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Bonus Episode: The Rules – The Method Behind the Madness image

Bonus Episode: The Rules – The Method Behind the Madness

S1 · Fictional Fighting Championship
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23 Plays1 month ago

What are the rules? Who makes the rules? And how did we land on Dexter vs. Hannibal without burning this whole bracket to the ground? In this short, chaotic bonus episode, we break down the tournament format, reveal the logic (or lack thereof) behind our selections, and explain why your favorite character probably didn’t make the cut.

Come for the clarification, stay for the stubbornness.

Transcript

Introduction to the Fictional Fighting Championship

00:00:05
Speaker
This is the fictional fighting championship podcast, the ultimate battleground where Hollywood's deadliest warriors collide. We're taking 48 of the most ruthless, skilled, and battle-hardened fighters from movies and TV and throwing them into a no-holds-bar tournament to see who survives.
00:00:23
Speaker
You've seen in the movies, you know the legends. Now it's time to settle the score.

Hosts Introduction

00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome guys. This is fictional FC episode zero and I'm Steve Sadler. I'm Chris Duggetsy. I'm Jordan Guerrero. Are you guys ready to jump in?
00:00:44
Speaker
Let's go. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Tournament Rules Overview

00:00:47
Speaker
I think we'll start. I think it needs a little bit of an explanation. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different than our normal episodes where we talk about matchups.
00:00:56
Speaker
This is an outline of the strict rules that we put in place for the podcast and also the tournament. Also, know our listeners are going to be really broken up about this, but there's going to be far less hilarious banter than you're used to Instead, this one is one that we're going to refer to throughout the season.
00:01:17
Speaker
As we gain new listeners, there's going to be questions, I guarantee it, about eligibility. Yeah. about eligibility, about matchups, about format. So rather than lead off like every single episode and and have to make that argument every single time, I just want to refer back to this episode zero.

Eligibility Rules for Characters

00:01:36
Speaker
So let's talk rules. Rule number one, human competitors only. Yeah, so that means no robots, no aliens, animals, monsters, cartoon favorite characters, or supernatural beings of any kind.
00:01:53
Speaker
No Godzilla or Shrek, Terminator, Optimus Prime, anything with supernatural powers, any superheroes, they're all out. All out.
00:02:04
Speaker
Now... Rule number two, it has to be a fictional character. For all you UFC boxing fans, that means no Mike Tyson, no Jon Jones, despite these guys being absolute beasts.
00:02:18
Speaker
We are not having any real life historical or modern figures in the tournament. But going to make slight exception. Some characters that are heavily fictionalized in the canon, I'm going to throw out there a William Wallace from Braveheart is so hard to separate from the movie because let's be honest, who knew about him before Braveheart came out? So some people like that were given a free pass.
00:02:42
Speaker
I feel like historians would argue that quite heavily. But for the sake of this podcast, I'll give you that one. We don't read. So here we are.

Exclusion of Supernatural and Superhero Characters

00:02:53
Speaker
Now, okay, now we're rolling here. Now, only fictional characters, as I said, but also we're going to take it a step farther. These are characters, human characters, only depicted in TV or movies.
00:03:06
Speaker
That leaves some out. So that's going to be no book-exclusive characters. That might be season two. we're going to have to learn how to read by then. We can hope. And no video game characters for all you nerds out there. yeah Go touch some grass.
00:03:20
Speaker
No, I am a huge video game fan. I wish we could put video game characters and ah you know superheroes and all of that into the tournament. But in the interest of making things fair, no video game characters and no book characters.
00:03:33
Speaker
Correct. No Lara Croft or something like that. Well, she's in the movie, so she... Yeah, wait... Oh, fuck. Yeah. Hey, no. Hey, these are our rules. We're going break them how we want to We can do how we want. Yeah.
00:03:44
Speaker
All right. That leads us to the fourth rule. Now we know it's humans. It also means no superpowers, no magic, no supernatural abilities. We kind of touched on this before, but this has its own rule aside from the no robots and and no aliens part.
00:03:59
Speaker
This means humans with no superpowers or magic. It must be grounded in real world or at least semi realistic combat skills. He or she can be an absolute beast, but they can't be enhanced in any way. That's right. Gotcha. So Superman's out, Harry Potter and his one, no way 11 with her cool superpowers. They're all out.
00:04:22
Speaker
Correct. Bingo. Absolutely. debt Even though we would consider them human characters, right? I don't know. Is Superman human? He's from another planet. I don't know. It's still human, right? He's Kryptonian. Is that human or no? I don't know. It's human only earth not human. Oh my God. You're going to suck in season four.
00:04:38
Speaker
Is a human the same as an earthling or are they different? He came from a different planet. All right. Put a pin in this. I do want to have addendum to that previous rule, because whenever I tell people about the podcast, you know, hey, only humans, only humans with no no superpowers, magic, superhuman abilities, things like that.
00:05:01
Speaker
Almost everybody says, oh, well, Batman, technically correct. No superpowers, right? Yeah, I'm going to say no no superhero types. Even if they lack the superpowers, you got Mr. Billionaire, all of his gadgets.
00:05:16
Speaker
He's not really competitive with a lot of these other people. If they're superhero within the superhero cannon and effectively act as a superhero, we're calling them a superhero.
00:05:26
Speaker
Agreed. So that I'm calling the Batman rule, but there's others Hawkeye. I don't know. Does this guy even have any super superpowers? He's got like six arrows. That's pretty cool.
00:05:37
Speaker
He's like Katniss Everdeen. That's a genetics reaction time reflexes. He's a good athlete, but yes, definitely. you know set in the superhero Marvel world and so was excluded at least for this season or this tournament.
00:05:55
Speaker
Definitely. Okay.

Franchise and Actor Limitations

00:05:57
Speaker
Now here's where we really start digging in because I bet everybody's thinking of different characters right now, all their favorite action characters and all that. But two twists.
00:06:06
Speaker
The first one is one character per franchise. think that's pretty self-explanatory. We're probably leaving some out, but... We'll we'll take take those arguments on a different day.
00:06:18
Speaker
The other one, one character per actor. Now this is where it gets tricky, right? Because there are some actors, especially in that era of action heroes, that literally every movie had a different franchise and a different character that could easily be in this tournament. so But we had to draw the line somewhere. We couldn't have an entire final four of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
00:06:42
Speaker
Unfortunately, but that could be bonus content. Somewhere along the season. What ah great a great. Yes, absolutely. We are going to do that. I just made a note, a mental note, of course. I don't know how to write or read. Season two.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah. Bonus content for sure to talk about the Darnold characters. I think we should definitely do

Listener Engagement and Call to Action

00:07:02
Speaker
that. But listen, guys, those are the rules. try want to try to keep this episode short and sweet, get keep keep it to the point.
00:07:11
Speaker
So again, we're going to save all of our hilarious banter for an actual episode. So hope all all the listeners enjoy the podcast. We know you're going to enjoy the tournament. And don't be afraid to bring your opinions and especially tell all your friends about us.
00:07:26
Speaker
That's it, guys. And remember, this is the Fictional Fighting Championship podcast, the ultimate battleground where Hollywood's deadliest warriors collide.