Scott Pilgrim vs Travis Touchdown (... vs No More Heroes) VS Prediction Blog

 

"With the glass ceiling broken, all the oppressed groups shall prosper. Especially the most oppressed group of all: Gamers"

Scott Pilgrim, the slacker bassist taking on the world with the power of love
Travis Touchdown, the Crownless King assassin of No More Heroes

Heroes can come in all shapes and sizes, even if they happen to be loser young adults with no jobs that happen to be big fans of fictional media and are also kinda big assholes. These two unlikely heroes would end up progressively fighting a group of weird foes, which was initially motivated by them wanting to be with a hot mysterious lady. However, as these fights went on, they’d slowly realize their own faults and work to become better people by the end of their journeys. So, can Scott take down the top ranked assassin, or will Travis put an end to his pilgrimage? Let’s find out.

Before We Begin

For this match, Scott will be composited between capabilities from the original comics, the movie, the game, and any other official adaptation. Though the original source material does take precedence here, so any details from other adaptations that outright contradict the original comic will not be considered. I will note I won’t include stuff from the board game, as I have no real easy way to access it and I don’t personally believe any of the stuff I’ve heard from it would realistically change details of this. Also this was made before the Netflix series released, so don’t get on me if something from that ends up changing everything.

As for Travis, this will be utilizing him from before No More Heroes 3. This is done mainly for the sake of consistency, as Travis in that game is very blatantly far stronger than how he’s portrayed in every earlier title, so this way we can keep things a bit more down to earth and consistent. As such, feats, equipment, and abilities found solely in that game will not be included, though any relevant details to stuff he had already demonstrated in prior titles will be fair game to acknowledge. Besides that, all of his other games are on the table here, along with other supplemental material such as the manual comics and interviews.

Both will be given all their possible abilities and equipment, to see them at their maximum potential. There will also be some mentions of raunchier topics, as well as instances of bloody gore in regards to Travis specifically. Finally, full spoilers for both of their stories will be on here, so be wary if you want to stay blind to either.

(Note: This was written a bit ago, so certain elements may be outdated to my more modern opinions regarding these series' scaling)

Background

Scott Pilgrim

“I, Scott Pilgrim, will be the best 24-year-old... Ever!”

In Ontario Canada, there lived a slacker by the name of Scott Pilgrim. He had just gotten out of college and had made some success for himself as the bassist for his band, Sex Bob-Bomb. His life would end up changing forever after a chance meeting with the literal girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers. After some initial awkwardness, the two would hit it off, with some mutual attraction to each other. However, it turned out trying to start a relationship with her came at a cost, as he’d need to defeat a league of her seven evil exes to stay with her, which he kind of ignored until one of them literally tried to fight him out of the blue. Regardless, Scott would feel Ramona was perfect and worth fighting for, so he agreed to this challenge.

As these fights went on, Scott would also spend time growing closer to Ramona. However, some cracks would end up forming in his other relationships, thanks to how he treated his ex-girlfriend, a fan of his band named Knives. He has been dating her before he started dating Ramona, but didn’t break up with Knives until after he started dating Ramona, which is something his friends called out as a bit skeevy. However, he wouldn’t let Ramona know of this until after Knives violently attacked her several times and she confronted him over it, which led to some cracks forming in their relationship. Scott was also feeling some tension with Ramona, as she had been slowly drifting away due to her hiding from her past.

After these cracks led to the two separating, Scott would end up despondent, and ended up going on a wilderness sabbatical to try and find himself. While out there, he’d get some time to self-reflect after literally taking on his personal demons, realizing that he was kind of a dick to people in the past. He’d then return to Toronto, ready to take on Gideon with newfound confidence. Though his first try in taking on Gideon didn’t go too well, as Scott ended up dying in his first fight with Gideon.

After this, he’d be taken into Subspace, a mental unconscious space where he’d meet with Ramona, who had gone into hiding there due to Gideon having a literal hold over her head. After Scott made it back to life thanks to having an extra one, he’d end up confronting Gideon i n her mindspace, and the couple would ultimately take him out of her head. They’d then manage to take him on in a final boss fight which ultimately took him out for the count.

After this, Scott would end up getting his life together. He’d get a job at a diner, would apologize and make amends with those he took for granted, and would reinvigorate his love for Ramona. They left for an uncertain future, with Scott coming out a better person in the end, even if he still undeniably had some progress to make. But even if he needs to take on the entire world, he’ll always be ready to defend those he cares about. 

Travis Touchdown

“I wanna be number one. How's that? Short and simple enough for you? It's gonna be a long, hard road. But who knows? Could kick ass... Could be dangerous. Could totally suck. Whaddya say, bro? Join me. Let's see how far we can take this.”

The world of professional assassins can be a cutthroat business, and not just in the literal sense. Many of these professional killers would go out of their way to prove themselves as the strongest among them, with the most revered being the UAA’s top ten. Among them would be a man who would rise to challenge and win his spot as the deadliest thrice over. A guy who jacked off to anime girls from a motel room and killed using a bootleg lightsaber he won in an internet auction by the name of Travis Touchdown.

Travis had initially joined life to track down the man who had killed his parents, but he didn’t exactly have a lot of luck initially. That is until he was approached by a mysterious woman named Sylvia Christel, one of the people running the UAA, who encouraged him to join the ranks for money and to possibly sleep with her. Travis would accept this, slowly carving a path up the ranks, though he did need to do some odd jobs along the way due to her constantly asking for money to participate in these fights. Eventually, he’d end up at the number one slot, and would face his long lost sister Jeane, who was also the one who killed his parents. The two would duel, and while Travis would nearly die, he’d end up taking her down thanks to some assistance from Shinobu, a young assassin who he spared the life of earlier. 

After a scuffle with his Irish raised twin brother Henry Cooldown, Travis would enjoy his new position for a time, until the constant barrage of guys trying to challenge him for his position led to him willingly stepping down. However, two years later, a hit job on buddies of his done by the relatives of those who had been slayed by him would lead to him plunging back into the life to seek revenge, leading to him climbing the ranks once again to find the killer of those he cared about. However, this also led to him getting a new perspective on life, coming to see that the UAA was doing nothing but forcing people into a cycle of violence. While he managed to make his way to the top and take vengeance again, this time the action gave him no satisfaction, and he’d ultimately forcibly disband the UAA. Though on the brightside in the process he finally got laid with Sylvia, having two kids.

That being said, his journey didn’t end there. Due to not wanting to deal with the fame his actions had given him and the assassins constantly coming for his head, he’d run away to live in a camper in the woods. However, 7 years later, his past would still follow him, as the father of one of the assassins he killed would confront him and try to take revenge. But then they ended up sucked into a cursed video game console Travis had lying around, which could also grant wishes, so Travis ultimately would go on a journey through the console’s games to use the wish to revive her from death. Also the console was involved in a CIA experiment to create clone super soldiers, but that’s not too important.

2 years later, Travis was once again dragged out of retirement, this time due to a world wide alien invasion. He’d end up challenging the overlord’s Galactic Superhero Association, and while this was his hardest challenge yet, he’d ultimately take down their leader FU. After this, he’d end up being approached by the future versions of his kids, who would end up having him come with them to the future to prevent an apocalypse caused by his brother killing him. While we may never know for sure how his journey ends or if he’d ever escape this cycle of violence, there’s one thing for sure: Even if there’s No More Heroes left to fight, he’ll be there to take on anyone who dares to challenge his status as the Number 1 Assassin. 

Intelligence & Skill

Scott Pilgrim

Scott Pilgrim is a skilled fighter, as he had won the All-Ontario Fighting Tournament when he was 19, making him considered the best fighter in Ontario thanks to this. He’d back up this reputation throughout his fights with the evil exes, as in many of them he showed a good amount of skill and quick thinking. He was able to trick Lucas Lee into defeating himself by making him do a dangerous stunt, and took down the Katayanagi Twins despite suffering from a hangover. In the movie he was able to defeat Todd by tricking him into eating non-vegan food, and took down a large group of Lucas Lee’s stunt doubles. The game further shows him able to take on large groups of enemies in all of the levels, getting through it and defeating the exes at the end potentially all on his own. 

His fighting style has several moves inspired by that of Ryu and Makoto from Street Fighter, both of whom’s styles have roots in the real world Shotokan karate, which centers around being fast and dynamic while maintaining relative ground stability. Scott’s style does have some elements of this, often dodging around strikes to get a good opening while making decisive moves with counters and strong moves. 

Travis Touchdown

Despite his fighting skills being self taught through online correspondences and old wrestling tapes, Travis is very naturally skilled as a fighter, to the point where even before the events of his first game he found standard assassin work to be barely a challenge. He’s regularly able to cut through hordes of enemies on his own when he goes to fight the various assassins, and he’s taken on everyone from expert assassins with decades of experience, prodigies which can figure out moves that take years to learn in just a couple days, and geniuses capable of creating complex robotics and machinery. He’s even managed to one up Guts and take down 100 men in just 5 minutes. He’s also had training from combat masters such as the legendary Yakuza hitman Thunder Ryu and the drunken master Randall Lovikov.

In terms of fighting style, Travis mainly utilizes his beam katanas in conjunction with various wrestling moves, focusing on killing his enemies as effectively as he can by slashing them up before finishing them with a beheading or bisection. Though he is adaptable, adjusting his fighting style to account for a stage magician, an old lady with a shopping cart cannons, a football player that merged with his cheerleader harem to make a mecha, an obese man with a flamethrower that is really the ghost of a cursed child, and other weirdness. He’s also adept at fighting while on his bike, being able to take on enemies while racing on a highway and dueling Ryuji while on a cliffside.

Hey, why didn’t you mention the alien stuff? I think that’s pretty impressive.

Didn’t you read the top? They’re not using it for this.

Well that’s stupid. Why would you ignore an entire game like that?

VS matches do that kind of thing all the time.

How the fuck did you two get in here-

You left the door unlocked.

…dangit.

Anyways, I see your notes here for the next part, but they look a bit boring, so I think I’m gonna explain it instead.

Hey, I’m not letting you do that without me, you wouldn’t understand my stuff.

Sure thing, Mr 17-year-old-dater.

I’m not taking shit from Mr “Let me go pick up the milk, it’ll just take 7 years”.

…I’m just going to go pick up my food now, you two handle this I guess.

Equipment

Scott Pilgrim

Bass Guitar

This is my trusty Fireglo Rickenbacker 4003 Bass Guitar, which I use when playing with my band. I can also smack people with it and play good enough to make riffs to hurt people. Also me and the rest of the band were able to make a big energy yeti beast… thing to fight the Katayanagi Twins in the movie and just anyone in the game, but I’m pretty sure I can’t bring him out to do that here since I gotta do it on my own.

The Power of Love

This is a sword I got after confessing my love for Ramona, and can summon whenever I want by pulling it out of my chest. I’m pretty proficient with Longswords in general, and this particular one can summon fire around itself, shoot energy blasts, and can even heal wounds when drawn out. It also levels up my skills, though this can be taken away if the sword is stolen, like when Gideon did it (what a dick). 

Also I’m not sure what those numbers do but RPG logic tells me higher ones are a good thing. The movie also gave it higher numbers, which is pretty neat.

The Power of Understanding

This is the cooler sword I got after realizing I made mistakes and needed to improve myself, and it looks a lot like Ichigo’s Zangetsu. It’s apparently stronger than the PoL, since it was able to take down Gideon pretty easily, but for some reason the stat boost it gives me is lower? Also it gives me a new shirt which is pretty cool.

The Power of Self-Respect

This is the sword I got in the movie instead of the Power of Understanding. It looks suspiciously like the Power of Love for some reason and has basically the same abilities as it, just colored purple. Using it I was able to beat up Gideon’s goons much faster than I could before using the PoL, but it also proceeded to break once Gideon busted out his strong sword, which uh, makes it useful as another option I guess. It at least has better numbers than the PoU! Though I still don’t know what they do.

Extra Lives

This is a giant floating head of myself I got from beating Todd that was able to revive me from death after I got killed by Gideon. It immediately revived me in the comic, but it also kinda reset time for me in the movie for some reason. I also only got one of those in the comic and movie, but in the game I can get up to 9 of them from various shops. Though if I end up dying without the extra lives, it’s game over. Kinda. I actually apparently just ended up back home, though that’d probably be inconvenient for the whole “continuing the fight” thing.

Other Weapons

In the game I can also use a variety of weapons in the environment, though it’s mainly other melee weapons like bats, wooden boards, katanas, future taser things, along with some throwable stuff like rocks or snowballs. 

Consumables

Also from the game, I can take a bunch of power ups from various stores to heal me and increase my stats. I can also carry one of them with me to go, and when I get knocked down to 0 health, it will heal me up, basically acting as another life. 

Travis Touchdown

Blood Berry

This is the beam katana that started it all. I managed to pick it up in an online auction, and it’s very good at slicing up any fools that get in my way. The little receiver at the end allows the beam to penetrate matter it normally cannot due to having a standard, dull receiver. Definitely a bit outclassed by everything I got later, but you can’t go wrong with the classics. 

Tsubaki

Designed by my very hot weapons scientist Dr. Naomi, these are a set of beam katanas that are progressively more deadly. MK I is the prototype of them and boasts better durability than the Blood Berry. MK II is bigger and more powerful, though I gotta wield it with two hands and therefore can’t attack as fast. MK III is the best katana of the ones from the first game, and while it’s not as powerful as the MK II, it’s energy output is so great that I don’t need to recharge it mid mission. I got a similar looking one from the start of the second game, though it lacked the infinite battery for dumb reasons like “gameplay balance.”

Peony

Another invention of Dr. Naomi's, this is like the MK II in that it’s a slower but stronger blade I wield with both hands. Though it has the unique gimmick of the blade growing based on my Ecstasy Gauge, which I’ll explain later, though the blade also shrinks if I lose my health. Kinda like how my little blade did when I learned the good doctor somehow turned into a tree, if you know what I’m talking about. 

Rose Nasty

My final set of beam katanas, at least of the ones I’m allowed because the guy running this decided I needed a nerf for dumb reasons. (I’m still here you know) These babies were gifted to me by my late buddy Bishop. They’re a pair of custom made curved beam katanas that I dual wield, which trades raw stopping power for the ability to just dice people into bits in seconds. 

Schpeltiger Mk. III

This is my motorbike, which is huge, powerful, and sturdy (heh), and comes equipped with rear twin disk brakes, specially tuned suspension, a long spin arm, and 30-inch tires. The first one ended up wrecked due to Dark Star and Jeane fucking it up, requiring me to get a sequel to it in the second game. And then I ended up getting a third by the time of my trailer park retirement. Its top speed is apparently impossible to measure, but in the Death Drive a similar one was able to keep up with the Smoking King, who can race up to 800 kilometers an hour, and I’d bet mine’s also able to do that. 

Death Drive Mk. II

This thing is a cursed VR game console I picked up from a game shop that just kinda unloaded it on me. It’s capable of sucking you into the games so you can play them yourself, and it has a bunch of different worlds and enemies to beat. If you manage to beat all 7 of the games, it will grant you any wish, though it’s naturally not advised to try and do that in the middle of a fight. Could probably offer a decent way of ending the fight regardless, since being exposed to the effects of it can cause brain damage to guys who can’t handle it. There’s also something about it making clones that it brainwashes to be part of a super soldier thing, but that’s something I dunno the full limits of.

Abilities

Scott Pilgrim

Energy Projection

A lot of the attacks I do can send out energy as they hit people. It makes them all look pretty cool and stuff. People in general tend to have this ability, and we can even make a shield, though if I were to do it on my own it’d probably be a lot smaller.

Shoryuken

Taken from like 10 guys from Street Fighter, but mostly Ryu, this is an attack where I smack a dude and they go flying in the air. Good for opening on guys that very rudely interrupt band performances

Air Juggle

As you get knocked into the air, I can combo it into this thing. My personal record is 64 hits, though it’s a little hard to train better than that since sandbags don’t go flying as easily as people.

Reversal

I got this counter attack which lets me block a strike and then immediately hit back. Which in the game is carried over as a universal counter option for the other playable characters. Not gonna sugarcoat it or anything, there’s really not much more to go over.

Super Attack

I can do another Ryu staple with my version of the Tatsumaki Senpukyaku. Though uh, I can’t move side to side while using it, mainly because it’s not as easy as it looks, and it can make you really dizzy when you do it for a while. Speaking from experience.

Tech Attack 1

Another reference to Street Fighter, though this time it’s Makoto’s Fukiage. It launches enemies skyward is a big blast of energy, and it works well on anyone, whether that be bisexual ninjas or weird sentai guys that cut in line.

Tech Attack 2

Yet another reference to Street Fighter, with Makoto’s Hayate. I draw back my fist and then slide forward with a lunge punch which can send people flying. I swear, I’ve played more fighting games than that.

Hyper Mode

In the game, if I beat up enough people in a row or consume certain foods, I can enter this state, which greatly increases my speed and lets me combo people easier. It’s pretty handy, though it is kinda lame visually. Expected my hair to grow or something.

Teleporting

At the end of levels in the game, I can teleport out of the area like Mega Man. How? Why? Where? All good questions. 

4th Wall Awareness

I’m also pretty aware of whatever mediums I end up portrayed in. There’s a bunch of moments of me acknowledging the 4th wall as seen above, including a time I advertised my own book. And in the movie I was able to recognise when someone was getting bleeped out. I’m still not sure how she did it, by the way.

Subspace

Subspace is a trippy mental world highway thing I can go into through various doors dotted around the place. I don’t know the full mechanics for sure, Ramona tried explaining it once but I kinda got distracted. One thing I do know for sure is that when in subspace, I’m in an avatar of myself that can stay conscious through damage that would otherwise kill me, like getting cut in half. Though Roxie did say that if I died in that state I’d still die for real. Meanwhile, The Glow is a weird mental energy thing Gideon launched at me that uses the power of my mind making my flaws more amplified. I can’t quite use the whole subspace stuff to the same level that she or Gideon can, but I was able to figure out how to use this Glow stuff to beat the weird muscled form of Gideon down. 

Scott Sense

I have a sense that lets me know when someone says my name. Surely this will be the big deciding factor here.

Travis Touchdown

Katana Techniques

• Slashing Stance - I can alter between low and high attacking stances to get past the guards of the enemy.

• Death Blow - When an enemy’s ready to die, then I  can do this to finish them off with a blow that can decapitate or bisect them.

• Double Slash - A more powerful version of the Death Blow which has, as the name implies, twice the power and area of effect.

• Charge Attack - By holding a sword swing for a second, I can unleash a more powerful strike with more range. When I’m in a high stance It will send me forward a bit, while in a low stance it’s a large arcing slash. 

Dark Step

Whenever I dodge an attack at just the right time, I’ll be able to do this, where time slows down as I get the chance to dodge or unleash counter attacks. This happens so fast the enemy will be literally frozen in confusion on where I went. And yeah, I did it before Bayonetta did it, no biggie. 

Wrestling Moves

I’m also a fan of wrestling and have taken after a lot of moves to incorporate them into my fighting styles, which is mainly because the dude behind my games is a pretty big fan of luchador stuff. I’ve learned them from watching old wrestling tapes, finding masks in levels, and reading magazines. I’ve got a lot of individual techniques, some of which include-

• Dragon Suplex: A belly-to-back suplex initiated with a full nelson hold, then I arch back and slam the enemy into the ground.

• Vertical/Jackhammer Suplex: I bring the enemy's near arm over his shoulder, lift them while they're upside-down and slam them downwards.

• German Suplex: I move behind the enemy and lift them from the waist and fall backwards to slam the enemy's head against the ground.

• Belly-to-Belly Suplex: I wrap my arms around the enemy's body and shift backwards while turning, slamming them into the ground.

• Trap Suplex: I lock the enemy's arms from above and deliver a belly-to-belly throw.

• Tiger Suplex: I hook both my enemy's arms from the side, placing my arms against their back, then perform a suplex.

• Hurricanrana: I wrap my legs around the enemy's legs before performing an acrobatic takedown.

• Tombstone Piledriver: I lift the enemy upside down and drop down, taking my legs away from them and letting them smash into the floor head-first as I land on my knees.

• Quebradora Con Giro: I spin my enemy overhead and slam them against my knee.

• Saito Suplex: I grab the enemy from the side and suplex them with a waistlock.

• One Shoulder Powerbomb: I perform a Powerbomb in such a way that the target is sitting on one of my shoulders as I lift them up.

• Tiger Driver '98: I lock both of the enemy's arms behind their back while bending them forward so their head is between my legs, then I pull back on those arms, lifting them, and dropping them down, bringing the enemy's head against the floor.

• Full Nelson Suplex: I move behind the enemy, bring both my arms under the enemy's and lock my hands against their neck, then suplex them.

Darkside Mode/Slash Reel

Whenever I kill a guy with a Death Blow or wrestling move, a roulette wheel pops up and rolls around for a bit, and if the slots roll all one symbol, then I’ll be powered up with a temporary boost I can activate at any time. The moves are all based on the moves of the girls from Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly, an anime I like which is better than the name and art style makes it look I assure you. These techniques include-

• Strawberry on the Shortcake - If you match three grasshopper icons, I’ll get powered up and apparently go super saiyan. In this state any attack I make will lead to a Death Blow. In the second game, it also slows down time and lets me move faster.

• Blueberry Cheese Brownie - After matching three bell icons, I get faster while getting the ability to shoot fireballs to annihilate assholes.

• Cranberry Chocolate Sundae: After matching three BAR icons, I can instantly kill anyone I get to while they’re paralyzed in place with fear, though I am slowed down while using it. In the second game, I’ll transform into a tiger while using this for some reason.

• Anarchy in the Galaxy: In the first game, by matching three 7's in the slot, I can unleash a hot pink energy wave that causes a bunch of explosions that destroys all enemies nearby.

• Gooseberry Sugary Donut: In the second game, if I get three 7s, I instead perform a spin attack that creates a huge explosion to wipe out everyone nearby.
  
  Wait a second, that’s basically the same thing, why the hell did they change it at all-

Lovikov Techniques

From another late buddy of mine, the drunk Russian guy Randall Lovikov taught me a bunch of moves after I gathered a set of balls to give to him (get your mind out of the gutter). There’s notes here apparently saying they were based on guys from something about 7 Killers or whatever, which is cool I think. These techniques include:

• Technique of Beauty - From the Memory of Three, this allows me to see the location of enemies on a mini-map.

• Technique of Love - From the Memory of Demon, this lets me perform a jumping slash, which can knock enemies on their back while opening them up for a kill.

• Technique of Bizarre - From the Memory of Child, this lets me dash for a bit at a fast speed.

• Technique of God - From the Memory of Woman, this extends the time limits of my Dark Side Mode techniques.

• Technique of Affinity - From the Memory of Mask, this can somehow increase the range of my grabs, which lead into my wrestling moves.

• Technique of Mystery - From the Memory of Tattoo, this lets me earn bonus money when completing ranked missions. Which means it is completely useless here. Great.

• Technique of Crazy Awesomeness - From the Memory of White, this lets me perform a long-range Jump Down Attack, which can finish off enemies from afar.

Ecstasy Gauge

This is a gauge that helps represent my excitement and ki, which raises the more I kill people, but decreases if I lose health. As it grows, my strength and speed with my strikes gets better, and when it hits maximum I can enter a special super mode in which my speed and damage gets even more boosted, along with turning me invulnerable. Though after the mode ends, or I use a Dark Side mode, the gauge drops to empty. 

Killer Instinct

 

Me and other assassins are able to sense each other based on our mutual bloodlust, with it often helping to find my targets and protect from sneak attacks. It’s enhanced my instincts to the point where I can dodge attacks without even looking at them, let me feel someone’s bloodlust from far away, and even tell why they feel bloodlust.  I can also feel the bloodlust from people even if they’ve left that life behind them, though I wouldn’t feel anything if the guy is dead. This stuff also gives me a limited form of precognition, mainly in the form of a sudden bad feeling that things are about to go wrong. It’s apparently a surprisingly common thing in my world. 

4th Wall Awareness

I’m pretty aware of the fact I’m in a video game. I talked directly with whoever’s playing just in the start of my first game, acknowledged plot elements feeling contrived and the fact I’m in a sequel, and I’m even able to fast forward through exposition dumps. This is partly thanks to my senses, as I’m able to directly sense you whenever you play my game. Which means yes, I can tell when you suck and will internally judge you for it. 

Stage Magic / Teleportation

When I was fighting the stage magician/assassin Harvey Volodarskii, I countered his magic tricks by performing one of my own, which in this case was teleporting out of a box. Don’t question how or why, because I still don’t fucking know.

Resurrection

Thanks to exposure to the Death Drive’s effects, whenever I die in the real world I can reform my body in another dimension as my consciousness travels to it, at which point I can return to reality in my own body. I’m not sure exactly how long it takes, since it’s all a bit trippy and hard to follow. 

Oh and before anyone whines about “oh they said nothing from NMH3”, shut the hell up. It’s basically what also happened at the end of Travis Strikes Again. It’s at least easier to follow than all the dumb Subspace bullshit.

Least it’s more consistent than “Oh the UAA is suddenly not fake because the sequel needed to exist”. By the way, the difficulty in that was really unfair and shit.

Oh yeah, buddy? Well I got through your game in like 3 hours, so I think you just got a skill issue there.

Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is then, chump. There’s an arcade just around the block, and I can kick your ass at anything there. 

You know what? Sure. Don’t worry, I know you’re broke, so I’ll pay. 

Oh, you still got money back from Sylvie scamming you?

Ah hell, I am looking forward to this.

…great, they’re gone. Though they couldn’t have even been bothered to finish their own ability lists, of course.

Resistances

Scott Pilgrim

• Extreme Cold - Lives in Canada and can casually traverse through blizzards.

• Death Manipulation - Despite listening to Crash and the Boys' song "Last Song Kills Audience", which does what it says on the tin, Scott was not affected by it.

• Mind Manipulation - Survived bearing witness to the existential horror of Honest Ed’s, something not even Todd could do. 

• Extreme Pain - Took multiple brutal sword slashes by Gideon, and yet was able to keep standing. Later stayed conscious through being cut in half while in Subspace.

Travis Touchdown

• Fire Manipulation - Has shrugged off being completely lit on fire.

• Poison / Paralysis Manipulation - Can break out of Cloe Walsh’s body paralysis toxins.

• Madness Manipulation - Was unaffected by being in range of Cloe Walsh’s cries, which have allegedly driven birds suicidally mad.

• Sleep Manipulation - Unaffected by listening to Margaret Moonlight's song, which knocked out Sylvia for a week despite hearing it from a distance.

• Empathetic Manipulation - When fighting, he enters a state where he mentally shuts down his emotions.

• Mental / Biological Manipulation - Endured using the Death Drive, which normally causes so much stress on the user’s mind that they get brain damage. No human had ever beaten even one of the games on the Drive due to this, and yet Travis was able to beat seven of them with little apparent side effects. 

Feats

Scott Pilgrim

Overall

• Considered the best fighter in Ontario 

• Got with Ramona Flowers

• Defeated the Seven Evil Exes (though only 5 of them were in a fight)

• Learned to be a better person by the end

• His Netflix series looks pretty epic

Power

• Allegedly punched a guy so hard he went around the world (no time frame was specified so putting numbers on it is a bit hard)

• Defeated a ninja girl in one hit by accident

• Sliced Roxanne Richter clean in half

• Roxie kept up with Mr Chau, who can slice a bus in half

• In the game, she can do the same to a tram

• Decapitated a robot with a guitar

• Fought and defeated a big robot

• Can easily bust down walls

• Can break out of a dogpile of up to 10 guys by sending them all flying

• Took down the Super Fighting Robot, which is the size of a building

Speed

• Punched Matthew Pattel in the air and hit him 64 times before he hit the ground

• Kept up with Lucas Lee, who can skate up to 309 kilometers per hour (Mach 0.25)

• Moves from a stage to Envy before she can swing a hammer at Ramona

• Dodged a punch from a ninja girl

• Dodged strikes from and tagged Roxie, who can move faster than eyesight

• Comparable to Shatterhand, who weaponize sound waves

• Zipped away from the sight of a guy he was talking to in the time it took him to look to the side

• Kept up with Nega-Scott, who can move fast enough to look like a blur

• Can dodge meteors from Super Gideon (Mach 5.8)

• Can move in tandem with lightning summoned by Gigadeon (Mach 738.21)

Durability

• Blocked strikes from Matthew Pattel, who could punch a hole in a venue roof

• Was tossed into a tower hard enough to smash part of it apart and was only knocked out 

• Was fine after getting force choked and tossed through a wall by Todd

• Got blasted into the air and hits the ground after a bit

• Was fine after being in the center of Honest Ed’s imploding (At least 10.50 Tons of TNT)

• Got sliced into a bit by Gideon and was still standing

• Got launched into steel support beams hard enough to bend them

• Survived being caught in this explosion (0.133 tons of TNT)

• Survived being in a tram as it crashed into a building

• Can survive being hit by meteors made by Super Gideon (93.7 tons of TNT)

Travis Touchdown

Overall

• Became the 1st ranked assassin twice

• Beat the 7 games of the Death Drive

• One upped Guts by taking down 100 men in just 5 minutes

• Singlehandely caused the crime rate of Santa Destroy to go down just from killing people

• Canonically buddies with Jacket of Hotline Miami

Power

• Regularly is able to slash apart people with his blades casually

• As seen above, sliced a door in half along with the guy in front of it

• Equally fought Henry Cooldown, who tanked the explosion of Letz Shake blowing up (7.9 - 81.07 Tons of TNT)

• Sliced the barrel of Speed Buster’s cannon in half

• <ahem> Did it with Sylivia so hard the ground shook and the sign on the roof of the motel they were at fell over (Downward fucking dog!)

Speed

• Seemingly dodged multiple bullets from Helter Skelter (Mach 13.29)

• Dodged a sneak attack from Destroyman’s lasers without looking

• Can intercept automatic fire from multiple directions at once

• Intercepted a bullet from Dr Peace (Mach 16.49)

• Blocked close range gunfire before dodging through it to kill several goons

• Caught multiple bullets fired at him through a door, before blitzing the multiple gunmen that fired them before they could fire again

• Comparable to Shinobu, who sliced apart New Destroyman’s arm faster than he could perceive

• Can react to Vladimir’s beams, which can cut a satellite in half (Mach 3450.06)

Durability

• Was violently electrocuted and beaten up by Destroyman, and was fine fighting him directly afterwards

• Got battered around by multiple grenade explosions caused by Holly Summers and was fine to fight afterwards

• Survived being in Speed Buster’s beam, which can pulverize a wall of rock (At least 0.096 tons of TNT)

• Got punched in the heart and was still standing 

• Can briefly recover from damage which would normally kill him

• Likely superior to Million Gunman, who could remain alive as just a head

• Can take hits from Vladimir’s beams, which can cut a satellite in half (166.44 tons - 32 kilotons of TNT)

• Took hits from Jasper Batty Jr, who can destroy the roof of a skyscraper with just a slap (9.854 Tons of TNT)

Weaknesses

Scott Pilgrim

As a person, Scott can be pretty lazy, stubborn, and has a tendency to ignore his own flaws rather than try to improve himself, though that last one seems to be something he’s worked past. In terms of a fight, he has a tendency to rush in directly without thinking, which has put him into tricky situations where he needed friends or extenuating circumstances to bail him out. And while his swords do power him up, it is possible to remove this power up by taking away or destroying the swords, thus weakening him.

Travis Touchdown

Travis’s most notable weakness is that most of his beam katanas have limited battery lives, which he must recharge by using vigorous thrusting motions. They can also be short circuited through exposure to water, violently electrocuting him for a bit. In terms of Travis himself, he can be a bit cocky and overconfident in fights, and has fallen for some pretty embarrassing plays in spite of his skill. Finally, he is more hesitant in killing foes that are far younger than him, though he isn’t above maiming them if he needs to. 

Before the Verdict

Todd Ingram

Now for the pretty infamous sticking point in Scott Pilgrim VS discussions. Todd Ingram, one of the evil exes, is capable of flying to and punching a hole in the moon. Now the actual numbers you could put on this feat are at least continent level, or even up to planet level if you want to take its depiction in the movie as literal. However, for the purposes of this blog, this is not being considered fair game to include for Scott’s stats. There are many reasons to do this in my opinion. First of all, this is a massive outlier far above literally everything seen elsewhere in the series. The only thing coming close is a vague statement that Gideon “may or may not'' be capable of a country level blast. But given that it is said amidst multiple other descriptions we know aren’t true of Gideon, it can’t be used as an actual indication of power. Secondly, Scott was clearly put on the back foot by Todd’s power throughout their fight, and needed to use trickery to remove his powers to ultimately defeat him, indicating he logically should not be fully comparable to Todd’s strength. Thirdly, the fact Todd was explicitly acknowledged as having specific vegan powers few have shows there is a reason to assume he’s an exception to the standard power levels of the verse. Finally, there is a direct word of god statement from Bryan Lee O'Malley, the creator of the series, regarding this topic, in which he confirmed Todd was not going all out in their fight. There’s also a statement in the behind the scenes section of the books themselves, where he went over his design process, during which he said Todd turned out to be bigger, stronger, and more powerful than Scott. All of this gives plenty of reason not to scale Scott to his strength in my opinion. But people have argued that there’s still a reason to use it, so I feel like it’s worth acknowledging some of those arguments and giving my rebuttal.

• All other feats done in the series were casual, therefore the feat being an outlier is simply because they don’t visibly demonstrate that level of power

• First of all, the first part isn’t really true, as there are multiple instances of characters visibly putting effort into feats that are far below moon punching range. And secondly, that still wouldn’t be a justification to assume they’re all actually millions of times stronger. There’s absolutely nothing within the text implying the characters are constantly holding back their full strength, unlike something like ki control for Dragon Ball characters, so there would be no reason to assume that is the case here beyond head canon. There’s also people who have claimed that fights generally don’t have people reacting as if it’s a shocking event, further implying this level of power is just normal for everyone, but this is also contradicted by the multiple instances of people we know to be experienced with this kind of stuff and random bystanders alike visibly showing shock at these fights.

• Todd didn’t use the vegan powers to bust the moon, so Scott taking them away doesn’t matter

• Ramona pretty clearly notes he had just become vegan at the time, and it is directly stated several times that his powers are directly tied to his veganism. Some have said his powers were instead from later teachings, but Todd also directly notes in the above instance that he had been experimented on, further showing that he did have powers at the time. And there’s nothing implying his display of power here was different from his later showings. The only thing that could imply it is the fact he does not seem to do the standard glowy hair associated with him using his powers, but the one clear shot we have of him during the moment itself is from the back and not that detailed, which combined with the page being stylistically depicted in black and white even in the colored version of the comic means there isn’t really conclusive evidence for such a claim. There’s also nothing implying he physically punched the moon to create the attack or anything, as the shot pulls away without any way to see how he’s doing the damage beyond the vague energy blast. Said energy blast, by the way,   is all but stating it was done via his vegan powers, as him using his powers very consistently take the form of energy based blasts. As for Envy’s recounting of the story, her depiction of the event has even less seen details to work out if his hair was glowing or how he did the feat, and while she does note he was "going to learn the secrets of his people'' after the fact, given context, that was not him going to gain his power, but likely more to gain training and control over his power. So no, there’s nothing implying he did not have powers at the time. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite if you actually pay attention.

• Todd wasn’t fully vegan when Scott was fighting him, meaning his power isn’t tied to that

• This isn’t really how Todd’s powers work. The vegan police pretty clearly note as they’re taking away his powers that the “keep vegan to keep power” thing is less a specific requirement he has to use his powers and more equivalent to a law he needs to follow in order to maintain access to this power. To give an analogy, using a gun to perform a crime is illegal, but that doesn’t mean there’s a magic force stopping people from using a gun to do crime, it still would rely on police officers taking the gun away after learning they broke the law. 

• Scott implies him being overwhelmed in these fights was more down to range over power

• These are not mutually exclusive factors to Scott being overwhelmed, as there is nothing to suggest Todd dominating couldn’t have been down to being stronger and more ranged. Additionally, this is contradicted in how Scott manages to close the gap at several points before being blasted away, showing Todd’s superior range is not the main issue in trying to take Todd on in a fair fight. 

• Scott still took hits from him, so he should scale regardless

• People do not always put 100% of their strength into everything they do, and we know Todd is the kind of person who would only put as much power as he needed to in order to knock around Scott. His various beatdowns of Scott very blatantly are not being done with as much force as his moon punch, as well as very casually by Todd himself. If he were putting the same amount of energy into his strikes as he did his moon punch, then why is the most destruction he causes when tossing Scott outside is knocking a hole in a wall? 

• Scott staggered Todd and drew blood, so he was strong enough to overpower Todd’s durability

• Well, the small specks of blood are oddly colored enough that I had to do some looking into it here to see if it actually was blood, but this admittedly could just be an odd coloring choice as I can’t really think of anything else it could be, and even the original black and white version has these specks. The bigger issue is that this very clearly did nothing resembling significant damage to Todd, as he proceeds to dominate in the rest of the fight until the cops pop up with no other visible injuries. So the idea this was Scott fully overpowering his durability is very questionable, especially given it was done during a sneak attack. In fact, the idea Todd ought to scale in durability to his attacking strength is questionable as well, since we don’t really see if he was physically in the blast radius as he blew up the moon, and AP doesn’t always equate to durability.

• The bit of him imploding Honest Ed’s was him losing control and unleashing his full power, meaning Scott tanked his full power in that moment

• This is ignoring how he was still visibly struggling to hold back his full power, especially since he was under direct instructions not to use these powers, and if he was completely losing control here, in the immediate aftermath he seems to have got them under control again rather quickly. Now I do agree the amount of visible force Scott takes in this moment is fair to scale him to, but assuming it was the same level of the moon punch is not reasonable, as it very clearly did not do as much damage as the moon attack. Additionally, it's a bit inconsistent to say this moment of him losing power was the full force of his powers, then use the many instances of him being in control as he tosses Scott around as evidence Scott can take his full force as well. Logically speaking, those two explanations cannot coexist.

• Scott himself said the evil exes each get harder than each other, so the later exes should be more powerful than Todd

• First off, in context Scott is drunk and exhausted from fighting a robot all night, so he’s hardly a reliable source at that particular moment. Secondly, neither Roxie nor the Katayanagi Twins ever do anything to actually back up the idea they are of greater power than Todd, as their feats are well in line with others in the series that are significantly below Todd. And while Scott did struggle in fights against them, this was due to his personal life and relationships being more strained, which was something that was distracting him, as well as the fact he did not want to fight a girl and was hungover respectively. In fact, with the Twins specifically, when he was able to get past these blocks temporarily, he easily bested both of them without any boosts from his swords, which further hurts the interpretation of them being stronger than Todd. 

• Gideon was definitely stronger than Todd due to being the final boss and his direct superior in the league

• His fight being difficult was more down to his manipulation of Scott and mental abilities fucking with him leading to Scott getting caught off guard more easily. And Gideon simply being the leader of the exes does not mean he was stronger than all of them, as there’s nothing implying he got his position through power or the like. In fact, that interpretation goes directly against his explanation of how the League formed, where he said they allied more out of a common cause. Now sure, Ramona does suggest he somehow corrupted them, and we do know he has something of a self serving memory. But at this moment Ramona’s also not being particularly reliable, as she had just been afflicted with The Glow, and there’s still nothing suggesting his explanation isn’t true, as we do know one consistent trend with most of the other exes was them being upset over their relationship with Ramona, which checks out with his story. And even if you want to disregard this, there’s still nothing suggesting he’s at the top solely because he’s the strongest. Aside from Subspace scaling stuff, which I will get to later because it’s a different bag of chips.

• The word of god statements contradict the story and are therefore inapplicable

• There is not really any sort of contradiction these statements bring to the events within the text. All the first cited statement says that Todd is an asshole who wouldn’t use his full power on Scott, and the text pretty clearly shows that to be true. In fact several of his displays of power have him visibly not putting much effort into his strikes. And the second one is also pretty cut and dry, as he directly says Todd is stronger but dumber than Scott, which is also blatantly true when you look at the text. The only contradiction these statements have is if you assume Scott can scale to Todd, thereby meaning the assumption is further unfounded. And finally, it’s again a bit oddly inconsistent to use a statement that is directly contradicted by the events of the story to support your point, only to throw out some statements that are fairly reasonable with the events of the story but directly contradict the conclusion that he could scale.

• Scott’s fight with Todd in the game shows them fighting equally

• Not only is this fight part of a section that is directly contradicting the original story, and as such would be treated as inapplicable, but just within the game continuity, Todd showcases several abilities that are never seen in other media, and there is no mention of his moonbusting in the game’s continuity, so just assuming this version of him is exactly as strong as other versions is unfounded. The one thing that could imply it is several cutscenes in the game show the moon with two big craters, which could be implied to be his doing, but these craters are notably bigger and in different positions than they are in the comic, further casting doubt on that interpretation. 

So overall scaling Scott to this feat is off the table. The story itself does not support this conclusion, and much of the logic used to say he should scale is inconsistent, uses cherry picked contexts, and are based in assumptions that are highly unfounded by the text itself. You could maybe give Scott some sort of downscaling to Todd’s strength, but considering the exact amount Scott’s below Todd isn’t clear I’m not going to try to guess. Though I will at least include a section in the conclusion going over how Scott scaling to it fully would change the match.

Relativistic Scott Pilgrim

There are a couple instances within Scott Pilgrim media which could imply Scott scales to moving this fast, but as you saw from the feat section, this blog is not going to buy any of them. I’ll get the more debunkable ones out of the way first. Some have suggested that Envy is intercepting a teleport from Lynette here. However, context shows that this was not a fully instant teleport, as Ramona and Envy both had time to say several words as she was in the middle of intercepting it. She also was aiming the attack for her before she teleported, so it would not be a case of outspeeding instant movement in the first place, as that would require intercepting the end of the teleport, not here, where she was already aware of and swinging for where Lynette was and she just happened to teleport away mid swing. There’s also multiple instances of enemies in the game using attacks which could be seen as lasers, but none of them share any characteristics with light speed lasers, so they can’t really be used for light timing arguments either.

As for the big instance, that would also be in the game, as your character is capable of parrying camera flashes, as seen in the above gif. However, there’s also several issues in using this. First of all, it would be important to bring up the question of this only being possible through gameplay mechanics or not, as physically parrying a camera flash doesn’t really make much sense even in the weird world of the series. Another issue is that, by its nature as a parry, you have to preemptively use it a bit before the enemy attacks, meaning it’s arguable whether it can be seen as your character reacting to the speed of the flash itself or merely the speed the enemy pulls up the camera and presses a button. Finally, the fact that the attack is something that can be parried and reversed at all implies it has physical force, which can even be seen in the fact that parrying it pushes you back slightly. Light does not have any physical force behind it as that is physically impossible. Ergo, this cannot qualify as light timing either.

Nuke Level Scott

Another possible feat from the game is this moment, where your playable character ends up potentially being exploded by a nuke if you fail to punch it enough in time. You can see what appears to be actual nuclear material in the bomb, implying it could be a full nuke Scott is tanking the blast of. However, given the level this takes place in is a movie set, it’s more likely that the nuke is a prop and not an actual one, and the explosion is of similar magnitude to the one you can experience a bit later. This is backed up by them using the exact same effect and damage numbers for the explosion.

Simon Lee 

At the start of Issue 2 of the comic, we see a flashback to Scott’s past, where he fights a dude named Simon over Kim. The events of this were adapted into a 2D animation as a sort of prologue to the movie called Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation, and this sequence of events does provide some useful feats, most notably a moment Scott moves fast enough to make afterimages through rain. However, in Volume 6, it’s clarified that the events of this sequence were false memories, and Simon was actually just a nerd he beat up. It’s unclear if this also holds true for the animated short version, but even if it did it would be contradicting the original series so it’s inapplicable. 

Related to this is a statement in the movie itself where he comments that he had to fight an “80 foot tall” guy who he proceeded to “kick so hard he saw the curvature of the earth” to be with Kim. This could also be a decent feat, but given the parallel this moment has to a moment we know was fake, it being a contradiction to the original comic, the context of it being an aside comment that gets no elaboration, and the fact it is likely hyperbole given his tone, this means it’s also off the table as a feat.

Subspace Scaling

This is another potentially interesting discussion which could go into dimensional tiering stuff depending on the interpretation, but at the end of the day it’s also pretty irrelevant for Scott himself. While Ramona and Gideon demonstrate a lot of control over Subspace implying they have some level of power within it, Scott himself never demonstrates any of the powers they do willingly, so there’s no reason to assume he could replicate many of them. 

The one moment I’d also like to draw attention to is when Scott blew up the big form of Gideon. Which I’d like to remind you, was only when he was under the effects of the Glow. That’s not some sort of state he can just activate on his own, Gideon needed to place it on him, and it went away after defeating Gideon in Subspace. As such, it’s simply a temporary state he was able to take advantage of while within Subspace. Also despite the seemingly impressive feat of dispelling his super form, the Glow also is still inferior to someone in control of subspace, as Gideon states afterwards and backs up by instantly cutting him in half despite the loss of his super state. Ramona, someone who had a similar control over it, was the one who had to step up and take the fight out of Subspace. And no, defeating Gideon later would not give him scaling to it, as one thing we do know for certain is that Subspace avatars aren’t physically comparable to their real life selves.

There’s also multiple abilities people have argued Scott could utilize due to being able to tap into Subspace to an extent, which I’ll link an explanation to here. I didn’t include most of these abilities due to the fact Scott either has either never consciously controlled these abilities in a fight scenario or never even demonstrated the use of them personally, meaning a lot of them would be a bit irrelevant to this debate due to them likely not being options Scott would even think of doing, as well as the fact he’d need to take the fight into Subspace in the first place for many of them. 

One specific instance I’d like to break down a bit more individually is the section on immortality. This seems impressive at first glance, but I don’t totally agree with the interpretation that it would just happen for anyone, given Scott explicitly needed an extra life to revive from his death in the comic, and this would also contradict the statements of characters just going back home when they die. Additionally, realistically speaking this wouldn’t impact the fight, as even if he were revived within Subspace, without extra lives or outside help he wouldn’t have an easy way of getting out of Subspace, as the ability to create portals out of it is merely an implied detail and not an actual ability, so it even being a viable way to allow him to continue the fight would be arguable at best. 

Glastonbury

Now, this is a pretty big potential part of Travis’ arsenal, as it is a giant mecha that can potentially get to large mountain levels of strength. You might call bullshit on not including it as part of his arsenal here, but I do have my reasons. First of all, we’ve only seen Travis bust out this kind of stuff for dealing with other mecha or big aliens, as every other instance of him fighting with another assassin that doesn’t have something like this has him stay grounded. This means that, in a fight where he’s dealing with someone like Scott, it’d be questionable if he would even decide to bust it out in the first place. Secondly, even if I ignored that, it’s also arguable if he would even still have access to it in this kind of situation. His only on screen fight with it ended with the UAA confiscating it, and while it’s unclear when and if he ever tried to get it back between games, by the time of No More Heroes 3. he directly mentions that the mecha had since been decommissioned due to deterioration. It’s not clear if that holds true for it as of Travis Strikes Back, but given deterioration implies it went unused for some time, it’s reasonable to assume it was in no condition to fight even if it hadn’t been decommissioned by then. So ultimately it’s a bit of a non-factor.

Death Drive Scaling

The main draw of Travis Strikes Back, this is a console which Travis plugs into to go through various video game worlds. Now, there has been some confusion in regards to how much of what he’s capable of in the Death Drive is something he would be capable of replicating in real life, as this game in particular can get a bit confusing in regards to what he’s doing. That being said, I’m not going to be including much of this, for reasons I will outline below. 

Now Suda51 has stated in an interview that Travis had essentially absorbed the powers of the Death Drive during the events of TSA, meaning he could be argued as receiving the power of the Drive. However, in context, he’s specifically referring to the resurrection ability Travis demonstrates after Henry kills him during the events of 3. He never actually clarifies what else Travis got from the absorption, and there are many abilities Travis doesn’t show an equivalent to out of the Death Drive, even if you were to include the events of 3. 

Another thing acknowledging is the Death Glove. Originally introduced in TSA, this is the controller of the Death Drive which can be upgraded with various chips to give special abilities, which NMH3 showed can carry over to real life. However, all of the chips you upgrade the gloves with in NMH3 are different from what you can give them in TSA, which implies that the chips from TSA are stuff he only has access to within the Death Drive, and therefore he wouldn’t have access to them here.

There’s also multiple feats within the Drive that can be seen as in line with his statistics outside of the Drive, but there’s also several feats of possible universal and higher strength. There is business involving the Drive creating stronger clones of them which may be actually what the Travis we’re playing as is, as outlined at the bottom of here, but it’s also not really solidly defined. I won’t really speak on whether or not I think these arguments hold water, but I’m opting to not include them for the sake of brevity and because including it wouldn’t change the result too much.  

I will freely admit that the game in general is kind of a blind spot for me, as a lot of it is the kind of stuff I’m confused by even after reading dozens of wikis and plot synopsises. While I will acknowledge there is an argument for much of this stuff applying to Travis even out of the Drive, for this blog I’m going to treat abilities he only does only in the Death Drive as stuff he can only do if he somehow took the fight into the Death Drive. Apologies if you don’t agree with this stance, but to me it’s just kind of overcomplicating this match far too much. 

Kill The Past

Now, in case you were unaware, many of the games Suda51 and his company have had a hand in are actually in a pretty loose shared universe with each other, which are typically referred to by the name above. As by far the most popular series of games under that umbrella, No More Heroes actually has acted as a bit of a nexus point for many of them, with Travis Strikes Back giving a more cohesive list of the games that share the world with Travis. All that said, you might be wondering why I haven’t really brought up much cross scaling to these games here. For most of them that was mainly for the sake of simplicity, as most of the feats of these other games don’t really add much to this discussion due to their stats being inferior or in line with what Travis compares to just in his own games. So I’m not going to inflate his stat list with a bunch of stuff from other games just because he’s in the same world. There’s also several feats that are above where I have Travis that you could argue he’s comparable to, but I’m gonna individually break down each of them and go over why I don’t think they’re on the table

• The first and biggest instance is killer7. Aside from the aforementioned ability shout outs, Dan Smith, one of the playable characters of that game, actually makes an in person appearance in Travis Strikes Again, which could be relevant considering there’s several feats from that game which can get a bit higher than Travis usually does, mainly in regards to speed. However, this is also the easiest to disprove, as said scene has Badman, a guy who would keep up with Travis with little fear later, be absolutely terrified at the idea of Dan confronting him, indicating he’s likely below Dan. Now Travis should likely be stronger than Badman, but assuming that means he could stand up to Dan, a guy he’s never actually met, is a bit weak as an argument. 

• Next would be Lollipop Chainsaw. At the end of the game, Juliet Starling, the protagonist of the game, survives an attack that’s about 12 times greater than Travis’ peak here. However, there’s not really much of an argument that he should be comparable to this. For one thing, there is a word of god statement from Suda51 himself before the release of the game where he said that Juliet might be able to beat Travis. At the time, Travis would only be as strong as he was in NMH2, so him potentially losing is backed up by her superior stats as seen above. Now Travis should reasonably be above his NMH2 self by the time of TSA, but the amount he is stronger isn’t really solidly defined, especially given he had been in retirement for much of the intervening period. Speaking of TSA, some have also suggested the character of Juliet Chesterfield from the VN segments of that game is meant to be an older version of Juliet Starling who had distanced herself from her past. However, this is merely a fan theory, as Chesterfield gives no real explicit confirmation throughout her discussion of her past to the idea she used to be Starling, and there’s no real similarity the two characters have in personality or appearance besides sharing the same first name. Even if you were to assume they are one and the same, Travis never really does anything during his interactions with her to imply he should scale to her either, as they never really fight or anything.

• Finally, briefly acknowledging LET IT DIE, there are a couple feats done by Uncle Death from that game which get pretty high. However, not only is he considered massively above everyone in the context of that game, I also couldn’t really find a definitive link between it and other games aside from “you can get weapons based on guys from older games”, which is hardly definitive enough to draw a connection between them, let alone argue Travis scales to it. There’s also the fact there’s a device known as the Death Drive 128 found within the game, which would be a later version of the Death Drive 2 from TSA, but that would suggest the game takes place long after the other titles in the future, thereby meaning no one should scale to it regardless.  

Verdict

Stats

For Scott’s baseline, there are multiple casual feats that get him into the wall level range, and he can generally tank big explosions, take down building sized robots, and keep up with various ninjas slicing public transport apart, which all gets pretty consistently in the building level range. He also survived being in close proximity to the implosion of Honest Ed’s, which gets up to 10 tons of TNT, and is likely stronger. The strongest solid feat he survived was Super Gideon’s meteors, which while not quite as impressive as a full scale meteor, would still be hitting at an impressive 93.7 tons of TNT. 

Next would be speed. He has multiple showings of keeping up with characters that can move as a blur at faster than eyesight speeds, and has even pulled off similar feats of moving that fast. To get to the more calculable side of things, he could keep up with Lucas Lee, who can hit a max speed of 309 kilometers an hour or about a quarter the speed of sound, and he should be comparable to characters who can weaponize and emit sound waves. He’s also able to dodge Gigadeon’s meteors, which likely aren’t quite the same speed as full scale meteors due to them being summoned in a location that is not open to the sky, but would at least hit the speed needed to ignite at Mach 5.8. As for the fastest speed he could scale to, that would be moving in tandem with Gigadeon’s lightning attacks, which come from clouds meaning they are likely the real deal. There’s multiple calcs I’ve seen for this feat, with the one I’m going with clocking in at Mach 738.21.

Finally, all of this is stuff he should likely upscale to, given his swords are able to buff his stats. It is difficult to tell by how much, given the buffs stated for his swords are additive instead of multiplicative, but in the movie it was shown that Gideon’s Pixel Katana could buff him to 7 times his own strength, and Scott’s best sword could match it. Now there are issues in applying this Scott, as the katana itself is something that’s absent from the original comic’s story, but given it’s the only solid multiplier I could find in Scott Pilgrim media, I’ll just use it for the sake of the argument. Applying that 7x multiplier to Scott’s stats, at full strength his AP/Durability would get up to 655.9 tons of TNT, and his speed would get up to Mach 5167.47.

Now to move on to Travis’s stats. He also has multiple casual wall level feats from cutting apart people and objects alike, and also has instances of tanking building level stuff directly. There are a couple notable lower feats for his AP/Durability, including Jasper Batty Jr’s 9.854 tons slaps, and the lower end for Henry surviving Letz Shake blowing up at 7.9 tons. That’s already matching Scott’s feats, but Travis can match and surpass base Scott’s stats thanks to the higher end of Henry’s feat at 81.07 tons, and the lower end for Vladimir’s satellite splitting at 166.44 tons. And even the multiplier doesn’t change this, as the higher end for the satellite blast clocks in at 32 kilotons, which is about 49 times stronger than Scott’s best with the multiplier.

Now for speed. Travis’s multiple and consistent instances of bullet dodging and intercepting are all impressive, with the best ones clocking in at Mach 13.29 and 16.49, and are far faster than Scott’s lower ends, which at best hit about half that speed. Travis’s highest speed is also from scaling Vladimir's beams, and while they clearly aren’t full light speed beams as we explicitly see it curve, being able to tag a satellite near instantly as they do mean they are able to move at Mach 3450.06, which is about 4.6 times faster than Scott’s base top speed. However, Scott’s higher end when accounting for his multiplier would actually be about 1.5 times faster.

That is good for Scott, but Travis also is capable of upscaling from these feats as well. Now unlike Scott, there’s no instances of direct multipliers for strength in NMH that I could see apply here, but it is explicitly mentioned he had grown stronger between the first and second game, so it’s safe to assume TSA also marked a jump in strength. And Travis only being as little as twice as strong would still swing the speed advantage back in his corner by a factor of 1.3. That is still relatively close to Scott, but it also even further widens the gap in power to 98 times greater than Scott.

So, no matter which end you go with, while at their best the two are relatively close in terms of their speeds, Travis is the one who holds a very comfortable edge in terms of raw power. 

Arsenal & Abilities

Now both characters have quite a bit to go over in this section. When it comes to their physical weaponry and equipment, I would give the edge to Travis. In terms of on hand weaponry, he has more potential blades to swap between, along with them also being more independently unique than Scott’s which basically do the same thing. His bike would also give him a sizable mobility edge if he feels the need to take to it. But Scott also has an edge in that he has a wider arsenal in terms of objects he could take from the environment, as well as being the only one with a solid access to healing, even if it would only be a single use.

When it comes to comparing their more innate abilities. Scott definitely has a solid edge in terms of hand to hand techniques, thanks to his pretty versatile moveset pool. Travis technically has a wider pool of wrestling moves, but given most of these are just variations of “grab guy and slam him down”, this means Scott would definitely be the more versatile hand to hand fighter in practice. Scott also has access to his extra lives, which would essentially give him up to 9 retries should Travis kill him, and these methods are faster than Travis’ own ways to revive himself.

That being said, that revival actually would end up working into Travis’s favor in the long run. While their speed is relatively close here, Travis has multiple methods to buff his own statistics, including his speed, and all of those tend to happen by killing people. Several of his Dark Side modes, as well as his Ecstasy Gauge, can buff his speed to the point of being able to blitz the enemies he keeps up with, and that essentially means that when Scott ends up dying, his extra tries are going to be significantly harder due to Travis now possessing far superior speed and multiple abilities on top his already one shotting strength edge, which would let him take Scott out before he could do much in response. Scott also does have a method to buff his own speed thanks to Hyper Mode, but it requires either beating an enemy multiple times, which would be unlikely to be something that happens to Travis due to his far superior strength, or by eating a food after getting knocked down, which is something that he’d only be able to do once on his first life. And while Scott could learn from his mistakes and try a different approach, the fact that Travis is also going to be learning his moves from these previous lives means that this is unlikely to work out for him in the long term.

This is of course going with the interpretation of Scott’s extra lives reviving him after death, which is more consistent and what the comic and game follow. If you were to go with the movie’s interpretation of how the lives work by essentially restarting the fight from everyone’s perspective besides his, he could be hypothetically restarting the fight every time from his perspective, which would give him more of an edge to work around Travis. This does run into an issue of combining multiple contradictory interpretations of the story, but even regardless that wouldn’t really change too much. While in this situation Scott would arguably be more consistently taking the speed edge due to him constantly getting Hyper Mode back, he still doesn’t have a good answer for the gap in power, as he lacks any real hax to take Travis down outside of Subspace. 

And Scott running out of lives would just make him respawn at home in Ontario, but that would still likely be a significant distance away from any possible battlefield with Travis, who lives in Santa Destroy, California, which is roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. While the exact battlefield would be unclear, assuming the fight took place somewhere near Travis’s home, this would mean that Scott would need to travel over 2000 miles to get back to the fight over country lines and multiple state lines, which he realistically has no real way to do in a timely enough manner to be seen as being able to continue the fight. Even Subspace wouldn’t help here, given we’ve only seen people use it to transport themselves across towns at the furthest. You could say the fight would be taking place somewhere else in America, but that would get to a similarly long distance. And if you wanted to put it somewhere closer to Scott or even in Ontario itself, I feel that would be approaching giving Scott an unfair edge in terms of home field advantage. This is also assuming Scott would even want to try and go for a rematch in the first place, but given he’s known for bailing on situations if he thinks he can’t handle them, it’s far more likely that if this happens he just concedes, which I feel would definitely count as a win for Travis even if he didn’t technically kill Scott for good. 

There’s also multiple factors in Travis’s corner beyond his ability to take advantage of Scott’s respawns. While Scott’s Scott Sense is funny, it absolutely pales in comparison to Travis’s instinctive reactions, which would mean he’d have a significant edge towards anything Scott may try to pull. Travis is also by far the more skilled fighter when it comes to swordplay, as well as possessing more techniques when using them. Along with that, Dark Step being able to slow time from his perspective would also be a massive help in giving him the edge in terms of speed without needing to build up the Dark Side Mode or Ecstasy gauge.

Finally, both of them do have options to take the fight into an alternate space they are stronger in and have control over, that being Subspace and the Death Drive respectively. Now I do feel that realistically speaking it’s unlikely either would get the chance to do this, given neither have ever really used them in such a way and the methods to take them into these spaces are a bit situational. But just directly comparing them, I feel Scott being dragged into the Death Drive would be far more likely and more dangerous to him than Travis being sucked into Subspace. While characters such as Gideon and Ramona have shown some abilities in Subspace that they could use to hypothetically end a battle, Scott being able to replicate this actively in a fight is theoretical at best, as the few abilities he has shown in Subspace are abilities he’s not used actively in a situation such as this. Additionally, him getting Travis into Subspace in the first place would be unlikely, as he needs to physically find or maybe summon a door to take Travis into. It’s unlikely he’d be able to physically force Travis into Subspace  thanks to the strength gap, so he’d need to somehow lure Travis into the door, which might be unlikely considering Travis’s precognition, but he has also fallen for stunts in the past so that’s not unbelievable. Regardless, even if Travis was in Subspace, it wouldn’t exactly give Scott an easy way to end the fight, as he’s never demonstrated much in terms of warping the mental space into deadly situations, and given unsummoning the portals to Subspace is something no one has really done, there would be nothing stopping Travis from just leaving the way he came in or finding another way out. 

On the flipside, the Death Drive has a lot more inherent danger in it thanks to its various enemies and the chance of brain damage, along with giving Travis a far more solidly defined set of skills while within it. He also has complete control over it, which is solidly defined enough to mean Travis would get the chance to take Scott down. It’s also far harder to actually leave, since Scott would need to defeat one of the games in it in order to break out. Scott could arguably get out by making portals to Subspace, but at best that would just make both of them a non-factor, since they both would know not to follow each other into weird things. And unlike Scott’s implied at best access to Subspace anywhere, we know for a fact Travis owns the only method in and out of the Death Drive. 

Tertiary Factors

When it comes to the two’s skills as fighters, Travis should very likely take the edge. Scott is undoubtedly talented, but Travis has faced a far wider variety of opponents, had to contend with far more weirdness in these fights, and has kept up with many fighters with a large amount of experience. And while the two do have a tendency to be cocky, Travis is generally a lot more calm headed and tactical in fights, as Scott is a lot more consistently someone who gets his ass kicked due to rushing in and needing his friends to bail him out.

On the topic of weaknesses, Travis does have several, but in practice against Scott most of them aren’t likely to pop up. Scott is old enough that Travis would see no reason to hesitate in fighting him, he doesn’t have an easy way to short circuit the katanas with water, and while their limited battery life could leave him vulnerable, the fact the stat gap in strength is so wide means he essentially only needs to hit Scott a total of 11 times total, which means it’s unlikely for that to be a big deciding factor. Another issue for Scott is that if Travis ends up disarming him of or destroying his swords, his buffs would likely end up going away, and given that’s the only reason he’d even be relative in speed to Travis, this would mean Travis would be able to take him out even easier.

Finally, just to briefly acknowledge it, yes Scott being able to scale to Todd’s moonbusting could put him above this version of Travis. However, in that case I’d also say it’s fair to not hold Travis back from NMH3 scaling. And that game gives Travis multiple consistent statements that get him to planet level, along with star level stuff from taking on Space Peacock. There’s also taking on Mr Black Hole, who can create his own universe, which even if you don’t buy it as universal and instead a pocket dimension, would still likely be in the multi solar system level due to the presence of a starry sky. And while Scott has multiple vague relativistic feats, even basic enemies in NMH3 are capable of FTL speeds, which Travis should upscale from given they are basic enemies. That’s also before mentioning the numerous abilities and equipment that game gives him which let him far eclipse Scott in sheer versatility, but I’m starting to feel like that kid from the Simpsons responding to Homer beating up a mascot, so I’ll just end it here. 

Conclusion

“Gideon, I think I understand you, man. And now I have to kill you.”

Advantages:

• Relative in speed with multipliers…

• Superior in hand to hand fighting

• More solid options for healing and reviving back into the fight

• The fight being brought to Subspace may theoretically let him win…

• His Netflix series still looks pretty good

Disadvantages:

• Weaker no matter which end you use

• …but Travis has ways to surpass this thanks to his buffs

• Inferior skill in sword fighting

• Less experienced and skilled fighter overall

• …but there’s easy ways out of it and the Death Drive is more solidly defined

• Travis’s senses and adaptability make any potential counters hard to implement

• Dated a 17 year old girl

• His girlfriend has been dead for 7 years now

“People ask me, "What is the meaning of killing if you're risking your own life?" It doesn't 'mean' shit. It's about instinct, not meaning. That spark lights up in your brain. And that sweet, sweet dopamine starts to flow... There's no 'meaning' to men fighting. Men are born to fight.“

Advantages:

• Stronger no matter which end you use

• Relatively close speed in base, can widen the gap using various buffs

• Superior skill in sword fighting

• Smarter and more experienced fighter overall

• Has multiple methods to take advantage of Scott’s respawning

• Superior senses mean counter strategies from Scott would be hard to implement

• The Death Drive would be a lot more likely as a way to end the fight than Subspace

• Actually has the standards to not date a girl he has unfair power over

Disadvantages:

• Inferior hand to hand fighter

• Has less reliable revival and healing techniques

• Drywall

• Got cucked out of Smash

So, while Scott undeniably has some edges thanks to his extra lives and skill in hand to hand fighting, these ultimately would not be enough to surpass Travis’s many more significant edges over him. Unfortunate end for Scott, but at least he might win the game thing they were doing-

He didn’t. And man, they nerfed me to hell and back and I still beat him this hard? He must be weaker than I thought. But hey, at least it was an extremely close match, right?

…heh, sorry, couldn’t resist. To be real for a bit, he’s pretty a pretty cool guy, and honestly I much prefer trying to wreck people in games nowadays over wrecking them in combat. And as much as I  ragged on him, he’s clearly learned from his past and is trying to work himself better, like I did. So I wish him all the best in whatever he’s getting up to now. 

But regardless, looks like if we ever were to fight, he’d be eating the L, and this time it ain’t standing for lesbians. 

The winner is Travis Touchdown. 

Now can you please get the fuck out of my house-

Next Time

…bit of a bummer to come back to this after he kicked my ass in Street Fighter, but that was a bit less aggressive than I thought it’d be. He did initially feel like a bit of an asshole, but he seems like a pretty cool dude, maybe we could try playing online in something like Smash…

…eh, that’d probably be a sore spot for him, nevermind. Anyways, the guy that was running all this is currently sleeping, but looking at the next time, it looks funny, so I’ll go ahead and drop it here-

King Knight vs Big Jack Horner

(Shovel Knight vs Dreamworks)