The Unfought / Video Games

• In the obscure PS1 game 40 Winks, the antagonist, Nitekap, is never fought. Instead, the final boss is his minion Threadbear piloting a robotic bear.
• In Akatsuki Blitzkampf, Mycale is a playable character who doubles as a major in-story antagonist... but up until the Ausf. Achse Updated Re Release fits here through and through.
• Alice: Madness Returns has the first boss, a steam-powered Humongous Mecha piloted by the Dormouse and March Hare. Just after the pre-battle cutscene is over, Mad Hatter unceremoniously whacks it out of existence with a giant teapot. In fact, this applies to every Boss Battle except the Final Boss. This also serves as Foreshadowing that this time, nothing from Wonderland is actually the problem Alice needs to get rid of.
• Alone in the Dark (2008) builds up to a climactic showdown between Edward Carnby and Lucifer... and just when it looks like the two are about to throw down, the game ends with a Gainax Ending.
• The Antz game never gives you the chance to give General Mandible his due for all the crimes he committed. He only appears after the final stage, in a cutscene that states he got beaten for good and has Z's foot on his head.
• None of the Asterix videogames have Caesar as a fightable enemy, which is perfectly faithful to the comic where he is a physically frail but shrewd Non-Action Big Bad. Asterix and the Great Rescue merits a mention, because it is one of those where Julius appears overlooking the Colosseum fight, giving orders from afar.
• Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana has Mull, a smirkish swordsman who is set up to be a final boss. He's quickly killed by an ancient god he's been trying to summon, so you end up fighting it instead.
• Banjo-Kazooie: Despite being Gruntilda's loyal servant and the one who sets into motion her evil plan during the Game Over sequence, Klungo is never fought. In fact, he isn't even met at all with the starring duo. This changes in the sequel, where he's a Mini-Boss fought three times and then goes into Heel–Face Turn.
• Banjo-Tooie: Of the three antagonistic witches in the story, only Gruntilda is fought during the final battle, since her two sisters Mingella and Blobbelda are dispatched by herself during the Tower of Tragedy minigame after they fail to outscore Banjo and Kazooie during the quiz rounds.
• Baten Kaitos: Geldoblame has yet to be fought in human form, unlike pretty much every other human villain in the series. And Melodia isn't fought at all.
• Many villains in the Batman Arkham Series never get a proper boss fight, either being taken out in a cutscene (Harley, Scarecrow, Hugo Strange), are defeated with a single stealth attack or thrown Batarang (Zsasz, Riddler, Deadshot), or both (Croc). This is particularly egregious with Hugo Strange, since he's a main antagonist and the in-game description of him includes the bulletpoint "Trained to physical perfection." That sounds like a fight! Nope.
• In Bastion, there is Zulf. Made somewhat humorous by the fact that immediately after you figure out there won't be such a fight, Rucks starts talking about how The Kid must be having a final showdown right about now.
• Battle Princess Madelyn: The Baron of Germany is one of the bosses you're tasked with defeating, but right before the fight begins, he's killed by another character in one of the game's more bizarre moments. So while he does get dealt with, you don't actually get to fight him yourself.
• The Dark Queen appears but remains unfought in the Game Boy and arcade Battletoads games, both of which have Robo-Manus as the Final Boss. Also, though Silas Volkmire is the namesake of a stage in the original NES game, the only time players get to confront him directly is at the end of Battlemaniacs (and it's little more than a Quick Time Event).
• Beast Wars: Transformers does not have a boss fight against Rattrap in the Predacons campaign, or one against Blackarachnia in the Maximals campaign, in spite of them being playable characters in their respective campaigns.
• Seconds before Henry would have needed to fight, "Alice" gets killed in Bendy and the Ink Machine.
• Delekhan, who is built up as the Big Bad for most of Betrayal at Krondor, ends up getting killed via cutscene after the game is technically over (he ends up just being The Dragon in the end anyway, and you do fight the actual Big Bad.)
• In Beyond Good & Evil, General Kheck, the leader of the Alpha Sections, is never actually fought. While you do brush shoulders with him once or twice, your only actual combat encounter with him is actually with his ship. You fight his Tripod Terror from your ship, and it crashes and lands... but when you go inside, he's already dying, and all you get is an Almost Dead Guy speech.
• BioForge: Dr. Mastaba got away scot-free.
• BioShock:
  • In BioShock, you never really fight Andrew Ryan. He basically commits suicide using your mental conditioning to bash his brain in a cutscene.
  • In BioShock 2, the player doesn't get to fight Sofia Lamb, but her fate can be determined by the choices they made. She will either drown or be left to live as Cruel Mercy.
  • Many of the named antagonists are not directly fought by the player in BioShock Infinite. Daisy Fitzroy kills Jeremiah Fink, Elizabeth kills Fitzroy, Booker DeWitt does kill the main antagonist but in a non-controllable scene, and Songbird ends up assisting the player in the final battle before being sent to die at the bottom of the ocean. Cornelius Slate is played up as a boss battle, but once you have killed his men and confront him, he's too exhausted to fight and he turns into a Cutscene Boss instead. Lady Comstock is the only named character that is actually confronted in a player-controlled battle and, as if to make up for the long list of unfought, has to be defeated three times in three equally difficult fights.
• In Iron Tager's Story path of BlazBlue, he runs into Ragna after beating Hakumen, but they trade only words instead of blows.
• In Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Yang is the only member of Team RWBY who is never encountered and fought in the story mode. Additionally in Episode RWBY, she goes off in the beginning with Blake and then the story follows Ruby, and Yang only comes back at the end to take care of the wounded Ragna while Ruby and Weiss deal with the System.
• In Mighty Bomb Jack, you don't get to fight Beelzebut in any of the Multiple Endings.
• In Borderlands, Commandant Steele and the Crimson Lance are the main antagonists for most of the game; however, upon reaching the Vault, you don't get to fight Steele because she is impaled by an Eldritch Abomination named The Destroyer, that is, quite in fact, a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere. However, she returns in Claptrap's Robot Revolution, having been rebuilt as "Steele-Trap" and as an actual boss.
• Borderlands 2:
  • When you go to rescue Roland from the Bloodshots, who are planning to ransom him off to the Hyperion Corporation, you're probably expecting to fight their leader Flanksteak. The game seems to really try to sell you on this guy being a big deal, so you're probably even looking forward to facing him. Instead, Hyperion decides to storm the Bloodshots' base with an army of Mecha-Mooks and capture Roland themselves, and Flanksteak, comically oblivious that the mayhem going on in his own base is not just the fault of the Vault Hunters, gets killed when he tries to offer an attacking Hyperion Loader twenty bucks for Roland.
  • In the first DLC expansion, Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty, you get a downplayed example. While you do technically fight the titular Captain Scarlett, she's actually only marginally involved in the fight; the real enemy is her pet rakk hive. After the battle, she runs away and is never seen or heard from again, managing to use some sort of teleportation device to escape.
  • In the second DLC expansion, Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, Flyboy is set up as one of the competitors before Piston kills him so he can fight you.
  • In the third DLC, Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt, Professor Nakayama dies when he finally decides to confront you, only to trip and fall down some stairs.
• Colonel Capricciola, Bubbles, and Gingerelle from Brave Fencer Musashi, despite all three being warriors. Bubbles and Gingerelle vanish about halfway through with no explanation, and Capricciola is actually Jon and is secretly helping you. It's possible that Cappricciola was to be fought at one time, as his action figure has attacks and voice-overs that aren't used elsewhere in the game. Either that, or that was done to hide the big twist later.
• In Breath of Fire IV, Yuna, the dark mage/geneticist in charge of the Carronade (a hex cannon fueled by torture victims) and responsible for the creation of monstrous synthetic gods, flees at the only opportunity your characters have to fight him, protesting that he is "a scholar and a pacifist." He survives through the end of the game. He was intended to have been fought by the player or at least given some form of comeuppance for what he did. Capcom was forced to rush the game at the end due to the fact that they were actually risking bankruptcy at the time. However, he still gets away in the manga.
• Bug Fables: The Dead Lander Omega lurking in the background of the Giant's Lair is easily the biggest enemy character in the game. But it never directly confronts the heroes; it instead sics smaller Dead Landers on them if it catches them in the gaze of its Giant Eye of Doom.
• In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Vladimir Makarov is originally set up as the Big Bad. Then Magnificent Bastard General Shepherd steals the limelight. The closest you get is firing on him in No Russian, which fails the mission. It is implied, however, that with his enemies closing in on him, he won't last long. In fact, he only shows up in a grand total of two missions in the game. And only one of those in person. The other you just hear his voice. You eventually do get to kill Makarov in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
• In Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Celia Fortner is the Big Bad of the game and attempts to bring forth a new Dracula. She's never fought, instead being killed in a cutscene by either Soma Cruz (who kills her in the bad ending after becoming the dark lord) or Dmitrii Blinov (who sacrifices her shortly before the final boss fight of the good ending route).
• Chained Echoes has two main plot threads, both of which result in this happening. There's the present war involving Taryn, which ends with Prince Frederik of Taryn killing himself to enact a Thanatos Gambit that will let his sister unite the land peacefully, and the ancient threat known as the Harbinger, which ends with the party defeating the Abusive Precursors that seal it away by periodically wiping out humanity and the now-united world starting to prepare for its release at some point after the end of the game.
• Arnold Leach from Clive Barker's Jericho, while a Big Bad, is never fought (contrary to what some players may tell you). It is possible to shoot at him during a later level, but it has no effect on him.
• Father and Cree Lincoln play important parts in the story of Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation: V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E., but neither of them get their own boss fights.
• The arcade version of The Combatribes has the three main characters chasing after a generic looking man-in-suit crime boss throughout the final two stages. When the player finally confronts the boss at the end, he gets murdered by his own female bodyguard, who confronts the player as the final boss instead.
• John Adams is this in The Conduit. The main protagonist, Michael Ford, storms his headquarters in hopes of confronting him towards the game's end, but Ford soon discovers that he is nowhere to be found and that Adams has eventually rigged the base to self-destruct to try and lure Ford into a deadly trap that he must escape in the final level. Ford does not get to fight him until the end of Conduit 2.
• In Conker's Bad Fur Day, all three major villains end up going unfought:
  • The Panther King, the Big Bad of the game, has a barely lawyer-friendly Xenomorph burst out of his chest shortly after he meets Conker for the first time, killing him and leaving the Xenomorph as the final boss. Though, in the Live and Reloaded multiplayer map Doon, the Panther King DOES serve as the map final objective, you have to shoot his heart.
  • The Panther King’s right hand minion, the Professor, is sucked out of an airlock after launching the bank vault he and everyone are in into space, all while realizing too late how stupid of an idea that was.
  • Don Weaso, the chief member of the weasel mafia, flees after seeing the Xenomorph that came out of the Panther King and, presumably, escapes with his haul of money, never to be seen again. Also an example of Karma Houdini, as, unlike the other two villains, this means he gets no comeuppance for killing Berri.
• Contra:
  • In Contra: Hard Corps, one of the four main story paths ends with an outbreak of alien organic matter, providing a distraction for the main antagonist, Colonel Bahamut, to escape to fight another day.
  • Chief Salamander in Contra Re Birth. Justified for plot twisting reasons.
  • In Contra: Shattered Soldier, the Triumvirate is a subversion once they got overwhelmed with the Relic of Moirai, becoming One-Winged Angel True Final Boss.
• In Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Uka Uka is introduced as the man behind the man, an extremely powerful mask that was sealed away for thousands of years. You never really fight him; all he does is act as an obstacle during the final boss battle. This isn't so bad (a mask is kind of hard to make into a full boss), but it gets really annoying in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex where there was a perfect opportunity to fight him. In that game, every boss is Crunch absorbing the powers of an elemental mask. There are four elemental masks, five bosses, you'd expect the final boss to be the recurring boss using Uka Uka's power, right? Nope. Instead, he just uses the other four masks at once, and Uka Uka does absolutely nothing during the fight except pull Cortex back to safety after you attack him. It took until Crash Twinsanity for a proper battle with Uka Uka, but by that time, he's no longer the main villain.
• In The Dark Spire, you fight what appears to be the main boss and kill him. Then you learn there's much more to it, but the real boss is only fought in a cutscene. And you have to do a lot of stuff to unlock this ending, which makes it a real let-down.
• The psychopaths in Dead Rising 3 embody the Seven Deadly Sins. Teddy Lagerfeld, who represents sloth, is a lazy bum who's holding up in a basement in a lofty villa, and is completly oblivious to the zombie outbreak going on in Los Perdidos. When Nick enters the villa to ask about getting a key to an armory, Teddy dismisses him and sends out his attack drones to deal with Nick. Teddy is the only psychopath that isn't fought head on, and dies from a heart attack as soon as he's confronted.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: For all his big talk, Lideal never fights Gun and is never heard again after Distia.
• Demon Legacy: Apollo is one of the major antagonists and for a while is built up as the final enemy, but just when you finally make it to his lair to fight him, Narik/Abel has already killed him for you, and you fight him instead.
• In Devil May Cry 4, you never get to fight Credo in human form, despite his Informed Ability of being a master swordsman. He activates Devil Trigger before throwing down with Nero. Another example is Trish in the original game: When she's revealed to be working for Mundus, only Nightmare is fought, not her.
• In Die Hard: Vendetta, Hans Gruber's son Piet is introduced at the very beginning. He is established as the main villain almost immediately, and is constantly taunting John throughout the game. Piet is killed in the next-to-last level's ending cutscene by John's daughter Lucy, leaving action star turned terrorist Jack Frontier as the final boss.
• In Disney's Hades Challenge, you don't get to fight Hades directly, as he backs himself off a cliff by mistake.
• Samuel Hayden from Doom (2016). Doom Eternal remedies this by finally having him face off against the Doom Slayer as the Final Boss of The Ancient Gods - Part One DLC.
• Hiruko, the fortune teller in the NES version of Double Dragon III, is never fought after she betrays the heroes. This is not the case in the arcade version, where she has a brief battle with the player before fighting the final boss.
• Dragon Age II has Sister Petrice, who is killed by a Qunari archer in front of you — though she admits early on to being a non-action person, so this is perhaps unsurprising.
• In Dragon Quest IV, the main villain that only the Hero is able to defeat is Estark, who is about to awaken from a long slumber since his defeat in the distant past. In a surprising subversion, you get to him before he has a chance to wake up, and kill him in his sleep. Psaro, one of his minions, ends up being the final villain.
• Dynamite Headdy has an unfought boss, but you don't even know anything about her or what she looks like beforehand... a world just ends without a boss (and a justification, which was the only storyline text that got carried over to the English version, where it's revealed that Heather managed to get to World 4's Keymaster before Headdy could and subsequently defeated her and took her key).
• Earthworm Jim 2's first boss fight ends almost as soon as it begins, when Jim eats the boss. Justified in that the boss in question is Bob the Killer Goldfish, who was a Zero-Effort Boss in the first game.
• Yzma is not fought in the Game Boy version of The Emperor's New Groove despite being shown as capable fighter for her age. This does not hold for the PlayStation, Dreamcast, and PC game which make her a Final Boss.
• Etrian Odyssey Nexus: While Blót (who eventually reveals himself as the Big Bad) is fought in a boss battle, his twin brother isn't. The latter character meets his demise offscreen shortly before the awakening of the Final Boss (Jormungandr); ironically, the former character not only survives his boss defeat, but also redeems himself near the end of the postgame.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Astral Gate is an antagonistic presence throughout the game, performing actions that hinder the players and rescues the Big Bad from certain annihilation. In a normal end it allows the escape of the Dark Power responsible for Dark Force and his attacks and in the true end prevents the heroes from attacking the Dark Power until it is strong enough to possess Emerald and become the True Boss fight. But ultimately Astral Gate is a cosmic troll who manipulates events for his own amusement, even aiding the heroes at a couple points, and escapes unfought. He later becomes Force Star's rival fight in the prequel Star Resistance.
• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance: Series Big Bad Dark Force is not actually fought in the game's main story, despite leading the invasion of the Shakun Star. The players will fight his commanders Undata and Mensouma, and witness Dark Force blowing up the capital city, but will never face him directly until Attack of Darkforce.
• Fable II's Reaver will shoot Lucien if you allow him to talk too long.
• In Fallout 3, President John Henry Eden is never actually fought in the game ...which has partially to do with the fact that he turns out to be a giant supercomputer. You can speech-challenge him, though, and lead him to self-destruct if your speech skills are good enough.
• Fallout 4 has Father (aka Shaun your son) in the main questline depending on weather side against him, you end up storming the Institutes underground base, and when you find him again you only talk to him one last time. Justified in he is an old man on his last legs, and has no combat ability.
• Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 with the most badass mercs Jackal and Vaas. You get taken down by Cutscene Incompetence whenever you meet Jackal for one. Same thing for Vaas (apparently the Far Cry devs really love this trope), and when you finally take him down, it happens in a trippy drug/dream sequence that you aren't even sure is really happening.
• F.E.A.R.: Project Origin promises an incredible psychic battle between protagonist Michael Becket and Big Bad Alma. It doesn't happen. Instead, you get a somewhat anticlimactic Battle in the Center of the Mind with your Evil Counterpart, while Alma rapes your comatose body.
• The Final Fantasy series does this a lot.
  • Emperor Gestahl in Final Fantasy VI is the primary antagonist throughout the first half of his game, and get killed by the real villain without ever fighting the player. He was a stupendously powerful wizard, as shown in his fight with the one who kills him, and knows spells you don't have at that point in the game, so he would have been a Worthy Opponent.
  • In Final Fantasy VII:
    • The Sapphire Weapon is killed by the Junon Cannon before the party can get to it.
    • Also, Tseng, leader of the Turks, never actually battles the party; it's always some combination of Rude, Reno, and Elena (who can also become The Unfought if you decide not to fight the last Turk encounter). In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, however, not only is Elena a recurring mandatory boss, but Tseng is also fought in one of the game's penultimate boss encounters.
    • Diamond Weapon in the original Japanese version, but a fight against him was added when it was released internationally (and retroactively added to the Japanese re-releases).
    • The human form of Sephiroth is never fought in the game (and never met outside flashbacks, as the humanoid Sephiroths that appear throughout the game are actually parts of Jenova, while the real Sephiroth is already in the planet's core by the time the game starts). The closest thing you get to a fight against it is the Omnislash finisher after the Safer Sephiroth battle, but Sephiroth is in a weakened state from the previous battle, has only 1 HP and can only do a single, incredibly weak attack if the player fails to trigger Omnislash in time—at which point Cloud with automatically retaliate and kill him. This is averted in Remake, however, where Sephiroth's human form is the final boss.
  • Final Fantasy IX also subverts this trope with the Four Fiends. At first, when the characters split into four groups to take them on, only one (Lich) is actually fought by the player(known as the "Earth Guardian" in that fight), the other battles taking place offscreen. However, in the final dungeon, they're revived and all four are indeed faced in battle. There's also Queen Brahne who, despite a sickly appearance, is a clear cut antagonist (mostly manipulated by Kuja) and uses Summon Magic to destroy cities and settlements, but the player never gets the chance to fight her due to Kuja killing her by taking control of Bahamut from her and using it against her.
  • Inverted along with an inverted Bait-and-Switch Boss in Final Fantasy X. Yu Yevon is the creator of Sin and the cause of Spira's "cycle of death" for a thousand years. But it's the Yevon Maester Seymour who is the party's personal Big Bad, and your obligatory battle with Yu Yevon is a fight you can't lose.
  • In the Chains of Promathia expansion for Final Fantasy XI, Nag'molada is an enemy working at cross-purposes to the player for most of the storyline, working indirectly by means such as spreading lies about the player, stealing credit for your accomplishments and sending powerful boss monsters against you. At the very end, however, he commits suicide by allowing himself to be absorbed by Promathia the Twilight God. Not only does this cheat us out of a boss fight, but it also unleashes an apocalyptic evil god upon the world. Not cool at all, Naggy. Even in a follow-up quest where his spirit is attempting to cross over into our world along with that of some other malefactors, an NPC ally fights him instead off-camera while we rematch with a couple of old bosses.
  • Happened again in Final Fantasy XIII with Jihl, who was even featured in the trailer, but ends up appearing in a stupefying total of 4 scenes (if even that many), during the last of which she is blasted in the back by the REAL boss as she confronts the heroes. They are now fightable in DLC for XIII-2, however.
  • In Final Fantasy XVI, the Eikons Phoenix, Shiva, and Ramuh are never fought by the player due to their Dominants being allies to Clive. While you do fight Jill in the first mission of the main story, she's already been exhausted by a recent fight with Titan and doesn't sic Shiva on you.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, during chapter one, a couple people are set up as disc one final bosses, but are never directly fought. Among these are Gustav (Who set up the Marquis's kidnapping, which Wiegraf detested) and Gragoroth, the Corpse Brigade member who kidnapped Teta^note he commits suicide by explosion after being shot by Argath at Ft. Zeakden.
• Fire Emblem
  • An infamous example is Ephidel from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. Set up to be a Climax Boss, he instead suffers death by exploding dragon. Breaking open the game's code reveals that he only has generic "citizen" stats and an inventory filled with items he can't use (while several other non-combat NPCs have proper stats and inventories).
  • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Glen is one of the six top generals of Grado. He is set up for the possibility of either becoming a Defector from Decadence like Duessel or succumbing to Honor Before Reason like Selena, but before he can commit to a decision, Valter murders him. This is only seen on Eirika's route; his fate is only acknowledged on Ephraim's route if you visit a random house in Chapter 15. In addition, the aforementioned Selena and the Disc-One Final Boss Vigarde, both set up to be major antagonists, are only fought on Ephraim's route; Eirika gets to skip them both.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn has an army example in the Begnion Central Army. It plays a big role in the story and is frequently mentioned in dialogue, but you never fight any units from this faction. Justified as they have such a reputation as a Badass Army (and are led by General Zelgius) that a large portion of Part 3 centers around staying the hell away from them.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has two notable examples from Nohr, Nyx and Elise. On the Birthright route, where players have sided against the Nohrian army, neither of them are fought, making them two of only a few playable characters to never be fought on any route. Nyx only ever gets involved in the war thanks to the Avatar's interactions with them, so she has no reason to ally herself with the Nohrian army. Elise is an even more noteworthy example: she is the only royal sibling from either faction to not have a whole chapter dedicated to fighting her ^note  She can be fought in the first real chapter of Birthright, but is optional to do so(only Xander needs to be defeated to clear the chapter), and every other royal sibling is either a required boss or is right in the way to finishing the chapter and is hard to avoid fighting. Justified for Elise: she's a squishy mounted healer, so she has to rely on reinforcements to put up a fight. (This provides an interesting contrast to her Hoshidan counterpart Sakura on Conquest, who does pick up a yumi and opposes you with force.)
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Marianne is the only playable unit (besides Byleth) that is never encountered as an enemy after the Time Skip. Her A-support with Byleth reveals that she was praying for her own death, so it's speculated that she killed herself during the five year time period. She is finally faced in Fire Emblem Heroes, although the Boss Battle might not be canon.
    • On the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes, Cornelia, aka Cleobulus of Those Who Slither in the Dark, is never fought.
  • Fire Emblem Heroes': In Book VII, King Njörðr is established to be a major antagonist late in the book, but ends up being killed by Gullveig one chapter after being revealed as evil, and is never actually fought.
  • The fan hack The Last Promise has the sorcerer Lahar, who is set up to be an endgame boss after he kills Siegfried. However, just before the final part of the final chapter, he reanimates Siegfried, and intends to have him fight the party. He does, but he still has enough free will to kill Lahar first. Thus, Siegfried himself is the final boss.
• God of War III has several: Hera is killed easily in a cinema, Helios is weakened to the point where all you need is a mini-game to kill him, Hephaestus and Gaia are technically killed completely by Kratos, but in mini-games instead of full battles.
• Alex from Golden Sun. He's more of The Chessmaster type. And as of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, he's STILL unfought.
• In Granblue Fantasy, Noa is notable as the one of the only playable primal beasts you meet in the main story that you don't get to fight against, either in a regular fight or as an Optional Boss.
• In Grandia III, Grau is never fought. One of Xorn's roots turns him into glass and shatters him.
• Officer Tenpenny in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the meanest, most manipulative son of a bitch in the game, but you never get to actually fight him. After a city-wide car chase, he ends up losing control of his truck and driving right off a bridge through a concrete barrier, just in front of CJ's home. CJ is convinced by Sweet not to drive a bullet in the man's head "just to make sure", and lets Tenpenny die of his own internal injuries.
• Ray Bulgarin seems to be the perfect Big Bad for Niko in Grand Theft Auto IV, being a bigger threat and having a greater personal connection to him than Dimitri Rascalov, but he simply disappears after letting loose a group of goons on Niko and Packie in an attempt to retrieve his stolen diamonds. His fate is revealed in Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, where he does serve as the Big Bad and Final Boss.
• Gunstar Heroes. You never get to fight the evil emperor, because he gets nuked by the crystals he was trying to collect, which then open the Sealed Evil in a Can for the real boss fight.
• Despite his mythological role, Cerberus fills this role in Hades. When Zagreus and Cerberus encounter each other on the entrance to Hades, neither can bring themselves to hurt the other and Zagreus is instead forced to hunt down some doggy treats to bribe the dog with in order to pass.
• Halo:
  • The Prophet of Truth and the Gravemind in Halo 3. Justified in that it wouldn't fit with the tone of the game (the Prophet of Regret boss battle from Halo 2 was universally loathed, and the Gravemind is a (possibly city-sized) Eldritch Abomination).
  • 343 Guilty Spark in Halo: Combat Evolved (though you do fight him in Halo 3) and the Prophet of Mercy in the second game.
  • Jul 'Mdama in Halo 4 and Spartan Ops, despite him being the leader of the Covenant forces you're fighting.
• In the Arcade Game Hard Head 2, you never fight the cyclops monster that steals your girlfriend. After killing the Final Boss, the monster just returns the girl to you and leaves.
• Hi-Fi RUSH:
  • CH-AS1R, the giant robot Kale attacks you with at the end of Track 7 (and then leaves with after assuming you are dead) is revealed in a subsequent Leaning on the Fourth Wall conversation with CNMN to have originally been a boss battle.
    "I just feel bad for the designer of that robot. They must have put a lot of love into designing it. Something clearly intended to fight YOU! Oh, what an interesting setpiece that would've been."
  • In the Vandelay Museum, a blue KEM-0N0 variant can be seen hanging from the ceiling. Reading a nearby datapad reveals that it too is an unused enemy.
• Homefront has Colonel Jeong, the only enemy that isn't an anonymous masked clone. He arrests you in the opening sequence and is narrowly avoided later on in the game, but after his second appearance, he is never mentioned again.
• In the first and second House of the Dead games, the final bosses are artificial monsters created by the Mad Scientist of the episode. The maestri themselves are not up to a fight, either having been slain by their "masterpiece" immediately after its commission or doing themselves in after it's destroyed. Although, in Curien's case, you will get to fight him at the end of the third game, after being resurrected and transformed into the artificial life-form "Wheel of Fate".
• The House of the Dead: OVERKILL's dragon, Papa Ceasar, manages to get away from the protagonists throughout the game. To make it worse, he gets killed by the Big Bad.
• In Iconoclasts, General Chrome never gets an official boss battle, instead being killed by Elro's serum in City One's Bastion near the end of the game. You technically face him early on in Shard Wastelands, but he doesn't fight you himself; he's riding on an attack helicopter piloted by a generic One Concern soldier, and he reads from scriptures instead of paying attention to the battle.
• Subverted in Jade Empire: Death's Hand is killed by Sagacious Zu in a cutscene. However, you're not as close to the end of the game as it seems, and he gets better, eventually facing you as the boss of Chapter 6.
• Count Veger in Jak 3 is the Big Bad, and the one responsible for Jak's exile at the beginning of the game. He never gets fought directly, but sends a mecha to stop Jak from reentering the city, and is believed to be behind the firebombs that killed King Damas. Just when it looks like Jak is about to fight Veger in retaliation for his exile and his father's death, the Precursors reveal themselves and turn Veger into an Ottsel.
• Viridi from Kid Icarus: Uprising. She sends her forces at Pit like the other gods, insults and tries to put him down like the other gods, and is a clear antagonist, but through a combination of an army of Giant Space Fleas from Nowhere and losing the war against another god, she and Pit eventually become allies. Even in the chapter that puts Pit up against hypothetical enemies, like Magnus, she doesn't get a boss fight. Quite strange for a character with such huge importance in the story. The most likely explanation is that she looks like a little kid, but that doesn't prevent Pit from at least threatening to attack her.
• Killer7: Many antagonists during the endgame, most notably Kun Lan himself, excepting a battle with an angel projection early on in the game. Others include Trevor Pearlharbor and Handsome Pink, and of the other antagonists, several end up being a Cutscene Boss (Handsome Black, Benjamin Keane) or Zero-Effort Boss (The rest of the Handsome Men, Emir Parkreiner, Kenjiro Matsuoka, the Last Shot Smile) anyway. It's like the game adamantly refusing to give you a proper climactic boss battle.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Zexion was never battled in the original Game Boy Advance version of Chain of Memories; he's finished off in a cutscene. Averted in the PlayStation 2 remake and its Updated Re-release in 1.5 HD Final ReMIX, where he has a normal boss fight when Riku encounters him at Destiny Islands.
  • The hyped-up duel between Roxas and Sora only happens in a cutscene in the original Kingdom Hearts II, but was added as a playable boss fight in the Final Mix.
  • Quite a few of the recurring Disney villains sit out having a battle in some games. Maleficent is part of the Big Bad Ensemble for the first half of Kingdom Hearts II, but is never fought; she is also never fought in Dream Drop Distance and only appears in one scene. Similarly, Pete sits out of Birth By Sleep and despite his role in the Neverland storyline, Hook is never fought in Days.
  • You don't get to fight the Wicked Queen in Birth By Sleep either. She's on her way to poison Snow White as Ventus is leaving, and by the time Aqua arrives in the world, she had already been chased off by the Dwarves as in the movie. Aqua instead randomly fights the Magic Mirror, who even admits it has no business working for the Queen anymore. It's understandable, though, since the Queen has no fighting skills to speak of.
  • While Lady Tremaine and her daughters were about to fight Aqua, they're offed by the Cursed Coach before either side can strike^*though it's heavily implied Sora or Roxas would've fought their Heartless later on. Ventus gets to fight Lucifer, at least (and no, he doesn't have any special powers, he's just a regular cat with you being mouse-sized). Lady Tremaine would later become a boss in Unchained X as the Mean Maiden.
  • Frollo dies either before or after a Dream Eater boss, depending on whether you're playing as Sora or Riku. Either way, he remains unfought.
  • There's also Clu in The Grid. Of course, given the way he is programmed in the film, it's possible that neither Sora or Riku could even scratch him.
  • Gothel isn't fought as herself, but as she's falling to her death, Marluxia believes her darkness will linger and pose a threat to Rapunzel, so he turns her into the Grim Guardianess so Sora and the gang can destroy every last trace of her.
  • Hans not only doesn't face the heroes, he never even gets a line or more than a few seconds of screentime across two cutscenes. The only thing related to him that Sora's party fights is Sköll, a Heartless that spawns from him.
• Kirby:
  • Galactic Nova in Kirby Super Star's "Milky Way Wishes". While Kirby does attack its heart with his Starship, it survives that and only gets destroyed when Marx is sent hurtling into it after beating him. Kirby: Planet Robobot makes up for it by including a Nova-lookalike as the final form of the final boss.
  • Kirby: Triple Deluxe never lets you fight Taranza, since at the climax of the game, he pulls a Heel–Face Turn to help Kirby fight the real villain, Queen Sectonia (whom he initially worked for). Instead, he's fought in the spinoff game Team Kirby Clash Deluxe.
  • Despite Galacta Knight having his own unique set of Boss Subtitles and splash screen to top it off, you don't actually fight him as a boss in Kirby Star Allies. Instead, he's used for a bait-and-switch, as a butterfly from another dimension absorbs his power, makes him vanish and brings forth Morpho Knight instead. However you face him in Super Kirby Clash, as the Final Boss.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Instead of Galacta Knight being vanished, it's the post-game's supposed final boss, Soul Forgo. Again, Morpho Knight does the deed of removal and replacement.
• Knight Eternal: Despite all signs pointing to her being the Big Bad, the queen of Zamaste is not the Final Boss. By the time the party reaches her, it turns out she was already poisoned.
• Thanks to its rushed development cycle, Turel is the only one of Kain's vampire lieutenants that Raziel does not fight in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver — in fact, the entire third act of the game was unceremoniously Dummied Out to set up a sequel. Fortunately, future games in the series got a chance to rectify this: Raziel fights and defeats Turel's human form in Soul Reaver 2, as well as his vampire form in Defiance, where Turel has travelled back in time and is worshipped as a pagan god in the underground catacombs of Avernus Cathedral.
• LEGO Batman: You never get to fight Bane even though you see him in Penguin’s intro cutscene- it’s revealed during the villain story that he knocked himself out and was arrested. Downplayed with Scarecrow- you shoot down his plane, but never fight him in person, as he is also arrested during the villain story. Averted in the DS port where you get to fight them both, but it’s in exchange for fighting Man-Bat and Killer Moth.
• Like a Dragon:
  • Of the Omi Alliance executives ^note not counting Jin Goda in Yakuza 2, Ryuji Goda is the only one Kiryu ever fights. Toranosuke Sengoku makes Kiryu fight his pet tigers instead and then is killed by Ryuji, and Ryo Takashima also gets killed by Ryuji in retaliation for killing Jin.
  • In Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Eiji Mitamura is never fought directly despite having a Sujidex entry. While he is present during a boss fight to buff the enemies, he does so from a video screen and isn't actually there physically.
  • In Like a Dragon: Ishin!, Ryoma is about to fight Matsubara Chuji after the latter is exposed as The Mole to prove he deserves a spot as a Shinsengumi captain. However, Inoue Genzaburo instead kills him just before Chuji can reveal Ryoma's real identity.
• Live A Live:
  • The Kuu Tribe Chief, in spite of more or less being the Arc Villain of the Prehistory chapter (with Odo serving as the Greater-Scope Villain), is never fought by Pogo or the other heroes of the chapter, and when confronted, is quickly eaten by Odo to make way for the fight against him.
  • Yun Jou is the only one of the bandits the Earthen Heart Shifu doesn't fight when confronting them, due to him being Forced into Evil and refusing to fight back. Even after being recruited by the Shifu as a disciple, he does not need to be fought at all during the training segments, though doing that will result in his death. Also, should he not be chosen as the hero of the Dominion of Hate, he's the only one of the possible chosen successors who will join the party without any prior requirement.
  • The Zu brothers, in spite of being the Co-Dragons to Ou Di Wan Lee, are never fought by the player, with them being defeated offscreen by the Earthen Heart Shifu while the player controls the chosen successor in their fight against Wan Lee.
  • The man who challenges Masaru after he's defeated Odie O'Bright is never fought onscreen, as the Present Day chapter ends right before the fight begins. Even in the context of the story, Masaru doesn't get the chance to fight him before he's whisked away by Odio to the Dominion of Hate, though getting the game's Golden Ending implies that Masaru, after returning home, was able to resume the fight and won.
  • None of the leaders of The Conspiracy, in spite of more or less serving as the collective Arc Villains of the Near Future chapter (with Odeo serving as the Greater-Scope Villain), are never directly fought by Akira during the chapter.
  • The Behemoth cannot be fought during any of its encounters, and letting it catch up with Cube will result in a One-Hit Kill. Ultimately, it instead ends up being killed off by Darthe while Cube is busy fighting OD-10.
  • The Aspect of Cube is the only being encountered in the Dominion of Hate that cannot be fought, due to the fact that he's not trying to impede the heroes and is only encountered in the puzzle centric Trial of Wisdom.
• While Don Salieri is the primary antagonist of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, having used Tommy and Paulie all along with the diamonds at the docks for one, Tommy never gets to confront him directly in a boss battle; Salieri's fate is instead narrated by Tommy in the epilogue, and while you can try and attack the Don in missions where you can interact with him, you'd certainly end up with a bullet in your head if you dare to mess with Salieri and/or his goons prematurely.
• In Magician Lord, the human form of villain Gal Ageise (easily confused with Az Atorse due to iffy translation) is never actually fought. The seventh boss is his avatar, but his separate human form is never battled.
• From the Mana Series:
  • Secret of Mana: Emperor Vandole is the main antagonist, but he never engages the party in battle, always leaving that to his lieutenants and minions. Then he's killed off by Thanatos and it's revealed that two of the other lieutenants, Fanha and Sheex, were in on Thanatos' plan the whole time.
  • In Trials of Mana, the central antagonist and their accompanying lieutenants of your campaign is dependent on your chosen protagonist: The Dragon Lord, Darkshine Knight, and Crimson Wizard for Duran and Angela; the Masked Mage, Gourmand, and the Tainted Soul for Kevin and Charlotte; and the Dark Majesty, Belladonna, and Malocchio for Hawkeye and Riesz. While all of the lieutenants are encountered throughout the story, come the midpoint of the game when the forces of all three main villains clash at the Sanctuary of Mana, only the forces of one of those villains will emerge victorious. The defeated lieutenants will appear one last time at the Sanctuary before disappearing, never to be seen again, their leader, likewise, removed from the plot.
• In Mass Effect 2, you fight Harbinger on multiple occasions as he possesses Collectors. However, you never fight his actual body, which resembles a cross between a Collector and a Husk Praetorian. This is because the Collector General is not his true body either. He's actually a Reaper, and the Collector General is just another shell he discards when it's no longer convenient.
• Mass Effect 3. You spend the entire game building up a fleet to battle the Reaper forces led by Harbinger at Earth and you don't even fight him. He doesn't even have any lines! He only appears at the Conduit-like beam that leads to the Citadel and blasts Hammer as they bolt for the beam.
• Max Payne 3:
  • Serrano. You get close to him, but never have a proper gunfight. The last you see of him is in a building about to collapse.
  • This also applies to Neves, the leader of the Crachá Preto mercenaries, who is shot by another character just before he can kill the protagonist. His second-in-command is taken out with a handful of quick time actions.
• Mega Man:
  • In the first Mega Man Star Force, this happens to Geo after he doesn't bother to fight back against a Jammer. When he knocks him down, Harp Note promptly comes in, saves him from the Jammer and his "EM Humans", but lets Geo kick the Jammer's ass himself. Later on, it happens to Cepheus, the FM-King. Despite the fact that his power is great enough to merge the Wave and normal worlds together, you instead fight his superweapon Andromeda, after which he surrenders himself to Geo and Mega's mercy, only to proceed to become friends with them.
  • In all of the Mega Man Battle Network games and the first two Star Force games, the Big Bads are not fought...except for Mr. King in Star Force 3.
  • Isoc in Mega Man X6 never fights you, instead being found dead and seeming to set up a plot element for the sequels, which never materialized.
  • Mega Man Zero 3 ends with the fight with The Dragon, Omega. The game's Big Bad, Weil, is not fought until the sequel.
• Metal Gear:
  • The original MSX version of Metal Gear, the first game in the series, sees you destroy the titular Metal Gear by avoiding two laser cameras moving behind it and planting C4 on its feet. The NES version has this boss edited out: instead, you destroy a super computer, and never even see Metal Gear in the game at all.
  • Decoy Octopus is the only member of the FOXHOUND terrorist squad who doesn't have a boss encounter in Metal Gear Solid. Instead, you meet him in the first 30 minutes of gameplay, disguised as the DARPA Chief Donald Anderson... and even though you don't actually fight him, you still kill him by passing the FOXDIE virus to him.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty:
    • Even though Ocelot is a major villain, he is far too busy with his Gambit Roulette to fight you. You still get to battle him in the other games in the series, though.
    • Dead Cell in the same game is a zigzagged example. The full Dead Cell unit actually has six members, but two of the members and their boss fights had to be scrapped due to time. In-universe, the story writes it off as these two members being killed during the "liquidation of Dead Cell" that happened before the events of the game. Dead Cell member Chinaman still technically appears in the game, albeit very briefly in a flashback as a dead body that Vamp cradles in his arms. His boss fight arena also appears as the one that Vamp uses instead, as Vamp's original arena was supposed to be somewhere in Arsenal Gear. The other scrapped boss fight/Dead Cell member is Old Boy. Old Boy isn't even mentioned in the game, but his boss fight concept is used instead for "The End" in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and his status as a mentor of Big Boss is made into the character of "The Boss". All living Dead Cell members in the game are in fact fought, however.
  • Hot Coldman is all but confirmed early on in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker to be the main villain, but you don't get to fight him. He's killed by Zadornov, another major villain, in a cutscene. You don't get to fight Zadornov either, as he's also killed in a cutscene.
  • Skull Face in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the main antagonist, with Snake and Miller wanting to kill him, having held a deep desire for vengeance against him for 9 years. However, in the end, Skull Face is badly wounded and rendered helpless collaterally by Metal Gear Sahelanthropus (influenced by Eli at the time), and later begged Venom Snake for a mercy kill. Huey ends up killing him instead. Not to mention after all the build-up to a showdown, the Big Bad was killed off halfway through the game, leaving both the characters and the players a "lasting phantom pain" (according to an interview with director Hideo Kojima, it was intentional, to point out that Vengeance Feels Empty). Also worth mentioning is that there was actually supposed to be an episode 51 titled "Kingdom of the Flies" whereby Snake gets a final showdown with Eli who is last seen piloting Sahelanthropus to escape from Mother Base in a jungle environment. However due to time constraints Konami did not include it in the final game.
• Metroid:
  • Super Metroid has the third Torizo when you enter the Super Metroid's chambers in Tourian. The Super Metroid has already killed it and the player is attacked by the comically large and invincible Metroid instead.
  • Subverted in Metroid Fusion just to dash your hopes before things go From Bad to Worse. After an entire game of hiding from, avoiding, and running from the SA-X, you watch it get overwhelmed by infant Metroids and jettisoned into space where it dies in an explosion. You get to spend just long enough thinking you won't have to fight this highly dangerous Evil Twin of Samus... until Adam reminds you the X-Parasites reproduce asexually and by now there are more than 10 of them on the station. Naturally, one of them serves as the penultimate boss fight of the game.
  • MB, aka Melissa Bergman in Metroid: Other M. Justified in that a straight fight between her and Samus would've been over in seconds, given how easily a bunch of random GF Troopers were able to kill her.
• The final boss of Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen is never fought. As soon as you enter the final room where he waits for you, the ending plays. You get a climactic cutscene of a Sealed Good in a Can fighting him for you and defeating him with a Heroic Sacrifice. The battle itself was climactic, but the challenge was not. You never even get to see an in-game character model of the Big Bad. And if you didn't unseal the Sealed Good, then the Big Bad simply waves his hand and your party dies.
• Motaro, in Mortal Kombat 9, is unceremoniously killed by Raiden just off-screen early in the third part.
• Muramasa: The Demon Blade has Fudo-Myou and Amitabha. For the first, you only get to tear up a statue of him, and when the real one shows up he immediately overpowers Jinkuro in a cutscene. For the second, Kisuke targets him at the end of the game, but gives up the idea once he realizes just what he's up against.
• This trope is frequently used in the No More Heroes series:
  • Parodied in in the first game, where Letz Shake, the 5th-ranked assassin, is killed right before the boss fight would start, causing Travis to complain about being cheated out of a fight. Happens again with the 1st ranked assassin, Dark Star, who is killed by Jeane, a character who was only mentioned in the manual up to that point.
  • Zigzagged in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Travis never actually fights any of the 22nd through 11th ranked assassins... since they're killed by Dr. Letz Shake, settling a proper battle against him. Then later on, Henry kills the 6th and 5th ranked assassins as well as a third, unranked assassin for Travis as payback for Travis saving his life. He even lampshades this trope in an answering-machine message, telling Travis (and the player) not to complain about missing out on those boss fights, and offering polaroids "so you can imagine what it might have been like".
  • Happens multiple times in No More Heroes III: Black Night Direction is killed off by Native Dancer, Vanishing Point is killed off by Kimmy Love, Sniping Lee is killed off by Notorious (who is actually an ally who enlists your help in killing a roboticized Destroyman), and Paradox Bandit is murdered by FU before you even get to him (his boss fight being replaced by a suddenly-evil Henry). Zig-Zagged in the case of Velvet Chair Girl, whose boss fight consists entirely of an Absurdly High-Stakes Game of musical chairs, and besting her results in her being Driven to Suicide. Her grief-stricken underling, Ohma, takes over for the regular boss fight.
• Octopath Traveler II:
  • Ageha, The Dragon of Hikari's story, is never fought. Rai Mei gets the honor of fighting him while Hikari goes to confront Mugen — he survives this, but is ultimately killed by Oboro.
  • Only half of the members of the Moonshade Order are fought by the protagonists. For the other half: Tanzy sacrifices herself to make Arcanette happy and douse one of the Sacred Flames, Petrichor (the Dark Hunter) sacifices herself to the Darkling to put out another one of the Flames ^note though it's implied that the Grotesque Monster the party fights is the result of her doing that, Ori pulls a last-minute Heel–Face Turn and disappears, and after all four of the Sacred Flames are re-lit, Oboro sacrifices himself to awaken Vide the Wicked.
• In Odin Sphere, you never fight Big Bad King Valentine. You just deal with the mess he creates.
• Ōkamiden. Daidarabotchi. Big. Threatening. Never even moves, let alone fights.
• After a fantastic boss fight with the Demon King, Fortinbras, in Onimusha: Warlords, there's a short movie sequence featuring the Big Bad, Lord Nobunaga, walking ominously down some steps towards your character, Samanosuke. Then the screen fades to black and there's an epilogue. There's still a few Onimusha players scratching their heads and wondering how Samanosuke got out of that one.
• This scenario plays out at the end of the Resistance campaign in Operation Flashpoint. Having been defeated, the enemy Big Bad, Soviet Colonel Guba, gets off scot-free and flees in a helicopter, but not before cornering and blowing up the protagonist. And that's the "good" ending! (If the player fails to destroy the bombers, every population center gets bombed into oblivion instead.)
• The sorceress in Orcs Must Die! is never confronted directly, although there is some verbal sparring.
• Pokémon:
  • Giovanni, despite being hyped up as returning throughout all of Pokémon Gold and Silver, never even appears. They fixed that in the remakes, but it required a Mystery Gift Celebi which is now impossible to obtain since the event ended long ago (unless you happen to have a friend that never bothered to transfer it to later games). However, Giovanni can be fought again in Pokémon Black and White 2 as an Optional Boss in the Pokémon World Tournament and as the leader of Team Rainbow Rocket in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon (with a freaking MEGA MEWTWO).
  • Charon is never fought in Pokémon Platinum despite temporarily taking over as Big Bad once Cyrus is beaten.
  • Many fans were disappointed when they found out that during the post-game storyline of Pokémon Black and White, when you're given the task of hunting down the six sages of Team Plasma, you don't get the opportunity to engage them in battle. This is especially notable because, near the end of the normal storyline, they all try to gang up on you, 6 on 1, before the Gym Leaders come in to take them off your hands, but they never decide to get revenge on you. Instead, they all (but one) turn themselves in willingly. This also applies to the Shadow Triad — those teleporting ninjas who guide you throughout the game. However in the sequel, Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, some of this is remedied, as two of the Sages, Rood and Zinzolin, are fightable, as are the Shadow Triad.
  • Happens with Mythical Pokemon that are somewhat relevant to the plot occasionally. In Pokémon Crystal, when passing through Ilex Forest you see a shrine dedicated to the forest's guardian, Celebi. The GS Ball is required to summon and battle it, but it was never distributed outside of Japan. And in the remakes, it's merely handed to you through Mystery Gift. In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl you learn about the Original One, Arceus, who created the world, Lake Guardians, and Creation Trio. The Azure Flute was required to enter the Hall of Origin and battle it, but it was never distributed because Junichi Masuda thought it would be too confusing for players to use (although an Action Replay allows the player access to it). In Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, legendary Pokemon from past generations start appearing all over Hoenn out of rings created by the Mischief Pokemon, Hoopa. Unlike the others, Hoopa is never acknowledged in-game or even battled, but is simply handed to the player through Mystery Gift.
  • After Generation V this trope applies to Mythical Pokemon as a whole, as Game Freak stopped making events that allow you to battle and capture them on your own and simply handed them to the player through Mystery Gift. This led to a boring cycle in which players would become aware of Mythicals through datamining at the start of a generation and Game Freak would refuse to acknowledge them before suddenly announcing an event and movie tie-in, rinse and repeat until Pokémon Sword and Shield when they finally got wise and added in the data for them in later updates but still with no way to actually fight them.
  • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness, the leader of Team Skull, Skuntank, is never fought, while his flunkies Zubat and Koffing are fought at the end of the first dungeon. After trying to backstab Wigglytuff and suffering the off-screen beatdown that followed, Team Skull is just forgotten, aside from one dungeon.
• The Nintendo DS version of Power Rangers: Super Legends has three villains involved in the story who are never fought as bosses.
  • Moltor serves as the main villain of the Operation Overdrive level and Emperor Grumm does the same in the SPD level, but neither of them directly fight the player. Instead, both their final confrontations consist of standing on a platform high above the player while sending enemies to attack the player.
  • Rita Repulsa appears in the cutscenes of the level based on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, but never encounters the player during actual gameplay.
• Most of the people responsible for what happens in New York in [PROTOTYPE]. Peter Randall and Colonel Ian Taggart, the general of Blackwatch and leader of the Military, are killed in a cutscene by Alex, and McMullen, head of Gentex and company that developed the virus, kills himself when Alex confronts him. Justified since any normal human other than Captain Cross would have been a Zero-Effort Boss to Alex Mercer.
• In The Punisher (Capcom), Bruno Costa (the Mafia gang boss responsible for the death of Frank Castle's family) sends out various cronies to take care of Frank Castle and Nick Fury as he makes his getaway. When the player finally confronts him in the end of the second stage, Costa gets killed by an android sent out by the Kingpin to eliminate him.
• In Puyo Puyo Fever, typically the final boss of the hardest story mode course, HaraHara Mode, is Ms. Accord's cat puppet Popoi. However, it is possible to encounter Arle's pet Carbuncle as a secret alternate boss instead; if the requirements are met to trigger this, Raffina doesn't fight Popoi at all.
• Dr. Loboto in Psychonauts. While he's presented as the primary antagonist for most of the game, you neither get to enter his mind nor confront him directly as a boss. Instead, he gets a lowly Disney Villain Death. Presumably for the same reason other heroes do: Raz beating up on mental baddies is OK, but real people? No. Also, The Milkman, who after being awakened simply ignores Raz and eventually burns down the asylum, completing his programming, then leaves Boyd's mind forever.
• Ratchet & Clank: Captain Qwark's involvement in the plot is inverse to the way he is fought.
  • In the first, he's The Dragon, yet only fought ship to ship.
  • In the second of the games he is the main villain, but not fought at all.
  • You finally fight him head to head in the third, yet he's barely a comic relief villain.
• Rave Heart: During the AI invasion quest, Doctor Francesca and the Archlight scientists are the ones behind the rogue robots, but they're quick to surrender when confronted.
• In the original Rayman, you never actually get to fight Mr. Dark. First he tortures you with some fire magic, then you fight his three mutants^note whether he summons the mutants or transforms into the mutants is still up in the air, but you still don't fight him in his original form, then... the game just ends. You do get to fight him in the incredibly obscure GBC Rayman game, though.
• The Magician from Rayman Origins doesn't even get something even resembling a boss fight.
• Skint in The Reconstruction. You come extremely close to battling him (there's even a Fight Woosh!), but Dehl calls off the battle and solves things diplomatically. The next time you see him, he's Half the Man He Used to Be and requests a Mercy Kill in an Alas, Poor Villain scene.
• In Red Dead Redemption, John Marston spends almost the entire game hunting down Dutch Van der Linde, the leader of his old gang. But when the two men finally come face to face, Dutch commits suicide in a cutscene.
• In Resident Evil:
  • Your team leader, Albert Wesker, is revealed to be the villain behind the game's events, but he's killed by the Tyrant he releases without you fighting him. Then in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, he returns, with superpowers no less, and you again don't get to fight him, instead watching him beat up the playable characters in cutscenes. This tradition of Wesker being built up as a behind-the-scenes, cutscene-only Big Bad responsible for almost all of the trials faced by Resident Evil's heroes continues throughout the following games, such as 0, 4, and The Umbrella Chronicles, before finally being averted in Resident Evil 5, when you finally face off with Wesker and kill him.
  • Wesker's colleague, William Birkin, also has this when never being confronted in human form in 0 and 2. Instead, he is confronted after becoming a monster due to injecting the G-Virus into himself.
  • Their boss, Ozwell E. Spencer, is not confronted by the protagonists. In fact, they never even encounter him. Alive, anyways.
• Meibisi in Rise of the Kasai is never fought in his human form; despite being invincible because he removed his heart and put it in a crystal, and having been a part of the same organization as the heroes, which would have involved being a highly trained warrior in his own right, he goes straight into One-Winged Angel mode during his boss fight, becoming the mindless avatar of his god, Kri.
• Road Redemption has the Phantom Leader, who, unlike the leaders of the earlier two gangs, isn't directly fought. Instead, the boss fought in Phantom territory is the unaffiliated Big Bad.
• Runescape has a few, which include, but are not limited to:
  • Lucien, perceived for several years to be the game's Big Bad until a new quest was released in which he is killed easily by an even more powerful enemy. However, the 2018 Halloween Event did allow to fight a nightmare version of said character.
  • You don't really fight Iban as such, rather, players must simply run into his room and throw a Voodoo Doll of him into the Well of Voyage, killing him. He is trying to blast you with magic during this procedure, but the room is very small and it's quite possible to succeed without him hitting you once.
  • You don't get to fight Mother Mallum, as you are being controlled. Instead, a team of player controlled NPC's drop a pillar on It. This one caused much uproar in the community.
  • The ultimate Big Bad of the Myreque quest series Vanescula Drakan is never directly fought (at one point you even temporarily play as them); instead, their living seige weapon, the monstrous Wyrd becomes the Final Boss for the series. When you confront the villain for the last time the player opts to spare Vanescula to create a lasting peace in Morytania.
• Phillipe Loren in Saints Row: The Third. Early in the game, The Boss meets Loren when he attempts to broke a deal between the Saints and the Syndicate, with the Saints giving about 66% of their earnings. When you take out the Syndicate at the end of Act 1, Phillipe is indirectly killed by the Boss, crushed by a giant metal ball before the Boss could confront him. This is changed in Johnny Gat's loyalty mission in Saints Row IV, where he is an actual boss fight in the simulation the game takes place in.
• Scooby-Doo: Mystery Mayhem has boss fights against all of the criminals the gang face except for Mindi Stiles and Dr. Selena Drake. Instead, the bosses fought in their respective levels are the Giant Dust Devil and the Fire Ghost that Drake summons in a final attempt to defeat Mystery, Inc.
• The Big Bad of the Serious Sam series, the Evil Overlord Mental, has not once been confronted in a proper boss fight since the first game released in 2001. He was originally intended to be the Final Boss of the first game, but that role was instead given to Ugh-Zan III, who was a Boss in Mook Clothing in the alpha builds. His status as The Ghost has since turned into something of a Running Gag, acting more like a Greater-Scope Villain while his servants take the spotlight.
• In Shadow Complex, Lucius spends the entire climax standing in his observation tower while the player fights the final boss. He gets shot in the head in a cutscene.
• Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall features two major examples. The dragon Feuerschwinge looks like she's going to be the main antagonist for most of the game. Near the end, it turns out that her body and soul have been split from one another, and both are in the possession of the real Big Bad Adrian Vauclair. After ending her first rampage, Vauclair became convinced that the only way to prevent humanity from being enslaved by dragons was to wipe out the latter (given the power and ambition of dragons in the Shadowrun setting, it's not 100% clear he's wrong), using Feuerschwinge's body as a vector for an anti-dragon pathogen. Of course, by this point Vauclair is an old man with cancer, and he was never a mage or other superhuman even in the prime of his life. His security chief/dragon (the other kind), Audran, and a horde of Elite Mooks serve as the actual final boss, after which Vauclair kills himself. The trope is inverted if you convince Vauclair to abort his plan - Audran kills him and takes over, making him the literal final boss.
• Lan Di, the antagonist of the Shenmue series, is never fought by the player even once. Despite the series finally, finally getting a third installment, creator Yu Suzuki has hinted that Ryo may eventually abandon his quest for revenge after all, so it remains to be seen whether he'll ever face Lan Di.^note Not counting the Non-Standard Game Over in the original.
• In Shining Force III, you never get to fight a great number of bosses, at least outside Japan. Due to the fact the game was split into three different games and only the first one was globally released, there are great scores of bad guys, monsters, and machines that are introduced and never seen by the main characters, let alone fought.
• In Shining Force Gaiden II (a.k.a. Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya), Hindel is the only one of King Warderer's generals that isn't encountered as a boss, as he is the protagonist's older brother, and Warderer sacrifices Hindel to resurrect Iom as punishment for his treachery.
• You never get to fight Elise in Shining the Holy Ark, despite the fact she bathes in the blood of children to retain her beauty. You only get to fight her sister and the half-vandal Panzer. Perhaps it because was she was a powerful Vandal and to retain the fear of vandals for the sequel Shining Force III. You never get to fight Galm, either.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • In Shin Megami Tensei II, Gabriel isn't fought on any route, even on Chaos, most likely due to being the only thoroughly sympathetic Law aligned character. Furthermore, Seth isn't fought on any route except after he fuses to become Satan. It takes a spinoff to avert this trope for these two particular incarnations - Gabriel is fought alongside her partners due to a feeling of loyalty, and Seth is fought on the path to Satan.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, Mastema becomes this if you're on the Neutral ending. Normally, alignment-specific characters in this franchise are fought if you oppose them; not so with this guy, even though he's angry with you for not choosing to side with the forces of Law. On the Chaos Path, Mem Aleph, the Big Bad, is your ally and thus not the Final Boss as per usual.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Gozu-Tennoh, the leader of the Mantra army, is set up as a major antagonist, as the leader of the strongest faction in the Vortex World. However, Hikawa, leader of the Assembly of Nihilo, uses the Nightmare System to drain his life, and Gozu-Tennoh ends up on the brink of death. His last act is to fuse with Chiaki, who becomes one of the main contenders trying to reshape the Vortex World in thir idea.
  • Digital Devil Saga also has Cuvier, who is set up as the second game's Big Bad, only to be unceremoniously killed off by Angel during the game's Wham Episode.
  • In Persona 2, Queen Aquarius and Makimura are the only members of the Masked Circle who are not fought. In fact, their Personae are never shown.
  • Medjed in Persona 5 is set up to be a major threat to the Phantom Thieves. The real goal of that arc is actually to get the help of Futaba, who deals with them off screen.
  • Similarly, a few cases show up in Persona 5 Strikers:
    • The Monarch of the Okinawa Jail is never met in person, having killed himself prior to the game's events. Unlike Palaces, Jails do not disappear if the Monarch dies or has their heart stolen.
    • The Monarch of the Kyoto Jail, Akane Hasegawa, is not fought directly, instead sending cognitive versions of the Phantom Thieves to fight the party. After those are defeated, the Monarch is brought to her senses.
    • Jyun Owada, an ally of the Big Bad, is never faced directly, and is arrested at the end of the game.
    • The main culprit behind the incident, Kuon Ichinose, doesn't fight the party directly, instead hiding behind a barrier while an army of Shadows led by a Hecatoncheires attacks. After all those are defeated, Ichinose has a Heel–Face Turn.
  • In Devil Survivor, if the player heads onto Atsuro's or Yuzu's route, Jezebel will not be fought.
  • In Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker's Triangulum Arc, the Big Bad Canopus is not fought, if the player follows Miyako's route.
• The main antagonists of Silent Hill are rarely fought at all.
  • In Silent Hill, the Big Bad is dispatched by the Final Boss.
  • In Silent Hill 3, the Big Bad is also dispatched by the Final Boss. Like the first game, it involves a priestess being killed by the very abomination she was trying to summon.
  • In Silent Hill 4, you actually get to avert this trope for the one and only time in the series.
  • In Silent Hill: Origins, Travis fights neither Dahlia nor Kaufmann, instead wrestling with a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere during the game's climax.
  • In Silent Hill: Homecoming, the Big Bad becomes a minor Cutscene Boss well before the game's climax.
  • In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories... there are no bosses of any kind. But you can't even fight the mooks.
  • In Silent Hill: Downpour, you become the final boss.
• Sincere Deceit: Subverted with Gaius. He gets killed by the Resistance before you get to fight him, but it turns out this was only a remote body he built for himself. His true body, at the bottom of the factory labs, serves as the boss of the Industry District.
• Skies of Arcadia:
  • Alfonso is the first major villain you're introduced to, and he never fights you directly. That does fit with his personality, though.
  • Empress Theodora is the same way — although the heroes (with the exception of Fina) never encounter her in person. Given that she's elderly and shows no hint of magical talent to compensate for physical weakness, the fact that she never fights you is unsurprising.
  • Ramirez's flagship, the Monoceros, never fights the player either.
  • You never get to fight the purple Gigas, Plergoth. Or as you'd know him better, Rhaknam.
• Arpeggio from Sly 2: Band of Thieves falls victim to the "killed by real villain" category, surprisingly late in the game.
• Despite his name being in the title, Gargamel doesn't actually appear anywhere in Smurf: Rescue In Gargamel's Castle.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Adventure, Chaos first transforms into Chaos 1 with a Chaos Emerald, but is never fought directly since he vanished with Eggman.
  • Sonic Adventure 2 marks the first time that Sonic doesn't directly fight Eggman. This is justified since this game is mainly focused on the heroes fighting their gameplay counterparts (Tails vs. Eggman, Knuckles vs. Rouge, and Sonic vs. Shadow).
  • In Sonic Heroes, the player pursues Dr. Eggman to the flagship of his airborne fleet, only to find out it was actually Metal Sonic impersonating him after having gone rogue and launched an operation against the protagonists himself. Also, for the team battles, only 3 of the 4 teams had fought each other, meaning that Team Rose doesn't fight Team Dark, and Team Sonic doesn't fight Team Chaotix.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic and Shadow both fight Silver, but never each other as they were in a Rivals Team Up situation. To make this even more of a shocker to some, Shadow actually saves Sonic from a potentially fatal blow from Silver.
  • In Sonic Rivals 2, just almost all of the characters have fought two members in each of the 4 teams (Sonic and Tails, Knuckles and Rouge, Shadow and Metal Sonic, and Silver and Espio). The battles that didn't occur were Sonic vs. Rouge, Tails vs. Knuckles, Sonic vs. Metal Sonic, Tails vs. Shadow, Knuckles vs. Espio, and Shadow vs. Espio.
  • In Sonic Forces, you don't get to fight Chaos and Shadow. Chaos is taken out by Classic Sonic, and Shadow is taken out by the real Shadow.
  • In Sonic Frontiers, you never fight Eggman or Sage directly. Eggman's been stuck in Cyber Space the whole time, and Sage only sics the Titans on Sonic. By the time Eggman does get out of Cyber Space, the threat The End poses is far too great, forcing Eggman and Sage to team up with Sonic to stop it.
• Soundtrack Attack: Despite running from her being the whole plot, there is no final confrontation with the player character's superior, just a short cutscene where she gives up and leaves.
• In South Park: The Stick of Truth, Clyde Donovan is thrown out of his treehouse by Cartman in a cutscene after the player defeats Nazi Zombie Chef. Downplayed in that Clyde is fought in the game once, but that was as a tutorial before his Face–Heel Turn.
• In Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos, Speedy fights the other members of Los Gatos Bandidos, but he never fights Sylvester, their leader, at all in the game. When you beat the game, a cutscene is shown wherein Sylvester runs away, and Speedy chases after him.
• Spider-Man: Web of Shadows:
  • The game has Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin into its plot. He's a notable member of Spider-Man's rogues gallery, more than capable of holding his own in a fight against a street-level hero. However, halfway through the game you're forced to team up with him, so Fisk stops being a secondary antagonist and starts giving you quests instead. Needless to say, you never fight him.
  • Moon Knight is an interesting case. In the actual game, he's merely another quest-giver and one of the characters you can summon to help you in fights. However, unlike other allies (both heroes and villains), there's never a stage in the game where you have to fight Moon Knight or even where he's heavily involved. During the credits you can see concept art of Moon Knight getting possessed by a symbiote akin to some of your other allies, hinting that originally he was supposed to have a bigger role in the plot and probably a proper boss fight.
• Rick never fights Dr. West in the Splatterhouse remake, instead beating him senseless with West's torn-off arm in a cutscene. Instead, Rick fights the leader of the Corruption as the climatic fight.
• In the story mode of SpongeBob's Boating Bash, the other playable characters are gradually introduced in cutscenes throughout the story, after which they will become opponents in each event the player takes part in. However, while Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy can be unlocked as a driver for the free play modes, they don't become opponents in story mode, even after their introductory cutscene.
• Star Fox Adventures: You confront General Scales, and press A to start a cutscene in which Andross tells him to give you the Krazoa Spirit. He does, and promptly collapses. A case where the villain was the Big Bad. Word of God later revealed both boss fights were originally planned... then ownership of Rare shifted to Microsoft, forcing them to rush development of the game and focus on only one. Unused audio also implies Falco would help Fox take down Scales.
• In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Merrin isn't fought as she defects at the last moment, and Malicos is fought in her place.
• Stay Tooned! features a spoof of Mortal Kombat in one of the rooms. The moment you enter said room, Killtron is introduced in a cutscene and he takes the role of the announcer. However, after defeating all your opponents in the Kartoon Kombat game, Killtron just... tells you he's not a fighter, but a dancer, does the sombrero dance and blows himself up.
• All of the 8-bit home computer ports of Strider (Arcade), handled by the notorious Tiertex, omit the final confrontation with Grand Master Meio, likely due to memory and disk space limitations, instead abruptly ending with The Reveal that the story was all a simulation.
• In Suikoden:
  • You never actually fight the game's real Big Bad, Lady Windy. Instead, the final battle is you beating some sense into The Emperor (who turns into a 3-headed dragon for the fight). After you beat him, he apologizes for everything he's done, grabs Windy, and jumps off the castle to his death, dragging her with him.
  • Yuber from the same series is another example. In the first two games, he's a minor antagonist who deserts during the final battles when it becomes apparent that his side has no chance. In Suikoden III, he is one of the main villains and is fought repeatedly. It quickly becomes apparent that he didn't desert out of cowardice.
• You never get the chance to fight Varil in the final round of the tournament in Summon Night: Swordcraft Story.
• In Sunsoft's Superman Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, Mr. Mxyzptlk launches attacks on Superman in several stages, and Superman never gets a chance to retaliate. This example is justified if you know anything about Mxy, though- he's an extremely powerful Reality Warper, so fighting him psychically would probably not end well.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3: Captain Syrup herself. You fight her genie instead. After defeating said genie, she promptly pulls an Exit Villain, Stage Left.
  • Yoshi's Island: Kamek never directly fights the player in the first two games (SNES and DS), only showing up occasionally as an Invincible Minor Minion. You do get to fight him in later Mario games, including the third game in the Yoshi subseries (Yoshi's New Island).
  • Mario Tennis: The varsity squad in the Game Boy Color game. You get to play against Mark when he's in a Doubles match, and Emily in a Singles. But never Kevin.
  • Super Mario Party: During the game's ending, it seems like Bowser will do something sinister after all the Gems are placed in the ceremony plaza, prompting a Final Boss fight against him. However, he only says some words of encouragement (it's unclear if he changed his mind or merely wanted to pull a leg on everybody), and the celebrations continue as usual, eventually leading to the game's credits.
  • Paper Mario:
    • Paper Mario 64: The "battle" against Kammy Koopa is simply a scripted battle with Peach; there is no way you can lose. She gets a proper battle in the sequel.
    • Super Paper Mario: Nastasia is the only member of the main group of villains who isn't fought, though she was also the only one who had no real combat abilities.
    • Paper Mario: The Origami King: Origami Peach is never fought as, despite being under Olly's control, he unfolds and repurpose her into a stained glass window.
• At the end of Super Robotnik Land, it is revealed that Zelda is the game's true Big Bad, and she put KINGMAN under a hypnotic spell, which Robotnik was able to free him from. While Robotnik never fights Zelda in the game, KINGMAN does punish her.
• The real Dr. Hell is not fought in Super Robot Wars BX. Instead, the Great General of Darkness kills him when he's summoned by Kiba using the Gravity Reactor to open the gate.
• Super Robot Wars UX: Master Vespasianus, Emperor Annex Zaboom, and Shot Weapon.
  • Vespanius is not fought because Augustus killed him.
  • Emperor Annex Zaboom is not fought because he was betrayed by Hazard, who commanded Vajra to suicide bomb themselves at his and Sharom's battleships.
  • Shot Weapon is not fought because he attempted take to Alto with a suicide bombing.
• Shot Weapon isn't fought in Super Robot Wars X and is dealt with in a cutscene by Silky Mau.
• At least three in Super Smash Bros. Brawl:
  • Ganondorf is presented as a major villain in The Subspace Emissary, but the closest you ever come to fighting him is a cutscene where the heroes attack the Halberd with their various spaceships, after which Ganondorf is double-crossed by Tabuu. A little weird, as this is a game where Ganondorf is a fully playable character. You later fight a dark copy of him in The Great Maze, but that's because Tabuu created a dark copy of each of the 31 characters that have appeared by that point, so it doesn't count. This might be the reason why he has several boss fights in Ultimate, including as Ganon, as a way to rectify his lack of Boss Battle in Brawl.
  • Despite being a straight boss in Classic Mode, Master Hand was presented as the Big Bad of The Subspace Emissary until it's revealed that he's the literal puppet of Tabuu, who disposes of Master Hand before the players get there. That said, he is faced in Ultimate during the story mode. More than once to boot.
  • There's also the Ancient Minister, who was hyped as the subgame's main villain in previews and promotional material. He heel-faced and was revealed to be R.O.B. just before the heroes busted into what would've been his boss chamber. He's faced in Ultimate as an optional Mini-Boss in the quiz world though.
• In Tactics Ogre:
  • Heirophant Balbatos, the silent antagonist for the first part of the game, is never fought by the player. In the Chaotic route, he is captured by the Walister Resistance and more liberal Galgastani and executed off-screen. (However, you can view it with the Warren Report.) In the lawful route, he simply commits suicide before he gets to you.
  • Of the dark knights, Volaq and Balxephon are never fought in the original versions of the game. In fact, battle data for Volaq and Balxephon didn't even exist in the original versions! This was changed in the PSP version where Balxephon is one part of a Dual Boss in Chapter three, and where Volaq is an optional boss fight in chapter four.
• TAGAP 3 has the Funky Prophet, who unlike the other members of the Pluto Conclave Pablo fights doesn't engage against him, but instead gives him some exposition and a weapon Pablo needs to progress. This could probably be excused due to him being more of the peaceful type more interested in getting high than waging war with someone. That, and having converted his battle mech into a bird bath.
• In Tail Concerto, Waffle encounters and fights the leaders of the Black Cats Gang, who are being backed by the evil arms dealer Fool. Fool is never fought throughout the story (lampshaded in a Bait-and-Switch moment halfway through when he states that he's not one to get his own hands dirty) despite being established as the Big Bad of the game early on.
• The Tales Series:
  • The Adephagos from Tales of Vesperia, as accidentally summoned by Alexei.
  • There's also Cumore, whom Yuri unceremoniously killed.
  • Tales of Phantasia has Mars, the knight who has massacred Cless and Mint's Doomed Hometown. The guy summons Dhaos, and promptly gets vaporized by the Dhaos Laser.
• Shere Khan plays this straight in both the NES and Genesis versions of the Talespin video game. He appears in both games, but only through cutscenes. He can be fought in the less well-known TurboGrafx-16 game.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2013) Karai shows up in the penultimate level and sends mooks out to fight the Turtles. Just when it seems like you're going to fight her at the end of the level...she leaves, and is never seen in the game again.
• Moon Cresta, the first installment of the Terra Cresta franchise, is the only game where Mandler isn't encountered or fought.
• Terranigma features a Mad Scientist called Beruga who is set up as the Big Bad for quite a while. But when you track him down and are about to fight him, he just ends up killing himself by accident.
• Marion from Three the Hard Way is revealed to be The Man Behind the Man who was the true mastermind behind the first Kaibutsu War that occurred 65 years ago, and is partially responsible for (but not directly involved in) the chaos of the main story. She didn't stick around after revealing her true colours, and the story wraps up without ever dealing with her evil machinations, even though it's implied that she still have some control over the kingdom, and is able to continue twisting the future history into her favour.
• The Tiamat Sacrament: Ilisrei and Saphira are the only Great Dragons that don't have boss fights. In the former's case, she was already killed by Gyle. In the latter's case, she decides Az'uar is already worthy of her power and gives up her Soul Gem.
• While most Tiny Toon Adventures video games have a final battle against Montana Max, not only is Monty not the final boss of Buster Busts Loose (that honor goes to Duck Vader), there's no boss fight with him at all in that game.
• Papa Muerte in Total Overdose is a legendary and feared underworld figure who all of Tommy's investigations have pointed to, and eventually Muerte is connected to killing Ram and Tommy's father. He's behind every mobster Ram fights, works for, or works for and then fights. A Big Bad appears out of nowhere in the last two chapters, but all that's seen of Papa Muerte is the back of his head in some distant narrative shot.
• The eponymous Hisoutensoku of the expansion to the second Touhou Project fighter Touhou Hisouten Scarlet Weather Rhapsody is never encountered or fought by the three interested in its shadow. Instead, Cirno fights Alice and a giant Shanghai doll, Sanae fights Suwako who was responsible for the event, and Meiling hallucinates about a big freaking catfish.
• In Transformers: War for Cybertron, Optimus Prime is never fought during the Decepticon Campaign (the major boss fight is against Omega Supreme) and Megatron is never fought directly during the Autobot Campaign (the end boss fight being against Trypticon). Averted in the sequel, where you can choose to play as Megatron or Optimus for the final battle and get to defeat the other in a duel.
• Triad Stone spends much of its story building up King Barroll as the villain who stole the three magic stones for himself to tyrannize the island by releasing evil monsters and disasters, and Gian repeatedly urges Ashe to go stop him. Yet in the end, Barroll is never fought or even seen during the game. The ending narration says the stones were taken back from Barroll's followers, but not how the king himself was dealt with. Instead the final battle is against Barroll's Sealed Evil in a Can predecessor, Faless the Dark King.
• In Triangle Strategy, Tenebris is the only one of the Saintly Seven to never be fought. Serenoa's party doesn't cross paths with him at all on the Morality ending, and he's taken out by somebody else on every other route.
• In Tron 2.0, you never actually get a chance to fight apparent Big Bad Supervirus and self-proclaimed Master User Thorne. Instead he gets killed out of left field by the ICP Kernel about 3/4ths of the way through the game.
• Um Jammer Lammy: Cathy Piller is presented as the instructor of Stage 3, but she doesn't do any singing. Instead, the unnamed baby she holds does the instructing instead.
• Uncharted
  • In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, you never fight Roman or Raja. Especially noticeable since they're two out of three named villains in the game, and the third one is the only boss fight in the entire game.
  • Happens again in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves; Flynn is already dying when you confront him the last time, which is more noticeable since Uncharted 2 actually does have multiple boss battles.
  • Once again happens in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. This time, the Big Bad, Katherine Marlowe becomes this. Justified due to being a Non-Action Big Bad. From the same game, Rameses also becomes this.
• In Undertale:
  • The player never fights Alphys in any route, and as such she is the only major monster in the game who cannot be directly killed. She is implied to have died in one of the less happy endings, possibly having been Driven to Suicide by several others' deaths at the player's hands. You could consider part of the Pacifist final boss fight to count, but even then she merely reuses Mettaton’s attacks.
  • There is also the Fallen Child, whom you never even really meet until the end of the No Mercy/Genocide path, at which point they've already won. The latter being one of The Unfought is a very Justified Trope since they are an embodiment of everything destructive and terrible you've done in a video game. As an incarnation of the player's own actions during the Genocide route, the only way to "fight" them is by fighting the urge to Level Grind, i.e., not doing a No Mercy/Genocide run.
• According to Vampire Survivors' Excuse Plot, the Big Bad is a vampire named Bisconte Draculó, and although he's prominently featured in the cover art and title screen, he doesn't make any appearance in-game. The game text even lampshades his absence, wondering where this vampire (or heck, any vampire) even is. As of the game's 1.0 release, there still aren't any vampires, and he's definitely isn't the game's final boss. There are no vampires to survive in this game.
• Danek Emperor Jeal in Vay. Though you do eventually come face-to-face with him once most of the Orbs are collected, his second-in-command, Prince Sadoul, kills him right in front of the party's eyes.
• Edna from Wild ARMs XF dies before you get a chance to kill her for all the terrible things she's done.
• There are several witches such as Dulce, Teresa, Lavi & Ryubence in The Witch and the Hundred Knight that never gets to fight hundred knight, despite the game hyping that they will eventually have a showdown with Metallia. Even Lucchini was fought only by Metallia, which occured off screen, but never with hundred knight in both "true" and "bad" ending.
• In The World Ends with You, it seems like the Composer is going to be the final boss. However, the player has no input when he challenges Neku to one final game after Kitaniji is finally defeated. Also, Sho Minamimoto returns with a badass newfound power and the game builds it up as if he's gonna be the next boss, but then you find him crushed by his own trash heap.
• NEO: The World Ends with You:
  • You fight the Game Master just as before. However, you don't get to fight the true villain of the story, Tanzo Kubo, in any capacity, and he is instead exorcised by Hazuki. He points out during Week 2 that he 'isn't allowed to fight back' and could effortlessly erase the Wicked Twisters if he could; when it's revealed that he's an Angel, all preconception of the party defeating him in straight combat disappears without a trace.
  • The Wicked Twisters fight against the leaders of all the opposing teams with one exception- the Variabeauties. Late in the game, the Wicked Twisters fight the Plague Noise inside Kanon in an attempt to save her, but never fight said leader personally.
• In World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor the promotional materials and plot positioned Grom Hellscream as the antagonist of the expansion. Instead his position was usurped by Gul'dan and Grom ended up working alongside the Horde and Alliance againt the Burning Legion. And Gul'dan wasn't fought in this expansion either, instead going off to start the plot of the next one, where he is finally fought and killed.
• F is the only Consul in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, who is never engaged in a proper boss fight. Instead he just sends the soldiers of his colony after the party and is killed by a rebelling Segiri as well as Sena and Lanz in the following cutscene.
• Most of the top-level antagonists in Xenogears escape the direct wrath of your giant robot violence. The Gazel Ministry is wiped out by Krelian, and Krelian himself gets off scot-free, having achieved pretty much exactly what he wanted.
• Out of the many antagonists in the Xenosaga series, only two are never given boss battles.
  • Sellers' case, at least, is justified as he's just a scientist in a hoverchair who is incapable of combat. The other example? Wilhelm, the Big Bad who played some role in almost every malevolent action in the series. After being built up as The Antichrist, and therefore fully capable of taking on the heroes, he was instead taken out by his right-hand man. However, Sellers is the only antagonist whose fate was left unknown; if a sequel is ever made, it's possible that he may return for a proper battle.
  • Also, the White Testament is the only Testament who isn't fought. Though really, he wasn't looking for a fight, and the developers may have figured that a fourth battle with Albedo would have been redundant.
  • In addition, out of all of the enemy E.S. that appeared throughout the series, the only E.S. the player never gets to fight (the modified version of Simeon notwithstanding) is Judah, the red E.S. belonging to the Red Testament. However, considering that official sources list one of its abilities as being able to strike its targets through hyperspace, this may have inadvertently ended up being a blessing in disguise.

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