Robot Wars (TV series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • 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 unimpressive to say the least.
    • 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.
    • A lot of veteran robots that came back in 2016 qualify due to being in retirement for so long and with their internals modernised. Justified since the 12 year gap between Series 7 and 8 meant that technology had advanced tremendously since 2004.
  • Broken Base: Tornado vs. Razer in the series 6 final most notably.
    • Firestorm 2's Heat Final match with The Morgue in Series 4; one camp will tell you that The Morgue was robbed of a darkhorse victory due to Firestorm falling into the pit, whereas The Morgue didn't quite go in itself. The other camp will also point out that The Morgue was technically pitted since its baseplate dropped below the pit's rim, which technically counts as a pitting at that point.
    • The House Robots themselves. Depending on who you ask, they are either entertaining hazards that spice up a battle, or they are incredibly annoying and have the capacity to unfairly alter the outcome of a fight.
  • 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.
    • Hellbent was a very short lived example, absolutely thrashing everything in its opening bout, despite being its very first battle. It proved to have a strong axe and flipper, and looked pretty sturdy too. The reason it didn't go further than Round 2 however, is because it went against the vastly improved Atomic.
  • 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 decades 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.
  • Informed Attribute: Many newcomers will enter Robot Wars with a machine that they claim is stronger/more powerful than the the elites; like a flipper more powerful than Chaos 2's, or a flywheel more deadly than Hypnodisc's, to name a couple of examples. 9 times out of 10, these claims tend to be grossly exaggerated and never live up to said claims.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: One of the most common criticisms of Series 9 was that it retained the Round Robin format in the second round, and kept the number of competing robots the same as the year prior, at just 40. Aside from the addition of the Dial of Doom, not much else was changed or improved.
    • Justified in some ways for Chaos 2; the robot barely changed since its debut in The Third Wars, and it started to struggle more and more against strong opposition later in its career. Even lesser opponents like Crushtacean gave it trouble towards the end.
      • Averted with Behemoth; though the general design remained the same, the team kept on improving the robot year after year until it finally landed a joint 3rd place finish in the most recent series (the only reason it took this long is due to a long string of bad luck and technical mishaps).
    • Ming 3 is often accused of being a Razer clone (even when the team stated otherwise), thus frequently decried as a crap robot because of it.
    • Gravedigger's Series 3 incarnation has this reputation for being a Cassius clone. Still a good robot, but no one can seem to look past the similar design to the latter.
    • Panic Attack had fought in 6 wars by the time the classic run ended, but it had the same general design as in early wars, and still used electrically powered weapons in an ever-evolving sport where more advanced/powerful weaponry was used.
  • Large Ham: Jonathon Pearce, naturally.
  • Narm: Laurie Calvert's (captain of Team Lightning) over the top attempt to sound threatening ahead of their match with Thor was more amusing than intimidating (though it's not as though he was actually trying that hard).

Laurie Calvert: Just wait...<puts on shades>...FOR THE THUNDAHH!!

  • Negative Continuity: One of the show's biggest criticisms from the start is how inconsistently the rules tend to be applied, which often tend to lead to debates over how a battle should/shouldn't have gone.
    • One such rule is a robot being classed as immobile even if it is only moving on one side. Infamously, Suicidal Tendencies lost to Wheely Big Cheese in the Heat H final of the Fourth Wars because of this ruling despite being the more dominant robot. But then in the Fifth Wars semi final between Hypnodisc and Dominator 2, the latter was stuck spinning in tight circles, yet the fight was dragged out for the full 5 minutes despite the fact that Dominator 2 should've been counted out.
    • Another example is Sir Chromalot being spared from a Round 1 defeat in the Third Wars/Heat D due to being unfairly pitted by the House Robots rather than its opponent (since Chromalot was just about still moving). But then in Extreme I, Sir Killalot out of nowhere just grabbed Killertron (who was in no danger whatsoever, nor was it near a CPZ) and dumped it into the pit, giving Splinter the win with no intervention from the judges.
  • 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.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: In the Third Wars, pneumatic spikes would suddenly pop out of the floor when a robot drives over them. The problem is that they are not marked on the floor whatsoever, so roboteers don't see them until it is too late. This hazard has ended the campaigns of Behemoth, Thing II, and Pitbull unceremoniously and were thankfully removed from the Fourth Wars onwards.
    • Series 10 introduced the Fog of War, which simply blasts massive volumes of CO2 into the arena for about 10 seconds. However, not only does it completely obscure everyone's vision (including the House Roboteers), but it causes the battle to screech to a halt.
  • 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 immobilized 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.
  • Shocking Elimination: As reigning champion at the time, and seemed nigh unstoppable, Chaos 2 was viewed as the firm favourite to win the Northern Annihilator that ran alongside The Fourth Wars, only to suddenly crash and burn in Round 1 when the axe wielders - Dominator 2 and Killerhurtz - overwhelmed and immobilised it.
    • Bigger Brother's shocking defeat at the hands of Iron Awe 2.1 in the Seventh Wars definitely qualifies. The 4th seed started strongly by tossing Iron Awe across the arena, but then out of nowhere, got caught by the latter and flung over the fence, and out of the competition!
    • Thermidor 2 was a firm favourite for Johnathon Pearce to win Extreme's Annihilator in Episode 7. It ended up being the first to fall when Splinter rammed it into submission and was finished by Shunt.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: 3 Stegs to Heaven, Corkscrew, and the gold version of Panic Attack.
    • Justified in that newer robots usually tend to not be as good as the originals. 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, it abandoned the corkscrew design in favour of a flat invertible circular design with a spinning disc. It proved to be rather 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)
  • The Woobie: Díotíor had an absolutely rotten time in The Fourth Wars for several reasons. First, it competed in the Sumo Basho event in Heat B and performed dismally with a time of only 3.95 seconds. Then by the time it fought in Heat C, the team hastily tried to put the robot back together, having dismantled it at customs to prevent a repeat of what happened the year before, only to discover that the robot was overweight (forcing the team to take the top off of), and the weapon mechanism had broken. High expectations were on Díotíor to do reasonably well as it was given the 21st seeding, but due to the above problems, it was felled by Ming 2 in less than 5 seconds, landing it its worst domestic championship result ever, and its only 1st round loss.
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