History Main / HeWasRightThereAllAlong

* When you meet the Garrador of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'', he's chained to a wall and covered with invulnerable armour. To escape the room, you need to get right up into the guy's hairy mutated grill in the hope of pulling the switch that opens the door. He waits till you're six inches away before breaking out of his chains and beginning the battle.
** Earlier, you pass by a locked gate that you can hear something growling behind. When you return to this area at night, that something is revealed to be El Gigante. Cue boss fight.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Resident Evil|1}}'' remake for the [=GameCube=] makes a damn fine scare out of this. You open a door and walk into an empty room... and then the door swings shut behind you and you see the ''giant fucking spider that was clinging to the back of the door all along oh God''.
** [[AntiClimaxBoss Undermined a great deal by the fact a few stray handgun rounds kill the spider in the GameCube version.]]
** Also in the [=REmake=], the first encounter with Lisa Trevor in her cabin. Whilst there is the sound of the door opening to warn you, you had no idea she was around the cabin before that.

* This is how bosses appear in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}''[='=]s Octo Valley and ''VideoGame/Splatoon2''[='=]s Octo Canyon. Once the player approaches the [[LevelGoal Zapfish]] at the center of the arena, an Octarian tentacle will reach out from the boss beneath it and pull it in, before the boss itself springs to life. ''Splatoon 2'' goes a step further, as the Zapfish is now suspended over an unassuming puddle of Octarian ink, from which the tentacle and the boss will emerge. Averted when the bosses are fought again in ''Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion'', as the bosses now emerge from the ink as soon as Agent 8 enters the arena.

* In ''Film/{{Nope}'', the UFO [[spoiler:StarfishAlien has the ability to disguise itself as a cloud, though it doesn't move like natural ones; the characters don't realize this until they look at timelapse footage of the sky. Given how it's mentioned on the radio early in the movie that a group of hikers disappeared in the area six months ago, it's been there at least that long, though possibly even longer if it had only been eating animals beforehand.]]

* In Magus's Castle in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', the party comes across an easy monster they believe to be the sorcerer Flea, who dies quickly. Then the bat which followed them for the entire time reveals [[CreepyCrossdresser himself]] to be the real Flea.

** Ditto for ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts'', where the cute doggy following you through Chapter Nine turns out to be under Dehuai's control. Yuri just ''has'' to insult him, causing Dehuai to transform it into the aptly-named Beast Dog.

* In ''VideoGame/HollowKnight'', at one point you follow the sound of someone's voice through a series of tunnels. When you arrive in a room covered in dung, there's no one there. Suddenly, the floor starts to move... and a moment later, the Dung Defender bursts out of the floor, [[IncomingHam lets out an incredibly enthusiastic]] BattleCry, and attacks.

** Sapphiron is probably a better example. You walk into what sure looks like an empty room with naught but a few bones laying about. They may as well have put up a neon sign screaming '''[[SchmuckBait TRAP!!]]'''.

* The Chief in ''WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget'' always appears by popping out of some random object he happens to be disguised as in the background. Unfortunately he usually disguises himself as a trash can, which Gadget unthinkingly disposes the exploding message into after their conversation... Also a variation since he is the boss alright, the boss of the clueless title character.

* ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' does this in a truly horrifying way with the [[http://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Bloodborne/Lesser%20Amygdala%20Eyes.png Amygdala]]. [[spoiler:They're absolutely gigantic and lurk on top of a few buildings. They're normally quite invisible, at least until you rack up enough Insight. Then, you can see them. And they can see you. [[OhCrap And then they get grabby.]]]]

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening Link's Awakening]]'':

* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass Phantom Hourglass]]'' has the boss on the ghost ship that won't show up until you get all four of the "sisters" together. {{Justified|Trope}} in that [[spoiler:the sisters themselves ''are'' the boss.]]
* ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild Breath of the Wild]]'':
** The Stone Taluses and the Moldugas stay buried in the ground until you walk by their resting points, though the Taluses at least stick out of the ground a bit.

* In the first ''Film/{{Saw}}'' film, the killer is revealed to be [[spoiler:the [[PlayingPossum seemingly-dead]] body in the middle of the room that Adam and Lawrence are trapped in. He'd been there the entire movie and neither of them noticed.]]

** The game contains a particularly unique example in Goht, who is plain sight the moment Link walks into the Boss Room, but is frozen solid and must be hit with a fire arrow to be awakened— at which point he promptly tramples you [[GetBackHereBoss and runs off.]]

** The Darkhammer, the mini-boss of Snowpeak Ruins, initially appears as just one of two suits of armor in a narrow hallway that Link passes through. Once Link passes him and is just pass the second armor, it triggers the cutscene where he comes alive and destroys the other armor with his EpicFlail while Link dodges out of the way.

* ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain: Soul Reaver'' has Dumah, the fifth boss, who has already been killed once by a pack of vampire hunters and impaled with six-foot stakes to his own throne. Of course, being a vampire, he can be brought back to life in an instant by pulling the stakes back out, and players can square off against his spirit in the game's Spectral Realm.

* Played straight in ''VideoGame/{{Doom 3}}''. You walk through a doorway into a seemingly empty arena, before finding out you just walked under the Cyberdemon's legs. Either it just likes to stand over doorways and freak people out or the door spontaneously changed its destination. (Hell is weird like that.)

** In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', you discover a teddy bear in a shopping cart cage in the Jury Street Metro trainyard. Opening the cage causes the bear to wave its arms, still nothing special happening. But then, a Super Mutant Behemoth appears out of the east to clobber you.
** In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'', as you enter the Museum of Witchcraft basement, there are rumblings in the ceiling and {{scare chord}}s in the music. When you reach the main floor, you come face to face with the source of the commotion, a [[KingMook Savage]] {{De|monicSpiders}}athclaw.

** This is actually subverted in ''Film/{{Alien 3}}'', where Ripley believes she sees the xenomorph lurking in the shadows, but it turns out to be just a bit of piping in the shape of the creature's head. Played straight a few seconds later, when she backs up against a wall, only to find the creature waking up behind her.

* In ''Film/{{Jurassic World}}'', the head of the Asset Containment Unit finds the tracker of the Indominus Rex clawed out and laying on the ground. Blood drips onto him from a leaf above his head. [[spoiler: When he looks up, the previously-camoflaged dinosaur reveals itself and kills the entire ACU.]]

** There are the Beady Longlegs, who drop down on you. The Titan Dweevil, Snagret, and Emperor Bulblax all come up from underground.
** Another such enemy in ''Pikmin 2'' is the creeping chrysanthemum. It looks like a lot of the normal flowers that are all over the game except it has narrow blinking eyes staring at you which are hard to notice. If you approach it, it pops out of the ground & reveals the giant fat root that is its torso. It uses its stem arms to scoot around on its "butt" & tries to eat your Pikmin with its red flower mouth. If you or your Pikmin are too close to it when it initially pops out of the ground, you'll get knocked over making it extra hard to avoid losing Pikmin.
** ''Pikmin 3'' has the Quaggled Mireclops, which at first appears to be merely an oddly-shaped hill poking out of the mud, with something organic-looking buried inside of a crystalline substance. Try to break it, [[ThatsNoMoon and the 'hill' underneath you will begin to rise...]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'': Multiple:
** Several bosses in ''Ys I and II'' don't spawn until you try to open the treasure chest in the room.
** In ''Ys III'', a statue in a bubble blocks your path in Valestine Castle, and you must find the PlotCoupon to make it disappear. Later, it returns as a boss.

** The mini-boss in Arbiter's Grounds doesn't show up until you cut one of the ropes holding its sword. You can't actually ''see'' the boss until you activate your wolf senses.

* The [[KingMook boss Spider Splicer]] Rose in ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' enters in this fashion. After first meeting Peach Wilkins, you hear someone humming The Ink Spots' "I Didn't Care", and petals start falling from the ceiling; only when you look up does she attack, but she escapes before you can kill her. At the end of the mission when you are heading back to Fontaine Fisheries, you hear her humming again, but she doesn't appear until you [[SchmuckBait grab the Wrench Lurker tonic]].

For applications of the trope on a very large scale, see ThatsNoMoon. Also see JawsFirstPersonPerspective, EmptyRoomUntilTheTrap. DropInNemesis ''sounds'' like an alternate name for this trope, but it is something else entirely. The same goes for RightBehindMe. TeleportingKeycardSquad operates under the same idea but for in-game enemies.

** Ditto for ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts'', where the cute doggy following you through Chapter Nine turns out to be the aptly-named Beast Dog.

* When Elastigirl finds the Screenslaver's hideout in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles2'', you can actually see the faintest glow of his goggles in the background when Helen's stretching her arm through the gap in the door.

* Also in the [=REmake=], the first encounter with Lisa Trevor in her cabin. Whilst there is the sound of the door opening to warn you, you had no idea she was around the cabin before that.

* Necron lore in the fourth edition of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' tends to involve this. In its most basic form, the aptly-named Necron Tombs appear to be just that -- incredibly large and elaborate, with advanced technology strewn everywhere, but not a living thing in sight. And then [[SchmuckBait some damn fool]], usually a [[AveMachina techpriest]], gets the urge to fiddle with things and the Necrons themselves show up, often by teleportation, and proceed to slaughter everyone.

* In ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', Prince Hans and a group of soldiers approach Elsa's ice palace. As they get close to the entry staircase, a pile of snow next to the staircase suddenly stands up -- it's Elsa's giant snow monster [[FluffyTheTerrible Marshmallow]], who had been sitting down with his back to camera.