- —Tagline
Hulk VS Doomsday is the 69th episode of Death Battle, featuring The Hulk from Marvel Comics and Doomsday from DC Comics in a battle between destructive rage-filled monsters. Hulk was voiced by Parker Bohon.
Interlude
Wiz: Pure, unadulterated rage. Usually, in a stressful situation, you'd want to avoid this sort of emotion, in order to keep yourself focused.
Boomstick: Unless you're a giant, rampaging pile of muscles, like these two.
Wiz: Dr. Bruce Banner, The Incredible Hulk.
Boomstick: And Doomsday, the monster who killed Superman. He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.
Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win... a Death Battle.
The Hulk
Wiz: Within each of us, ofttimes, there dwells a mighty and raging fury, and this suits no one better than the mild-mannered scientist, Bruce Banner.
Boomstick: 'Cause when Bruce gets angry, oh boy, you wouldn't like him when he's angry.
Wiz: Doctor Robert Bruce Banner may have grown up with few friends, but what he lacked in popularity, he made up tenfold with his intellect. However, in spite of his gifts, it was never enough to earn the respect and love of his father.
Boomstick: Partly because Bruce was so smart, that his alcoholic dad literally thought he was a monster, and expressed that to Bruce pretty thoroughly...
A picture of Brian Banner send young Bruce flying with a slap is shown on-screen.
Boomstick: Goddamn! How much distance do you think he got there, Wiz?
Wiz: Eh, nine, 10 feet?
Boomstick: Man, with an arm like that, he could really go places, like the nuthouse, after he murdered his wife right in front of Bruce. Aww...
Wiz: Understandably traumatized, Bruce coped by creating an imaginary friend to talk to.
Boomstick: You know, I had an imaginary friend once.
Wiz: You did? What was his name?
Boomstick: Dad.
Wiz: Oh...
Wiz: Well, Bruce's friend served as an emotional outlet all the way through his college graduation. However, his advice to Bruce was oftentimes... destructive....
Boomstick: So, when the U.S. military recruited Bruce to make weapons, it was actually kind of fitting.
We see a penis-shaped bomb, with an asterisk in the far right and the words "NOT A DICK".
Wiz: Bruce was tasked with developing a gamma bomb, which would use gamma radiation to target enemy weapons and buildings without endangering human lives. At least, that's what Bruce was told.
Boomstick: Surprise surprise, gamma radiation is actually pretty fucking harmful. And when it came time to test the bomb, and some dumb kid decided to play his harmonica right in the test zone, Bruce asked his assistant to stop the countdown and dashed off to save him. But, turns out his assistant was a Russian spy who set off the bomb anyway.
Wiz: On that strange, strange day, Bruce's imaginary friend became a real life terror, as he transformed into... the Incredible Hulk.
The Hulk roars and destroys a tank.
Boomstick: Heh heh heh, really?
Wiz: Yes, apparently. Ever since, whenever he's angry, Bruce's body and mind morphs into that of The Hulk's, granting him unmeasurable power.
Hulk stands on a cliff and roars as a storm rumbles in the sky.
Boomstick: While he loses Bruce's brain power, The Hulk is ridiculously strong. He can leap great distances, survive the harshest environments, and most importantly, smash the crap out of everything with his bare fists.
Wiz: He also knows a technique known as the Thunder Clap, which creates a shock wave that can deafen foes, level forests, and push back explosions.
Boomstick: As if he needed anything more than that, The Hulk has a healing factor that gives Wolverine's a run for his money.
Caiera stabs Hulk through the chest, only for him to pull the arm out and the wound to instantly heal.
Caiera: You're healing... you should be dead!
Boomstick: He's super strong and super hard to kill, what's not to like?
Wiz: Well, there's one little detail that kind of ruins the whole experience: Bruce can't really control The Hulk. In fact, The Hulk is his own being, and they both hate each other, vying for dominance over Bruce's body, and yet, Bruce and The Hulk are often reminded how much they depend on each other for survival.
Boomstick: Bruce figured, if he was stuck with this big green goliath forever, he might as well try using him for good, eventually joining the Avengers, Defenders, the Fantastic Four, and even the Illuminati.
Wiz: Hulk has held up a 150 billion ton mountain, escaped Earth's gravitational pull with a single jump...
Boomstick: And one time, when a planet's tectonic plates started splitting apart, threatening to shatter the whole world, he just jumped right in there and pulled the planet back together.
Wiz: The estimated average mass of a single lithospheric plate is nearly 45 quintillion tons, and The Hulk pulled two of these together with nothing but his bare hands.
Boomstick: And he's not just strong and tough, he's more than twice as fast as a fighter jet, which puts him over Mach 5 speeds, at least, and he can always go faster if he's pissed off enough.
Wiz: This is because the Savage Hulk's strength is directly related to his anger; the angrier he gets, the more powerful he becomes. In theory, this means his maximum level of strength is potentially infinite, and when he taps into that immeasurable rage to the fullest, he truly lives up to his name of "Worldbreaker".
Boomstick: Bigger, stronger, and oozing with gamma radiation, the Worldbreaker Hulk is so powerful, with a single stomp...
Boomstick: He created earthquakes felt hundreds of miles away. In his battle with Sentry, basically Marvel's Superman, they almost destroyed New York, and when battling another Worldbreaker Hulk, a single collision between 'em obliterated an entire planet.
Wiz: Even the mutant Darwin's power, which specifically adapts to counter any enemy, decided that the best defense against The Hulk, was to be somewhere else.
Boomstick: Holy hell, who could even stand up to this madness?
Wiz: Not many, obviously. Typically, Bruce does his best to contain and limit the Hulk's power. In fact, Worldbreaker Hulk is the result of Bruce relinquishing that control entirely. In terms of combat, usually only cosmic beings like Silver Surfer or Zeus have the might to challenge The Hulk.
Boomstick: Oh yeah, like that one time Zeus hit him so hard, it burned out his healing factor.
Wiz: But even gods sometimes have to learn the hard way, you do not mess with the Incredible Hulk.
Loki: I am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by—
Hulk grabs Loki and slams him into the floor five times like a rag doll, then leaves him lying face-up in the resulting crater.
Hulk: Puny god.
Doomsday
Wiz: What if all you had ever known was hatred and aggression, violence and pain? This life is reality for Dooms...
Boomstick: YouTube comments... Do-Doomsday, yeah, the D-Doomsday guy.
Wiz: Thousands of years ago, on an uninhabitable, prehistoric planet which would one day be known as Krypton, a scientist named Bertron intended to engineer the ultimate lifeform.
Boomstick: Yep, it's another one of those stories, but with one hell of a twist!
Wiz: See, at this time, Krypton was a harsh wasteland, filled with nothing but sharp rocks, poisonous air, and violent predators.
Boomstick: Bertron believed that if he could create something that could live through that, they could survive just about anywhere.
Wiz: To realize this theory, Bertron acquired an infant from... somewhere, and through a rapidly accelerated evolution process, attempted to transform him into his dream creation.
Boomstick: Oh, don't try to dance around it, Wiz. Bertron put that little sucker into a baby cannon, blasted him into the wild to get murdered by any number of things, sucked up what was left of him with a vacuum cleaner, and just cloned a new one out of the mess to do it all over again.
Wiz: Well... yeah, the idea being each new clone would be stronger than the one before, thus covering millions of years of evolution in just a few decades.
Boomstick: That... doesn't sound like science...
Wiz: No. It doesn't. So, after 30 straight years of... baby murder, one of the clones finally survived the tests. Amazed by his own success, Bertron named this baby "The Ultimate."
Boomstick: The ultimate baby!
Wiz: But to the rest of the universe, he was their Doomsday.
Doomsday walks out of the fire that was left after an explosion from a truck.
Boomstick: See Wiz? Reloading as it is, patenting my baby cannon was a good idea.
Wiz: Successful as Bertron's experiment was, it was anything but a good idea. Turns out, while Doomsday usually appears to be a mindless beast, he remembered every single time Bertron had him killed. As a result, Doomsday had been unintentionally programmed, at a genetic level, to hate everything that lives.
Boomstick: Bummer. Needless to say, Bertron was pretty screwed.
Wiz: Because even with 30 years of development, Bertron had never quite figured out what to do if his experiment actually worked, because Bertron is the worst.
Boomstick: I mean, he did do what he set out to do. He made an eight foot ten monster that doesn't need to eat, breathe, or have internal organs to live. It just kills and kills and... kills some more.
Wiz: Doomsday possesses enormous strength, incredible durability, and poisonous spikes, which can extend, but due to Bertron's experiments, Doomsday's greatest power of all is his ability to adapt to his opponent's powers.
Boomstick: After taking his sweet revenge, Doomsday stowed away on a supply ship and ravaged dozens of planets, until he finally found himself on Earth.
Wiz: On that day, Doomsday did the unthinkable. On that day, Doomsday killed Superman. Well, kind of. He actually put him into a super sleep; after several days, he kinda woke up more powerful-
Boomstick: Yeah yeah yeah, we all know, Wiz. At least Supes took Doomsday down with him. Or, maybe not. Turns out, whenever Doomsday dies, he just comes back to life, forever immune to whatever killed him in the first place.
Superman tries to use his heat vision to lobotomize Doomsday as Justice Lord Superman did, but it fails and Doomsday just knocks him away.
Doomsday: Ah ah ah, can't beat me the same way twice.
Boomstick: He's been punched to death by Superman, blasted apart by the Radiant's energy, brutally ripped in half, incinerated by Imperiex, and just curbstomped by a Kryptonian horde.
Wiz: Practically invulnerable at this point, Doomsday's taken on Darkseid, tanking his Omega Beams and beating him to near death. He's singlehandedly defeated most of the Justice League and took on an energy attack that wiped out a fifth of a planet.
Boomstick: He's punched through the Phantom Zone, battled super beings called Gogs for a century, and even broken Wonder Woman's arms. Arms strong enough to help pull the Earth.
Wiz: And during his rematch with the Man of Steel, after witnessing Doomsday survive an explosion equivalent to one million nukes, Superman realized that the only way to stop him was to send him to the end of time.
Boomstick: At his most powerful, Doomsday's mere presence can boil the ocean and disintegrate buildings. A casual stroll across Africa made Wildebeests an endangered species, just by walking around. But what he's got in strength, he really lacks in brains.
Wiz: Not that he's dumb, he just literally lacks a brain. More often than not, Doomsday is little more than a one track mind killing machine. This makes his intentions predictable, and a clever opponent could use this to, say, lead him into a trap, and should that foe come up with a new way to hurt Doomsday, he could be killed.
Boomstick: Still, that's gotta be pretty goddamn hard to do.
Doomsday beats up Superman.
Prelude
Wiz: Alright, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all!
Boomstick: But first, Wiz won't stop talking about this thing, so he wants to tell you about it.
Wiz reads out an advertisement for Harry's.
Boomstick: But right now, IT'S TIME FOR A DEATH BATTLEEE!!!
Death Battle
A meteor flies from outer space and crashes onto a heavily populated city.
Doomsday emerged from the meteor and immediately goes on a rampage. Cars are turned over, and the people are in a panic as Doomsday starts killing multiple pedestrians and roars.
In order to stop the villain's massacre, a capsule sent by the Avengers lands in the middle of the street. A green fist punches the door off of it as Doomsday turns around to notice it. The Hulk comes out of the capsule and starts yelling. Doomsday, still in a fury, lets out a threatening growl as he focuses his attention on Hulk. Hulk replies:
Hulk: HULK SMASH UGLY FAKE HULK!
The two goliaths charge towards each other preparing their fists.
Their fists clash and cause a shock wave that sends debris flying at more citizens.
Doomsday tries punching Hulk, but Hulk counters the blows and pummels Doomsday.
Hulk: HULK CRUSH YOU LIKE BUG!
Doomsday catches one of Hulk's punches and starts laying his own beat down on the green giant.
Doomsday: DIE!!!
Doomsday kicks Hulk so hard that Hulk starts flying back and crashes through the capsule and the street.
Doomsday grabs hold of a nearby bus and tosses it towards Hulk's direction. Hulk catches it, but before he can do anything with it, Doomsday dive kicks through the bus to deliver another heavy blow to his opponent. Doomsday starts landing more hits and prepares another heavy punch.
Doomsday: DOOM!
Doomsday delivers a large uppercut that sends Hulk through a skyscraper. Hulk lands on a nearby building to regain his ground as Doomsday crashes through the skyscraper.
As Hulk watches from the edge of the top of the skyscraper, Doomsday starts to throw cars to Hulk's higher level. Hulk easily parries the cars. When Doomsday tosses a police car at the green freak of science, Hulk catches it.
Hulk: STUPID GRAY MAN!
Hulk than splits the car in half and wears them on his fists like boxing gloves.
Hulk: CARS CAN'T HURT HULK!
Hulk dives down with his fists landing on Doomsday's head.
Hulk: HULK SMASH!
Hulk uses the police car boxing gloves to deliver some large blows on Doomsday...
...and send him into a multi-story car park. Hulk follows inside it.
Hulk: HULK HATE YOU!
Doomsday begins to stand back up.
Hulk: HULK HATES SPIKY BEARD! SMASH!
Hulk unleashes a thunderclap which causes pain to Doomsday's hearing. Doomsday slowly adapts and powers through it and unleashes a large punch that breaks both the camera and the building the two are standing in.
Doomsday quickly emerges from the rubble and can't seem to find Hulk. He roars in triumph and starts walking away, but turns around after hearing Hulk pushing away the debris. Hulk is bruised and bleeding from the beatdown; while he's able to shake off the damage, his defenses begin to weaken. Despite this, Hulk stands up more determined.
Hulk: You break buildings good.
Hulk stomps onto the ground, creating an earthquake that shakes the Earth as his power and rage escalate to tremendous magnitudes.
Hulk: But Hulk... BREAK WORLDS!
Hulk starts glowing green as he enters his Worldbreaker form. Doomsday is oblivious to Hulk's new power and lets out a roar before the two run and clash their fists in an intense punch that levels the whole city and nearly destroys the continent. Doomsday stumbles from Hulk's superior strength; but recklessly resumes to assault Hulk. The two tank each other's blows, but Doomsday begins to flinch as Hulk overshadows him with his increasing power. Hulk gains the upper hand and slams Doomsday on the ground.
Hulk: SMASH!
Hulk stomps his foot on Doomsday's left arm so hard it is crushed and nearly breaks off. After screaming in pain, Doomsday grows a spike on his right hand and impales Hulk's right leg. Hulk steps back to recover as Doomsday heals his broken arm in an instant. Doomsday grows more protrusions on his arms and stabs Hulk's right arm when the green giant tries to punch him. Hulk's healing factor is unable to keep pace, as Hulk begins to slow down from his pain. Doomsday keeps making more spikes and rapidly repeatedly puts them through Hulk in multiple areas: impaling him with dozens of massive spikes.
Hulk falls to his knees in pain and exhaustion as Doomsday laughs and cracks his knuckles. "The Ultimate" starts punching Hulk's face repeatedly like a punching bag, resulting in a lot of green blood covering the screen.
Doomsday: ARGGGH! DIE!
Doomsday's merciless thrashing accelerates with both speed and ferocity with each blow. Doomsday then places his hand on Hulk's head.
Doomsday: DOOM!
Doomsday rips Hulk's head off by growing a blade on his left knee. He holds the deceased Banner's head in triumph while roaring.
Results
Boomstick: (sniffles) Oh, that was beautiful!
Wiz: With The Hulk's immeasurable power and Doomsday's impossible immortality, this truly felt like a fight between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.
Boomstick: Hulk may have had the advantage in raw strength, at least at his full potential, but Doomsday could certainly hold his ground. His victories against the likes of Superman and Darkseid prove he can take a hit from someone strong enough to break planets.
Wiz: And by experience, Doomsday had the speed advantage. He regularly fights foes with lightspeed capabilities, while that kind of speed is an extreme rarity in the Marvel Universe. In fact, the only foe that fast who Hulk's ever seemed to keep pace with in a one-on-one match was Sentry, and that was when he was at his most powerful stage, Worldbreaker Hulk.
Boomstick: So overall, Hulk had strength and Doomsday had speed, but neither completely outclassed the other. At first glance, this one looked like it can go either way.
Wiz: Which means the devil's in the very tiny details.
Boomstick: So why couldn't The Hulk's infinite strength just keep rising and eventually overwhelm Doomsday?
Wiz: Well, even assuming Hulk's strength WAS infinite, his healing factor was not. Don't get me wrong, it can only be overtaxed by hits from absurdly powerful beings such as Zeus or Sentry, who Doomsday certainly compares.
Boomstick: Naturally, Doomsday's crazy strength and speed started wearing that healing factor down.
Wiz: Here's where it gets a bit tricky. The Hulk may look like a giant green monster, but he's still technically human, and his power directly correlates with his anger. A human being's anger stems from an increase in hormones and adrenaline in the body. However, the brain can only produce these chemicals at such a rate for a limited time, eventually giving up and turning apathetic. Therefore, Hulk's limitless power could never have existed without his healing factor; it's the key! It allowed his body to continue producing hormones and adrenaline far beyond the norm, theoretically an endless supply, thus increasing his superhuman power to an immeasurable degree. So, Doomsday overtaxing his healing factor meant the Hulk could no longer maintain his increasing rage and Hulk form.
Boomstick: And if you're still skeptical, that's why there's a bunch of times in comics when a huge impact forced The Hulk to turn back into Bruce Banner, including that battle between Worldbreaker Hulk and Sentry. With his healing power beaten down, he literally couldn't keep himself angry enough to stay in Hulk mode.
Wiz: I love science, but there's still one more thing. Thanks to his battles with Superman and other Kryptonians, Doomsday has evolved to a point where it's basically impossible to kill him with brute force alone.
Boomstick: So Hulk couldn't have killed him just by getting angry enough to punch harder than Doomsday ever felt.
Wiz: Precisely. Here's the proof: Superman and Doomsday eventually had a rematch, in which Superman was much more powerful than their first battle. As we discussed before, Superman's power is also potentially limitless by way of continually absorbing solar energy, and at this point in the story, he'd begun to discover that.
Boomstick: But try as he might, despite his increased power, Supes couldn't kill Doomsday with blunt force a second time.
Wiz: Ultimately, Doomsday's immunity to being ripped, impaled, incinerated, blasted with energy, and being beaten by blunt force from both focused and multiple sources means Hulk just didn't have the options available to take Doomsday out before his healing factor was overtaxed.
Boomstick: On this day, Hulk met his doom. D-Doomsday...
We cut to the "Winner" card.
Wiz: The winner is Doomsday.
Trivia
Production
- The core connections between Hulk and Doomsday are that they are both incredibly angry, powerful, monstrous, large, and destructive comic book characters who were created in failed experiments headed by scientists (Bruce Banner and Bertron, respectively). In addition:
- Both are immortal with the ability to come back to life after being killed (Hulk through the Green Door and Doomsday through resurrection), although Hulk achieved this after this episode aired.
- Both are also known for fighting Superman (Hulk has fought Superman thrice in crossover comics, while Doomsday is a common foe of Superman).
- In the Marvel and DC crossover comic Silver Surfer/Superman, Impossible Man transformed into the Hulk to fight Mr. Mxyzptlk and claimed that no one in the DC universe could match the Hulk's power, with Mxyzptlk then transforming into Doomsday in response.
- According to Chad James, Boomstick's voice actor, the outcome of the battle was at the time the "closest and hardest to determine Death Battle that we have ever done", with the previous one being Link VS Cloud (2012). This is likely why the post-analysis was longer than usual.
- The team originally planned to do Hulk VS Broly, with Ben Singer even having begun preliminary research for it. However, Hulk VS Doomsday became a more popular matchup after Doomsday was shown in a trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. After doing multiple polls (including one on Twitter which also had Hulk VS Godzilla as an option) and discussions with fans to confirm that the latter matchup was more popular, Hulk VS Doomsday was ultimately decided on, with Hulk VS Broly being scrapped.[1]
- This makes it the second matchup to be made due to fan-polling, after Zitz VS Leonardo, and with the next four being Bill Cipher VS Discord, Cole MacGrath VS Alex Mercer, Wile E. Coyote VS Tom Cat, and Master Chief VS Doom Slayer.
- Hulk VS Broly would eventually happen as the Season 7 Finale, albeit with the Hulk fighting the version of Broly reimagined for Dragon Ball Super instead of the original Dragon Ball Z version.
- Coincidentally, this episode came out on the birthday of Lou Ferrigno, the actor who played the Hulk in the 1978 live-action television series, voiced him in the 1996 The Incredible Hulk animated series, and played him in several movies.
- It was also released in the same year as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which featured Doomsday as part of the film.
- The music used in the analysis section was changed for the YouTube release of this episode.
- When the episode was originally published, its title (as well as the title for Hulk's YouTube preview, which still remains this way) was fully capitalized rather than following any prior or later naming convention. This was later changed after release.
Easter Eggs
- In Doomsday's analysis, Boomstick mentions that he patented his "baby cannon", which is a call-back to him wanting to make a "baby launcher" in Yoshi VS Riptor.
- Boomstick calling Doomsday "The Ultimate Baby" is a reference to the parody film The Death and Return of Superman, which had a clip shown during this episode's blooper reel.
- The Wilhelm scream can be heard during the battle.
- The Sanic Hegehog meme character can briefly be seen in the beginning of the fight during Doomsday's rampage.
- This makes it the first episode to have a reference to Sanic, with the next one being Flash VS Sonic.
- Hulk tearing a car in half and using it as boxing glove-like weapons during the fight is a reference to him doing the same thing in the film The Incredible Hulk, and possibly also the in-game ability from the video game Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.
Errors
- The thumbnail for this episode originally used the Season 2 template with the non-italicized "VS", but it was eventually changed to the Season 3 template with the italicized "VS" a few days after the episode's release.
- In Doomsday's "Feats" slide, "Darkseid's" is misspelled as "Darksei'd".
Other
- This is the eighth Marvel VS DC-themed episode, after Rogue VS Wonder Woman, Batman VS Spider-Man, Batman VS Captain America, Deadpool VS Deathstroke, Iron Man VS Lex Luthor, Green Arrow VS Hawkeye, and Flash VS Quicksilver, and with the next 21 being Venom VS Bane, Thor VS Wonder Woman, Batman Beyond VS Spider-Man 2099, Black Panther VS Batman, Doctor Strange VS Doctor Fate, Nightwing VS Daredevil, Thanos VS Darkseid, Aquaman VS Namor, Captain Marvel VS Shazam, Ghost Rider VS Lobo, Miles Morales VS Static, Cable VS Booster Gold, Winter Soldier VS Red Hood, Batgirl VS Spider-Gwen, Lex Luthor VS Doctor Doom, Batman VS Iron Man, Scarlet Witch VS Zatanna, Black Adam VS Apocalypse, Ant-Man VS Atom, Phoenix VS Raven, and Martian Manhunter VS Silver Surfer.
- This is the third 3D Marvel VS DC fight, after Deadpool VS Deathstroke and Iron Man VS Lex Luthor, and with the next three being Thor VS Wonder Woman, Thanos VS Darkseid, and Batgirl VS Spider-Gwen.
- This is the third time that DC wins, after Batman VS Captain America and Flash VS Quicksilver, and with the next 11 being Thor VS Wonder Woman, Batman Beyond VS Spider-Man 2099, Doctor Strange VS Doctor Fate, Nightwing VS Daredevil, Thanos VS Darkseid, Aquaman VS Namor, Captain Marvel VS Shazam, Miles Morales VS Static, Cable VS Booster Gold, Scarlet Witch VS Zatanna, and Phoenix VS Raven.
- This is the fourth episode in which only one combatant received a voice actor, after Mario VS Sonic (2011), Luke Skywalker VS Harry Potter, and Eggman VS Wily, and with the next six being Lucario VS Renamon, Crash VS Spyro, Blake VS Mikasa, Link VS Cloud (2021), Boba Fett VS Predator, and Skyrim VS Dark Souls.
- This is the fourth episode to have an Antagonist defeat a Protagonist, after Godzilla VS Gamera, Ryu VS Scorpion, and Joker VS Sweet Tooth, and with the next seven being Sephiroth VS Vergil, Gray VS Esdeath, Hulk VS Broly, DIO VS Alucard, Harley Quinn VS Jinx, Black Adam VS Apocalypse, and Bill Cipher VS Discord.
- This is the first episode to have a Villain defeat a Hero, with the next one being Gray VS Esdeath.
- This is also the first episode to have a Villain defeat an Anti-Hero, and the with the next four being Sephiroth VS Vergil, Harley Quinn VS Jinx, Black Adam VS Apocalypse, and Bill Cipher VS Discord.