Robot Wars (TV series)

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A British television show about alleged "rowbutts", actually remote controlled vehicles, fighting each other with everything short of untethered projectiles and hardened steel blades. Other than flipping the other over, often neither rowbutt is pulling any punches. It's a lot better than it sounds - Craig Charles calls it "Rowbutt Wars", though apparently it's spelled "Robot Wars". The show lasted for seven seasons between 1997 and 2004, plus two editions of Robot Wars Extreme and several computer games. The first 6 (and the two extremes) aired on BBC2 while the last season aired on Channel Five. The latter channel's treatment of the show proved to be the death of it, but it lives on in repeats and live events organised by the roboteers.

The first season was hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, but later seasons were hosted by Craig Charles, who was more suited for this. The show was originally a mix of fighting and various "trials" (games such as pinball, sumo, obstacle courses, etc.); later on, more emphasis was put on the former and by series 5 the format was entirely combat-based.

The show ran for 7 series and 2 Extremes before it ended in 2004, but after 12 years of live events across Britain, the show was revived in 2016 in a new filming location, a new arena, new presenters and, most importantly, a new breed of modern combat machines taking advantage of new technology and resources; also returning are House Robots Sir Killalot, Dead Metal, Shunt and Matilda, all bigger, badder, and meaner than ever before. The revived series was hosted jointly by Dara O' Brien and Angela Scanlon, with old hand Jonathon Pearce returning as commentator. The modern era was commissioned for 3 wars in 2016 and 2017 with 2 episode specials in between.

Not to be confused with Super Robot Wars, or with the American series Battlebots with which it shares a common ancestor in the form of underground American competitions in the early 1990's. No relation at all with the 1993 Giant Mecha movie of the same name. If your looking for a trope about wars against robots, that's Robot War.

Tropes used in Robot Wars (TV series) include:
  • Arch Enemy: many, many long-standing rivalries; Panic Attack vs. Firestorm, Razer vs. Tornado, everyone vs. the House Robots...
  • Actor Allusion: The robot "Scutter's Revenge" (and its followup "Spawn of Scutter") was a reference to the Scutters from host Craig Charles' role in Red Dwarf.
    • Likewise, Inquisitor from series 2 was named after the title enemy from Red Dwarf series 5 episode "The Inquisitor".
  • Anachronic Order: Heats F and M were swapped in the logical sequence of the 4th Wars. It is believed that this was altered so that Gemini (pegged to win Heat F) could eventually meet Chaos 2 (almost certain to win Heat A) and continue their rivalry. Unfortunately, Gemini failed in this regard, making the whole process for nothing.
    • Heats A and E were swapped in broadcast order for the Seventh Wars. Traditionally Heat A was the returning champion's heat, but the producers thought it made for a weak series opener because one of the robots broke down before making it into the arena.
  • Ascended Fanboy: Martin Smith went from being a roboteer with Cruella in the first and second series to be a full-time judge from the third series onwards. Justified since, while the competition is open for anybody with any skill, quite a lot of the roboteers are very capable and qualified with robotics outside of Robot Wars (indeed, at the time of his ascension, Martin Smith was a professor of robotics at the University of East London).
    • Anyone who liked the show and had the know-how could be one. Numerous teams were inspired to build and compete after seeing the show on TV.
  • Awesome but Impractical: The move of flipping a robot into the pit, which whilst very cool-looking was difficult for a robot to pull off without driving in itself.
    • A lot of the machines themselves fit. Generally, the more fancy a robot looks, the more vulnerable it is.
      • Hypno Disk comes to mind. It was one of the most powerful, destructive robots on the show, the massive disk could wreak most machines to pieces within a couple of blows. Sadly, Hypno was extremely prone to mechanical failures, presumably due to the extreme recoil caused by the impacts of the disk dislocating sensitive machinery within, and therefore, Hypno Disk would rarely win tournaments.
      • One of Tornado's weapons in Series 7 was a vertical spinning bar recycled from the infamous external frame used to win Series 6. In theory, it could have been a good weapon, but the team didn't use it since Tornado would not be able to run inverted (not surprising considering 6 of its 7 opponents had some flipping capacity).
      • Wheely Big Cheese had an enormous flipper capable of launching 100kg robots out of the arena from halfway across the box, but it was weak everywhere else; welding, manoeuvrability, speed, and reliability. As a result, Wheely Big Cheese wasn't as successful as it could've been despite reaching 2 semi finals.
      • Vortex Inducer from the Dutch series; it had a spinning disc mounted on a thin axel and could rotate between vertical and horizontal configurations. This sounded like pure genius, but unfortunately, its effectiveness was diminished due to circumstances: the robot needed tracks to move the whole thing, and the team had to take them off because the robot was overweight. The result is a robot that barely moved, and lost very quickly. Worse still, the axel the disc was mounted on was extremely thin, as Sir Killalot was able to easily cut the robot clean in two with his claw!
      • Project 2: Hex 'Em, another Dutch entrant (well, Belgian) featured only one drive wheel and two casters at the front. The wheel was mounted on a pivot and can be rotated with a linear actuator. Sounds cool, right? Well, in practice it proved difficult to control as Project 2 was unable to properly line up for an attack against its opponent.
    • Walkerbots fit this perfectly. Robots that actually walked around on legs, and were engineering marvels, but woefully inefficient when it came to fighting, often coming down to over-complicated walking mechanisms, poor armour, ineffective weapons, or just being agonisingly slow. With one exception...
      • They were very effective when used in Robot Wars' sister show, Techno Games, though.
  • Awesome but Practical: Razer, full stop. It was popular for a reason. The machine looked way past cool, could dish out massive damage, yet would rarely malfunction and had no stupid weaknesses (like being flipped over). While Razer has had its subversions - like when it would indeed malfunction - the fact remains that it was one of the most successful machines on the show AND one of the most Badass ones as well. The Razer team are well known for mixing aesthetic sense with performance in their machines with their Battlebots entry Warhead being surprisingly successful despite its elaborate design.
    • Anarchy, the one truly successful walkerbot. Unlike other walkers, which were slow and featured ineffective weapons and no protection for the legs. Anarchy, built by Mike Franklin (who built the very successful 101), was far speedier than other walkers (5mph, compared to the others 2 to 3 mph), had armour around the legs, a very thick front scoop, a very powerful flipper and a very powerful axe. It actually reached the heat final (the only other walker to get past round 1 was The Clawed Hopper, which did so because the opponent broke down when it touched it) and took future champion Tornado to defeat it.
  • Berserk Button: The House Robots generally don't like it when the competitiors attack them or their mates; some of them learned this the hard way!
  • Blatant Lies: The official merch told wondrous tales about Inquisitor and Aggrobot (in series 2 and 3 respectively) beating Razer by bravely charging in with their woefully underpowered weapons, miraculously hitting a weak point and taming the beast. The truth didn't make for quite as good a story; both breakdowns were just miniscule component failures that killed Razer's drive.
  • Boring but Practical: The original build of Panic Attack, that won the second series and beat Cassius? Just a box with lifting forks and a hell of a driver.
    • As in Awesome but Impractical, a lot of successful machines come to mind. Tornado was essentially a quick and resistant flat box on wheels. It had a laughably weak weapon, but was immune to just about everything opponents could throw at it and would win by mere aggressiveness and persistence as opposed to actual damage-dealing. Bigger Brother also comes to mind. Not a particularly interesting of a concept, not a very cool weapon (simple flipper), but a set of armor so heavy even Razer, known for one of the most powerful weapons, could barely make a dent.
    • Full body spinners (essentially spinning domes, cones or cylinders with blades attached in most cases) were as destructive as they were basic as they could dent or tear most armor on contact barring mechanical failure. The entry built by Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage actually endangered the audience despite all the safety measures in place. Most designs were also barely mobile and hard to control, so some early matches were won with the opponent essentially destroying itself in attack attempts.
  • Butt Monkey: Ming 3 has been trashed by spinning discs on three separate occasions. One was due to unfair meddling by a house robot.
    • Robochicken too (and this show came BEFORE Robot Chicken, by the way).
      • Nemesis as well, which was prone to catching fire due to having a fur-covered body. This happened in all of it's appearances due to Sgt. Bash inevitably singling it out above everyone else. Eventually there was a fight between the aforementioned Bash, Nemesis and another robot prone to fires just so everyone could watch them burn. (Sgt. Bash won.)
    • Among the house robots, Refbot. Matilda was these in the early days before she Took a Level in Badass.
  • British Brevity: Just Series 1, where Grand Final didn't even get its own episode.
  • Cargo Ship: An in-universe example: Jonathan Pearce commonly suggested that Matilda was having a relationship with one of the other house robots, usually Sir Killalot, Sgt Bash or Shunt.
  • Catch Phrase: "Pit! Pit! Pit!"
    • "Let the wars begin!"
    • "ACTIVATE!"
    • Charles would finish each episode with a four line poem ending "on Robot Wars."
    • Charles got several introductions in the early years from the announcer, but eventually stuck with "Ladies and Gentlemen. Please welcome the master of mayhem: Craig Charles."
    • The head of the Recyclopse/Cassius team had "Well, you gotta try, ain't ya?"
  • Chainsaw Good: Averted; chainsaws were one of the least effective weapons seen on Robot Wars, even House Robot Matilda ditched hers after Series 4 (the new spinning disc was designed to be interchangable with the chainsaw, but the chainsaw was never used again).
  • Channel Hop: From BBC2 to Channel 5.
  • Characterization Marches On: Cassius' accidental invention of the srimech - which was subjected to six consecutive replays from different angles immediately afterwards - is often accused of being What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?, because in later series every robot had it and flippers as a whole were commonplace (it was considered madness to not have some way of self-righting). At the time, however, it was groundbreaking, particularly since until then Sir Killalot's biggest threat was considered to be his ability to turn robots over with the lance.
  • Cheerful Child: These appeared on a lot of teams.
  • Chef of Iron: Technically Diotoir when the team began putting food on it, so it would cook when the carpet lining that covered it caught on fire (although when they tried this by sticking a kebab on it the robot ended up in the pit instead).
  • Contest Winner Cameo: Christian Bridge joining the Panic Attack team during season 4 after winning a competition in the Robot Wars Magazine.
  • Cool but Inefficient: Oversized static spikes, axes (with a few exceptions), chainsaws, and drills.
    • The paramount example has to be a a robot called Niterider. Its weapon was a "disemboweler," a drill accoutered with three flanges. The idea was to dig into the opponent's innards, and the flanges would flail around and slash the electronics. In practice though, lining up an attack with such an unwieldy weapon was impossible, and most metals can't be pierced with a drill.
  • Cosmic Deadline: The Diotoir team arrived in series 3 with their robot in pieces as it had been disassembled by customs. To avoid the same problem in series 4, they took the robot disassembled anyway, thinking they'd have enough time to put it back together when they got there. When they arrived, however, they found that the time of their first fight had been moved forward and that the robot was over the weight limit. The end result was that they went into battle with their top armour removed and no power for their weapon. They did not do very well.
  • Death From Above: The Drop Zone
    • A partial subversion, in that the competitors were already immobilized and therefore out of the running when placed on the Drop Zone, so it could be more of an example of Kick Them While They Are Down.
      • How much harm it actually did would also vary; some weeks a harmless object such as a load of plastic balls would be dropped for comic effect rather than damage, and if the producers were feeling cruel it'd be something like railway tracks; occasionally an object meant to do serious damage would prove ineffectual.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: In Robot Wars Extreme, Spawn Again teamed up with Comengetorix for a tag team match. The former's explanation of why they joined forces? "Last year we beat them, ever since we've been friends!"
  • Determinator: Bigger Brother and Wild Thing in their fights with Hypnodisc. Firestorm too.
  • Dueling Shows: With Battlebots. Both share a common ancestor in the robot combat tournaments held in abandoned San Francisco warehouses in the early 90's.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The first few series have plenty of this; a visibly more relaxed attitude to health and safety, a completely different set, more simple designs, lots of teams that retired in later wars, the Gauntlet and other 'trials'.
  • Everything's Better with Spinning: Hypnodisc is the most remembered.
    • Blendo had a varation, in that the whole robot itself spun around. It was so deadly in 1995, it had to be removed from the competition due to audience safety. Who were the makers of this robot? Adam and Jamie of mythbusters.
    • Disappointingly averted with Gyrobot, which had some genius design elements, but sadly didn't make it far.
    • Averted with 13 Black, for whom spinning rarely works at all
      • As a last resort, 13 Black will spin its whole body round and round, in hopes that the other robot is dumb enough to bump into it. It's a destructive tactic, but Craig Charles rightly calls them chicken.
    • And of course, Typhoon 2, who went on to win the seventh wars thanks to its "gyroscopic speed".
  • Epic Fail: Many robots dived straight into the pit or never moved at all. The Killerhurtz vs. Cerberus fight in series 3 must be mentioned; Killerhurtz hit Cerberus once, backed off, then careered around the arena and flew directly into the pit.
    • In the case of Killerhurtz they claimed that they'd forgotten it was there after taking part in Battlebots, which doesn't have a pit.
    • In one of the early series, Uglybot managed to make a negative score on the Gauntlet because it got stuck on the turntable.
    • One of the series 2 "trials" was a Joust, where each robot had to cover as much ground as possible against Matilda. The fourth robot to run got stuck and was pushed back, meaning that the last robot to run had to beat a negative score (-2.10m) to qualify. It didn't move at all until it was too late, whereupon it got stuck as well, and was dragged back to -2.80m.
  • Executive Meddling: In the Second Wars semi-finals, in the case of Mortis. In the pinball trial, when Mortis first started to move it got stuck on the arena spikes, meaning that it scored 0 points. However, somebody on the production team decided to let Mortis run again. (This at least may have been justified, as the roboteers had been told the spikes would not be used.) However, the usual driver was unhappy about this decision, meaning that another member of the Mortis team drove the robot. In the second attempt, Mortis scored very few points, and the house robots started scoring points for them (note that when the trial was introduced it was explicitly pointed out that points scored by the house robots would not count), and according to the scoreboard, Mortis had scored 100 points. In the televised version, there was no hint that Mortis had been given a second run or that the production team had fixed it. The production team clearly wanted Mortis, the favourite, to reach the final. At least when Panic Attack pushed Mortis into the pit in the next round the executives didn't try and persuade the judges that they shouldn't win.
    • The "Grudge Matches" special at the end of the series included a fight between Mortis and Napalm, the robot eliminated as a result of the above meddling. The intro to the match didn't explain in any detail and made it look as if the Mortis team had been given a second chance by protesting to the judges, when in fact they were given one despite their protests. (Mortis won the grudge match.)
    • Another instance pertaining to The Seventh Wars. With the new producers, a new rule was implemented that all competing robots must have an active weapon. Therefore, robots who only had static wedges and spikes, or were Thwack-Bots (a robot which caused damaged by spinning on it's axis and slamming a clubbing or sharpened weapon into its opponent) were a big no-no. Even STINGER, a former GRAND FINALIST, which had consistently participated in highly entertaining battles and fought reigning champion Chaos 2 to a standstill in series 4, where it placed 3rd overall by a very narrow margin was barred from competing as well, because it didn't have an active weapon. The majority hated this rule, especially considering a sit-and-spin robot called T-Wrecks made it through the cracks.
  • Filler: Constantly, especially in the Grand Final where four battles (or three; on two occasions the third place playoff had to be cancelled) lasting five minutes each were milked out to the full timeslot.
  • Five-Bad Band: The house robots:
  • Fluffy the Terrible: Literally. There was a robot named Fluffy. It had a spinning blade that was very destructive.
  • Follow the Leader: Any time a weapon became really successful several teams would copy it in the following series, each with varied amounts of success, examples include flippers (first used by Recyclopse in season 1 but became really popular after Cassius in season 2 and Chaos 2 in season 3), crushers (after Razer), spinning discs (after Hypnodisc) and the SRIMECH/Selfrighting Mechanism (first used by Cassius in season 2)
  • Fun with Acronyms: Some robots would employ these as names (for instance, SMIDSY stands for Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, which the team, a group of bikers, had heard many times from cars nearly hitting them)
    • Robots without SRIMECH (itself an acronym for Self-righting mechanism) would sometimes have PTO written on the bottom, "Please Turn Over".
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Chaos 2 getting flipped out of the arena by Dantomkia
    • Chaos 2 was also knocked out of the Second World Championship on Robot Wars Extreme by being driven into the pit while in the process of flipping another bot into it.
    • Razer getting immobilised in the third wars when it got itself stuck on the spike at the back of its weapon which had raised its wheels of the ground.
  • Humiliation Conga: Once immobilised, the House Robots are free to come in and punish the robot more, using their own weapons plus the arena's own hazards; a lucky competitor might find themselves in the pit straight away, but there's also the floor flipper, drop zone, flamethrowers, saws...
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: The odd VHS and DVD specials exist, and the show still exists in reruns, but no full release of championships have been made. The only complete episode to receive a commercial release was the First World Championship. That said though, you can now find full episodes of the show on YouTube, either in the full 45 minute format, or separated into 4 parts depending on where you go.
  • Large Ham: Craig Charles and Jonathan Pearce.
    • The Sir Chromalot team as well.
    • The International Wreck Crew, of Plunderbird and Plunderstorm infamy. They were a lot better at rapping than robot building.
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: The Recyclopse/Cassius team were known for generally trying to defeat their opponents without overly damaging them, and then if the house robots tried to damage the helpless opponent, they would use that as an excuse to attack the house robots (and show no mercy).
  • Lighter and Softer: Most noticeably after Series 1, with the removal of the oft downright rude Jeremy Clarkson, and the contestants no longer swearing on camera. The theme slowly drifted away from futuristic apocalypse towards straight-up competition.
    • Justified in Nickelodeon Robot Wars, the kids' version of the American import Extreme Warriors. They deactivated all flame based arena hazards (including Sgt Bash's flame thrower) and refereed to Sir Killalot as Sir K
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: Up to 128 robots in a single season, not counting side events. You're introduced to a minimum of 6 robots and their team members per episode.
  • Loophole Abuse: The mandate for an "active weapon" remained when the show came back in 2016, but Team Saint got around this rule with Gabriel: the robot was technically a thwack-bot which only featured a static blade similar to Stinger, but the robot was ingeniously designed to allow the body to move independently from the wheels, thus allowing Gabriel to swing its giant blade as if it was an axe, thus classing it as an active weapon.
    • Nuts 2 also did this; its weapon was a pair of chain flails that only took effect with the sit-and-spin tactic, but Nuts 2 had "melty-brain" technology that allowed the robot to move very slowly around the arena while spinning at tremendous speeds.
  • Lovely Assistant: Arguably Philippa Forrester and Julia Reed.
  • Made of Iron: While most are literal examples, Bigger Brother shows this against Hypnodisc.
  • Manipulative Editing
  • Man On Fire: Or rather Robot On Fire. Particularly Díotóir, with external fur.
  • The Merch: This is possibly one of The BBC's most merchandising-friendly shows. In the early noughties Robot Wars merchandise was the number one boys' toy in the UK.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Most notably the house robots: Sir Killalot, Dead Metal, Mr. Psycho, Shunt.
    • Also subverted. Many of the most dangerous robots on the show either had fairly functional names (Hypnodisc, Razer) or aggressive, but not over-the-top ones (Chaos, Iron Maiden). Killalot, on the other hand, is slow enough that "really fast" isn't that relevant.
    • And Chaos isn't a name to run away from really fast?
  • Nice Hat: The captain of S3 sported a nice trilby hat, and a team member from The Stag donned a very nice hat with lights and moving parts!
  • Non Gameplay Elimination: The best remembered example is Pussycat's disqualification from series 3 for using an illegal weapon. Notably, several robots failed to make it into the arena. Terrorhurtz also springs to mind in Series 7 when it was disqualified for arriving at the studio incomplete.
  • Numbered Sequels: Some of the follow up robots' names (e.g. Chaos was followed by Chaos 2).
    • Got somewhat ridiculous with Firestorm who changed its number yearly and was on 5 in series 7.
    • The series/seasons themselves? The First Wars, The Second Wars, all the way up to the Seventh Wars.
  • Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Again, the names of some follow up robots (e.g. Scutter's Revenge was followed by Spawn of Scutter and then by Spawn Again).
    • Barber-ous was followed by Barber-ous 2, then "Barber-ous 2 and a Bit".
    • Each iteration of Kan-Opener was distinguished by letters rather than numbers (Series 7 version was H-spec, 2016 was J-spec).
  • Opening Narration: In the first 4 seasons (and the first episode of the 5th) this acted as a Last time on Robot Wars... sequence, but in seasons 6 and 7 this acted as a preview of the upcoming episode (which did of course lead to spoilers but this decreased somewhat in season 7.
  • Out of Order: Heats B and D of the second Wars were swapped round when broadcast, this is obvious when the heat winners are introduced in the semi-finals in heat order and Mace (winner of the broadcast Heat B) comes out 4th and Behemoth (the winner of the broadcast heat D) comes out second.
  • Overly Long Name: Lampshaded by Craig Charles once. At the end of each battle, he liked to shout out the result; one fight featured a robot called "Cataclysmic Variabot", and when he managed to say it without tripping up he added "Thanks for that!"
  • Piss-Take Rap: The Plunderbird team's intro in the first three seasons.

We are the crew and we're here to tell you - we're gonna bash them, we're gonna trash them. In the wars you know we're gonna thrash them. The forecast's bad. You better get running. It's gonna be tough. There's a Plunderstorm coming!

  • Promoted Fanboy: Martin Smith was a member of the Cruella team in series 1 and 2; he later became one of the show judges.
    • Also Jamie McGarry, who was the webmaster of the Panic Attack fan site for several years; when it became promoted to the official Panic Attack website, he was invited to join the team for the Seventh Wars.
  • Punny Name: For example, Axe-C-Dent.
    • 3 Stegs to Heaven (after Steg-O-Saw-Us and Steg 2).
    • Wheely Big Cheese.
    • Iron Awe
  • Ring Out: Against the rules initially, due to safety concerns and the possibility of damage to expensive ringside equipment. The growing prevalence of srimechs and development of effective flippers forced this to change.
  • Rule of Cool
  • Running Gag: Diotoir catching on fire. It reached the point where they began putting food (and presenters began making requests) on it.
    • Iron Awe getting flipped out of the arena (Axe Awe by Wheely Big Cheese in series 5; Iron Awe 2 by Chaos 2 in series 6 and Dantomkia in Extreme 2).
  • Screwed by the Network: Suffered this from both the BBC and Channel 5. Three episodes from Extreme II were never aired on terrestrial television, and the show in general got shunted around the schedules a lot, to the point that in the last series only about two episodes were shown in their originally advertised timeslots. Channel Five also moved it from its well-known Friday timeslot to Sunday evenings.
  • Shocking Elimination
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: When Sir Killalot joined the show he dwarfed the other House Robots and rather upstaged them.
  • Spoiler Opening: At least in Series 6.
  • The Worf Effect: Flipping a house robot was a common way for a robot to achieve this. It helped that their armour fell apart at the slightest touch.
  • Thirteen Is Unlucky: 13 Black had 2 huge spinning discs for massive destructive potential, and yet, it never lived up to its capabilities. Their motto was "unlucky for some..."
    • As Craig Charles said it only lasted about 13 seconds in series 5 (not true as it lasted the full five minutes, though it still lost the judges' decision) -- although in series 6 it reached the Semi-Finals, and managed to take out Chaos 2 and Dominator 2 in the All-Stars Tournament.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Killerhurtz becoming Terrorhurtz during Series 5, Atomic's upgraded design in Series 7, X-Terminator swapping out the axe for a flywheel, the reason why nobody remembers the original Chaos. Do we need to go on?
    • Terrorhurtz was a double-subversion; in its first Wars it failed to do any better than Killerhurtz despite the look, won only one battle (and that was because a house robot interfered) and only in the Sixth Wars did it really get going.
    • The House Robots in 2016: they weren't simply brought out of retirement, they were rebuilt to modern standards being heavier, stronger, and in Sir Killalot and Matilda's cases, faster.
  • Too Powerful to Live: Chaos 2 flipped its way to become Champion in series 3 and 4 with often minimal damage and effort, and came close to repeating the feat in series 5. This trope was invoked in one of the series 4 Annihilators when in the very first round, every single other robot united to take it out before anyone else; Badass Decay set in later in series 6 and the Extreme II All Stars.
  • Unexpected Character: There were a fair few veteran robots from the classic era of Robot Wars that no one expected to see again in the 2016 reboot, such as Chompalot, Thermidor II, Supernova, and a few others.
    • The General really exemplifies this trope since its only appearance before 2016 was in the Robotic Soccer competition in Series 3, 17 years prior, and never fought in the main UK championship until the show came back.
  • Unperson: The VHS release of "The First Great War", a collection of highlights and behind-the-scenes material of series 1, removed any footage of or reference to Jeremy Clarkson, and the video itself was presented by Craig Charles. No tie-in media mentions Clarkson at all, and many people watching series 1 for the first time since broadcast are surprised to find someone other than Charles as host.
    • It seemed like that season was never broadcast in the US.
  • Viewers Are Goldfish / Viewers are Morons: The profiles of the House Robots that were shown before every single fight in the Fifth Wars, even if said house robots had already appeared on the episode. If they'd cut those out, they could probably have included an extra battle with the time saved.
    • Starting with the Third Wars the heat final battles showed a short montage of how the competitors had managed to get to that stage, despite the fact that the clips were from battles between half an hour and three minutes before.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The new filming location for the series revival up in Glasgow, especially Series 8 and 9 being filmed during the winter, gave robots with CO2 powered weapons a new weakness: the low temperatures can cause a robot's CO2 system to effectively freeze up, causing their weapons to not function properly, if at all. Robots like Bonk!, Terrorhurtz, and especially Dantomkia suffered because of the cold climate.
  • Whammy: All too often, a robot would dominate in its battle, only to lose due to due radio interference, a dislodged safety link, or some other technical malfunction that causes it to stop dead. Razer and Fluffy were particularly notable for this.
  • Wham! Episode: In the early days, a viable piece of advice was "don't worry too much about armour, the robots' weapons don't actually do that much damage." Then came Series 3, Heat H, and in it: Hypno-Disc.
    • Someone from Team Mace (either Shane Howard or Brian Fountain) once claimed that you shouldn't enter Robot Wars if your robot needs a self-righting mechanism, or something to that effect. Given how Mace II was defeated in Series 3, he probably regretted saying that...
    • From later on in Series 3, Chaos 2 flipping Firestorm out of the arena. This new method of winning would be performed by many many flippers (and a few vertical spinners), culminating with 34 occurrences in the final season and a semifinal comprised almost entirely of bots with Ring Out potential.
  • What Could Have Been - despite being the two most successful non-flipper robots, and two of the fan favourites, there was never a matchup of Hypnodisc Vs Razer. No immobilisation, both out to destroy.
    • The "Peoples' Challenge" in Extreme gave the viewers the option to choose which robots they'd like to see fight each other, and Hypno-Disc vs. Razer was actually the winning choice, but both teams decided it wasn't worth the damage to their robots. Outside of that, the two robots came maddeningly close to meeting in the series 5 grand final and the first two All-Stars tournaments, but it never quite happened.
    • Seen in many cases throughout the shows run, notably in the first wars when Plunderbird 1 was eliminated in the gauntlet despite being in the same heat as a stock robot (kamikaze robot made to make up numbers), or several robots breaking down at critical moments where they were in complete control (or between rounds, which prevented the chance of Razer fighting fellow crusher Suicidal Tendencies), and most noted in the seventh wars with Lightning (which is championed by many fans as being likely to have won the title that year). Why did it lose? It came in the heat final with a flat tyre, which cost it.
      • This ignores the fact that Lightning's opponent had the second most powerful flipper in Robot Wars history, and whose list of victims included the arena sidewall, a camera, one of the other top flippers on the show (in the shortest fight ever), the seeded robot in the heat, and four house robots, three of which it was the only robot to take out, and one of which was four times its weight. A tire may not have been enough.
  • The Wiki Rule: Has its own wiki that is the only place on the internet to list all results ever.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: Behemoth got the challenge belt in Extreme 1 as a consolation prize for the world championship. They just had to beat out 3 challengers and it would be theirs to keep - even if a later challenger defeated them. The first two matches were a walk in the park, but their third opponent was the nigh-invincible at the time Tornado, who knocked them down and snatched the belt away. Behemoth would never win a trophy - unless you count the antweight version - and ended up with the most battle losses of any robot in Robot Wars.

The video games based on the show provide examples of:

  • Artificial Stupidity: It is often incredibly easy to get the AI robots in the computer games to drive into the pit simply by driving your robot to the other side of the pit, whereupon the AI robot will charge forward, straight into the pit.
    • The 'Football' mode on Extreme Destruction is just a regular head-to-head battle with a ball and goal, meaning that the competitor robot ignores the ball and just attacks you.
  • Artistic License Engineering: Chassis, armour, wheels, motors, power source, weapons and you're good to go.
    • Armour, wheels and even weapons will fly off in massive chunks as a robot gets hit. Even if the other robot is attacking with an axe it is enough to tear off whole sheets of metal.
  • A Winner Is You: Completing "Competition" mode on Extreme Destruction, which presents you with 'CONGRATULATIONS - enjoy your special prize' and a revolving image of a small carriage clock. Played for Laughs a little, as if you stay on the screen a while the clock falls apart.
  • Bonus Feature Failure: the computer games allowed you to unlock competitor robots to play as as you progress through the various tournaments. Unfortunately, several of these (Dominator II in Extreme Destruction, for example) are so poor compared to their real-life counterparts that they just weren't worth bothering with.
  • Contest Winner Cameo: Thor in the video game Arenas of Destruction.
  • Gravity Screw: The Mars arena includes an anti-grav switch.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder
  • Second Place Is for Losers
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