Cruel And Unusual Death / DEATH BATTLE!

Screw being a noble warrior. THIS is a battle to the death.

Being a show about two or more fictional characters fighting each other to the death, it is almost guaranteed that any fight in DEATH BATTLE! will end with the loser dying in battle. Some of these fights end in the loser dying in more painful and/or humiliating ways to die than others.

Do not add deaths from the actual battles 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.

Also, this page will spoil the winner of the fights listed. No point in using spoiler tags when every single example would be a spoiler.

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Season 1

• In their battle royale, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have all turtles sans Leonardo suffer surprisingly gruesome deaths. Michelangelo’s was the most tame, as he simply had his arm and head sliced off by Leonardo. Donatello, on the other hand, had it worse than Mikey, as he was killed by Raphael repeatedly stabbing him an unnecessary amount of times. Finally, Raph was killed by Leo stabbing him in the neck with a broken katana, sinking into the water and turning the sewer water red with his blood.
• Sonic proves that he's not only the Fastest Thing Alive, but the Spikiest Thing Alive, as he kills Mario by combo-punching him to the ground, followed by Spin Dashing into Mario's back, slicing apart his vertebrae like a buzzsaw.
• After a Sleepy Time Sheep knocks Zelda out and puts her to sleep, Peach uses a Mega Strike that kicks Zelda hard enough to make her head explode into a gory mess, followed by the Hylian princess’s scream.
• Thor kills Raiden by smashing his body in half with Mjolnir, then grabs the remaining half and throws his opponent into the sun.
• Pikachu has a very humiliating one at the hands of Blanka. After charging into each other, Blanka suddenly bites and chews Pikachu's head off before putting its corpse in a blender and drinking the remains.

Season 2

• Shao Kahn smashes M. Bison's head multiple times before grabbing his body and tearing it in half in gory fashion. And Shao Kahn isn't finished, as he devours M. Bison's soul.
• Ivy's death is rather embarrassing, as Orchid turns her into a frog and squashes her with her boot.
• Just as Luigi was about to finish Tails off with his hammer, the latter had one last trick and impales the former with the Magic Hook that impales the plumber's chest in a surprisingly bloody manner.
• Two of the three Pokémon in their battle royale die in horrific ways:
  • Venusaur had its plant violently torn off by Charizard's Wing Attack. Then, Charizard uses Flame Burst to incinerate Venusaur, with the latter writhing in agony as it burns alive. In the aftermath, Blastoise is seen eating the remains of Venusaur's flower.
  • Charizard's fate isn't any better. As it bites Blastoise’s head, the latter Pokémon tears off its opponent's wings, grabs its neck as it prepares Flamethrower, and finally uses Hydro Pump to fill the rival Pokémon up with water to the point where it explodes like a balloon.
• Captain America getting his neck snapped by being hung from a lamppost via Batman's grappling hook. Just to add insult to injury (with a dash of irony), Bats then threw Cap's shield through his dead body and cut clean through his torso.
• When Toph surprises Gaara by catching him in a chokehold, she manipulates his sand armor to crush his entire body.
• Sam Fisher is killed in a painful way as Snake stabs him multiple times in the chest, which shocks him, concluding with Snake stabbing Sam in the neck.
• Doctor Doom launches a boulder at Darth Vader as the two fall in a volcano, which crushes the Sith Lord and sinks him in the lava, incinerating him in the process.
• Dan Hibiki's death emphasizes the "unusual" part of the trope. Just as Hercule Satan was about to finish him off, the capsule that was knocked off earlier was accidentally swallowed by Dan, with both combatants having an Oh, Crap! reaction after hearing a sound trigger. Dan's body bursts into Ludicrous Gibs from the jukebox that was in the capsule he swallowed.
  Announcer: Whoa! I've never seen anything like that! He punched him so hard he turned him into a jukebox! It can only be the champ's new technique, the Karaoke Punch!
• Another Charizard, this time being Red's, is on the receiving end of this trope from WarGreymon. After Red’s charizard landed a good hit with Blast Burn on WarGreymon, Tai gets pissed and beats up Red, which distracts the Charizard. WarGreymon then retaliates by gutting the Charizard like a fish, with the heavily wounded Pokémon crashing on its trainer, crushing his legs. Both the bloodied Pokémon and its trainer struggled to move, but they were finished off by WarGreymon's Terra Force, incinerating his opponents.

Season 3

• Quicksilver gets launched out of Barry Allen's Speed Force and his body gets impaled by a samurai statue in an Accidental Murder. It would be later revealed in Season 8 that Barry's Arch-Enemy, Eobard Thawne, was responsible for putting the statue there to frame Barry.
• Upon his initial return to the show, Shadow the Hedgehog falls victim to a very Undignified Death. After having his memory wiped by Mewtwo and his Golden Super Mode runs out, the legendary Pokémon knocks the Ultimate Life Form with a giant spoon and throws it at him, impaling the hedgehog all the way through with the blunt end, with his corpse now being fed to a school of Carvanha in the ocean.
  Boomstick: You know, Wiz, when we started DEATH BATTLE!, I don't think we ever expected to see someone die by spoon.
• Cammy suffers a long and drawn-out series of events leading up to her death from Sonya. First she gets electrocuted by a stun grenade, then is shot multiple times by Sonya's drone, only for it to malfunction and crash into a nearby oil barrel, triggering an explosion that leaves Cammy bleeding and moaning in pain. Then, Sonya approaches the mortally wounded Cammy, grabs her by the neck, breaks her bones with punches, and finally uses her Scissor Split to bisect her, which happens as she screams. And when that is all said and done, Sonya runs over part of Cammy’s corpse with her car, painting the tarmac with blood in the process. This is not helped at all by Sonya, otherwise a heroic character in her series, undergoing Adaptational Villainy in this episode.
• Amy Rose kills an unconscious Ramona Flowers by knocking an arcade machine into her, which crushes her and turns her into coins. The cruelty part kicks in when Scott Pilgrim was there to witness Ramona get crushed by said arcade machine.
• Doomsday gorily impales the Hulk numerous times with bone claws, then repeatedly punches the hero's face which splatters radioactive blood on the screen, then finally decapitates his opponent Sub-Zero style and roars victoriously. As the first villain to kill a hero on the show, it was only fitting that Doomsday would end the fight in brutal fashion.

Season 4

• Scrooge McDuck grabs Shovel Knight's blade and very brutally stomps it through the latter's neck like a pogo stick. And he does this three times and the viewer gets a brief look at the inside of Shovel Knight's throat, culminating in the third strike very messily tearing the knight's head right off his body, which then sinks into the coins as Scrooge McDuck, covered from head to toe in Shovel Knight's blood, angrily glares. In the bloodbath's aftermath, Shovel Knight's head is placed on a stake by Scrooge as a warning for any future would-be thieves, complete with being next to a sign reading "THIEVES BEWARE!".
• "Fire Fist" Ace gets fried until there's nothing left of him, but it doesn't happen all at once and we see every layer of his body burn away as he screams in agony, complete with his eyes boiling and melting away in gruesome detail.
• Captain Marvel suffers an agonizing death to Android 18, having both of her arms broken and screaming in agony. Then when she tries to get up after being knocked into the crater, Android 18 crushes her head like a watermelon.
• Lucario impales Renamon with Bone Rush, but the viewers get to see the Digimon choke on her own blood while grasping at her own neck before dying. Poor Guilmon walked in and saw her corpse in the aftermath.
• The ending to Shredder VS Silver Samurai (pictured above) is one of the most brutal and horrific in the show's history. Super Shredder starts by chopping one of Harada's arms off with a knife-hand strike resulting in a massive shower of blood, then impales him in the head by punching his own Tachyon Blade through his eye socket, knocking his helmet off, and finishes by tearing Harada's head off by dislodging said katana before crushing it with one hand. This last part in particular is drawn in horrifying detail, complete with Harada's one remaining eye popping out of his skull and his scalp bursting through Super Shredder's fingers. In the aftermath, while Super Shredder walks away from the forest, we see Silver Samurai's soul in Hell getting flattened by the Soulcutter, resulting in Harada being rendered Deader than Dead.
  Super Shredder: (as he crushes Harada's head) PLAYTIME. IS OVER.

Season 5

• Batman's second return to the show sees him clawed open and having his head ripped out with a shoryuken-like vertical slash by Black Panther, with Bruce's corpse being then eaten by a killer whale below.
• Jotaro Kujo suffers the same fate as many of Kenshiro's foes, as his pressure point was touched earlier in the fight, causing him to swell and explode in a disgusting bloody mess.
• Doctor Fate finishes off Doctor Strange like this. When Strange decides to confront Fate inside his helmet, the former can only realize he got more than what he bargained for as Kent, Inza and Nabu charge up their power and use them against Strange's astral form, brutally obliterating him from existence limb by limb before revealing Strange's lifeless body, which withers away and disintegrates into dust.
• Optimus Prime finishes RX-78-2 Gundam by annihilating the machine and its pilot with the Matrix of Leadership, complete with a bloodied Amuro screaming in agony as he gets vaporized.
• Thanos falls victim to a horrific fate, as he's now trapped in the Omega Sanction. Unlike the other fallen combatants before him, Thanos must suffer an endless amount of lives and deaths, each worse and more humiliating than the last. His first death? Being shot by Deadpool who was making out with Death. This becomes even more ironic when you realize Thanos had fallen in love with the personification of death.
  Darkseid: Behold, an endless death.

Season 6

• Aquaman paralyzes Namor, then commands the anglerfish to devour his opponent, ripping Namor's body apart. He finishes the job by throwing his trident at Namor’s head, impaling it.
• Just as Wario is about to finish off King Dedede, the latter knocks a Gordo right in his butt. Wario then swells up from the inside because of the unreleased gas and explodes with enough force to destroy the planet, in what is perhaps the most humiliating death in the show’s history.
• Hal Jordan goes back in time to the beginning of the fight, cuts Ben’s arm with a scissor conduct, and crushes the kid with a giant boot. This isn't helped by the fact that the sprite used for Ben was his younger self.
• Lobo is finished off by having his soul consumed by an enraged Zarathos, being wiped out from existence. And considering Lobo has killed many, many people, he truly suffers his fate as he lets out an agonized scream.
• To conclude a brutal, one-sided Halloween-themed fight between two powerful dark lords, Dracula overwhelms Ganondorf with the Demonic Megiddo, which succeeds in breaking the Gerudo King out of his Ganon form and obliterates the castle. After being brought back to normal from this attack, Ganondorf can only express absolute fear as Dracula hoists him by the face, then tosses him in the air and impales him with one hand before tearing Hyrule's greatest threat completely in half, spilling his blood and guts all over the camera in the process, and concluded with Drac feasting on the blood of his dead opponent while 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.

Season 7

• Cable is killed by having his body crushed by the force field Booster Gold gives to him, despite doing everything he can to fight off the force field, crushing him into a bloody mess and reducing him to nothing.
• After waiting out Ultra Sonic, Wally West manages to land an Infinite Mass Punch on Archie Sonic while he's detransforming, resulting in a blow that doesn't just atomize the hedgehog, but forces him to relive every single second of his life before reducing the fastest thing alive to pixels.
• To end a long and bloody fight, the blood-moon empowered Jon Talbain, fresh off of having his intestines gruesomely ripped out, allows his ferocious inner beast to take over and then proceeds to brutally tear apart Sabrewulf, who was just heavily burned by the Dragon Cannon. Here, Jon leaps forward and proceeds to furiously slash Sabrewulf until he gets graphically disemboweled, then claws the Baron's right arm off, drags him back when he attempts to crawl in a desperate attempt to escape, and finally sinks his teeth into Konrad's head before thrashing violently and using his jaws to rip the Baron's head clean off, concluding a fight that is gory even by the show’s standards by howling thriumphantly at the blood-moon while standing on top of his desecrated opponent.

Season 8

• Just as a vicious, brutal fight comes to a climax, Shadow gets the upper hand on Ryuko Matoi, with the latter being pinned to the ground so she doesn't escape before being vaporized by the former, and as this happens, we bare witness to Ryuko screaming in horrific agony just as she's being disintegrated into nothingness. And in extreme close-up no less, making her death that much more agonizing.
• Just as Lex Luthor is about to unmask Doctor Doom in the midst of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, the latter swaps his body with the former. Taking advantage of the Everyman Project, Doom forces Luthor to violently impale himself in the chest with his own arm, followed by the businessman screaming after the body swap. Victor then blasts Lex into rebar and uses energy blades to slice him up into ribbons, concluding a brutal Rasputinian Death that's followed by LexCorp exploding. To add insult to injury, Lex gets pinned to his own company logo during the last seconds of the carnage.
• Geese Howard was thrown into a volcano by Heihachi Mishima and was blasted into a stalagmite. We then see the impaled Geese get graphically burned alive by the surrounding lava in close hand-drawn detail.
• Mikasa becomes vaporized by a misfired Thunder Spear, which Blake takes advantage of and throws it back at her, followed by a shot of fire coming out of Mikasa's eyes and mouth as she screams.
• To conclude the return of two icons of gaming following their first encounter, Link and Cloud get into the climax of a very brutal battle, with Link entering his Fierce Deity form and unleashing his rage on Cloud, who attacks with the Omnislash V5 and overwhelms the hero of Hyrule. Then, Link tries blocking Cloud's sword with the Triforce... to no avail, as he gets gruesomely cut in half. We then see his bifurcated body splitting in two in horrific detail (complete with extremely gruesome squelching) before letting out one final scream and dying, with the two halves of his corpse falling in front of Cloud to the ground soon afterward.
• Another brutal death at the hands of a speedster, this time with Reverse-Flash inflicting this on Goku Black. First, his time ring is removed to remove his Paradox Person status before getting impaled by another Reverse-Flash, then he gets run over the world a few times at super speed, stripping him to the bone, and finally hurled to the sun so hard that it goes supernova. Oh, and because Saiyans go back to their base forms when they die, and Black was still in Super Saiyan Rosé, he was still alive after Thawne shredded his skin off.
• After grabbing onto Oni's arm, Shao Kahn proceeds to rip it off, punt him onto the ground where his hammer then bounce off his face hard before resummoning his hammer to his hand to smash Oni's head into paste. The whole time, Oni can be heard yelling out in absolute pain.

Season 9

• Vegeta dies by having his head crushed in between Thor's hand and the incoming Mjolnir in graphic detail.
• To conclude a hideous Curb-Stomp Battle in a way that does the Gorn of both Invincible and The Boys justice, Omni-Man makes good on his promise to feed Homelander his own heart in the most literal way. First, he tears out Homelander's jaw mid-Villainous Breakdown, causing it to loosely slack, then punches his arm through Homelander's chest to rip out his heart through his back. Upon reminding Homelander of his previous promise in an utterly chilling way, Nolan force-feeds John with said heart by ramming it down his gruesomely flayed torn-open maw, all before slowly squeezing his head between both palms to brutally crush it into a gory mess, just like how he executed Red Rush... all in what's quite possibly the most brutal death in the show's history, not to mention the most absolutely deserved. As one can guess, Homelander is very quickly reduced to a whimpering wreck by this and the realization that he bit off way more than he could chew, only when it was much, much too late.
  Omni-Man: Remember what I promised you? (crams Homelander's own heart down his throat, then opens his eyes as he begins to squeeze John's head) Now, swallow.
  Homelander: (muffled and sobbing in agony) NOLAN! PLEASE- (his head violently explodes)
• A paralyzed Black Adam has his head stomped by Apocalypse face-first, which is followed by a close-up of his face, having been reduced to mush. Apocalypse then continues to repeatedly stomp on Black Adam's face, making it even more disfigured as the Mutant laughs maniacally all the while. En Sabah Nur then grabs the still-living Teth-Adam (whose horrifically mangled face is shown to the viewer in detail) to make him witness his kingdom fall while mocking him over his failure to protect his people, right before electrocuting his brain with his own Living Lightning and discarding his corpse. "Cruel" is quite an understatement in the case of what Apocalypse does to Black Adam.
• Xeno Trunks ends up taking a death about as bad as Archie Sonic's, as he dies by being impaled by his own Sword of Hope-enhanced Keysword (which is a massive BFS, for reference), getting temporally annihilated. Like with Archie Sonic, Trunks' agonized screaming emphasizes how far from painless this is, especially as one can see blood repeatedly spewing from his impalement as he temporally glitches out before exploding into nothingness.
• Fittingly for a battle between slasher villains, Michael Myers ends up being run through the stomach by Jason with his machete and after a futile attempt at getting Jason off him by stabbing him in the head with his knife, ends up getting an axe both killers were using lodged in his skull. Jason then follows this up by removing Michael's knife from his head before using it to slice Michael's head off his shoulders and just for good measure to ensure Michael doesn't somehow come back from that, splits Michael's severed head in two against a gravestone with the axe.
• As expected, Sauron pulls absolutely no punches against the Lich King. He traps Arthas in the epicenter of a fiery vortex, suspends him in midair, and uses the One Ring to forcibly extract Arthas' soul from his body, letting his lifeless husk smack clean against the floor while Sauron proceeds to claim the Frozen Throne for himself.
• Subverted for Deku. One would think that being stabbed by three massive blades and slammed into the ground, after straining yourself to the limit is one painful way to go out. However, Swan stated that Deku had actually already died after the final clash by pushing himself too much◊ (with his eyes going white as the signifier), and he died happy thinking he won.

Season 10

• As the opening for season 10, the end of the fight between Ant-Man and Atom doesn't disappoint in the brutality department, with poor Ray dying in a way that's horrific even by the series' standards. First, Ray gets dragged by Hank into the Overspace, a dimension that ravages the former's mind before Eternity's presence, then we bare witness as Ray is brutally ripped apart by giant ants bursting from within his body as his eyes turn bloodshot and he lets out muffled screams of agony before finally exploding into nothingness, all in what is without a doubt one hell of a horrible way to go. Because of all these factors, Atom's death may very well rank near the top of the series' list of "most horrible ways to die".
• Killua Zoldyck undoubtedly goes out in brutal fashion. After he tears out the heart of the Iron Sand duplicate of Misaka, he gets covered in it and frozen in mid-air as the real Misaka fires her Railgun, causing the Zoldyck prodigy to be dismembered from the Railgun exploding him, leaving behind a rain of blood and his limbs all falling to the ground.
• In "Stitch vs. Rocket", not only does the poor Ice Cream Guy never get to enjoy his ice cream, he also doesn't even get to live by the end of the fight, as Stitch crashes into him and splatters off the face of existence... all while Stitch enjoys his ice cream.
• The climax of "Cole MacGrath vs Alex Mercer" has Alex die in a pretty thorough matter. Alex seems to have Cole on the ropes as they fall from a great height, him beginning to forcibly take Cole's power for himself. Then Cole utilizes a Karmic Overload to turn the tables - quickly using Bio Leech to absorb Alex's bio-electricity, while also doing a Thunder Drop at the same time. Judging from the crater afterwards, and Alex's scream during this process, it was not a pleasant way to go. The only thing left of Alex was a small strand of Blacklight Virus - that Cole promptly disintegrated.
• Gojo uses Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void to overload Makima's brain, leaving her completely unresponsive. All she can do is scream from the overload, barely able to process that she's about to die; right as Gojo uses Hollow Purple to completely crush and disintegrate her body into nothing.
• "Scooby-Doo vs Courage the Cowardly Dog" has one... for Eustace, who spent the entire video chasing (and attempting to kill) the two combatants, being indirectly responsible for their battle in the first place. Scooby and Courage cower behind the Chest of Demons, which opens up and unleashes a horde of demonic hands that grab at Eustace, pulling his head apart into vertical slices before pulling him into the chest, which locks with him inside. And considering what the chest does in the source material, and the fact that we still hear him angrily yelling, he's probably still alive - or as "alive" as he can be in this situation.

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