeared on television.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Averted. The gold version (which was only painted gold because they didn't have any of the usual yellow) was the real beginning of PA's Badass Decay and was openly rubbished by Kim, who wasn't happy with it due to lack of testing, manoeuvrability and speed.
• Humble Hero: Despite Panic Attack being a very good robot, Kim Davies is almost always worried about how good the robots he's facing are, and that he could lose in the following round. This contrasts with the attitude of many other competitors, who want to take home the trophy.
• Long Runner: Tied with Behemoth as the longest competing robots on the show, competing from Series 2 to 7 plus both Extremes.^note Subsequently surpassed by Behemoth, though, since Panic Attack did not return for Series 8.
• Old Shame: How Kim and the team sees the Series 6 version of Panic Attack, as it was untested, slow and couldn't self-right. Because of this, combined with this version getting destroyed by Terrorhurtz and the House Robots, they brought back the Series 5 version for Extreme 2 and Series 7.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Every incarnation of the robot had a pair of black triangular eyes painted onto the front, with eerie red pupils.
• Revolving Door Band: Had a total of eight different team members over six series, with none of them appearing in every series.
• The Rival: To Firestorm. The score between them is 4-1 in Firestorm’s favor.
  • Also to the House Robots, and would act on it at any opportunity it could get. It was even said in-series that Panic Attack's greatest enemy was Shunt.
• Rule of Fun: Kim Davies said in Series 5 that he's not interested in winning the trophy (again), since he's just competing for fun.
• Taking You with Me: How it managed to win the Sumo competition; it was judged to have knocked Shunt off as Shunt hit the ground first.
• Weak, but Skilled: See Boring But Practical. Kim Davies was generally regarded as one of the best drivers in the series, which more than compensated for the robot's simplicity and lack of seriously offensive weaponry.
• What Could Have Been: Was originally going to be called "Toxic Shock" until the team looked up the condition of the same name and decided it would be inappropriate.

Cassius (Series 1 Grand Finalist as Recyclopse, Series 2 Runner-Up) (5 Seed in Series 2)

"Well, you gotta try, ain't ya?"

^{Click to see finalist Recyclopse} 

Weapons: Front-Hinged Flipper Arm

Battle record: 5 wins, 3 losses as Cassius; 2 wins, 1 loss as Recyclopse

Gadgeteer Genius Rex Garrod first made his mark in the 1st Wars with his bizarre creation, Recyclopse, winning his heat to reach the final. His masterpiece Cassius was considered to be the most-advanced robot of the 2nd Wars, only losing a major upset to Panic Attack due to Kim Davies' peerless driving. The first robot to perfect the front-hinged flipper first prototyped by Recyclopse, incorporating it into a fast and agile wedge, Cassius was most famous for being the first robot to successfully self-right with its flipping arm. Unfortunately, after Cassius II bowed out early from the 3rd Wars, Rex abandoned the show in disgust in a famous protest over the lax safety standards and never appeared again.

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• The Ace: The first competitor to perform a house robot kill (as the team’s previous robot, Recyclopse), and the inventor of the SRIMECH in the UK, deserves this title.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Rex Garrod later theorised that Mick Cutter had deliberately driven the robot into the pit in Series 3 on account of the fact that the robot's flipper had been rendered almost useless by Executive Meddling.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Recyclopse was markedly different to any of the Cassius machines, having only its flipper in common with them.
• Friendly Rivalry: With George Francis and his team; the two engineers actually collaborated on their robots and tested them against each other for the first three series.
• Friend to All Children: Since Rex Garrod wanted to encourage children to get into engineering, he would outright take on the house robots to stop them destroying a competitor's robot if a child was on the team. He didn't want them to get demoralised if they saw their robot getting used as a pin cushion.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Rex Garrod was a true engineering mastermind- even before he entered Robot Wars he was known as the engineer who created and operated Brum.
• Handicapped Badass: The incident in the pits that seriously injured a stagehand during Series 3 caused the producers to instigate a large number of new health & safety procedures, which meant Cassius 2's CO2 system was completely banned, meaning it could only use its flipper once per fight. Despite the robot's effectiveness being completely crippled, it still convincingly won its first battle.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Was well known for defeating opponents such that they wouldn’t be damaged, and then when the house robots would come in for the kill, he would attack them and show no mercy.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Recyclopse actually had the most unusual front-hinged flipper in all of Robot Wars, despite being the first robot to use such a weapon - it had a long flat "tongue" at the bottom that slid out along the ground with the intention of sliding under other robots, then the front-hinged flipper would fire up from the tip of the tongue, pushing the victim over.
• Oculothorax: Recyclopse resembled this, being a black dome-shaped robot with a single massive eyeball painted on the front.
• Oddball in the Series: Unlike both previous versions of Cassius (and Recyclopse), Cassius 3 was a rear-hinged flipper which had more in common with Chaos 2 than its predecessors.
• Rage Quit: In the incident famously known as "Garrod's Protest", Rex finally lost his temper with the incompetence of the Robot Wars production staff when an unsecured robot had inflicted a serious injury on a member of the crew, for the second year running, despite him personally warning them of the dangers of the lax precautions after one of their "health and safety staff" had criticised him over a triviality. This was his last appearance on the show, despite being one of the most successful and respected roboteers.
• Undignified Death: Cassius II bowed out of Series 3 by ploughing into the pit while making a reckless run at Pussycat.
• What Could Have Been: Cassius II was one of the most highly-advanced machines in the Third Wars and could have gone far had it not driven straight into the pit against Pussycat, while Cassius 3 could also have done well in Series 4 had Rex Garrod not quit the show in protest.

Roadblock (see Series 1)

Killertron (Series 1 Heat Finalist, Series 2 4th Place) (4 Seed in Series 2)

Axe no questions, tell no lies.

Weapons: Axe

Battle record: 5 wins, 6 losses

One of the iconic competitors of the first two series, Killertron was the first really successful axe-wielder. Losing a duel against eventual champions Roadblock in the 1st Wars, they returned in the second series to go all the way to the Grand Final before, again, falling to eventual champion Panic Attack, then losing the 3rd place playoff to its old enemy Roadblock. Although it missed the 3rd Wars, it returned for the 4th and continued fighting all the way up to Robot Wars Extreme before finally retiring.

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• Book Ends: In Series 1 it was the first robot to be defeated by getting overturned, while fighting Roadblock. In its final main appearance in Series 4, it was again overturned by Wheely Big Cheese - and in quite spectacular fashion!
• The Bus Came Back: Took Series 3 off (because the recording dates were moved at the last minute and the team couldn't make the new ones) but returned for Series 4.
• Can't Catch Up: Killertron's weapon was very effective in the first two series, but when it came back in Series 4, the armor of the other competitors had been upgraded so much that the axe lost a lot of its potency.
• Combat Pragmatist: Killertron couldn't swing its axe as quickly as Mortis or Terrorhurtz, and the sharp pick tended to get stuck in opponents' armour. As a result, Killertron was much more pragmatic than most axe-wielding bots, preferring to pin opponents beneath the axe and then shove them towards hazards or (in the case of Behemoth) pull them onto their side. On one occasion, the axe broke down while fighting Technophobic, so Killertron used the spikes on top of the pickaxe as a ramming lance to skewer Technophobic and shove it down the pit.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The presenters constantly got Killertron’s past history wrong, such as claiming that it made the Grand Final twice, when it actually only made it once.^note The source of the confusion was likely due to it losing its Series 1 heat final to eventual champions Roadblock. Combined with the unconventional nature of the Series 1 final — a six-way rumble with all heat winners thrown in together — Killertron was the last opponent Roadblock fought in a 1v1 battle, causing people to consider it the 'runner-up' to Roadblock.
• Defiant to the End: A comical example in Series 4, where Killertron's axe continued to swing away at thin air even after it had been pitted by Sir Killalot, to the amusement of Jonathan Pearce, who even quoted the trope name verbatim.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite being a previous grand finalist, its year out in Series 3 cost it a seeding when it returned in Series 4.
• It Will Never Catch On: When the robot first appeared in Series 1, Jonathan Pearce expressed doubts at the effectiveness of the pickaxe weapon, only for it to turn out to be one of the most powerful axes of the first two wars.
• Long Runner: Although it took the 3rd Wars off, Killertron, a Series 1 robot, was still competing as late as the first series of Extreme!^note With Mortis retiring after winning the War of Independence event at the end of Series 4, Killertron was in fact the very last remaining Series 1 robot to fight on Robot Wars.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast
• One-Hit Wonder: Its only major success was reaching the Grand Final in Series 2 (it was a battle away from reaching it in Series 1, but that was due to the truncated format that year).
• Real Men Wear Pink: Very powerful, but also bright pink (except in Series 2, where it was orange).
• What Could Have Been: The team intended to replace it for Series 5 with Killertron 2, which would have been more similar to Dominator 2 in appearance, but it failed to qualify. They then intended to turn it into a robot named Spinnertron, with IG-88-style vertical spinning axes, but they couldn't finish it in time for Series 7.

Series 3 (1999-2000)

Chaos 2 (Series 1 Grand Finalist as Robot the Bruce, Series 2 Heat Finalist as Chaos, Series 3 & 4 Champion, Series 5 Semi-Finalist, Series 6 Heat Finalist, Extreme 1 All-Stars Semi-Finalist) (6 Seed in Series 2, 1 Seed in Series 4 & 5, 5 Seed in Series 6) (Winner of Best Engineered Robot Award in Series 3)

"Chaos 2: a role model for Robot Wars!"

^{Click to see Chaos} 

^{Click to see Robot the Bruce} 

"If you know anything about Robot Wars, you'll already know who we are."

—George Francis

Weapons: Rear-Hinged Flipper

Battle record: 24 wins, 9 losses as Chaos 2; 2 wins, 1 loss as Robot the Bruce; 1 win, 1 loss as Chaos

A robot that brought many innovative concepts to Robot Wars, most of all ushering in a generation of machines equipped with powerful flippers. It used CO2 to power a front flipper that was powerful enough to flip opponents out of the arena, and from then on anyone else with a lifter or flipper was either trying the technique themselves or were watching their backs for it in the ring. Chaos 2 was the only double champion in the history of the show, winning Series 3 almost completely unchallenged and only meeting real opposition in Series 4 when they made it back to the Grand Final.

• The Ace: Defeated nearly every opponent it faced in Series 3 and 4 almost effortlessly, and again for much of Series 5, before falling to Bigger Brother. The only robot ever to win the main series title more than once.
  • George Francis himself was just as notable as his machine. He built two of the Series 1 Grand Finalists, helping Rex Garrod build Recyclopse before striking out on his own with Robot the Bruce, which made the Grand Final despite having no weaponry at all. Then he returned with Chaos, which was powerful enough to pull Dead Metal into the pit and was nearly the first robot to self-right. And then, of course, he built Chaos 2, one of the most advanced robots of Series 3 and which swept all before it that year, while operating on a fraction of the budget of most other roboteers. And beyond his engineering skill, he was also unquestionably one of the best drivers on the show, although he attributed that to how easy Chaos 2 was to drive.
• Achilles' Heel: The CO2 bottle powering Chaos 2's flipper was mounted only an inch or so underneath its rather flimsy rear armor. Said rear armor was also completely transparent - Chaos 2 may as well have had a giant bullseye painted on its back. This wound up being a decisive factor during its First World Championship bout against Razer, which crushed the bottle as soon as it got a decent grip. A titanium plate was added in Extreme onwards to prevent this, although they never fought a robot really potentially capable of attacking it there.
  • Its Extreme 1/Series 5 upgrades increased the power of the flipper but added two more weaknesses: the flipper was now so powerful that it would throw Chaos 2 onto its back if it missed, and it was an extremely inefficient SRIMECH that would leak CO2 and drain the robot's supply; the front panel of the flipper also had a tendency to break under the force of the impact when it flipped itself over, which made it totally impossible for the robot to self-right. The latter weakness led to its two main-series defeats, after it got flipped over and couldn't self-right, and a combination of both saw it nearly go out in the Series 5 heat final when it flipped itself over and got stranded.
• Ambiguous Gender: The debate over team captain George Francis' gender remains a memorable talking point to this day.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Its World Championship fight against Razer, mentioned above, had Chaos 2 being perforated by both Razer and Dead Metal, losing power to the flipper in the process. As soon as Dead Metal let go, Chaos 2 reversed straight into the open pit.
• Blown Across the Room: Chaos 2 was the first high-pressure flipper to appear on Robot Wars, capable of literally hurling enemy robots through the air instead of just tipping them over. At the time of its Series 3 debut, the impact of such a weapon was mind-blowing.
• Book Ends: Chaos 2's first and last fights of Series 3 both saw it overturn its opponent before taking on the house robots.
• Boring, but Practical: Not Chaos 2, or even the original Chaos, but George Francis' 1st Wars entry, Robot the Bruce. It was literally just an 84kg box on wheels- not even a rammer, it was just pure pushing power. It still made the Grand Final, before being tipped over by Roadblock.
• Can't Catch Up: Team captain George Francis was self-employed and couldn't afford to upgrade Chaos 2 year on year to catch up with the current standard of competition, and he also couldn't take full advantage of the increase in the weight limit from 80 kg to 100 kg because it would lead to problems with weight distribution. The robot was good enough to survive as it was for quite a long time (it was far ahead of its time when it debuted in Series 3) but was eventually outclassed, with its final appearance in the main competition seeing it defeated in the heats by a newcomer.
• Combat Breakdown: Due to its limited CO2 supply, Chaos 2's flipper decreases dramatically in power as a fight drags on. It would start a round easily hurling opponents through the air, but after about five or six flips, it would often be reduced to gently tipping opponents over.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Blink and you'll miss it, but at the start of Series 3 Heat A, as Craig Charles goes over the four judging criteria, there's a brief clip of Chaos 2 flipping over The Big Cheese, as seen in its heat final. Doubles as an Early-Bird Cameo for The Big Cheese as well.
• Epic Fail: Its campaign for the Second World Championship. After flipping Italian machine Mastiff over and lining up to pit it, Chaos 2 charged at its immobile opponent, it bounced to the side, then Chaos 2 flew into the open pit right behind Mastiff.
• Foreshadowing: Chaos 2's heat final against SMIDSY in Series 5, where it flipped itself over trying to get SMIDSY out of the arena and its flipper then malfunctioned so it couldn't self-right^note Chaos 2's flipper had a curved panel on the top of it to make it tip more towards its rear, making it easier for it to right itself, but SMIDSY dented it in so it was lying flat on the flipper and couldn't make it back over. On that occasion it went to a rematch, but its defeats to Bigger Brother later that year, and to Dantomkia in Series 6, both came after it got overturned and couldn't self-right (although the former was because it had run out of gas for the flipper, which was the tactic Bigger Brother was pursuing).
• For Want Of A Nail: Or to be precise, for want of a few screws. According to George Francis, the original Chaos would have been able to self-right had the team remembered to put two rounded pieces of plastic on the back to help it do so. As it was, the team forgot to put them on and this cost it in its heat final against Mace, where it was overturned and ended up stranded on its back when it tried to self-right. Had it succeeded, it would have pre-dated Cassius as the first robot to do so, and could well have defeated Mace and reached the semi-finals (which would have made Team Chaos the only team other than Firestorm to reach five semi-finals).
• Fountain of Expies: The rear-hinged flipper.
• Fragile Speedster: Chaos 2 became this in later series, as its polycarbonate and titanium armour gradually became outdated and inadequate in comparison to its competitors. In its final appearance, in Extreme 2, it was brutally torn apart by 13 Black, Razer, and Mr Psycho.
• Game Changer: Cassius had demonstrated the viability of srimechs, but Chaos 2 made them utterly essential. Six of its seven Series 3 opponents had no srimech, and were duly curb-stomped; the exception, Firestorm, was subjected to another Game Changer by being thrown out of the arena entirely. This, being obviously a One-Hit Kill which not even a srimech would protect you from, instantly made high-powered flippers the most powerful weapon on Robot Wars. Although it should be noted that it would take several more series for other roboteers to be able to adequately reverse-engineer George Francis' awesomely powerful design- in Series 4 the only other robot capable of performing a ring-out was Gemini when it combined both its flippers together. It was only when the weight limit was increased from 80kg to 100kg that other robots were able to start matching the feat, which goes to show how far ahead of the field Chaos 2 was.
  • The legacy of Chaos 2 has echoed down the ages of UK robotic combat, as the high-powered rear-hinged flipper has come to be the quintessential UK robot weapon^note in no small part because spinning weapons were banned on the live circuit since the mobile arenas were unable to contain them. Even in the reboot series, taking place in an age where high-powered spinners had become the standard, two of the three series were won by flippers, with one of these (Eruption) also being the runner-up in the third.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Chaos 2's last appearance in the main competition saw it flipped it out of the arena by newcomer Dantomkia.
  • Narrowly averted in Series 5, during its battle with S.M.I.D.S.Y. It drove the machine up against the arena wall to try and flip it out, but only succeeded in flipping itself onto its back, whereupon the flipper failed, leaving it unable to self-right. With S.M.I.D.S.Y stuck against the arena wall and Chaos 2 stuck upside-down, the judges called for a rematch, and this time Chaos 2 won at a canter.
• Humble Hero: George Francis was one of the most modest and self-effacing roboteers on the show, never one to brag or overstate his chances at winning, even when his robot was unquestionably the most powerful in the Wars. By Series 6 he admitted (like Kim Davies) that he was mainly competing for fun.
• Invincible Hero: Encountered very little serious opposition on the way to winning its first title in Series 3, and during its successful title defence in Series 4 it was only really in trouble in the very late stages of the competition.
• Lightning Bruiser: Zipped around at 20mph and threw robots straight over the wall.
• Mercy Kill: Not quite a mercy kill, per se, but in its Series 4 heat melee, having overturned Indefatigable, Chaos 2 then interrupted the house robots' usual Humiliation Conga by hurling the defeated robot out of the arena. The Indefatigable team later thanked George Francis for having done this^note The two teams had been sharing a control pod during the fight, so it's entirely possible that they'd asked him to.
• Mighty Glacier: Robot The Bruce in Series 1. It was slow at only 4mph, but was heavy and had immense pushing power.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Especially once it gained its reputation as The Dreaded.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Before the 6th Wars, Team Crushtacean (see the Heat Finalists page) were planning to rebuild their robot. George Francis suggested a new and extremely complex hydraulic system to replace the old one which the team thought was a good idea, but unfortunately it was too complex to be implemented, so they were forced to give up on the redesign and re-enter the old robot they used in Series 5. Ironically, Chaos 2 would defeat Crushtacean itself in the 2nd round of the heat (although to be fair, Crushtacean actually defeated itself by opening the pit then reversing into it).
• Not So Invincible After All: From its debut in Series 3 up to the Grand Final of Series 4, Chaos 2 had never faced any kind of serious opposition.^note The Big Cheese in its Series 3 Heat Final and Steg 2 in its Series 4 first round Semifinal match had both managed to flip Chaos 2 once, but it had simply self-righted. Every opponent had been knocked out in short order, either by being flipped and left to rust, or hurled out of the arena.^note Although it very narrowly avoided losing in the second round of the semi-finals against Tornado in circumstances that were not broadcast, albeit through bad luck more than anything else - Tornado pushed it into Shunt's CPZ, which George Francis was unable to see from his control booth, meaning Shunt knocked the drive chain out. Tornado's infamously unreliable drive chain also chose that moment to fall off, and the judges called for the battle to be restarted as they couldn't agree which robot was immobilised first. The aborted fight was not broadcast. Then it came face-to-face with Stinger in the first round of the Grand Final and found itself up against a machine that would run any way up, wouldn't sit still long enough to be manhandled near the arena wall, and was armed with a brutal concussive weapon that was more than a match for Chaos 2's fragile polycarbonate armour. Chaos 2 barely squeaked out a victory on quality of control, but the machine was severely beaten up by Stinger's flanged mace, with its back plate knocked off and one of its curved front panels completely snapped. Craig even noted that it was the first time Chaos 2 had ever been subjected to a judges' decision, and in the pits afterwards Julia said it was a nice change to see the team actually having to do some work for a change as they effected repairs for the Grand Final.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Robot The Bruce and Chaos 1 were both very good machines: Robot The Bruce was the only robot to come first in both the Gauntlet and Trial and go on to win its heat, despite not having any weapons beyond pushing power and brute force, while Chaos 1 overpowered Dead Metal in the Tug of War Trial and was nearly the first robot to self-right.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Chaos 2's distinctive black body was extremely compact, especially when you factor in that its protruding flipper took up a third of its length. This became even more pronounced from Extreme 1/Series 5 onwards: while other robots bulked up to the new 100kg weight limit, Chaos 2 remained at a petite 84kg.
  • Robot The Bruce was even more compact, at a miniscule 82cm x 52cm x 37cm - and that's including its gaping ground clearance and box-wedge design. It also played the "powerhouse" part more literally, given its tremendous pushing power.
• Punny Name: Robot the Bruce.
• Ring Out: Inventing this was arguably Chaos 2's greatest claim to fame. For his part, George Francis claimed that it was an accident and that he was intending to slam Firestorm into the side wall.
• The Rival: To Mace. The score between them is one apiece.

Hypno-Disc (Series 3 Runner-Up, Series 4 & 5 4th Place, Series 6 Semi-Finalist) (2 Seed in Series 4, 3 Seed in Series 5, 4 Seed in Series 6) (Winner of Most Original Entry Award in Series 3)

"Spin to win!"

"We put some basic physics and engineering knowledge into practice on how to design a really effective weapon and the only way you can really do that is with a method to store energy, and the old-time fashioned way of doing it is a flywheel."

—Derek Rose

Weapons: Horizontal Flywheel

Battle record: 22 wins, 12 losses

One of the deadliest spinners in all of Robot Wars, Hypno-Disc owed its success to the unique physics behind its disc. Technically it only has one contact tooth- the other is welded to point upwards and away to act as a counterbalance to the actual cutting tooth. The result is consistently-higher impact speeds, and brutal damage, as most of Hypno-Disc's opponents found out. Hypno-Disc was generally considered the greatest robot never to win the championship.

• The Alleged Car: Like Razer, Hypno-Disc in early series suffered from horrendous reliability issues, just (usually) not ones that killed it outright. In Series 3 alone, it got stuck in reverse against Robogeddon, the disc broke down against both Berserk 2 and 101, and then after its Grand Final eliminator battle against Steg-O-Saw-Us the machine broke down completely. The team couldn't fix it properly in time for the decider against Chaos 2, and ended up a sitting duck.
• Always Second Best: As stated above, it's considered the greatest robot never to win a major title. It was the first machine to reach three consecutive Grand Finals (and the only one in the original series; Carbide pulled it off in the reboot), but it just couldn't secure that elusive trophy.
• And Show It to You: In Series 4, it tore the batteries out of both The Predator and V-Max in successive battles, and in the former case, smashed the battery for good measure. Its fight against Bulldog Breed in Series 5 came to a similar end when Hypno-Disc ripped out Bulldog Breed's removable link, immobilizing it instantly.
• The Berserker: In Series 3, at least. The team admitted in a Robot Wars Magazine interview that about 50% of the time, the robot was completely out of control. This nearly cost it in its first battle against Robogeddon when it got stuck in reverse and was almost counted out before they managed to regain control in time for the curb-stomping to begin.
• Cast from Hit Points: Hypno-Disc's weapon was so destructive, it sometimes ended up backfiring when the sheer force of the clashes inflicted recoil damage on Hypno's own systems. A great many of Hypno-Disc's losses were due to an opponent weathering the attacks long enough for Hypno-Disc to knock itself out, ending up with a horrifically battered, but mobile opponent and a Hypno-Disc outwardly in pristine condition... but unable to move.
  • This was also what arguably cost it the title in Series 3: towards the end of its Grand Final eliminator battle against Steg-O-Saw-Us, Hypno-Disc started to break down, and it still wasn't fully working when it went into the arena to face Chaos 2 for the title. The rest is history.
• Cool Old Guy: Ken Rose.
• Crack Defeat: Fought Nasty Warrior (a robot made from wood) in a UK vs Germany fight for Extreme 1. It lost because the chips of wood it knocked off Nasty Warrior got stuck in its internals and caused it to break down. (It lost a Wild Card Warrior fight in a similar manner after breaking down less than twenty seconds in, making it the only such fight where the Wild Card won, but this fight was not broadcast.)
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: The team have repeatedly stated that prior to getting into the arena for the first time in Series 3, they had absolutely no idea how powerful the weapon was going to be - during their robot introduction they held up some metal they'd tested it on which had some gashes cut in it, suggesting what level of damage they were actually expecting. When Robogeddon, and later Stealth, were torn to pieces, they were just as surprised as everyone else.
• The Dreaded: Among the other roboteers. To quote Peter Kinsey of Beast of Bodmin:
  "We did not want to meet Hypno-Disc... This machine was stunning for the amount of damage it dished out. The pits were very quiet when it was on."
• Early-Installment Weirdness: As the first-ever flywheel spinner on the show, Hypno-Disc had several distinctive design quirks that set it apart from pretty much every spinner that came after it, including a lack of invertibility; a solid, dome-shaped disc instead of a flat, hollow one; a single-tooth design with a visible counterweight; and its use of a driveshaft and gears to drive the weapon directly, instead of a chain or belt, a design decision that contributed to its unreliability^note chains and belts are much better at absorbing recoil, whereas Hypno-Disc's setup transmitted the shock of its blows back through the gears and driveshaft and into the motor.
• Foregone Victory: Its Series 4 heat final against Raizer Blade. They had already battled each other in the eliminators, where Raizer Blade had taken massive damage from Hypno-Disc and had only gone through because The Predator had broken down first. It was still limping and barely-functional by the heat final (having won its second round fight because its opponent deliberately threw the battle in order to avoid fighting Hypno-Disc), and everyone knew who was going to win, but the Raizer Blade team decided it would be best to try and put on a good show before losing.
• Game Changer: Before Hypno-Disc, metal armor was considered a waste of weight and money. Then Hypno-Disc tore Robogeddon's flimsy kevlar/aluminium shell to ribbons in its first match, and scattered bits of machinery across the arena. After that, everyone was armoring up like there was no tomorrow.
• Glass Cannon: Hypno-Disc had exposed wheels, a vulnerability to flippers (especially with the massive ground clearance under the disc) and little pushing power^note it was actually surprisingly fast, though, with a top speed of 20mph, although it moved slowly whenever the disc was running... but a horrifically destructive weapon. The robot as a whole was basically a mobile platform made to direct the devastating power of the weapon; if a normal robot is a tank, Hypno-Disc was a self-propelled artillery piece. Many of its defeats were either against rambots such as Tornado (or Steg-O-Saw-Us, which lost to it but dealt it terminal damage in the process that was directly responsible for it losing the series decider), or in melees where the other robots ganged up on it.
• Hell Is That Noise: The sound of Hypno-Disc's weapon spinning up to speed was extremely distinctive- and terrifying. Comparisons to a screaming metal demon have been made by the fanbase. In the Meaningful Background Event mentioned below, you can tell it's Hypno-Disc fighting just from the sound of that howling steel blade ripping through the air in preparation to make contact with metal.
  Youtube Commenter: If there is a sound of Satan having an orgasm it has to be the sound of that disc spinning up to speed.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": During its Meaningful Background Event Early-Bird Cameo in Series 3. As it tore Robogeddon apart in the background, several roboteers could be seen gathered around the TV monitors gasping in horror, as they realized that they could potentially end up having to fight it themselves.
• Meaningful Background Event: In Series 3, during Berserk 2's first post-battle interview with Philippa, Hypno-Disc (who was going to compete next) could be seen on some TVs in the background ripping Robogeddon to pieces - complete with horrified gasps from the roboteers watching the battle.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Series 6, Hypno-Disc was modified so that both the blade's teeth stuck straight out. Previously, the other tooth was just there as a counterweight. Unfortunately, sticking out the other tooth meant that each one could only gain half as much speed, reducing the robot's destructive capability.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Dished out some of the most brutal ones on the show. Its debut fight had it inflicting, according to Jonathan Pearce, "the most complete destruction I think we've seen on Robot Wars ever." And that wasn't even the worst of them.
• Not So Invincible After All: Its Series 3 heat final against Berserk 2, and its Series 4 semi-final fight with Wild Thing, saw both robots manage to prove surprisingly resilient (in the former it was unable to make any headway against Berserk's armour and only won because its opponent got flipped by an arena spike, and in the latter Wild Thing took significant damage but almost managed to win through the sheer tenacity and determination of its Heroic Second Wind) after every other opponent Hypno-Disc had faced so far that series had been dismembered. Although neither won, they both managed to hold Hypno-Disc off to a very close judges' decision.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Its victory over Steg-O-Saw-Us in the first round of the Series 3 Grand Final took a lot out of the robot and the team didn't have enough time to repair it; the resulting bodge job lasted less than a minute against Chaos 2 before the gears gave up and they were dead in the water.
• Rule of Three: Each of Hypno-Disc's first three heat finals had it show a surprising amount of mercy to its opponent:
  • In Series 3, after Berserk 2 was flipped over by an arena spike, Hypno-Disc sportingly helped to push it back onto its wheels so it could continue fighting. (This might not sound merciful, but bear in mind Berserk 2 was one of the few robots Hypno-Disc couldn't damage.)
  • In Series 4, Raizer Blade was already crippled from its first fight with Hypno-Disc and didn't stand a chance, so the team sportingly agreed to Mercy Kill it while dealing as little damage as possible.
  • In Series 5, after knocking out Bulldog Breed's safety link, Hypno-Disc could easily have smashed the immobilized machine into pieces (as X-Terminator later infamously did in Series 7), but instead they just pushed it into the pit.
  • Four Is Death: Hypno-Disc's victory over Barber-Ous 2 in its Series 6 heat final was the last battle it ever won.
• The Runner-Up Takes It All: Hypno-Disc never won the main championship (or anything at all apart from the "Most Original Entry" special merit award in Series 3), but is almost certainly the first robot that will come to mind when people think of the show.
• Spectacular Spinning: The robot that pioneered the horizontal flywheel in Robot Wars most certainly qualifies.
• The Worf Effect: An example of being Over-Worfed. Everyone said they were terrified to go up against Hypno-Disc, but in a 3-or-more-way melee, it was very easy to beat Hypno-Disc by ganging up on it. Hypno-Disc's final three battles were all melees, all of which it lost^note the Losers' Melee in its Sixth Wars semi-final and the first round of the All-Stars and Challenge Belt tournaments in Extreme 2, and in all of them the other robots barely touched each other until Hypno-Disc had been taken care of.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Hypno-Disc was part of the main choice of Robot Wars Extreme’s unmade “People’s Challenge”. It involved the audience voting for which robots they wanted to see battle each other, and Hypno-Disc vs Razer was the top choice. However, the battle never took place, as both teams felt fighting each other for no real reason would be too pointlessly damaging to each others' machines.
  • Hypno-Disc could easily have beaten Chaos 2 to the title in both Series 3 and 4. In Series 3 it probably could have torn Chaos 2 to shreds had it not been limping due to the internal damage it suffered in its victory over Steg-O-Saw-Us, and in Series 4 its defeat to Pussycat stemmed almost entirely from one tiny glancing blow from Pussycat's blade that bent its wheelguard and jammed the wheel, leaving it spinning in circles. Had it defeated Pussycat, with its new SRIMECH it would almost certainly have gotten its revenge on Chaos 2.
  • The team considered rebuilding Hypno-Disc from scratch to compete in Series 9, but unfortunately it never happened.
  • According to Robot Wars Magazine, the team considered changing Hypno-Disc into a walkerbot for Series 4 onwards.
• Worthy Opponent: At the end of their intense battle against Wild Thing in the Series 4 semifinal (the first time in the entire series any opponent had managed to fight Hypno-Disc to a standstill), the Rose boys could be seen applauding their courageous opponents from their control pod.

Firestorm (Series 3 Joint 3rd with Steg-O-Saw-Us, Series 5 & 6 3rd Place, Series 4 & 7 Semi-Finalist, Extreme 1 All-Stars Semi-Finalist, Extreme 2 All-Stars Runner-Up, Commonwealth Carnage Champion) (5 Seed in Series 4, 7 Seed in Series 5, 3 Seed in Series 6, 2 Seed in Series 7)

"We're Firestorm, and you're gonna burn!"

Weapons: Cutting Disc (as Groundhog, Series 2) Front-Hinged Flipper Arm and Pneumatic Spike (Series 3), Front-Hinged Flipper (Series 4-7)

Battle record: 34 wins, 11 losses as Firestorm; 0 wins, 1 loss as Groundhog

After Hypno-Disc, arguably the show's greatest uncrowned champion. Unquestionably one of the most consistent performers in the show's history, Firestorm was to front-hinged flippers what Chaos 2 was to rear-hinged ones, except that unlike Chaos 2 it was never equalled. After making an inauspicious debut in Series 2 with the bizarre and ineffective Groundhog, the team would go on to drive their striking red-and-yellow machine to great success, reaching a record five semi-finals and three grand finals, resulting in no less than three 3rd-place finishes.

• Ace Pilot: Graham Bone's impeccable driving skill combined with Firestorm's maneuverability was the keystone to the robot's success, as shown by their record of three Grand Finals.
• Always Second Best: Reached three Grand Finals, but on all three occasions it failed to make the series decider, being beaten in the eliminator by the eventual champion.
• An Arm and a Leg: Its very first Series 5 fight had the flipper getting nearly torn clean off by Matilda's flywheel. The flipper was repaired to full functionality, but noticeably no longer fit properly in the chassis for the rest of the series.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Played for Laughs when the team wore Diotoir's furry codpieces into the semi-finals of Series 3 after beating the Irish robot in the heat final.
  • The trope even applied to the robot itself. After defeating Diotoir, the team decorated Firestorm's sides in its fur on two occasions, in the Series 3 semi and grand final (complete with a plastic shamrock), as well as the All-Stars battle against Wild Thing in Extreme 1.
• Between My Legs: Because of its incredibly high ground clearance and shape, the camera framed Loco between Groundhog's legs before activate was called, in a homage to Western films that used the same shot.
• The Cameo: Whilst his robot didn't return for the reboot, Alex Mordue is briefly visible as an audience member in the second heat of Series 10 (his hairline having significantly receded, and having grown a beard, in the decade or so since he was last onscreen).
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Dished them out on several occasions, but wasn't immune to them either. Due to a mechanical fault that stopped it from moving properly, it fell victim to Chaos 2 in Series 3, and was the first robot subjected to the "Out Of The Arena" flip. It was also beaten with ease by Razer on two occasions, though it took it to a real nail-biter in their final fight.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Once flipped Mr. Psycho. Mr. Psycho weighs three quarters of a ton, more than 7 1/2 times the weight of Firestorm. You're not even supposed to fight Mr. Psycho, let alone beat him!
• Determinator: Its Series 5 performance. After receiving a One-Hit Kill from Hypno-Disc in the first semi-final round, it battled through the Losers' Melee against Wheely Big Cheese and Panic Attack, beat Pussycat on a judges' decision to become the only Losers' Melee winner ever to progress to the Grand Final, fought Razer to a virtual standstill despite having its flipper mechanism broken early on (nearly shoving Razer down the pit at one point), and then had to fight Hypno-Disc again in the third-place playoff, with its flipper still broken, and won.
• Discard and Draw: After Razer broke its flipper mechanism in the Series 5 Grand Final Eliminator, the Firestorm team decided they didn't have time to repair it, so they removed parts of the inoperable mechanism and some of the robot's side armour, and used the extra weight to slap a thick sheet of polycarbonate onto the front wedge to deflect Hypno-Disc's weapon.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Groundhog, a bizarre-looking box on stilt-like legs tipped with "omniwheels" that supposedly allowed it to drive in any direction. While it at least made it through its Series 2 Gauntlet and Trial, it lost its only battle and was promptly forgotten when the team returned with Firestorm.
  • The original version of Firestorm also counts: it had a much smaller, T-shaped flipping arm, conveyor belts on the front to drag opponents up onto the flipper, a pneumatic spike at the back, and was spelt "Fire Storm".
• Grand Romantic Gesture: After winning the final battle that would give Firestorm its first and only trophy (the Commonwealth Carnage Championship in Extreme 2), driver Graham Bone proposed to his girlfriend and team-mate Hazel Heslop on the spot. Unfortunately they didn't do it in front of the cameras.
• I Feel Guilty; You Take It: By all rights, Firestorm and Steg-O-Saw-Us should've been 3rd and 4th place respectively in Series 3 as Steg-O-Saw-Us had been too badly mangled by Hypno-Disc to make the play-off battle. However, Team Firestorm felt that it would've been unfair, so they chose to share joint 3rd place with Steg-O-Saw-Us instead.
• Irony: A robot called Firestorm, that was occasionally clad in Diotoir's flammable fur, and it never caught fire.
• Lightning Bruiser: Incredibly fast, but was able to survive being perforated by Razer and defeated Hypno-Disc while its flipper wasn't working.
• Long Runner: The team appeared in every original series of Robot Wars except the first.
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • The only robot with a front-hinged flipper that could also toss robots out of the arena. Due to its design, it could drive an opponent against the arena wall and then use the reverse-wedge on its back end to rear up and push the opponent over the wall.
  • The Series 3 version wasn't capable of Ring Outs, but was also unusual in that it had a pair of conveyor belts running up the front of the wedge. The idea was that Firestorm would get underneath an opponent, the belts would drag them up the wedge onto the flipper, and Firestorm would then turn them over.
• Numbered Sequels: From Firestorm all the way up to Firestorm V.
• Old Soldier: By the time it reached the Semi-Finals in Series 7, it had this vibe - no other robot had reached five series semi-finals, and all of the other teams that could have potentially matched this record had either retired after the previous series (Chaos 2, Hypno-Disc, Wild Thing) or been knocked out in the heats (Spawn Again, Panic Attack). It was even drawn against the runner-up and winner of the New Blood championship in its semi-final fights.
• Palette Swap: In Series 4, Firestorm's color scheme was inverted, being mostly red with yellow on the back. It reverted to the original paint job for the rest of the series.
• The Rival: To Panic Attack. The score between them is 4-1 in Firestorm’s favor (and the 1 loss is from Firestorm pitting itself in a fight where all the competitors ganged up on the House Robots, so technically Firestorm was never beaten by Panic Attack).
• Running Gag: Firestorm pitting itself but still winning or qualifying, having done so against The Morgue (Series 4), Hypno-Disc (Series 5), Colossus, Mega Hurts & Cedric Slammer (Series 6).
• Showdown at High Noon: Groundhog's sole arena battle against Loco played this up for all its worth, complete with a shot of Loco between Groundhog's legs, which was possible due to its unwieldy shape.
  Jonathan Pearce: The gunfight at the Robot Wars Corral! Our two gunslingers (in Southern accent) must be plum loco to go into that arena.
• Signature Move: Had two. In early series, its signature KO move was to flip an opponent in such a way that they were pinned up against the arena wall, preventing them from moving or self-righting. Later, it developed the tactic of rearing up onto its back wedge and using its flipper to hoist its opponent up and over the wall.
• Suicide Attack: Firestorm 3 took out Hypno-Disc in the Series 5 Playoff by getting underneath Hypno-Disc's rear and charging down the pit, dragging the spinner in with them. With both robots being pitted at the same time, the judges declared a rematch; however, Hypno-Disc hitting the floor disc-first led to internal damage that forced them to withdraw, giving Firestorm the win by default.
• Taking You with Me: Groundhog managed to take out Sir Killalot during its Gauntlet run... because when Killalot picked up Groundhog, it was so heavy and such an awkward shape that he overbalanced and fell over. It still earnt Graham and Alex a hero's welcome in the Pits.

Steg-O-Saw-Us (Series 3 Joint 3rd Place with Firestorm, Series 4 Semi-Finalist as Steg 2, Series 5 Heat Finalist as 3 Stegs To Heaven) (7 Seed in Series 4, 8 Seed in Series 5)

"Served up from the dank mists of time"

Weapons: Lifter (Series 3), Rear-Hinged Flipper (Series 4), Cutting Disc (Series 5)

Battle record: 5 wins, 1 loss as Steg-O-Saw-Us; 3 wins, 1 loss as Steg 2; 2 wins, 2 losses as 3 Stegs to Heaven

The Cinderella Story of the 3rd Wars, Steg-O-Saw-Us was actually a reserve called in to replace another competitor that was forced to drop out, only to brute-force its way to the Grand Final with sheer ramming power. The team returned in Series 4 with Steg 2, a powerful flipper than was one of the best in the series, but sadly not good enough to beat the best, Chaos 2. Unfortunately, the team split up after that and although two of the members returned with 3 Stegs to Heaven, it failed to recapture their former glory.

• Always Someone Better: Every robot that beat Steg-O-Saw-Us in the main competition (Hypno-Disc in Series 3, Chaos 2 in Series 4, Bigger Brother in Series 5) went on to finish in the top two.
• Animal Motifs: Stegosaurus.
• Badass Decay: 3 Stegs To Heaven was considered a major disappointment after the formidable Steg-O-Saw-Us and Steg 2. Unfortunately, after their impressive run in Series 4 (giving Chaos 2 a run for their money before coming off second best in the battle of the flippers), team captain Rob Heasman left the team and took Steg 2 with him, forcing the remaining members to start over from scratch for the 5th Wars and Extreme, and the new robot just wasn't as good as the previous two.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Downplayed, but in Series 4 Steg 2 was seeded 7th, the lowest seeding ever given to an incumbent Grand Finalist^note Griffon in Series 2 wasn't seeded at all, but there were only 6 seedings that year and Griffon hadn't initially qualified. The two non-Grand Finalists ranked ahead of it, Razer and Behemoth^note winner and runner-up respectively in the First World Championship, though neither had even made the semis the previous year, both crashed out in their heat finals while Steg 2 made the semis.
• Kill Tally: In Series 3, it had the names of its defeated opponents written onto its tail and then crossed off, like a hit list.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Incredibly, Steg-O-Saw-Us originally failed to qualify for the Third Wars! It was given a reserve placing instead, and only elevated into the contest after another robot pulled out. Steg-O-Saw-Us then promptly bulldozed its way into the Grand Final, beating former champions Beast of Bodmin along the way, and shared 3rd place overall with Firestorm (who insisted on sharing the title with them as Steg-O-Saw-Us was too badly damaged by Hypno-Disc to fight a deciding battle for it), making it the most successful substitute robot in the show's history until Typhoon 2 came off the reserve ranks to win Series 7.
• Oddly Named Sequel: Steg-O-Saw-Us - Steg 2 - 3 Stegs To Heaven. Invoked: the team decided they didn't want to just call the third one "Steg 3" and held a naming contest in Robot Wars Magazine, with "3 Stegs To Heaven" being the winning entry.
• Ramming Always Works: The tactics of the original Steg-O-Saw-Us (it had a small lifting tail, but this rarely, if ever, saw use). Steg-O-Saw-Us was arguably the first real rambot seen on the show- there had been plenty of shovebots and wedges before it, but it was the first robot capable of inflicting serious concussive damage on opponents with its slamming attacks, as demonstrated when it battered Napalm (admittedly a rather soft target) into scrap.
• Spanner in the Works: See the What Could Have Been entry for Hypno-Disc; Hypno-Disc may have defeated Steg-O-Saw-Us in the first round of the Series 3 Grand Final, but while Chaos 2 had quite a good chance of beating Hypno-Disc anyway, the damage Steg-O-Saw-Us had inflicted on it (and caused it to inflict on itself) sealed the deal.
• Taking You with Me: While Hypno-Disc battered it into submission in the Grand Final Eliminator as expected, Steg-O-Saw-Us put up an extremely good fight and actually controlled much of the first half of the battle, ramming Hypno-Disc repeatedly and shoving it around. By the end of the fight, Steg-O-Saw-Us was tattered and immobilized, but its resistance had caused Hypno-Disc's internals to start shredding themselves, and the damage ultimately cost Hypno-Disc the title against Chaos 2.
• Took a Level in Badass: In one series! It failed to qualify for Series 3, but was chosen as a reserve robot and got pulled in to replace a robot that broke down. It won its heat convincingly and beat the former champions, Beast Of Bodmin, before finally being beaten by Hypno-Disc.
  • While it didn't get as far in Series 4, it arguably took another level there- Steg 2 may have gone out in the first round of the semis, but it was a markedly more powerful robot than Steg-O-Saw-Us (a powerful rear-hinged flipper robot which clearly took inspiration from Chaos 2). Its failure to go as far as the original can largely be attributed to its final opponent being Chaos 2 themselves (reigning champions who would go on to retain their championship) and Steg 2 still managed to give Chaos 2 their first real challenge of the series.

Series 4 (2000-2001)

Chaos 2 (see Series 3)

Team Cold Fusion (As Bodyhammer - Series 1 Runner-Up, As Pussycat - Series 3 Heat Finalist, Series 4 Runner-Up, Series 5 Semi-Finalist, Series 4 Celebrity Special Champion, Series 7 All Stars Champion, Extreme 1 Tag-Team Terror Champion with Diotoir and Annihilator 1 Champion, War of Independence Champion on Extreme Warriors) (3 Seed in Series 2, 19 Seed in Series 4, 2 Seed in Series 5, 9 Seed in Series 7) (Winner of Sportsmanship Award in Series 5)

"The Erazer"

^{Click to see Runner-up Bodyhammer} 

^{Click to see Kill-E-Crank-E} 

Weapons: Sledgehammer/Spinning Discs (as Bodyhammer), Cutting Disc (as Pussycat), Vertical Spinning Disc (as Kill-E-Crank-E), Vertical Bar Spinners (as Krank-E)

Battle record: 31 wins, 8 losses as Pussycat (3 wins, 0 losses in the US); 2 wins, 3 losses as Bodyhammer, 0 wins, 2 losses as Kill-E-Crank-E

A team with arguably the most mixed fortunes in all of Robot Wars; they came 2nd in two separate series (1 and 4), while they were also the highest-ranked seed ever to fall in the first round of a competition (in Series 2) as well as the only robot ever to be formally disqualified from the contest for a rules violation (when their illegal hardened-steel blade shattered dangerously in the 3rd Wars). Pussycat was still an astonishingly powerful bot, easy to underestimate but capable of doing massive damage with its patented cutting blade and almost impossible to disable. Unfortunately the team was struck by tragedy when young driver David Gribble was killed in a traffic accident after Series 5. Robin Herrick, one of the team's original members in the first 4 Wars, entered Series 8 with Kill-E-Crank-E, making him the only man to compete in both Series 1 and the reboot.

• Ace Pilot: David Gribble was one of the best drivers on the show and a huge part of Pussycat's success. His tragic early death was one of the leading causes of its Badass Decay.
• Ancestral Weapon: After a fashion; according to the wiki, Kill-E-Crank-E's tires were constructed from parts of Bodyhammer. They've certainly lasted well. In Series 9, Crank-E's wheels were apparently taken from Pussycat.
• Artifact Title: Bodyhammer continued to be called Bodyhammer in Series 2 despite the hammer having been replaced by a reciprocating spike and circular saw. In fact, "Bodyhammer" was arguably an Artifact Title in Series 1 as well, as the hammer broke down before its first fight and was converted into a ramming blade instead. Then again, ramming could be considered to be using the robot's body as the hammer.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Pussycat's blade wasn't a mass-destruction weapon like a heavy flywheel - it was penetrating and powerful, but did damage in small amounts. However, when combined with David Gribble's precision driving, this made it extremely proficient at going in and targeting weak points on enemy robots to disable them, perhaps most notably in their Series 4 Grand Final bout against Hypno-Disc where they landed a one-in-a-million hit on Hypno-Disc's rear wheel, crippling them and leading to their defeat.
• The Bus Came Back: The Pussycat team understandably took Series 6 off after the tragic death of David Gribble, but returned for Series 7.
  • The team also returned in Series 8 with original member Robin Herrick and their robot Kill-E-Crank-E.
• Cats Have Nine Lives: The team certainly made this claim about their robot. Amusingly enough, counting its defeat by Shunt in the Series 4 Sumo Basho, Pussycat proceeded to use up every single one of them.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Downplayed. Pussycat's unique "any way up" design was to ensure it would not get stuck in the Gauntlet like its predecessor Bodyhammer... only for the team to learn that the Gauntlet had been scrapped. While its ability to always get back onto its wheels also proved a big advantage in battle, the design left it with large exposed wheels and a gaping ground clearance. All three of its main-series defeats ^note not counting its disqualification in Series 3 came against flippers, Bulldog Breed also threw it out of the arena during the Extreme 2 Tag Team Terror, and Tornado defeated it in the Extreme 1 All-Stars by ramming it so hard one of the wheels came off.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Literally. If Pussycat couldn't disable a robot by hitting it in a critical spot it would usually win like this - being Made of Iron themselves, they would rip into the opponent, slowly slashing away at their armour and chewing their way through struts until the opponent looked like it had been through a wheat thresher, perhaps seen best in its back-to-back comfortable judges' decision wins over Thermidor 2 and Dominator 2 in the Series 4 semifinals.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Tore Razer apart on two separate occasions. The only robot ever to defeat it cleanly. It even bragged of being "The Erazer" in Series 5. And its successor made it three... well, sort of.
• Died During Production: As mentioned above, David Gribble's death, which was the main reason why the team did not enter Series 6 and why Pussycat was eventually given to a new team.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Pussycat was an extremely difficult robot to drive, not only because of its unique drive system, but also because of the high degree of precision required by its weapon. With Ace Pilot David Gribble at the controls it was capable of accomplishing amazing things, but it was notably less-successful after his death when driven by less-experienced drivers.
• Epic Fail: Bodyhammer's Series 2 run. Having entered the series as the number 3 seeds, it got stuck in the Gauntlet and became the highest-rated seed ever to get knocked out in the first round.
• Expy: Kill-E-Crank-E has been compared to Series 5 & 6 competitor S3.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Invoked, according to Robin Herrick, as a means of making it stand out from the crowd. Ironically, one of their closest victories was against the actual Fluffy, where they had their blade torn off and almost gave up hope before Fluffy spontaneously broke down and were eliminated.
• Foreshadowing: Take a quick look at Pussycat's Kill Tally during the Series 4 Sumo Basho, which was filmed after the Grand Final but aired during the heats. The only robot that's clearly visible is Razer, whose loss to Pussycat had already aired, but there are three more robots tallied beneath it, hinting at just how much further Pussycat went that year.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: The source of the bad blood between the Pussycat and Razer teams. Pussycat's driver continued to attack Razer even after the latter was immobilized, inflicting tremendous damage even after its victory was assured.
• Kill Tally: In Series 4, it had pictures of its beaten opponents drawn onto its body and then crossed out in red. For Series 5 it kept the crossed-out image of Razer, along with a message dubbing it "The Erazer".
• Legacy Character: Robin Herrick, a member of Team Cold Fusion during both Bodyhammer and Pussycat's Grand Final appearances, competed in Series 8 with Kill-E-Crank-E, making him the only man to have entered both Series 1 and Series 8.
  • Just to further this vibe, Kill-E-Crank-E's wheels were actually salvaged from Bodyhammer.
• Long Last Look: At the start of the Series 4 Heat B Final, Julia came to talk to David Gribble just before the battle against Razer. David was sitting beside the robot in its pen just behind the arena, gazing at the robot with an unreadable expression on his face, clearly wondering if this was the last time he would ever see his beloved machine in one piece. Joyfully subverted when Pussycat won!
• Long Runner: The only team to take part in both Series 1 and Series 7 (albeit with different robots, and with a break for Series 6 after the untimely death of David Gribble). Original team member Robin Herrick returned in Series 8 with axlebot Kill-E-Crank-E, making him the only competitor from Series 1 to return for the reboot.
  • Long-Runner Cast Turnover: Had ten different team members over their history, the most of any team. By Series 5 there were no original team members left, and by Series 7 they'd been essentially absorbed by another team and the line-up had completely changed a second time.
    • In Series 8 only 1 member returned from the original lineup. Everyone else was new (although Stuart Barnwell, who was part of the Series 7 iteration of the team, is part of another team).
• Made of Iron: Pussycat's engineering was stunningly solid. They had 8 losses in their Robot Wars career and all but one of them was either a judges' decision, a ring-out, or due to them being pinned and carried into the pit (or, in one notorious instance, a post-victory disqualification for breaking competition rules). They were only immobilised once (in their Extreme All-Stars battle against Tornado when they lost a wheel and got stuck on their side) and even then they weren't counted out before cease was called thanks to Refbot getting distracted by a blazing and panicking Sir Killalot. Their robot NEVER suffered an internal failure, no matter how much of a beating they took, something almost no other robot could claim.^note Pussycat might have been internally immobilised during their second meeting with Tornado in Extreme when they fought them for the Challenge Belt, where they were severely battered and left motionless beside the open pit, but Tornado came and shoved them in to seal the deal before it could be determined whether they were immobilised or merely stunned. Arguably the only robot tougher was Wild Thing.
  • Averted with Crank-E, which despite having tougher armour than Kill-E-Crank-E, was smashed open by Aftershock in its only battle in Series 9.
• Meaningful Name: Always lands on its feet.
• Non-Gameplay Elimination: Disqualified from their Series 3 heat final; they had switched their blade pre-match for a different, hardened one (in breach of the show's health & safety rules) without informing anyone^*  although Robin Herrick's telling of the swap has had him say that the team DID tell the tech team of the show about the new blade., and the new disc then shattered when it hit the arena wall. The only robot ever to be eliminated this way.
• Ramming Always Works: Bodyhammer's tactic in Series 1, after its hammer broke down.
• Running Gag: One for Team Cold Fusion as a whole; knocking Razer out. Twice with Pussycat (Series 4 and Extreme 1) and again in Series 8, where Kill-E-Crank-E dragged Razer into the pit with them.
• Taking You with Me: Kill-E-Crank-E wasn't able to escape Razer's pin as the open pit loomed- but it was able to get enough traction on the floor near the edge to turn Razer towards it at the last second, sending them both in together.

Stinger (Series 4 3rd Place, Series 5 & 6 Heat Finalist, Extreme 1 House Robot Rebellion Champion) (30 Seed in Series 4, 5 Seed in Series 5, 11 Seed in Series 6)

"A tail of two wheels"

Weapons: Pizza cutter (Series 3), Torque Reaction Axe & Spikes (Series 4-6)

Battle record: 12 wins, 10 losses (0 wins, 1 loss in the US)

If Steg-O-Saw-Us was the Cinderella Story of the 3rd Wars, Stinger was unquestionably the one of the 4th. Considered practically a Joke Character after its underwhelming debut in Series 3, when finally given a proper chance to spread its wings it bashed its way through all comers, including a shocking upset over Panic Attack, before finally falling to Chaos 2 during the Grand Final in a ridiculously close contest.

• Achilles' Heel: As mentioned under Made of Iron, Stinger was almost indestructible- but it did have one weakness. With all the components contained within the wheel hubs, they still needed aerials to receive signals from the transmitter and there was only one place on the robot where they could be placed and still work: inside the rubber tires running around the outside of the wheels. Damage to the tires could potentially cause signal problems to Stinger, as seen in the Series 4 Northern Annihilator when an axe blow from Dominator 2 disabled one of the wheels and left Stinger hobbling in circles.
• Character Shilling: Subverted. Stinger lost its only battle in Series 3 in less than a minute, after spinning madly and driving into the pit, and yet it was seeded 30th^note It was originally seeded 32nd - the lowest seeding on offer that year - but two robots that were originally seeded dropped out and bumped everyone below them up two places, while other better-performing machines hadn't been seeded at all (it was seeded due to innovation and creativity). However, Stinger went on to justify its seeding that year by reaching the Grand Final, giving Chaos 2 a run for its money, and finishing third.
• Confusion Fu: It was very hard to fight Stinger conventionally, as its shape meant it was difficult to hit and, as it was invertible, lifting and flipping weapons didn’t affect it. All whilst it would spin wildly around the arena, looking like it was seemingly out of control.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The original Series 3 version of Stinger had a weird rotating "pizza cutter"-like weapon at the end of its arm rather than the famous mace; apparently at the time the team believed the only effective method of attack was the torque reaction overhead swing (whereas the robot in later appearances would do most of its damage by spinning horizontally to bludgeon opponents with the mace) and also that it needed a third wheel to drive properly (which it really didn't).
  • In both Series 3 and 4, Stinger had a sort of rotating "pedal" attached to the central axle underneath the mace, designed to get traction on the floor and let the robot flip its mace over without needing to rely on torque reaction. It was removed in Series 5 after the team realised that, not only was torque reaction quite adequate to deliver powerful blows, but Stinger's most powerful attack was the horizontal spinning smash. Ironically, the ability to move its mace under its own power might have allowed Stinger to bypass the "must have an active weapon" rule that kept it out of Series 7 (similar to Gabriel in Series 8 and 10).
• Epic Fail: Stinger's appearance in Series 3, where it ran around the arena aimlessly before pitting themselves in well under a minute. Jonathan even questioned if the controllers had been drinking before the fight!
• Executive Meddling: The rules change in Series 7 meant Stinger couldn’t enter.
• Made of Iron: One of the more durable robots in the arena, contrary to what its appearance would suggest. On several occasions, it suddenly sprang back to life after being counted out by the Refbot, and in the Extreme 1 House Robot Rebellion, it survived being attacked by Dead Metal, Shunt, and Matilda at the same time.
• Old Soldier: While it never appeared in another series after 6 due to the "active weapon" rule, Stinger is still combat-ready as of 2017, despite having spent enough time in retirement to completely rust over during the show's hiatus before being restored to fighting status.
• One-Hit Wonder: Its only major success was coming third in Series 4; it failed to make the semis in the following two series, although it was still awarded a healthy amount of respect (and two heat finals is hardly "nothing").
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: To Sir Killalot, who seemingly harbored a seething hatred of Stinger for some reason and would often go out of his way to pick Stinger up in his claw For the Evulz. The most notable instance was in Stinger's Wild Card Warriors fight against Ajjay, where Killalot picked Stinger up, carried it halfway across the arena, and dumped it over the wall (after "Cease" was called, thankfully).
• Start My Own: After Stinger's inauspicious debut in Series 3, team member Jonathan Pillai went off to build his own axlebot, which eventually became Infernal Contraption. This didn't really work out for him as he consequently missed out on Stinger's wildly successful Series 4 performance, while Infernal Contraption's own performances were less than stellar.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Series 3, it lost its first fight after just 40 seconds when it drove itself into the pit by mistake. In Series 4, it make it all the way to the grand final and took reigning champions Chaos 2 to a judges' decision, which if not for its inherent lack of control, it might have even won.^note There's a sizable group of fans who think that Stinger actually beat Chaos 2 and the judges only awarded it to them because of bias and a desire not to see the #1 seed fall right after the #2 seed was knocked out in the previous bout- the judges ruled Chaos 2 and Stinger both equal on damage, which was absolute bollocks since Chaos 2 couldn't even scratch Stinger, while it came out of the battle with Stinger looking like it had spent half an hour in a cement mixer. On the other hand, the fight was reportedly edited down for broadcast, and Stinger was apparently more damaged than was seen on TV, visibly slowing down as the fight went on.

Hypno-Disc (see Series 3)

Series 5 (2001-2002)

Razer (Series 4 Heat Finalist, Series 5 Champion, Series 6 Runner-Up, 2 Time World Champion, Extreme 1 & 2 All-Stars Champion, International League Champion, Series 3 Pinball Champion, Southern Annihilator Champion) (3 Seed in Series 4, 4 Seed in Series 5, 1 Seed in Series 6) (Winner of Best Design Award in Series 2, 3 & 5)

"Part bird, part reptile, the rest machine..."

"The [weapon Ian and Simon] chose was based on the principle of the fly press, a factory device which is used to bend and fold metal into shape by progressive force. If they could harness enough power to use this as the weapon, then Razer would prove a MOST devastating opponent."

—Team Razer on weapon design

Weapons: Vertical Crusher

Battle record: 40 wins, 6 losses (1 win, 1 loss in the US)

An engineering masterpiece with a crushing claw that nobody else was ever quite able to imitate. Everything about Razer was unique: the crushing claw, the "wing" self-righting mechanism, and a shape that looked fast standing still all gave Razer unmistakable looks and its exploits in the arena gave it a devoted fanbase. While it was stymied by engineering failures in its first three championship runs, once these were ironed out Razer smashed all comers to become the champion of the 5th Wars.

• The Ace: Statistically the most successful robot in the series, with forty victories versus only six defeats. Razer also won more individual tournaments and championships than any other contender.
• The Alleged Car: Its catalogue of breakdowns in Series 2-4; in Series 2 it jumped off the ground and the force of the impact with the floor sheared the drive chains, in Series 3 its self-righting mechanism spontaneously activated and then jammed, leaving the wheels raised off the ground, and in Series 4 it got stuck in forward drive (although it was later discovered that its opponent was at least partially responsible for this one).
• Always Someone Better: Near-invincible champions they may have been, but Razer never beat Pussycat, which was also the only robot ever to defeat it cleanly.^note While Pussycat beating Razer in Series 4 might have been because of a technical fault rather than damage caused, during their rematch in Extreme Pussycat just straight-up KO'd Razer. Even in Series 8 when Razer got a grip on Pussycat's Legacy Character Kill-E-Crank-E, KECE managed to drag Razer down into the pit with it!
• An Arm and a Leg: In its very first fight in Series 5, one of Razer's wings was torn nearly clean off by Big Nipper's jaws. Not that it did much, as Razer spent the rest of the fight punching holes in Big Nipper until it broke down.
• Animal Motifs: Designed to resemble an eagle with the "eye" on the end of the claw and the self-righting wings. Jonathan Pearce has also described it as "part bird, part reptile", and more often than not referred to the claw as a "beak".
• Arch-Enemy: Pussycat, the only robot ever to defeat it cleanly, and Tornado, the robot that controversially prevented it from winning back-to-back championships in Series 6.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Most of Razer's victories came about when its beak pierced an opponent's armor and crushed the internal workings.
• The Bus Came Back: After missing Series 7, it took part in Series 8.
• Crack Defeat: Lost to the obviously inferior Aggrobot, simply because Aggrobot's unwieldy shape made it difficult to attack, prolonging the battle long enough for Razer to break down again.
  • Again in Series 8, they tried to carry Kill-E-Crank-E into the pit, but because of Kill-E-Crank-E's long body shape it was able to get enough traction on the floor by the edge of the pit with its other wheel to drive Razer into it with them.
• Dark Horse Victory: Sort of. In Series 2 through 4, it was a popular competitor and had won many side competitions (it was often referred to as having won "everything but the actual title"), but was prey to mechanical issues and had never got beyond the heat final. It was expected to repeat this pattern in Series 5, but it went on to destroy all foes easily and become the champion.
• Every Year They Fizzle Out: For the longest time, slight-yet-debilitating damage, breakdowns or other glitches would keep Razer from advancing too far.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Sometimes this happened for the most trifling reasons, and just when Razer's designers had finished patching up some previous flaw. Razer's self-righter was designed to protect the delicate underbelly from smacking the floor when Razer rolled right-ways up, by suspending the wheels off the ground (since it had lost in Series 2 as a result of the force of a sudden impact with the floor shearing the drive chains). Against Aggrobot in Series 3, it got stuck open whilst the robot was upright and did just that, costing Razer the match.
• Flip-Flop of God: They famously chose not to participate in the "People's Challenge" in Extreme against Hypno-Disc, as they felt that it wasn't worth the damage to the robots. Despite this, Ian Lewis later claimed on the "Ultimate Warrior Collection - Razer" that Hypno-Disc was the robot they most wanted to fight (although their decision to pull out of the "People's Challenge" was likely informed by the fact that it would have been a one-off, non-competition match that could have potentially put the robot beyond repair).
• Follow the Leader: While there weren't as many imitations of Razer and its crusher as there were imitations of Chaos 2 and its impressive flipper, Razer had its imitators. The most blatant was Ming 3, a robot that was singled out as a Razer knockoff for its long, narrow wedge profile and a claw shaped very much like Razer's. Team Ming denies any conscious imitation, but it's hard to imagine Razer wasn't on their minds when they decided to go with a crushing claw.
  • Dramatically Missing the Point: It wasn't Razer's weapon that made it so successful (or at least, that separated it from its much less successful imitators) it was the shape of the robot, particularly the zero ground clearance scoop at the front that no robot could ever get under, and its ability to turn on the spot so attacking robots could not get around to its sides or back and could do nothing except drive onto the scoop to get crushed. Ming 3's claw might actually have been as destructive as Razer's- but since they had a big clunky ramp on the front and turned slowly thanks to their large, exposed wheels, they almost never got to use it.
• For Want Of A Nail: Two of its three infamous breakdowns could be attributed to this.
  • In the Third Wars, the valve which controlled the direction of the hydraulic fluid for the crusher jammed, causing the arm to extend to its highest point and stay there, leaving the robot suspended on its rear spike.
  • In the Fourth Wars, one of Pussycat's impacts with its blade reveberated through the machine, causing a tiny switch^note 7 mm by 1 mm, not even the size of a nail to fall out of place, leaving it stuck in forward drive.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: While Razer almost never pierced an opponent all the way through, the claw was easily capable of punching through armor and then burying itself deep enough to do severe internal damage - and often allowed Razer to lift the unfortunate victim up and parade them around the arena.
• Invincible Hero: It has just six losses to its name in the UK. Three were due to it breaking down (against Inquisitor, Aggrobot and Pussycat in the UK championship), once due to immobilisation (against Pussycat in Extreme Vengeance)^note although we never learned exactly why it got stuck in forward gear during its Series 4 battle with Pussycat, so it may have actually been from damage Pussycat inflicted with the blade, which would also count as an immobilisation, once to a judges decision (to Tornado in the Series 6 grand final) and its pitting due to the unusual shape of Kill-E-Crank-E in Series 8. Other than that, it won anything and everything else it entered.^note The match in the Extreme 2 European Championship was classed as a win even though they later voted to concede the match to Tornado, and their sole US loss was the International Championship battle where Tornado debuted the anti-Razer frame
• Left Stuck After Attack: Unlike many robots with piercing weapons, Razer was able to exploit this trope, as the claw was powerful enough to lift opponents clean into the air when it retracted. Razer could then drive them wherever it liked or, more often than not, simply show off the impaled opponent in a humiliating fashion before letting them back down again.
• Lightning Bruiser: While Razer's 12 mph made it far from the fastest thing in the arena, it was still decently zippy, and the claw was easily one of the most devastating weapons ever seen on the show.
• Logical Weakness: Razer can handle pretty much anything that comes its way, but the one type of robot it can't handle are those with awkward designs, like large pyramids or frames around the robots, so Razer has nothing to grab on to. Almost all of its losses were to robots with these designs (Aggrobot, Pussycat, Tornado with its frame on, and Kill-E-Crank-E) as they were able to prolong the match without getting damaged until Razer broke down or was immobilised (or, in the last case, the unusual shape allowing them to drag Razer into the pit with them).
• Long Runner: Razer debuted in Series 2 and was a mainstay of the show up until the end of Extreme 2. Over a decade later, it was there again for the first episode of the reboot (Series 8), just as menacing as always. Just a pity about Kill-E-Crank-E and the pit, really...
• Meaningful Name: Jonathan Pearce joked that Razer was named after then West Ham footballer Neil "Razor" Ruddock but Razer's name is really an extension of the word Raze...
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: ...and Raze it did.
• Old Soldier: In Series 8. Razer had very few upgrades compared to the other returning veterans, and indeed it originally wasn't going to be entered at all, as the team knew how outdated it was. Nonetheless, they decided to bring it out of retirement, give it a few upgrades, and enter anyway for one last hurrah.
• Perfect Play A.I.: Arguably a non-AI (and non-video game) example: Razer were almost invincible because the design of the robot meant they were all but impossible to attack. Almost any attack made on them would result in the attacker driving up onto the scoop on the front, under the claw, then being pinned and crushed without being allowed to fight back, often resulting in a One-Hit Kill. The only weapon they weren't technically immune to were flywheels (which would knock Razer away when they made contact, preventing them from bringing the claw into play), but fortunately for them they only encountered one in their entire career (13 Black in the Extreme 2 All-Stars) who could dish out damage as good as they got it from Razer, and Razer was nearly immobilized by them. The only robot ever to KO them cleanly (twice) was Pussycat, whose unique shape made them one of the few robots Razer couldn't easily get the claw into.
• Promoted Fanboy: It wasn't actually on Robot Wars, but team member Simon Scott eventually joined the crew of sister show Techno Games in the later series to provide technical breakdowns and enthusiastic explanations of some of the competitors and their mechanics.
  • Ian Lewis went on to become the single English-speaking judge on the first series of Chinese robot combat show King of Bots.
• The Rival: Infamously with Tornado. The final score sits at 2 - 2, with Razer winning a deciding battle but handing the win over to Tornado.
  • Also with Team Cold Fusion, the only team to beat Razer by KO twice. A third battle at the very beginning of Series 8 saw both teams get pitted and lose when Kill-E-Crank-E pulled a surprise move and dragged Razer into the pit with them.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After their first loss to Pussycat, Ian Lewis stormed off the podium to check up on the damage dished out by Pussycat, instead of chatting with Craig and the rest of his team.
• Shocking Elimination: Against the inferior Inquisitor and Aggrobot in Series 2 and 3, and the good-but-not-as-popular Pussycat in Series 4. Their return in Series 8 saw them register their worst performance ever, being pitted together with Kill-E-Crank-E in the opening melee.
• Sore Loser: After Razer's loss to Pussycat in Series 4, team member Ian Lewis didn't bother showing up for the post-fight interview, wanting to check on his robot, as he wasn't happy over how Pussycat kept damaging them after immobilisation (he claimed the teams had made a "Gentleman's Agreement" beforehand not to continue attacking their opponent after immobilisation^note The Pussycat team argued that because Razer's wheels were still moving, they thought Razer was still mobile, which was why they continued to attack.). At the end of the program he then went into a rant about how some people don't engage in No Holds Barred Wreckings. Averted by his teammates, who admitted that Pussycat's weapon was very effective, thought it was great that they had lost to such a good robot and congratulated the Pussycat team on their victory. Ian would later apologise for his behaviour, though they still fought in a "Vengeance" battle against Pussycat in Extreme. They lost again, but Ian was much more graceful.
• Swiss-Army Appendage: After its first loss against Tornado with its anti-Razer cage attached in the US, the team developed two add-ons designed to help it get to grips with the frame: an extra spike beneath the crusher used in the Series 6 grand final, and a three-pronged attachment used in Extreme 2.
• Team Mom: Gillian Lewis, Ian's wife (and Vinnie Blood's sister) joined the team for Series 8 and filled this role- for example, she brought along a pack of sausage rolls.
• Victory Pose: Activating its self-righting "wings" whilst still upright. As noted under Hoist by His Own Petard, this resulted in a case of Dramatic Irony in Series 3 when it was knocked out by getting stuck in its Victory Pose^note the team didn't trigger the Victory Pose intentionally, part of the hydraulic system that powered the arm malfunctioned and triggered it automatically.

Bigger Brother (Series 5 Runner-Up, Series 3 & 6 Semi-Finalist - Series 3 as Big Brother, Extreme 2 All-Stars Heat Finalist & Minor Meltdown Champion) (14 Seed in Series 4, 2 Seed in Series 6, 4 Seed in Series 7)

"No guts, no glory!"

Weapons: Morningstar Mace (Series 3), Rear-Hinged Flipper (Series 4-8)

Battle record: 20 wins, 11 losses as Bigger Brother (1 win, 1 loss in the US); 2 wins, 2 losses as Big Brother; 0 wins, 1 loss as Or Te; 1 win, 3 losses as The Swarm.

The "Nightmare in Metal", Bigger Brother was a Lightning Bruiser par excellence. A heavily-armoured, very fast and incredibly well-driven flipper, in Series 5 it rose from inauspicious beginnings (with its predecessor Big Brother only reaching the Series 3 semifinals due to the kindness of their opponents) to dethrone reigning champions Chaos 2, overcome Hypno-Disc in the single greatest comeback victory in the history of robot combat, and take Razer to the limit to claim 2nd place.

• Ace Pilot: Both Ian and Joe qualified as ace pilots. Ian drove the robot in its Series 5 campaign, where it finished second, while Joe drove Bigger Brother during the Minor Meltdown event and won.
• Anti-Climax: The fight with Mauler during their visit to BattleBots. Bigger Brother simply reversed its armoured rear into Mauler, snapped one of the steel padlocks, and the imbalanced centrifuge did the rest. That said, the image of Mauler unbalancing itself and flipping became one of the most iconic scenes in the show's history; whenever a full-body spinner unbalanced itself, it was called by fans "the Mauler Dance".
• Awesome, but Impractical: After the failure of Or Te, Ian Watts fixated on using teams of clusterbots, with a variety of different weapon arrangements. Clusterbots simply aren't a serious competitive option and Ian has managed only very limited success with them across multiple different competitions, but he perseveres all the same.
• Badass Adorable: "Little Joe" Watts was very well liked in the pits because he was so cute and endlessly cheerful, and was also a very skilled roboteer, being the weapons operator of Bigger Brother during its most successful battles.
  • Sam Watts in the reboot picked up where his big brother left off, even driving one of the bots in The Swarm himself as well as directing the rest of the team.
• Badass Back: Bigger Brother's rear panel, made from cobalt titanium, was easily its strongest, as demonstrated in its battle against Hypno-Disc. Bigger Brother was on the receiving end of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, but the "cushion" on its back provided the best defence against the disc, and eventually led to Bigger Brother's victory.
• Battle Trophy: Little Joe scores one of The Grim Reaper's skulls to put on Big Brother in Series 3.
• The Bus Came Back: Ian Watts competed in Series 8 with Or Te, a spiritual successor to Bigger Brother, and in Series 10 with The Swarm.
• Cheerful Child: The most prolific in the whole show. "Little" Joe Watts & his sister Ellie were very popular with the crowd and Joe himself was a very skilled driver. At the age of 8.
  • While Joe and Ellie have grown up and are no longer part of the team, the team had a Cheerful Child in Series 8 and 10 in the form of Ian's other son, Sam (age 12).
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Some people wonder if Ian Watts went a bit loopy after Or Te got knocked out of Series 8 in one blow, as he seems to have become obsessed with clusterbots, entering them in Robot Wars, BattleBots and King of Bots despite a marked lack of success. He also started acting more than a bit eccentric, dressing himself and his team up in strange outfits (such as dressing as chefs with colanders worn as hats on King of Bots).
• Curb-Stomp Battle: It easily threw its first two opponents out of the arena in Series 5.
• Determinator: Its famous victory over Hypno-Disc in Series 5 is enough to qualify it. It took so much damage, and just kept going.
• Distaff Counterpart: The team's BattleBots entry, Little Sister, painted yellow with flowers.
• Epic Fail: Or Te was eliminated from Series 8 in about five seconds after a single blow from Supernova knocked out the safety link.
• Gratuitous Latin: "Or Te" is roughly Latin for "Hey, you!"
• History Repeats: Just as Bigger Brother entered BattleBots with Little Sister with little success, The Swarm previously entered BattleBots with Creepy Crawlies with no success (although being drawn against Son of Whyachi didn't do much for their chances). They did somewhat better with The Grubs in the first season of King of Bots and The Four Horsemen in BB's 2018 season.
• Improbable Weapon User: The morningstar mace on Big Brother, which was meant to whip back and forth, was the only one of its kind on the show.
• Legacy Character: Competed in Series 3 as Big Brother, a wedge with a morning-star mace.
• Large Ham: "Little" Joe occasionally became one, especially when paired with Craig.
• Loophole Abuse: During the team's vacations to fight in the US, they couldn't continue using Bigger Brother as Mentorn now wouldn't allow it. But there ain't no rule against entering the robot with a new paint job and name!
• Made of Iron: Best demonstrated by its battle with Hypno-Disc. Hypno-Disc ripped off its flipper and destroyed its armor, and Bigger Brother still beat it.
  • Averted by Or Te, which was knocked out by a single blow from Supernova.
• Meaningful Name: "Little" Joe is Ellie's big brother.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The "Blenda" minibot of the Swarm singlehandedly knocked out Donald Thump, who was almost four times its size!
• Put on a Bus: Sadly, Or Te was apparently turned away from Series 9 after its poor showing the previous year, marking the first time since Series 2 that Ian Watts didn't take part in the show.
• Shocking Elimination: Its elimination in round 2 of its Series 7 heat is one of the most-remembered examples in the entire show.
• Stone Wall: Against opponents which can't be flipped, Bigger Brother ended up being this. It had little offensive power, but ridiculously tough armor, enough to weather hits from heavy hitters like Razer and Hypno-Disc.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The team's BattleBots entry "Little Sister" looked like a carbon copy of a later model of Bigger Brother, but painted yellow with flowers.
• The Cameo: Appeared in an episode of Big Brother, where the housemates faced off against it. Unsurprisingly, Bigger Brother defeated them easily.
• Took a Level in Badass: Wasn't really much of a contender in Series 4, going out in the heat semi-finals. In Series 5 however, it got all the way to the Grand Final, ultimately coming in second place. This run included: flipping each of its first two opponents out of the arena in under 35 seconds; taking on Chaos 2, the two-time reigning champions, and winning; and enduring No Holds Barred Beatdowns from both Hypno-Disc and Razer without being immobilised. Jonathan Pearce lampshaded it as early as the heat final, calling Bigger Brother one of the most improved robots he'd ever seen.
  Jonathan: [as Bigger Brother tosses 3 Stegs to Heaven around the arena like a leaf] If you'd seen Bigger Brother before on Robot Wars, you'd have never guessed that this could happen! Never in a million lightyears!
• Zerg Rush: The Swarm somehow manages to pull this off in Robot Wars by virtue of being four small robots in one. Each individual bot didn't have much in the way of durability or weaponry (other than Blenda's spinning bar, which was surprisingly powerful for its size), but they could simply pester the opponent from all sides, making them split their attention while chipping away at them. Additionally, the clusterbot rules meant that three of the four had to be knocked out in order for The Swarm as a whole to be eliminated, so they could lose up to two minibots with no issues.

Firestorm 3 (see Series 3)

Hypno-Disc (see Series 3)

Series 6 (2002-2003)

Tornado (Series 4 Semi-Finalist, Series 6 Champion, Series 7 3rd Place, Holder of 2 Challenge Belts, Extreme 1 All-Stars Runner-Up, European Champion, Extreme Warriors International Champion) (12 Seed in Series 5 & 6, 1 Seed in Series 7) (Winner of Best Newcomer Award in Series 4)

"It's like the Mike Tyson of the Robot Wars world!"

Weapons: Ramming Spikes (Series 4), Vertical Drum (Series 5), Interchangeable (Series 6 & 7)

Battle record: 32 wins, 9 losses (3 wins, 0 losses in the US)

Debuting in Series 4, Tornado made an immediate impression, winning the Best Newcomer award after several highly impressive wins. A combination of sheer brute ramming power, powerful engineering, tough construction and (in later series) interchangeable weaponry made Tornado difficult to deal with and capable of battering most opponents into submission, leading to them eventually snatching the Series 6 championship from the crushing jaws of Razer.

• Ain't No Rule: The anti-crusher cage. A lot of people decried this as "cheating", but the producers went out of their way to make it clear that it was perfectly legitimate, with Philippa even bringing judge Noel Sharkey down to the pits to ask him on-camera if it was legal (which Sharkey confirmed it was).
• Boring, but Practical: YMMV, but many people feel this way, as it generally won by ramming others into submission. It's thought that the "active weapons" rule brought in for Series 7 was a direct response to Tornado winning Series 6 (which doesn't even make any sense since, apart from when they switched to the static spike to beat Anarchy, Tornado had already been using "active weapons" ever since Series 5).
• Crack Defeat: To Diotoir. Tornado was a very tough robot and nobody (not even Team Nemesis) even considered that Diotoir might win. However, the resulting battle cemented Diotoir's status as the Lethal Joke Character.
  Philippa: Can your robot beat that robot (Tornado)?
  Zulu: Going downhill, yeah. If we had a start on a ramp, not a problem.
• Crazy-Prepared: Not only did they bring the notorious anti-crusher cage to Series 6, they also brought anti-axe and anti-spinner weapons (though the latter two were deemed illegal), just on the off-chance that they came up against a robot with one of those three weapons. They had no idea whether they'd face Razer at any point (although admittedly with Razer being all but unstoppable at that point it was likely), but they brought the anti-crusher weapon anyway, and lo and behold...
• Cryptic Background Reference: Of its interchangeable weapons, the Anti-Axe Weapon and Anti-Spinner Weapon were both declared to be against the rules during Series 6 filming (despite a reference to one of them still being broadcast - see What Happened to the Mouse? below). In Series 7 the team mentioned a few new interchangeable weapons to replace ones they couldn't use due to rule changes; these included a large vertical spinning bar adapted from the now-outlawed Anti-Crusher Weapon, which was mentioned but never seen. No pictures of Tornado with any of the weapons not seen on TV (or explanations of how they worked) are known to exist.^note According to the team's website, the Anti-Spinner Weapon was a set of kart tyres with titanium plating attached to the chassis, and may have also incorporated a lifter; the Anti-Axe Weapon was similar, but with some kind of overhead frame.
• Dark Horse Victory: In Series 6. To much controversy.
• Determinator: All five of its Challenge Belt battles in Extreme - in which it took on Behemoth, Chaos 2, Pussycat and Wild Thing and beat them all - were filmed on the same day.
• History Repeats: In Series 5 and the Extreme II All-Stars championship. After a relatively successful attempt at the main championship (Top 8 in Series 4 and winner of Series 6), its next appearance saw it losing in Round 2 when its opponent (Diotoir in Series 5 & Bigger Brother in the All-Stars) opened its flipper and trapped Tornado underneath, eventually pushing it around enough to pit it.
• Jack of All Stats: Not a Lightning Bruiser. At 10 MPH its speed is around average, but it is notable for having interchangable weapons.
• Joke Item: The original pneumatic spike used by the Series 4 incarnation of the robot was derided by the team, who said the moment they built it it was clearly not up to scratch and described it as a "pneumatic toothpick".
• Loophole Abuse: The controversial new rule in Series 7 requiring robots to have an active weapon meant Tornado's most effective one - the scoop - was now illegal. So the team simply added a small rotary flail to it.
• Older Than They Think: The anti-crusher "Razer-proof" cage didn't first appear in the Series 6 final, as many fans believe. It actually appeared first on the US spin-off Robot Wars: Extreme Warriors International Championship when Tornado and Razer fought in Round 2.
• Ramming Always Works: Although many people consider Tornado boring for this reason, it was an undeniably effective attack strategy. It took Chaos 2 to stop Tornado in Series 4 (although Tornado would later defeat Chaos 2), and Razer in the 2nd World Championship. It lost out in Series 7 to a superior rammer, Storm 2.
  • Averted with Diotoir. After Tornado got some early hits in, Diotoir stood its ground and wasn't affected by Tornado's constant attempts it push it around the arena, as the shape of Diotoir's chassis meant that Tornado's wheels were slightly lifted off the ground every time Tornado hit it front-on. Eventually Tornado was the one being pushed around, not Diotoir.
• The Rival: Infamously with Razer. The final score between them sits at 2 - 2, with Razer winning the deciding battle but handing the win to Tornado.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: The interchangeable weapons system in Series 6 & 7, which included several weapons designed for specific types of opponent (or even just specific opponents, with the Anti-Crusher Weapon having been designed especially for Razer).
• A Taste of Defeat: Series 5, where it didn't even reach the heat final. Every other war Tornado entered saw it reach at least the last 8, if not the grand final.
  • The All-Stars championship in Extreme II saw it lose to Bigger Brother in round 2. The kicker? The championship featured the robots who made it to the Series 6 semi-finals ^note with only Chaos 2 replacing Wild Thing, who didn't participate in Extreme 2, which was the series it won.
• Tempting Fate: Before their battle with Diotoir, the Tornado team joked that the worst that could happen was that the robot choked on a furball.^note Diotoir is covered completely in fur. According to their website and the post-match interview, the fur did indeed jam their weapon on more than one occasion.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: During the first round of the Series 7 Grand Final, Team Tornado came up against a robot heavily based on and inspired by theirs which they had also done a lot to help build: Storm II. As the Storm II blog put it, "Storm II was going to take on its mentor". The upgrade won it.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In their interview before their fight with Hypno-Disc in the Series 6 semi-finals, the team say they're going to fit their Anti-Spinner Weapon... after Tornado has been seen driving into the arena without it fitted. According to the team's website, the Anti-Spinner Weapon was declared illegal after the Hypno-Disc team made an official complaint and the producers ruled it was a "defensive addition" rather than an offensive weapon. A scene explaining this was filmed but for whatever reason wasn't broadcast.
  • At the start of Series 7, the team allude to a new spinning weapon. Said weapon was never used because it was deemed unsuitable for every fight they had (chiefly because Tornado could not run inverted with it attached, which would have been suicidal in the flipper-dominated Series 7^note Every opponent Tornado faced in Series 7 was capable of flipping them over, with the sole exception of Tetanus Booster in the heat final).

Razer (see Series 5)

Firestorm 4 (see Series 3)

Terrorhurtz (Series 6 4th Place, Series 10 Heat Finalist & Wildcard Melee 3rd place) (Extreme 2 Challenge Belt Runner-Up) (Northern Annihilator 3rd Place with Killerhurtz) (16 Seed in Series 4, 3 Seed in Series 7)

It kills, it hurts, get used to it!

^{Click to see Terrorhurtz's old look} 

^{Click to see Killerhurtz} 

Weapons: Spiked Axe (Series 2-4 as Killerhurtz), Bladed Axe (Series 5-9), Hammer (2016 pilot as Basher)

Battle record: 14 wins, 8 losses as Terrorhurtz; 4 wins, 6 losses as Killerhurtz

Unquestionably the most devastating axe-wielder in the history of Robot Wars, Terrorhurtz had been around (as its predecessor Killerhurtz) since the 2nd Wars but had never made a real impression. In Series 6 it finally got to show what it could do, smashing apart all comers with shocking brutality that no other axe-bot had ever displayed before, only falling to reigning champions Razer. Captain John Reid has remained an active presence on the robot combat scene ever since, with Terrorhurtz winning the UK championship twice during its time on the live circuit after the show originally went off the air, so it was no surprise to anyone when the axe-wielder returned for the 2016 reboot.

• Ace Pilot: Despite his driving misstep in Series 3 that nobody ever seems to be able to let go of, John Reid has established a 20-year reputation as one of the best drivers in robot combat. Whether he's driving Killerhurtz (except that one time), Terrorhurtz, beta or TanShe, his driving is confident, precisely controlled, relentlessly aggressive and utterly fearless.
• Achilles' Heel: Their axe mechanism failed to work in two successive battles in Series 8. The first time didn't matter so much as they simply pushed Carbide around the arena before pitting them, but the second time saw them run up against Behemoth, who turned them over and left them unable to self-right.
  • While Terrorhurtz' modern design has extremely tough front armour, enough to No-Sell Carbide, its rear armour is fairly fragile, and in Series 9 both Sabretooth and Aftershock tore it open.
• all lowercase letters: beta.
• The Berserker: If there was ever a robot that fit this description that wasn't armed with a gigantic spinning weapon of some kind, Terrorhurtz was it. Its drivers were aggressive and its axe was powerful, but only if it was aimed properly, and swinging it too many times too quickly made it start bouncing off the ground - a dangerous thing to happen around wedges or flippers. The consequences of too many misses became apparent when Terrorhurtz lost to Razer in the Series 6 grand finals: most of the reason Razer was able to survive was because Terrorhurtz kept swinging at empty arena when Razer moved even a bit off-center.
  • Its successor, beta, can also mimic Terrorhurtz's berserker jumps when activating the hammer. Since this is a bad thing for the robot, they built powerful electromagnets into it to help hold it to the floor- but this backfired on them when they were so strong that they tore up the floor panels of the Battlebox, keeping beta out of Series/Battlebots Season 5.0.
  • Notably averted in the reboot, where Terrorhurtz' swings are much more measured and precise. Memorably, in one Series 9 battle, John Reid chided weapons operator Nick Lynch for swinging the axe around wildly and told him to "wait for a good hit".
• Born Unlucky: And how.
  • In Series 2 Killerhurtz stormed through the Gauntlet and Trial only to face reigning champions Roadblock in the heat semi-final, and they were promptly shoved down the pit.
  • In the First World Championships, Killerhurtz was drawn against Chaos 2 in the first round. It damaged Chaos 2's flipper panel and even punctured the reigning champion's CO2 canister, but somehow Chaos 2's flipper was still working, and one flip was enough to throw Killerhurtz over and out.
  • In Series 4, having finally won its first battle, it seemed Killerhurtz might finally live up to its promise, only to break down in the heat semi-final against Splinter. In the Northern Annihilator at the end of the series it was then ganged up on by pretty much every other robot in the arena.
  • In Series 7, Terrorhurtz was suffering from long-standing technical difficulties and wasn't able to compete.
  • In Series 8, its axe failed to work during its round-robin fight against Behemoth, so it was unable to self-right when Behemoth flipped it over. This left it needing to beat the crippled Nuts by knockout in order to qualify, only for Nuts' flail ring to break off and get stuck underneath Terrorhurtz, hampering its mobility and allowing Nuts to hang on for a judges' decision, sending Terrorhurtz out.
  • The bad luck wasn't exclusive to their Robot Wars outings either: the team tried to enter BattleBots 2015 with beta only to be forced to withdraw after a 25kg bag of essential parts got lost in transit, and when they finally entered the following year, the robot fell off the trolley as it was being wheeled into the arena (though it was fine, and went on to win that battle).
• The Bus Came Back: Terrorhurtz returned for Series 8, after a cameo in Series 7 followed by a 13-year gap.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Prohibited from entering their new robot, beta, in the series because of exclusivity clauses between Robot Wars and BattleBots, they simply renamed the robot "Basher" and entered in it the unaired pilot episode instead. They didn't push their luck by trying to enter it in the series itself, though.
• The Chew Toy: In the Northern Annihilator, where Killerhurtz was a target in every single battle and made it to the penultimate round before Dominator 2 finally took it out.
• Cool Old Guy: John Reid is universally liked and respected in the Robot Wars community, especially considering that many of the current roboteers grew up watching him on TV.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Terrorhurtz was one of the first overhead axe-welding robots to be able to dish out a lot of damage. It dispatched Panic Attack with its axe, and also pitted the destructive Carbide without a functioning weapon.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: John Reid teamed up with Gabriel Stroud from the Sabretooth team (who John had defeated in Series 6 and been defeated by in Series 9) to create a new machine for King of Bots called TanShe.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: As stated above, Terrorhurtz is one of only five robots to have defeated Carbide as of Series 10 (the others are Apollo, TR2, Nuts 2 and Eruption).
• Early-Bird Cameo: Terrorhurtz debuted in the Arenas of Destruction video game even though that game was based on Series 4, which Killerhurtz had entered instead; indeed, Arenas was released several months before Terrorhurtz appeared on television at all. The reason for this was that BattleBots owned the merchandising rights to Killerhurtz, but not the newly-built Terrorhurtz, so that machine was put in the game instead.
• Epic Fail: The damaging power behind Killerhurtz was negated by John Reid's occasionally lacklustre driving ability. This was memorably demonstrated in its Series 3 campaign when it hit Cerberus with one axe blow, retreated, drove across the arena and fell into the pit.
• Every Year They Fizzle Out: Killerhurtz was popular and much was expected of it (best shown by the fact that it was seeded 16th of 32 in Series 4 even though at that point it had yet to win a single battle in the UK), but crashed out in the heats four years in a row (including Terrorhurtz's first series) before it finally got going.
• Handicapped Badass: It was able to pit the destructive Carbide in the Series 8 round robin stage, while taking almost no damage and with their axe not working. They were the only robot to beat the heat winner, and without a working weapon!
• Irony: Before Series 3, John Reid had taken Killerhurtz across to fight on BattleBots, where he'd won a trophy for his driving skill. Then during his first battle in Series 3, he drove Killerhurtz straight into the Pit of Oblivion! He claimed that he'd forgotten the pit was there since they didn't have a pit on BattleBots (and to be fair, the Series 3 pit could be a little hard to see in the darkened arena, as its borders weren't marked with hazard tape until Series 4). He later said that he was trying to do a circuit of the arena to face Cerberus head on again,^note necessary because of Killerhurtz's unusual car-style steering and thought the pit was a black panel on the floor.
• Legacy Character: British fans might not think of its predecessor, Killerhurtz, as much of a contender, but in American counterpart BattleBots Killerhurtz earned a reputation as a poor-handling but powerful robot. Then came Terrorhurtz. Both robots are named on playing with the "hertz" scale, "kilohertz" and "terahertz" respectively.
• Lightning Bruiser: When its pneumatic axe hit it was devastating and it was suitably manoeuvrable, but its real asset was the speed at which it could swing its axe both ways, meaning it could string together devastating blows in very rapid order. The remodeled version from the reboot waives this ability in exchange for being much faster and tougher while still hitting with thunderous force, qualifying for this trope even more.
• Long Runner: John Reid debuted in Series 2 with Killerhurtz, and is still competing with Terrorhurtz almost 20 years later. If he hadn't missed Series 7 because of a technical fault, he'd be tied with Ant Prichard of Behemoth as the Robot Wars competitor with the most appearances in the show's history.
• Loophole Abuse: BattleBots owned the merchandising rights to Killerhurtz, preventing it from appearing in Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction. However, they didn't own the rights to Terrorhurtz, meaning the developers included that machine instead.
  • The team's exclusivity contract with BattleBots also prevented them from appearing in Series 8 with their new robot, beta. However, the contract didn't say anything about appearing in untelevised battles, so they instead showed up for the unaired pilot episode. Just to be on the safe side, they also entered it under the alternate name "Basher".
• Mascot: In Series 3, Killerhurtz had Charmander stuck on top of it as a mascot.
• Made of Iron: The remodeled Terrorhurtz from Series 8 has phenomenally thick front armour plate, able to soak up the worst damage Carbide's spinning blade could put out without taking more than a few dents. beta is similarly durable, as its run in the 2016 series of BattleBots showed.
  • In Series 10 John took this up to eleven by replacing the old Hardox steel plate with one made of ARMOX steel instead. That's the material used to make tank plating, and it took 80 tons of pressure to fold the metal into that shape.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Zig-Zagged with Killerhurtz. Its second attempt at the UK championship was worse than its first, but its second go at the Pinball Warrior Tournament saw it reach third place with an impressive score of 235, when it came second-last the previous year.
  • Played straight with Terrorhurtz. It only reached round 2 in its first championship, but reached the Grand Final the following year, proving that the robot wasn't just wasted potential. It later went on to win the championship while on the live circuit.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast
• One-Hit Kill: Terrorhurtz slew Diotoir in the World Series with a single hit that knocked out its removable link, which hadn't been properly secured before the battle.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After spending the entire Northern Annihilator getting thoroughly beaten up on and facing more punishment from Dominator 2, John Reid drove a damaged Killerhurtz straight into the robot entrance door in the arena so he could retrieve his robot and leave as quickly as possible.^Actually... Killerhurtz had suffered such serious damage that it was stuck in forward drive and had simply trundled uncontrollably across the floor until it was trying to force its way through the wall in front of the House Robot entrance gate.
• Spam Attack: As noted above, Terrorhurtz could hit its opponents many times, very quickly, until its opponents were overwhelmed by the speed and power of the repeated blows. This was no longer part of its new design by the time it entered Series 8, with the remodeled Terrorhurtz more closely resembling beta/Basher, with a defined front and back and an axe that would deliver single, vicious blows before having to reset after firing.
• Took a Level in Badass: Killerhurtz, after 3 years of not doing much, finally found some success in the Northern Annihilator where it came third overall. Along the way, it immobilised Chaos 2 and was ganged up on by every other competitor for no apparent reason.
  • Terrorhurtz became one for the team as well. After a weak Series 5 campaign, it finally made it to the heat final in Series 6, defeated former champions Panic Attack, then made it all the way to the Grand Final!
  • After the original show finished, Terrorhurtz continued fighting on the live circuit to great success, capturing the UK championship twice (a feat only matched by Chaos 2, Iron-Awe, Big Nipper and Eruption). Of these five double-champions, Terrorhurtz is tied with Eruption for being closest to becoming a triple-champion, being runner-up behind Kronic and Big Nipper in 2005 and 2007 respectively.^note Eruption might technically be considered closer, as it has yet to place outside the top two as of 2015, winning 2013 and 2014 championships back-to-back before coming second to TR2 in 2015. Of course, the issue was decisively settled when Eruption won Series 10.
• What Might Have Been: Terrorhurtz came to Series 7 redesigned and optimized, but the rebuild wasn't completed before recording began and it was withdrawn as a result. It's highly likely that Terrorhurtz would have been a strong contender otherwise.

Series 7 (2003-2004)

Typhoon 2 (Series 7 Champion, Extreme 1 & 2 Middleweight Champion with Typhoon and Extreme 2 Runner Up with Typhoon Twins, Extreme 2 Lightweight Champion with Typhoon Thunder)

"Planning to whip up a storm!"

Weapons: Full Body Spinner

Battle record: 7 wins, 1 loss

The most controversial champion of Robot Wars, Typhoon 2 was also the first newcomer to lift the trophy since the second series, making its championship debut in Series 7 as a reserve and going all the way to the title. Their championship victory was marred by controversy at the time by accusations of them being a Creator's Pet, but the robot was unquestionably very powerful, the only full-body spinner to ever find real success due to its reliability and the unbelievable power of its rotating weapon, and decades after the fact the controversial accusations are considered to have been disproven.

• Achilles' Heel: The shell spinner design left no room for a self-righting mechanism. While it miraculously avoided being taken out by any of the myriad flippers in Series 7 (although only narrowly in its opening melee, as it was flipped after two other robots had been immobilised), this caused it to fall at the first hurdle in the Extreme 2 Annihilator, where it was flipped by Raging Reality after being crushed by Kan-Opener.
• Backed by the Pentagon: Or in this case, the British Air Cadets.
• Born Lucky: Perhaps more so than any other champion.
  • First of all, it originally didn't even qualify: it was defeated by Big Nipper in its qualifying battle and was only selected as one of twelve "lucky losers" to make up the numbers.
  • Secondly, in a series overflowing with powerful flippers, six of its seven battles saw it go up against robots with some kind of flipping or lifting weapon. As it didn't have a SRIMECH, a single flip would have been enough to end its title challenge before it even began. While it was flipped by Bigger Brother during its first-round melee, the other two opponents had already been dispatched by then and it went through regardless.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Appeared in an Extreme 2 annihilator but was eliminated the first round. Later went on to win the following championship.
• For Want Of A Nail: In the opening melee of Series 7, Typhoon 2's weapon wasn't working, and the second Bigger Brother attacked it it was flipped over and totally helpless. Bigger Brother single-handedly took out all three of its opponents in the melee, and Typhoon only got through because it was flipped after the other two robots had been immobilised; if Bigger Brother had attacked it sooner, the eventual champion would have been out in round 1.
  • Bigger Brother's Ring Out loss to Iron-Awe 2 could also be seen as this, as it had much thicker armor than Iron-Awe and would likely have been able to flip Typhoon had it not been defeated a round earlier.
• Generation Xerox: Every Typhoon variation looks exactly the same, and had roughly the same track record of winning everything under controversial circumstances.
• Hell Is That Noise: While it wasn't anything like as distinctive as the sound of Hypno-Disc's screaming disc, when Typhoon 2 was allowed to get up to its full speed it made a sound like the roaring of a heavy industrial fan. This was usually the sign of impending doom for their opponent, as the hit that could be delivered once it reached these speeds would usually be enough to send them spinning through 720 degrees or more!
• Legacy Character: Gary Cairns, one of the Typhoon 2 team members from Series 7, competed in the reboot (Series 8) with a horizontal spinner named PP3D. PP3D is a separate robot rather than a successor to Typhoon 2, though, so it wouldn't have been counted as the reigning champion, even if the reboot hadn't already been ignoring most of the history of the original series.
• Nice Guy: Like Rex Garrod before them, they entered to encourage people, especially kids, to get into engineering. They've also masterminded many programs to introduce schoolkids to field, such as the Rampaging Chariots which provides schoolkids free featherweight robot kits to build themselves and customise. They've also done school tours with the Typhoon robots as part of their program, and have reportedly been unfailingly polite during their visits.
• One-Hit Wonder: Won its debut war, Series 7, and didn't return for any following events or Series 8 or 9. One of the team members is returning, but with a different team and a different bot.
• Running Gag: The Air Cadets insisting that the technical details behind Typhoon 2 are "military secrets".
• Spectacular Spinning: A very destructive full body spinner.
• Trash the Set: Destroyed the arena wall in both its Grand Final battles, both times requiring the battle to be stopped whilst the damage was repaired.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Typhoon Thunder vs Ellie's Little Pink Bot. Ellie's bot never got off the mark, since the batteries were so big it kept the wheels off the ground.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Typhoon 2 had to withdraw from the Third World Championship at the last minute, allegedly due to the team only having one set of batteries, which they elected to use for their middleweight (which was the reigning champion for its division, so they chose to have it defend its title instead). Although, admittedly, whether they could've been a contender and settled the score with Storm 2 would've depended entirely on whether they could break through Tough as Nails.
  • At one point during the Seventh Wars, Typhoon 2 was measured up for a potential pullback toy of the robot to be released. Unfortunately, whoever did this only realised later that Five didn't have the merch rights to the show, so the plans were abandoned.

Storm 2 (Series 7 Runner-Up, Series 8 Heat Finalist, 3rd World Championship Winner, New Blood Champion) (16 Seed in Series 7)

"Your worst nightmare in the arena"

"The way to damage someone internally isn't to wave a bit of metal about on the end of an arm, it isn't to spin up bits of metal as fast as you can on a disk and chase after someone. The answer is to use the robot as the weapon. [...] We coined the phrase "Full Body Hammer" because that's exactly what it is."
— Team Storm

Weapons: Full Body Hammer, Lifting Arm (Series 7), Interchangeable (Series 8)

Battle record: 17 wins, 3 loss

Tornado's protege and one of the most brutal rambots of all time, Storm 2 made its mark in Extreme 2 during the New Blood Championship, a tournament where the winner would be given automatic admission to Series 7 and a seeding. It reached the Grand Final before being defeated in an extremely close match against Typhoon 2. While it failed to win the Championship trophy, Storm 2 at least earned a consolation prize by winning the 3rd World Championship tournament which took place at the conclusion of the 7th Wars. However, controversy erupted afterwards with accusations of producer bias actively sabotaging the machine, leading to a decades-long narrative that Storm 2 had been cheated out of the Championship, before these allegations were finally examined in depth and dismissed, leading to Storm 2, rather than Typhoon 2, becoming the machine that is Overshadowed by Controversy.

• Always Someone Better: In two series it only ever lost to that series' champion, specifically Typhoon 2 and Apollo.
• Befriending the Enemy: Although the battle between Storm 2 & Typhoon 2 is infamous, Ed Hoppitt and Gary Cairns actually became good friends and each other's biggest supporter some time after the TV series ended (although they occasionally play up the rivals angle as a joke). For example, Team Storm was the first sponsor of Gary Cairns' Kickstarter to upgrade PP3D. However this took a nasty turn when, during Series 8, Ed apparently attempted to openly sabotage Gary by trying to buy a motor that he needed to repair PP3D from Sabretooth captain Gabriel Stroud just to keep Gary from getting it (allegations apparently backed up by multiple witnesses).
• Boring, but Practical: If Roadblock was the first robot to prove the supremacy of solid engineering, good driving and raw power over gimmicky weaponry, Storm 2 was the ultimate expression of this ideal. Although its supposed "boringness" didn't bother the audience (because its battles were brutal, crunching, high-energy affairs), the showrunners didn't seem to think much of it (in its first appearance in the Extreme 2 New Bloods competition even Philippa openly rubbished it as "boring").
  • Suffered a great deal more from this in Series 8- due to slower motors and heavy gear-down, Storm 2 was significantly slower than it used to be, and lacked their trademark high-impact arena wall slams.
• The Bus Came Back: Returned for Series 8, after the decade-long hiatus.
• Call-Back: In the New Blood heat, their weapon is described as "rammer" on the stats screen, but after the team described why they called the weapon a "full body hammer" in the heat final ^note Their argument roughly being, "When a robot's entire body spins as its offensive weapon, it's called a full body spinner. What about robots that use their ramming power to cause damage by blunt force trauma, like a hammer?", their weapon description changed to "full body hammer" in their stats screen in the New Blood Grand Final.
• Dark Horse Victory: Despite being newcomers to Series 7, they still managed to plow through such experienced opponents such as The Steel Avenger, Firestorm V, and Tornado and came very close to winning the series altogether, before going on to take the Third World Championship.
• Executive Meddling: Ed Hoppit accused the showrunners of having an unreasonable bias against his machine to the point of attempting to rig the contest against him, but under long-overdue examination, the allegations have been found wanting. Although it's still true that the producers did engage in Moving the Goalposts with new rules after Tornado won Series 6 to prevent an influx of rambots (considering a similar issue had contributed to the demise of Battlebots), this wasn't targeted at Storm 2 specifically.
  • Their featherweight robot (Storm Vortex) "withdrew", not because the producers had a grudge against the team, but because they were apparently told by some rather annoyed house roboteers that they were given the instructions to destroy as many featherweights as possible to "amuse the audience". After being told this, they claimed there was a "malfunction" and quietly withdrew.
• For Want Of A Nail: During its head-to-head bout against Apollo in Series 8 it came very close to shoving Apollo into the pit. Had it succeeded, the eventual grand champion wouldn't even have made the heat final - Storm 2 would have instead been facing Eruption, which it had already beaten. From there, things could have proceeded a lot differently.
• Handicapped Badass: In Series 8 it was forced to run with much less powerful motors and at half its usual speed, greatly reducing its effectiveness, and yet it still made the heat final - in what was widely considered the toughest heat in the entire series - and it took the eventual champion Apollo throwing it out of the arena to finally stop it.
• Lightning Bruiser: As mentioned, threw The Steel Avenger out of the arena without using its weapon, curbstomped the previous champion, and fought Typhoon 2 (which had demolished most of its previous opponents) while taking only moderate damage. Possibly one of the best examples of being ALL power and ALL speed on the show.
  • Mighty Glacier: Remained extremely powerful and tough in Series 8, but due to replacement motors they lacked a great deal of the tremendous speed that they once possessed.
• Made of Iron: In Series 7 it was the only robot able to withstand Typhoon 2's full-body spinner, and in Series 8 it similarly withstood PP3D's blade while PP3D slowly shook itself to bits.
• Nice Guy: In Series 8 the team could be seen encouraging and later congratulating the driver of Eruption during their first battle. And in the final, they applauded Apollo for launching them out. They also laughed it off as a relatively good outcome in the interview afterwards. However Ed Hoppit's reputation has taken a bit of a battering in recent years, although Tim and Meral Bence have avoided this.
• Numbered Sequels: As you'd expect from the name, Storm 2 is the successor to a similarly-shaped machine named Storm that never actually appeared on the show. This made it exceptionally odd when Storm 2 made the New Blood tournament on account of never having entered before.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Not only is Storm 2 very small for a heavyweight, at just 17cm x 78cm x 68cm, but at 18HP the Series 7 version was the most powerful contestant robot in the show's original run^note To give you an idea, that's the same power-to-weight ratio as a Lotus Elise. Factor in its extremely dense, well-armoured construction, and Storm 2 hit like a truck.
• Put on a Bus: The team skipped Series 9 to give themselves enough time to properly upgrade Storm 2 ready for Series 10. Unfortunately, when Series 10 came around, scheduling clashes meant they had to skip that as well. According to later reports, however, the team was actually blacklisted from the competition after controversial backstage behavior in Series 8.
  • Bus Crash: By default, as BBC cancelled the show after Series 10.
• Ramming Always Works: Even after installing a lifting arm, Storm 2's main weapon was its heavy ramming power. Notably the only robot to send an opponent out of the arena just by ramming it. This was also their design philosophy: why bother with a weight on the end of an arm to hammer opponents when you have a perfectly good 100-kilogram hunk of solid metal to do it with instead?
• Revenge by Proxy: Defeated PP3D last to reach the heat final in Series 8, quietly avenging their loss to Typhoon.
• Spectacular Spinning: For Series 8, Storm 2 now has a vertical spinning disc, interchangeable with the lifting arm. They never used it, though, as they faced two flippers (which would make using the spinner suicidal as it leaves them unable to self-right) and a horizontal spinner (which they were hoping to flip over themselves).
• Surpassed the Teacher: Tornado had inspired Storm 2 and Team Tornado had helped enormously in its creation. When they battled in the first round of 7th Wars Grand Final, Storm 2 proved the superior machine. They almost immediately had a rematch against each other in the 3rd World Championship that followed the 7th Wars, where Storm 2 reaffirmed its supremacy.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Their Facebook account admitted that they had their work cut out for them when they were put into Heat D "for Death" for Series 8. Some of the robots they have to face include PP3D, a robot built by Gary Cairns (of the Typhoon 2 team), Eruption, a two-time UK Championship winner, and Apollo, Kronic's spiritual successor, which as noted under The Worf Effect, once curb-stomped Storm 2 in less than 10 seconds. Impressively, they still made the heat final.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: See above.
• What Could Have Been: According to their Facebook page, Storm II was originally going to be entered into BattleBots, but then it ended. Had it done so, then what with the Executive Meddling about robots appearing on both shows, it would never have appeared on Robot Wars.
• Willfully Weak: The team rarely use the lifting arm, since they rely solely on causing damage with its ramming power. The arm was only ever added to meet the new "active weapon" rule. However the arm did come in useful a few times, such as flipping over Tornado, who had also equipped a front ramp for this fight. This basically left Tornado to drive around with no ability to even damage for the rest of the fight.
• The Worf Effect: Almost unbeatable in its heyday, it can nowadays barely last a minute (and it once didn't last 10 seconds) with heat-finalist Kronic, amongst other weaker robots.
  • Admittedly, this is due to several factors, including Storm 2 being forced to use much slower motors due to reliability issues, as well as a smaller arena that was used for live event tours for economic reasons and ease of transportation (so Storm 2 had less room to build up speed for an impact) and the increase of powerful flippers at live events.
• Worf Had the Flu: The team admitted prior to their Series 8^note In the comments that Storm 2 was limping along for the entire year due to overheating issues stemming from a replacement speed controller; the team had to gear their speed down to a relatively glacial 12mph just to keep running. It was visibly much slower than it had been during its Series 7 appearance.
  • In addition, the unusually powerful LEM motors they once used have been replaced by a pair of more pedestrian MagMotors due to reliability and sourcing issues.^note As Storm 2 only runs on two motors, this means that they're actually running with significantly less power than you might expect a six-wheeled robot to have.
  • Finally, the redesigned arena makes rambots far less effective, as the walls curve down to meet the floor at the bottom rather than meeting them at a flat right angle, making it extremely hard for Storm 2 to inflict impact damage on opponents by ramming them against the wall.

Tornado (see Series 6)

X-Terminator (Series 3 & 6 Heat Finalist, Series 4 Semi-Finalist, Series 7 4th Place) (22 Seed in Series 4, 14 Seed in Series 5, 11 Seed in Series 7)

"Apparently this is the X-Factor that everyone's been looking for."

^{Click to see the older version of X-Terminator} 

Weapons: Axe (Series 3-6; Interchangeable with Lifting Arm in Series 4), Vertical Flywheel (Series 7)

Battle record: 16 wins, 12 losses

A long-time veteran, X-Terminator had debuted in the 3rd Wars with their fast and powerful axe-wielding bot. Despite some good performances, including 2 heat final appearances and one semifinal appearance, its totally different new design, with a devastating vertical flywheel, saw it finally rise to the top in the final series of the show's original run.

• Achilles' Heel: Being flipped in Series 7; the pneumatic spikes on the side of the robot could help it back onto its wheels if it landed in a certain position, but it only won its heat final when Tsunami managed to knock it back onto its wheels whilst trying to get it out of the arena, and its loss in the third place playoff was attributable to getting knocked onto its back by Matilda's flywheel.
• Born Unlucky: Lost in Series 4 after Sir Killalot burst a hydraulic valve, spilling fluid everywhere that ruined X-Terminator's traction, was winning the Sumo Basho side tournament only for Shunt to drive off the ring against Panic Attack, and lost in Series 6 after its axe stopped working.
  • Born Lucky: In Series 7, where it fought three flipper robots in succession and managed to defeat all of them despite having weaker self-righting capabilities than before. Its heat final battle against Tsunami was especially lucky as Tsunami had it upside-down and immobile, and it only won after Tsunami's attempts to throw it out of the arena failed and righted it instead.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: The rolling chassis from the original Series 3 version of X-Terminator was later used by Marlon Pritchard's family^note his father, mother and brother to build the very similar axe-bot ICU, which entered Series 6 and the Extreme 2 New Blood competition with little success.
• Cool Shades: The team members wore these from Series 6-7, jokingly saying they wanted to protect their eyes from harsh TV lighting.
• Crack Defeat: Its Series 5 campaign was embarrassingly ended by Corkscrew, a robot built and funded by some little boys' pocket money, when the batteries packed in.
• Crippling Overspecialization: After much embarrassment over its Joke Item axe in Series 4^note summarised by the team's website as "The axe? I don't want to talk about it!" the robot was rebuilt for Series 5 to massively upgrade it - the new one accounted for more than a third of the robot's weight. Unfortunately, they had to compromise on the batteries in order to make the weight limit, which led to a Crack Defeat in round 2 when the batteries ran out.
• Humiliation Conga: Both of its fights in the Series 7 grand final. They were utterly unable to do anything against Typhoon 2 in their eliminator battle; their lack of speed allowed Typhoon to spin up and repeatedly hit them until they were overwhelmed and broke down. This was not helped by the fact that the bout had to be stopped midway through due to the arena getting damaged and being declared unsafe; when it was restarted, the already mortally-wounded X-Terminator took one more hit from Typhoon and died completely. The team then had to repair it as best they could for the third-place playoff, but were similarly helpless against Tornado and took severe damage from Matilda, which was widely seen as Laser-Guided Karma for their treatment of Bulldog Breed in their semi-final fight.
• Joke Item: Its stick-like Series 4 axe was utterly useless, although they quickly realised this and replaced it with their alternate weapon that converted it into a lifting arm, which allowed them to defeat Behemoth in the heat final.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Had a tendency to do this in Series 7, most notably continuing to attack Bulldog Breed long after it had been immobilized and they had already torn off its armor. Marlon Pritchard was very apologetic about this later, stating that they were so fixated on trying to throw Bulldog Breed out of the arena that they didn't realise how much damage they were doing and they felt very bad about it after.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Series 3-6 versions of X-Terminator were very fast, varying between 18-25mph, and were heavily armoured to boot.
• Made of Iron: The original X-Terminator had possibly the thickest armour ever seen on the show: aluminium that was allegedly an inch thick.
• Mighty Glacier: The Series 7 version was slow at 9mph, but compensated for this with its destructive weapon. The lack of speed turned out to be its undoing against Typhoon 2, against which its usual strategy of hanging back until the flywheel was running at top speed wouldn't work and it simply couldn't catch its opponent before it had spun up itself.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: For its Extreme 1 Grudge Match against Panic Attack, the X-Terminator team added a large spike to the front of the robot. When Panic Attack flipped it over, the spike prevented X-Terminator from self-righting and it was counted out.
• Oddball in the Series: The Series 7 version was the only version that did not use an axe, and was by far the most successful.
• The Rival: To Panic Attack. The final tally is 2-0 in Panic Attack's favour (X-Terminator also held a grudge over the Series 4 Sumo competition; they were top of the leaderboard having survived the full minute, before Panic Attack beat that by managing to knock Shunt off). A truce was called in Series 5 when team captain Marlon needed a weapons operator due to his team having work commitments, and asked one of Panic Attack's team members to help him out (although he expressed a desire to fight them again in Series 7, where PA was knocked out a long time before X-Terminator).
• Spectacular Spinning: In their Series 7 appearance, with that monstrous flywheel.
• Took a Level in Badass: Was a consistent competitor from Series 3-6 but had no great deal of success, only reaching the semi-finals once. Then came Series 7, where they replaced the sometimes ineffective axe with a hugely powerful vertical flywheel, capable of throwing opponents out of the arena.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Jonathan Pearce seemed to think they may have gone too far in repeatedly attacking Bulldog Breed long after they had immobilised it, and even Craig criticised them a little, albeit jocularly.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: A stylized version of "exterminator", with emphasis on the "X".

Rebooted Series (2016-17)

Series 8 (2016)

Apollo (Series 8 Champion, Series 9 Wildcard and Grand Finalist, Series 10 Heat Finalist & Wildcard Melee runner-up)

They will let you touch the sun.

Weapons: Flipper

Battle record: 13 wins, 7 losses

The first champion of the reborn Robot Wars, Apollo's history actually begins with the unassuming former heat finalists, Kronic the Wedgehog. Kronic 3, purchased from its original creators by Team MAD, was quite successful on the live scene that flourished between the demise of the original show and the reboot, and was the inspiration for Apollo, which was itself a double-Annihilator champion on the live circuit. When the war returned, Apollo showed itself to be the fastest, toughest, most powerful and most well-driven robot in the UK, taking on all comers and winning the first trophy of the new era.

• Born Lucky: Had one of its wheels torn off by PP3D in its Series 8 first-round match, but went through anyway; having already eliminated Kan-Opener, Sweeney Todd also went out shortly afterwards. It then suffered drive problems all throughout the head-to-head round but still beat PP3D and Storm 2 (and in the latter fight it narrowly avoided getting shoved into the pit).
• Combat Breakdown: As the Series 8 final fight wore on, first Carbide and then Apollo's weapons stopped working, reducing the match to a shoving fight.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Only the second robot to ever flip Dead Metal, a sign of just how powerful modern flippers have become, and the first UK robot to ever flip Matilda with her flywheel equipped^note Tricerabot had managed it in the US series. And it flipped them both in the same battle.
  • It is also the only robot ever to have beaten Storm 2 by knockout in the televised show, throwing it out of the arena in the heat final.
• The Dreaded: Feared for its powerful flipper. It earned its reputation. It flipped over three house robots in the heat and the team said that Sir Killalot, the fourth house robot, would be next. When Apollo was put in the arena with Sir Killalot during the grand final, the latter retreats when Apollo approached the CPZ.
• Handicapped Badass: Suffered from drive problems throughout its Series 8 heat, and was only properly working once it reached the heat final. The flipper, like many others, was also suffering from problems that reduced its effectiveness.
  • I Am Not Left-Handed: In the Series 8 heat final, with the drive problems fixed and the launcher working at its full potential, they promptly launched Storm 2 right out of the arena.
• Insistent Terminology: The team refer to the flipper as a "launcher", fitting with the Apollo theme.
• Large Ham: Definitely one of the hammier teams in the arena, from their posing when entering battle to Dave Young's feigned melodramatic sobbing when Apollo went back to the pits in pieces after a run-in with Carbide.
• Older Than They Think: As well as Apollo's origins with Kronic, Dave Young actually competed in the Antweight Championship in Extreme 2, as well as the Featherweight Championships in both Extreme 2 and Series 7. He was nowhere near as successful as he later was with Apollo (memorably, in Series 7, his featherweight G2 was hurled out of the arena by the floor flipper).
• Ring Out: The second competitor to achieve this in the reboot, throwing Storm 2 out of the arena in the heat final.
  • Also came perilously close to experiencing this at the hands of Eruption.
• The Rival: Invoked with Carbide in Series 9; while Apollo had defeated Carbide in the Grand Final of Series 8, there wasn't any particular rivalry there, but in the next series the producers put them both in the same heat so they could fight right off the bat (something the classic show went out of its way to avoid doing). The score between them stands at 3 for Carbide, 1 for Apollo, and 1 where both qualified.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Apollo and Chronic both share a very similar design to each other and to their joint predecessor, live circuit competitor Kronic 3. They were built due to the complicated merchandising and executive agreements between producers on BattleBots and Robot Wars, which notably forbids competitors from participating on both shows.
• A Taste of Defeat: Despite performing well in the rest of its Series 8 heat, it suffered a decisive loss to Eruption when they came up against them in the head-to-heads.
• The Worf Effect: Despite making the grand final three series in a row, Apollo's progress was steadily worsening. It went from champion (Series 8), to the wildcard Grand Finalist who got eliminated in the three way opening melee (Series 9), to Heat finalist-turned Robot Rumble participant to become the wildcard (Series 10).
• Too Fast to Stop: This was how it was beaten in their Series 10 Heat Final. After a very back-and-forth bout between the two, with Apollo throwing Behemoth all over and nearly getting it out of the arena, Apollo got caught from behind by Behemoth and simultaneously flicked up by the scoop and shoved hard — causing it to lose traction on the steel floor and crash straight into the Pit.

Carbide (See Series 9)

TR2 (Series 8 3rd Place)

More flips than Lara Croft.

Weapons: Flipper/axe combination

Battle record: 8 wins, 1 loss

A robot built by a father/son team from Gateshead, TR2 were successful competitors on the live circuit before the show was revived, beating out Eruption to become 2015 UK champions. Despite not originally being selected to compete to enforce Cast Speciation, TR2 were subbed in when another robot broke down, and proceded to bulldoze their way into third place.

• The Ace: The only robot in Series 8 to have made it through their heat with no losses whatsoever.
  • Even in the grand final, their only loss was to the eventual champion, leaving them with the least losses of any competitor that made it past the head-to-heads.
• Ace Pilot: TR2's driver, Alex Brown, is unanimously considered to be the best driver in the rebooted series, at the age of 15. Even the judges acknowledged Alex's driving ability.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite having come third in the previous series, TR2 was again only selected as a reserve for Series 9, and this time it didn't get to compete at all.
• Fun with Acronyms: "TR2" stands for "Toon Raider 2".
• Handicapped Badass: Made it through the first round without a working flipper, instead simply bulldozing Supernova around the arena until Supernova skidded into the pit.
  • Even after fixing it, the flipper failed to work to its full power throughout the entire episode, due to the temperature negatively impacting the effectiveness of the pneumatics. It was still too much for the likes of Dantomkia.
• Joke Item: The axe attached to the back of the flipper (nicknamed the "bum-axe" by Dara O'Briain) was highly ineffective. It only really saw use at the end of its group-stage battle against Dantomkia, having already flipped it over, and on that occasion it did no damage at all. It was eventually removed for the finals.
• King Incognito: At the time of its first appearance it was technically the reigning UK champion.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Had a small axe attached to the back of the flipper so that the axe comes down when the flipper fires. It wasn't not the first robot to experiment with such a combination, but it was still a fairly unique set-up. The axe wasn't actually all that effective, however, and was later removed.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Comments from various roboteers present at the event indicate that TR2 was actually a reserve called in to replace an unspecified competitor who withdrew.
• Oddly Named Sequel: The successor to a robot named Toon Raider.
• One-Hit Wonder: While not exactly a stranger to the live scene, TR 2 only entered Series 8 of the televised series, made the Grand Final, and didn't return.
• Put on a Bus: Having failed to qualify for Series 9, the team didn't enter Series 10 at all, as filming clashed with Alex Brown's exams. The team intend to return for Series 11 with TR3.
• Shout-Out: The name is a Portmanteau of Tomb Raider and "the Toon", a nickname for Newcastle United football club. The black-and-white paint scheme with a number 9 on the front is also a Newcastle United Shout-Out.
• Victory by Endurance: Its two victories over Dantomkia were accomplished by simply flipping Dantomkia again and again and again until Dantomkia wore down and couldn't self-right any more.
  • Again with their victory over Carbide, where they got thoroughly chewed up at the start, but just kept coming until Carbide's blade simply stopped working.

Thor (New Blood Championship 3rd Place, Series 8 Grand Final Wildcard and 4th Place, Series 9 Heat Finalist, Series 10 Heat Finalist & Wildcard Melee entrant))

Mjolnir strikes!

Weapons: Hammer (Series 6-7), Axe (8-), Claws (Series 6)

Battle record: 16 wins, 11 losses

The first of only two original-series robots to reach a Grand Final during the reboot (admittedly through receiving the wildcard), Thor was a powerful and agile axe-bot whose history dated back to the 6th Wars. A modestly successful but ultimately unremarkable machine on the original show, Thor was most notable for coming 3rd in the New Blood Championship^note despite not actually meeting the criteria to enter, as the New Blood Championship was supposed to be for either all-new machines or contestants from the 6th Wars who had lost in the first round; Thor had reached the 2nd round. When it returned to the reboot, it had been completely rebuilt into a lightning-fast machine with a hammer-axe that rivaled that of Terrorhurtz.

• Ace Pilot: Well over a decade of live circuit experience entitles Jason to this status. Thor races around the arena at lighning-quick speeds, but Jason controls it with a precision of a Formula 1 race car.
• Best Served Cold: In the Series 10 Wildcard Melee, Jason Marston had his sights set on Concussion, who'd beaten Thor in its Series 9 heat final. He got his revenge by shoving Concussion into the pit.
• Beware the Silly Ones: In the original series the team wore horned helmets (with built-in long blond wigs) that made them look like a comedy team. They weren't.
• The Bus Came Back: Thor returned in Series 8, stronger to boot.
• The Chew Toy: Managed to take crippling damage in every single fight that they were in in the Series 8 finals, being torn up first by Carbide then Matilda, and finally losing the rear armour cover in their fight with Apollo.
• Crutch Character: Utterly out of its depth in the Series 8 Grand Final despite doing so well in its heat, losing all three of its head-to-heads by knockout.
• Dartboard of Hate: Went into the Series 10 Wildcard Melee with Concussion's logo painted on its front scoop. This wasn't a show of support - Concussion had knocked Thor out in Series 9 and Jason Marston was out for revenge.
• Determinator: The original Thor survived a thorough pasting from Tornado in Series 6, even managing to jam its drum weapon with the fur tassels on the hammer head, and in Extreme II it was easily one of a few robots to give Storm II a hard time, without a working hammer. This carried over into the reboot, where it spent the entirety of the Series 8 Grand Final getting its butt kicked but just kept coming back for more.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Was dominating its Series 8 heat, having won all its matches thus far, but in the heat final a single ram from Shockwave caused it to break down, allowing Shockwave to pit it without resistance.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The original Series 6 version was extremely long, had front claws that didn't really do anything, and the team dressed up in Viking helmets with long blond wigs. The only things it had in common with the modern version were the high top speed (18mph), the powerful overhead weapon, and the red paintjob.
• Horny Vikings: In the original series, the team members wore Viking helmets with horns that could move up and down.
• I Am the Band: Why "Team Thor" was still called that in the reboot is anyone's guess, since the sole team member is Jason Marston.
• Joke Weapon: The claws it had in Series 6 never seemed to actually work, and when it fought Tornado they quickly crumpled like tin foil, leading Jonathan Pearce to wonder whether they actually were made out of tin foil. They were ditched from Extreme 2 onwards.
• Lightning Bruiser: It's the fastest robot in the rebooted series, with a top speed of 30mph. Quite fitting, considering it's named after the Norse god of thunder.
  • Glass Cannon: Strong, powerful and lightning fast- but the first time it took a serious hit, it was instantly knocked out.
• Long Runner: Debuted in Series 6 (2002) and continued to fight in live events before returning for Series 8 (2016), with original captain Jason Marston still at the controls.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Was the recipient for the Wildcard and was granted a place in the Series 8 grand final.
• Phrase Catcher: The weapon is almost always called the "mighty hammer" of Thor by Jonathan and Craig.
• Red Baron: Jason has acquired the moniker of "the Lone Wolf of Robot Wars" due to being one of the few one-man teams (and the only notably successful one).
• Shocking Elimination: Was absolutely dominating its Series 8 heat right up until the final, when it ended up on the wrong end of a Curb-Stomp Battle against a robot it had beaten earlier.
• Shout-Out: To Thor of Norse Mythology.
• Took a Level in Badass: Zig-Zagged. It lost in Round 2 of Series 6, made the Grand Final of the New Blood Tournament and came third, then lost in Round 2 of Series 7, then was given the wildcard place for the Series 8 Grand Final, placing fourth out of the 6 finalists.
• We Can Rebuild Him: In addition to being rebuilt almost completely over the course of the Series 8 Grand Final, Thor was rebuilt to better face spinners in the future.◊

Shockwave (See Series 9)

Team Ranglebots (As Pulsar, Series 8 Grand Finalist, Series 9 Heat Finalist. As Magnetar, Series 10 Grand Finalist)

What will scream louder, its spinning drum, or your robot?

Weapons: Spinning drum

Battle Record: 9 wins, 5 losses, 1 draw

The true "wild card" of the reboot, Pulsar's weapon had people sweating in their shoes, with its drum reaching speeds of 9000 RPM, one of the most powerful weapons in the world. However it suffered from unreliable engineering and was rarely able to bring its full power to bear, constantly breaking down. They had enough luck on their side to reach the Grand Final before their engineering gave up the ghost for good, but remained one of the most memorable contestants of Series 8. An upgraded version of Pulsar was built for Series 9 and a further upgraded version, renamed Magnetar, was built for Series 10.

• Achilles' Heel: In Series 8, their side panels were only made of reinforced polycarbonate: Ironside 3 proved the point and knocked them out in a single hit in their group battle. They wisely switched to metal side panels for Series 9 but found another Achilles' heel in their electric system: in every single one of their matches they either burnt out a motor, their speed controller, or both.
  • In Series 10, Magnetar seemed to have fixed these issues. Instead, its self-righter consistently failed to retract after opening, costing it the grand final.
• The Alleged Car: Pulsar was immensely unreliable, to the point of spending a fair portion of its Series 8 fight with Gabriel immobile, but never quite for long enough to eliminate it. Its unreliability finally came back to haunt it in the final, where it just died in its melee and got counted out.
  • The Series 9 version was only slightly improved in reliability, however it was still chewing through its electronic components at an incredible speed until its heat final battle against Ironside 3, where the team's luck and replacement parts ran out, and lost after one hit from Ironside's bar.
  • Mostly averted in Series 10, where Magnetar worked perfectly ...apart from its srimech.
• Born Lucky: Up there as one of the luckiest Grand Finalists ever in Series 8.
  • Firstly, it had originally dropped out of the show due to not being ready in time, only to be reinstated when another competitor withdrew.
  • Secondly, it was eliminated in the first-round melee after a fierce blow from Ironside 3, but brought back in to replace Chompalot after the latter went up in flames.
  • From there, Pulsar managed to beat both Beast and Ironside 3 despite suffering serious reliability issues, and being shoved into the pit by Ironside in the latter battle^note the judges ruled that Ironside had been immobilised for longer than ten seconds before being righted by Killalot.
  • Finally, it stopped moving three times during the heat final against Gabriel, but on each occasion it got moving again just in time to avoid being counted out, and dealt enough damage to win the judges' decision.
• Expy: Like Dave Moulds of Carbide, Ellis Ware of Team Ranglebots was selected as a mentor for the second episode of the Battle of the Stars and, like Dave, stuck to what he already knew, creating another vertical spinner bot for Kadeena Cox. While Kadeena Machina had less in common with Pulsar than Arena Cleaner did with Carbide (it was actually very close in design to classic series competitor S3), its devastating vertical flywheel was almost as powerful as Pulsar's drum and the robot was much more reliable, leading to an almost effortless victory.^note This is at least partially due to using standard electronics, as opposed to Pulsar's custom brushless equipment.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Despite driving a robot most famous for it's unreliability, Ellis Ware is very much this. Most of Pulsar's notorious problems come from being almost entirely completely custom parts; in particular, the electronics are built around brushless motors^note Electronics for brushed motors are incompatible, and also the standard. which are very rarely used in combat robots, due to lacking speed controllers capable of handling the massive strain the systems are subjected to on a regular basis. The main reason Ellis has so many problems with finding replacement parts is that he built everything himself. Technically, Pulsar is absolute bleeding-edge electronically, but being so far out on the edge means that every issue that comes up has to be found and fixed by Ellis himself.
  • To be fair on those issues, he's at least had different issues; Series 8 Pulsar had persistent control issues, while Series 9 was burning out electronics every single round.
  • The issues with the electronics were finally fixed with Magnetar, but the self-righter gearbox, ironically the only off-the-shelf part in the robot, broke each time it was used.
• Generation Xerox: Despite being an entirely new machine, Magnetar could pass for an upgraded Pulsar in looks.
• Hell Is That Noise: Their spinning drum sounded utterly terrifying when it revved up, and was so loud that Dara O' Briain mentioned hearing it from all the way across the pits during his interview before they fought. In the arena, it tended to drown out everything else when it was going at full speed.
• Lightning Bruiser: When it worked, it was lightning-fast and had a ridiculously fast spinning drum.
• Meaningful Name: In space, magnetars are theorized to form from gravitational interactions between a star ready to go supernova and a nearby companion. The robot Magnetar was built to replace Pulsar, which had previously been crippled by their explosive Single-Stroke Battle against Supernova. Magnetar also employed rare earth magnets on its underside to prevent the robot from flipping itself with the sheer gyroscopic force of its weapon.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Twice. Pulsar was originally due to compete in Series 8, Episode 2, but dropped out due to not being ready, and were replaced by Chimera. After a robot called Pod dropped out of a later episode Pulsar replaced them, only to be knocked out in the melee. Then Chompalot's batteries caught fire, and the rest was history.
• One-Hit Kill: Its matches tend to feature these.
  • In Series 8 it was subjected to one by Ironside 3, then dished out one of its own to Ironside 3 after its reinstatement.
  • In Series 9 it knocked out Apex in one hit in the melee round and threw Supernova across the arena in the head-to-heads, but in the heat final it was again disabled in a single blow by Ironside 3 (who then hit them a few more times just to be sure).
  • In Series 10 it hurled Expulsion six feet into the air and onto the floor flipper, which duly threw Expulsion onto its face and immobilized it.
• Palette Swap: Externally, Magnetar is almost identical to Series 9 Pulsar aside from a new colour scheme.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Pulsar and Magnetar were both extremely compact, measuring less than 1 metre wide and only 20 cm tall. Likewise, their spinning drums were unimpressive in size compared to the likes of Ironside 3 and Carbide, but they could punt enemies into the air and inflict crippling damage all the same.
• The Rival: Arguably one to Ironside 3. They've fought together an impressive five times in two series. Considering Pulsar has only competed in 10 matches, it's spent half its life fighting Ironside 3! Their rivalry stands at 2 wins to Ironside, 1 win for Pulsar, 1 battle where they both progressed and 1 draw^note Due to technical difficulties.
• Spectacular Spinning: In Series 8, Pulsar's spinning drum boasted a nightmarish 9000 RPM top speed, the fastest ever seen on the show up to that point.
• Stellar Name: Pulsars and magnetars are both types of neutron star, which are known for spinning extremely quickly on their axis.

Series 9 (2017)

Carbide (Series 9 Champion, Series 8 Runner-Up, Series 10 Runner-Up)

*hums menacingly*

"Carbide, as a chemical compound, one of the strongest in the world. Carbide, the robot - one of the strongest we've ever seen..."

—Jonathan Pearce

Weapons: Horizontal bar spinner

Battle record: 22 wins, 5 losses

This champion was made by two experienced roboteers who have joined forces to create a destructive beast. Team member Sam Smith previously reached a Series 7 heat final with Tiberius, while team captain Dave Moulds was previously on Team Hurtz with beta on BattleBots during the unlucky year when beta's pieces did not make the UK to US plane trip. Reaching all three Grand Finals of the reboot series and winning one of them, Carbide would go down as the single most-destructive robot in Robot Wars history, leaving a legacy of wreckage behind it.

• The Ace: It went completely undefeated in Series 9, a feat not even Apollo achieved the previous year. It's also one of only three robots to make the Grand Final three times, alongside Firestorm and Hypno-Disc, and unlike those two, it not only won a series but also never finished any lower than second place.
• Achilles' Heel: The weapon chain, a common vulnerability in horizontal bar spinners. Nuts 2's chain flail struck it precisely during their Grand Final melee, knocking it off and rendering Carbide weaponless.
  • Removed Achilles' Heel: For their semifinal rematch against Nuts 2, they welded on a piece of metal cannibalised from Rapid over the front of the chain and it saved their bacon when Nuts scored another hit onto it, allowing them to shrug the attack off and tear Nuts apart.
• Call-Back: To another show, no less. Team captain Dave Moulds mentioned that he knew John Reid's strategies since Dave was on his team... on BattleBots.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: The team also entered BattleBots Season 2 with a near-identical robot named Cobalt. Carbide did much better.
• Combat Breakdown: Against Apollo; see their respective entry under Series 8.
• Crippling Overspecialisation: In Series 8. Without its immensely powerful weapon, Carbide didn't have the pushing power or control to be able to beat opponents through alternative means, either through defeat via house robot/pit or judge's decision. In Series 9 the weapon was reliable enough that it didn't need any alternative means, though its drive had been upgraded anyway.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Dealt one to Nuts in Series 8, ripping first their weapon, and then one of their wheels off. Also surprisingly received one from Terrorhurtz, who shoved them all over the arena and into the pit despite having no power in their axe.
  • Pretty much every single one of its fights in Series 9. The only robot to last more than a minute against it was Eruption in the Grand Final, and the only robots still in working order after fighting it were the clusterbots Crackers 'n' Smash, if only because they were too low for Carbide to get a proper hit. The one time it did, it sent Smash hurtling the entire length of the arena with such force that it smashed one of the wall panels off, whereupon the team forfeited.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Carbide was the first robot with a spinning weapon to ever defeat Behemoth in the televised show, after nine whole series (counting the two Extremes). And it did it twice.
• The Dreaded: By Series 9, Carbide had achieved a level of notoriety and fear comparable to Hypno-Disc at its peak. And unlike Hypno-Disc, who never won a championship, Carbide easily won Series 9, and in fact looked almost completely invincible.
• Expy: Dave Moulds was selected as the mentor for the celebrity team of Scott Mills and Chris Stark for the first Battle of the Stars episode at the end of 2016. The machine he built for them, Arena Cleaner, was pretty much Carbide 2.0 (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Carbide 0.5 since its chassis design was less well-armoured with exposed wheels) and was just as destructive as his championship entry, winning the episode comfortably.
• Four Is Death: The fourth time it fought Eruption, it lost.
• Glass Cannon: As with most spinners, Carbide is heavily reliant on its weapon. If the opponent can weather the blows or just stop the weapon from reaching full speed, Carbide doesn't have a whole lot to fall back on, as demonstrated by Terrorhurtz. It is, however, far less of a glass cannon than most of the other powerful spinners in the reboot, which tended to break down after just a few hits.
  • Despite being less of a Glass Cannon, against anything that can withstand their blade for long enough it tends to break down, directly leading to their defeats against TR2 and Apollo.
  • The reliability issues seem to have been fixed by Series 9, suffering no breakdowns or loss of functionality throughout their heat in addition to the weapon's increase in power.
  • Seems to be back as of Series 10, as the robots have all armored up to counter the threat, and fights are now lasting long enough for the reliability to begin to come into question again.
• Hell Is That Noise: The presenters certainly noted the "death hum" of Carbide's weapon as it reached full speed, so named because when you hear that sound, the opponent is in all likelihood screwed beyond measure.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Made a bit of a mess of Apollo in their Series 9 round-robin fight, even after Apollo were immobilised. Part of this may be down to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for having lost to them in the last series's Grand Final.
  Dave Young: Come on, leave us alone! Stop it! He's going for the wheels...
  • Averted; since Apollo were only playing dead to avoid further damage by an appeal to the general goodwill; and moved of their own accord right at the end of the fight in an attempt to avoid being counted out.
• Made of Iron: Comparatively speaking. Spinners in general have pretty poor reliability records, especially when the weapon stops working and takes most of the internals with it. Twice in the final Carbide's weapon broke down early, and twice it survived to a judge's decision.
  • Achieved in Series 9 - Carbide made it through its heat completely unscathed, its weapon fully functional throughout. The other robots weren't so lucky.
• Not So Invincible After All: Carbide finally lost their first fight since the Series 8 Grand Final in their opening melee of the Series 10 Grand Final when their weapon was disabled by a precision hit from, of all robots, Nuts 2! They barely managed to avoid immobilisation (with 1 second to spare), but the judges decision easily went against them.
• Properly Paranoid: After Nuts 2 took out their weapon chain with a lucky precision hit in their Series 10 Grand Final melee, the team welded some scraps of metal salvaged from Rapid into an improvised shield over said part before the rematch. As it turned out, this may have saved Carbide's entire series run when, during the second fight against Nuts, the whirring chain flails landed several hits squarely on the guard, saving Carbide from a repeat of their earlier defeat.
• Punched Across the Room: When their spinner reaches full speed, this tends to happen to their opponents, in particular Nuts who they threw into the Pit Release button (Trash the Set below was a result of this on both occasions). Also happens to themselves quite often, due to the recoil.
• Real Song Theme Tune: In the leadup to Series 10, the BBC released a promo video focusing on Carbide called "The Champion Returns", a montage of Carbide annihilating all and sundry in Series 9 set to "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash.
  And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
  And I looked, and behold a pale horse
  And his name that sat on him was death
• The Rival: See Apollo.
• Spectacular Spinning: The weapon is a spinning bar with enough power to knock opponents across the arena and smash the wall panels off.
• Trash the Set: A lot of their battles seem to result in the arena itself being damaged, either from accidental glancing blows, or later from pieces of debris getting hurled into it.
  • They managed to smash part of the arena wall in their Grand Final melee, necessitating the halt of combat. The arena walls were made of six-millimeter steel plating.^note Although to be honest, what Carbide did was cause the comparatively weak bolts holding the panel in place to shear from the force of the hit, not actually penetrate the metal.
  • They repeated the feat in their Series 9 match against Crackers n' Smash, punting Smash into the wall from the other side of the arena with enough force to break a panel off and send Smash ricocheting five feet into the air.
  • Their battle against Aftershock in the Series 9 final saw the side panel of their opponent literally embedded in one of the bulletproof protective screens, to the amazement and horror of all.^note This was only the outer wall - the inner wall that protects the audience is made of two layers of polycarbonate that are each twice as thick as the one Aftershock's panel got stuck in. The audience were never in any danger.

As Tiberius (Extreme 2 University Challenge champion, Series 7 Heat Finalist)

Tiberius 3

Weapons: Vertical crusher

Battle record: 7 wins, 4 losses

• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Tiberius 4 was later purchased by Team Storm, heavily upgraded, and entered into BattleBots 2016 under the name "Photon Storm".
• Follow the Leader: One of several rip-offs of Razer. While it wasn't even close in power to the original, it was still the second most successful vertical crusher on the show after Razer themselves (the only other such robot to reach a heat final) and after the show ended it continued fighting on the live circuit, with Tiberius 4 becoming the most feared vertical crusher still competing.
• Long Runner: Debuted in Series 4 (2000-01) and is still fighting to this day, albeit as "Photon Storm" and with significant upgrades.
• One-Hit Wonder: Unlike the trio of Kan-Opener, Spikasaurus and Chompalot it did manage to win battles in the main competition (its final record was 7 wins to 4 losses), but its only real achievement of note was winning the University Challenge.

Eruption (see series 10)

Team Mouse/ Team Outlaw (Series 3 Robotic Soccer Finalist with Velocirippa, Series 7 Heat Finalist with Mighty Mouse, Series 9 3rd Place with Ironside 3)

Good things come to those who wait.

^{Click to see Velocirippa} 

Weapons: Ramming Spikes (Velocirippa & Mighty Mouse), Cutting Disc (Velocirippa & Mighty Mouse), Rear-Hinged Flipper (Velocirippa), Horizontal Spinning Bar (Ironside 3), Low Pressure Flipper (Meggamouse)

Battle record: 1 win, 6 losses (as Velocirippa); 3 wins, 3 losses (as Mighty Mouse); 9 wins, 3 losses, 1 draw (as Ironside 3)

Long-running veterans of Robot Wars, Team Mouse have entered with three different machines over the course of seven series. While Velocirippa performed consistently badly, and its successor Mighty Mouse performed strangely well, Ironside 3 proved to be their most powerful and successful machine by far, netting them their first Grand Final appearance at the seventh time of asking.

The Team as a whole

• The Constant: Trevor Wright is the only constant member of the team, as the team captain. The only exception is Meggamouse, since he couldn't enter a second robot in a series after he already entered with Ironside 3, so he loaned the robot to another team.
• Long Runner: Has been competing in the series since 2000, and was the only team from the original series to have significantly bettered their performance until Behemoth reached the Grand Final of Series 10, and even that wasn't quite as big of an upgrade in success as Team Mouse accomplished.
• Oddball in the Series: Ironside 3, the only one not to have a shared genesis to Velocirippa.
• One-Hit Wonder: Each of the robots (except Meggamouse) have reached a final for a championship (Soccer, Heat and Grand for Velocirippa, Mighty Mouse & Ironside 3 respectively).
• Took a Level in Badass: In 2000, Velocirippa appeared in the Series 3 Grand Final in the Robotic Soccer side competition. 17 years later, they would earn their place in the grand final again as one of the final competitors of the UK championship.

Velocirippa & Mighty Mouse (1999 - 2004)

• Animal Motifs: Velocirippa was themed after a dinosaur; Mighty Mouse was themed after mice.
• Born Unlucky: Any robot named "Velocirippa" was eliminated in the first round of combat. When the original Velocirippa re-entered under a different name and paint-job, it somehow won its first round in Series 6, then made the heat final a year later. ^note What makes this unusual is that by Series 7, the general design of robots had evolved to the point where previous grand finalists like Panic Attack and Bigger Brother (still using their Series 4 robots with minor updates) performed terribly. They both lost in Round 2 while Mighty Mouse had better progress, despite wielding ineffectual weaponry and a worse track record.
• Butt-Monkey: Velocirippa, which never won a fight. Ever. The team, on the other hand...
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Weird example: after the original Velocirippa was torn to bits by Disc-O-Inferno in their qualifier for the second Annihilator of Extreme 1, the team started building Velocirippa 2, but they also salvaged the battered chassis of Velocirippa and rebuilt it into another robot called Mighty Mouse, which they entered in Series 6 in Velocirippa's place. Both Velocirippa 2 and Mighty Mouse fought together (and lost together) in the Tag Team Terror tournament of Extreme 2, but in Series 7 a fortunate circumstance allowed the team to enter both robots. While Velocirippa predictably crashed out in the first round again, the 83kg practically-unarmed Mighty Mouse made the Heat Final!^note Admittedly they only survived their melee because two of the other entrants were KO'd before it was, but it genuinely KO'd Kronic the Wedgehog by shunting it into Mr Psycho, and while the subsequent heat final against Thermidor 2 was one of the most one-sided judges' decisions ever, they got full marks for effort and guts
• Epic Fail: Velocirippa made its way into the pit in record time at a live event.
• Fragile Speedster: The original version of Velocirippa (and its reborn form Mighty Mouse) was incredibly fast and agile, but light, practically unarmed, and very easy to knock out.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Mighty Mouse's main battle tactic, as best demonstrated by its heat final against Thermidor in which it spent the entire battle running away and not giving Thermidor the opportunity for a sustained attack which could have given them the opportunity to flip them out of the arena.
  Jonathan Pearce: If this goes to the judges, can you imagine the mark for aggression for Mighty Mouse? Can we give minuses? I'm not too sure.
• Springtime for Hitler: Mighty Mouse, despite having virtually no offensive capabilities^note It had spinning discs on the rear in Series 7, added so it would meet the "requires an active weapon" rule, but these were never used and a chief battle tactic of running away, managed to make its heat final in Series 7, recording a better competition finish than Bigger Brother, Panic Attack or Behemoth that year.
• Tag Team Twins: Velocirippa and Mighty Mouse entered the Extreme 2 Tag Team Terror as a partnership.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: While Velocirippa holds the record for the most losses by a robot that never won a battle, it did defeat Demolition Demon 2 in their qualifying round of the Robotic Soccer tournament in Series 3. Not a "battle", but it's something.^note It's listed on the Robot Wars wiki as their sole win.
  • The robot continued fighting in robot battles after the show ended and actually had markedly more success than it ever achieved on-camera. Performance anxiety, perhaps?
  • Of course, Mighty Mouse did almost bizarrely well. Maybe it wasn't the robot that was cursed with bad luck so much as the name 'Velocirippa'...?

Ironside 3 & Meggamouse (2016 - 2017)

• Achilles' Heel: Ironside 3's srimech has proved to be this. In Series 8 it failed to work in its head-to-head battle against Pulsar, costing it a place in the heat final (which it likely would have won). In the Series 9 Grand Final, the srimech was disabled after a hit from Carbide, causing it to lose against Eruption in the head-to-heads - again, this cost it a place in the Grand Final.
• Animal Motifs: Meggamouse, like Mighty Mouse, is themed after mice.
• BFS: Ironside 3's enormous 35kg spinning bar was the biggest spinner in the competition until Apex came along.
• Born Unlucky: Ironside 3 suffered a double subversion in its Series 8 fight against Pulsar. Pulsar's first blow flipped Ironside 3 over, whereupon its srimech failed, leaving it seemingly eliminated. However, it was eventually righted by Sir Killalot and allowed to keep fighting, and after Pulsar broke down, Ironside 3 pitted it to seemingly secure a shock victory. However, the judges ruled that Ironside 3 had been immobile for too long and gave the win to Pulsar.
• The Bus Came Back: Ironside 3 marked the team's return after the 12-year hiatus. Meggamouse, the upgraded Mighty Mouse, is returning for Series 9 along with Ironside 3.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Meggamouse is a rebuilt version of Mighty Mouse (itself a rebuilt version of Velocirippa).
  • Ironside 3 was later redesigned as "Robin Hood" for the Chinese series Clash Bots.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Like TR2 in Series 8-9, the team were Grand Finalists in Series 9, but were rejected from Series 10. Fans were not pleased.
• For Want Of A Nail: In the Grand Final Ironside 3 came within millimetres of taking out Carbide's weapon chain, which would have almost guaranteed it victory.
• Kick Them While They're Down: Averted by Ironside 3 during their Series 9 Round Robin match against Pulsar. Due to a technical glitch, Ironside 3 thought Pulsar had been counted out, so they held back rather than going in to finish off the (still technically mobile) machine. This ended up costing them a point, as the match went to the judges. They duly played it straight in the heat final, against Pulsar again, giving it several extra hits just to make sure.
• One-Hit Kill: Dealt one to Crushtacean in its Series 9 melee battle, and another to Pulsar in the heat final, having been on the receiving end of one from Pulsar the previous year.
• Put on a Bus: Despite their impressive performance in the previous year, they where not selected for Series 10.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Trevor Wright wasn't allowed to personally enter two robots into the rebooted series, so he lent Meggamouse to live circuit competitors Team Tilly, who also borrowed Wright's former team name (Team Mouse) for the show. Hence why he doesn't appear on the team despite owning the robot.
• The Rival: Arguably to Pulsar. In two series they've met five times, with Ironside 3 winning twice, Pulsar winning once, one match being declared a draw, and a fifth having no interaction between them.
• Spectacular Spinning: Ironside 3 and its tremendous 35kg spinning bar.
• Spell My Name With An S: The series is not consistent about whether the name is meant to be stylized as Ironside3, Ironside 3, or Ironside-3.
• Took a Level in Badass: Meggamouse is this compared to Mighty Mouse, with a powerful low-pressure flipper that allowed it to hold its own far more effectively.
  • And then, of course, there's Ironside 3, a far, far deadlier machine than Velocirippa or Mighty Mouse had ever been. Its Grand Final appearance came after it took on Apex, Supernova, and Pulsar, and beat all of them.

Team Shock (Series 8 Grand Finalist with Shockwave, Series 9 4th Place with Aftershock)

Weapons: 360 degree lifting scoop (Shockwave), Vertical spinning blade (Aftershock)

Battle record: 4 wins, 2 losses (as Shockwave); 7 wins, 6 losses (as Aftershock)

Representative of the Boring, but Practical school of robot design in the reboot and spiritual successor to the likes of Panic Attack, Shockwave came from behind in its heat to upset Thor. With its rotating shovel weapon and powerful engines, Shockwave proved a difficult proposition for robots that lacked the weaponry to knock it out, but fell prey to the awesome power of Carbide in their Grand Final melee.

In Series 9, the team (taking inspiration from the robot that destroyed it the previous year) returned with a more up-to-date design called Aftershock, replacing the scoop with a devastating vertical spinner blade. It flattened everything in its heat to win through to the Grand Final for the second year running with relative ease.

Shockwave

You will be blown away.

• Dark Horse Victory: Beat Thor in a single massive ram after having previously been battered all over the arena by their massively powerful hammer.
• Heroic RRoD: Shockwave dropped out of their grand-final melee round after Carbide managed to break the arena wall, when it became clear that they had suffered irreparable damage.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Whenever they equipped the metal bladed scoop instead of the plastic half-pipe in their heat they won (or at least qualified); Foxic, DisConstructor and Thor can all attest to this.
• Made of Plasticine: For their second fight with Thor they replaced their metal scoop with one made of sewer pipe. Unsurprisingly, it didn't hold up very well.
  • Also took catastrophic damage from Carbide much more easily than most of the other finalists- a single hit was enough to rip it apart. Justified as Shockwave's chassis was originally constructed to be a Techno Games competitor in 2003- rather than the now-standard steel, its chassis was made of aluminium.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Armed with an interchangeable lifting scoop that can spin all the way around the robot, allowing itself to flip itself over. It does this as part of its Victory Dance.
• One-Hit Kill: Knocked something loose when they rammed Thor into a wall, which left it basically dead.
• One-Hit Wonder: Shockwave was retired after Series 8 and replaced with Aftershock.
• Third Time's The Charm: Fought Thor three times over the course of their Series 8 heat, and came off worse in every match until their shock upset in the heat final.
• Victory Dance: Often celebrates by flipping itself a couple of times with its lifting scoop.

Aftershock

The aftershock is more dangerous than the first strike!

"You're supposed to attack the robot rather than attack the arena!"

—Dara O Briain

• Curb-Stomp Battle: No opponent Aftershock faced in their heat could stand up to it, not even Terrorhurtz. It mangled Sabretooth when it tried. But then Aftershock met Carbide...
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: Aftershock's body shape meant that it could use its flywheel as a srimech; as long as the weapon was functioning, the blade could bounce Aftershock back onto its wheels.
• Kick the Dog: During Aftershock's first battle against Sabretooth, they quickly flipped it upside down. Despite being designed to be invertible, Sabretooth couldn't run from this position, but Aftershock came back in, flipped it back over, then absolutely laid into it, doing practically Hypno-Disc-level damage to it until it was almost torn to pieces- and this was during the group stage where Sabretooth still had at least one more match to fight! The team were just barely able to get Sabretooth back together and mobile in time to make it into the arena, but the robot was in such weak shape that it promptly lost to the reinstated Jellyfish- which still meant they had to go through to face Aftershock again in the Heat Final. Team Shock was reportedly very apologetic after finding out just how much damage they did.
  Esme Stroud: Stop!
  • Laser-Guided Karma: During their round-robin match against Carbide in the Grand Final, Carbide easily disabled them, them proceeded to treat them the same way they'd treated Sabretooth, brutalising them so badly (including tearing off a side panel with so much force that it was found lodged halfway through the polycarbonate barrier around the arena!) that the only way they were able to get the robot repaired in time for their next match was to stick the armour back on with gaffer tape!
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Gabriel is generally immune to spinning weapons due to its immense size and thick plastic wheels, but Aftershock's vertical spinner was tall enough to reach Gabriel's main body, allowing it to do what even Carbide couldn't do and knock Gabriel out.
• Took a Level in Badass: Shockwave was steady but unspectacular. Aftershock's resumé, meanwhile, includes punting Terrorhurtz a good ten feet into the air, obliterating Sabretooth, damaging the arena floor panels twice, and knocking out the reigning champion in two hits!
• Trash the Set: Tore up the arena's floor panels twice when their blade made contact with them. The first time, the damage wasn't apparent until Apollo got stuck underneath one.
  • In its Series 10 melee it broke the floor flipper.

Concussion (Series 9 Grand Finalist, Series 10 Heat Finalist & Wildcard Melee entrant)

Will leave you with a headache.

Weapons: Spinning drum

Battle record: 7 wins, 4 losses

The Concussion team were total newcomers when they arrived in Series 9, having never fought before, but their powerful single-toothed drum quickly proved effective, and it overcame technical problems to smash its way into the Grand Final at the first attempt.

• Achilles' Heel: The top half of the wheels are very exposed, and Nuts disabled one of them in a single hit when they fought in the group stages. Concussion tried to address the weakness by placing polycarbonate panels on the sides, but created another weakness in that it could no longer drive properly while upside-down.
• The Alleged Car: Not quite as bad as Pulsar, but it was still battling technical problems (mostly drive-related) for most of its heat.
• Beginner's Luck: While it may be a bit unfair to attribute it to "luck" after the amount of hard work they put in, Concussion was its team's very first attempt at building a combat robot, and its opening-round melee was the first time they'd ever faced another opponent in battle. Managing to reach the Grand Final of the ultra-competitive Series 9 on their very first attempt, fighting opponents who had been doing this for years, is an amazing accomplishment.
• Born Lucky: Won its group match against Thor despite getting stuck on top of the closed pit; Thor foolishly charged in to ram Concussion and was thrown upside-down, leaving it unable to self-right. It also beat the weaponless MR Speed Squared despite briefly catching fire towards the end of the fight.
• Dark Horse Victory: Thor was the favourite to win its heat, with Concussion labelled a dark horse, but it went on to beat Thor twice on its way to the Grand Final.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In its Series 10 heat final, it applied extra armour to defend itself against Nuts 2, nicknamed "Nuts guards". The armour stopped it from being able to move properly when it was inverted and was directly responsible for losing it the fight.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Well, golden-orange, but it was certainly superior during its heat, going undefeated.
• Man on Fire: Appeared to suffer a brief internal fire towards the end of its bout with MR Speed Squared, but by that point it was well ahead on points and survived to win the judges' decision.
• One-Hit Kill: Killed Tauron with a single blow in its first-round melee.
• Spectacular Spinning: Armed with a 6000rpm single-toothed drum capable of tearing Heavy Metal's wheel off and hurling it out of the arena.

Apollo (see Series 8)

Series 10 (2017)

Eruption (Series 9 Runner Up, Series 10 Wildcard Melee winner and Series Champion)

The pressure builds...

"Our aim is always to throw them out of the arena, so we're really happy that we got to do that. That's always the prized moment."

—Michael Oates

Weapons: Rear-hinged flipper, interchangeable mini claw and drum

Battle record: 16 wins, 5 losses

A two-time FRA champion, Eruption went into Series 8 as one of the favourites, but narrowly missed out in the "heat of death". It returned massively improved for Series 9 and achieved four Ring Outs in rapid succession - the last being performed in 6.5 seconds - to reach the grand final. In Series 10 it suffered from immediately being placed up against Carbide again in its heat, dropping it down to the Wildcard Melee, but managed to pull through the chaotic conflict and beat all comers to finally fulfill driver Michael Oates' childhood dream of winning Robot Wars!

• The Ace: Eruption was one of the most-notable robots from the highly-active live scene that had sprung up in the hiatus between Series 7 and 8 to appear in the reboot. It was mentioned on this page several times before the show came back as one of only a handful of robots to win the UK championship more than once (and the only which had never competed in the original series), giving it a level of prestige on the live circuit similar to Chaos 2! And while it came up short in the "heat of death" in Series 8, in Series 9 it showed its mettle by curb-stomping its entire heat with four consecutive ring-outs!
  • It finally secured its hold on this position by beating Carbide to win Series 10!
• Ace Pilot: Michael Oates, the driver, is widely regarded on the live circuit as being a fantastic driver, and his two back-to-back UK Championship wins attest to that.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Michael won the 10-Robot Rumble to earn the wild card by sitting back and letting all the other robots take each other out and use up their resources. The last two opponents he had to take out himself, Terrorhurtz and Apollo, had already expended almost all the CO2 that powered their weapons and Eruption was able to deal with them fairly easily.
  • While the robot was outwardly still the same, in Series 10 Michael took the liberty of armoring up one side of Eruption more than the other specifically to tank Carbide's spinner.
• Crippling Overspecialisation: Despite technically qualifying, averted. Eruption^note along with a number of other contestants that share the same base design, such as TR2 and Apollo is the pinnacle of live-circuit flipper design, initially pioneered by Gravity^note or possibly Spawn Again, opinions vary on who the true progenitor is- probably the best compromise is that Spawn Again is the Trope Maker and Gravity is the Trope Codifier. They have a relatively long flipper, a single untethered wide-bore pneumatic ram to power it and bungee cord to stop it flying off, a wedge design that means they always roll onto their front or their feet, and a sloped back with slightly exposed wheels, for various reasons (being able to reverse if you drive up an opponent's wedge, adding additional force to your flip, etc). This makes for a terrifically powerful flipper, but this design was perfected on the live circuit, where spinners are too dangerous to use. Despite this, Eruption has given at least a decent showing every time they've come up against a spinner, and only losing to PP3D (by judges decision; technically, they achieved a mutual KO) and Carbide.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Its Series 9 fights against Cherub particularly. The first time, Cherub was still crippled from its epic fight with PP3D and didn't move at all, allowing Eruption to toy with it briefly before throwing it out. The second time, Cherub was working again but was thrown out of the arena in a single spectacular flip.
• Determinator: Its performance in the Series 9 Grand Final against Carbide was reminiscent of Bigger Brother against Hypno-Disc: Carbide's ferocious bar tore gash after gash into Eruption's armour, gradually tearing it apart, and yet Eruption just kept coming. While it still lost, Eruption survived for almost twice as long as any other robot that fought Carbide that series.
  • During their rematch in the Series 10 Grand Final, Eruption was actually able to tank Carbide's spinner and eventually get control of the fight, lasting the full 3 minutes and winning the judges' decision.
• Friendly Rivalry: With Alex of TR2, though not well-shown on camera. Following their respective social media proves that the two of them get along very well, probably due to their similar ages and shared skill in robot combat.
• Made of Iron: It managed to take three minutes of heavy punishment from Carbide, to the degree there was a massive gash across their entire front, including the flipper. Not only did Eruption remain functional after such a beating, but their flipper was still functional even in it's mangled state.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Invoked, as a means of standing out from a crowd of flippers. The top of Eruption's flipper can be fitted with either a small pneumatic claw to trap opponents, or (from Series 9 onwards) a small drum to chew up their front wedges. In practice, neither are really needed because the flipper is just that powerful, and in later battles it tends to forgo them entirely.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Won the 10-robot rumble to get the wildcard and didn't lose a fight after that.
• Only a Flesh Wound: A large reason it won the Judge's Decision in the Series 10 Final; for all the damage Carbide did, it was purely cosmetic, and everything important was still working (or at least it was easy to hide when it wasn't, if it all), whereas Carbide's weapon was clearly and visibly inoperable for a portion of the fight (according to the Push To Exit team, they had to stop using it due to overheating issues), which helped Eruption's damage scores and allowed for greater aggression, helping that score too.
• Revenge: Its loss to PP3D in the Series 8 head-to-heads was what cost it a place in the heat final. They met again in the Series 9 head-to-heads, and this time Eruption came out on top, flipping PP3D over and then ejecting it from the arena.
  • Finally beating Carbide in the Series 10 Grand Final, after already losing to them in both the Series 9 Grand Final and their Series 10 Heat Final.
• Ring Out: Tied Atomic's record for four ring-outs in a row, and came within a second of Gravity's record for the fastest ring-out in its heat final battle against Cherub.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Won its Series 9 heat final battle in just one flip and six seconds.
• Took a Level in Badass: It was pretty impressive in Series 8 - achieving the first Ring Out in the new arena, and defeating eventual champion Apollo - but in Series 9 it curb-stomped its entire heat without breaking a sweat.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Eruption's approach to its finals group battle: sit back and let Aftershock tear Apollo to pieces. That being said, it didn't completely escape punishment, as it suffered a blow to the flipper from Aftershock's blade when Apollo flipped the latter robot onto it.

Carbide (See Series 9)

Nuts 2 (Series 10 Grand Finalist, Joint 3rd Place)

This team is totally--

"You can still be silly and crazy and kill things."

—Rory Mangles

Weapons: Spinning chain flails & minibots

Battle Record: 5 wins, 5 losses

The original Nuts debuted in Series 8 as a thwackbot. The team quickly earned a place in the hearts of the fandom with their kooky attire and a fighting style that often fell under Crazy Enough to Work. After an inauspicious Series 9, they Came Back Strong in Series 10, quickly showing that for all the fun, they meant business...

• Action Survivor: Its first fight in Series 8 saw it enter the arena as fodder to three other former grand finalists and qualifying for round 2 after one team fell into the pit and took Razer with it. Averted in Series 10 when it Took a Level in Badass.
• Attack Drone: Nuts is accompanied by a number of minibots when it goes into battle, aiming to interfere with the opponents' driving while Nuts gets up to speed. Played for maximum laughs in the Grand Final when, purely by fortuitous timing, the drone hit the pit release at just the right moment to instantly eliminate Behemoth. Later in the same fight, one of them got wedged underneath a weaponless Carbide and nearly immobilised it!
• Attack Its Weak Point: Despite the whirling chain flails hardly being what you'd consider "precision weapons", they showed a remarkable propensity for this, smashing Concussion's wheel in their heat melee, Androne 4000's hydraulic system in the heat semifinal, and Carbide's weapon chain in their Grand Final melee!
• Blown Across the Room: Despite their popularity, the team made an early exit from Series 9 when Matilda's flywheel sent the entire machine flying out of the arena in the group battle.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Rory started out with an utter joke of a robot with an utter joke of a weapon, claiming not to even know what his own machine did... and, with a bit of clever engineering underneath the external battiness, turned that joke machine into a force to be reckoned with.
• Came Back Strong: Their run in Series 10; with massively improved internals that allowed it to move even when spinning, it made even approaching it a daunting prospect. Before it was a highly-ineffective thwackbot, now it's technically a full-body spinner!
• Confusion Fu: How Nuts 2 fights, with some Strategy, Schmategy.
• Crazy Enough to Work: They took a robot called "Nuts", slapped flails on it, and somehow made it grand finalist material.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: On first inspection, most people wouldn't even know what it's even supposed to do (including its own team) and in a series brimming with the most powerful axes, spinners and flippers ever seen in Robot Wars, Nuts is armed with flails, which have never been successfully used as an offensive weapon. Despite that, its first-ever fight saw it holding its own against 3 former grand finalists and qualifying for the next round, and it would later reach the grand final itself 2 years later after easily beating both of its opponents - twice. It won with strategic use of minibots, the innovative "meltybrain" technology and turning flails into a Lethal Joke Weapon.
• Dark Horse Victory: Its first ever battle saw it up against three former Grand Finalist teams (Team Hurtz, Razer and Cold Fusion) and still qualifying to the next round (admittedly only because two of the others took each other out via the pit)!
  • In the Grand Final melee, it was up against veterans Behemoth and champions Carbide. Nuts 2 beat them both.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: In the Series 10 Grand Final 3-way. It. Beat. Carbide.
• Epic Flail: With Meltybrain equipped, Nuts 2's flails became this.
• Foreshadowing: Its first battle saw it holding its own against three previous Grand Finalists (including champion Razer) and winning, and it would later qualify for the Grand Final 2 years later where it defeated another champion: Carbide.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Rory Mangles is probably the most low-key example of this ever seen on the show. The Melty Brain system that allows Nuts 2 to perform controlled movement while spinning at full speed is a concept that thwackbot engineers have been pursuing for a long time, something of a holy grail of roboteering, mostly without success. Rory was the first to not only get it to work, but also to find major success as a result, despite only ever intending to create a Joke Character. Aside from the Melty Brain circuit, Nuts 2 is a machine so simple it almost borders on Bamboo Technology (two large wheels in a boxy body, a rotating outer ring, two chains with weights on the end, and a pair of minibots), but thanks to Rory's brilliance it proved far greater than the sum of its parts.
• Improbable Weapon User: Flails are rarely seen in robot wars due to being almost impossible to actually use as an effective weapon. Nuts 2 turned it into Exotic Weapon Supremacy.
• It Only Works Once: On two occasions, their opponents armoured up their weak spot to prevent Nuts 2 from hitting it again. Concussion added some "Nut-busters" on their wheels (which prevented them from moving while upside down and Concussion was eliminated when it was flipped), and Carbide added "Nuts guards" onto the weapon chain, which stopped them from losing to Nuts 2 again.
• Joke Character: Due to their rather haphazard fighting style and ineffective weaponry, few took them too seriously...
• Lethal Joke Character: ...until Series 10 at least, where they defeated (and nearly immobilised) freaking Carbide.
  Angela: Nuts, the 'joke robot', the supposed joke robot. And you have the last laugh!
• Lethal Joke Item: Flails have always been considered possibly the most useless weapon in all of robot combat, because swinging a weight on a chain at an opponent is even less-effective than merely hitting them with a rigid weight (like a thwackbot would), since the flexibility of the chain negates all the force of the impact when it strikes armour, and robots that have tried using them have never been able to build up a fraction of the momentum needed to actually strike with any reasonable force. It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that a flail-armed robot would struggle to threaten a human, let alone another combat robot. However, Nuts 2 amped up the power of its 2-wheeled drive system to allow it to spin on the spot so unbelievably fast that, when you factor in centrifugal force, the tip speed of the weights was on par with actual horizontal spinner robots, giving them so much impact force that even the chains can't absorb all of it, letting them smash armour (as an added bonus, this also highlights the advantage of the chain as, unlike all other types of spinner, Nuts takes practically no recoil damage from the attack at all, giving it far better endurance than other spinners). Additionally, the length of the chains gives its flails immense reach and Nuts 2 an attack radius far higher than any other robot in the contest, making them incredibly dangerous to approach. Add in the Meltybrain circuits that allow it to move while spinning and Nuts 2 had the perfect combination of traits to finally make flails work.
• Mighty Glacier: The upgraded Nuts 2 could inflict crippling damage with its flails, whose long reach also made the machine very hard to attack. However, even with the Meltybrain circuit equipped, its top speed while spinning was less than spectacular.
• Rule of Three: In Series 10, Nuts 2 had three rematches with a robot it had defeated. Androne 4000 and Concussion lost a second time, but Carbide didn't.
• Spectacular Spinning: Its main method of attack; spin in place and use its chain flails to whack the opponent. Improved in Series 10 with a bit of equipment that could allow it to move while at full revs (similar in spirit to Gabriel's ability to use its axe regardless of its momentum).
• Took a Level in Badass: With the aid of a bit of circuitry that Rory built himself, allowing it to attack and move at the same time, a first for a robot of its kind. It was also capable of spinning much, much faster than before, and the bodywork was considerably upgraded to handle this increase in power from the weapon.

Behemoth (Series 2 Semi-Finalist, Series 3, 4 & 8 Heat Finalist, Series 10 Grand Finalist, Joint 3rd Place, First World Championship Runner-Up, Extreme 2 Antweight Champion with Anty B, Series 7 House Robot Rebellion Joint Champion) (6 Seed in Series 4, 15 Seed in Series 5, 10 Seed in Series 7)

"Behemoth: it's big, it's bad, it's back!"

Weapons: Lifting Scoop (interchangeable from Series 9 onwards), Twin Axes (Series 3), Single Axe (Series 5-7, 10)

Battle record: 29 wins, 20 losses as Behemoth; 1 win, 1 loss with Anty B

The oldest fighting robot in the world, Behemoth first debuted in Robot Wars Series 2 and is still fighting with basically the same yellow-and-black-striped bulldozer design to this day. Although they reached the semifinals in their debut appearance, Behemoth subsequently slipped into the role of the eternal also-rans, constantly falling prey to new and unbelievable ways of being eliminated from championship contention every year despite their best efforts. Although always being considered serious contenders they never got the break they needed to get beyond their heat again, until in Season 10 they came back stronger than ever and toppled former champions Apollo to secure themselves their long-awaited first-ever Grand Final berth and eventual equal-third place!

• Book Ends: An unintentional but still amusing example: Behemoth was both the first and the last robot to be thrown by the floor flipper (in Series 3, Heat B and the Series 7 House Robot Rebellion respectively).
• Born Unlucky: Where to begin? Eliminated the instant Killertron dragged them over with their pickaxe in Series 2, even though Killertron immediately righted them again pulling the axe out; flipped by an arena spike in Series 3; lost a tight judges decision in Series 4; flipped themselves over in Series 5; drawn against the second seeds in Series 6; broke down in forward drive in Series 7^note In doing which they managed to become the only robot ever to be defeated by a self-right - Mute somersaulted over them whilst self-righting, hit the aerial and caused the radio interface to crash; and in Series 8 they were matched against the one spinner robot their famous scoop couldn't resist, suffered control problems, and ended up driving into the pit. Could’ve had the Challenge Belt had their third opponents not been Tornado, got literally mugged by Shunt during the Extreme 2 Iron Maidens contest (who righted their opponents, Chompalot, before single-handedly disabling Behemoth) and ended up with the most losses of any robot on the show. Their removable link got knocked out by random fluke hits more times than any other robot and by the time it happened in the Extreme 2 University Challenge you can read the expression on Anthony Pritchard's face like a book: "Getting real tired of this shit..."
  • Even the antweight version of Behemoth, Anty B, suffered from this, as the first televised antweight battle saw Anty B somehow getting stuck under the floor flipper. Fortunately, the second such battle saw Anty B coming out on top.
  • Craig Charles even lampshaded it once:
  Craig: Behemoth. I consider you to be the unluckiest robot in the history of Robot Wars.
  • And where to begin with Series 9? It was winning against Eruption until it was driven into a corner, where the team couldn't see what was happening, allowing Eruption to gain control of the fight and eventually flip them out; they equipped the wrong type of scoop for their decisive battle against Cherub, against Anthony Pritchard's advice, leaving them unable to get in underneath it; and they still would have gone through had Cherub not earlier won a very close judges' decision over PP3D.
  • Defied in Series 10. Despite being immobilized at the same time as Sabretooth in their group battle, Behemoth was deemed the winner of the judge's decision, and proceeded to steamroll The Swarm before succeeding in pitting former champion Apollo in the heat final. This marks the first time that Behemoth have ever made it to the grand finals, and the look on Ant's face says it all.
    • However, even after getting this far they're still plagued by their famous bad luck, as early in the Grand Final melee against Carbide and Nuts 2, Behemoth's front armoured ram was holding up well against Carbide's spinner, only for a blow to spin them around and drop them on top of the pit the instant that one of Nuts 2's minibots hit the arena button, triggering the pit^note actually a rare occurrence with the addition of the Rogue House Robot and Fog of War options and dropping Behemoth straight down into it and out! Ant's face was a picture of bewildered and indignant shock.
    Ant: Wha — what happened there?!
    Michael: One of the little ones hit the Pit!
    Ant: Ah, dang it!
    • Fortunately, they managed to defy it again in their (as of this moment) final battle: after the aforementioned pitting, they managed to defeat Magnetar in the redemption round, putting them up against Eruption in the semifinals, where the two flippers had a classic battle for the ages that went all the way to the judges. Despite Eruption being the clear winner, Behemoth gave the eventual Series 10 Champion a serious fight to remember and was able to claim equal 3rd place with their heads held high.
• The Bus Came Back: Behemoth was one of the few competitors to make the leap from the original series to the reboot.
• Construction Vehicle Rampage: Unambiguously based on a bulldozer with black and yellow hazard stripes and flashing lights. Reportedly, it also makes beeping sounds when backing up, like a truck.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: The robot immobilised Mr. Psycho with its tiny axe, the only competitor to have achieved this with damage. ^note Firestorm and Junkyard Queen have also immobilised Mr. Psycho, but by flipping him over.
• Depth Deception: The original Behemoth was built by the team watching back the first series and judging how big they thought the robots were. As with many other viewers, the team significantly underestimated them and the robot ended up being much smaller compared to other robots. When it was rebuilt for Series 3, it was made much larger, and has remained that size ever since.
• Diabolus ex Machina: The arena spikes appearing from nowhere and flipping Behemoth during its Series 3 heat final battle.
  • In addition to this, it also holds the dubious honour of being the only robot to be defeated (unintentionally) by a self-righting mechanism (in its Series 7 fight against Mute).
• Every Year They Fizzle Out: Great things were expected of Behemoth each series, but as noted under Born Unlucky they were somehow always stopped, including three round 2 defeats in a row.
  • Finally defied in Series 10, where they defeated former champion Apollo to earn a place in the grand final.
• Humiliation Conga: Sadly, the team's Series 9 run, especially for poor Anthony Pritchard. They had a solid chance to reach the heat final with an easy win over the mostly-unarmed Cherub, but the team decided to go with their untested grabber weapon over the scoop (and over the strenuous objections of Anthony). As a result, an almost Foregone Conclusion win turned into an embarrassing loss to a team of kids driving a robot that hadn't actually been originally designed for combat, driving Anthony to storm out of the post-battle interview in case he said something he'd regret. This was then interpreted by a lot of people as childish poor sportsmanship and he faced a horrific deluge of online scorn and abuse. It was referenced at the start of Series 10, with Dara commenting to Ant that he'd "gone viral", and Ant agreeing it was something he didn't want to happen again.
• Ignored Expert: Anthony Pritchard wasn't happy when the team decided to go with ineffective pincers instead of their usual scoop for a crucial battle in Series 9. Instead of a guaranteed win with the scoop, the pincers held the battle to a judge's decision that they lost.
• Joke Item: The grabber from Series 9. It replaced their biggest advantage (the scoop) with pincers that were supposed to pin opponents and they had roughly the same effectiveness as Napalm's "mandibles". When they came back again in Series 10 there was, unsurprisingly, no sign of it anywhere on Behemoth's bench.
• Lightning Bruiser: In its current guise, Behemoth has a top speed of 15mph, enough power to tow a Land Rover, extremely strong armour, and a powerful lifting scoop.
• Long Runner: The 2016 reboot saw it become the longest-running competitor in the show's history, having previously competed in every series bar the first including both Extremes^note the only other bot with that record, Panic Attack, didn't returning for the reboot. The only other bots that old competing in 2016 were King B Remix and Razer, which both missed a series^note King B failed to qualify for Series 6 and Razer was one of many long-running robots that declined to apply for the infamous Series 7, and with neither returning for Series 9 Behemoth is absolutely uncontested as the longest-running fighting robot in the UK.
  Ant Pritchard: Robot Wars would just not be Robot Wars without Behemoth.
  • In fact, Behemoth is quite likely the oldest fighting robot (that is, using the same name and basic design) in the world — even Battlebots veteran Nightmare (which debuted in 1999) isn't as old as Behemoth! Popular robot combat website Battlebots Update jokingly (but also accurately) called it "a robot that’s literally old enough to legally have sex with."
    Battlebots Update: That's staying power. That's Behemoth.
• Made of Iron: Despite its many defeats, Behemoth has technically never lost a fight due to battle damage. It withdrew from the Series 4 Southern Annihilator between rounds after suffering irreparable damage to its drive system, and has had its safety link knocked out on several occasions, but the closest it's come to actually being KO'd was when Carbide broke its scoop and damaged its drive in the Series 8 round-robin stage, and even then Carbide pitted it rather then finish it off.
• Mighty Glacier: In its original guise, Behemoth had decent armor, excellent pushing power, and could easily lift a robot over the arena wall, but was quite slow at a top speed of 6mph.
• Morton's Fork: After losing what should have been an easy win to Cherub because his teammates forced him to go with an untested weapon rather than the reliable scoop bucket, Ant Pritchard had to choose between staying around for the subsequent interview and risking a horrible outburst he'd regret (probably about his teammates), or walking away to try and regain his composure. He went with the latter and was subsequently labeled a "Manchild" and a "crybaby" by unsympathetic people on social media.
• Numbered Sequels: Not shown on screen (except for a small numberplate on the back of the robot reading 'EVO ___'), but Behemoth went from Evo I in Series 2 through Evo V in Series 6 and 7. On the live circuit, it went up to Evo VIII, while Evo IX is taking part in the reboot.
• Old Soldier: There are none older.^note OK, John Reid is close, but he's used different robots. With 49 on-screen battles, at least one in every series of Robot Wars since Series 2, as well as years of live circuit experience, the Behemoth team have more combat experience than any other roboteers in the UK if not the world, and they're still using the same bulldozer design (albeit massively upgraded) they debuted 20 years ago.
• Punched Across the Room: Behemoth's scoop is low-pressure, so it's not as powerful as the likes of Apollo or Eruption, but during its fight against Nuts in Series 8 it flipped one of Nuts' minibots and sent it flying almost the entire length of the arena.
• Rage Breaking Point: After his teammates' foolishness caused him to be ejected from contention AGAIN after years of failure, this time for a reason that wasn't just sheer bad luck but was also unquestionably not really his fault, Anthony Pritchard snapped, storming out of the post-battle interview with a muttered "Whatever!" and refusing to even stick around to drive Behemoth in a scheduled whiteboard match against TR2. Fortunately he managed to calm down and get back on the same page for Series 10, and was rewarded with his best result ever.
• Revenge: Behemoth finally avenged what was probably their most frustrating defeat (at the hands -or rather, the srimech- of Mute in Series 7) during their first battle in Series 8 by flipping Bonk and eliminating them when they couldn't self-right.
• Ring Out: Behemoth's scoop was powerful enough to lift an opponent clean over the arena wall. In fact, it was the first robot to win a fight by ejecting its opponent with something other than a flipper.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ant Pritchard stormed off the roboteer's podium after their head-to-head loss to Cherub, since he was furious the team decided to use ineffective grabbers and lost instead of going for a guaranteed win with the regular scoop. Unfortunately, since Cherub's team was made up of schoolchildren, this led to the incident appearing on social media and even several newspapers as "grown man storms off after losing to a bunch of children".
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Despite being famous as "the team that never win anything even though they should", they at least won the Antweight Championship on their second attempt with Anty B, an adorable palm-sized version of Behemoth. They also shared victory in the series 7 House Robot Rebellion with Gravity.
  • After 19 years of competing, the team finally made the Grand Final in 2017.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Series 8 they were one of only three returning robots to better their previous performance, reaching the heat final for the first time since Series 4^note the other two were Thor, which bore no resemblance to the Series 7 version, and Chompalot, which was destroyed in the process. Indeed, when you consider that only 10 robots got to that stage, Behemoth technically notched up its best performance since its debut in Series 2!
  • And of course, 2 series later they one-upped this by making it to the grand final after beating former champion Apollo in their heat final!
• What Could Have Been: According to Anthony Pritchard, during the original series' run, there were plans for Behemoth to receive a pullback toy. For unknown reasons, the toy was sadly never produced.
• You Don't Look Like You: The original Behemoth looked very different from its later forms, which all more or less resembled the image above.

Rapid (Series 10 Grand Finalist)

Try to keep up.

Weapons: Flipper

Battle Record: 4 wins, 3 losses

Debuted in Series 9, Rapid is the most expensive robot in the competition's history — costing £25,000 to build, largely due to the top-of-the-line parts and cutting-edge design tools that went into constructing it. After an inauspicious beginning when a fault forced them to drop out of the round robin stage, they came back reoptimised in Series 10 and managed to beat the veteran Terrorhurtz for a place in the Grand Final.

• Awesome, but Impractical: Its Series 9 incarnation; the gearbox assembly proved far too complicated to fix quickly when it got damaged, leading them to have to forfeit. The robot was made easier to repair in general for Series 10.
  • Even in Series 10, after they had time to perfect it, the flipper, powerful enough to throw a Transit van, suffered from reliability issues: it was leaking gas for most of its heat and took a noticeably long time to retract after firing. As such, Rapid is noticeably more restrained in using its flipper than most flipper robots, instead opting to shove enemies around the arena much of the time.
• Bling of War: Rapid is certainly one of the shiniest robots in the reboot — helped even further with the nice golden paintjob it received for its Series 10 redesign.
• Combat Pragmatist: In its Series 10 Heat Semi-final, the team quickly realised the flipper had a gas leak — so didn't waste any time in just throwing their opponent out of the arena in a matter of seconds. Also in its fight with Terrorhurtz, making heavy use of the arena hazards before dealing the killing blow.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Josh Valman — the team captain and self-made mechanical engineering and design entrepreneur — has offered anyone who can beat them a job with his company, RPD International.
• Game-Breaking Injury: How they went out in Series 9. Rapid sustained critical damage to its highly-intricate gearbox in a fight with Aftershock, which was too deep inside the robot to fix within the two-hour allotted time for repairs. Because of this, they were forced to retire.
  • Combined with Incendiary Exponent in the Grand Final of Series 10, when the damage it took from Carbide caused it to mimic Chompalot and burst into flames, seemingly destroying it for good. Fortunately, the team then revealed afterward that 90% of Rapid is still useable, even after the horrific No-Holds-Barred Beatdown it took and the resulting battery fire that appeared to gut it. That's some durability!
• Generation Xerox: Subverted. Rapid's first appearance in Series 9 drew several comparisons with Mortis, another expensive, over-engineered robot that never quite lived up to expectation. Rapid's much-improved performance in Series 10, coupled with Josh Valman taking his brutal loss to Carbide remarkably well, meant those comparisons were quickly thrown out the window.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: When Rapid returned for Series 10 with a fresh coat of gold paint, it did substantially better than in Series 9.
• Lightning Bruiser: Of the hard-hitting speedster variety. Rapid is not only capable of throwing a Ford Transit van a metre into the air and opponents out of the arena, but can zip around the arena at speeds of up to 23 mph.
• Meaningful Name: Quick at 23mph, and holds the record for the fastest Ring Out in Robot Wars history.
• One-Hit Kill: Flung Track-tion out of the ring in 5.6 seconds.
• Punched Across the Room: Possessed a powerful flipper that made getting a Ring Out a formality.
• Punny Name: Rapid is named after RPD International — team captain Josh Valman's company.
• Ring Out: Twice inflicted this on Track-tion, once in the first round, again in the heat semi-final — the latter being the quickest in the show's history. It also did this to Terrorhurtz to secure their place in the Final, and almost succeeded in doing it to Carbide in their Redemption Battle. Key word being almost, sadly.

Magnetar (See Pulsar in Series 8)