Mario vs. Sonic. Call of Duty vs. Battlefield. Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat. Final Fantasy vs. Dragon Quest. Most of the great rivalries throughout video game history aren't just a battle between franchises but between game companies themselves, with Mario and Sonic for instance basically symbolizing Nintendo vs. Sega in general. That said, sometimes a video game franchise rivalry can be just as heated between two series from the same company-- as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest became after the Square/Enix merger-- and few examples of that are more notorious than the fight between Bethesda's Fallout and Syrim.

The Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises have very different histories, with Fallout not even starting out as a Bethesda property but becoming one with the release of Fallout 3. Coincidentally, that's when that series first ran up against Elder Scrolls with the release of breakout entry Skyrim, which marked Elder Scrolls' transition from niche RPG series to major AAA game franchise on the level of a Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty.

Even though their settings are quite different, and one involves guns and bombs and the other involves swords and magic, Skyrim and the modern Fallout games play very similarly-- similarly enough that they are often compared and fought over. Today, we've decided to take the angle that Fallout is the superi🍸or one, and wh🐻at better what to prove that than how all debates are settled on the internet: through a series of hilarious memes.

20 Been There, Done Th🎃at ♊

When the original Fallout launched in 1997, it stood out from most of the role-playing fare of the time by taking place not in a medieval-flavored fantasy world of knights, dragons, and magic but in real-world-inspired locales in a post-apocalyptic future. Few RPGs took place in the future, let alone in the "real world"-- and even fewerജ had weapons that included machine guns, rocket launchers, and nuclear bombs.

In fact, it's those unique elements that make the Fallout series stand out to this day, as many other games in the genre-- The Witcher, Dragon Age, Dark Souls, Dragon Quest, etc-- still adhere fairly closely to the same Tolkein-esque fantasy tropes that the genre has been overdoing for 40+ years now. Another game that is very much guilty of that? Skyrim, of course. While various elements of its gameplay are unique enough, the fact remains that Skyrim is still wrapped in the overly familiar trappings of a guy with a sword and magical powers traversing a m﷽edieval countryside filled with towns and taverns and having to battle rats, giant spiders, and eventually dragons-- all of which gamers have been doing since people were still wearing bellbottoms and listening to the Bee Gee💟s. In fact, pen-and-paper RPG fans were doing it even longer ago than that.

19 🔯 A Tale Of Two Mels

Okay, so Mel Gibson doesn't have the cache that he used to have, for reasons both valid and not worth getting into right now. Bu🅘t for a good long while there, he was one of Hollywood's biggest stars and fronted some of the most successful and/or beloved movies of all time. He also made a lot of the types of movies that would inspire, say, video games-- and it seems like the folks at Bethesda are fans. This is one of several memes on this list that can either be taken as more pro-Fallout or pro-Skyrim-- but we're here to make the case that Fallout comes out ahead here.

Sure, Braveheart won Oscars and all that good stuff, and Mad Max...not so much (at least not the original; Hollywood finally made good on the Oscar nomination love with Fury Road). But what wins Oscars isn't always what is the coolest movie, or the movie that the average moviegoer likes the best. And for gamers, Mad Max is way cooler than Braveheart, making whatever game is inspired by it♐ automatically more awesome.

Case in point: can you name the character Gibson plays in Braveheart...without looking it up? Yeah, we thought not. So it's Mad Max himself versus nameles🥃s historical Scottish dude-- 'nuff daid.

18 My Eyes Are Up 𝓀Here ♈

An RPG without treasure chests is kind of like a Halo game without Master Chief-- it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Sure, games sometimes switch things up from the traditional wooden box 🍰that you'd expect a pirate to plunder, but the basic functionality is still the same: find o🌸ne, open it up, and help yourself to whatever random and oftentimes nonsensical prize you find inside. Or, depending on the game, the chest might be a mimic and turn into a monster that you have to fight-- and in most RPGs, it's a really, really hard monster, too.

Let's be honest, though-- actually opening treasure chests is tedious and ain't nobody got time for that.

So a lot of games, Skyrim and Fallout included, just let you-- for reasons unexplained-- simply look at a treasure chest and know its contents. Skyrim only tells you if the chest is empty or not (and you'll still look inside even if it is, but that's irrelevant). Fallout, on the other hand, tells you what's in a chest before you waste the time of actually opening it up all the way. Again, you'll probably still look in there anyway, but your OCD isn't Fallout's fault.

17 Kermit Spills The Nuka Cola ಞ

One thing that ,uixmight be eating at some of you as you read through this list: the fact that we're essentially comparing a single game (Skyrim) to an entire franchise (Fallout), or at least the most recent few entries of said franchise. Moreover, a lot of these memes are going to focus specifically on Fallout 4, which is a 2015 release-- four full years after the initial launch of Skyrim. So isn't that a little unfair of a compariso𒆙n, you mi𒁏ght be asking us?

For starters, Skyrim fans are all too eager to put their game of choice up against the whole of the modern Fallout games, so when Fallout fans come back with things about Fallout 4, turnabout is fair play. Beyond that, there hasn't been a true follow-up to Skyrim yet, and the only new, non-mobile-spinoff Elder Scrolls game released since Skyrim has been The Elder Scrolls o😼nline-- and we obviou✃sly can't compare MMOs to non-MMOs.

Mostly, it's easy to insinuate that the main takeaway from all this is that there is a reason why there has been new Fallout games since 2011 but not a new Skyrim game-- and in case that isn't obvious e🍸nough, don't worry🅺, we'll dig more into it later.

16 Today I'll Be P🐎laying Generic Knight #82

Ah, cosplay-- is there anything that further illustrates the intense level of passion and fandom that video games inspire than the many hours that people put into crafting costumes based on their favorite games and characters? And to that end, both Fallout and Skyrim have countless examples of stellar cosplay based on them, and you can get lost for hours in Google image searches or browsing DeviantArt for Fallout and Skyrim cosplay.

Above you'll find three examples of amazing cosplay-- the Fallout power suit is courtesy of PeachyLeaf Cosplay, the vault dweller is DeviantArt user atomic-cocktail, and the Skyrim knight is DeviantArt's doublezerofx. Before we start picking on the Skyrim cosplay, please know that it isn't about the quality of the costume itself nor is it meant to be a knock against the cosplayer. That said, would anyone but a hardcore Skyrim fan even recognize the character? He kind of just looks like a knight from a million other swords-and-sorcery games. Whereas the Fallout cosplay can be instantly identified by just about anyone with even a passing knowledge of the series, even if they've only seen advertisements for it. To us, that just speaks to how much more unique and iconic Fallout's characters are compared to those in Skyrim.

Cosplay, clockwise from upper left, by PeachyLeaf Cosplay, doublezerofx.deviantart.com, and atomic-c𝐆ocktail.devian🌱tart.com.

15 The𒁃 Bethesda Cinematic Universe?

People just love to try and connect multiple franchises of something into a single, overarching universe-- thank you very much, Marvel movies-- and it often takes outlandish co💃nspiracy theories in order to accomplish those connections.

Other than just being by the same company, Fallout and Skyrim do play fairly similarly, and it isn't hard to position them as just installments in a single series rather thaꦗn separate franchises altogether.

How do you connect a medieval-esque fantasy game world with one that takes place in real world locations decimated by a nuclear war?

The most obvious thing to do would be to have Skyrim take place in the past and Fallout take place in the future-- but that's way too easy for the type of people who like to concoct these fan theories. So some people have actually swapped the two franchises chronologically, having Skyrim's setting be a world that has had to start over after a nuclear apocalypse and has only reached the equivalent of the middle ages from a technological standpoint-- but that the magic that exists in that world is a result of the radiation that the planet and the human race had been exposed to ever since the events just prior to Fallout.

So what does this mean for the rivalry between the two? Well, it means that Skyrim couldn't have happened with Fallout-- so by default, that makes Fallout superior, obviously.

14 My Eyes Are Up He꧒re, P༺art 2

We'll try to avoid getting all SJW on you here, but facts are facts: Women in role-playing games often get the short end of the stick when it comes to their "armor." While male fan🀅tasy characters get all kinds of protection, especially as they progress through a game, the women of those same games seem to just get progressively less-dressed the more they level up. No matter how high a female RPG character's defense stats are or whether she's found the absolute strongest armor in the game that is available to her, there always seems to be a convenient lack of 🌳covering near the chest and/or rear-end areas.

To be fair, Skyrim does tend to treat the fairer sex a little better and more tastefully than a lot of other RPGs-- cough The Witcher cough-- but it is still plenty guilty of featuring female armor that seems more designed for the male gaze than actual protection in battle. By contrast, in the Fallout world, armor is bওasically armor, especially Power Armor-- until a woman takes her helmet off and reveals long hair or lack of an Adam's Apple, you can't even 🤡tell if the person underneath is a man or a woman. What a crazy concept, armor that is exactly the same no matter what combination of chromosomes a person has!

13 𓄧 It's All In How You Look ꦑAt It

This is another one of the memes that can go either way-- it could be used by Skyrim fans as proof Fallout is inferior and it can be used by Fallout fans to 🍷prove the opposite. To be completely honest, the person who created this meme very likely had the former idea in mind, as suggested by the use of a frowning, pouting Vault Boy. Still, all memes are open to interpretation no matter how obvious the original intent might be.

The implication here is that Skyrim is the better game because you get to play as a superhuman rather than a boring ol' regular person. A fair point, as video games are escapism and it can be more fun to escape into a character whose abilities exceed that of a real person. But is it as fun when you're playing as the only superhuman character in a game? How interesting would an Avengers movie be if all they fought against were normal, averag༒e people?

So if you have to have one aspect of a game be superhumans and the other be regular people, what is actually far more fulfill🦩ing is for the enemies to be the overpowered ones and the player character having to just be a regular person who needs to find a way to take down said army of supermutants.

12 💫 Unless You're Indian✤a Jones...

...aliens make everything better. It's a proven scientific fact. And Skyrim's complete lack of aliens is a pretty serious check in the "con" column-- not just in its battle against Fallout, but✤ in comparin𓆏g it to other, more varied games in general.

This meme also inadvertently gets to the heart of each game's respective DLC. Skyrim's various expansion packs were basically more of the same, while Fallout 3's in particular each took the game in interesting and sometimes unexpected directions. "Operation Anchorage," for instance, puts players in virtual reality simulation of a past war fought before the events of the game, and forces them to procure all new weapons and equipment a🔴nd not bring over any existing inventory.

Even better is "Mothership Zeta," which brings the world of Fallout into space aboard an alien spacecraft and has you encounter strange extraterrestrial creatures. Can you imagine Skyrim going in such a creative and off-the-wall direction (without user mods, of course)? So go ahead, pay extra money just to visit more🎉 towns and taverns and fight more spiders and dragons-- the point of DLC should be to do something completely different than the main game, not just be more of the same. If that's all you wanted, you could just play the game over again.

11 Medieval Etsy vs Post-Apocalyptic Etsy ꧂

Full disclosure: this is a carefully-selected excerpt of a larger collection of Skyrim vs. Fallout comparison comics that are clearly designed to insinuate that Skyrim is better. Even this one is technically supposed to paint Skyrim in a positive light and Fallout in a negative one. B♓ut once again, perception is everything, and we're here to ꦦexplain why this particular comic says the opposite thing that its creator intended it to.

Yes, Skyrim's crafting system makes a lot more sense than Fallout's and is much deeper and more elegant. But so what?

Who wants to stop in the middle of an epic adventure to mine and craft and all that nonsense just to make slightly fancier swords and axes, when in Fallout you can just grab some duct tape or some nails or something simple like that and create crazy gun hybrids that would make a Call of Duty player jealous?

If you want to mine and craft, then...um, play Minecraft. If you want to just quickly take two weapons and mash them into a single, more powerful weapon and get on with your life, play Fallout.