Board 8 > King of Fighters 2020 (NOT MERCS) R1D14: Elizabeth vs Rick Sanchez (Mid)

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Welcome to the King of Fighters 2020 (NOT MERCS) Simulated Character Battle Tournament!

The game is simple. The two* listed characters are placed in an (imaginary) location with a variety of (imaginary) environments, kind of like a picture in a child's schoolbook that describes different types of geological features. Within a ten mile radius, there is an (imaginary) urban downtown, exurbs, plains, snow-clad mountains at the edge, dry plains, etc. Fighters start wherever is most appropriate for them, but feel increasingly compelled to seek out their opponent and fight. Strong-willed fighters can try to hold out in their chosen environment for longer... eventually, all will succumb and actively search for the other to battle.

To participate, just vote in bold for whichever character you believe will win. Giving reasoning is optional, but please be polite and read what others have said and carefully make your decision. I'll ping the nominators (they can opt out) to give arguments if they wish.

TODAY'S PARTICIPANTS:
Elizabeth (Bioshock Infinite)

Capable of ripping holes into alternate timelines to obtain information and equipment, Elizabeth, more importantly, also harbors the same factor that led to Tifa, Morrigan, and others' strength

vs

Rick Sanchez (Rick and Morty)

funniest shit ive ever seen

@Johnbobb @Xeybozn

FIGHT

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Rick has a portal gun, right? How likely is he to just follow Elizabeth to wherever she ends up going and like, freeze ray her or something

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Rick turns into a pickle, causing Elizabeth to laugh herself to death.

...Actually, I don't know much about Elizabeth. Does she have anything that matches Rick's broken sci-fi cartoon bullshit?
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Yeah as much as I love Elizabeth, this'll be Rick easy.

Elizabeth's main advantage is her ability to move herself and other things in and out of infinite alternate realities. Which Rick can also do just as easily, possibly easier, and also has tons of cartoony tech shit on top of that

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Shonen_Bat posted...

Rick has a portal gun, right? How likely is he to just follow Elizabeth to wherever she ends up going and like, freeze ray her or something

pretty likely. this is another weirdly unfortunate matchup

Xeybozn posted...

Rick turns into a pickle, causing Elizabeth to laugh herself to death.

...Actually, I don't know much about Elizabeth. Does she have anything that matches Rick's broken sci-fi cartoon bullshit?

IIRC she has a lot of intuition about the worlds she opens holes to. In the game a lot of times you can get here to spawn ammo or turret emplacements and stuff for you. She might be able to lure Rick into a trap when he chases her with his portal gun. He's pretty cocky and though he can afford to be with how smart and knowledgeable he is, I could see him getting blindsided by a foe he doesn't understand

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NFUN posted...

I could see him getting blindsided by a foe he doesn't understand

thing is, he has so many broken defenses. One episode has his body's auto-defenses disinegrate someone who touches him. One episode has him die, only to regenerate dozens of times across alternate realities before coming back to his own

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Johnbobb posted...

thing is, he has so many broken defenses. One episode has his body's auto-defenses disinegrate someone who touches him. One episode has him die, only to regenerate dozens of times across alternate realities before coming back to his own

I only really remember his mechsuit that I think he had to explicitly activate

I'm personally strongly leaning Rick, just wanted to help start an argument for Elizabeth

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More than any other fight so far, this seems like one that would be fun to watch.

I'm actually gonna vote for Elizabeth

Rick has a lot of dumb bullshit on his side but it's very inconsistent and he is a known jobber. His epidermis is laced with a nano-defense mesh... except when it's not. He can instantly solve any problem... except when he can't. The list goes on and on.

Remember, this guy almost died to Arthricia. There's like a coin flip as to whether he'd even take the fight seriously or if he'd just make some dumb joke about being in a lame content for nerds to argue on the internet before getting his ass kicked. Elizabeth could easily capitalize on his personality and defeat him. I'm not saying I feel 100% confident that she would win -- it's really hard to know what will happen to Rick in any situation because his power level is so inconsistent -- but I do actually think that it is possible for her to win.

If she manages to defeat him, he can awaken a clone body and revive himself in another dimension. But we've seen how long that process takes, and I believe that taking him out one time would suffice to win the fight. All she needs to do is literally anything to make him lower his guard, and then take him out.

Also think about episodes like The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy, where a random ass flight attendant was able to inject him with a drug that completely neutralized his personality and made him go passive. Rick is VERY susceptible to dropping his guard, and while he likes to hype himself up as someone who can solve any problem instantly, his responses when he is caught off guard are usually clunky and slow. Once again see Whirly Dirly Conspiracy, after the time dilation effect wears off... it takes him like a full three seconds to trigger his arm gadget where he shoots a sticky dart at the other guy's gun to steal it, and then fumbles with the gun before shooting him. He really leaves himself open so, so often when you actually examine how he behaves in the series.

HE ALMOST DIED TO ARTHRICIA.


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I would even go so far as to argue that many of Rick's best showings are when he is outnumbered and outgunned, and some of his worst showings are when he is facing a single combatant who is seemingly beneath him, but always manages to get in good shots. That might be the reason why I'm leaning Elizabeth here.


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What is Elizabeth's personality like? Is she the type to go for the kill right away? Would she actively initiate the fight, or would she keep a low profile and observe first?

She's definitely a keep low and observe type, but she's also got a strong survival instinct

She'd likely run away and try to set up an advantageous position for herself

Which would work against most enemies, but not the one other person in the contest who can go between timelines

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What is key here is that Elizabeth's powers are innate, while Rick needs tech and inventions to travel through realities. All she needs do to win is to get Rick to follow her to a reality where he is unable to use his portal gun for whatever reason (crushing gravity, EMP storm, etc). Rick will be trapped there and pretty much be at the mercy of whatever Elizabeth is up to.

Elizabeth

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This was originally written as some examples of the fact that Rick constantly loses to female characters, but I think there's actually even more relevant information in here about how inconsistent his powers are overall. I'm too lazy to rewrite the parts that are specifically about losing fights to female characters, but just read this like it's a list of all the times his powers have done absolutely nothing to protect him in the most mundane of situations... and you start to see a pretty clear pattern that I think is best summarized by my last bullet point (3x8). I didn't write anything about season 4.

1x2 - Lawnmower Dog: He does manage to grab Miss Pancake and hold her hostage. This is probably his best showing against a female character and that speaks volumes.

1x7 - Raising Gazorpazorp: Rick is totally helpless against the all female society of warriors. You can argue that this is one of the many cases where he lost his portal gun but also consider the following... his portal gun was broken by someone throwing a rock at it. And Rick for some reason didn't use any of his innate cybernetic implants of other enhancements to get himself out of this situation, to prevent himself from being captured by the female gazorpians, or anything. Great example of Rick's inconsistent power set.

2x4 - One of my favorite episodes, Total Rickall: Not a female combatant but it's worth noting that in this episode he gets his ass beat by a symbiote, and easily captured. Guess his nano-defense mesh didn't feel like activating in this scene either.

2x9 - Look Whose Purging Now: I said this before already but Rick almost gets killed by Arthtricia in this episode. Rick, who has a gun, a portal gun, and supposedly an endless supply of high tech gear on him at all times. Arhricia is an unarmed teenage girl. She steals his gun, shoots him in the liver, steals his portal gun and his ship. This is an example of how easily Rick can be defeated when he lets his guard down.

2x10 - The Wedding Squanchers: Tammy defeats Rick very quickly in a physical battle and forces him to surrender his portal gun. Once again, his cyborg enhancements did not seem to help him out.

3x4 - Vindicators 3: Once again at the end of the episode Rick is easily disabled and defeated by a single female combatant. Apparently he has no sci fi gadget which prevents him from being lifted up and choked, and no kind of weapon that he could have deployed to save himself while in this position. This is also a good opportunity for me to bring up the fact that Rick constantly lies about what his tech is capable of doing. We see in one episode where he claims he has a beam that turns people into snakes, but it's later revealed that he was just disintegrating them and releasing snakes from a holster in his leg. For some reason a lot of fans still take what Rick says at face value even though we're explicitly told that he lies about his own abilities. Now keep in mind that when the phantom train conductor grabs Rick, he claims that he had an automatic defense system protecting his body... but the tech didn't activating until after Rick explained this? It didn't stop the guy from grabbing him? It seems like maybe he needed to engage the device manually, hence the delay, and the fact that it's never shown to automatically protect him in any scene... not even this scene.

3x6 - Rest and Ricklaxation: When Rick is trying to get Morty to go back into the containment tank, the woman who Morty picked up runs over and easily overpowers Rick, throwing both Rick and Morty out of the containment tank. I guess his nano defense mesh did not feel like activating in this case.

3x8 - Morty's Mind Blowers: We're shown countless gags of Rick messing up in small ways, doing stuff as dumb as skiing directly into a tree. No automatic shields to protect him, nothing. He just knocks himself out. It seems that Rick is intentionally curating the narrative to make himself seem omnipotent, but this episode gives us a glimpse of the fact that Rick messes up fairly often. As the audience, we're usually only shown the outcomes where Rick looks infallible, and even that facade has been chipped away over time.


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Elizabeth

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Rick operates on rule of funny. He can either be super tough or easy to deal with depending on the episode and as of late he has been leaning toward the "easier to deal with" end. He is nowhere near as busted as he claims to be and has gotten messed up many times for various reasons.

There was also that dragon episode where all his tech suddenly no longer worked because he was put into a realm where tech didn't function normally. Would Elizabeth be able to just do that if she was able to pull it off (which would then come down to if she can just finish him before he can macguyver up something else based on his situation and new info while she still has the power advantage)

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Some thoughts:

1: Is there anything stopping Rick from just portaling back to his own universe? If not, he probably just doesn't bother with any of this and Elizabeth wins by default. Since that's really boring I'm assuming Rick can't portal out of the "arena", but in that scenario Rick is probably going to be taking his opponent seriously. A lot of Rick's screwing around is because he believes he's completely invincible; he'll be more on his guard if he knows he's not in complete control of the situation.

2. Looking at the fight location, are there likely to be any parallel realities where all of Rick's tech doesn't work? Are there infinite variations with different physical properties for Elizabeth to try out, or is it just going to be endless copies of the same exact place?

I'm still leaning Rick, but Elizabeth has a better chance than I thought.
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I'd say that in order to reconcile the different teleportation systems, Elizabeth can only teleport to alternate versions of Earth that are fundamentally the same but had history evolve differently (for example, a version where the whole area is barren or a metropolis or where there's a war going on with weapons to take)... unless Rick opens a portal to another type of Universe, which she then gets access to with the same abilities and intuition she does normally. So if Rick opens up a portal to a magic no-tech variant of Earth, Elizabeth can then go there and explore all of the different variations of it

This is at least how I'd think of it

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Elizabeth

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Elizabeth

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yeah Maria sold me on Elizabeth

especially because Rick is wildly inconsistent and:

MariaTaylor posted...

I would even go so far as to argue that many of Rick's best showings are when he is outnumbered and outgunned, and some of his worst showings are when he is facing a single combatant who is seemingly beneath him, but always manages to get in good shots.

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NFUN posted...

I'd say that in order to reconcile the different teleportation systems, Elizabeth can only teleport to alternate versions of Earth that are fundamentally the same but had history evolve differently (for example, a version where the whole area is barren or a metropolis or where there's a war going on with weapons to take)... unless Rick opens a portal to another type of Universe, which she then gets access to with the same abilities and intuition she does normally. So if Rick opens up a portal to a magic no-tech variant of Earth, Elizabeth can then go there and explore all of the different variations of it

This is at least how I'd think of it

So she can just send Rick to Fascist Earth and he gets btfo?

Elizabeth

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NFUN posted...

I'd say that in order to reconcile the different teleportation systems, Elizabeth can only teleport to alternate versions of Earth that are fundamentally the same but had history evolve differently (for example, a version where the whole area is barren or a metropolis or where there's a war going on with weapons to take)... unless Rick opens a portal to another type of Universe, which she then gets access to with the same abilities and intuition she does normally. So if Rick opens up a portal to a magic no-tech variant of Earth, Elizabeth can then go there and explore all of the different variations of it

This is at least how I'd think of it

Reiterating again that this would be a fun match to watch. (Assuming Rick takes it seriously, which it sounds like he wouldn't.)

Elizabeth takes it based on arguments. Really interesting match though.

Elizabeth at her strongest was basically a reality warper existing on a million worlds at once

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Elizabeth

I thought at first that her power was 'just' teleporting things but I guess it's closer to 'oh I changed history' in scale

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