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Hilarious In Hindsight / Epic Rap Battles of History

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Adolf Hitler vs. Darth Vader

  • In the rematch, Vader comments that he's "on the leader of your limp-dicked Luftwaffe" before making a reference to Lucas's other famous production, Indiana Jones. Then another Lucas production about pilots taking down the Luftwaffe came out.
  • In the third installment, Hitler tells Vader "I beat you twice you sellout, now you bow down to Mickey Mouse." Maker Studios, the company that produces Epic Rap Battles of History, did for a time as well. Even funnier now that ERB is independent of Maker.

Sarah Palin vs. Lady Gaga

  • The idea of Sarah Palin rapping doesn't seem so outrageous after The Masked Singer saw her doing just that.

Hulk Hogan and Macho Man vs Kim Jong-il

  • One of the dances Kim Jong-il is doing in the background of his second verse in the new edit of the battle looks eerily similar to the default dance move in Fortnite.

Master Chief vs Leonidas

  • One of Leonidas' disses goes "I'd look you in the eye but you're too much of a bitch to show your face". One of the biggest criticisms of the Halo live action series is the decision to have Master Chief remove his helmet to reveal his face actor several times.

Wright Bros. vs. Mario Bros.

Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney

  • The two's face-off can bring some chuckles to this day, especially since in the 2016 election they would find themselves on the same side against Donald Trump.

Doc Emmett Brown vs. The Doctor

  • Doc Brown closes the rap (at least before Ten Time Travels) by telling the Doctor "You're not a cat with nine lives, you're a pussy with thirteen!". Five years after this, the thirteenth doctor becomes the first female incarnation of the character.
  • The Doctor Who fans will immediately recognize the 10th and 4th Doctors as two of the best in the history of the series. But the idea of a Doctor regenertating backwards into a previous face is something that did not occur in the show. Then a year later on the 50th anniversary special, the 4th Doctor himself makes a cameo, stating that the current Doctor will eventually revisit old favorites. Another 9 years later and the then current Doctor regenterates into none other than the face of the 10th Doctor. Even more interesting, the 10th and 4th Doctor actors took part in the anniversary special, though without any interraction between them.

Bruce Lee vs Clint Eastwood

  • At one point, Clint Eastwood says that Bruce Lee got killed by an aspirin. In 2022, a new consensus regarding Bruce Lee's death has shown that he actually died of hyponatremia, which is caused by intaking too much water. It's possible the aspirin still played a part in his death though.

Batman vs. Sherlock Holmes

Michael Jordan vs. Muhammad Ali

  • Keegan Michael-Key would later play Jordan again on Saturday Night Live, spoofing the notorious quarter-tossing game in The Last Dance.
  • One of Jordan's first lines is that Ali has "as much chance of beating [him] as LeBron". LeBron James would later be the star of the Space Jam sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy, replacing Jordan.

Goku vs. Superman

  • Goku's line "Defeat me with heat beams, you're crazy" is this to those who have seen the second matchup between these two characters by DEATH BATTLE!, in which Superman deals the finishing blow by focusing his heat-vision through Goku's eyes to incinerate his brain.
  • At one point Goku remarks that he thinks Superman is boring and keeps checking his clock when a Superman movie is on. Dragon Ball Super has his son Gohan star in a Superhero movie (as the Great Saiyaman) and Goku is bored to sleep while watching it, remarking that being in an actual fight is much more interesting than watching one in a movie.

Stephen King vs. Edgar Allan Poe

  • In his first verse, Edgar calls Stephen King a "joker". This line becomes doubly hilarious in season 6, where one of King's characters, Pennywise, gets to battle The Joker. Not only that, but Pennywise ends up making a reference to one of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, and The Joker's raps actually roasts Stephen King almost as much as Pennywise himself.

Sir Isaac Newton vs Bill Nye

George Washington vs William Wallace

  • Washington says that he “cock block more Scots than Hadrian’s Wall”. In 2019, drawings of penises made by the Roman soldiers were found all over Hadrian’s Wall.

Zeus vs Thor

  • The whole Lego battle was intended as an off-brand affair without involving Lego's licensed properties (likely due to copyright issues), but a few slip through the cracks anyway, with MCU Loki, Queen Amidala from Star Wars and Fluffy from Harry Potter making notable appearances. Guess who the dueling franchises of the next Lego rap battle would be.
  • Just the fact that Zeus and Thor really will meet... in the MCU.
  • As of 2022, both rappers can also claim to have been opponents of Kratos.
  • Zeus' first lines mention Odin multiple times ("I'm the father of the gods, put your daddy on the phone! Maybe Odin will beg me for a truce..."). In the MCU, Odin is played by Anthony Hopkins, whose most famous role- Hannibal Lecter- is featured in the very next battle.

Deadpool vs Boba Fett

  • The entirety of the rap is this in hindsight once Boba Fett shows up again in The Mandalorian Season 2. Half of Deadpool's disses at Boba Fett is him attacking Boba for being overrated and is only popular because he looks cool while having barely any backstory and lines and got taken out anticlimatically, with all the awesome things that he did retconned once Disney took over. Then Boba comes back in The Mandalorian and got his backstory and role heavily expanded upon while also kicking lots of asses along the way, finally giving him a chance to live up to the legend that the fans wanted him to be. This means half of Deadpool's disses are now effectively useless.
  • Boba Fett says that Deadpool should've "ditch[ed] the prick from Van Wilder", referring to the then-upcoming Deadpool film with Reynolds as the title character. When the film came out, it was a smash hit, with Reynolds being greatly praised, both for his acting and for his behind-the-scenes role with the movie (such as paying out of his own pocket for the writers to be on set to make sure things matched their vision). Considering the film's low budget and just how much effort Reynolds put in, in no small part due to his own love of the character, pretty much anyone can agree that if they had ditched Reynolds, the movie wouldn't have done nearly as well.

J. R. R. Tolkien vs George R. R. Martin

  • One of George R.R. Martin's first disses against Tolkien was complaining about how all of "[Tolkien's] bad guys and guys die and [his] good guys survive," is amusing when, in the wake of the ending of Game of Thrones, almost all of the main good guys live and all but two villains die.
  • This battle also becomes much funnier when, in later summer 2022, Amazon and HBO released Dueling Shows based on each of their works.

Thomas Jefferson vs. Frederick Douglass

  • In Hamilton (which hit peak popularity around the time of the battle) Thomas Jefferson was portrayed by Daveed Diggs. Later on, in The Good Lord Bird Diggs would end up playing Frederick Douglass.

Ash Ketchum vs Charles Darwin

  • At the start of his first verse, Ash makes a quip about not having a Ghost-type Pokemonnote  referencing how he's about to rap against a dead person. Almost four years after this video was uploaded, Ash would officially catch a Ghost-type Pokemon, a Gengar, in Pokémon Journeys: The Series.

Wayne Gretzky vs Tony Hawk

  • One of the first things Tony does is make a Gag Nose joke about Wayne. The real Tony would later appear on The Masked Singer as the Elephant.

Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg

  • Three years after the battle's debut, Musk acquired Twitter (now X), formally becoming a business rival to Zuckerberg's Facebook (now Meta). This also made Musk's lines about Facebook being full of bots retroactively seem like Hypocritical Humor, as Twitter has much the same problems.
  • And one year after that, Zuckerberg challenged Musk to a one-on-one cage match in real life.
  • To take their business rivalry a step further, Zuckerberg recently launched Threads in July 2023, Meta's take on a Twitter-style social media.

Thanos vs J. Robert Oppenheimer

  • In his first verse Oppenheimer makes a wordplay on Iron Man ("You need an Iron, man, for that wrinkly chin"). Four years later, and Tony Stark's actor stars in a film about Oppenheimer himself. Notably, both characters that he plays are the biggest thorns in Thanos's and Oppenheimer's sides (with RDJ playing the antagonist on the latter).
  • Apparently this battle was foreshadowed in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 5, which takes place at the same time as Avengers: Infinity War - the whole season was about a prophecy that brought about a Bad Future, when someone in the cast would become someone known as the Destroyer of Worlds (after the well-known Oppenheimer viral video).

The Joker vs Pennywise

John McClane vs. John Wick vs. John Rambo

  • Wick's line "Bitcoin, no, hit-coin, certainly / I'll put you two in tombs, call it cryptocurrency" was a perfectly good pun when the battle was released, but it became even funnier when the crypto market was essentially "buried" by a major market crash in late 2022.

Lara Croft vs. Indiana Jones

  • Indiana Jones' line about Square Enix not wanting Tomb Raider anymore is this now that the franchise's current owner, Embracer Group, licensed the games out to Amazon's gaming division.

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