History Main / DegradedBoss

* In the 7th and final season of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', the first Turok-Han (or "uber-vamp") is a terrifyingly powerful enemy that Buffy is only able to defeat with extreme difficulty. When the rest of them are fought during the SeriesFinale, not only are Buffy and the other Slayers more than a match for them, even ordinary humans like Xander can fight them.

** Slogra and Gaibon have degraded just about as far as you can go by now. In their first appearance in ''Super Castlevania'', they were fought individually as two of the three final bosses before Dracula (they other one was ''Death''), and they weren't easy. In ''Symphony of the Night'', they were fought as a team as the ''first'' boss, which wasn't that hard. Further games stripped them of boss status entirely, but at least kept them on as tough mooks found near the end of the game. By ''Portrait of Ruin'', they have become little more than standard issue dead-in-two-hits mooks found randomly in the middle of the game.

* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFire'' makes recurrent use of the trope in their early entries:

* Anyone with a Two-Star uniform in Anime/KillLaKill becomes this... around ''episode 5'', which should probably tell you something about the ridiculous power scale of the show. By episode 7, they're lucky to get even two lines of dialogue before Ryuko strips them. Hell, one of them doesn't even get to announce their name before getting taken out.

** Similarly, in ''GundamSEEDDestiny'', The Earth Alliance's powerful Mobile Armors such as the Zamzah-Zah and Destroy Gundam appear in greater numbers later in the series (and are usually killed ''much'' easier than the first one they faced).

* Gillians in Manga/{{Bleach}}. First time one appeared it seemed like an EldritchAbomination with power of mass destruction. Turns out it was just a {{Mook}}.

* Inverted in ''VideoGame/OdinSphere''. The player normally encounters [[GrimReaper Halja]] in the Netherworld as midbosses, but in Oswald story, two of them are fought at once as an end-of-stage boss.

* The Knight in ''VideoGame/WonderBoyInMonsterLand'', in addition to having several {{palette swap}}s, also appears as a recurring enemy late in the game, as does the GrimReaper, who also returns in ''VideoGame/WonderBoyIIIMonsterLair'''s fifth stage as swarms of miniature versions.

* The Knight in ''VideoGame/WonderBoyInMonsterLand'', in addition to having several {{palette swap}}s, also appears as a recurring enemy late in the game, as does the GrimReaper, who also returns in ''VideoGame/WonderBoyIIIMonsterLair'''s fifth stage.

* The Knight in ''VideoGame/WonderBoyInMonsterLand'', in addition to having several {{palette swap}}s, also appears as a recurring enemy late in the game, as does the GrimReaper.

*** In a meta sense, the Mothulas went from being a boss in ''A Link to the Past'' and ''Oracle of Seasons'' to a miniboss and later mook in ''The Wind Waker''. Vitreous also went from an ''A Link to the Past'' boss to a miniboss in ''Majora's Mask'' (called "Wart" outside of Japan). Gyorg was both played straight and subverted - In ''Majora's Mask'' it was a boss, in ''The Wind Waker'' a common mook, and in ''The Minish Cap'' went back to being a boss, then went back to mook status in ''Phantom Hourglass'' and ''Spirit Tracks''.

*** ''Doom 2'' also adds the Hell Knights, a PaletteSwap of the Baron with half the health. Combined with the above-mentioned double-barreled shotgun, they show up more than the Barons without unbalancing things too drastically.

* The ''DarkForcesSaga'' is rather fond of this trope. The Dark Troopers of the original game are introduced in this way, as are [=AT-STs=] in later installments. In ''Jedi Academy'', in which lightsaber-wielding opponents are so numerous that they are basically EliteMooks by the end of the game, an early level features one as a de facto boss.

* Xord in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'' is the first Faced Mechon you fight proper. Later on Mass-Produced Faces that look and fight exactly like him show up as regular enemies. One of the few examples that are entirely justified in-story though, as there are implications that Xord is a Mass-Produced Face himself, meaning the minor antagonist you assumed was TheBrute turned out to be just a run-of-the-mill EliteMook who happened to have a backstory.

* Gillians in {{Bleach}}. First time one appeared it seemed like an EldritchAbomination with power of mass destruction. Turns out it was just a {{Mook}}.

** The Giant Bat from the first game is echoed by the Armor Battler in ''CastlevaniaBloodlines''; several instances of it appear in quick succession in the last level, with heavily reduced hit points.
*** ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaTheAdventure'' has the first boss appear a few times on the final level as a normal enemy. It has less health than when it was fought as a boss.
** Several early bosses in ''CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'' (Gaibon and Slogra, Karusuman, the Lesser Demon, plus the arena's Werewolf and Minotaur). The degradation seems to have stuck, as several of these monsters have remained normal enemies in later games in the series.
** ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Aria of Sorrow]]'' loved this. The first four bosses become regular enemies later. There's even [[PaletteSwap more powerful]] versions of these enemies later on.
*** The Man Eater is an inversion. It's a regular enemy that shows up in the BossRush mode for some reason. ''OrderOfEcclesia'' brings it back as a full-fledged boss.

*** ''Order of Ecclesia'' had it both ways, with several palette swapped Frankenstein's Monster types as normal enemies (The Creature-which is the name the original boss and most normal enemy incarnations go by, Enkidu, Rebuild) and one as a boss (Goliath)

** ''Portrait of Ruin'' also uses a lot of degraded bosses. Many of the bosses from ''Rondo of Blood'' (Including Minotaur, Wyvern, Dogether, and Camilla's assistant Laura the catgirl) appear as normal enemies, as well as the aforementioned Slogra and Gaibon. However, the Werewolf and The Creature are back to being bosses again - but 2 of The Creature appear in the Nest Of Evil. And you better believe they're not degraded whatsoever despite not being the floor boss(es).

*** Series wise, the boss version could be a KingMook variation. Before and after, it's a mook, that one time it's a boss. However, they appear as mooks again in HarmonyOfDespair, exactly the same as in Portrait of Ruin (giant, hard to get around with projectiles that curse, and you have to hit a floating head).
** The Giant Armor in Harmony of Dissonance appears as an enemy later on.

* In ''VideoGame/RType III'', there is a BossRush against a number of bosses from the first and second games, each of which go down a lot more easily than the first time you fought them. In this case, the bosses weren't actually any weaker than they used to be; the player's ship was just that much more powerful.

* ''{{Blood}}'''s bosses, excluding the final one, all appear as regular enemies in the episode(s) following their boss fight, though only above normal difficulty. Each one also has a subordinate version of themselves that appears primarily in the episode they're the boss of.

* The Altered from ''VideoGame/{{Wolfenstein}}''. The first time you fight one, you're armed with nothing more than small arms and have to use the environment to kill it. Later in the game you acquire a BFG that can kill one in a single hit.

* The special zombies in ''DeadIsland'' show up initially as bosses, complete with cut scenes showing shocked protagonist reactions. After couple of areas have been passed, they show up mixed in with regular zombies, as strong as they were before (stronger, in fact, as they level with the players). As they tend to have elements of a PuzzleBoss about them (disable the arms first, use ranged weapons, only attack from behind etc) it's usually best to mop up the mook before attempting to take them down.

See RecurringBoss for examples where they don't get degraded. This may overlap with MookRecycling if the boss return as a mook has no real reason other than add flavor to the game.