Formula Breaking Episode / Epic Rap Battles of History

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• Most season 1 battles featured one eight-line verse from each rapper, then one four-line verse from each rapper. "Abe Lincoln vs Chuck Norris" is the first battle to follow a different pattern: first Lincoln gets a ten-line verse, then they each get a four-line verse, then Norris gets an eight-line verse. Lincoln also raps the last four lines in his first verse fast enough to make it sound like this verse has the standard eight lines.
• "Kim Jong-Il vs. Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage" has Kim Jong-Il killing Hogan at the end of his second verse, prompting Macho Man to finish the battle for him.
• Stephen Hawking's verses are played using Auto-Tune vocals instead of a synthesized voice, because they couldn't get the synth to use a proper rhythm. He was the only rapper to use Auto-Tune until Oprah vs Ellen.
• "Ben Franklin vs. Billy Mays" has Billy Mays die of a heart attack before he can start his second verse. Vince Offer then decides to Take Up His Sword and finish the battle.
• Shakespeare's second verse. Turns out he can rap really fast. This was to be expected, as he was played by George Watsky, one of the fastest rappers on YouTube. Also in the same battle, Dr. Seuss brings in his characters to rap for him rather than rapping himself.
• "Nice Peter vs Epic Lloyd" is the first battle where each rapper gets more than two verses.
• "Hitler vs. Vader 2" has each rapper getting only one verse before Hitler is dropped into the Rancor pit.
• "Jobs vs. Gates": instead of sticking to the formulaic two verses per rapper (2 vs 1 battles notwithstanding), Jobs and Gates end up switching back and forth every line for a while:
  Jobs: Ooh, everybody knows Windows bit off Apple.
  Gates: I tripled the profits on a PC.
  Jobs: All the people with the power to create use an Apple!
  Gates: And people with jobs use PC.
  Jobs: You know, I bet they made this beat on an Apple!
  Gates: Nope, FruityLoops, PC.
  Jobs: You will never ever catch a virus on an Apple!
  Gates: Well, you can still afford a doctor if you bought a PC.
  • Then, Jobs ascends, Gates undergoes Sanity Slippage, and HAL 9000 appears and finishes the battle with a verse of his own.
• "Wright Brothers vs Mario Brothers" is the first battle to have two rappers on each side and have each rapper rapping simultaneously with his partner.
• "Elvis Presley vs. Michael Jackson" featured two different incarnations of both characters rather than a single figure to represent their entire lifetimes. The first two verses featured the characters at the beginning of their music careers: a young Jackson Five-era Michael Jackson (the only child rapper ever featured in the series) and a teenaged, suit-wearing 1950s Elvis Presley; in the second verse, Jackson grows into his pale-skinned, middle-aged This Is It-era persona, while Elvis becomes his overweight, jumpsuit-wearing 1970s incarnation.
• "Marilyn Monroe vs. Cleopatra" was 3 to 2 verses respectively.
• "Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama" had one big verse for each and smaller verses as the song goes on, similar to the above. Then Abraham Lincoln shows up to thrash them both.
• "Batman vs Sherlock" is a rather unusual team battle: Sherlock's partner, Watson, raps simultaneously with Sherlock, similar to the Wright brothers and the Mario brothers, whereas Batman's partner, Robin, gets his own verse, similar to Hulk Hogan and Macho Man.
• "Adam vs. Eve". Instead of raps relating to the story of Adam and Eve (though there are some aspects of that), it's mostly just a generic married couple bickering set to music. This one was expected since some of the comment suggestions that went with it were "Man vs. Woman".
• In "Martin Luther King vs. Gandhi", King offers Gandhi forgiveness at the end of his second verse, and Gandhi gets an extra verse, in which he rejects it.
• "Stalin vs. Rasputin" had 5 rappers each getting one verse.
• "Hitler vs. Vader 3", like the second, has each rapper getting one standard verse, then Vader brings in Boba Fett to help him, who is shot by Hitler after 8 seconds; Hitler then has a Villainous Breakdown and responds with nonsensical insults that don't rhyme at all before Vader cuts him in half.
• "Michael Jordan vs. Muhammad Ali" gave both rappers three verses instead of the usual two.
• Like "Stalin vs. Rasputin", "Donald Trump vs. Ebeneezer Scrooge" also features 5 rappers: Donald, Ebeneezer, J.P. Morgan (The Ghost of Rich Dudes Past), Kanye West (The Ghost of What's Right Now), and The Grim Reaper. However, Ebeneezer gets a whole verse in response to each of the other four. The episode was also different in that the rap itself tells a progressing story; even in the Vader vs Hitler trilogy, the story only happened before and after the battles. Also, only Trump gets the standard Boastful Rap, while the others' raps are just to fill their part in the story.
• "Isaac Newton vs. Bill Nye" has Neil DeGrasse Tyson showing up at the end to help Nye out with a verse of his own after it becomes obvious that Nye's a bit outclassed.
• The Season 3 finale was the largest rap battle up to that point, a full four on four battle: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello vs. Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello. Cowabunga.
• "Ghostbusters vs MythBusters" tops even the Season 3 finale, starting with Peter, Egon, Ray, and Winston against Adam and Jamie, then the MythBusters bring in the Build Team, and at the end Stay Puft shows up for a total of ten rappers, or eleven if Janine Melnitz' cameo line counts.
• "Zeus vs. Thor" is done through Lego stop-motion rather than live action. It's also the first time the backgrounds are built physically (in Lego!) instead of a total green screen.
• "Jack the Ripper vs Hannibal Lecter" (both of them serial killers) is LEGITIMATELY creepier than anything they've ever done before, to the point of being an actual horror video. That's saying something considering they've covered two horror writers, five Russian leaders^note well, four Russian leaders and a Russian mad wizard who controlled the Tzar, to be precise, The Walking Dead and Adolf Hitler.
• Similar to the Russian Leaders battle, season 4 has "Steven Spielberg vs Alfred Hitchcock", who each get one verse, then Quentin Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick, and Michael Bay show up.
• Subverted in "Harry Houdini vs. David Copperfield". When Houdini uses the word "angle" Criss Angel shows up as if he's about to take the next verse... but is shut down by Houdini and leaves.
• "Eastern vs. Western Philosophers" starts with a standard battle, with each getting two verses, until Sun Tzu uses mind games to manipulate the Western team into arguing amongst themselves. This tactic then backfires when he ends up tearing apart his own team as well.
• "Stan Lee vs. Jim Henson" has Stan Lee realize he's gone too far in the middle of his second verse and apologize, leading them to both put their differences aside and make up. Then Walt Disney shows up and tells them to get back to work.
• "Frederick Douglass vs. Thomas Jefferson" has Jefferson spending his second verse acknowledging and explaining his own wrongdoings, the first character in the series to do so to such a degree.
• "James Bond vs Austin Powers" has the first physical set that matches the authenticity of the costumes and makeup, a homage to the music video for "BBC" by Ming Tea as well as the first movie's Eye Catch. It's also the first battle where a third-party rapper (Sean Connery's Bond) not only shows up but actually has mutual back-and-forth exchange of insults with the other two, as opposed to just finishing the battle with his first verse.
• "Ivan the Terrible vs. Alexander the Great" has four rappers (Ivan the Terrible, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great, and Catherine the Great), with Catherine being the only one to get more than one verse, not counting the dialogues in which Ivan attempts to kill the others.
• "Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton" has each rapper only getting one verse, and Trump being interrupted mid-sentence by Abraham Lincoln, who finishes the battle with a verse of his own.
• Probably the weirdest example in the series is "Nice Peter vs. EpicLLOYD 2". Of all the battles in the series, it's the one that feels least like a silly comedy video and more like an actual heated argument between two people who are seriously pissed off at each other, with the disses mostly being based on events in the personal lives of the cast which nobody else watching the battle would have had any way of knowing about. Also, Peter and Lloyd sing their last verses simultaneously. They don't team up, they just rap over each other.
• Of all nine one-on-one season 5 battles, only two gave each rapper the standard two verses, so three for each rapper now seems to be the norm rather than the exception. "Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg" however did give each rapper two verses.
• Most of "Freddy Krueger vs Wolverine" is a normal battle (albeit full of Visual Effects of Awesome) featuring Krueger against Comics!Wolverine. Then, right before Wolverine's last verse, it's revealed that everything that happened prior was All Just a Dream that was dreamt by Film!Wolverine. Despite this, Wolverine continues to rap against Krueger, and there are several hints of Or Was It a Dream?
• "The Burger King vs Ronald McDonald" is a full-scale remake of a battle from the "Flash-in-the-Pan Hip-Hop Conflicts of Nowadays" side-series, with full costumes/backgrounds/effects/etc. and a few updated lyrics… and then, unlike the original, Wendy shows up and takes the last verse.
• "George Carlin vs Richard Pryor" is a twist on the format of "Rasputin vs Stalin" and "Spielberg vs Hitchcock". It doesn't just become a five-way battle where each rapper gets one verse. The first surprise entry, Bill Cosby, is knocked unconscious by a roofie in his pudding, and then Joan Rivers joins the battle, followed by Robin Williams. At one point, Cosby wakes up, only to be knocked out again by Rivers.
• "Harry Potter vs Luke Skywalker" is Built with LEGO like "Zeus vs Thor."
• "John Wick vs John Rambo vs John McClane" is the first three-way battle in the series. There have been prior battles with at least three participants, but this one has all three battlers present from the start with each one dissing the other two, rather than a standard 1-vs-1 battle being interrupted by a third party towards the end.
• While every past battle has involved actual actors and actual Lego in some cases, "Godzilla vs King Kong" is entirely CGI thanks to Unreal Engine. Lloyd and Peter even get into mocap suits to play Kong and Goji respectively.

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