Decoding Pop Culture Battles: Navigating the Clash Between Canon and Kayfabe
Source: Death Battle YouTube Channel; Rooster Teeth Network
There is an exciting phenomenon you see on the Internet: pop culture battles, where two fictional characters from different narrative universes, like Superman and Goku, are pitted against each other. Sometimes, they are more comedic, such as The Joker and Pennywise facing off in Epic Rap Battles of History. Other times, they are raw 1v1s like the channel Death Battle, where two characters fight to, well, the death.
These videos are fascinating because they are a very brand-centric way to tell a story. Rather than storytelling being an activity where anything can happen, in these videos, it is often depicted to be more like physics or history, where fictional narratives are treated as living records that one must simply decode — and in the case of death battles, where one winner is inevitable.
When canon is real-ish
I want to really highlight how peculiar this activity is — not because nerd stuff is weird or I dislike character-driven mashups (I love all of these things), but because of how these videos are often framed — i.e., with a "correct" answer. A channel like Death Battle will present its arguments and facts for why its character has triumphed, and it's usually a mini-thesis, where in their own cheeky words, "they've' run the data through all possibilities."
Yet, I want to step back and focus on what these channels' creators are doing here. They are telling a story where characters from one narrative universe suddenly exist within another. There is nothing wrong with this whatsoever. Fictional retellings and reimaginings are the bread and butter of many stories, and pretending to be documenting a "real" history is a solid storytelling conceit. However, we must still acknowledge that what is being done here is storytelling rather than an exact science. The creators of Death Battle can make any character "win" because stories are not confined to the rules that came before them. Superman beats Goku or vice versa because that's the reality these storytellers have decided upon.
However, often, these creators are still combing through comics, movies, books, video games, and more to make these arguments, measuring the accomplishments of these various characters like they are real people. Superman or Courage the Cowardly Dog does a feat in one of these mediums, and that is treated as a reference point to prove how fast and tough these characters really are.
Take the channel's death battle between Darth Vader and Obito Uchiha, characters from the properties Star Wars and Naruto, respectively. The creators reference how a droid in one book tries to kill Darth Vader with a laser gun firing just under three hundred thousand kilometers per second and how he easily blocks it. That feat of perception and reflexes becomes the upper limit for his ability simply because an earlier text claimed it was so.
There are limitations to this approach. One is that these brands are not the work of a single creator and often have inconsistencies as a result. Vader's perception varies dramatically from story to story and that's the case with nearly all fictional brands. As a Trekkie, I will frequently see lore content creators spend a lot of time stitching together disparate stories that were never really meant to be viewed together in that way. And so when you try to treat these works as "historical" references, you quickly come across the reality that they do not always mesh well. As the handle Andrew Plotkin writes in their article, Canon is kayfabe for writers:
“It’s kayfabe! It’s exactly kayfabe. The writers are selling us a meta-story that their story conforms to a great and glorious master plan, a beautiful aperiodic crystal of harmony. And we pretend to buy it — even though we know the writers are making it up as they go. They’ve been making it up as they go for sixty years. (For the DC and Marvel (multi-)verses(-es), even longer.) We know perfectly well that the story will change the next time someone has a better idea, and we’re fine with that. But we are united in the pretense.”
When we look at pop culture battles and, to an extent, all lore theorists, what we are really seeing is an exercise in Intellectual Property synthesis, where fans are engaging in that collective kayfabe (i.e., a wrestling term for the fake authenticity of a staged performance) trying to pretend that they can stitch all of these different works into one cohesive reality. While that can be a fun and entertaining exercise, it's still a performance — a type of storytelling constrained by Intellectual Property law itself because the only thing genuinely uniting all of these stories is that one entity owns them all and has decided they belong together. Often, there is no real intentionality connecting these stories other than, again, ownership.
The creators of Death Battle are not combing through fanfiction and other unauthorized stories to make these comparisons. They are looking at "canon" works that the holders of these brands, companies such as Disney, have deemed valid. There are millions of Star Wars stories, after all, but only a couple hundred of them are considered legitimate, and that's what the emphasis is on when creators such as Death Battle examine the feats of "fictional" characters. It's a fascinating practice that says a lot about how many of us now perceive stories in our society, not as a fluid collection of works that can be radically retold and reconceived, but at least, in theory, as rigid histories whose legitimacy is contingent on the entity that owns them.
This, of course, is not how storytelling truly works. You can't stop people from reimagining, recontextualizing, and retelling existing characters. I mentioned the millions of fanfiction stories out there, but we can also look at breaks in canon where companies try to delegitimize existing stories only for fans to reject such a move. A famous example is Star Wars, where a lot of stories set after the 1983 movie Return of the Jedi, collectively called the Expanded Universe (referred to now as Star Wars Legends), were suddenly decanonized following Disney's acquisition of LucasFilms in 2012. It was a move not well-liked by many fans then, and many are still bitter about it.
The video essayist Jared Bauer, using the framework of philosopher Jürgen Habermas, referred to this backlash as a "legitimization crisis" akin to the Protestant Reformation, where suddenly, fans of Star Wars were questioning the decisions of the brand's IP holder, when it came to how to best interpret it. It may seem strange to compare disagreements over a brand's direction to a schism in a religion, but I assure you that people can get quite devoted to the brands they follow. As one user responded to one of my pieces:
“I have no church. I worship no gods. Fiction is my religion. Stories are my scripture. Character development is my holy communion. It’s not just entertainment for me. It’s something sacred.”
However, instead of the printing press giving more adherents of Christianity access to the bible, Bauer argued, it was because modern technology like the Internet had collapsed the difference between consumers and producers, turning all of us into what philosophers Alvin & Heidi Hoffler called "prosumers." We are all now active makers of meaning with media, and so when a company tries to push against the common consensus, it can lead to a schism. As Bauer says:
“Star Wars fans are not just consumers of this canon. They have helped make the meaning of the Star Wars universe. Like the Catholic Church, Disney now faces the wrath of the educated masses. Except now the problem isn't just that people can read: they blog, tweet, make video essays, produce their own cartoons, and stream content to millions of viewers…the age of the prosumer allows people to criticize the few anointed successors of Lucas.”
To this day, when I see content creators making a "historical" analysis of Star Wars, many still draw upon Legends sources and, in the process, refute the official Disney "canon." In fact, we do not have to stray from the channel Death Battle to see this happen. That example we brought up early of Vader blocking a high-speed laser comes from the book Coruscant Nights II: Streets of Shadows, a Star Wars Legends book outside of the current canon.
Clearly, there is tension with this form of storytelling, as what is considered a "legitimate" source is not as stable as many believe. Even with a creator or "prosumer" like Death Battle, who generally tries to treat the canon of such brands as gospel, we see the kayfabe inevitability break.
A deadly conclusion
The phenomenon of pop culture battles unveils a fascinating intersection between storytelling, brand loyalty, and the fluidity of narrative interpretation. These battles, whether lighthearted or intense, reflect a deeply ingrained desire among fans to engage with beloved characters in novel ways.
However, beneath the surface, they also reveal a complex interplay between canon and kayfabe — i.e., the accepted truth of a fictional universe versus the staged authenticity perpetuated by its creators. While channels like Death Battle may present their matchups as definitive showdowns with a "correct" outcome, it's crucial to recognize that these narratives are not only constructed, but constructed within the constraints of intellectual property laws and the whims of corporate ownership.
Moreover, the tension between canon and kayfabe underscores a broader shift in storytelling dynamics, where fans no longer passively consume narratives but actively participate in their creation and interpretation. The democratization of media through modern technology has empowered individuals to challenge established canon, question the authority of brand owners, and assert their own interpretations of beloved stories.
Ultimately, pop culture battles serve as a microcosm of our evolving relationship with storytelling — a testament to the enduring power of fictional universes to inspire passion, spark debate, and unite communities. As fans continue to navigate the ever-shifting landscape of canon, they not only celebrate the characters they love but also contribute to the ongoing evolution of storytelling in the digital age — one death battle at a time.