Nightmare Fuel / DEATH BATTLE!

Sometimes, the "death" in DEATH BATTLE! is preceeded by something worse. Much, MUCH worse.

This show is called DEATH BATTLE!, so naturally, there's going to be violence... and stunned silence, as this page can attest.
Do not add details about the actual battle to this page before the corresponding battle is able for view by the general public. While it is admirable you are supporting the show, it spoils the surprise for those who don't and have this page on their watchlist.

As per Nightmare Fuel guidelines, all spoilers below are unmarked! Don't say we didn't warn you.

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Season 1

• Riptor biting off the head of a Baby Yoshi.
• Harry Potter's scar being torn open and exploding from Luke Skywalker's Shatterpoint as he screams in agony.
• Metal Sonic being infected by Roboenza and transforming into the Metal Overlord, then proceeding to destroy everything in sight.
  Boomstick: Well, that world's fucked. Our bad.
• Peach's finishing move for Zelda. She kicks Zelda in the head with 160 times the power needed to decapitate her, and more than twice the amount of pressure needed to cause her head to explode.^note She hit Zelda with the pressure of about 36 psi and she only needed 15 psi to kill Zelda (2.4 times the pressure needed). The move is so powerful that it outright gibs Zelda's head so hard the screen is temporarily obscured with blood and fragments of her brain and skull. Her shrill, echoing death scream — which shouldn't be possible at that moment due to her head being gone — from Super Smash Bros. Melee doesn't help, either.
• Raiden's death. Thor splits him in half with his hammer and throws him into the sun. The expression on his face as he burns up is unnerving.

Season 2

• He-Man vs. Lion-O:
  • The Eye of Thundera attacking He-Man fits here. He-Man breaks the Sword of Omens, then Lion-O, and walks off, content to allow Lion-O to live. Then the Eye just up and attacks him of its own accord. Not to mention it's shooting three other beams as well, meaning it's not able to control its own power. Plus it's just so freaking abrupt. Especially nightmarish for those not familiar with the Thundercats series, as there's hardly any prior indication that the Eye of Thundera could do this. Just a brief, easily-missed mention of the gem being sentient in the rundown, that's all. And when it does attack, dramatic orchestrated music blares out as the Eye produces some unearthly noise.
  • He-Man's reaction when the Eye attacks him. With all the hits Lion-O did land, such as getting blasted into a mountain and stabbed in the shoulder, He-Man didn't do more than yell a little and shrugged it off no problem. The Eye is what makes him scream.
• During SGC the creators spoke about the original ending to Batman vs Spider-Man. It sounded...horrific to say the least. Originally Spidey was supposed to web Batman in place and then spray webbing down Batman's throat until he either suffocated or exploded. This death was eventually worked into the Pokemon Battle Royale, with Blastoise causing Charizard to burst with his cannons: cannons which, in the leadup, were said to have 90000 PSIs (pounds per square inch) of force. It is... messy.
• Shao Kahn tearing M. Bison in half and then devouring his soul. It's very bloody and a truly horrible way to go.
• Fox vs. Bucky:
  • Bucky's bombs blow off Fox's legs, essentially leaving him Half the Man He Used to Be. If it weren't for the fact that his legs are cybernetic, he would have died horrifically right then and there.
  • The killing blow is surprisingly brutal in how primal it is: Fox throttles Bucky with his bare hands, slowly killing him with strangulation (complete with realistic choking noises) before grabbing his blaster, putting it to Bucky's head, and blowing his head apart with a point-blank charged shot. Firearm deaths aren't uncommon on Death Battle, but this one ranks among the most disturbing.
• Terminator vs. Robocop:
  • After getting sent careening into an exploding oil tank. Terminator rises up from the fire without his artificial skin, revealing his true form. Complete with glowing red eyes and noticeably more jerky movement coupled with the fire creating a hellish image.
  • Even after Robocop destroys half of Terminator's body, his other half still keeps coming at him. Then, as Robocop picks up said half-of-a-Terminator body, he warns Terminator that the fight is over. Terminator's response? Slowly turning his head 180 degrees and give a deep, low, and slow "Noooooooot. Yeeeeeeeet.". Implacable Man taken to its logical extreme.
• Tails vs. Luigi ends with Tails plunging a robotic hand into Luigi's chest, and he lets off a chilling death cry before expiring. The fact that you can barely see the device itself being prepared the first time around makes the killing blow even more unexpected.
• The Starter Pokemon Battle Royale:
  • This battle adds two more entries to the Cruel and Unusual Death list. First up is Venusaur, who dies trying to escape Charizard's flames with an utterly terrified look on its face, and second is Charizard, who gets filled with water until it pops like a balloon. After this episode, you'll probably be thankful that Pokemon just get knocked out, no matter how absurd the power imbalance.
  • When Venusaur's plant is slashed off by Charizard, and blood/tissue is visible inside the stump despite it appearing to be made of wood on the outside. A minor detail, but noticing it makes that part so much worse.
• Godzilla vs. Gamera has Godzilla towering over Gamera after shrugging off his blast like it was nothing, right before exploding him into bloody chunks. What's more, for the first time in Death Battle, justice is foiled as the more heroic combatant dies and the villain lives to continue his rampage unabated.
• Batman hanging Captain America with his grappling hook, breaking his neck in the process coupled with a Sickening "Crunch!" is certainly not a pleasant sight (or sound) to behold. Bats goes the extra mile and slices Cap in two with his own shield (which Batman stole prior). Guess there's a good reason why Batman usually doesn't kill.
• Ryu vs. Scorpion: Ryu flaying Scorpion to the bone... AND NOT KILLING THE NINJA WRAITH, the way Skeleton!Scorpion cricks his neck up for the first time is unnerving.
• The promotion for the Funko Super Saiyan God Goku before the Kirby v. Majin Buu battle. What starts out as a simple lighthearted promotion suddenly turns into the climax of Toy Story, where SSG Goku begins to call out Ben Singer for the outcome of Superman v. Goku, much to Ben's horror.
• Gaara vs. Toph: Both combatants try to kill the other in a similar manner, encasing them in sand/earth and compacting them. Only Toph succeeds. She then drops his armor off of the pillar that they were standing on, audibly shattering it. Thankfully, we're spared the sight of a horrifically crushed, bloodied, impaled, and mangled corpse that this would inevitably cause.
• Tony's "Playing human" speech, with him getting up in his suit from Superior Iron Man and his brutal disposal of Luthor. The suit is based on a symbiote, probably Venom's, which are known for amplifying people's darker personality traits and the speech itself is a reference to a time when Tony has been turned evil. Combined with the brutality of his victory, it looks like to defeat Lex, Tony had to let out the very worst of him.
• Beast vs. Goliath: Beast's death at the hands [or claws] of Goliath. Relentlessly slashed enough to make a HUGE puddle of his blood, and then Goliath digs his claws into Beast's chest and basically RIPS his upper body clean off.
• Solid Snake vs. Sam Fisher: The killing blow is gruesome, with Snake stabbing Sam through the head with a Karambit knife. The distinctive curve of the blade also means that it went through Sam's throat, and blood slowly oozes down his face from the exit wound at the top of his head as he staggers and falls. While it killed Sam nearly instantly, meaning that he would hardly have felt it, it's a pretty horrific way to die.
• Darth Vader vs. Doctor Doom: The post-fight animation suggests that Vader didn't die instantly after the final blow, and is slowly being cooked to death by the lava, crushed by a boulder with no hope of escape, and fully conscious the entire time.
• Goku vs. Superman, the rematch: How does Goku die the second time around? He gets his brain completely incinerated by Superman's heat vision! Sure, it's immediate, completely painless, and totally within Superman's power to do, but that doesn't make it the least bit less horrifying as we see it happen right before our eyes. And as the cherry on top, this is uncannily similar to how Superman's Regime counterpart killed Shazam, which obviously wasn't a pretty sight.
• There's how Raiden finishes off Wolverine. After sadistically decapitating him, he proceeds to savagely keep slashing at his head until it's just pieces and lets out a maniacal laugh after kicking the head to bits. Boomstick's reaction says it all.
• Donkey Kong vs Knuckles: While the episode is generally fun, comedic and silly, Donkey Kong himself qualifies simply for the incredibly intimidating sprite they chose for him, with his cartoonish head stuck to an incredibly large, realistic and muscular body that absolutely towers over Knuckles, to the point where just one of his hands is bigger than the echidna's entire body. Not at all helped by the multiple expressions of pure rage on his face at various points in the fight.
• Hercule vs. Dan: In a desperate bid to win against Mr. Satan, Dan powers up with the Surge of Murderous Intent, more commonly known as the Satsui No Hado. The comical music from earlier in the battle is not present during this moment, and is instead replaced with a chilling, intense score while Dan charges up and tells Hercule to "DIE!" And then it turns funny again when Dan trips over the jetpack he used earlier, completely wasting his attack.
• Tifa vs. Yang: How Yang kills Tifa truly deserves to be here just due to its sheer abruptness. After Tifa presses Yang's Berserk Button, the latter goes absolutely berserk and grabs a hold of the former's head before firing Ember Celica, with the recoil snapping Tifa's neck! To say that Yang's own VA Barbara (who was watching the fight during the live stream) was visibly mortified and jumped back a bit would be kind of an understatement.
• Red and Charizard vs. Tai and Greymon: Poor Red gets punched out by Tai, clearly having no idea what's going on. Unfortunately for Mega Charizard X, he doesn't know how to fight without Red commanding him and gets slashed and cut up by WarGreymon's claw gauntlets as a result. This is followed by Charizard and Red getting incinerated by WarGreymon's Terra Force. Red gets this particularly bad since Charizard falls on Red and breaks his legs, thus leaving him unable to run away, so he has no choice but to comfort the dying Charizard and wait for the inevitable. He's also 16.

Season 3

• Dante vs. Bayonetta:
  • How Bayonetta dies — after seeing Madama Butterfly beheaded and being stabbed through the stomach with Yamato, Bayonetta is repeatedly Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Lucifer. Then once she's completely pincushioned, Dante detonates all the blades at once with a thrown rose, reducing her to nothing but a squishy red smear on the ground.
  • The ending of the first episode of DBX wasn't much better. Trish ends up much like Bayonetta does, her body reduced to sushi-like pieces, but not without getting cut in half before that and letting out a scream of agony.
  • The lovely shot of Bayonetta being Dragged Off to Hell following the end of the fight.
• Bowser vs. Ganon: The final outcome of this match is nothing to scoff at. Bowser manages to swallow Ganon whole and then appears to get the last laugh. We are led to believe that Bowser had won for a brief moment... until he's surrounded by a purple aura and begins shrinking and losing his color, which is actually Ganon decaying his body from the inside with a death curse, much like how he killed the Great Deku Tree. Eventually, this leaves behind only his skeletal Dry Bowser form, which Ganon then explodes immediately afterwards with a burst of dark magic as he finishes with a distorted Evil Laugh. And then, just to rub insult to injury, the post-fight animation has Ganon telekinetically manipulating the Koopa King's arm and leg bones and spinal cord to make a gruesome marionette. Boomstick's quote during this really says it all.
  Boomstick: That'll do, pig. That'll do.
• The Joker vs. Sweet Tooth:
  • How the fight ends. Joker convinces Sweet Tooth to leave the Sweet Bot and kill him personally, and just when Needles is about to deal the finishing blow, Joker sprays his trademark Joker Venom in his face. The Ominous Visual Glitches and Sweet Tooth's attempt to strangle Joker as he laughs himself to death definitely don't help.
  • The speech used by the Joker to trick Needles out of his vehicle is positively spine-chilling, and the atmospheric music helps make it all the more terrifying.
    Joker: Killing someone from inside a tin can? That's no fun! The cold of their skin... The blankness of their eyes... The reveal, of who they really are... so much better when you savor all the.... little emotions.
  • At the end of Needles' analysis, viewers are treated to a flash animation of him mutilating a man's face with an ice cream scoop, after said man asks Needles "what have you done to my son!?"
• Mewtwo vs. Shadow:
  • How Mega Mewtwo Y finishes off Super Shadow. After the two turn into their respective super forms and fly off into the sky, Mega Mewtwo Y uses its mind-altering abilities to Mind Rape Super Shadow, wiping his memory clean and leaving him completely motionless in shock... just long enough for his Super Shadow form to run out of energy. Then as Shadow begins to fall, Mega Mewtwo Y summons its giant telekinetic spoon once more, launches it at him, and impales him all the way through with the blunt end.
  • This battle is a reminder why fighting a telepath — especially one of Mewtwo's caliber — without any way to protect your mind, is a truly terrifying prospect. They can scan your brain for all of your attacks, weaknesses, and strategies in the time it takes them to think, and with a second thought can make you forget not just who you're fighting, but who you even are.
• Meta vs. Carolina: The Meta is as terrifying as ever. His blank helm and eerie death rattle-like breathing are creepy enough, add to that his status as an Implacable Man and you have one terrifying mass murderer. At one point Carolina staggers him by unloading an entire magazine from her magnum into him, he just gets back up, throws his brute shot with enough force to open a gash on her chest and leave the weapon embedded in the wall and then starts beating the shit out of Carolina.
• Cammy vs. Sonya:
  • During the fight animation, Sonya is depicted as being ruthless to the point of being downright cruel. While her execution of an already incapacitated Kano is probably justified given everything he's done and the long, bloody history that he and Sonya share, the way that she finally dispatches Cammy after the fight is effectively over is brutally excessive, befitting Sonya's home series, and perhaps one of the most agonizing deaths in Death Battle history. To wit, Cammy is electrocuted by a Stun Grenade, shot repeatedly by Sonya's drone, and caught in an explosion when the malfunctioning drone crashes into an oil barrel -- after which she's left weeping and bleeding out -- all in a matter of seconds... and this is before Sonya decides to start breaking out a Fatality, during which she hoists the mortally wounded Cammy into the air by her neck, fractures her ribcage, arm and skull with punches, and then slowly splits her in two with her Scissor Split, during which Cammy is fully conscious and screaming for her life.
  • And to kick Cammy one last time when she's down and dead, Sonya proceeds to mock her deceased opponent with a kiss and then run what's left of her body over with a car as she leaves the scene, leaving the Killer Bee as nothing but a bloody smear on the tarmac. In direct contrast to the tough-but-fair Four-Star Badass she is in canon, Sonya literally comes off as downright evil.
• Hulk vs. Doomsday:
  • Doomsday, in general, is portrayed rather creepily. In his post analysis video, instead of an awesome moment or witty one-liner like most characters get, it's just him beating the shit out of Superman in total silence. And then once the battle itself starts, he's introduced by murdering a bunch of random civilians, including one poor sap who gets his head crushed with one hand.
  • The brutal death of The Hulk. Doomsday impales him several times with bone claws, overtaxing his Healing Factor and leaving him visibly helpless and exhausted, punches him in the face until the screen is covered in radioactive blood, and finally rips his head clean off.

Season 4

• Lara Croft vs. Nathan Drake:
  • In Lara's rundown, Boomstick goes over her climbing axe. "Officially, it's just for scaling cliffs, but imagine what it could do to a human skull. Oh, Wait!! You don't have to- watch!" And he shows footage from the 2013 reboot of Lara stabbing a man to death via climbing axe to head. It's as gruesome as you'd expect, and Boomstick doesn't help by going "Mmmm... lovely!"
  • Lara's The Many Deaths of You montage as shown by Wiz, featuring such lovely death scenes like being impaled on a branch, and being devoured by wolves.
  • The sheer abruptness of Nate's death. After successfully hijacking Lara's helicopter, he lifts off into the air and starts flying away. Lara, however, uses her Improbable Aiming Skills to nail the helicopter's tail with her thrown axe, after which the helicopter explodes and Nate plummets to the ground. For a few seconds, Nate lies there, winded but alive, but then the rotary blades fall towards him and lodge in his chest, spraying the screen with blood. And Nate only has time for a quick scream of pain before he dies. Ouch.
• Scrooge McDuck vs. Shovel Knight:
  • The killing blows. Scrooge decapitates Shovel Knight by stomping the Shovel Blade into his throat. Bad enough, but it takes THREE stomps to cut through him, and after the second you can see what appears to be the inside of his throat. One can only hope that he was killed or at least blacked out after the first strike.
  • After lopping off Shovel Knight's head, Scrooge, covered in blood (both his and his opponent's), pulls off one hell of a Death Glare at the rest of Shovel Knight's body as it sinks into the money pool. The McDuck clan's rage is the stuff of legend, but it takes a special type of fury to pull off a stare that brutal. Somehow, the Ducktales theme playing over the killing blow doesn't help at all.
  • The result screen shows that Scrooge McDuck has decided to display Shovel Knight's decapitated head outside his money bin with a sign reading "Thieves Beware". Who would have thought an elderly duck could be so ruthless?
• Venom is a monster in Venom vs. Bane: he yanks two of Bane's minions into the darkness and eats them before delivering a creepy laugh, constantly taunts Bane with a nightmarish voice, and ends the fight by blowing Bane's head open and eating his brain. When Batman drops by after the fight, he can only look on in horror at what's left of Bane. You know you have a grisly sight when even the Dark Knight visually recoils at the sight of it.
• Natsu vs. Ace: Ace completely disintegrates under Natsu's lightning-charged assault, and we get to see it◊ in disgustingly close detail. It's not a quick disintegration either; it takes a few seconds for his skin to start to blister before properly burning, and his eyes boil away, as he screams all the while. It's not until he's little more than a charred skeleton about to crumble into ash that he's finally granted the mercy of death. No wonder it was the main photo for this page for a long time.
• Sub-Zero vs. Glacius: Glacius melts off Sub-Zero's hand after Subby's Punch Parry goes wrong. Literally melts it off. It's not even his Ice Clone's— it's the real deal and is still spraying blood when the real Sub-Zero stands victorious.
• Android 18 vs. Captain Marvel: How Captain Marvel dies. Before Android 18 kills her, she breaks both of her arms like she did to Vegeta — causing Carol to make horrifying loud screams that sound very agonized and realistic for the show's standards. Then after being pounded into the ground, she still tries to get up — even though both of her arms are completely shattered and useless — before 18 dives down after her, effortlessly and bloodily stomping a hole through Carol's skull as she's trying to motivate herself to continue. The fact that Captain Marvel is already left writhing in visible agony as it happens and the sheer abruptness of her death for somebody so powerful only makes it worse.
• Lucario vs. Renamon: Lucario kills Renamon with an Impromptu Tracheotomy via its Bone Rush attack, leaving the Digimon suspended in the air by its neck until it dies. It's not a particularly quick way to go by Death Battle standards, either, as Renamon chokes on its own blood for several seconds while feebly grasping at its neck before going limp and ultimately expiring; its corpse being dropped onto the floor in a bloodied heap afterward.
• Balrog vs. TJ Combo: Near the end, we get a nice scene of TJ beating the everloving snot out of Balrog — from Balrog's perspective! And then TJ punches off Balrog's head, sending it flying into the air, and it lands on the camera a few seconds after TJ leaves the ring, with Balrog's mad eyes still staring blindly into thin air. No wonder the announcer feels like vomiting!
• Shredder vs. Silver Samurai:
  • After the Silver Samurai succumbed to his wounds from his last fight, he wound up in Hell. Somehow, it got worse: he was brought before the Devil and was torn apart by the Devil's Soulcutter, a sword that leaves wounds that can't be healed. That is an astoundingly horrible fate for the Silver Samurai, who might have been an asshole, but also showed the capacity for human decency.
  • Silver Samurai's death. By far among the most brutal, and seeing the long the list above, that's really saying something. First, Super Shredder tears off Silver Samurai's left arm with a knife-hand strike to his shoulder — with High-Pressure Blood for extra measure — and punches his Tachyon Blade clean through his eye socket, leaving his right eye hanging out. He then decapitates him, catches the head, and crushes it in one hand while staring directly at the viewer — all drawn in horrifying detail, including Harada's other eye bulging out of his skull and his bloody scalp bursting out from between Super Shredder's fingers as it happens. Really goes to show that while his portrayal is all over the place, Shredder does not screw around.
  • The brief shot of Super Shredder ominously walking towards Silver Samurai from the latter's perspective, complete with blank white Glowing Eyes of Doom. With his sheer size and spiked armor forming a monstrous silhouette and the forest burning down around the two as well from a deflected lightning bolt— Shredder looks far less like his usual self and more like a demon marching straight out of Hell.
• Smokey vs. McGruff: The Crime Dog's frightened yelp when Smokey crushes him to a pulp inside his monster truck is pretty disturbing, coupled with the blood that leaks from the truck afterwards.
• Thor vs. Wonder Woman: The sheer abruptness of the killing blow. One moment, Thor is stunned — the next, he's been stabbed through the back of the head, with Wonder Woman's sword sticking out of his mouth.
• Naruto vs. Ichigo: The look of utter pain and agony◊ etched in Ichigo's face as he was obliterated by Naruto's Tailed Beast Bomb. Not helped by the fact that Ichigo still tries to put up a fight even in the face of Naruto's strongest attack. Damn.
• Batman Beyond vs. Spider-Man 2099: Miguel O'Hara's last moments when he realizes that three explosive Batarangs have been stuck on his chest and is unable to get them off. Unlike Doomguy and Scout, who also had bombs strapped to them in their final moments but were more shocked and annoyed respectively than scared, poor Miguel has a fucking full blown mental breakdown, being clearly panicked as he screams for his Benevolent A.I. Lyla — who has been shorted out by Terry's electrified suit — just before the batarangs detonate and kill him instantly by blasting a hole through his torso.
  Miguel: Lyla? LYLA --! (the bombs explode and cut him off mid-sentence)
• Sephiroth vs. Vergil:
  • After Sephiroth gets cut by Vergil's Speed Blitz, he gets one very nasty-looking open and bloody gash on his chest that exposes a good bit of raw flesh. It sticks for most of the fight too, even on his doppelganger illusions, only disappearing once he heals himself up with Curaga.
  • Sephiroth's Supernova attack has always been intimidating, thanks to blowing up several planets before it hits Cloud and company, but in his fight with Vergil, we get to see in gruesome detail just how badly it can hurt somebody. Vergil is screaming in agony during his time in the center of Sephiroth's summoned sun, and by the time he barely escapes it, he's covered in burnt flesh and open wounds. Sephiroth's coup de grace right after would almost count as a Mercy Kill if he'd been interested in showing Vergil mercy at all.

Season 5

• Kenshiro's entire fighting style qualifies as this. His main method of combat is to target his opponent's pressure points and make them swell up in a very grotesque manner before messily exploding. And Jotaro meets this exact fate — as we see his face and body swell to hideous proportions before he explodes into a shower of gore... in front of his horrified grandfather.

  Kenshiro: Omae wa mou... shindeiru. (You Are Already Dead.)
  Jotaro: N-NANI?! (WHAT?!) (swells up horrifically, before bursting into a cloud of blood)

• Crash Bandicoot vs. Spyro the Dragon:
  • During Spyro's analysis, when the hosts are talking about Spyro's Aether Breath, they mention that officially, it's comparable to an atom smasher. Wiz then describes the effect of such a device on a living creature by recounting the Real Life story of Anatoli Bugorski, a Russian researcher who was hit by the beam — which was less than the size of a molecule — from an atom smasher and survived, explaining in great detail how it sliced through his skull, obliterated all matter in its path, and left the half of his face that surrounded the wound swollen and peeled apart, as well as permanently paralyzed. Needless to say, not a story for the squeamish.
  • Crash and Aku Aku are both completely vaporized by the aforementioned Aether Breath. What makes it worse is that Crash didn't see it coming at all; he expected to just make it out in one piece via Aku Aku saving him, and likewise Aku Aku ends up perishing in what turns out to be a Senseless Sacrifice. It's cold comfort that they both, at least, died pretty much instantly.
• Leon Kennedy vs Frank West: For the results screen, Frank's disembodied head is... not a pretty sight to see. Not only is it zombified (at least until Leon lands a second coup de grace with a throwing knife) and missing an eyeball, but its brain is leaking out onto the asphalt in surprisingly realistic (and gruesome) detail.
• Doctor Strange vs. Doctor Fate:
  • The Last Note Nightmare of the fight's soundtrack is deeply unsettling, as the music slows down and distorts as Strange's corpse, a pale and lifeless husk, disintegrates to dust and collapses into itself while Doctor Fate watches without a word.
  • The end itself: Strange hoped to gain an advantage by astrally projecting himself into the helmet, but all it did was giving Fate the Home Field Advantage, allowing Kent and Inza to appear in front of him. As he begins to process what is going on Nabu himself appears right behind him with Glowing Eyes of Doom.
    Nabu: Doctor Strange. Welcome… to our home. Welcome… to the end.
• Samurai Jack vs. Afro Samurai:
  • The climax turns the duel into one of the goriest fights in this show's history, as it ends with Jack losing one arm, while Afro has both of his hands hacked off before Jack cuts him to ribbons.
    • We get a horrific close-up shot of Jack losing his arm, complete with the flesh tearing and dangling from his shoulder as the arm falls off.
    • The fight ends with a close-up of Afro's chopped-up face and gibbed body parts floating in the water as Jack walks away with the Number One Headband — his expression being one of pure agony, and bleeding from his mouth and eyes.
  • Lucy's part of the next episode preview shows why she's a worthy opponent to Carnage, highlighting some of the most brutal moments from her series.
• Carnage vs. Lucy:
  • Early on in Lucy's analysis, the hosts warn the viewers that Lucy's methods of killing aren't for the faint of heart. Indeed, her analysis has no shortage of scenes where people get bloodily sliced to bits by her vectors — while any nudity is censored, none of the gore is.
  • The end of Carnage's preview teaser alone already has a Squick moment. Boomstick tries to imitate how Carnage rips off pieces of his own body shape-shifted into weapons, so Boomstick tries to rip off one of his fingers to throw at Wiz. He dislocates it... We're just lucky we didn't get to see it... Until Boomstick said this lovely sentence.
    Boomstick: Look! I can make it spin!
  • Carnage's entrance in the fight proper is appropriately disturbing, as he racks up an impressive off-screen body count by killing the passengers of a train as it pulls into the station, complete with harrowing screams, splattering the floor and windows in large amounts of blood. He then attempts to pounce onto Lucy as soon as the door opens. Even worse, Lucy sees this in her Nyu persona. She looks absolutely terrified of him.
  • True to form, Lucy wastes no time in tearing Carnage apart, completely nonplussed. This being Carnage, it doesn't take, and he's back on his feet in seconds.
    Lucy: Die.
    Carnage: (maniacal laugh) Not yet!
  • Halfway through the fight Carnage starts singing an Ironic Nursery Tune in the vein of Venom's use of Pop Goes the Weasel in his fight against Bane:
    Carnage: It's raining, you're bleeding, Carnage is STARVING!
• Optimus Prime vs. RX-78-2 Gundam: The finishing blow, while epic, is also fairly brutal. Optimus Prime blasts the Gundam, and Amuro along with it, with the power of the Matrix of Leadership, utterly annihilating RX-78-2. The real kicker is Amuro's agonized screams and wide-eyed expression of horror as Optimus destroys him — which make it clear that Amuro definitely did not go out painlessly.
• Mario vs. Sonic:
  • In the fight proper, Mario rips off his beach uniform, skin included, to reveal his overalls underneath. A simple, clean joke, right? Well BlindFerret sent the crew a little bonus clip where Mario ends up completely flaying all of the skin off of his entire body, revealing raw flesh and muscle, which causes the plumber to scream in absolute pain. It's funny as hell, though.
  • Also in the fight proper, both characters deal significantly bloody blows to one another. Super Sonic reduces several of Cat Mario's clones to bloodstains in the sand by dive-bombing them, and by the end of the fight, Sonic tries spin-dashing Mario when he's already in his hands, which means Sonic's spinning spikes start scratching Mario's palms. And then Mario sets fire to Sonic and throws him into the sea hard enough that he explodes upon landing, and one of his disembodied legs lands in Mario's grasp afterwards. There's a reason Sonic and Mario's games are normally full of Bloodless Carnage.
• Ultron vs. Sigma: Despite how karmic it was, Sigma's fate could qualify. While his viral AI wasn't erased from existence, he essentially got assimilated by Ultron and his entire personality completely subverted and transformed to that of Ultron's. Sigma sounds genuinely panicked in his final moments, screaming in terror as he is overtaken by Ultron; left alive and fully aware of what's happened, but imprisoned forever in a body and mind no longer his.
  Ultron: Oh, please... (begins assimilating Sigma)
  Sigma: What? What's this?! No! NO! (Sigma's AI is erased and replaced with Ultron's)
  Ultron and Possessed!Sigma: Everything belongs to me.
• Thanos vs. Darkseid: Thanos suffers possibly the most awful fate of any Death Battle combatant, getting trapped for eternity in the Omega Sanction and being doomed to suffer an endless amount of increasingly degrading and hopeless lives and deaths for daring to challenge Darkseid. And for Thanos in particular, that also involves Deadpool stealing his waifu for eternity. Granted, it's karmic for all the crap Thanos has done, but still.

Season 6

• Aquaman vs. Namor:
  • While most of the fight was an exchange of witty jabs between the two kings of the seven seas, the finishing blow is surprisingly brutal. As the two enter their final clash, Aquaman uses his powers to paralyze Namor, rendering him helpless. Soon after, Arthur empowers a school of angler fish and uses them to violently tear Namor to shreds, sending blood and limbs everywhere. For the coup de grace, he then throws his trident at the mass of anglers, tearing Namor's head from what remains of his body.
  • Before the finishing blow was struck, seeing the angler fish slowly close in on the fighters, only moving when the screen grows dark, is a major Mood Whiplash.
• Mega Man Battle Royale: In a similar manner to his nemesis in the previous season, X goes out when Star Force Mega Man takes over his body for his own use. While rather tame when compared to Classic Mega Man and Volnutt getting sucked into a black hole, or Geo in X's body getting vaporized by .EXE's Wave-Motion Gun, losing control of your body is still a pretty nasty way to die, especially since X is shown spazzing out as Geo takes over.
• Black Widow vs. Widowmaker:
  • The hosts pull no punches when talking about the time that Black Widow was fully conscious during invasive surgery, feeling everything while the surgeons cut open her stomach and sewed her insides back together, needing to force herself to not react to the pain for potentially several hours (as recoiling from the pain would have killed her). Even Boomstick has to fight the urge to vomit by the time Wiz has finished talking about it.
    Wiz: Just imagine: she felt every cut, every pull, every movement as the surgeon sliced open her stomach and sewed up her insides. Despite the incredible pain throughout this entire ordeal - which likely lasted several hours - for her own sake, she could not move a muscle.
    Boomstick: I think I'm gonna throw up.
  • The killing blow is Black Widow decapitating Widowmaker with a garrote wire. While that in and of itself is rather tame compared to other deaths in the series and she certainly counts as an Asshole Victim, there's something particularly disturbing about Widowmaker desperately gasping for air and struggling to retrieve her Widow's Kiss. She's no longer a cold-blooded killer, but someone just trying to fight for survival. The tone she uses for her last words is especially poignant as if she's trying to convince herself that she can still win;
    Widowmaker: I can... survive... anything.
    Black Widow: Nice theory! Let's test it. (yanks the Garotte Wire upward as she springboards off of Widowmaker's back, neatly slicing through her neck and pulling her head off)
• Captain Marvel vs. Shazam: There's a point discussed in a rundown that makes Boomstick react with horror. In this case, it's the time Shazam had his body turned inside out by a Tesseract Bomb, complete with a detailed visual.
• Wario vs. King Dedede:
  • After Wario and Dedede lose their respective disguises, a Goomba and Waddle Dee experience a jaw drop out of shock. The issue? Waddle Dees don't actually have mouths, meaning that the dee rips a bloody hole in its face, with two strips of flesh connecting the top and bottom. Made worse by how comedic the episode as a whole was.
  • Despite the humor of it, Wario's death was pretty gruesome. After Dedede plugs up his ass, he gets blown up from the inside by the Waft he was charging.
• Ben 10 vs. Green Lantern:
  • Combined with Tear Jerker, after Wiz said Alien X recreated the universe when it was destroyed, Boomstick points this out:
    Boomstick: Since he just made a copy universe, that technically means that all those characters we watched through the whole show are still dead. Damn dude, throw somebody a bone or something.
  • Hal cuts off Ben's arm with scissors (in very graphic detail) while the Omnitrix was still attached to it and then crushes him in very bloody detail, Ben's terrified scream once he sees his arm severed makes it worse. Keep in mind that the sprite they used for Ben portrays him in the original series, hence where he's still a kid no older than 10, the very gory nature of this death actually ended up forcing the very next episode to change it's planned ending for the same reasons.
• Weiss vs. Mitsuru:
  • In Mitsuru's rundown, Wiz talks about the Evoker guns that the members of S.E.E.S. use. It involves using the gun to shoot themselves in the head and thus invoke a traumatic event to summon their Persona, a fact that people (including Wiz and Boomstick) would find disturbing due to obvious Driven to Suicide imagery.
    Wiz: And so came the Evoker. Which, might be a little disturbing to some people... so fair warning.
    Boomstick: Yeah, looks just like a gun and that's kinda the point. The idea is to use the gun to create an extremely traumatic experience similar to how Mitsuru first evoked her own Persona.
    Wiz: Specifically, this is accomplished by aiming the thing at your face and pulling the trigger.
    Boomstick: Yeah, that's definitely not how guns are supposed to work.
  • The aftermath commentary of the episode revealed that the animators originally planned a more gory ending where Weiss's body is completely obliterated and Myrtenaster lying broken amidst a puddle of frozen gibs. Like poor Ben, Weiss is basically a high-schooler.
• Johnny Cage vs. Captain Falcon: Cage lets out a surprisingly guttural and realistic scream of agony when Falcon uses the Blue Falcon's Boost Fire to grind him against the track at well over supersonic speed.
• Ghost Rider vs. Lobo:
  • Lobo's death is probably one of the worse fates to be had in Death Battle, up there with Bayonetta's and Doctor Strange's demises. He's on the receiving end of a Penance Stare from Zarathos, which is a grisly fate in and of itself, but it's made worse as Zarathos then proceeds to eat Lobo's soul, effectively erasing the Main Man from existence once and for all. The fact that Lobo, a character normally cavalier about being ripped apart, torn to shreds, and blown up, is legitimately terrified doesn't help matters at all.
  Lobo: (as every single one of his sins is reflected back onto him) NONONONONONONONONO NOOOOOOOOOOOO! (Zarathos' jaws close around Lobo as he's dragged into the void)
  • Zarathos taking control is a pretty frightening moment. Breaking out of a dogpile of Lobo clones, the enraged Spirit of Vengeance vows that they will all die screaming, and incinerates every single Lobo into thin air. And afterwards, when Lobo's soul is shown to be still intact, Zarathos suddenly harpoons him with a chain out of thin air, reels him in, and Neck Lifts him up to subject him to the Penance Stare, all while speaking in a demonic Voice of the Legion.
    Zarathos: LOBO OF CZARNIA! YOUR SINS ARE INNUMERABLE! I AM HERE TO WREAK VENGEANCE... UPON YOUR SOUL!
• Dragonzord vs. Mechagodzilla: Akane gets shot down during the fight and begs Kiryu to keep fighting before impact. Kiryu goes berserk, complete with glowing red eyes and Godzilla's roar. It's made even worse with how the crash is seen from her first-person perspective.
• Ganondorf vs. Dracula:
  • The Medusa heads Dracula uses to attack Ganondorf. They relentlessly charge at their target, snake-hair flailing all over the place and shrieking all the way. Their faces are permanently a Weeping Angel-esque Nightmare Face that never changes, not even when Ganondorf subjects one to Eye Scream.
  • Ganondorf disposes of Dracula's humanoid body by decapitating him with the Sword of Sages. Pretty scary, but the real nightmare fuel comes when Drac's demon form bursts out of its head socket, accompanied by a geyser of blood.
  • How the fight ends is quite lengthy and absolutely brutal, even for the series' standards. For starters, never before has Ganondorf been seen with such shock in his face and absolute fear in his eyes. With Dracula ready to end the fight, hoisting Ganondorf in the air with a Facepalm Of Doom, it looks like Ganondorf is about to shoot out one more surprise with the Triforce of Power, but it fails to work. Dracula then throws Ganondorf into the air, impales him on one hand (causing him to let out an ear-piercingly realistic and absolutely bloodcurdling scream of bloody murder out of utterly excruciating agony), and tears him in half (spilling his blood and guts out toward the camera) before throwing his lower body to the ground and enjoying drinking his blood spewing from his upper torso while (fittingly enough) standing in front of a massive full moon.
    Dracula: You're right. You're not a man. You're a pig. Let me hear you squeal.
• Mob vs. Tatsumaki:
  • Tatsumaki picks a fight with a 14-year old boy for accidentally pushing her Berserk Button by asking her for directions to school thinking that she was around his age. Mob doesn't even put up more than a cursory attempt to fight back until after he's been slammed into a building, had a building thrown at him, been nearly crushed, launched through a third building, dragged up a fourth building and gets thrown down through that building hard enough to leave a crater. Tatsumaki might not be the nicest person in her home canon, but is a good person underneath her abrasiveness. Here, Adaptational Villainy is in full play here, and it is terrifying. And she wins after all of this, too: vaporizing her opponent's body with a triumphant Psychotic Smirk after her murderous temper tantrum.
  • Near the end of the fight, ???% Mob chooses to try and restrain Tatsumaki in one of the most horrendous ways possible, using his psychic powers to basically turn Tatsumaki's body into a straightjacket. While she survives this and manages to reverse this effect, seeing Tatsumaki's arms and spine twist like they were made of rubber can be nauseating to watch, even if she does deserve it at that point.
• Deadpool vs. The Mask: Near the climax of the fight, both Deadpool and The Mask are set to show down. Deadpool pulls out his Continuity Stone... only for The Mask to do the same. To Deadpool's shock, The Mask gleefully gloats about his Reality Warper powers as Deranged Animation kicks in, The Mask's face swelling to massive proportions like a balloon (a la Punsy McHale) as he gleefully cackles in front of The Merc With A Mouth.
  Deadpool What?! Where did you get that?!
  The Mask: Ohohoho, Jack! I'm already WEARING IT!

Season 7

• Miles Morales vs. Static:
  • The rapper singing Static's lines in the background music is jarringly fierce in describing the ways he's going to hurt Miles if he doesn't withdraw from battle.
    Rapper-As-Static: You better step back, check that/ you don't wanna fight
    I'll leave your head cracked, chest smashed/ won't make it through the night!
  • Miles' pained scream right before he explodes from Static shooting him is pretty disturbing.
• Black Canary vs. Sindel:
  • Sindel nearly kills Dinah in a particularly sadistic manner by taking her above cloud level and strangling her with her hair in a way that resembles a botched hanging^note done properly, a hanging breaks the victim's neck, killing them quickly; done improperly, it either decapitates them entirely or, if they drop before the rope goes or is too short, results in a slow, excruciating death by strangulation.. Black Canary's face turns purple from the lack of oxygen before she breaks free, and even that almost kills her as she blacks out immediately after, barely waking up in time to save herself from becoming a splat on the ground.
  • Dinah soon returns the favor with a nasty Fatality of her own, however, and hers is successful; she punches Sindel in the mouth hard enough to put her fist through the back of her skull and take the rest of her head clear off.
• Leonardo vs. Jason: The otherwise light-hearted episode ends with a shot of Leonardo's blood running down into the sewers after Jason kills him. Hardly a pleasant sight, especially after the horrific ways the other Ninja Turtles killed one another in Leo's debut episode.
• Goro vs. Machamp:
  • As expected of an episode featuring a Mortal Kombat character — and unlike the previous MK episode with Sindel, rendered in full 3D animation as opposed to sprites — the fight gets gradually more brutal as it goes on; with Goro subjecting the Superpower Pokemon to such family-unfriendly injuries as getting his skull fractured, inflicting very painful-looking burns with dragon fire, and even getting one of his arms torn off by Goro and then being clubbed with it. Machamp likewise ends up landing enough punches and throws to leave Goro's body covered in realistic blotchy bruises and glistening open wounds.
  • The finishing blows. Adding onto the above, Machamp retaliates from losing its arm by tearing off all four of Goro's arms as easily as snapping twigs; and while Goro (unsuccessfully) tries to defend himself, Machamp lays into him with his signature thousand-plus-punch barrage that Goro can be heard screaming in pain during; ending the long and painful combo with a double-fisted punch so powerful that Goro is not only exploded into bloody chunks, but said remains are flat-out hurled into lower orbit.
• Cable vs. Booster Gold: Cable's death is... unpleasant, to say the least. After trapping the mutant in his force field, Booster proceeds to crush Cable within it. However, it takes a fair bit longer, likely due to Cable trying in vain to push back the shields. However, it's not enough, as Cable is then gruesomely crushed into a gumball, before being outright reduced to nothing as he lets out one last agonized scream.
• Obi-Wan vs. Kakashi: When Obi-Wan finds himself trapped in a genjutsu, who should appear but Darth Vader himself - wreathed in shadows and with glowing red eyes.
• Danny Phantom vs. Jake Long:
  • Jake is pretty vicious towards Danny at the start of their fight, scratching the halfa repeatedly, hard enough that he draws blood- or, in this case, ectoplasm.
  • Jake loses complete control over his body after Danny overshadows him. His struggle to resist the possession is futile as his eyes change to that of Danny's and is forced to fly into buildings against his will.
• She-Ra vs. Wonder Woman: While most of the fight is a fairly jovial match thanks to She-Ra's boastful quipping and Wonder Woman's annoyance, the fight takes a turn for the scarier when She-Ra breaks Wonder Man's bracelets of submission. Her eyes suddenly glow, and she wordlessly ends the fight within seconds by slicing She-Ra's sword, the trees around her, and She-Ra herself with two strokes, while She-Ra is simply powerless to do anything about it.
• Beerus vs. Sailor Galaxia
  • Sailor Galaxia's Rasputinian Death. After resisting Sailor Galaxia's mind control and nullifying the power of her Sapphire Crystal, Beerus uses a ki beam to force her towards a nearby black hole and leave her unable to move from having to block and avoid being pulled in. He then punches the beam to first tear-off Galaxia's arms — complete with a loud agonized shriek from the galactic conqueror — before completely gibbing her when she can no longer protect herself. Even if that didn't kill her, Galaxia's bloodied remains being absorbed into the black hole behind her certainly finished the job.
  • On the whole, Sailor Galaxia comes off just as genocidal and Ax-Crazy here as she does in her own series; smiling gleefully as she destroys most of the Solar System, and taunting Beerus in a flat-out deranged tone of voice as she tries to kill and eventually possess him.
    Sailor Galaxia: You're trash! YOU'LL DIE LIKE DIRT! (laughs maniacally as she begins using her Sapphire Crystal on Beerus) YOU'RE ALL MINE!
• Zuko vs. Todoroki: After freezing Zuko in place, Todoroki's Finishing Move is to fire a wave of icy spikes that goes straight through Zuko's head, drawing blood and making him scream, before freezing and shattering the Fire Prince. A pretty brutal deed, considering he's a hero just like Zuko.
• The Seven Battle Royale:
  • While trying to blast Billy Butcher, who was sniping at her from the roof of an apartment complex, Starlight accidentally starts a fire. Cue an innocent civilian staggering about, screaming in agony as he's engulfed in flames, before falling out the window to his death. Starlight is appropriately horrified.
  • Wiz and Boomstick are left under the watchful eye of Black Noir. The two are understandably terrified of the silent assassin.
  • Every death barring Starlight's is gruesome. The Deep is splattered into mush all over the place when A-Train runs into him (complete with A-Train spitting out some of his gibs and complaining that he swallowed a gill), A-Train is blinded by Starlight to the point that his eyes are bleeding and then has his upper body splattered into mush by Maeve, Maeve is gruesomely sliced apart by the baby's lasers, and Butcher is completely squashed into paste by Homelander, only a few gibs (including an eye) remaining.
• Winter Soldier vs. Red Hood:
  • During the fight, Bucky picks up a crowbar and starts bludgeoning Jason with it. During the beatdown, we get to see him suffer a PTSD-induced breakdown from his death at the hands of the Joker, complete with a chilling voice-over from the Clown Prince of Crime himself. And topping it all off, Jason goes from quipping at Bucky to screaming at the voice in his head to shut up.
    Joker: Jason... oh, Jaaaaasonnnn... he's not coming for you. (deranged cackling) No one is.
    Red Hood: Shut up. No! (Joker's cackling continues) SHUT UP!
  • And then, Jason decides to even the playing field with Bucky by injecting a dose of Venom right into his neck. After a few sickening cracks and groans, Jason stares Bucky down, growling in a deepened voice. He's not Hulking Out like Bane, the more well-known Venom user, but Red Hood juiced up on the stuff still makes for a frightening sight.
  • The Winter Soldier himself is solid Nightmare Fuel. The episode starts off with Bruce Wayne contacting Jason to report the murder of three agents of the League of Assassins, who were all shot. Jason denies killing the assassins himself, and he's correct- it's possible that Bucky took them out himself before going after Jason. Then Bucky shows up and fires his gun repeatedly through Jason's boarded-up door, kicking it off its hinges and entering the room. You can't blame Jason for hurrying behind overturned tables for cover as soon as he sees who he's facing.
  • What makes the Winter Soldier even scarier? He never once speaks throughout the entire fight. In response to Jason's taunts and quips, he just repeatedly attacks his opponent, like the assassin he was trained to be. He only speaks after he's already killed Jason, in a unnaturally calm voice to declare, "This is Agent Barnes. Target... eliminated. Moving on." And just like that, the Winter Soldier leaves the room, sparing only one last look back at Jason's corpse, while the music rises creepily. There's a reason Bucky's The Dreaded among superheroes.
• Venom vs. Crona:
  • The infamous Weird Moon from Soul Eater shows up in the night sky, chuckling eerily whenever it's on-screen. Viewers even get a closeup of the thing during Crona and Venom's Air Jousting match.
  • At one point Venom vanishes from view, only to reappear in the church rafters, singing a tune from The Nightmare Before Christmas ("We are the ones hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red!"), before then literally tongue-lashing Crona into the floor and walls. Bear in mind that Crona looks like a child, and it adds disturbing implications to the symbiote's plans.
  • Crona themselves are pretty disturbing when they deal the Finishing Move to Venom. Harpooning and binding the Klyntar in place with thorny vines of Mad Blood, they use Ragnarok's nightmarish scream to sonic attack Venom, and blow him to pieces on the spot, after which Ragnarok happily consumes both Eddie and Venom's souls.
• Sabrewulf vs. Jon Talbain:
  • It's a battle released on Halloween, between two ferocious werewolves. Predictably, this one got messy.
  • Before the fight occurs, we see a trail of butchered corpses leading to Sabrewulf, who's clearly Fighting from the Inside and failing at it. It's a nasty situation for more than one reason, as you wouldn't want to be the unlucky sod ripped apart by a rampaging werewolf or the poor bastard who's along for the ride as your inner beast takes control of your body.
  • After the fight breaks out of the alleyway and into the surrounding moors, the two beastmen go to town on each other, spilling each other's blood all over the graveyard they're fighting in and mutilating each other in sickening ways. Sabrewulf goes so far as to pull Jon Talbain's guts right out of his body and strangle him with the intestines... and yet, Talbain still comes off the better of the two. His killing moves start by burning the flesh off of Sabrewulf's arms and legs with his Dragon Cannon, before Jon leaps on top of and savagely claws him repeatedly to the point he tears his arm off. Sabrewulf feebly tries to crawl away, right before Talbain drags him back and rips off his head off in his teeth before spitting it out; Konrad letting out an agonized scream that's suddenly cut off as it happens.
  • At the climax of the fight, the clouds part to reveal a full blood moon in the sky. Jon struggles to contain the savage beast within while also fighting Sabrewulf. There's a bit of hope once the clouds obscure the moon again to give him a chance to save himself, but he soon gives into his inner beast to make sure Sabrewulf dies a horrific death.
    Jon Talbain: I'm no monster. But tonight... I'll make an exception.
  • Just how gory this fight was, perhaps being the bloodiest fight in all of Death Battle history until the following Halloween episode. Normally, blood is reserved for the final blow of the fight or for just before. And if there is more, it tends to just be sprays coming out of the fighter's body. Here, not only is there blood covering nearly everything the fighters touch, but it's all over them as well, giving the fight an even scarier feel. Even Boomstick makes a comment on it as the episode's Bond One-Liner:
    Boomstick: Brutal doesn't even cut it! I mean, how much blood was that? You know it had to be at least... a Gallon.
• Batgirl vs. Spider-Gwen: For two combatants who normally avoid killing, this battle has an unexpectedly violent finishing move. Gwen yanks Batgirl towards her by her own grappling line, and you'd normally expect a punch to follow. Instead, she extends claws, and slashes Barbara's throat as she's moving toward her at rapid speed (likely tearing through her carotid arteries or jugular veins). causing the latter to make a particularly gruesome Nightmare Face in slow-motion — complete with dark blood spurting from her neck, her eyes rolling back and glazing over, and her teeth bared in an agonized grimace — before limply slamming into the ground like a ragdoll and quickly bleeding to death.
• Sanji vs. Rock Lee: The finishing blows are surprisingly brutal. Rock Lee, after opening the Eighth Gate, punches Sanji hard enough to snap off his left leg in a spray of blood. Sanji no-sells this and repays Lee by kicking him hard enough to split him clean in half, at which point you can hear Lee's Death Cry Echo. Afterwards, Lee's torso falls to the ground and dissolves into ash due to the effects of the Eighth Gate, while Sanji pays it and his missing leg no heed in favor of smoking instead. Brutal, Sanji. Brutal.
• Hulk vs. Broly:
  • There's something terrifying about the fact both combatant's attacks are ultimately measured in destroyed universes.
  • Immortal Hulk fans knew it was coming, but seeing Hulk's resurrection abilities firsthand is absolutely disturbing. Broly rips off Hulk's head. But instead of kneeling over like his first bout against Doomsday, Hulk's headless body slowly stands up, knocking Broly away before reattaching the head back on.
    Broly: You are... monster?
    Hulk: No... THE DEVIL!
  • Hulk himself. In the last Death Battle, he was basically raging and childlike, but he was defending people from the Ax-Crazy monster that is Doomsday. Here, he wears a Slasher Smile throughout most of the fight, and instigates the battle by heckling and attacking the Gentle Giant Broly. Makes you wonder if one of the Hulk's darker personalities was in charge that day.
  • After finally defeating the Hulk in a universe-shaking headbutting contest, Broly reappears on Earth drained of power and complaining of a sore throat, and holding the Hulk's disembodied hands, both of which crumble into powder in his grasp. Bloodless Carnage, perhaps, but still disturbing.

Season 8

• Lex Luthor gets a creative and absolutely brutal Rasputinian Death at the hands of Doctor Doom. An Everyman Project-empowered Luthor has Doom pinned to the ground and is about to tear his mask off, at which point Victor activates the Oviod Mind Transfer to forcibly swap bodies with Luthor. Upon taking control, Doom plunges Lex's own hand through his chest to crush his heart before immediately swapping back, blasting the fatally-wounded Luthor backward into sharp steel rebar — from his own broken-apart logo, no less — to impale him, and then gorily slicing him into at least five pieces with enormous energy blades that destroy the entire LexCorp building in a fiery explosion, immolating his remains.
• Remember how agonizing Ace's death was back in Season 4? Imagine that, but even worse. Wait, you don't have to, Heihachi vs. Geese somehow made such a death even more horrifying. Not only was Geese outright impaled on a volcano stalagmite after being punched into it by Heihachi's Electric Wind Godfist beforehand, but we see him, in brutal detail, being melted alive by lava^note Which, for reference, burns on average from about 800°C (1,470°F) to 1200°C (2,190 °F). as he struggles to escape. His flesh and hair slowly burn away as he flails and screams — boiling away his eyes and exposing his muscles under his peeling skin — and he is eventually reduced to a charred skeleton that quickly crumbles to nothing. For how much of an unrepentant scumbag Geese is, it almost makes you feel sorry for the man.
• Blake Belladonna vs. Mikasa Ackerman: You know how RWBY's previous fights ended with relatively bloodless deaths? Well, Blake vs. Mikasa technically ends that way... but only because Mikasa doesn't bleed after Blake impales her through the chest with her own Thunder Spear, leaving her to scream in agony as fire pours out of her mouth and eyes right before being exploded into nothing, to the point where only a piece of her scarf remains.
• Iron Fist vs. Po: The way Iron Fist goes out, while not seeming that bad at first, is actually pretty horrifying. After a brief clash with their chi dragons, Po and Iron Fist charge at each other again, only for Po's dragon to eat Iron Fist's dragon and then Iron Fist himself, upon which we are treated to a shot of Iron Fist's skeletal body disintegrating. And since this happened in the Spirit Realm, that means that Iron Fist is most likely Deader than Dead.
• Steven Universe vs. Star Butterfly:
  • The end of the fight, when we're treated to a scene of Star standing on a burning beach, numerous Watermelon Stevens and her own summons dead on the ground as a result of her widespread Mega-Explosive Crystal Laser (Which she likely only did to break out of Steven's barrier trap), and Steven's shattered gem next to her. This imagery, paired with her odd yet cheerful personality upon thinking she won the sand sculpture contest with the ribbon blowing to her, just after defeating Steven, only makes her appear more like a psychotic killer than her usual airheaded yet cheerful self. Also, before the end of the fight, when Steven and Star's respective forces run towards one another, at least one of Star's Warnicorns impales one Watermelon Steven on its horn, along with a sickening squelch. The Squick factor is somewhat downplayed, due to the fact that it's, you know, a watermelon person, but still...
  • Steven's defeat doesn't help with this, as the poor kid ends up letting off a gutwrenching scream as he's struck by the laser, with his human body being vaporized, and his gem being seen shattering through the blast.
• Link vs. Cloud Strife:
  • Link's final fate.◊ After Cloud uses Omislash V5 on him, he attempts to use the Triforce to block Cloud's sword. Viewers will likely expect the Triforce to do something only for it to be quickly slashed apart along with his body, made worse by Link's (vertical) halves coming apart with a squelching noise and him somehow letting out one final scream of agony. So in a way, it's a lot like Ganondorf's demise at the hands of Dracula.
  • The Fierce Deity itself is terrifying and aptly named, towering over Cloud with Glowing Eyes while surrounded by darkness and a purple inferno. At this point, Link abandons all strategy and relies purely on brute force. One might get the impression that the beloved hero we once knew is completely gone, replaced by a rampaging god of rage and destruction.
• Goku Black vs. Reverse-Flash:
  • The animation wastes NO time showing just how much carnage and destruction both villains love to cause, with Goku Black murdering numerous civilians, and Reverse-Flash outright using one as a Human Shield against Black's attacks, leading to a surprisingly gory death on the Innocent Bystander's part.
  • The finisher of the battle is as brutal as Reverse-Flash gets, no matter how much Goku Black deserves it. After obliterating Goku Black's Time Ring, one of his time-displaced copies proceeds to send a vibro-hand through Black's back. The "main" Thawne proceeds to leave the timeline, while the copy then pulls off a superspeed enhanced planet-lapping Wipe the Floor with You, leaving the mortal-possessing Kai's front completely shredded with a good view of his insides (keep in mind that Saiyans turn back to their base form when they die. Black was still in Super Saiyan Rosé, meaning that he was still alive during the whole gruesome ordeal, even letting out an absolutely bloodcurdling and continuous scream of pure agony to REALLY sell it). And to finish it off, the alternate Thawne then proceeds to spin throw him into the sun, sending blood splattering EVERYWHERE. The sun then explodes, wiping out the planet.
• DIO vs. Alucard
  • It starts when Alucard shoots out the tires of the car that DIO was driving in. When he rather casually steps out of the wreckage, he laughs and casually tosses the hapless victim that he was feasting on before telling the Vampire King that he was interrupting dinner.
  • The first half of the fight captures how terrifying Alucard would be to fight. It starts with DIO rather quickly tearing him in half, only for Alucard to reform and start shooting at him again accompanied with an Evil Laugh. DIO again kills him while mocking him by calling him a weak dog, only for Alucard to reappear behind him with his Hellhound Familiar Baskerville. By Alucard's third death and promptly unleashing Level 0, DIO is clearly unnerved and exasperated with his opponent's powers.
• Korra vs. Storm:
  • In order to display how spirits work, Wiz kills Boomstick, then plans to revive him using a clone he made. However, Boomstick's spirit instead ends up possessing DUMMI, leaving the two fighting for control and both are implied to be in serious pain because of it.
  • Storm ends up delivering a surprisingly brutal kill to Korra. In a quick moment of redirecting Korra's lightning, Storm ends up firing the lightning back at her at point blank range, directly at her head. A vicious Boom, Headshot! that not only leaves Korra giving off a brutal death scream, but blows a bloody hole out the back of her head as her corpse ragdolls back, eyes wide open and blank.

Season 9

• Harley Quinn vs. Jinx:
  • Early on in the fight, when Harley sticks the Dynamite Cigar in Jinx's mouth, her reaction is in-character... albeit deeply unsettling. Anyone who's watched a cartoon or seen this played out in a comic — Batman or otherwise — knows that the victimized party usually freaks out the second the live explosive makes it past their lips. Jinx, however, laughs and then proceeds to fully enjoy the next half minute or so of them fighting, as if to say "I like this dangerous game!" in response.
  • Though Jinx's immunity to poison spares her an agonizing death in Harley's toxin-filled death trap, the gas sends her psychosis into overdrive. Not only does she begin experiencing the same terrifying hallucinations seen in Arcane, her demeanor shifts from playful and mischievous to gleefully psychotic and murderous, to the point that she stops toying with Harley and immediately begins coming after her with the intent to kill. You even see her briefly but futilely fight against the madness and beg Harley to run away before she completely loses it.
    Harley: Sorry 'bout your doodad. To make up for it, I got you some nice perfume!
    Jinx: (coughs as she's sprayed in Joker Venom) Smells like... (inhales) home. (hallucinates visions of Vi in the mirrors and her own insane laughter, punching them before giggling herself) G-get back... (laughter gets worse as Harley can be seen sneaking up behind her on the shattered mirror) I'm CRAZY! (devolves into full-on Laughing Mad as Harley joins in) I'VE GOT A DOCTOR'S NOTE FOR IT! (shoots wildly at the camera as the hallucinations and laughter hit their peak)
• Thor vs Vegeta:
  • Close to the end of the fight, it initially looks like the Prince of All Saiyans has secured a victory by vaporizing Thor with his Final Flash technique… only to get caught off-guard and restrained by the God of Thunder. What makes this unsettling is that we get a brief POV from Vegeta’s perspective, showing Thor with an utterly chilling expression on his face, not helped by the copious amount of injuries the Final Flash inflicted. Thor looks battered, bloodied, and bruised, and it only serves to hammer home just how ready he is to murder. It's no surprise Vegeta immediately resorts to the Final Explosion upon seeing that.
  • The finishing blow is absolutely brutal. Once Thor gets the upper hand, he pushes the Saiyan down while summoning Mjolnir back to his hand. The end result is Vegeta getting his head crushed from behind in gory detail.
• Omni-Man vs. Homelander: Good God, it's going to be very difficult for the show to top this one.
  • One detail right out of the gate, the show's levels of gratuitous violence? It's completely in character for both combatants this time — both Invincible and The Boys are ultraviolent supers series, and Omni-Man and Homelander are the primary villains of said series. Nothing's ramped up for shock, both are not only perfectly capable of, but perfectly okay with doing what's on display.
  • The fight animation begins with Nolan returning home, only to see Homelander wearing a Santa hat while drinking hot cocoa. Just after the latter offers Nolan some, the Viltrumite looks to his left for a small moment before returning his focus to the Supe. After, Homelander states that he's there because Nolan is threatening his position as the top superhero he acknowledges Nolan's wife Debbie to his right, or rather, Debbie's charred corpse who he murdered prior to Nolan's arrival, an act that is entirely in character of Homelander.
  • Nolan's sole response of feeding Homelander his own heart is delivered in such a chillingly calm way. This is not a threat, nor a scream of anger, this is a promise of physical harm - a simple statement of fact, and it really shows how utterly furious the Viltrumite is under the surface. And just in case you thought he simply meant it as "I'm going to kill you", Nolan follows through in graphic detail, shoving Homelander's heart down his shattered jaw before crushing his head in a shower of gore.
    Omni-Man: Remember what I promised you...? Now, SWALLOW.
  • The part when Omni-Man holds Homelander in the path of a passenger jet is more chilling if you've seen the animated adaptation of Invincible. Omni-Man really was planning to let a plane hit Homelander without any regard for the people in it. And the only reason it doesn’t is because Homelander cuts it in half with his Eye Beams first, showing even less regard for the passengers — and we know that Homelander has done this before, even without a guy holding him in the path of one.
  • During the fight, Nolan is constantly showcased as The Juggernaut - the only thing that Homelander does that has any real effect is his screams, and that doesn't do more than disorient Nolan for more than a brief moment. In the final scene of the battle, Nolan is depicted menacingly hovering, uninjured, out of a fire. Then he tanks Homelander's Eye Beams with his own eyes, breaks Homelander's jaw, rises up above him menacingly and rips out Homelander's heart. Then in a voice that is dripping with anger, he asks Homelander if he remembers what he promised him from before the first blow was thrown. Omni-Man is, in the final scene, the poster child of Beware the Superman.
  • Homelander is frequently shown to have absolutely no regard for the lives or safety of those around him throughout the fight, plowing through houses, blowing up a tank truck, and using his Eye Beams to destroy a passenger jet. But when pushed past his breaking point, he makes a last desperate attempt to kill Omni-Man by firing his heat vision directly at Nolan’s eyes with as much intensity as he can muster, while snarling that once he is done with Omni-Man, he will kill Mark next, then the neighborhood, and then everyone Omni-Man ever knew. This makes his fate that much more well deserved.
    Homelander: AFTER I'M DONE WITH YOU, I'M GONNA FLASH-FRY THAT LITTLE SHIT SON OF YOURS, THIS WORTHLESS NEIGHBORHOOD, AND EVERY GODDAMN PERSON YOU KNOW!!!!
  • The final shot of Homelander before Omni-Man makes him swallow is EASILY one of the most gruesome and disturbing images Death Battle has ever produced: an extremely disturbing close-up of Homelander's face with his crushed jaw gruesomely torn open, with broken bone showing through and left only barely hanging onto the face by tatters of raw red meat flayed right down to the jaw, his heart forcefully shoved in his far-too-open mouth, one eye swollen completely shut and the other one bloodshot, with blood and tears leaking out... the fact it can be considered a visual mercy when Nolan makes chunky salsa out of it really is saying something.
  • The noises Homelander makes when Omni-Man tears his jaw are absolutely chilling. He screams in raw, genuine terror, but the sounds of his screams are muffled and distorted by his utter lack of lower jaw, and it very clearly sounds like he's desperately begging for his life in his final moments.
  • During the entire fight, the absolute control Omni-Man has on his strength serves. He could have caused an untold amount of collateral damage... and all he did was crack his home's wall and a table when he repeatedly punched Homelander into the former and threw him into the latter. It becomes very clear that Nolan could have ended the fight in seconds... And this makes everything else that much scarier.
• Magneto vs. Tetsuo: In the public consciousness, Tetsuo is best known for doing one thing: turning into an enormous, grotesque meat blob with the face of a crying infant, so it's only natural that this episode features the Body Horror of AKIRA on full display. The worst part is when Tetsuo starts mutating into said meat blob, rendered in full hand-drawn animation, and the experience is so horrific that both combatants are horrified by it, to the point where Tetsuo begs Magneto to free him with his telepathy and Magneto complies without a second thought. Despite Magneto being over 90 years old and having fought all kinds of strange characters for more than half his life, all he can do is stay on his knees and watch Tetsuo suffer with a look of dumbstruck despair when he first sees the poor boy's Ego Death form in all its hideous glory.
• Boba Fett vs. Predator: While it's an undoubtably awesome moment, Boba cauterizing the stump of his severed arm with a lightsaber is just as painful as it looks. His screaming during the procedure does not help.
• Black Adam vs Apocalypse:
  • En Sabah Nur himself is utterly terrifying in this episode. Black Adam may be among the heaviest hitters in DC Comics, but he ended up completely outmatched against an opponent that not only equaled him in strength and speed, but had a counter for anything Adam could throw at him. The Living Lightning and the Yellow Lantern Ring? Neither did any good, as Apocalypse could simply absorb the energy of said attacks to enhance his power while draining Black Adam. The Wisdom Of Zehuti informing Black Adam of any weaknesses of Apocalypse? Apocalypse could read his mind to find out what he was planning and defend himself. And those times Black Adam actually managed to wound Apocalypse? His Healing Factor was potent enough to render said instances meaningless.
  • Black Adam’s death is exceptionally barbaric, even by Death Battle standards. Apocalypse not only stomps down on his head enough times to reduce it to a bloody mulch, but to add insult to injury, he then forces Adam to watch his army destroy Khandaq, before finally burning him alive with his own Living Lightning and dropping his corpse from a huge height... but not without first giving us a clear look at Black Adam’s horrifically-mangled and terrified Nightmare Face. And considering how he cackles like a lunatic for almost the entire time, Apocalypse clearly enjoyed every second of inflicting this torture.
    Apocalypse: I never offered you a choice. Now, everything you've built... will fall!
  • Finally, the first time Apocalypse stomps on Black Adam, the way the shot is angled means that he actually manages to shatter the screen! And it remains broken apart during Wiz and Boomstick’s final scene after the post-fight analysis, which is something no other combatant has managed to do.
• Trunks vs. Silver: As awesome as it was, Trunk's death is also pretty horrific. Not only does he get impaled by his own sword, but it also straight up erases him from existence. It definitely wasn't painless if his scream and the sheer size of the sword were anything to go by.
• Jason Voorhees vs. Michael Myers:
  • The episode takes place with the Death Battle hosts around a campfire, the analysis being told as though it were scary stories. However, one by one, DUMMI, Ringmaster, and Jocelyn disappear until Wiz and Boomstick are left, and nothing really shows how they vanished... until a certain sound attributed to Jason is heard and a silhouette begins looming over the two.
  • The battle itself cranks up the Mook Horror Show, with two innocent victims being pursued by both Jason and Myers like a scene straight out of a slasher film.
  • The very start of the fight begins with a bloodied teenager trying to run from Michael before tripping into a car. She has just enough time to scream before we see her butchered from Michael’s POV. We then see Jason kill his own victim before turning to see the dead counselor beneath the car, with her killer nowhere to be seen. Cue Michael popping up behind Jason to shank him in the back.
  • Michael shows his frightening ability to pop up behind people to run a sharp object through their back with notable frequency, especially with Jason.
  • Later on, an innocent bystander, Sam, ends up being spotted by Michael who begins to pursue him in typical horror movie fashion. And while he does manage to survive for a while — even taking an axe blow to the shoulder — he soon finds himself also being attacked by a still-alive Jason, being ripped out through a car window. He narrowly manages to flee and hide behind a tombstone as Michael and Jason proceed to brawl, taking a moment to calm himself down... Only for Jason to stab clean through the tombstone and Sam's throat as a result, with a Scare Chord going off at the same time as well.
  • As much as Michael deserved it after all the fear and death he sowed over decades, his violent death at Jason's hands is enough to make even hardened horror movie fans wince. When Jason turns the fight around, he impales Michael through the stomach with his machete and puts an axe through his face, before taking Myers' own butcher knife (out of his own head, no less) and cleanly decapitating him with it. Then Jason picks up the axe with Michael's head still embedded on it, and smashes it to bloody chunks against a tombstone. For one last nightmarish touch, he simply tosses the weapon aside and vanishes quietly into the fog... none the worse-for-wear and having claimed his most impressive victim yet.
• Sauron vs. Lich King:
  • The battle takes place at the site of the Frozen Throne, between two insanely powerful, soul-claiming Tin Tyrants. Whoever wins, both the world of Azeroth and the world of Middle-Earth lose.
  • Based on Boomstick's ending comment about a super-charged Sauron, he actually did eat Arthas's soul and all the ones he had claimed. With the power of an almost-equal enemy at his command on top of gods know how many more mighty warriors, he may not even need the One Ring to fulfill his ultimate goal anymore.

Season 10

• Ant-Man vs. Atom: A lot of fans thought the winner would shrink, go inside the loser, and make them explode by growing back again, and indeed, something like that happens...except it's Hank Pym making his ants burst out of Ray Palmer while his eyes turn bloodshot and he screams in agony, all rendered in a hand-drawn sequence where we can see them tear out of Ray's body in detail. Death by super-sized insect infestation is about as horrible to witness as you'd think.
• Skyrim vs. Dark Souls: After Darkstalker Kaathe goads the Last Dragonborn into destroying the Chosen Undead and the First Flame, it ends with the Last Dragonborn collapsing as everything is enveloped in darkness. Kaathe gloats that the Age of Dark has begun while giving a haunting Evil Laugh.
• Stitch vs Rocket Raccoon: While this episode is comedic overall, Rocket’s death via being impaled on a makeshift missile, then crashing into his own Orbital Weapons Stash satellite and being vaporized in the resulting explosion could not have been a pleasant way to go.
• Darth Vader vs Obito: While it's a merciful way to go compared to most on this list, there's something deeply unnerving about Obito trapping Darth Vader with the Infinite Tsukuyomi in an illusion where he is once again Anakin Skywalker, reunited with his loving wife Padme, alive and well... until she speaks with Obito's voice overlapping hers.
  "Padme": You are liberated from Hell.
  Obito: Find peace in the next life.
• Guts VS Dimitri:
  • While both combatants falling to their rage acts as the perfect climax for the fight, the scene is definitely creepy. With Dimitri surrounded by flames and being coaxed by the voices in his head while the Beast of Darkness approaches Guts and seemingly takes over, while both of their internal monologues morph together. The implication isn't just that the two of them have tapped into their rage, but that it has taken over and consumed them, quite literally the worst case scenario for both characters.
    Dimitri: I promise, I'll kill them...
    Guts: ...all of them!
    Dimitri & Guts: DOWN TO THE LAST ONE!
  • Guts' death brings the arrival of the God Hand to claim his soul, which is a horrific experience to anyone familiar with Berserk itself. Luckily, Dimitri was judged to be stronger than Guts — so his chances against them are sure to be better — and the Tempest King steps up to fight the demons and protect his fallen opponent's soul. Even so, the sight of a bloody, wide-eyed Dimitri picking up the broken spearhead from Areadbhar while giggling like a lunatic ends the fight on a chilling note; like he's just snapped himself.
    Dimitri: So we're both shackled to the dead. (turns to the God Hand as he picks up his broken glaive) You foul beasts... YOU WILL NOT HAVE HIS SOUL! (laughs crazily as he pursues them)
• Martian Manhunter VS Silver Surfer:
  • While the moment is played more for tragedy, the battle takes a turn into existential horror at the end, when Martian Manhunter looks into Silver Surfer's mind and finds that...he knows just as much as he does. They know they have to fight, and they know one has to kill the other, but the actual reason as to why this dreadful turn of events must come to pass is beyond their grasp. It's like they're seeing the strings pulling at their limbs, on the verge of stumbling upon the truth that they're just fictional characters being made to kill each other for entertainment.
  • J'onn's death. The energy of the Power Cosmic visibly melting his skin as he desperately tries to resist to no avail.
• Bill Cipher VS Discord: Oh, Bill brings all the Nightmare Fuel for this one.
  • Right off the gate the nightmares begin for the fight as the transition screen glitches out to reveal that Weirdmaggedon is happening already in Equestria, and for quite a while; Bill's Fearamid is hovering over the burning Canterlot, his henchmaniacs rampaging below, many ponies have been petrified and formed into a chair by the psycho triangle with even Celestia and Luna not having been spared, and to top it off the Mane Six have all been defeated and turned into banners much like most of the Zodiac was in Gravity Falls (A small comfort is that the Ambiguous Situation of Twilight's fate back in her fight with Raven is no longer ambiguous) and the only one left who's in the way of Bill and Equestria's destruction is Discord.
  • Once he's done toying around with Discord, Bill proves why his eldritch power is so feared in a sequence that doubles as Awesome: When the spirit Discord confidently boasts that he knows how Bill dies in his original show as he begins to erase the Mindscape, unlike in canon, Bill, due to still having his powers, begins to threaten Discord as he attempts to catch him. When Discord hits him and he begins to distort much like in his original death, he instead resists and gives off a chilling boast, making it clear Discord isn't leaving this one alive.
    Bill: Oh! YOU THINK WE'RE EQUALS, THAT YOU'RE SAFE IN HERE, YOU LOW-EFFORT CLOWN?!
    (after resisting his erasure) I'M AN ALL… SEEING… GOD!
  • What follows is a zoom out towards a gigantic three-dimensional Bill with an eye made of stained glass. In ominous silence, the physical form of Bill reaches through his eye, shattering it and allowing his Mindscape self to punch Discord's ghost into his gigantic palm. The creepiest shot is undoubtedly when the gigantic Dream Demon pulls him out, so filled with hatred towards the Draconequus that he remains uncaring even as his glass eye breaks further and begins to leak a black fluid.
  • The end of the fight has Bill stuck in the Nightmare Realm thanks to Discord, whose soul was crushed in victory over saving Fluttershy and all of Equestria. Bill freaks out for a few seconds but brushes it off as he knows he'll find a way out. After this, he slowly shifts his attention to the camera…
    Bill: (Grabs the camera and offers his hand to the viewer) WANNA MAKE A DEAL?!
  • The part where Bill freaks out is pretty creepy as well, with it basically being a Jump Scare as Bill inexplicably turns into his gigantic monstrous form to let out a distorted roar of pure rage, his surroundings burning in blue fire.
  • How terrifying is Bill? Even Wiz and Boomstick seemed unnerved around him. After Boomstick does his usual ending Bond One-Liner, Bill screams for the hosts to let him out.
    Bill: LET ME OUT OR I'LL EAT YOUR DREAMS!!!
• Cole MacGrath VS Alex Mercer:
  • Alex in general is terrifying, being the full on merciless supervillain from the second game.
  • At one point in the fight, Cole flash-freezes Alex and sends him flying into an office building, prompting the humanoid virus to pull himself together in a sequence straight out of a horror movie, using the biomass of several innocent, screaming civilians, their disembodied limbs getting pulled in by Alex's tentacles in the flickering lights and shadows of the damaged office. Alex emerges in his Evolved form, hidden partially in shadows as his eyes glow blood red. Cole himself is distraught at seeing the carnage Alex unleashes.
    Cole: What a nightmare...
    Alex: You don't know the half of it.
• Frieza VS Megatron:
  • Frieza, the worse of the two warlords by a wide margin, annihilates both Megatron and Cybertron in one fell swoop during a fit of rage caused by Megatron taunting him over the loss of his forces and vaporizing most of his body with antimatter. The battle then ends on an ominous note as the galactic emperor floats in the planetary explosion he caused and, being the genocidal maniac that he is, swears he'll kill the rest of Megatron's people as revenge for this humiliation, ending the scene with a Death Glare right into the camera.
    Frieza: Cybertronians... must kill them all...
  • The imagery of Megatron speaking to Frieza while antimatter seeps from his eyes and mouth is also pretty unnerving, invoking borderline Facial Horror because the Anti Matter just looks so wrong - it's like Megatron is suddenly channeling Eldritch power, yet he speaks with an almost Dissonant Serenity when mere moments ago he was doing the cybertronian equivalent of Berserker Tears. And it doesn't get better throughout his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Frieza - especially when he delivers a parting message to the smaller alien in a voice dripping with Tranquil Fury.
    Megatron: Die a fool's death.
  • Midway through the fight, Frieza takes the opportunity to transform into his golden form, and the music... changes. Before it had been a pretty hard-pounding number about two tyrants squaring off, but as Frieza transforms, the tune becomes more subdued... but the lyrics do not. In a case of Dissonant Serenity they now reveal just what is in store for Megatron as he now faces a foe that can fight at the level of gods, a foe who takes delight in being a Hope Crusher. It's as if the music has decided that there is no hope for Megatron's victory at this point.
    Lyrics: "Witness is the glory of going beyond what you thought was the end of your strength."
    "Hold on to hope if you wish, but that won’t be enough to save you from what’s incoming..."
• Gojo VS Makima:
  • As Gojo didn't know about Makima's contract with the Prime Minister, he accidently killed over a thousand people during the fight because all the attacks on Makima were reflected back on them.
  • While not intensely graphic, Makima's death is still noteworthy due to the inevitability of it; the moment she's caught in the Domain Expansion, she's stuck in place - unable to move as the infinite flow of information slowly fries her brain. As such, she can only watch and scream as Gojo's Hollow Purple moves in and eradicates every single fiber of her being.
• Scooby VS Courage: While it isn't the most horrific fate of the show, partly because the victim just complains about it after, the way Eustace goes out is pretty damn gnarly: having his head sliced into five pieces like somebody took a butcher's knife to it before he gets sucked into the Chest of Demons, a fate that the hosts relate to being stuck in a 10th Circle of Hell.
• Rick VS The Doctor: Due to a mishap with the portal gun, Rick and the Doctor end up in a room full of Weeping Angels. To make matters worse, the Doctor promptly tries to use them to get rid of Rick via telling him to blink as much as possible, claiming they’re afraid of rapid movement, when anyone who knows how these monsters work knows that is the exact opposite of what to do. Sure enough, when Rick falls for it, he quickly finds himself surrounded. While we don't see what they do to him, and he comes back later either in a new body thanks to Operation Phoenix or by finding a way back from the past (which the Angels can send their victims to), it most likely wasn't pretty.
• Galactus VS Unicron:
  • The previews already paint a pretty dark picture of the fight; while there have been many a destructive brawl, the teasers go out of their way to really emphasize the sheer scale these two world eaters operate on. And the best part? It’s our world that’s caught in the midst of their brawl. At one point, we are treated to a lovely shot of Unicron in his planet form (which is even larger than the Earth) slowly consuming the planet with a tractor beam as bits and pieces of it float into his maw.
  • During Unicron's run down, Wiz takes note that Unicron's nature as the Anthropomorphic Personification of evil who is powered and sustained by every single act of evil and destruction in creation makes for pure existential horror, as in essence, Unicron is us.
  • The apocalyptic Inferred Holocaust from the battle between the two cosmic destroyers cannot be understated. The battle literally begins with the destruction of Earth as Unicron smashes it over the head of Galactus - that's 8 billion human beings and countless other unique and diverse living creatures gone in an instant. Then the battle continues to escalate in size and scale and we see Unicron destroying entire planets, stars and galaxies merely by transforming and his presence alone, while Galactus and Unicorn throw more of said planets, stars and galaxies at each other as their forms and power reaches intergalactic scales. By the end of it, countless quintillions of sapients and civilizations on millions, billions of worlds were likely wiped out in their brutal exchange, and neither combatants likely even notice they existed, let alone aware of the collateral damage they were causing.
  • Say what you will about Unicron, but his death from Galactus is pretty brutal no matter how much he deserved it for all the planets he has eaten. Galactus murders him by feeding on his entire body all while Unicron helplessly screams in agony.

Death Battle Exhibition

Death Battle Exhibition

• Bendy vs. Cuphead:
  • When Bendy is knocked into a pile of ink, he winds up becoming Ink Bendy. Even Cuphead is terrified of this thing, and keep in mind that this is the very same Cuphead who beat the freakin' Devil.
  • Just as Cuphead thinks he's won after Ink Bendy is crushed by the collapsing ceiling, Beast Bendy rises up behind Cuphead, who turns around and faces the monster, who then proceeds to slam him into the wall, rip his head off and drink the contents, before dropping his head onto the floor, causing it to shatter. While it is funny how Beast Bendy actually lifts his pinky finger while drinking from Cuphead's head, he's still basically killing someone by drinking their brains out!
• Mulan vs. Lucina: Mulan's death is, surprisingly, one of the most horrible ever seen on both DBX and Death Battle. After Lucina swings an enormous crane hook into Mulan's head — piercing through one eye socket and out the back of her skull — she throws it off the side of the gantry the two are fighting on, causing Mulan to go over with it and dangle her by her head wound high over an inactive industrial fan, in a similar way to a botched hanging^note As covered under Season 7's Black Canary vs. Sindel., for several excruciating seconds. Lucina then activates the enormous fan and drops Mulan into it by throwing her sword at the crane's steel cable to cut it. Although the resulting mutilation is (thankfully) censored for the most part, it genuinely doesn't bear thinking about in full view.
• Shantae vs. Shovel Knight: Both deaths in this episode are gruesome, to say the least. For Shantae, Shovel Knight smashes her against the ground repeatedly by her hair before messily decapitating her in one swing of his Shovel Blade; much like how he himself died in his Death Battle episode against Scrooge McDuck. For Shovel Knight, Shantae gorily tramples him to death in her elephant form; much like a South Asian execution by elephant, which is in and of itself a very cruel and unusual fate. Compared to the other alternate deaths in DBX, which typically err on the side of rather tame, either fighter would have gone out violently regardless of who won.
• Yang Xiao Long vs. Katsuki Bakugo: Yang's loud, shrill screaming as Bakugo gains the upper hand and incinerates her with an enormous jet of flame from his gauntlets. The fact that Yang would never normally shriek in a such a way — implying that her death was incredibly painful — and the fact she's visibly based off her younger self from earlier on in the series makes the Huntress's fate surprisingly disturbing (possibly even sad) to even non-RWBY fans.
• Superman vs. Saitama: The way Superman's body ends up being split in half via the backlash when Saitama punches his Eye Beams back at him. You can actually see Clark's protruding spine before he falls to the ground. His blood splashing Saitama's fists doesn't help, nor does the closing shot of his face; with glazed, rolled-back eyes and blood seeping from his mouth.
• Gogeta vs. Vegito: The Alternate Ending, Gogeta sends Vegito downwards but when firing his ki blasts, Vegito instead prepares his Spirit Sword and rushes towards his Dance counterpart. Gogeta attempts to block the attack only to be sliced in half at the waist before Vegito slices his arms and head off, then to add insult to an already brutal injury fires two ki blasts downwards as Gogeta's head defuses back into Goku and Vegeta's heads, obliterating them.
• Ness vs. Sans: For the killing blow in the main ending, after overwhelming Ness' shield with Gaster Blaster fire, Sans proceeds to run the Hero of Onett through with bones before using his telekinesis to grab and rip Ness' soul from his body, killing the boy as blood sprays out as Sans crushes the soul in his hand and giving a wink towards the camera in victory.
• Black Adam vs. Apocalypse: Apocalypse's death is brutal, to say the least. To start, Black Adam flies him into the air zapping him with lighting repeatedly. Once high enough, he proceeds to rip Apocalypse in half, before ripping off an arm. Then, he throws him to the ground and sends one final lightning bolt after him. Talk about overkill. And the alternate ending is just as bad if not even worse. With Apocalypse shapeshifting a hole in his own body to cause Adam to hit himself with his own lightning, and taking advantage of the now mortal Adam's shock by grabbing his face to keep him from turning back before proceeding to rip him apart piece by piece, limb by limb. Though fortunately like Mulan's death, this isn't directly seen but wee see Adam's blood soak the ground and pieces of him fly into the air in both Gory Discretion Shots.
• Zuko vs. Roy Mustang: While the main ending already had a brutal outcome (Zuko using his swords to slice Roy's arms off before taking his head off), the alternate ending had an even worse killing blow; After avoiding a blast of fire from Zuko, the Flame Alchemist snaps his fingers again, though nothing happens immediately to Zuko much to the Fire Lord's confusion... before Zuko's good eye explodes stunning him before Roy proceeds to blast each of his opponent's limbs off before one final finger snap causes Zuko to be reduced to a red smear on the road.
• Palpatine vs. Xehanort: After a beautifully choreographed fight, alas all good things must come to an end with a finishing blow that shows that Palpatine isn't just a skilled manipulator and is... not pleasant to say the least. After avoiding being frozen by Xehanort, Darth Sidious blocks a swing behind him from his opponent before using the force to pull one of his discarded lightsabres towards him, during which it activates and impales Xehanort, leaving him wide open to be slashed in half at the waist by the Emperor and force pushed into a window. While none of this does him in, after the mentor of Darth Vader makes a chilling Bond One-Liner before leaving, Xehanort attempts to perform one last attack only for the window he was on to shatter, ejecting him into space as he finally separates into two pieces from his prior injury. Doesn't help that Palpatine is making a speech in the background during the credits.
• Goomba vs. Koopa 2: The alternate ending certainly takes the cake for one of the most horrifically brutal deaths in both DBX and the main show; When Koopa tries to drop on Goomba from the moon, Goomba simply hops out of the way as Koopa's shell's spinning and momentum carry it across the planet, while that's not brutal, Koopa pokes his head out only for the speed to force his head downwards, grinding his face into the ground until he finally stops in front of Goomba. He survives this somehow but is quickly finished off by Goomba biting his head off. Yikes...

Death Race

Death Race

• Optimus Prime vs. Thomas the Tank Engine: One of the contestants is the Flying Ford Anglia from Harry Potter... with the twelve-year-old Harry and Ron trapped inside, essentially forced to race to the death. Ringmaster openly mocks their fear after going over their rundown (even making a crack about Harry's dead parents). Typically in Death Battle and all its sideshows, all combatants involved remain valiant, never showing any real fear except in the face of death. Harry and Ron, however, are terrified and screaming for help the entire time, at one point even sounding like Ron is sobbing that he wants out. The fact that two children are fearing for their very lives in a race they clearly know will likely end in their death is unsettling compared to the confidence and determination Optimus Prime, Lightning McQueen, and Thomas show... and they don't survive the race, suffering the grisly fate of being burned to death by Thomas' fire breath, screaming the entire time...
• BATTLE CARS!
  • KITT is pretty creepy in this Death Race, hijacking Wiz and Boomstick's monitor to speak directly to the hosts in a Creepy Monotone, and chillingly relishing the chance to kill the opposition.
  • KITT cheating death by hijacking Wiz's body at the end of the race. Wiz is talking to Boomstick about the ethics of signing a contract in blood when suddenly he seizes up, electric charges course over his body and his eyes go red and he starts speaking in KITT's Creepy Monotone, making it clear that "the being you once knew as Wizard" is no longer in charge. While it doesn't frighten Boomstick, somehow, it does disturb Ringmaster- and Ringmaster, need we remind you, is the man who was happy to put two hapless 12-year-old wizards into a brutal race that ended with their deaths. It seems Even Evil Has Standards.

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