(2)Kratos vs (15)John Marston 2018

Ulti's Analysis
This was our first major case of SFF this contest, and Marston took it right on the nose. This wasn't some legendarily hilarious case of SFF like Link > Ganondorf in 2004, but it was still brutal to look at. Don't try telling me this isn't SFF, either, because if you look at the final stats Marston is in no way as weak as those stats would suggest. Red Dead Redemption is way too big of a series, even on this site, for the dude to be like bottom 10 in the LOL x stats. His game almost doubled Bayonetta a mere 3 years ago, and then it broke 40% on Shadow of the Colossus. That's pretty respectable. Not crazy strong, but respectable. Then there's that whole Red Dead Redemption 2 thing, which is so huge even South Park did a bit on it.

You know what the prime recipe for SFF is? It isn't sharing a fanbase. Mega Man and Zero share a fanbase. Zero got 44% in that match. SFF happens when you share almost the exact same fanbase and one character is clearly stronger than the other. Kratos and John Marston are both casualbait, strong, male, badass tough guys from major, popular series that had recent blockbusters. But Kratos is clearly out of Marston's league, thanks to a much longer history with the gaming audience. That is exactly how you get matches like this. It's also how you get things like Snake > Tanner and The Legend of Zelda > Adventure. Take two entities in a popularity contest where one is clearly already stronger than the other and it gets ugly quickly. That's what happened here.

Rivalry Rumble aside, did you know Kratos had never broken 61% in a poll before this match? Not once. You don't go from that to 73% by accident when another popular character is involved. This was SFF, plain as day.