Death Battle’s line-up looked like this in the early days, and it was supposed to end at episode 26:
As seen above, Tommy Oliver was going to be Leo’s original opponent, but he was switched out for Zitz due to a fan vote.
Several members of Team Four Star auditioned for Shadow before Takahata101 was chosen.
Around Mario vs Sonic, Ben admits he barely got any sleep while working on Death Battle and his voice, social life, and college grades were going downhill.
For Chun-Li vs Mai, Ben made the fight animation in less than 2 days, made sure to include Mai’s more sexual sprites for laughs, and accidentally labeled her measurements with inches instead of centimeters.
Starscream vs Rainbow Dash came about from a conversation with Chad and ProJared where they joked about tapping into the brony community’s popularity and Jared suggesting a pony fight a Transformer. The first fight considered was Megatron vs Twilight Sparkle, but it was abandoned because there wasn’t a connection to play off of. Craig was against including MLP in Death Battle, but Ben went ahead anyway. He also made sure not to include swearing, blood, or gore; and decided to only do the episode if Rainbow Dash won because “the bronies we’d attract would think we baited them, the non-bronies would question why the episode exists at all, and it might scar some very young children when their parent uses YouTube as a ‘babysitting tool.’”
Eggman vs Wily was done in an effort to improve the show’s quality and show ScrewAttack’s higher-ups that the show could use its profits to improve Death Battle’s production.
The calc for Peach’s Mega Strike was just supposed to be a dumb joke, but the amount of time spent on it in the episode made Ben reconsider how to evaluate future Death Battle winners.
Link vs Cloud’s rule of “No outside help” was only meant to apply for the episode itself to keep things fair and prevent the inclusion of summons or fairies. But the way they worded it made people think it applied for the whole series. This episode was enough of a debate that it got everyone in ScrewAttack’s office involved. Its animation was actually supposed to be 2D, and Ben even sent the animator all of the assets, but the animator surprised him by sending back a 3D animation.
Pikachu vs Blanka came from Chad joking about how if the two fought, Blanka could just eat Pikachu.
During research for He-Man vs Lion-O, Ben and Chad would try to one-up each other by discussing the feats they learned about that day.
Shao Kahn vs M. Bison was when Ben first introduced the research team, who started off as members of the G1 blog that he’d reach out to and discuss topics with.
Ben feels uncomfortable with how much time is spent talking about Ivy and Orchid’s breasts and feels the jokes didn’t land. This is why Boomstick’s perverted nature bec more toned down as the show went on.
Ben was conflicted about including Scorpion’s ability to drag Ryu to the Netherrealm because he felt the fight’s location shouldn’t impact its conclusion. He ultimately decided to include it because it was part of Scorpion’s arsenal rather than something neither could control.
Kirby vs Buu was originally going to be Kirby vs Ditto, but Kirby’s pan-throwing feat caused Ben to change his mind. He initially considered having an eating contest between Kirby, Goku, Snorlax, and Luffy, but decided on Kirby vs Buu at the last possible minute.
Ragna VS Sol Badguy, Gaara VS Toph, and Boba Fett VS Samus Aran Remastered were all rushed out due to Ben trying to make up for a slip in schedule that happened due to difficulties during production. He also said that he’s curious to see if Kirby VS Buu and Gaara VS Toph’s verdicts would hold up using modern DB’s rules.
While Guts vs Nightmare was being produced, Ben was going through a rough point in his life and was debating if he should stop working on the show. His spirits were lifted when Zack sent him his animation for Guts vs Nightmare, which helped reinvigorate him.
While working on Iron Man vs Lex Luthor team used some old Kinects to build a mocap rig and help improve Torrian’s character movements.
Knuckles was originally going to win against Donkey Kong until Ben discovered the context behind the robot-moon feat.
Yang vs Tifa was originally going to end with Yang’s killing blow happening near a stack of Vytal Tournament leaflets which would get kicked up by the force, fly around the area, and have one land on the camera. This was part of their agreement that in exchange for Rooster Teeth letting them use RWBY’s characters and casting Barb as Yang, they’d have to include a reference to the then upcoming Volume 3 of RWBY. Unfortunately, time constraints and their equipment not being up to task caused them to change it to the banner seen in the final episode.
Season 3 was when the research team was officially brought onto the show.
The joke about Sarge being Boomstick’s dad in Meta vs Carolina was based on an in-joke between Ben and Chad, and Boomstick’s voice was based off of Sarge.
The reason Scout didn’t run that much in Tracer vs Scout was due to how small the area and setpieces were, and to give Torrian a break because constantly animating the 3D episodes by himself was starting to affect his health. The latter also caused Amy vs Ramona to switch spots with Hulk vs Doomsday so he’d have more than 6 weeks to complete it.
I think this was already mentioned on the thread, but Hulk vs Doomsday was originally going to be Hulk vs Broly. It was later changed due to poll votes and discussions Ben had with fans.
Lara Croft vs Nathan Drake was supposed to be the finale for season 3, but got swapped around for Deadpool vs Pinkie Pie, which was originally the premiere for season 4.
Scrooge vs Shovel Knight was done because the team wanted to use both characters in a fight, and Scrooge was brought up by Sam while the team discussed what episodes they wanted to work on.
The killing blow for Venom vs Bane references Chad’s original idea for the killing blow in Batman vs Spider-Man, where Peter would’ve shot webbing down Bruce’s throat and suffocated him.
Ben’s hyped to bring Luffy into Death Battle at some point.
Evolutions were considered for Lucario vs Renamon, but were scrapped to help differentiate it from Pokémon vs Digimon.
The team debated canceling Batman Beyond vs Spider-Man 2099 since it would’ve been 2 Batman episodes close to each other, but Ben chose to go ahead with it since Terry’s different enough from Bruce.
Leon vs Frank was done because Torrian wanted to do it, but the animation had to be moved to the 2D team.
