Lara Croft VS Nathan Drake

Lara Croft VS Nathan Drake is the 72nd episode and Season 4 Premiere of Death Battle, featuring Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series and Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series in a battle between iconic video game treasure hunters. Lara was voiced by Eileen Montgomery and Nathan was voiced by Gianni Matragrano.
==Interlude==
Wiz: Sometimes, an archaeologist needs a bit more than a shovel and brush, especially when they're on the hunt for the most legendary of treasure.
Boomstick: Yeah, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. The best treasure hunters are the ones with the brawn to match their brain.
Wiz: Like Lara Croft, the tomb raider.
Boomstick: And Nathan Drake, seeker of the uncharted. He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.
Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win... a Death Battle.
==Lara Croft==
Wiz: Most people spend their entire lives in pursuit of wealth, status, and power, but Lara Croft was lucky enough to be born into them. However, despite attending the best schools and living in her own mansion, she was missing one crucial thing: adventure!
Boomstick: Man, rich people are always looking for some crazy way to help keep themselves entertained! But if you have a lot of money and you take a lot of trips, it's good odds that one of those trips is bound to go horribly wrong.
Wiz: And guess what? It did!
Boomstick: Before she was even old enough to order a drink, a crash landing left her stranded in desolation. She had to learn for herself how to adapt and survive for over a week before returning to civilization as a whole new lady.
Wiz: In whatever Tomb Raider timeline you're looking at, whether it's on an island or the Himalayas, Lara's destined to this life-changing fate.
Boomstick: I'm never getting on a plane with her!
Wiz: Surprisingly, Lara's experience left her far from traumatized. Instead, she was inspired, hooked by the thrill of perilous adventure. So she struck out on her own, seeking lost treasure across the globe to make a name for herself.
Boomstick: But Lara's no fool, so first, she made sure she'd be ready for anything. She tracked down the best teachers she could find to learn her the ways of stealth, survival, and martial arts.
Wiz: She became proficient in numerous types of firearms, and her martial art of choice appears very reminiscent to kickboxing. She can even fight while blindfolded!
Boomstick: So she's basically Batman. Who treasure hunts. With guns! Speaking of which, Lara is famous for her trademark dual Heckler and Koch pistols, and I'm not talking about the things under her sweater. But she's also skilled with shotguns, assault rifles, submachine guns, even grenades! And she uses them to take down everything from armed thugs to T-Rexes!
Wiz: Lara is also skilled with a competition compound bow, perfect for stealth kills.
Boomstick: And she's got enough trick arrows to make Green Arrow proud. She's got fire arrows, poison arrows, explosive tipped arrows, and even rope arrows for crossing gaps or grappling things. And while her climbing ax is supposed to be used for scaling up cliffs, you can imagine what the thing does to a human skull. Oh wait, you don't have to. Watch!
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Lara jams it into a guy's skull and throws him away with it.
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Boomstick: Mmm, lovely.
Wiz: Gruesome murder aside, Lara's extensive training paid off in big ways. She's discovered the legendary blade Excalibur, the Philosopher's Stone, the Ark of the Covenant, Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, and even Bigfoot, whom she also promptly killed.
Boomstick: Suck it, Sasquatch. She's survived dinosaurs, the Kraken, a Chinese dragon, and she even found the long lost Led Zeppelin song, "Stairway to Heaven".
Wiz: What? No, no, no, she found a literal stairway to Heaven.
Boomstick: Really?! Holy shit!
Wiz: For a 132-pound woman, she's surprisingly strong. She's held up a heavy gate for 36 straight seconds, while drowning. She also regularly pushes around enormous boulders, like the giant blocks in the Pyramid of Giza. This makes her easily strong enough to, say, punch a man through a wooden beam.
Boomstick: Lara's also a crack shot. She can precisely tag multiple targets in less than a second, even if they're button-sized bolts or kunai flying through the air.
Wiz: She's skilled enough to infiltrate and escape Area 51, she's tenacious enough to take a bullet in the heat of battle and keep fighting, and she's tough enough to dive off a 250-foot cliff into water, with no injury whatsoever. The highest documented dive ever recorded is 193 feet, but unlike Lara, this diver underwent weeks of preparation and still broke his collarbone.
Boomstick: Hell, this girl can survive almost anything.
Boomstick: When she was younger, she got impaled by a rusty metal spike, and was still able to complete an entire adventure while in constant pain.
Wiz: She wasn't even able to properly treat it. She had to cauterize it with a burning arrow tip.
Boomstick: Damn, that's hardcore! I think I've found my next ex-wife. And then there was that one time she threw her climbing ax at a helicopter, and it just... it just exploded!
Wiz: Yeah, the only logical explanation being she threw the ax into the chopper's air intake, shredded its internals, which caused a spark that reached its gas tank...
Boomstick: She made the helicopter explode with nothing but an ax! That girl's got one hell of an arm.
Wiz: I think we can all agree Lara is a badass. But she thinks so, too, and can get a bit reckless.
Boomstick: If she gets too full of it, she could always find herself at the wrong end of a tree branch, crushed by boulders, mauled by wolves, shot in the head, stabbed through the face, all sorts of horrific, fatal mistakes.
Wiz: Even knowing that, the risk doesn't keep her from any of her bewildering adventures.
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We see Lara in a robe, about to shower. She is about to remove it when she stops and looks at the screen.
Lara: Don't you think you've seen enough?
She pulls out a shotgun and fires at the screen.
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==Nathan Drake==
Wiz: Sic Parvis Magna. To most people, these words hold little meaning. But for globetrotting explorer Nathan Drake, it's his life motto. Greatness from small beginnings.
Boomstick: And beginnings don't get much smaller than his. Little Nate spent half his childhood in a boy's home, where he was raised by nuns, picked on by bullies, and pretty much just hated on for every second of his life.
Wiz: Nathan found solace in his fascination with history, particularly the explorer who found El Dorado, Sir Francis Drake. And like his idol, Nathan dreamed of one day escaping the orphanage to go on treasure hunts of his own.
Boomstick: And he did, with his big brother, Sam. The treasure? Their dead mom's old journals about Mr. Drake himself. Turns out they were in some old lady's house, so they broke in, she called the cops and then immediately died from a heart attack.
Wiz: Obviously not wanting to be caught trespassing and standing over a dead woman when the police arrived, Nathan began a life on the run.
Boomstick: Talk about shitty luck. Man, all he wanted was a book!
Wiz: Fortunately, Nathan seemed born for the treasure hunter's life. He's exceptionally athletic, has encyclopedic historical knowledge, and can find a way out of almost any bad situation with his quick wit.
Boomstick: He'd make sure that everyone would remember the name, Nathan Drake.
Wiz: After several solo adventures, Nathan eventually teamed up with Victor Sullivan, a former Navy officer turned expert con artist. Sully taught Nathan the ways of combat, both with his fists and with firearms.
Boomstick: Good thing, too, because it seems like everybody out there wants to take a shot at Nate. He almost always has a .45 Defender or 9mm pistol on hand, as well as a couple grenades. Nate can also rack up the body count with just about any weapon he touches, including machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, and sniper rifles. Hey, when there's a literal army of bad guys out to kill you, you gotta become a one-man army yourself!
Wiz: Ready for anything, Nathan set out to follow in his idol's footsteps and then some. He's discovered five lost civilizations, stopped multiple world-ending threats, and even unlocked the secret of El Dorado like Sir Francis Drake before him.
Boomstick: Yeah, turns out it's not a city of gold, just a dead guy that turns people into zombies!
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Gabriel Roman is infected with the virus and turns feral before being shot by Atoq Navarro.
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Boomstick: Didn't see that one coming. Anyway, Nate wouldn't have done any of those things if he weren't physically fit for the job. He's strong enough to move boulders twice his size, and hold up a four-ton gate for four seconds.
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Nate holds the gate long enough for Elena to pass through, then lets it go, and somersaults out of its closing.
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Boomstick: He can climb huge cliffs with nothing but his fingertips and constantly jumps humongous gaps without needing a running start.
Wiz: The standing broad jump world record is 12 feet and three inches. In this instance...
Wiz: Nathan Drake was able to make a 19 foot jump from a standstill. 19 feet! And he's always clearing similar jumps throughout his adventures.
Boomstick: Nate's got hops, but he's also got an iron hide. The dude is constantly falling dozens of feet, and just shaking it off, like that time he did a 40-foot belly flop and got right back up like it was nothing. That could kill a normal guy!
Wiz: Nathan Drake is nothing if not determined. When he found himself cornered on a train and bleeding out from a bullet wound, his solution was to simply blow the whole thing to oblivion.
Boomstick: What a convenient pile of propane tanks.
Wiz: But of course, he survived the crash, and even climbed to safety, despite having no way of knowing he'd get out of this whole mess alive at all.
Boomstick: On top of all that, look what he's wearing! It's freezing up there!
Wiz: Actually, explosions seem to be his exit of choice, like when he blew up a cargo plane while flying over Saudi Arabia.
Boomstick: After surviving the trip to the ground, he wandered the desert for two straight days, with zero food or water, but even with all that, when he found a bunch of mercenaries who wanted to kill him, he was still able to fight them off. How is this guy real? What kind of deal did he make with Satan? 'Cause he should know that that stuff comes with a terrible price, believe me.
Wiz: All of this just proves how careless and haphazard Nathan really is. This man rarely, if ever, has a plan for anything at any point. Nearly every moment of his life, whether he's in or out of danger, Nathan's philosophy insists that he simply roll with whatever punches come his way. When it comes down to it, much of his survivability can be chalked up to an abundance of good luck.
Boomstick: And also, his incredible knack for improvising and adapting. Lucky or not, hundreds, if not thousands of bad guys have tried to beat him to some treasure and lost. It's good odds that if you go up against Nathan Drake, you're not just gonna lose that treasure, you're gonna lose your life.
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Nathan and Chloe Frazer bring a wounded Elena Fisher to Safety.
Chloe Frazer: What the hell did you do back there?
Nathan: Oh, you know... saved the world.
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==Prelude==
==Death Battle==
A torch burns as Nathan Drake walks forward towards an ancient temple, an AK-47 on his back and a Jeep idle behind him. He scrolls through his small book as someone from a distance watches through hi-tech binoculars. After approaching a strange cage-like mechanism, Nate brushes his arm right.
Nathan: Damn, it's cold up here.
Nathan examines the area.
Nathan: Ok, let's try...
He takes a slow step onto a panel. The mechanism makes a noise, surprising Nate as he turns toward it. The mechanism opens up, its pieces separating into claw-like parts and spinning before folding over, revealing the Holy Grail on a small pedestal.
Nathan: Heh, aha! Gotcha.
Nathan swings his arm in triumph, then reaches for the Grail before he hears a gun being loaded.
Lara: Stop! Turn around. Slowly.
Lara Croft stands behind Nathan, his arm still stretched out, with a pistol aimed at him and a bow on her back.
Nathan: Aww crap.
Nathan turns around and puts his hands up as Lara takes out her second dual pistol. He begins walking to the side.
Nathan: Hey there! I'm guessing the whole "finders keepers" rule isn't gonna apply...
Lara: Cut the chit-chat! The grail's coming with me.
Lara: Either walk away, or die right here. Choose wisely...
Nathan: Okay missy, first rule about me...
Nathan takes out his AK-47 and aims it at Lara.
Nathan: I don't walk away.
Lara moves to the side and fires her pistols as Nate moves to the side to avoid her shots. He then fires his AK-47 as the two continue running sideways to avoid each other's fire. Nate spins and gets behind a pillar for cover as Lara does the same on the other side. Nate steps out of cover aiming his rifle as Lara does the same with her pistols and fires first, forcing him back behind cover. Nate puts his arm over his head for a moment as Lara keeps shooting at Drake's location.
Nathan: It never fails! I get to the gold at the end of the rainbow and somebody tries to kill me!
Lara ceases fire and runs towards Nathan, who then emerges and fires his AK-47. She runs toward a pillar and runs up it for a moment before jumping off of it, avoiding Nate's fire and landing near his pillar. She then rolls out of the way of fire before charging towards Nate. Lara attacks with a low sweeping kick, which Nate avoids by raising one of his legs, followed by a jumping kick that Nate avoids by stepping backward, concluding with an upward kick that Nathan swerves downward to avoid.
Nate prepares to fire his AK-47 when Lara's next kick strikes it, causing his single shot to miss. Before Lara can follow up with dual fire, Nathan swings his rifle at the handguns, whose shots also miss. Nathan then goes for a downward punch with his left hand as Lara swerves to the side, then prepares her handguns once more. As she fires a shot from each, she is suddenly struck by an upward swing of Nate's AK-47. After this, Nate charges forward and headbutts her, knocking her onto her back as she rolls backward back onto her feet, crouched and firing her pistols rapidly. Nate rolls forward, then runs to a pillar for cover while blind-firing with his AK-47.
The Holy Grail remains standing atop its pedestal as bullets fire from Lara's side. One of her bullets strikes it, slightly tilting it, but another hits the Holy Grail as well, sending it flying off the pedestal toward the ground. Lara notices this and stops firing her pistols as Nate leaps forward to catch it, both his arms outstretched for it. Lara sees this and runs forward as Nathan successfully catches the Holy Grail in his hand, lying on the ground before getting back up.
Nathan: Heh heh, not a scratch.
Lara: Do you know what you've done!?
As Lara scolds Nathan, who looks over the Holy Grail, the pedestal it once stood upon begins shaking, then sinks into the ground. Nate takes notice of this as the mechanism from before reemerges and closes before suddenly sinking as well, leaving a gaping hole.
Nathan: That's probably not good...
A statue-like piece of the temple falls to the ground and shatters, causing Lara and Nate to cower backward.
Nathan: Okay, that's DEFINITELY not good...
Pieces of the temple begin to crumble and break apart as Nate looks over at his Jeep towards the entrance. Nate turns backward towards Lara, who also noticed it, and the two then run for it. The floor suddenly breaks apart and falls from the hole onward as Lara and Nate both leap upward toward the remaining ground. While they were side-to-side before, Nathan's leap covers more ground horizontally.
Nathan: Crap!
Nate grabs onto the ledge, hanging on with his right hand with the Holy Grail in his left, as Lara doesn't make it and falls. He uses his left hand to help himself up as Lara continues falling fast and screams. She repositions herself in midair, takes out her climbing ax with her right hand, and strikes it into the wall, slowing and then stopping her fall. She grasps the climbing ax with both hands when she hears the sound of Nathan's Jeep starting up.
The temple starts leaning forward as it crashes while Nathan escapes into the desert in his Jeep as it drives up and jumps off of a ramp-like structure. Nate steers with his left hand as he tosses the Holy Grail upward and catches it with his right hand. Lara emerges atop a yellow sports bike, positioning herself by the lower side of Nate's vehicle. She climbs over the Jeep's side rail with her left hand and with her bow in her right, landing in the Jeep's back.
She swings her bow at Nathan's head with both hands, causing Nate to place his right hand over his face. Lara reaches over the passenger's seat and snatches the Holy Grail, then turns backwards to escape when Nate gets up, turns around, and grabs her hand left hand with his left. She swings at him with her right, the Holy Grail still in hand, as Nate ducks, then rises with a right punch. Nathan then grabs onto her shoulders before headbutting her, then goes for a left-handed swing as Lara ducks it, then counters with a knee to the stomach. He grabs onto the Jeep's railing with both hands for a moment, then turns and draws his pistol with his right when Lara kicks it out of his hand. She then kicks Nathan in the head, knocking him into the front seats as she takes out her bow and arrow, and aims at him.
Lara: Sorry... have to do what I have to do.
Lara looks up and notices something: the Jeep is about to crash into some rubble. She leaps out of the Jeep as Nathan gets up and realizes his situation after Lara leaves.
Nathan: Ah crap...
The Jeep charges forward and crashes into the rubble, causing an explosion as a helicopter stands nearby. Lara starts limping forward, her right shoulder with a wound, and her left hand covering it. She looks over at the Jeep's wreckage as the smoke from the crash disappears and sees no trace of Nathan anywhere.
Lara hears a helicopter's blades spinning and turns, seeing one beginning to take off as she covers her eyes with her left hand from the sand being brushed backward. Within the helicopter, with Croft Manor printed on the side, is none other than Nathan, who turns toward Lara and makes a taunting salute gesture with his left hand and chuckles as the Holy Grail sits in the passenger seat. The helicopter begins taking off as Lara takes out her climbing ax, lines up the shot, and tosses it at the helicopter.
The climbing ax sticks into the helicopter's upper area. Shortly afterward, the helicopter explodes as Lara steps backward from the shock. Nathan screams as he plummets towards the ground, landing back-first on the sandy ground hard. As he tries to get back up in vain, the helicopter's blades come spinning down and impale him on the ground, killing him. Lara recovers the Holy Grail near Nathan Drake's corpse and examines it.
Lara: Hm, not a scratch!
Lara walks off into the desert with the Holy Grail in her right hand.
==Results==
Boomstick: Ho ho, nice shot! Told you she had a good arm!
Wiz: Lara and Nathan have both displayed impressive feats of strength, durability, agility, and weapon skills, but Lara tended to have the edge in every category.
Boomstick: Both of them were way stronger than you'd think. Nathan shoved a boulder large enough to weigh 20 tons. That means he literally had the strength of 10 men.
Wiz: But in Lara's case, she moved several limestone blocks used in the Great Pyramids. Not only did she move them much farther distances than Nathan, but given their size and makeup, these blocks should weigh up to 27 tons each.
Boomstick: Lara's way tougher, too, and has been through things that would've definitely taken Nate out.
Wiz: Like when she was impaled by rebar but was still able to accomplish everything necessary to survive a hostile island for a week. Nathan suffered a bullet wound in the same area of the body, and while he powered through the pain for a short time, he soon passed out and was unconscious while under intensive care for three days.
Boomstick: Take my word for it, I've been through pretty much everything you could think of, and I'd rather take a bullet than rebar any day. And that rebar thing happened when Lara was pretty young. Later, she got all sorts of combat and survival training from experts, while Nate was mostly self-taught, with a few pointers every so often from a con man. Also, when the pressure's really on, Lara manages to always keep a cool head, much better than Nate.
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Elena Fisher: So, you got a Plan C?
Nathan: Yeah, floor it.
Elena: What?
Nate: I'm getting on that train.
Elena: What are you, crazy?
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Wiz: Nathan Drake did just about everything by the seat of his pants, and eventually, luck always runs out.
Boomstick: Yeah, she was just too "Croft-y" for him.
We cut to the "Winner" card.
Wiz: The winner is Lara Croft.
==Trivia==
===Production===
*The core connections between Lara and Nathan are that they are both iconic video game treasure hunters who travel around the world, often getting themselves into dangerous situations. In addition:
**Both were orphaned at a young age, but nonetheless swore to carry on their parents' research and archaeological legacies (Lord Croft and Cassandra Morgan, respectively).
**Both are known for fighting gangs of enemies while stranded in exotic locales. 
**Both were based on Indiana Jones.
**Despite only one of them being owned by Sony, both are considered icons of the PlayStation (with Tomb Raider being a major series for the original PlayStation and Uncharted being one for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4).
*Several scenes had to be cut from the fight, including one where Nathan walks up to the temple and notices Lara's parked motorcycle.
*Starting from this episode, the show's entire design was rebranded, including a new logo, graphics, thumbnail design (of which multiple styles would be used prior to Venom VS Bane finalizing it), etc.
**The Rooster Teeth version of the episode still uses the old graphic design from the first three seasons and originally had a Season 3-styled thumbnail before the YouTube release gave the first of several new thumbnail designs.
*This episode is one of the more negatively received episodes of the show, garnering a 65% positive reception rate on YouTube, the lowest positive rating for a Season Premiere. The majority of the backlash this episode received was towards Nathan's portrayal and his death being a result of bad luck rather than Lara directly killing him, combined with the rivalry between the Uncharted and Tomb Raider fanbases.
===Easter Eggs===
*The Super Rad Raygun logo can be seen behind Nathan's jeep.
*The golden cup featured in the battle is the Holy Grail, which was the main artifact sought after in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
===Errors===
*Portions of Lara's side of the current thumbnail are clipping into Nathan's.
*PlayStation is written as "Playstation" without the capitalized "S" in the episode's description.
*Several shots within the episode seemingly have different levels of finished rendering than others, mostly notable in the Holy Grail drastically changing in color for no discernible reason between shots.
*Lara scolds Nathan for activating the mechanism that led to the temple's collapse, even though she was the one who activated it by shooting the Holy Grail off its pedestal.
===Other===
*This is the second PlayStation-themed episode, after Ratchet & Clank VS Jak & Daxter, and with the next one being Crash VS Spyro.
*This is the third Season Premiere to feature a male combatant and a female combatant, after Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2010) and Dante VS Bayonetta.
*This is the 12th Male VS Female-themed episode, after Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2010), Yoshi VS Riptor, Justin Bieber VS Rebecca Black, Starscream VS Rainbow Dash, Gaara VS Toph, Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2015), Dante VS Bayonetta, Meta VS Carolina, Tracer VS Scout, Zoro VS Erza, and Deadpool VS Pinkie Pie, and with the next 13 being Thor VS Wonder Woman, Carnage VS Lucy, Captain Marvel VS Shazam, Dragonzord VS Mechagodzilla, Mob VS Tatsumaki, Gray VS Esdeath, Beerus VS Sailor Galaxia, The Seven Battle Royale, Red VS Blue, Shadow VS Ryuko, Steven Universe VS Star Butterfly, Killua VS Misaka, and Gojo VS Makima.
**This is the third Male VS Female Season Premiere, after Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2010) and Dante VS Bayonetta.
**This is the seventh time the Female character wins, after Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2010), Starscream VS Rainbow Dash, Gaara VS Toph, Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2015), Meta VS Carolina, and Tracer VS Scout, and with the next eight being Thor VS Wonder Woman, Carnage VS Lucy, Dragonzord VS Mechagodzilla, Mob VS Tatsumaki, Gray VS Esdeath, Red VS Blue, Steven Universe VS Star Butterfly, and Killua VS Misaka.
*This is the second episode where a combatant attempts to escape the battle, after Eggman VS Wily, and with the next three being Black Widow VS Widowmaker, Sabrewulf VS Jon Talbain, and Martian Manhunter VS Silver Surfer.
Category:Death Battles
Category:'Male VS Female' themed Death Battles
Category:Season Premiere
Category:'Video Games' themed Death Battles
Category:Fights animated by Torrian
Category:'Protagonists' themed Death Battles
Category:Season 4 Episodes
Category:'Rivalry' themed Death Battles
Category:3D animated Death Battles
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Category:Fights with voice actors
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