ERB's 15th Anniversarish

Karl Abate

Karl Abate

— 1 min read
The current banner of the ERB channel.

15 years ago the first episode of Epic Rap Battles of History came out! Kind of.

So the very first episode, John Lennon vs Bill O'Reilly, officially released on September 26, 2010, on Nice Peter's personal YouTube channel. Four days earlier, though, on September 22, Nice Peter released a video with the clickbait-y title Bill O'Reilly Flips Out on John Lennon.

This video is literally the exact same as the battle, with the notable exception of it actually being censored (albeit not the most consistently, "weed" is censored while "LSD" isn't). Also it features some additional sound effects and an ending screen not in the battle's actual upload.

A screenshot of the original upload of the video. It features an annotation saying "the people have spoken, click here for the uncensored version...."

Today is September 24, 2025, the exact midpoint between the two videos' 15th anniversaries, and so I decided to celebrate it today! As it seemed like the least polarizing day to do so (despite everybody collectively agreeing the real anniversary is the 26th, even ERB themselves).

ERB is one of my favourite channels/series of all time. Their battles are extremely memorable, creative, and super enjoyable, and despite them being mostly comedic I have learned a lot of things from their portrayal of historical figures. And even if it isn't one of their best, I do still wanna celebrate this video that started it all (or uhh these videos I guess?).

Additionally I wanna give a shoutout to this video by JowensYT, which covers some of the easter eggs and behind the scenes stuff on the first episode of the series. He also currently has videos on all the first five battles of the series, which I also recommend checking out!

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