The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny — Cartoon green Godzilla biting Optimus Prime in Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny animation

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

2005viral videoclassic

Published October 4, 2026

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny is a 2005 Flash music video by Neil Cicierega and Shawn Vulliez depicting celebrities and fictional characters in a chaotic brawl won by Mister Rogers. The absurdist song became one of the defining Newgrounds hits of the mid-2000s and spawned over a decade of parody videos.

newgrounds memes flash animation memes viral song memes absurdist humor memes mid 2000s memes

Overview

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny pairs a bouncy novelty song written by Neil Cicierega (performing as Lemon Demon) with Flash animation by Canadian animator Shawn Vulliez, who goes by altffour2. The lyrics describe a sprawling fight between Godzilla, Batman, Shaquille O'Neal, Aaron Carter, Chuck Norris, Abraham Lincoln and dozens of other figures, with Mister Rogers from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood walking away as the surviving champion1. The gag is the deadpan listing of impossible match-ups delivered at breakneck speed, each verse adding fighters until the entire roster has killed each other off.

Vulliez's animation moves through the characters in a jittery parade of simplified cartoon drawings, with each name timed to a punchy visual cue. The track became a staple of early YouTube AMV culture and inspired a long tail of swap-the-roster parodies, including anime-only, My Little Pony and stop-motion recuts1. Vulliez has said the project was inspired by ZekeySpaceyLizard's Experiment animations, and the Albino Blacksheep mirror credits him as the actual animator since viewers often misattributed the piece to the TooMuchSpareTime collective2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Newgrounds (origin) / YouTube (viral spread)
Creator
Neil Cicierega and Shawn Vulliez
Date
2005

On December 22nd, 2005, Neil Cicierega and Shawn Vulliez submitted the animation titled The Ultimate Showdown to Newgrounds1. Cicierega wrote and recorded the song under his Lemon Demon project, while Vulliez handled the Flash animation under the handle altffour2. The submission rapidly climbed the Newgrounds charts and on December 28th, 2005 picked up the site's Weekly Users' Choice award for the highest-rated flash movie of that week1.

The original Newgrounds upload accumulated more than 12.4 million views and a 4.35-star rating by May 20121. The track was later included on Lemon Demon's 2006 album Dinosaurchestra, giving it a life outside the animation itself.

How It Spread

After its Newgrounds debut, the video was mirrored to Albino Blacksheep and Weebl's Stuff, two other major Flash animation hubs of the era2. On July 2nd, 2006, the Dr. Demento Internet radio show named the song its number one track of 2006 up to that point, which pushed it toward audiences outside Flash animation circles1. An adult-themed Newgrounds parody titled The Ultimate Orgy was posted on August 8th, 2006 by user NotSafeForWork, swapping the brawl for lewd pairings of the same cast1.

YouTube uploads kept the song in circulation after Flash began to decline. User tomgibbens posted the original animation to YouTube on April 7th, 2007, where it collected over five million views within five years3. On January 10th, 2008, YouTuber nintendoitright uploaded an anime-cast parody4, and on May 9th, 2009, user legolooney released a stop-motion remake of the entire video5. Urban Dictionary's first entry for the song was submitted on April 13th, 2010 by user UltimateShowdown1.

The fandom-swap format kept going into the 2010s. On June 18th, 2011, YouTuber BronyMike posted The Ultimare Foaldown of Ultimane Despony, a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic recut set to Cicierega's track6, which was signal-boosted the next day by the fan blog Equestria Daily7. Cicierega performed the song live with Lemon Demon at the Internet culture conference ROFLCon in April 2008 and returned to discuss his animations on a 2010 ROFLCon panel1.

Timeline

2007-04-07

User tomgibbens re-uploads the animation to YouTube, where it draws over five million views.

2009-05-09

YouTuber legolooney releases a stop-motion remake of the video.

2011-06-18

BronyMike posts The Ultimare Foaldown of Ultimane Despony, a My Little Pony parody.

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