Death Battle cleanup

DEATH BATTLE! is a very controversial show due to its subject matter. Because of this, it attracts a LOT of disagreement and shoehorning with each new episode.

This TRS thread proposed making a thread to clean up examples, mostly on CurbStompBattle.Death Battle, but examples on the show's other pages can also be discussed here.

EDIT 1: A crowner has decided that a Curb-Stomp Battle can be found in either the animation or the analysis, but the analysis must actually be described as a curb-stomp. If the hosts call it close, it's not considered a curb-stomp even if there's a large difference between the combatants' feats.

Edited by Zuxtron on Apr 24th 2020 at 2:24:38 PM

How about starting with this example which I decided to add just before I thought of making this thread?

• Cable vs. Booster Gold is a lesson in why you should Beware the Silly Ones. Though Cable had an edge in versatility and experience, he didn't come close to Booster Gold's durability and speed: Booster's force field could survive attacks over 100,000 times stronger than Cable's greatest telekinetic feat, and given how his energy blasts draw from the same power source as his shields, this durability advantage translates to an offensive power advantage as well. And in terms of speed, Cable was briefly able to keep up with the Silver Surfer... while he was holding back; meanwhile, Booster Gold is a genuine speedster in the same league as The Flash, even being able to tap into the Speed Force. Not even Cable's mind-control could be of any use, as Booster Gold has resisted psychic assaults on a similar scale before. The animation corroborates the difference in power between the two, with Booster Gold No Selling most of Cable's attacks and ending the fight with nary a scratch on him.

I think there's a good case to be made for this example's presence on the page, given how Booster Gold is so durable that none of Cable's attacks could possibly harm him, which is also shown in the animation.

Gonna have to disagree on the animation side. A curbstomp battle isn’t just one side completely dominates but it’s also the fact that they did it with little to no effort. And there was definitely a lot of effort on booster gold’s side. At least in the animation.

You kinda have a point there... though I don't know about "a lot of effort", but I might have been too focused on all the shots Booster Gold shrugged off and ignoring the few hits that did seem to hurt him (the biggest one was getting zapped before being tossed into the portal to the future).

But even then, it felt like the difficulty he had was due to not taking the fight seriously. Once he took the gloves off and started abusing his time-travel powers, Cable had no chance.

Cable pretty did the same thing with hits booster gold got in. The fight was pretty even looking until Booster made the killing blow. And the fact that cable was able to pressure booster gold enough to take things seriously doesn't say curb stomp to me.

Alright, so I got rid of it for now, until more people come to back me up.

In the post-fight analysis, Wiz explicitly says that Booster's shields have held up under "every single thing in Cable's arsenal". It doesn't get much clearer cut than that: as far as the show is concerned, Cable couldn't feasibly hurt him. I'd consider a battle where simply hurting the enemy is treated as borderline impossible to be, to quote the main Curbstomp Battle page, "a fight that's extremely one-sided".

To put my cards on the table here, I don't think that most of the examples of the page are a misuse on the same grounds. Fight animations be damned, just about every example there is a one-sided fight when you look at the post-fight analysis. Even the ones where the hosts claim they're close feel more like cases of Character Shilling that contradicts their own research than actual arguments for the fight not being a stomp.

Edited by TravisTouchdown on Apr 20th 2020 at 9:46:15 AM

I don't think we should deciding whether or not their conclusion of their analysis is right or wrong. If they conclude in their analysis that a battle is close then that's just what their analysis says and we should go with that.

I guess the real question is, Do the Animation matter more than analysis, even if they contradict each other in the end?

Edited by Mrbda241 on Apr 21st 2020 at 5:54:28 AM

I think that either the animation OR the analysis should be one-sided for it to qualify, with the example mentioning which one(s) it is. So Cable vs. Booster Gold could be added back, minus the bit about the animation.

But, if it's based on the analysis, then the hosts HAVE to say it was one-sided. If they say it was close, then it's not an example, regardless of the difference between the combatants' feats.

I think the animation matters more than the analysis because Curb-Stomp Battle is about the actual battle not the matchup.

But if we are going to have analysis only entries then I think it should only be for cases where the hosts explicitly say that the match is completely one-side AND that the winner would defeat the loser with relative ease.

Agreed on that. Second-guessing the hosts when they call something close simply because they emphasized the reasons why they eventually chose the winner in the post-analysis is WMG territory.

So something like Smokey the Bear vs McGruff the Crime Dog, where they say that the best McGruff could do is make the battle tedious for Smokey, would count. Meanwhile, Dragonzord vs Mecha-Godzilla, where they start the Post-Analysis by calling it a close one, wouldn't.

Edited by Servbot on Apr 21st 2020 at 9:43:32 AM

^I disagree. Many of the times that the hosts call the fight close border on Blatant Lies, where the winner is statistically stronger in most/every way by an order of magnitude by their own numbers. If someone is statistically hundreds of thousands of times better at fighting (a claim that the hosts typically proceed to make after claiming it's close), that's not close, no matter how much their Character Shilling tries to claim otherwise.

Hell, Death Battle is so infamous for doing this that it has its own entry on its meme page.

Edited by TravisTouchdown on Apr 21st 2020 at 10:21:17 AM

Curb-Stomp Battle is an objective trope. It should only be listed when it actually happens in the episode.

This can be represented visually, by having the animation show one combatant not taking any serious damage from the other, or verbally, by having the hosts call it one-sided and with only one possible outcome. If they say the fight was close, that wording does not indicate a curb-stomp, no matter what the feats say afterwards.

You're free to criticize their choice of wording in the forums or on other sites, but the trope page should be about what the animation shows and the hosts say, nothing more. Saying that the fight is one-sided when Wiz says it's not is Fridge Logic, an Audience Reaction that should stay as far away from objective pages as possible.

^The claims they make are part of that episode. That's not subjective, it's objectively what the show treats as fact. Does them explaining that the winner was tens/hundreds of thousands times stronger, faster, tougher, etc. not qualify as verbal?

Edited by TravisTouchdown on Apr 21st 2020 at 10:43:31 AM

Not if they also claim that those differences aren't enough to make it one-sided.

Yea the only opinions on whether or not a fight would be a curb stomp that matters are the ones in the show.

So wait, in Dragonzord vs. Mechagodzilla it was a close fight, despite the analysis clearly saying it wasn't, and they themselves saying they were outclassed by Power and toughness. Yeah, it can be the exception that proves the rule, but still.

The analysis said that the Dragonzord was outclassed by Mechagodzilla in those areas but would still put up an intense fight against it.

Here's a crowner I made for voting on which types of examples should be allowed on the page.

If we're still deciding on what the criteria for an entry should be maybe we need to reopen the trs thread and work it out there.

I don't think that should be used to pick, mainly because one person can easily vote for their one rule and vote thumbs down on the other, if you can keep track on who's voting who, it might be unfair.

Disclaimer: I don't watch this show; I got curious as to how this thread was going. But I don't think re-moving this discussion to TRS will help much; as that's not a dedicated work forum many regulars probably don't watch this show and can't offer anything other than "Curb-Stomp Battle is clearly defined as a one-sided fight". What that means for Death Battle is better decided on by Death Battle fans.

That's just how crowners work, and crowners are just how policies and things get decided on in the fora.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 22nd 2020 at 9:18:59 AM

I agree. Taking it back to TRS isn't going to help just as having the TRS thread in the first place didn't help; a crowner will help.

So, looks like the crowner has consensus: the curb-stomp can be in either the animation or the analysis, but if it's in the analysis, the hosts need to actually call it one-sided; if they claim it's a close match, it shouldn't be on there no matter what the feats say.