Robot Wars (TV series)/YMMV


 * Badass Decay: Justified, the nature of the sport meant that the standards were raised every year. Most notable examples follow
 * Hypno-Disc, who after reaching three consecutive grand finals (the only robot at the time to do so) fared dismally in its series 6 semi-final and Extreme II fights, defeating only the most fragile of opponents.
 * Chaos 2 slowly fell behind the times, making few modifications between series and electing not to take full advantage of the extra 20 kilos added to the weight allowance in Extreme 1/Series 5. It finished its career with a heat final loss to a newcomer in Series 6 and a terrible thrashing in the Extreme 2 All-Stars competition.
 * Pussycat had a powerful blade and a very precise driver, propelling it to second place in Series 4. However, opponents' armours became thicker and the team lost their driver in a tragic accident. Pussycat returned in later series but could not deliver a repeat performance.
 * In Series 6 the Wild Thing team abandoned their successful shield-on-wheels design in favour of a vertical spinner. Though this version did no worse than last series, its victories were a lot more lackluster.
 * Panic Attack's performances were getting worse and worse as the series went on. By the time the Seventh Wars rolled around, it was still using electric power weapons, and the srimech was removed. Its final domestic appearance saw it go out to Tough as Nails in Round 2 of its heat.
 * Broken Base: Tornado vs. Razer in the series 6 final most notably.
 * Creator's Pet: The series 4 scoring system ranked Razer and Behemoth at 3 and 6 respectively, ahead of previous champions and grand finalists, primarily because of their performance in the First World Championship (which seemed to be pretty clearly rigged in the UK's favour).
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Professor Noel Sharkey, one of the show's judges, said that the judges inspected Hypno-Disc before its first ever fight and dismissed it as a copy of something off Battlestar Galactica and they did not think it would do very well. A few minutes into the first match, according to him, the judges were crawling behind their desks to avoid the shrapnel flying everywhere as Hypno-Disc tore its opponent apart.
 * Steg-O-Saw-Us was never intended to actually compete in the series; it was pulled from the reserves when another robot broke down. It won its heat convincingly, took out a former champion and it took Hypno-Disc in the first round of the Grand Final to beat it.
 * Team 101's walkerbot, Anarchy. It was clear that more time and money was invested in this machine, as it used a much simpler form of locomotion to give it great manoeuvrability for a walker's standards (5mph top speed), had strong armour, some powerful weapons, being a flipper and an axe, all while still having 33kg to play with. To date, Anarchy remains the most successful walkerbot, having made the Heat Final in Series 6, only going out to Tornado. Many fans believe that Anarchy would have made the Semi-Finals in any other heat.
 * Game Breaker: Razer (unless he's fighting Pussycat, or breaking its claw in the first 30 seconds of the fight.)
 * The ability to flip opposing robots out of the arena and thus win. It got so bad that in the last season, of all the robots that got through to the semi-finals, two had no flipping capability. Though one of the two eventually won the entire series.
 * In the series 6 final, Tornado employed a Game Breaker of its own - An external frame, designed to keep Razer far enough away from Tornado's body that it couldn't cause any damage. The frame was so big that Tornado wouldn't fit into the pit. Razer and Tornado fans still argue over whether the frame should have been allowed or not, even 18 years later. The frame was no longer allowed to be used in the Seventh Wars since the new rules required robots with interchangeable weapons to retain the same dimensions in all configurations.
 * Ham and Cheese: Whenever Wheely Big Cheese is present, add Craig Charles and you partially literally get this.
 * Nightmare Fuel: Granny's Revenge.
 * Conquering Clown. It was a wedge-shaped robot with a spinning blade for a weapon and a clown head for decoration. The clown face was creepy enough on its own, but when it was set on fire the rubber would slowly melt away and leave an even more horrifying empty metal face before the neck snapped completely. Brrr.
 * The Scrappy: The Refbot was highly unnecessary and annoying.
 * Refbot wasn't entirely unnecessary- he came equipped with a fire extinguisher to put out burning robots and the plough on his front allowed him, as an impartial participant, to free robots that were stuck on part of the arena but not immobolized without damaging them.
 * He was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in Extreme by giving him the electronic countdown and yellow/red card system, both of which were far more useful than the fire extinguisher (which proved highly ineffectual the first time it was used) and the ploughs which on more than one occasion only got in the way.
 * A better example would be Cassius Chrome, who debuted in the final series. His weapons? Metal fists that repeatedly punched other robots (and were interchangeable with a set of spikes). They were completely useless.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: 3 Stegs to Heaven, Corkscrew, and the gold version of Panic Attack.
 * Justified in that newer robots usually did suck a lot more than the original. 3 Stegs was extremely weak compared to it's predecessor (which took Chaos 2 to beat) and Panic Attack's Gold version had very poor locomotion. As for Corkscrew Two, well...that was completely useless.
 * Twister was nowhere near as good as its predecessor, Berserk II. It broke down from a gentle bump against Clawed Hopper of all robots.
 * Inverted with the first Dutch champion, Slicer. It is the successor to Technolease, which competed in the First World Championship, and it performed far better.
 * This was also the reaction of some fans when the early 'trials' were dispensed with as part of the main tournament, which was turned into a straight knockout competition.
 * The Problem with Licensed Games: The 5 Robot Wars video games ran the gamut, from unplayable to decent. There was also a board game, which was not well-received.
 * Sort of averted with Robot Arena 2, which, while not a licensed game, is pretty much indistinguishable from one, to those who don't know. It even has a fan-made mod (which is now more popular than the core game), that adds in the Robot Wars and Battlebots arenas, and at least thirty RW/BB robots. Unlike the official games, Robot Arena 2 has somewhat realistic physics (although they're prone to breaking) and building your own robots is actually worthwhile, as you can literally build it anyway you want, rather than having set places to put set parts. If you want to use a saw blade as your wheels, that's fine, if you want to stack a motor on top of another to make your weapon spin faster, that works too. The game can be downloaded for free nowadays, premodded, if you know where to look.(www.gametechmods.com is the only place that you can get it)