| Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible | |
|---|---|
| |
| Battle information | |
| Release date | July 12, 2016 |
| Number | 64 |
| Views | 64M |
| Length | 4:29 |
| Timeline | |
| Previous | Bruce Banner vs Bruce Jenner |
| Next | Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton |
| Beat Information | |
| Beat(s) | No Flex (Ivan, Alexander, & Catherine) Sex, Drugs and Hardcore (Frederick & Ivan) |
| BPM | 123 (Ivan, Alexander, & Catherine) 127 (Frederick & Ivan) |
| Beat producer(s) | BeatsCraze (Ivan, Alexander, & Catherine) Hollywood Legend Productions (Frederick & Ivan) |
| Other information | |
| Actors | Nice Peter EpicLLOYD Zach Sherwin Meghan Tonjes Mike Betette Illjaz Jusufi Burim Jusufi PewDiePie (reused footage) |
| Rappers |    
|
| Cameos | Pompey the Great Catherine the Great's backup dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov (reused footage) Rasputin (reused footage) Vladimir Lenin (reused footage) Mikhail Gorbachev (reused footage) Vladimir Putin (reused footage) Joseph Stalin (reused footage) |
| Location(s) | Red Square Alexandria, Egypt The Cathedral of the Dormition The Brandenburg Gate Hohenzollern Castle The Catherine Palace |
Alexander the Great vs Ivan the Terrible is the sixty-fourth installment of Epic Rap Battles of History and the sixth episode of Season 5. It features the first Tsar of All Russia, Ivan the Terrible, rapping against Macedonian king and warrior, Alexander the Great. Later, he is interrupted by Prussian king, Frederick the Great, Roman consul, Pompey the Great, and Russian empress, Catherine the Great. It was released on July 12th, 2016.
Cast
Rappers
Nice Peter as Ivan the Terrible
Zach Sherwin as Alexander the Great
EpicLLOYD as Frederick the Great
Meghan Tonjes as Catherine the Great
Cameos
Nice Peter as Rasputin, Vladimir Lenin, and Vladimir Putin (all reused footage)
EpicLLOYD as Joseph Stalin, and Mikhail Gorbachev (all reused footage)
PewDiePie as Mikhail Baryshnikov (reused footage)
Mike Betette as Pompey the Great
The Jay Brothers as Catherine the Great's backup dancers
Lyrics
[Note: Ivan the Terrible is in brown, Alexander the Great is in red, Frederick the Great is in dark blue, Catherine the Great is in light blue, Pompey the Great is in tan, and additional voices are in italics.]
Ivan the Terrible:
Look alive, crème de la Kremlin's arriving!
Try to serve Ivan: no surviving!
You're a land rover; I'm a land expander.
Here to hand you your first loss, Alexander!
I'll school you like Aristotle!
Smack you harder than you hit that bottle!
You're nothing but an overrated lush; I'll crush ya!
I'm the first Tsar of all of Russia!
You're an asshole with an anastole!
I'm heaven-sent, divine and holy!
So don't even try to approach the God,
Or you'll get a huge sack like Novgorod!
Alexander the Great:
Hey, fella! Swell diss,
But now you got the Panhellenist from Pella hella pissed!
Stepping up's foolish as well as useless,
Little Vasilyevich! Let me spell out the list:
I brought foes to their knees in Phoenicia!
Breezed through Gaza to Giza!
Had the Balkans, Persia, Syria, Iraq,
And Pakistan in my expansion pack.
While you died in the middle of a game of chess,
You got vodka bars: flavorless!
And what I'm 'bout to spit will be the craziest,
So go fix me a drink so I can stay refreshed!
Kudos! Greek for the glory I got
From winning every single war that I fought!
So this will be straightforward: I'll take up this sword that I brought
And slice you in half like the Gordian knot!
And I'll soar to the top
Like the eagle whose feather I would sport
In the helmet that I wore
As I swatted my many enemies; shattered 'em like a porcelain pot,
And they'd be praying for the torture to stop (ah!),
But I would leave 'em contorted and they'd be screaming and roaring
Until their vocal cords were torn up and shot!
And I would holler "Bucephalus!", hop on my horsey, and trot!
I win, Ivan; I vanquish! I'm an immortal; you're not!
Ivan the Terrible:
Enough! (Ugh.) I don't stand a chance against your skills!
на здоровье! A drink to your victory! Yes, I will.
It seems no one can defeat me. I weep; it's all so easy!
(Hoo!) What's wrong? I feel a bit…queasy.
Ha! You've been poisoned! Oh, the pain is unbearable!
My stomach's riddled with holes!
[Alexander the Great succumbs to his wounds and dies.]
(Ugh.) I'm terrible.
There's no great who could defeat this Russian!
Frederick the Great:
(Psst!) What about a flute-busting Prussian?
Old Fritz! Old Fritz! Old Fritz! Old Fritz!
Old Fritz! Old Fritz! Old Fritz! Old Fritz!
I'm Frederick the Great! Out the gate, first servant of state!
Oblique attack tactics ain't exactly straight!
I've got creative talents and battle malice!
Hard as steel on the field, genteel in the palace!
Russia's fucked up, but no wonder why!
With your tundras and taigas and bears! Oh my!
I would pay a guy to tear out my eyes
If I had to look at your troll face every night!
Now, bring me my chair!
I'm weary from tearing you a new derrière from here to Red Square!
Fought a Seven Years' War; I ain't scared of a Tsar
'Cause beating you only took me twelve bars!
Ivan the Terrible:
Oh, what a humiliating defeat!
I know when I am beat, so of course, take a seat!
I'd keep ripping you to shreds, but I'll take a break instead
And just rest my little head. Why don't you drop dead, Fred?!
(Hmm.) My expectations were a lot higher,
But at least I saved the rubles on the garrote wire.
It's another great day and another great victory
'Cause no great can beat me! What about me, Pompey? Yeah!
[Pompey the Great is decapitated by Catherine the Great.]
Catherine the Great:
Macedonians, Prussians, and Romans; those aren't worthy opponents.
It takes a Russian to take down a Russian. I'm Cat; I'm a cat; you're a rodent!
How are you the head of our state when the state of your head was such a crazy one?
Such sick shit going through your brain that you stuck a spike through your own son!
(Oooh!) You're unbalanced like I unbalanced the European powers with the wars I waged!
I brought the Russian empire straight out the olden days and right into the golden age!
I'm the boss bitch that you just can't meddle with!
This whole battle's like Alaska 'cause I settled it!
Ivan the Terrible:
(Mmm.) What a beautiful queen to beat me in a battle.
Accept this gift, Your Highness. I hear you enjoy the saddle!
Catherine the Great:
That horse story is a pile of shit,
Though I do keep 'em chomping at the bit,
But you're never gonna get it, nyet!
Couldn't spin in my chamber if this were Russian roulette!
I'm picking up where Peter the Great left off!
Bringing sexy back to House Romanov!
So don't call me queen; I'm far more great!
Empress to Tsar 8, bitch! Checkmate!
Scrapped lyrics
Alexander the Great:
I'm an immortal: a military authority!
My sortie's plots are studied and pored over and taught!
I would keep the heat of the battle so scorchingly hot!
I grew my empire borders way more than a lot!
And I would soar to the top like the eagle whose feather I would sport
As I swatted my many enemies with muscles that were forceful and taut!
Shatter 'em into pieces like a porcelain pot!
They were screaming till they're hoarse and their voices were shot,
But I would holler "Bucephalus!", hop up on my horsey, and trot off!
Leave 'em in an unfortunate spot!
Fold it up like an accordion; stop!
Poll
Trivia
General
- This is the fourth-longest video to date, at 4:30, but it is the longest rap battle to date, with an overall rapping time of 3:47.
- This is the first mid-season finale battle to feature a female rapper.
- This is the first battle:
- since Hulk Hogan and Macho Man vs Kim Jong-il to give title cards to rappers appearing partway through the battle.
- to give a title card to a cameo.
- to feature title cards at any point without the announcer introducing the character.
- At 4:09, a flash of text appears, reading:
"It's a very special kind of person who takes the time to read this one frame.
Thank you for being a part of this.
Sincerely, Pete & Lloyd." - This is the second battle to feature Russian subtitles, after Rasputin vs Stalin.
- This is the first battle to feature all of the rappers from a previous battle.
- During the line "I'm the first Tsar of all of Russia", all of the rappers from Rasputin vs Stalin appear through reused footage.
- This is the first battle to feature all of the rappers from a previous battle.
- This is the second gauntlet rap battle (a battle in which one rapper faces against multiple opponents at different times), the first being Donald Trump vs Ebenezer Scrooge.
- However, unlike the first gauntlet battle, the rappers in this battle are described as being on separate teams in the behind the scenes, while the characters going against Ebenezer Scrooge were all on one team.
- Counting Rasputin vs Stalin and Steven Spielberg vs Alfred Hitchcock, where a multitude of rappers enter in a "battle royale" format, it is the fourth "cavalcade battle" as termed by Lloyd.
- This is the second battle to feature a female non-title rapper, the first being Kari Byron in Ghostbusters vs Mythbusters.
- This is the sixth rap battle in which one or more of a rapper's lines do not have subtitles.
- The lines in question are Frederick the Great saying, "I'm Frederick the Great," Pompey the Great saying his name, and Catherine the Great saying "I'm Cat; I'm a cat; you're a rodent!"
Production
- This is the seventh battle to use more than one tagged instrumental.
- It was stated by Mat4yo that Peter was going to ask him to help with this battle but decided that the battle was not as hard to write as they thought.
Continuity
- This is the first battle to feature a clear progression of time, followed by Godzilla vs King Kong.
References
- The shots where Ivan kills Alex are allusions to scenes from Sergei Eisenstein's 1945 epic Ivan The Terrible, where considerably large shadows are cast against the walls of his cathedral.
- The stance made by Frederick the Great during his title card is a reference to the iconic one-legged stance of Ian Anderson, the frontman of British rock band Jethro Tull.[1]
Errors
- The English closed captions (CC) currently end on the line "I brought foes to their knees in Phoenicia" and were never completed.
- During the line, "You're an asshole with an anastole," Ivan the Terrible leans in and points at Alexander the Great using his right hand in the scene with the other Russians but switches to his left hand in the next scene.
- Part of Ivan's index finger is also cut off near the end of the latter scene.
- During the line, "Like the eagle whose feather I would sport," "whose" is misspelled as "who's."
- At 1:10, the ladle that Ivan uses to pour the poison can be partially seen through the silver cup.
- During the line, "Ha! You've been poisoned!", there is an extra space in the subtitles between "Ha!" and "You've".
- At 1:43, Ivan's shadow misses the top of his hat, partially overlaps Alexander's corpse when it should fall behind it, and falls upon the stairs remaining flat, as if the stairs were a wall.
- Around 2:25, when Ivan takes the seat, the shadow of the crew member who passed the seat can be briefly seen on the left as it moved.
- When Ivan the Terrible says the line, "But at least I saved the rubles on the garrote wire," the garrote wire is in both of his hands; however, during the next shot, it can only be seen in his left hand.
- When Catherine the Great tosses her garrote wire over her shoulder, only one hilt is ever seen falling; the other disappears once it goes over the top of the screen.
- During Catherine the Great's title card, her scepter is not keyed out properly.
- At some points during her verses, Meghan Tonjes' tattoo is visible on Catherine's right arm.
- At 3:42, the front backup dancer's shadow overlaps onto Catherine.
- During the outro, Brennan Seltzer's suggestion appears twice, although both comments are a month apart.
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