Freddy's disgust with Mr. Bear targeting children makes even more sense when you remember the FNAF animatronics are possessed by souls of children killed by William Afton. Seeing that happen all over again almost certainly strikes a nerve.
Part 4
In "Homer Simpson vs. Peter Griffin", Homer gets other characters to help him deliver his verses a few times, while Peter never gets any such help. This fits with the contrasting styles of their respective shows: while both shows are known for their often dark and cynical senses of humour, The Simpsons often stresses that its characters are still bonded by familial love and community loyalty despite their flaws, while Family Guy is more of a Sadist Show where the characters are generally shown as totally indifferent to anything outside of themselves.
Why is the MrBeast's battle titled "MrBeast vs. Squid Game" instead of "MrBeast vs. Seong Gihun"? Because he doesn't go up against only the latter, he also goes up against The Front Man.
Why does Count Olaf adopt his "Stefano" disguise when telling Loki to get help for his mental health problems? Because Loki is traditionally associated with snakes, which "Stefano" is supposedly an expert in.
Oogie Boogie's line "Decking dicey devils dealing douches dead, that's a D6" — if you take the first letter of each word, the line does indeed begin with six D's.
Sam's hastily mentioned death at the end of "Frodo Baggins vs. Ancient Egyptians". Seeing that Frodo traversed Egypt for 13 centuries, Sam likely died during Frodo's journey and was revived to battle Anubis for him before dying again afterwards.
Why does Cthulhu regard it as a "pitiful joke" when the Kraken accuses him of copying his style? In our timeline, kraken myths predate the Cthulhu Mythos, but within his own universe, Cthulhu is a Time Abyss who was doing his thing long before there were any cephalopods to copy. So from Cthulhu's perspective, Kraken is the real copy.
Kraken dissing Cthulhu for being ugly might seem odd at first, given that they're both giant tentacle monsters. But then you remember that the tentacle-monster depiction of Cthulhu is just supposed to be an approximation of his real appearance, which is so indescribably horrifying that two of the sailors who witnessed it in The Call of Cthulhu died just from looking at it.
Part 6
"The Rock vs. Paperboy vs. Edward Scissorhands" initially seems to broadly follow the logic of the game: The Rock reserves his most crushing disses for Edward Scissorhands, then Paperboy spends most of his verse covering The Rock. But Edward breaks the pattern, spending more time cutting into The Rock than Paperboy. Why? Because Edward was never able to fit in with other people.
It's also fitting that The Rock goes first, as rock is statistically the choice people are most likely to throw on their first game.
It's also also fitting that James Gunn appears as the fourth rapper, since people will usually treat the 'shoot' in "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!" as an option, and gun beats all.
D.B Cooper's line: "Didn't know any Morse code so communication was dropped. No wonder your story ended with dot dot dot." On the first listen, it seems to be only a shot at Earhart's mysterious disappearance (thus ending with an ellipsis), then you realize that three dots in Morse code is the letter S, so Cooper is making a Double Entendre; Earheart couldn't finish an SOS in Morse code.
Why does Jinx bring up killing Silco in her opening lines, given it's an accident and huge tragedy in her life? Aside from her in-game lines also referencing her love of bombing and killing, she knows that it's only a matter of time before Junko brings it up instead, so she beat her to the punch.
The line ("Once I'm hitting your eyes, I'm shooting you up like Silco") is also a reference to Silco regularly injecting something into his infected left eye, a process he later entrusts to Jinx.
Star-Lord drops the Precision F-Strike in his third verse, just as the third Guardians had the MCU's first F-bomb.
At the end of the battle, Jack Sparrow trails off as he raps about Star-Lord being a distraction. He had just realised that his ship is sinking and Star-Lord distracted him as he sank his ship.
"Caine vs. Alastor": Caine's line "Video Killed the Radio Star, and digital killed them both!" can also be seen as Caine not only dissing Alastor for how obscure radio is nowadays, but also Vox, who's themed after television, by saying digital killed both radio and video.
"Arthur Morgan vs. Trevor Philips": During Trevor's line "You hipsters in the mountains make me pissed off!", the screen around him goes red. This is a subtle double reference to his special ability in-game "Invulnerability" that allows him to withstand damage while dealing it twice as strong, as well as the Rampage side missions uniquely available to him in which he massacres different factions after flying into rage, turning the screen red for the entirety of the mission. The last faction he faces off against is, you guessed it, hipsters.
Arthur's being slightly pudgy, on account of Shwabadi's stockiness, may be a reference to him being able to gain weight in-game, up until the final chapter.
Arthur's second verse is a bit more pensive than his first; in his game, which may be related to him beginning to be more contemplative about his life and deeds in the second half after getting his diagnosis.
In "Benoit Blanc vs. Hercule Poirot", Holmes and Watson are the only detectives to notice that the "murder victim" isn't actually dead. Holmes attributes this to his superior intellect, but there's another reason why they'd be the most likely to notice this — being a doctor, Watson would naturally know how to check the body for signs of life.
Also, one thing that separated the original Sherlock Holmes stories from most later imitators was that most of the cases didn't involve a murder, and many of them turned out not to involve any crime at all. Naturally, he and Watson would be the most likely to consider the possibility that there was no crime committed in this case, either.
While small, the only combatant who doesn't hype themself up or introduce themself is L, who keeps his identity a secret to avoid being targeted.
Batman telling L he's been following his path is more of a chess metaphor than one would expect - how does the Knight move again? In an L shape!
In the same battle, out of all the participants, the only one who doesn't directly accuse someone of being the murderer besides Holmes, who solves the case at the end properly is Shaggy. While the other participants are skilled detectives, Shaggy himself is usually a comic relief character, and it's typically Velma or Fred who put together who the killer is, so of course Shaggy wouldn't be confident enough to accuse someone.
At the start of Shaggy's verse, Scooby accuses Batman as the murderer, but Shaggy quickly shuts him down. This has two interpretations: either Shaggy doesn't want to accuse Batman because the gang has teamed upwith Batman before, or he's Genre Savvy enough to know that the usual Scooby-Doo mysteries pretty much never have the culprit be the first suspect.
Sans Holmes and Waston, each detective showing up are all apart of the groups the next one usually deals with:
Herc and Blanc are both snobby rich men, and Columbo is famous for putting the wealthy behind bars.
Columbo works under a pseudonym to make sure he isn't targeted easily, and L has had experience with such a person.
L himself is a near-perfectly hidden person who usually plants riddles and clues to what he's planning, the perfect target for a master detective like Batman.
And finally, Batman himself is a guy in a costume designed to scare people, which earns him Shaggy's attention.
Part 8
At first, the concept of "Homelander vs. Zoolander" might seem to just be a joke about the two characters having similar names. But they do also have something else in common: they're both notoriously vain.
Zoolander's second verse in "Homelander vs. Zoolander" is noticeably more serious than his first, as he raises his voice above a whisper and gets more personal with his insults before ending it with the Blue Steel. It may seem that this is because Derek is wising up to how dangerous his opponent is, but there's another reason: Homelander made the same mistake as Mugatu and said that Zoolander only has one look.
Ironically, "Nosferatu vs. Wolf Man" is the only one of the first four battles of the season in which the rappers don't attack each other by the end, with the narrator stating they parted ways to hunt humans.
Unlike the Lethal Company employees, the Semibots are seen surviving their verses instead of dying. This is probably because of the fact they're much more resilient and have more means to fight and revive themselves.
"Star-Lord vs Captain Jack Sparrow" ends with Jack Sparrow's ship nearly completely sunken, with him stuck standing on a slowly sinking mast. Not only does this mean that all of his crew and friends, including Elizabeth, probably drowned, but unless Star-Lord is gracious enough to let him onto his starship even after all the taunts at him over Gamora and his parents, Jack's doomed too.
Part 7
Near the end of "Yugi Muto vs Moon Knight", the Seal of Orichalcos appears behind Moon Knight during Yami's second verse. It isn't just for show - the Seal of Orichalcos is known to steal the loser's soul in a Duel. Yami activated this card because he wants to separate Marc and Steven before sending Moon Knight to the Shadow Realm!
