History Main / PostfinalBoss

* At the end of ''[[VideoGame/ObsCure Final Exam]]'', after defeating the FinalBoss, you face [[spoiler:Principal Friedman]]. [[ZeroEffortBoss He's just an ordinary human being and, other than having a lot of health and a decent dodge roll, fights more or less like a basic enemy.]] The fight is pretty much just a chance to beat him up for causing the whole mess.

* This is seen in ''VideoGame/SilentHillDownpour''. [[spoiler:After defeating the giant "Wheelman" monster as the final boss, the game ends with Anne appearing and trying to murder you. She's a puny human armed with a pistol, while you're suddenly playing as The Bogeyman (who's at the same level of toughness as Pyramid Head was). Surprisingly, Anne still manages to put up a half-decent fight, although she has pretty much zero chance of actually killing you. So much so that intentionally letting her kill you earns you the secret Full Circle Reversal ending.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Wizard 101}}'' has a double version of this trope for the world of Avalon. In the second-to-last dungeon, the player fights the insanely powerful [[spoiler:Young Morganthe]], and the fight is then followed by the much easier fight with Sir Malory. The final dungeon is also easy compared to the second-to-last (although Pendragon is tough without any healing spells) and there is even a fairly easy DualBoss after him.

* The effective FinalBoss of most ''VideoGame/{{Gradius}}'' games is either a CoresAndTurretsBoss or an indestructible giant walker of some sort, as in the vast majority of games the Bacterian emperor (or whatever serves as a stand-in for it, such as Gofer from ''Gradius II'' or Original Visions of Ultimate Monster from ''Gradius Gaiden'') puts up little or no effort to guard itself.

* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'' has a unique example. The unnamed monster that the Titans face is the last antagonist of the final season after the actual BigBad The Brain and his LegionOfDoom are defeated. However, the monster is different from the norm of your usual PostFinalBoss in that he's considerably more difficult to defeat and the episode ends on a cliffhanger with Beast Boy joining the fight against it with no actual resolution. Meanwhile, the Slade-bot is the personal last foe that Beast Boy faces.

* The climax of ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'' is the title characters versus the final Omnidroid. Afterwards is a short confrontation with Syndrome where Jack-Jack awakens his powers and Mr. Incredible throws a car at Syndrome, knocking Syndrome into his plane's turbine and blowing up both of them.

* ''Videogame/BatmanArkhamCity'' has ''Harley Quinn's Revenge'', a DLC set some time after the ending of the main game which deals with Harley's VillainousBreakdown after the game and [[spoiler:her attempt at revenge for the death of The Joker]]. Since this is [[VillainousHarlequin Harley Quinn]] we're talking about, she's not exactly that big of a threat and the DLC is more to wrap up loose ends.
* After defeating Bane in ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamOrigins'', you fight some groups of mooks until you get to the Joker, who goes down rather easily.

** After destroying the [[spoiler:Jubileus, the creator]], the credits roll. [[spoiler:Unless you were expecting NoEnding, it's clear that there's more; it turns out these are fake credits, and Jeanne will show up at the end to remind Bayonetta that the statue used to summon Jubileus can't be allowed to crash back down to Earth, so you and her team up to tear it apart as one last action.]]
** During the credits [[spoiler:(the real ones)]], you'll also replay the original fight against Jeanne. You'll only have 30 seconds to do it, though, so her health and blocking/dodging abilities are incredibly stunted here.
* ''VideoGame/Bayonetta2'': After defeating the final boss [[spoiler:Loptr as Aesir]], Loki depowers him in a cutscene, and you get to wail on Loptr with near impunity before [[Franchise/KamenRider Rider Kicking]] him into oblivion with [[spoiler:Omne]].

* At the end of the final ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' [=DLC=] (which is also the end of the ''Borderlands'' story proper), you fight a humongous Claptrap robot-fortress. After you blow that up, the 3-foot-tall Claptrap robot himself jumps out to fight you. He's pretty nimble and has a fairly damaging close-range hadoken move, but otherwise has relatively low health and damage output and is a pretty easy fight compared to the usual major boss battles in the game.
* VideoGame/Borderlands2 has two examples
** The final fight against Piston in the DLC Torgue's Campaign of Carnage is him riding the humongous tank: The Badassasaurus Rex. As soon as it goes down, Piston comes out to face you head on, but he's an absolute pushover in comparison to his tank.
** After defeating Jackenstein, you're poised to fight Professor Nakayama, and [[AntiClimaxBoss then he defeats himself.]]

* ''The Chronicles of Inotia 4: Assasin of Berkel'': After successfully killing [[BigBadWannabe Alexander]] and having an epic BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind with [[EldritchAbomination Chaos Strider Moar]], you end up on a snowfield, fighting your way through polar bears till you reach your destination where the big reveal waits... then the game just ends on a cliffhanger until Elinia takes you to the post-game dungeon.

* ''Operation C'', the ''{{VideoGame/Contra}}'' game for the original UsefulNotes/GameBoy, has you fight a giant robot guardian before confronting the alien leader. The alien leader itself is just a giant BrainInAJar with no form of defense whatsoever.
* ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}} 3'': After the fight with [[spoiler:the Alpha Ceph]], which is very much a genuine challenge, [[spoiler:the True Ceph warship]], for all its buildup in-story, turns out to be this. [[spoiler:You hack into Archangel, line it up, and fire]]. There is so much time to aim that you have to deliberately refuse to fire to lose.

* ''The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard'' gives us Nafaalilargus, a dragon. After defeating him, you move on to the final boss, who is a fat old man.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' DLC ''Operation Anchorage'', you deal with Sibley and his band of Brotherhood Outcasts after defeating the [[MadeOfIron ultra-tough]] General Jingwei in the simulation. Since Sibley and his squad are each only about as powerful as a low- to mid-tier Enclave soldier, and you just looted a vault full of [[InfinityPlusOneSword T-51 Power Armor and Gauss Rifles,]] they don't put up much of a fight.
* In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', if the players take the House or Independent ending, they'll have to deal with General Oliver after dealing with Legate Lanius. Oliver himself is relatively weak, but is accompanied by [[EliteMooks NCR Veteran Rangers]] wielding Brush Guns (one of the best rifles of the game). Like Lanius, however, the player can choose to talk him into simply leaving. If not, you'll at least have your own Elite MechaMooks to back you up, and chances are you'll be tough enough to take them down yourself.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade'' has Idunn, who is fought to activate the game's GoldenEnding. Though her stats are actually higher than those of the true BigBad, Zephiel, she is also weak to anti-dragon weapons, including the legendary weapons the player needs to have access to if they want to fight her to begin with. This means she can usually be brought down very quickly. Much of the level before you meet her is essentially telling you her story, portraying her as a TragicMonster who deserves to be free and had little to no role in being used for evil by Zephiel.
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' In the thirteenth and final chapter of Book IV, the ArcVillain, Freyja, is fought and defeated in the fourth part of the chapter. The fifth and final part is a battle against recurring antagonist Loki.

* After two phases of the FinalBoss of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'', Cassius Bright ''finally'' shows up to deliver a BigDamnHeroes moment and weaken it. You then fight a third phase, where the boss has vastly lower HP and Defense, doesn't even attempt to fight back, and you start with all your [[LimitBreak S-Crafts]] fully charged. It's less of a fight and more of a playable CoupDeGraceCutscene.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel:''
** ''Cold Steel'' has a proper final boss fight against Loa Erebonius, which puts everything you've learned to the test. Subsequently, however, the story continues going and eventually pits the player against a string of three more bosses that largely serve to introduce the concept of [[UnexpectedGameplayChange Divine Knight combat]], as an early sample before its larger role in later titles. While not as difficult as Loa Erebonius, they're actually fairly challenging bosses for this trope, and the last is a HeadsIWinTailsYouLose that ends the story on a cliffhanger to set up the sequel.
** ''Cold Steel II'' one-ups this by having two post-final ''chapters''. The "Finale" is the real conclusion of the main plotline and features a massive, ''five''-phase final boss battle, but it's not the end of the game. You then have the Divertissement, which is a brief AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent sequence, and the Epilogue, which features a repeatable PostFinalLevel and a reskinned version of Loa Erebonius as the endboss, which mostly serves as a free-play mode to use all the game's characters freely one final time.

* The final battle against Zophar in ''VideoGame/LunarEternalBlue'' is a long, grueling, 3-phase fight that can take up to half an hour depending on your party's strength. After this fight, you must fight one more, extremely easy form, which has very low HP and a single attack that causes low damage.
* In ''[[VideoGame/LunarTheSilverStar Lunar: Silver Star Story]]'', after finally defeating Ghaleon for the last time, you still have to deal with an AxCrazy Althena. Just walking up the stairs to pick a fight with her gets you one-shot killed, and you have to play your ocarina to remind her who you are.

* After beating the [[TheManBehindTheMan Elder Princess Shroob]] in ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiPartnersInTime Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time]]'', successfully repelling the Shroob invasion, and returning to the present, Elder Princess Shroob's remains merge with Bowser in a last-ditch attempt to kill the Mario Bros. and their younger counterparts. Interestingly, the player is given no turns to actually attack (or heal), and instead must damage the boss entirely with counter-attacks and DeadlyDodging; despite the gimmick (or perhaps because of it), this battle is still much easier than what preceded it.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManZero3'': After you beat Omega, the Guardians paralyze him to make him use up the rest of his power. Then you can land the final blow with the Z-Saber.
* In the third ''VideoGame/MegaManStarForce'' game, after defeating Crimson Dragon for the first time, you're thrown into battle with it a second time. The catch is that you're permanently [[SuperMode Finalized]], cannot have your HP reduced below 1, and your [[LimitBreak Noise Force Big Bang]] is buffed to be a OneHitKill against it (with the caveat that nothing else can kill Crimson Dragon in that state: You HAVE to finish it with Red Gaia Eraser/Black End Galaxy).

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonOmegaRubyAndAlphaSapphire'', TheRival May/Brendan serves this role, challenging you to a battle after the credits and being around 10 levels lower than the Champion. They ''do'' use a Mega Evolution, but it's likely to be so underleveled it's hardly a threat. Also, like the above AZ fight, you don't even gain exp for this battle. The fight mostly exists to wrap-up the rival's character arc.

* ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersiaTheTwoThrones''. The Vizier is a very challenging final boss. Anticlimax, thy name is Dark Presence!

* In ''VideoGame/{{Skullgirls}}'', most characters' Story Mode arcs culminate in a battle with Bloody Marie, the Skullgirl, in her three forms. After this fight in Squigly's story, though, one of Marie's Dragons named Double reveals that [[spoiler:she was responsible for the death of Squigly and her family]], and you fight her in the final match [[spoiler:alongside Filia]]. Double's AI is very strong, though, so the battle is not a pushover.

* In the NES version of ''Manga/{{Strider}}'', after defeating BigBad Matic, the final task is to destroy Yggdrasil, the main ZAIN computer, which is only slightly more difficult than the previous ZAIN machines.

* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration Gaiden'': [[spoiler:Neo Granzon, much easier than Dark Brain, which had around a Million HP and 30% HP Regen]].
* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsZ Jigoku-hen'': [[spoiler:Shikuu, the pilot of the Shiseiten, appears after beating up [[Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann The Anti-Spiral King in the Grand Zamboa]], who is the FinalBoss of the game. Shikuu's fight isn't even a fight; you just need to survive four turns and the game is done (till ''Tengoku-hen'' at least).]]

* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphoniaDawnOfTheNewWorld'', [[spoiler:after defeating Richter, you fight a HopelessBossFight against Lloyd and Marta, followed by a DuelBoss against Ratatosk, which you don't even have to win.]] If you win that HopelessBossFight, you get the game's absolute ''[[EarnYourBadEnding worst]]'' ending for your trouble.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'' has an interesting variation on it. The final boss has two phases that work traditionally, but if you have both Luke and Tear in your party, there is a third phase that works like this, in which you're immortal and free to just pummel the boss, before Luke instantly kills the boss with his [[LimitBreak Mystic Arte]] when Tear finishes her song.
* Hwoarang and Violet's (Lee Chaolan) final stages in ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}} 4'' aren't against Heihachi Mishima. In Hwoarang's case, he fights Jin in the underground parking lot following Heihachi and in Violet's case, he reveals himself as Lee and beats Heihachi at the arena before Combot goes haywire and Lee fights it as his final boss. Kazuya also has a fight against Jin following Heihachi but this is more down to plot than tying up loose ends (as the fights at Hon-Maru are the canonical conclusion of ''Tekken 4'', albeit where Jin wins all of them).

* In ''[[VideoGame/WingCommanderTheKilrathiSaga Wing Commander III]]''. after completing the final mission, which is basically a homage to the Trench Run in ''Film/ANewHope'', you come face to face with a quartet of heavy fighters before you can jump home and complete the game. Under normal circumstances, these might be a legit threat, but at this point, they spawn with no missiles and you are flying a ship that is pretty close to a game-breaker.

* The final boss of ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'', Urobolus, is extremely easy. Of course, having just defeated ''God'' (or, rather, a somewhat mechanical creature that is sort of God but not really... [[MindScrew don't ask...]]), anything would be easy.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' ends with a three-part battle against [[spoiler:Zanza]]. However, the third form is identical to the second, and is vastly easier due to Shulk acquiring the True Monado between the second and third forms. It is technically possible to lose this fight, but it's ''very'' hard to do so.
* The prequel DLC to ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'', ''Torna: The Golden Country'', [[spoiler:follows the regular final boss Malos with an unloseable fight against Gort, in which you only have Lora and her Blades, Jin and Haze, in the party.]]

** ''VideoGame/MetroidDread'': Raven Beak is actually so powerful a final boss that even when you nearly defeat him, [[spoiler:he kills Samus.] But that triggers her evolution into a hybrid of herself and a Metroid, becoming powerful enough to drain him and his ship simultaneously. The weakened villain is then infested with an X parasite and becomes an amalgamation of some of the bosses of the game. The only way to be defeated is to let it get close enough, but it is otherwise quickly destroyed by Samus' hyper beam, X-Parasite included.

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'', Calamity Ganon is more or less the actual final boss, the Dark Beast Ganon fight that follows is the denouement, since you're given an EleventhHourSuperpower that kills the boss in eight hits and he only has one attack, a WaveMotionGun BreathWeapon that can OneHitKill you, but isn't particularly difficult to avoid.

** The fight against Data-Roxas at the end of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsCoded'' is shorter and much simpler than the earlier one against Sora's Heartless. Data-Roxas has one form with a decent amount of health, while Sora's Heartless has 4 (technically 5) forms and his end removes all of the bugs from Jiminy's Journal.

[[folder: Video Games]]

[[folder: Non-Video Game Examples]]

* At the end of ''VideoGame/LiveALive'', after a long and difficult battle against the [[BigBad Odio, the Lord of Dark]], you either fight Odio's "true form" [[spoiler:(Oersted, the protagonist of the Middle Ages chapter, who gets no benefit from HealthDamageAsymmetry and goes down in a few hits)]], or spare Odio and end up fighting all the game's previous major bosses from the previous chapters (who have ''[[VillainForgotToLevelGrind not]]'' [[VillainForgotToLevelGrind leveled up in the interim]] and thus pose only a very minor threat). The remake changes this in the latter, where after the BossRush you move onto a TrueFinalBoss that serves as a bigger climax than the ones before it.

** [[spoiler:MB]] is another example, from ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'' -- the [[spoiler:Metroid Queen]] is the main final boss, the last part is just a first-person thing and you just have to aim for the enemy ([[spoiler:MB]]) in order for a cutscene to play. It only resembles a challenge due to being backed up by four unique EliteMooks (Desbrachian supersoldiers) who can still be knocked out of the way easily once you figure out the proper trick to them. However, there is a PlayableEpilogue afterwards with its own TrueFinalBoss, [[spoiler:Phantoon]].
** {{Downplayed|Trope}} in ''VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission''. The escape sequence after beating Mecha Ridley ends with you having to fight two [[EliteMooks Gray]] [[DemonicSpiders Space Pirates]] in order to unlock the door to the Ship Bay so you can escape. Said Space Pirates can actually easily kill you and force you to fight Mecha Ridley again.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsOfColdSteel'' has a string of three boss fights after the final dungeon and "real" FinalBoss, though they're actually fairly challenging rather than being zero-effort, and the last is a HeadsIWinTailsYouLose that sets up the sequel.
** ''Cold Steel II'' one-ups this by having two post-final ''chapters''. The "Finale" is the real conclusion of the main plotline and features a BossRush of ''5'' battles, but it's not the end of the game. You then have the Divertissement, a brief AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent sequence, and the Epilogue, which features a Post-Final Dungeon and Boss. Neither are particularly difficult (the enemies in the "Post-Final Dungeon" don't even count towards the enemy log), they mainly serve to let the player go to town with the game's many characters one last time.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' has [[Literature/AftermathEmpiresEnd Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax]] as the last threat the Empire had to offer, who organized what remaining forces he has on Jakku in a final battle against the Rebellion, now known as the New Republic. He was dangerous, but compared to the fearsome Sith like Vader and Palpatine, he was nothing.
** Before that in the Original Trilogy the last named villain to die is the competent but unexceptional Admiral Firmus Piett, killed by an A-Wing crashing into his bridge shortly after the Dark Lords of the Sith had already fallen.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': Eren and the Source of Organic Matter plays this to themselves in the FinalBattle at Fort Salta, with Eren transforming into a [[KingMook modified Colossal Titan]] and the anomaly growing at a large size — all of which is a last-ditch effort for them to combine once again and continue the Rumbling. It only lasts for the penultimate chapter and the struggle took far less effort compared to 3 chapters dedicated to the Paradis/Marley alliance taking on Eren's earlier Founding Titan form with his army of Nine Titans.
** All of this is succeeded with Secretary Muller being ''the last'' figure to be antagonistic to the heroes, to which all it took for Armin to persuade him as the hero who took down Eren Yeager.

** After defeating the FinalBoss of ''VideoGame/PokemonScarletAndViolet, the player has a [[CutsceneBoss Cutscene]] [[DuelBoss Duel]] MirrorBoss between the boxart legendary you have been traveling with and an aggressive member of its species that had been bullying it before the events of the game sent out by the last line of defense for a TimeMachine known as the Paradise Protection Protocol. The boss will always use Taunt, followed up by a Giga Impact/Hyperbeam three turns later, with the player's legendary surviving the hit with one HP and getting a stat boost thanks to ThePowerOfFriendship (or the move Endure if you use it in the former case) before the player is encouraged to use a [[SuperMode Terastilized]] Dragon-type Tera Blast to end the battle

** ''VideoGame/MetroidDread'': After Raven Beak comes [[spoiler: Raven Beak X]]. While it is possible to die to it, at this point you've acquired [[spoiler: the Metroid Suit and the Hyper Beam]], so it's pretty much a CutsceneBoss where all you have to do is aim and fire your new weapon at it like the E.M.M.I. Omega Beam segments. After that is the escape sequence and then the ending.