Epic Rap Battles of History Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Rap Meanings


ERBoH17Meaning

Leonidas:

Spartans! Let's start this!

(Leonidas prepares his men for battle.)

Show this petty officer who's the hardest!

(Leonidas plans to show Master Chief who the manlier men are based on his army. Master Chief's full title is Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, but "petty" also means "insignificant," so Leonidas calls Master Chief inferior when compared to him.)

The biggest mistake that you've ever made!

(Leonidas tells Master Chief that he should not have crossed swords with him.)

I'll toss you like a frag grenade!

(Leonidas will throw Chief in the battle as if he were fragmentation grenade, a common pickup item in the Halo franchise.)

I'll stomp you in the face with my sandals enraged,

(After he defeats him, Leonidas will aggressively stomp on Chief's face with his sandals, the most common footwear used by ancient Greeks.)

And tonight, we shall rhyme in the shade!

(In the film 300, when a Persian scout informs the Spartan army that the Persian army plans to block the sun with arrows, a Spartan scout replies, "Then we will fight in the shade." This means that even if the Persian attacks darken the skies, the Spartans will continue fighting in the resulting shadows. As a result, when Master Chief gives out his raps, Leonidas will just evade them and be able to fight back. The first part of the sentence, "Tonight, we shall," comes from another famous quote in the movie, in which Leonidas says, "Tonight, we shall dine in hell!")

Your puny fans are fat nerds on computers,

(Halo players, like many computer/video game fans, don't exercise often and are thus obese to some degree, according to Leonidas.)

Jerking off to games, giving themselves first-person shooters!

(A stereotypical gamer is seen as a nerdy young man who normally plays first-person shooter games, such as Halo, which shows the game viewed in first-person perspective. Since many of these games feature women with accentuated sexual traits, the gamer may masturbate often and would "shoot" in first-person from their perspective.)

Your armor's hard, but my abs are harder!

(Master Chief wears protective armor, but Leonidas claims his powerful musculature is stronger than this.)

You're in my hood now, Chief! THIS IS SPARTA!

(Master Chief is on Leonidas' turf, otherwise known as Sparta, and thus Leonidas will do to him what he did to the Persians who fought against his army.[1] In signature style, he kicks him into a bottomless pit, like he had done to the Persian messenger in the movie 300. During this scene, he also yells his famous line, "This is Sparta!", which is best known by its memes and remixes on YouTube.[2])

Master Chief:

Not…so…fast.

(Master Chief flies back up from the hole he was kicked in and dramatically tells Leonidas not to dismiss him that quickly.)

Cortana says you're Greek, so why don't you stick these lyrics up your ass?

(Cortana is Chief's A.I. companion who tells Chief information about the enemies he faces. To "go Greek" on someone means to have anal sex with them, so Master Chief tells Leonidas to shove his rhymes up his ass. Leonidas was Greek, and Greeks were known to be open in having homosexual intercourse, so they would sometimes have anal sex.)

They built a monument to my sins. You're the soldier they need you to be.

(In Halo 2, the Gravemind introduces himself to Master Chief by saying, "I am a monument to all your sins." There is also a monument built to showcase Chief's heroism in the Museum of Humanity in Halo. Additionally, "A Monument To All Your Sins" is an achievement in Halo: Reach, which is earned by completing the campaign on the hardest difficulty known as "Legendary." In Halo: Reach, "The Soldier We Need You to Be" is the lowest rank you can get, so Chief calls Leonidas a weak soldier, capable of only the easiest difficulty.)

Ain't no way that you can beat me; even my initials spell MC!

(An MC, or emcee, is another way to say rapper. Master Chief claims just his initials prove that he's already a better rapper than Leonidas.)

While you and your companions were all camping in a canyon,

(Leonidas took his stand against the Persians in a canyon during the Battle of Thermopylae. Chief also refers to the common first-person shooter tactic of staying in one spot to achieve more kills, or "camping,".)

Took a campaign to your house and showed your Queen my plasma cannon!

(This references the "campaign mode" of many first-person shooters in which multiple missions may be requested of the player to reach a central objective within a defined setting. Here, Chief taunts Leonidas with a scene from 300 where Queen Gorgo, his wife, allowed Theron, a corrupt Spartan politician, to have sex with her in exchange for his promise of help. A plasma cannon is also a weapon in the Halo series, so Chief implies he had sex with Leonidas' wife and used his "plasma cannon" as metaphor for his penis.)

They should've thrown your rhymes over the cliff because they're sickly.

(Weak Spartans in ancient Sparta were kicked off a cliff after being born because they were considered to be physically unfit for combat. Leonidas was born with a defect, but his parents chose to let him live, even though it was against the law. Chief says Leonidas' raps are so bad, they should suffer the same fate weak Spartans receive at birth.)

You will not enjoy this, but it will be over quickly.

(Master Chief states that the battle will be painful for Leonidas, but Chief will end it mercifully early for him. He also quotes a line spoken by Theron to Queen Gorgo prior to Leonidas' battle at Thermopylae, in which he blackmailed the queen into having sex with him, and before the rape commenced he said, "This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this. I am not your King." Later in the movie, the queen exposes that the traitor was bribed into betraying Sparta by stabbing him with a borrowed blade and uttering, "This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this. I am not your Queen!")

Leonidas:

Ha! I've had better battles with my six-year-old son!

(From a young age, Spartans were trained to be warriors. In the film 300, a scene shows Leonidas fighting his son, Pleistarchus, as a form of training. Leonidas implies that even his six-year-old son is stronger and put up a better challenge in his training than the battle with Master Chief. This could also be a very subtle reference to John (Master Chief)'s abduction from his home world by the military at the age of six to undergo the SPARTAN project and become the super-soldier he is, as depicted in the first Halo novel. A Spartan boy doesn't become a true Spartan until the age of seven, so Leonidas calls Master Chief a worse fighter than a small child and can't match to a true Spartan.)

I don't need firepower when I'm rocking these guns!

("Guns" are another term for huge biceps, like the kind Leonidas has. Since the Spartans never had guns and used their brawn instead, he says he doesn't need the weapons used in Halo to fight his enemies.)

I'm king! You sleep in a freezer in outer space!

(Leonidas was King of Sparta. Master Chief was placed in cryogenic hibernation as the Pillar of Autumn, the spaceship he was on, was fleeing the besieged planet Reach and was under hot pursuit by hostile forces. It could also be a reference to the ending of Halo 3, where the Master Chief enters cryogenic hibernation for several years due to him becoming stranded in space.)

I'd look you in the eyes, but you're too much of a bitch to show your face!

(Master Chief has worn his helmet throughout the Halo series. Leonidas says that Chief does this because he has no self-confidence.)

Master Chief:

You got a bad case of no shirt there, Fabio Flintstone.

(Leonidas wore no shirts, similar to Fabio Lanzoni, an Italian model best known for his shirtless appearances. Master Chief is calling comparing Leonidas to Fred Flintstone, a caveman from The Flintstones.)

Your whole plan got messed up by a hunchback with Down syndrome!

(Leonidas and his men were all killed in the battle of Thermopylae because of a traitor named Ephialtes, who is depicted as hunchbacked and deformed in the film adaptation of 300. Down syndrome is a disorder resulting from an errant extra chromosome inherited by affected individuals that can cause deformity and may also impair mental capacity, so Master Chief taunts the Spartans by saying that their entire strategy was defeated because of Ephialtes, who should have been thrown over the cliff for having a disability. In the background to the left of Master Chief, there is a Spartan seen limping while dragging his shield, possibly referencing Ephialtes' depiction in 300)

300 asses need a kicking, give more tea bags than Lipton,

(There were 300 Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae; Master Chief says he can defeat every one of them since Spartans in Halo are capable of defeating an entire group of 300 people. "Teabagging" is a term referring to the act of placing a man's testicles on a person's face and in their mouth, which is commonly done by Halo players online simply by crouching rapidly on a dead body as a way to taunt them. Lipton is a brand of tea most often sold in bags, so Master Chief says that he'll give more teabags than Lipton produces.)

So why don't you quit your bitching? My trigger finger's itching!

(Master Chief tells Leonidas he should stop talking and trying to rap against him, or he'll shoot him with his trigger finger, which is the act of shooting rapidly with a semi-automatic firearm. He also gives him the middle finger gesture to show his trigger finger, as well as flipping him the bird as an insult.)

References

  1. The meeting with the Persian messenger, at YouTube.
  2. A popular remix of the scene, at YouTube.
Rap Meanings
Advertisement