Bait And Switch Boss / Video Games

Bait and Switch Bosses in Video Games.

---

• Abobo's Big Adventure first has Jaws being eaten by the larger Big Daddy. Later, just as it seems you are about to fight the giant Contra end-boss alien, he gets inhaled by Kirby, and things get nuts.
• Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War has a secret boss that only appears on the hardest difficulty of the bonus mission if you can defeat a specific squadron under a certain amount of time. If you manage that feat, you're greeted with the squadron you would normally fight last, only for them all to be destroyed by the secret boss who then comes after you. It's Mobius One.
• In AdventureQuest Worlds, Kimberly and One Eyed Doll decide to assist you in battling Chaos Lord Discordia. You battle your way to Discordia, but after defeating him and preventing him from summoning his Chaos Beast, Kimberly suddenly reveals that actually, she's the real Chaos Lord of the Mythsong saga, and Discordia was just a victim of her Mind Control. And she's already got a Chaos Beast lined up for you to fight before you take her and the band on proper.
• Aero Fighters 2 has something alike in the level that takes place in Australia, when a warship appears from behind you and starts attacking...just to be rammed and destroyed by the real boss: a far larger helicopter carrier-battleship.
• In the final level of Alien vs. Predator (Capcom), you mow down your way to a fat colonel that is getting Aliens for the Weyland-Yutani company. After you take out his last mooks, he steps forward to face you...only to be impaled and torn in half by the Alien Queen, which you thought you killed three levels earlier and who isn't a Stationary Boss like she was earlier due to not being attached to her ovipositor anymore. Cue hellish final boss fight.
• Ape Escape 2 has Hikaru/Jimmy finally meet Specter after defeating the Freaky Monkey Five. Specter talks about how he'll beat Hikaru with a powerful mecha...when Yellow Monkey, the one who ran after you beat him, appears again, and is giant-size. After Yellow destroys the mecha because he's told not to eat more Vita-Z bananas, Specter immediately bails out and leaves you to deal with the new problem.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt: After completing three of the six stages, you're thrown into a new mission, with a special boss icon and everything. Partway through the mission, you encounter Zonda, who uses xer illusion powers to flip the entire mission until right before the boss fight, where the illusion breaks. However, approaching the boss area reveals that Copen, a human with a hatred for Adepts, has already defeated Zonda, and Copen replaces xem as the boss. In the spin-off Mighty Gunvolt, the inverse happens: Copen seems to be the final boss, only to be knocked out by Zonda, giving the player a chance to finally face xem.
• Batman: Arkham Origins does this with the Electrocutioner. He gets a lengthy introduction movie with panning camera shots and dramatic music, an enormous health bar, and goes down in one hit. The level continues for a few more mook encounters and seems to have reached its end with Batman interrogating the Penguin, when the real boss, Deathstroke, shows up.
• Bionic Commando (1988) (and Rearmed):
  • Generalissimo Killt is set up as the Big Bad. When you meet him, he is immediately backstabbed by the newly-resurrected Hitler "Leader".
  • Same in the original game, except Hitler "Master-D" is somehow able to folgorate Killt from inside his resurrection chamber.
• Bladed Fury ends with you confronting Lord Tian, the main villain responsible for your current predicament... and turns out to be a frail, defenseless old man who can't put up a fight. But then he casts a spell and summons his ancestor, Tian Rangju, from the underworld; turns out his ancestor is a huge, demonic creature several times larger than you, being the game's True Final Boss.
• Subverted in BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, where one battle in Hakumen's Arcade Mode path seems to set you up against Tager, but then Rachel appears...and then she only speaks briefly with Hakumen before making way for Tager, for real.
• Borderlands has Commandant Steele yell at you for stealing artifacts the whole game, only to be replaced by a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere when she opens the vault.
• Borderlands 2:
  • In the second DLC, as you're about to fight Flyboy, Piston kills him so that he can fight you instead.
  • Piston himself becomes a bait and switch boss soon after. The heroes go to fight Piston, only for him to summon a giant robot/T-Rex/monster truck that you have to fight instead.
• Bug Fables:
  • During Chapter 5, in the Wild Swamplands, Team Snakemouth is led to believe they are going to face a group of Leafbugs at the end of the swamp. However, a roar is heard, and the Beast, the true boss of the location, appears, sending Leafbugs fleeing and prompting Kabbu to initiate the fight, him being determined to have his revenge on the Beast for killing his friends.
  • In Chapter 6, when Team Snakemouth participates in the Colosseum fight to convince the Termite royalty of their strength (to prove that they lost to the Wasp King not because of their weakness and convince them to help in stopping him), King Hector IV decides to sic a Primal Weevil on them as the final challenge (unaware that the team defeated it before). Just when the team is led to believe that they have to rematch the creature, Zasp and Mothiva appear, kick the Primal Weevil away, intending to beat Team Snakemouth to hijack their mission (in spite of the fact that their interference may sabotage the negotiation, as Kabbu points out), and take over as the Colosseum's last challenge.
• In SNK's Buriki One, you work your way up in the tournament and when you reach the final match, the guy you're supposed to be fighting is suddenly knocked through the entrance door (with said door flying off its hinges) and into the ring's steel cage before crumpling to the ground. Then an evil-looking guy with scars all over his body slowly walks in, and then leaps straight into the ring in a single bound.
• In Castle Crashers:
  • When you reach the first boss fight, you first see a barbarian about twice the size of the regular Mooks. Then there's pounding on the door behind him and it falls onto him, as an even larger barbarian shows up — this one fills up nearly half the screen.
  • In the Thieves' Forest, a grizzly bear attempts to attack your party, but an off-screen Giant Mook, which is causing the ground to tremble with its footsteeps, freaks out the bear so much that he craps himself and retreats back into his bush. You run away from this boss in the next stage, then fight him for real in a later level.
• Castlevania has a few.
  • In Harmony of Dissonance, you enter the boss room in a later part of the game, and see a Living Armour marching towards you. Looks exactly like the one you fought about twenty levels ago, only with a BFS...until it's destroyed in one hit by Talos, the real boss (the big armor that you ran away from at the start of the game).
  • Another one in Harmony of Dissonance occurs when you walk into a boss room to find a Peeping Eye. Extremely weak enemy. Move a bit to the right, hero, and you'll find the real boss, a Peeping Big.
  • Another version of Bait and Switch occurs in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. You've pounded Death and Legion, two of the more intimidating bosses so far, and are expecting a good challenge in the Battle Arena stage. You enter the boss room, and the bats hanging on the roof form into...the Giant Bat? A common boss, but universally a low-level boss in Castlevania. What's he doing this late a level? ...Until a massive hand comes out of the background and crushes the bat in its grip. Meet Balore, the real boss.
• In Cave Story:
  • You encounter a power switch that supplies power to the fans (which you need to activate) and something called "Malco." Turns out that Malco is the nearby security bot, which promptly prepares to kill you, before the Recurring Boss drops down out of the sky to take you on and lands on top of it.
  • Later on, a major villain shows up and prepares to fight you, when the ground suddenly begins shaking. The villain remarks that she's no longer needed and teleports away as a giant monster bursts out of the ground.
• Done twice in Chicory: A Colorful Tale. The first boss you face is a giant eye monster. When facing the second boss, it seems to be the same, only that there are two big eyes now... until it turns out the eyes are actually part of the head of a floating rabbit monster. And for the third boss, the same cutscene happens, only for the rabbit monster to turn into Dark Chicory.
• Clive Barker's Undying does this with the final boss fight, no less than four times! First, you fight Bethany, who's been set up to be the final boss all through the game. After killing her, your friend Jeremiah appears and reveals that he's been behind the whole thing! Looks like he's the final boss, but then Patrick just unceremoniously decapitates him mid-speech. Which results in the much-hyped Undying King being summoned, leaping out of the ground looking like a pissed-off mummy, as befit his name, only to disintegrate into powder upon hitting the ground. Only then does the real Undying King (the Celtic King was just a human sacrifice) rise out of the ground in the form of some odd-Eldritch Abomination-crab-spider-scorpion thing. After him, the game ends.
• The Panther King from Conker's Bad Fur Day. At first, it looks like you're going to fight him at the end of the game's final level^note which is not the Storming the Castle-style level that one might expect from a confrontation with a king, but a bank heist with Matrix stunts — Conker's Bad Fur Day is weird like that, but then a Xenomorph queen named Heinrich hatches out of his body (which was planned by Ze Professor to get rid of him), kills the Panther King, and as a result, the final boss battle actually pits Conker against her (this also means Ze Professor is bait-and-switched, as opening the vault to get the required suit ends up expelling the scientist to outer space, meaning that Conker won't have to deal with him in-battle, either).
• Contra series:
  • Shattered Soldier has Mr. Heli-Robo, a Transforming Mecha that chases the player throughout Mission 1. It eventually appears at the end of the stage, where it is promptly crushed by Slave Beast Taka, the actual boss. Mr. Heli Robo returns as a proper boss in Mission 6.
  • In Stage 2 of Contra 4, the player has to face a group of four enemy snipers in black who are tougher to kill than the regular mooks. When only one of the black-clad snipers remains, a tail suddenly grabs him and cuts him in half. Then the true boss rears his ugly head.
  • In Stage 1 of Hard Corps: Uprising, the first major enemy you fight is one of the game's standard mooks driving a rather bizarre Cool Car that can detach into two halves, and has an arsenal including a huge mining drill and a flamethrower. After you deplete its life meter, the player and the boss go zooming off a cliff together...and the latter promptly gets devoured by a giant robotic sand worm named Lotus Wyrm (Kanechiku in the Japanese version), who fills in for the now-vacant position of stage boss. Subverted when you take out the mecha-worm and move on — at the very end of the stage, when you've gotten back on a motor-bike, the camera cuts to the fallen worm...and the mook-driven Cool Car rips its way out of the mecha-worm's body to continue the fight.
• In Crush Crush, the girl unlocked after Bonnibel initially appears to be a purple-haired (and oddly eyeless) girl named Generica. However, when you view her introductory cutscene, she gets killed by a Yandere named Ayano, who takes her place afterwards.
• Dark Souls:
  • In the "Artorias of the Abyss" DLC, traversing the Royal Wood leads you to a coliseum behind a fog gate. Upon entering, you are greeted with a menacing-looking gangly monster, seconds before he gets pounced on by the imposing figure of the Handicapped Badass Knight Artorias, who, having skewered the monster on his sword, proceeds to throw it at you and let out a deep roar.
  • The Upper Undead Burg also has an example where the "original" boss isn't killed or portrayed as weaker than its replacement (quite the opposite). The Hellkite Dragon shows up briefly early in the level, which may lead a player to think it will be the level's boss. The Burg's actual boss, the Taurus Demon, by contrast has nowhere near as much foreshadowing. Then, soon after defeating that, the Hellkite Dragon appears again...only to demonstrate just why it's not the actual level boss.
  • Double Subverted by Father Ariandel in Dark Souls III in the Ashes of Ariandel expansion. It seems like Ariandel would be the boss when you step into his room, but then Sister Friede, the true villain, comes down to fight you. But once you kill her, Ariandel breaks his bonds, revives Friede, and fights you. And then he dies, leaving Friede to take the fight to a third round.
• Dead Space:
  • In Dead Space, after Kendra Daniels turns out to be working against Isaac, and ruins his only hope for escape, the player is supposed to grip the controller with rage. When you finally see her next on the destroyed colony, she's just on her way to leave...and is smashed to bits by the Hive Mind.
  • In Dead Space 2, it looks like the majority of the game is leading up to a dramatic final confrontation with Tiedemann before you destroy the Marker. Then you get there and Tiedemann is already horribly mauled and barely able to stand, then proceeds to shoot you through the chest twice with Javelins. A quick-time-event lets you pull them out, steal the Javelin gun, and shank him in return. Game over, right? Nope. You hallucinate about Nicole one more time, only now she wants to absorb you into the Marker body and mind and you have to hallucinate-fight her in your psyche, after which you sit down to accept your imminent demise as the station explodes. And then the credits roll. And then Ellie comes crashing through the ceiling in a ship to rescue you.
• Demon's Souls:
  • At the end of 1-3, you find a typical Fat Minister, the likes of which you've been fighting as regular enemies before. At first, it looks like he would be the boss, but suddenly he gets stabbed from behind and thrown out by the real boss, The Penetrator.
  • Played the other way round with Maiden Astreaea. Her bodyguard, Garl Vinland, is a formidable fighter in his own right (though not near the class of the other bosses of the game). Once you kill him, Astraea is completely helpless and you can either slay her with a few hits, or talk to her, which results in her suicide. Not without pointing out what you just did. She is supposed to be a heretic priest using demon powers, but the game doesn't tell you that.
• The boss of the Destiny 2 strike "Tree of Probabilities" at first seems to be a massive Vex Minotaur, who promptly gets smashed to pieces by an equally massive Cabal Valus when the fight actually begins.
• Used creatively in Devil May Cry 4. The boss of Mission 5 appears to be two luminescent female devils with ice powers, fought in a snowing courtyard. But as you fight them, they seem unusually pathetic, rarely ever attacking and doing little damage when they do. Damage them enough though, and a massive toad demon with ice powers will suddenly lunge out of the blizzard, trying to swallow you whole. He's the actual boss — the female devils were just his lures.
• Devil May Cry 5: In Vergil Mode, the cutscene at the end of Mission 19 plays just as it did in the main game, which would set the expectation that Nero is about to jump in. But when Vergil and Dante charge each other in their Sin Devil Triggers, Nero doesn't show up. This results in a second round with Dante for Mission 20 who, unlike in Mission 19, starts making use of his entire arsenal and his Sin Devil Trigger.
• Diablo:
  • Act II of Diablo II plays up Baal as possibly being the final boss of the act, but instead you face the Lesser Evil named Duriel (who is still a very tough boss, mind). Baal himself isn't confronted until the expansion.
  • Near the end of Diablo III's Act IV, one of the "boss preview/warning" of sorts shows what seems to be Imperius as the next boss, with earlier scenes highlighting a conflict between him and the Nephalem. Unfortunately, Diablo reaches the Crystal Arch at about this time and begins extinguishing it, neutralizing every angel in the High Heavens and nipping this impending fight in the bud, meaning that Diablo becomes your final opponent.
• Halfway through playing in single-player in Digimon Battle Spirit, one of your next opponents may be blasted off the stage by Impmon before the battle can start. If you manage to defeat him and collect 300 D-Spirit in total by the end of the playthrough, you can then unlock Impmon as a playable character.
• Dino Crisis 2 has you fighting and constantly running from a one-eyed T-Rex (who's justifiably pissed off, seeing as you and your team are the ones responsible for blowing up its eye). What's worse than fighting a T-Rex, you might ask? Having that T-Rex corner the player about 3/4ths of the way into the game, only to be grabbed, tossed aside, and made into lunch by an even bigger dinosaur: Giganotosaurus. The "good" news? You get to fight (and more likely run from) it about two rooms later!
• Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: Considering its name and level theme, K. Rool's Keep leads one to believe its boss will be K. Rool. Instead, the player gets just a cutscene in the SNES version and a different boss for the GBA version, while K. Rool waits in a secret world afterward.
• Dragon's Crown: In one stage's B-route, the players are tasked with stopping an evil cult from summoning the Demon King. They succeed with relative ease, banishing him before he can even leave the demon realm...only to be forced to face his Dragon, the Arch Demon.
• The Taito arcade game Dungeon Magic has a classic example of this. After chasing the evil wizard Venom through three scenarios, each of which ends with him escaping and leaving you to fight one of his minions, you face off with him. He summons a Demon Lord, which kills him in one blow, and then fights you.
• The first boss of Dynamite Headdy shows up at the end of the second world with a new vehicle, only to be squashed by the real boss. He even remains stuck in the boss's underside for the whole fight.
• Eternal Evil sees the Vampire Lord turning into a massive bat-like monstrosity after killing the other vampires. But before it can kill Saron, your recurring vampire nemesis and supposedly one of the lord's minions, Saron instead pulls a Dragon Ascendant and kills the Lord in a cutscene. You then face Saron, the actual last boss.
• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance: Sunny Day and Funny Face are the default bosses fought at the end of Stage 4. For certain player characters, Sunny and Funny will be introduced and maybe fought for a little, and then blown up by your rival fight boss as part of their own introduction.
• One of the first quests you can encounter in Fallout 4 involves acquiring a suit of Powered Armor and a minigun then using them to drive off some raiders that are besieging some refugees in an abandoned museum. Shortly after you acquire your new toys, a monstrous deathclaw appears and slaughters any of the raiders you haven't killed yet, and you must defeat it to advance the quest.
• In Final Fantasy IV, you arrive at the core of the moon just in time to see The Man Behind the Man get defeated in a cutscene, only for his hatred to take form and become the Final Boss.
• In Final Fantasy V, after retrieving one of the Plot Coupons, one of the Big Bad's minions shows up, ready to fight you; only to be swept away (somewhat ) by Leviathan. However, nothing forces you to fight Leviathan now: You can proceed to the next dungeon and return there only when you want to unlock his Summon.
• Final Fantasy VIII:
  • Early on, Squall and company run into Biggs and Wedge atop the Dollet Communication Tower. After depleting their health (a simple feat — they're only slightly better than normal Galbadian Soldiers and Elites), they get sucked up in a tornado as Elvoret gets annoyed at all the racket.
  • Also inverted with a bait and switch ally. If you've got Odin by the time you fight Seifer the last time, Odin shows up (which he never usually does in boss fights), attacks Seifer, and is killed(!). Later in the battle, Gilgamesh shows up and beats Seifer instantly for you, and replaces Odin from then on.
• Final Fantasy X features an example in the beginning of the game. Tidus, the main character, battles several minor enemies who ambush him in the water. After he defeats two of them, a massive unbeatable (at that point) boss, Geosgaeno, kills the remaining enemy, and promptly attacks you.
• Final Fantasy XII combines this trope with Fluffy the Terrible with The Fury from the Necrohol of Nabudis. When entering the boss room, a huge behemoth greets the party...but it suddenly collapses and a fuzzy little purple bunny shows up and the real battle takes place.
• Final Fantasy XIII:
  • The trend is continued with Jihl, although many agree that she deserved it after some less than meritorious behavior.
  • In one of the side missions later in the game, your objective is to fight Zenobia, an Undying Cie'th — that is, a Cie'th holding onto immense hatred for the fal'Cie that cursed it. Zenobia rises from the ground, in all its Body Horror glory, only to be stabbed in the leg and killed instantly by a Tonberry, the real boss of the mission. Both Zenobia and Jihl are fightable in the sequel, the former as a storyline boss and the latter as DLC.
  • The last enemy you face during Titan's trials is one of the Undying, which kills the behemoth Titan had intended for you to fight.
• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade does this in a few chapters.
    • The earliest example is in Chapter 3, where Zephiel is sitting on the throne before he, Brunnya, and Narcian leave, leaving Slater to replace him.
    • When you go to free the Western Isles once and for all, Lord Arcard is sitting on the throne. When the chapter starts proper, he leaves and puts his and Narcian's subordinate, General Flaer, in charge...who then makes way for the Manakete Aine when he shows up.
  • Also seen in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones in Ephraim's version of Chapter 10, after Duessel defects. In the chapter preparation screen, it looks like you'll be facing against one of Grado's top generals, Selena...only for her to be replaced on the first turn by a much weaker boss named Beran. You do later face her for real, though.
    • Another example in Ephraim's route: the boss of Chapter 12 is initially Caellach, another of Grado's top generals. After one turn, Riev calls him away from his post, leaving a cyclops in his stead. Again, you face him for real later on.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn pulls this one off in the prologue of Part 3. The apparent boss of the chapter is Septimus, but he turns out to be a Dirty Coward and runs away after two turns (not nearly long enough to get in range to engage him), leaving his second-in-command Silvano to guard the level goal instead. Septimus is fought eight chapters later.
  • Downplayed in chapter 9 of Fire Emblem: Awakening. Gangrel and Aversa are both on the battlefield alongside the level boss Campari, but leave on Turn 1 and leave him to do the dirty work.
• Five Nights at Freddy's World does this for its added content boss. It looks like it's going to be Purplegeist, but Chica's Magic Rainbow, whose main trait is being as demeaning as possible, drops in and attacks you instead.
• In The Force Unleashed 2:
  • While rescuing General Kota on Cato Neimoidia, you end up with him in a gladiator arena, surrounded by the corpses of countless warriors and wild beasts. Suddenly, a large gate nearby opens up, and out steps a rancor. Starkiller smirks and readies his blades...and then, from beneath the ground, a humongous hand reaches up, smashes the rancor into the ground, and pulls it under. And then said hand's owner comes out to play. Say hello to the Gorog.
  • Zig-zagged in the first game, where Maris Brood looks like she's the boss, then introduces a rather large bull Rancor, then turns out to actually be tougher than the Rancor after it goes down.
• Fur Fighters has a rather humorous example. In the Space Station Meer, you bump into a Xenomorph, but before the fight starts, a stereotypical lawyer barges in, claiming to represent 31st Century Films, and begins berating the game for breaking 35 different copyrights. The player character argues back, so the lawyer draws a gun and begins shooting at them.
• An early mine level of the Ganbare Goemon game Goemon's Great Adventure has a boss setup on a bridge against a bigger version of the standard haniwa enemy, except the haniwa is instantly smashed by a giant skeletal hand from behind the bridge, and Goemon must then fight a gashadokuro (giant skeletons composed of starved bodies).
• In the beginning of God of War: Chains of Olympus, a cyclops armed with a gigantic club smashes through a door you're trying to open. You drive off his first attack, and then the massive Basilisk, the real first boss, nibbles the cyclops from outside the door and eats it. At least he leaves you his club to use on the big lizard.
• Gunstar Heroes:
  • After fighting your way through an entire army, the boss warning sounds as you approach an invulnerable soldier who's just standing there and...swaying his torso around? The boss read-out identifies him as "Final Great Soldier", and lists his attack as "Love Love Dancing". After a few awkward seconds, the real boss, the Big Bad's Dragon, shows up, chews him out, and tosses him aside. The whole boss warning/read-out sequence starts up again to herald the upcoming fight.
  • When you face off with Grey, the Big Bad, his evil scheme fails on him, and he gets blasted by the real boss, Golden Silver.
  • Despite being a sequel, not a remake, the exact same things happen again in Gunstar Super Heroes. The entire plot of Gunstar Super Heroes basically revolves around the exact same things as the original Gunstar Heroes happening again, but with more story and explanation surrounding them this time.
• At the end of Hades, Zagreus finds himself face to face with Cerebus guarding the gates to the world of the living. At first, Zagreus acts like the two are going to face each other so he can get past, only for him to quickly admit that he could never hurt his beloved pet and instead detours to find a treat for Cerebus so he'll look the other way. It's only after this point that you come face to face with the real Final Boss of the game, Zagreus's father Hades.
• In Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, the final boss is apparently your Arch-Enemy Weasleby. However, after beating on him for a while, he suddenly starts twitching a whole bunch before his head pops off, with Henry's Kid Sidekick Cole coming out of his body. After a speech in which Cole reveals that he's the real Big Bad, he summons out a massive Mech that he only managed to build thanks to all the money you've spent on upgrades in his store.
• Hollow Knight's Godmaster campaign seemingly sets up a fight between you and Tiso midway through one of the Pantheons. They go so far as to give him an intro with a Battle Cry and a boss subtitle, only for the poor sap to have a bridge dropped on him in the form of the actual boss of the room, a Brooding Mawlek. In the same pantheon, you're also poised to fight Hornet... who turns out to be an upgraded Nosk impersonating her.
• Ittle Dew: When you first enter the final room of the Master Cave, it looks like you'll be fighting a simple fishbun. Naturally, it gets replaced by something much more threatening.
• In I Wanna Be the Guy, right before you enter the Palace of The Guy, the moon, which has been pestering you throughout the game, drops down from the sky to confront you...and then the real boss, the Mecha Dragon from Mega Man 2, beats it down and the real fight begins.
• In Jade Cocoon 2, all the non-story bosses are oversized versions of regular monsters, and before fighting a short FMV clip is played. In one of them, a large dragonfly buzzes at you menacingly. It looks a little out of place in the water world, and seems smaller than other bosses. It then gets eaten by a huge frog monster, who then attacks you.
• The Neon Boulevard penthouse stage from Jitsu Squad. After fighting your way through legions of mooks, you confront the unnamed boss, an overweight, unarmed man who can barely put up a fight, but before you can even attack the main villain, Lord Origami, appears personally to execute the boss for failing to capture the titular squad. Before sending the stage's actual boss, his second-in-command Dash Kobayashi.
• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Chapter 8 has Pit fight through the Space Pirates on his way to confront the Pirate Captain, only for a space Kraken to show up out of nowhere, eat the Pirate Captain, and become the boss for the chapter.
• An Olympus Coliseum mission in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days has you fighting in a tournament (which plays in the exact same way as the tournaments in the first Kingdom Hearts). The final opponent there is Xigbar? Just wail out some of his lifebars and cue the uninvited appearance of the mission's boss: the Guard Armor from the first game. And when it seems like Xigbar will assist you in fighting it, he instead dumps you for the boss battle. That clever little sneak.
• In Kingdom of Loathing:
  • There's an Optional Puzzle Boss called the Guy Made of Bees. His opening line is "We are Bees. We hate you." There's also a special challenge path called Bees Hate You. Curiously, the Guy Made of Bees doesn't appear in his usual location during a Bees Hate You run. Given the page you're on, you've probably guessed that he takes out the final, sausage-y form of the Naughty Sorceress, and you have to fight him instead.
  • Happens on the Avatar of Boris run — the final form of the Naughty Sorceress is taken out by an Avatar of Sneaky Pete, who takes the opportunity to attempt revenge on Boris for stealing his thunder back in their mortal days.
  • In an Avatar of Jarlsberg run, you find the Avatar of Boris has already defeated the Sorceress, and Jarlsberg seizes the opportunity to get revenge on Boris for being the Jerk Jock to Jarlsberg's nerd.
  • The Zombie Slayer challenge path ends with you facing Rene C. Corman, mastermind behind the Zombie Apocalypse plaguing the kingdom, instead of the Naughty Sorceress's final form.
  • Throughout the Heavy Rains challenge path, major boss fights get killed and replaced by "sentient mimetic water" sent by the Final Boss, the Rain King. Except for Ed the Undying, who gets right back up, beats his watery doppelganger back into the ground, and fights you as normal.
• The Kirby series has some examples in recent games:
  • In Kirby Star Allies, near the end of Guest Star ????, the player defeats Hyness and Galacta Knight appears out of a black hole. Instead of fighting him, his introduction screen is immediately followed by a cutscene. The cutscene has a butterfly land on Galacta Knight's lance, and then the butterfly defeats Galacta Knight, absorbs his power and forms Morpho Knight.
  • In Super Kirby Clash, it initially appears that Team Kirby will fight Parallel Nightmare for the final Story Quest at the Decisive Battlefield (the level's selection has his portrait shown), but he instead opens a portal that summons King D-Mind. And like with Dark Taranza before him, King D-Mind turns against Parallel Nightmare, smacking him into the background before the battle starts. Unlike Dark Taranza, though, this doesn't kill Parallel Nightmare.
  • At the end of Isolated Isles: Forgo Dreams in Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the Soul Forgo gets Boss Subtitles, implying a full boss fight. However, much like in Kirby Star Allies above, an innocuous butterfly floats by and absorbs Soul Forgo, revealing itself to be Morpho Knight.
• The Last Promise: Lahar, the Necromancer who killed Siegfried is set up as the Final Boss after Louis and Leon are defeated. However, just before the party confronts him, Lahar resurrects Siegfried to make him fight the party, only for Siegfried to kill him first. As a result, Siegfried ends up being the final boss for Anakin and Kelik.
• Subverted in Last Scenario. At the end of the Disc-One Final Dungeon, Ortas, the guy who you'd been led to believe was the Big Bad, gets literally and figuratively stabbed In the Back by Castor, who reveals that he's been manipulating him all along. Despite being mortally wounded, Ortas gets back up and fights you anyway.
• The Last Story: Early on, the party fights their way through the Gurak warship, and confronts the ship's captain. It looks like he's about to fight you, but instead a monster breaks through the wall, swats him aside like a fly, and attacks the heroes. Dagran lampshades: "Was that supposed to happen?".
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess does this in the fourth dungeon (which may seem like the final dungeon if you aren't familiar with the series tradition of having two sets of Mac Guffins). Big Bad Zant appears, but rather than facing Link directly, he just drives his sword into the skull of a dragon skeleton, animating the boss of the dungeon. Even then, you may think it's just his Dragon and you'll be facing him [immediately] afterwards, but no.
• In Like a Dragon: Ishin!, Toranojo Sengoku has a lengthy "Get Back Here!" Boss sequence, but you never end up fighting him — Souji Okita kills him instead and then challenges Ryoma to a duel.
• Loom has several scenes foreshadowing Bishop Mandible as the Big Bad and building up to a climactic confrontation with him as he captures you and takes you to his castle, to open up a portal to the realm of the dead. The leader of the undead, Chaos, promptly and messily one-shots him and takes his place as the actual Big Bad.
  "I am Chaos. Join me."
• The Lord of the Rings Online has one in the quest "Tomb of Elendil": after wearing down the first boss for a while, he runs over and wakes up the real boss, a giant turtle that eats the first boss for waking him up.
• In Lost Judgment, Shin Amon appears to reprise his role as Superboss from the previous game, but he is knocked out by his twin brother Juzo, who instead challenges Yagami to battle.
• Lunar: Dragon Song does this in reverse. Before you ever see Ignatius or Lucia, you battle Ignatius's butt-fugly pet Gideon twice. In the second time, it is in the chamber of rebirth in his most powerful form possible. After the fight, Lucia is already transformed into Althena and she is killed trying to save Jian in his not-so noble and heroic submission. Just when Ignatius tries to kidnap Flora and attempt to prompt Jian and co into a battle, it turns out Ignatius slips and falls when the platform he stood on crumbles and he falls into the endless void below. Despite the game portraying Ignatius as the main villain and the whole point of collecting all four dragon rings, the player will never battle him (not including one earlier match before you collect the dragon rings) and it is implied that Gideon had been the final boss instead.
• During the maimai segment of the 5th iteration of the KING of Performai annual championship, the finalists were tasked with a song whose details were not shown on the song select. After an introductory cutscene, the Final Boss song of the tournament, "系ぎて", was introduced, with a Master chart rated level 14. Except the song jacket and difficulty information were then removed, replaced with the same song but on Re:Master difficulty, with the number 15 abruptly shown in large, menacing red text (level 15 being the highest possible difficulty rating in the game). Welcome to the first Deluxe-type level 15 chart.
• In Marathon: RED, you return to the mysterious pyramid after being mutated to confront Joshua, but you find that Michael has finished him off first. He escapes and has his Champion Metalloids fight you in an arena battle similar to "You Think You're Big Time?", then the last act of the game is spent pursuing him.
• Mass Effect made you think that the entire final battle was going to be against Saren while the fleet dealt with Sovereign. While it is possible to get into a final boss fight with Saren or talk him into abandoning his plans and killing himself, either way you get into a fight when Sovereign takes over Saren's body.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge does an interesting variation — at the end of Wily Castle, there is a room with four teleporters. Seasoned Mega Man players will assume this part to be rematches with the four Robot Masters fought earlier (lifted from Mega Man), but instead they lead to completely different Robot Masters (lifted from Mega Man 2).
  • In an early dungeon in Mega Man Legends 2, the MacGuffin at the end of the dungeon is gone when you get there. This is not surprising, as you already fought a Cowardly Boss pursuing the same MacGuffin twice in the same dungeon. He then shows up behind you...and informs you that he doesn't have it, then leaves you to fight the boss that does.
  • In Mega Man Zero 3, Zero boards a missile headed for a populated city block, and was informed beforehand that Omega was inside (the missile was a ploy for Omega to capture the Dark Elf). Before Zero can reach Omega however, he confronts the Baby Elves instead, who were placed there by Dr. Weil as Omega's bodyguards, knowing all along that Zero would try to sabotage the missile.
  • At the end of the fourth chapter in Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch's single-player campaign, it appears you're going to fight the Cockroach Twins, only for them to be stomped flat by the Metool Daddy. In version 5 B, this scene is replaced with the fact that you are originally going to fight an enemy from Mega Man 5, but then the Cossack Catcher (piloted by a Metool) destroys it.
  • At the end of the Mega Man 6 Chapter in version 5 B, Mega Man? prepares to fight you one final time after every Robot Master is dealt with. His health meter fills up like normal, but when it fills up to half, Wily uses Gamma's fist to punch Mega Man?, killing Mega Man? instantly. Cue final battle against Gamma.
  • In Rockman 4 Minus ∞:
    • The final boss is set up to be the alien from Mega Man 2 before Mega Man climbs on a nearby structure and blasts it, revealing it to be a hologram (like in the original game). With this, Wily quickly distracts Mega Man long enough to flip a switch and trap Mega Man, stealing his weapons and E-Tanks to create the Petite Robot Masters .
    • For an example that may or may not happen, doing a No-Damage Run up through Wily 4 has the third Chimerabot get slashed by Shadow Man, revealing that they were just holograms. The new boss is very hard, but the reward for doing so turns every hit into a critical one, making the rest of the game a breeze.
  • Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest: The second has two:
    • The Tier 7 boss appears to be Pepsiman himself, but suddenly the Ghost of Christmas Future destroys him for fighting during his shift, and then attacks you for thinking you're mocking him.
    • The first Wily Star II stage boss appears to be CWU-01P from Mega Man, but before its health bar even fills up it gets blasted from off screen by the real boss, Mecha Bubble Man.
• Metal Slug X: At the end, you get ready to face off against General Morden, until the Dai-Manji (a spherical spaceship) appears and blows up the new craft Morden was planning to use, and kidnaps him. Thus begins the real two-part Final Boss battle.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid Prime: Hunters: In one stage, the player is about to face a guardian who gets shot by Trace, a bounty hunter with a sniper-scope weapon.
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: This happens twice. Both times, you face off against an "alpha" version of a wild creature you've already faced before, but then it gets possessed by the Ing. Neither one is very far into the game.
  • Metroid Fusion: Zig-zagged at the end. You get mauled by the big nasty-looking Omega Metroid first, then the SA-X, which you thought just died shows up... and gets destroyed in one shot (at least giving you the firepower to kill the original enemy).
• Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven: The final quest is to destroy the reactor in the Kreegan Hive to destroy the hive...which turns out to be surprisingly easy if you have followed the main quest^note the reactor is immune to damage from everything but one specific rare kind of weapon — but an earlier quest was specifically about gathering enough of that kind of weapon to equip every one of your characters, as while the reactor is a boss, having a somewhat dangerous attack and a fair bit of health and immunities, it's also a reactor — i.e. stationary. The real final boss is the Kreegan Hive Queen backed up by a horde of lesser Kreegan, who you get teleported in front of once you destroy the reactor and have to kill to get out.
• No More Heroes has three of these: Boss #5, Letz Shake, is taken out by Henry (whom you don't fight until much later). This is played straight, with your character (and probably yourself) left angry and unfulfilled. Then, just before the fight with the final boss begins, the real final boss punches straight through him, and one cutscene later, the real final battle begins. Then, after the final boss, you can watch the ending, where an unnamed assassin kicks down the door while you're...compromised. If you meet the requirements for the True Final Boss, and select the 'real ending' option, he will then be chopped in half by the True Final Boss (the aforementioned Henry), starting the fight.
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle has more, numerically speaking. Out of the 51 ranked assassins in the United States, numbers 49 through 26 are cheerleaders who work with the 25th ranked assassin, Charlie MacDonald, to form a Humongous Mecha. Assassins ranked 22 through 11 are participating with Travis (ranked 23rd by this point) in a free-for-all battle where they are killed by the tenth ranked assassin, Dr. Letz Shake (ironically, the brain from the machine that Letz Shake used in the last game). Finally, after Henry comes out of a coma thanks to Travis, he goes out and kills the fifth and sixth ranked bosses for Travis off-screen, giving the victories to Travis and sending him pictures of the aftermath; he also chides Travis for being upset about it because the game already has 15 bosses and more would be unreasonable. All in all, that's 39 bosses that the player does not get to fight (when Henry killed some assassins for Travis, he gave three names, but Travis only went from rank 7 to rank 5, which implies that either one of the bosses worked as a team with another, or attempted to reclaim Travis' current rank like Kimmy Howell beforehand. That or the creators just can't do math).
• No More Heroes III continues the tradition:
  • Boss #3 Black Night Direction is murdered by Native Dancer, a beam-katana wielding masked ninja cyborg that hails from the future and claims to have a connection with Travis. He's fought instead.
  • Boss #4 Vanishing Point is offed by Kimmy Howell, Travis' insane fangirl from Desperate Struggle now the freakish lovechild of Bayonetta and Ariana Grande and an aspiring raked assassin who fights Travis instead.
  • Boss #7 Sniping Lee is blown to bits by Notorious, a masked pro wrestler super hero and WWWWW World Champion. Travis seems to be an admirer of him. Instead, the player ends up fighting a new incarnation of Destroyman, the boss from the original No More Heroes, now a mass produced robot.
  • Boss #9 Paradox Bandit is killed by Fu himself. Travis ends up having a rematch with his brother Henry, now seemingly possessed by something.
• No Straight Roads:
  • On the leadup to Yinu's battle, you are lead to believe that she's the artist you have to fight to claim the district, and you indeed do so...for about the first third, at which point her frighteningly overprotective mother gets increasingly involved and you have to fight her instead. Downplayed in that Yinu herself does still contribute throughout the majority of the fight, and gets one last phase at the end all to herself after you defeat her mother.
  • Robotic boy band 1010 is set up to be the boss of their district, only for it to quickly become clear that the fight is actually against the band's creator and manager, Neon J. He's the one with a health bar you have to damage to progress the fight, and by the last phase he takes over entirely, with 1010 themselves being reduced to getting used as weapons. Tellingly, after Neon J is introduced, he's treated as the true boss/NSR artist of the district for the rest of the game.
• Octopath Traveler II:
  • Throné's first chapter sets up a Dual Boss fight versus Scaracci and Diamante at the latter's mansion. Once you get there, though, you find that Pirro has already killed both of them, and he instead provides the boss fight.
  • Agnea's final chapter has La'mani show up for a rematch, making it seem like he might be the final boss before Agnea takes the stage at the Festival of Grace. However, Veronica comes in and knocks him out, with the real final battle being a dance battle (treated as an actual boss battle) with Dolcinaea.
• One Piece: Unlimited Cruise Episode 2 plays this pretty straight with the battle against Donquixote Doflamingo. At first, it looks like you're going to fight against Bellamy, the relatively weak and easily dispatched villain from the Jaya arc. All of a sudden, a pink arm rises from the boss container and takes control of Bellamy. This is followed by the rest of Doflamingo's body.
• One Piece: Unlimited World Red has themed levels based on the locales of major arcs from the show, each of which has that area's Arc Villain as the main antagonist. There are a couple of points, though, where they get replaced at the last minute by someone a bit bigger on One Piece's Badass Scale.
• Persona 4 involves the party fighting Shadow Rise, who makes herself impossible to hit and eventually unleashes a devastating attack when low on health. Then Teddie jumps in taking the damage of the attack for himself. Afterwards, his Shadow Teddie counterpart awakens, initiating the second boss battle.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Red and Blue: You fought the Elite Four and even Lance appears to set you up as the champion so all is well. Right? Nope! You WOULD have been the champion, but your rival beat you to the punch, so now you have to go beat him to obtain the title!
  • Pokémon Black and White: So, you've defeated the Elite Four and are on your way to challenge the Champion. Not easy by any means, but at least you know what to expect! You heal up your Pokemon and ascend the staircase...wait, what's N doing here? Oh crap! At least you know who the Final Boss is now, though! Wait, Ghetsis?! Oh crap...!
  • Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon does this a few times.
    • The first is the third trial, where Totem Wishiwashi seems to be assembling itself into its dreaded School Forme (which is what happened in Pokémon Sun and Moon), only for Totem Araquanid to go and pull a Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and blast all of the Wishiwashi away.
    • You beat the Elite Four and sit on the Champion's throne, you think that the Final Boss is Kukui (again, like Wishiwashi this was what happened in Sun and Moon). Nope! Hau takes Kukui's place as the final opponent before the player becomes Champion.
• Done in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within in the True Final Boss ending. If you got all the health upgrades, as you prepare for a second battle with Kaileena, the Dahaka attacks again, but by this point, you have a weapon that can harm it, so you and Kaileena team up to kill it. Earlier in the game, you're about to confront the Crow on an outside ledge, but it just then gets killed by the Dahaka, and yet another Escape Sequence begins.
• In The Punisher (Capcom), Frank Castle and Nick Fury spend the first two stages running after mafia boss Bruno Costa, eventually cornering him and setting up for a not so intimidating boss battle. Suddenly, a laser sweeps away Bruno and his henchmen in a single hit, and a huge robot sent by the Kingpin engages the player instead.
• In Puyo Puyo Tetris, we are lead to believe that Ex is the Final Boss of the game. Nope. That's Tee, and it even happens again in the bonus chapter 10, Tee ends up as the last opponent you play against. Also serves as some clever Book Ends as Tee is the first character you play as in the game. In the final challange of the main story, you are playing as Ringo. The first challange, you are playing as Tee against Ringo.
• In Ratchet & Clank (2016), near the end of the game, Nefarious turns Drek into a sheep and sends him to a crash course to the recently constructed "New Quartu". The heroes learn about this later.
• Rocket Knight Adventures for Genesis had you finally get into the evil pig space station and lay some smackdown on the Pig Emperor. Except he's a robotic impersonator, and once you beat him, you find out the real boss is an ancient malevolent computer.
• RuneScape: The boss battle against the Giant Spider Araxxor has four phases and as you progress through the fight you move further into the area with each phase. When you reach the final phase and move with Araxxor to the final platform, Araxxor's even nastier mate, Araxxi, drops down and eats Araxxor and takes his place as your opponent.
• In Salamander 2, the sequel to Salamander (known as Life Force in the United States), you encounter the first boss of the first game, Brain Golem, at the end of the first stage. A few seconds later, Golem is gobbled up by a gigantic serpent-like creature. You then end up fighting this giant serpent instead as the boss proper. It is possible to actually destroy Golem for a large sum of points before the serpent kills it, but you need to have acquired a specific weapon type, have enough Options, and be constantly pounding on it.
• Shienryu aka Steel Dragon aka Geki-Oh has this with the Final Boss, where you first fight the red demon mecha from the game's spiritual predecessor Daioh, only for it to be destroyed by a Wave-Motion Gun blast from a much tougher blue mecha.
• After General Brand is revealed to be the mysterious villain that overpowers Sam in the prologue of Serious Sam 4, the final two levels of the game build up to the climactic confrontation between the two and the player would naturally expect him to be the Final Boss. The scene from the prologue plays out, Sam gets captured... and said villain then tries to offer him to Ugh-Zan VI, another member of the Ugh-Zan Dynasty that served as the final bosses of a few previous games, who rejects his We Can Rule Together proposal and swats him away like a bug. The player then gets to fight Ugh-Zan VI, who was not mentioned prior to him showing up, while Brand is disposed of in a cutscene afterwards.
• Sly 2: Band of Thieves builds Arpeggio up as the main villain. Then during the final level, Neyla betrays him and takes over as the real Big Bad of the game.
• In Solatorobo, Red finally wises up and answers the third guardian's riddle, gaining the last piece of the Flute without having to fight him. However, at that exact moment, Blanck shows up and a boss battle against him ensues.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, when you reach Sky Sanctuary with Knuckles, it looks like you're going to fight the Eggrobo yet again, shortly before Mecha Sonic shows up and destroys it (by accident, but still!).
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble, after you defeat Metal Sonic in act three of Atomic Destroyer Zone, a sleeping Fang the Sniper awakens and it seems like you're going to fight him one last time, but then he panics and runs away from the true final boss, Dr. Robotnik.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 2, the first boss seems to be a rehash off the Aquatic Ruin Zone boss, right before a giant flower robot serpent thing pops out of the background. Seeing as one of the major complaints of the first episode was boss rehashing, it's obvious why this happened.
  • In Sonic Colors, Eggman tries to use mind control to force a fight between Sonic and Tails, but when the device he's using breaks down, he's got a regular boss ready to go.
• This happens twice with General Scales in Star Fox Adventures.
  • The first example is in CloudRunner Fortress, when Fox catches up with Scales in the dungeon's vault; just as the protagonist readies the staff to fight his enemy, Scales tells the Sharpclaws following him to flee with the second Spellstone Fox is looking for. Since Scales knows Fox is looking for it, this buys him time to teleport away, forcing Fox to instead pursue the Sharpclaws (who are driving Speeders to flee, as does Fox) in a Wolfpack Boss battle.
  • Near the end of the game, you've barely begun fighting General Scales when the real final boss has him give up the Krazoa Spirit (killing Scales when he resists). He doesn't reveal himself until after the last Krazoa Spirit is in place — surprise, surprise; it's Andross.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, a group mission features a boarding party of the players' faction (Galactic Republic or Sith Empire) fighting to reclaim a cruiser from some rogue Mandalorians. As you approach a group of enemies rallying around a huge war droid, a boarding pod punches through the hull, crushing the Mandalorians and bringing in a boarding party fighting for the other faction. Naturally, you have to fight them.
• Steel Assault have you confronting a seemingly unarmed Major Harris in a control room with a chasm in the middle. Harris dies in one hit, only for you to find out you just hit a hologram - cue the real Harris appearing on the chasm's other side, and sending two gigantic robots to fight you as the boss.
• Street Fighter:
  • Super Street Fighter II Turbo normally has you fight M. Bison for the final showdown. But if you've beaten the game without losing a single round, Bison is taken out in one shot by Akuma, who becomes your final opponent. Also happens in the first Street Fighter Alpha, the first Street Fighter EX, and Street Fighter III: Second Impact.
  • In Alpha 2, each character has a secret rival who will interrupt one of the scheduled matches if the player fulfills certain conditions.
  • Played for laughs in Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, where after defeating all of the other characters, a pumped up Dan Hibiki stands up as the final boss...and then Akuma pops out kicking Dan's ass and making him flee in tears, facing you with a nasty evil grin. For those of you who don't know, Dan is the Glass Joe of the game.
  • Also played with in Alpha 3. Sometimes when you fight Karin, Sakura's rival, the pre-match animation will show her muscled butler waiting to fight you instead — then Karin throws a pot at him, he runs off, and she gets ready to fight.
• Streets of Rage: At the end of Stage 5 in the second game, the boss music immediately starts and replaces the main stage theme (rather than the usual fade out-fade in), and waiting for you is Big Ben (more than one in higher difficulty settings). An earlier incarnation of him in the first game was a boss character, but in the second game he's just an Elite Mook that appears as a miniboss half way through stages every now and then (in fact, he even appears earlier in Stage 5 being just that). But the way the boss fight of Stage 5 prepares itself, with Big Ben waiting there, you take a breather thinking it's just a Breather Boss. You're wrong. Further up the stage, hiding out of sight, is R.Bear waiting for you. Get ready to lose a lot of lives.
• Super Cyborg have a battle against an All Webbed Up monster called the Captured Bedlaah, stuck in the middle of a massive spider-web. Moments after you kill it, you then fight the Akhamafold Octopod, a Giant Spider far larger and stronger than the Bedlaah, who's royally pissed you exploded his lunch.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, when you get to the boss room in Baby Bowser's castle, it looks as though you are about to confront Kamek, but then Bowser wakes up, complains about the noise, and proceeds to stomp Kamek flat and kick him away. Kamek later shows up all fine just to provide a segue to the second phase of the battle and take Bowser away when he's defeated.
  • In Super Mario RPG, Booster kidnaps the princess and takes her to the Marrymore chapel, but Mario and his friends crash their wedding. Bowser, who is usually the one kidnaps her, is on Mario's side this time, which leads to much confusion as Mario tries to claim a Smooch of Victory. Then, as the party starts to walk back down the aisle, they are blocked by Chef Torte, his apprentice and the enormous wedding cake they are carrying, and a battle begins. Now, which one of these is the real boss of this chapter, the one which the player must focus their attacks on in order to progress? That's right: it's the cake, which turns out to be alive and hostile (at which point the chef and his assistant flee in terror).
  • In Paper Mario, has this during the penultimate boss fight at Bowser's Castle, where the last Bowser Door won't allow Mario to pass unless he defeats the Koopa Bros., the bosses of the first Chapter. They claim they've gotten far stronger since their last fight, but don't get a chance to show it; before a fight can even start, Jr. Troopa, who has been hounding Mario ever since the beginning of the game, charges in and knocks them all aside, demanding one last battle with Mario. This leaves the Bowser Door confused since it's not sure whether to count beating Jr. Troopa as having beaten the Koopa Bros. by proxy, eventually giving up on rationalizing it out of frustration and just letting Mario pass.
  • At the end of Super Mario Galaxy, just right before you even get to Bowser, you see Bowser Jr. once more, but instead of fighting him, he simply flies away in his spaceship, and as a result you actually end up fighting Bowser directly.
• Super Robot Wars X: In Scenario 24: The Great Hero, it seems Count Brocken is the boss of the scenario. Suddenly, the Ghostfire V9 shows up and kills Brocken with ease. As it turns out, the Ghostfire V9 is possessed by the soul of a Mycenae Empire soldier. This soul wants Koji dead, resulting in a Hopeless Boss Fight for Koji and the others.
• Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U: You'll initially just face the usual adversary of Master Hand at the end of Classic Mode. As you increase the intensity level, his unhinged counterpart Crazy Hand will eventually start tagging along, and the duo's HP will increase, which has been the norm since Melee. However, once you hit 5.1 intensity or higher, after you reduce their HP a little, they'll abruptly be replaced by Master Core, who bursts out of the former in a rather disturbing manner, while the latter inexplicably disintegrates.
• Tiny Barbarian DX has a doozy happening at the end of the apparent final level of Episode 4: the titular Barbarian Hero enters the ceremonial chamber of the cult leader who kidnapped his damsel, and as you leap towards expecting an epic boss fight, he immediately gets zapped in mid-air by the tractor beam of a spaceship that was stationed there, and gets whisked away. The damsel is so understandably frustrated by this that she breaks away from and decks her captor, then walks away, setting up a Time Skip for the next level.
• In Chapter 5 of Tokyo Xanadu, the Abyss Hound, an Elder Greed that Kou and Mitsuki defeated earlier, appears in a later dungeon, guarding a cage that Asuka is locked in. However, a different Greed, the Chaos Raven, suddenly descends from the sky and destroys the Abyss Hound before going up against the party.
• In Touhou Shinpiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo's PS4 version, it looks like the final boss of Reisen's Story Mode is the main character, Reimu Hakurei. But then, all of a sudden, Reimu mysteriously vanishes and is replaced by Fujiwara no Moukou. This turns out to be a Sequel Hook to Touhou Hyouibana ~ Antinomy of Common Flowers.
• Tower Of The Sorcerer: The boss of the undead zone is just a ring of big bats! Sure, there are eight of them, but by that point they'll probably go down in one hit each, before they even get a chance to strike back. And then, when you confidently step forward, a cutscene merges them all into a monstrously powerful vampire that will probably end you if you haven't collected every power-up the zone has to offer (including a hidden one).
• The entire plot of TRON 2.0 builds up to a final confrontation against Thorne, the 12-foot-tall Big Bad Super-Virus...and when you finally get to his inner sanctum, you see him being unceremoniously killed by the regular-sized ICP Kernel (the leader of the game's Mook cops), who out of nowhere decides to fight you too while he's at it. The rest of the game is also a case of a Halfway Plot Switch, as the last several levels has you chasing after greedy corporate hackers after an entire game of battling The Virus.
• The final boss of Two Crude Dudes was the evil scientist who'd unleashed all those hideous mutants upon post-apocalyptic New York. He's hilariously easy to beat the crap out of and throw around like a ragdoll...until he suddenly mutates into a gigantic asskicking monstrosity.
• ULTRAKILL: For a little while, you get to fight the initial boss of P-2, the Flesh Panopticon. However, after depleting only a quarter of its health, Sisyphus Prime breaks out of it on his own and challenges you to a battle.
  THIS prison... to hold... ME!?
• The final stage of Ultra X Weapons have you fighting Fire-Draco (a one-shot monster from Ultraman 80), and after you win... you're attacked by the real Final Boss, the iconic Ultraman monster Zetton (who's the series' most powerful kaiju at that point of the franchise).
• In Vagrant Story, Ashley interrupts a scene where Rosencrantz is beating up Sydney, demanding that Sydney teaches him mastery of the dark and berating him for choosing Ashley as his 'apprentice.' It looks like he's going to be the next boss fight...but then Sydney tricks him into discarding his weapon, and uses his dark magic to animate a statue sat against the wall, which crushes Rosencrantz with a giant sword. You end up fighting the statue instead.
• Viewtiful Joe 2 ends a later stage with yet another appearance by the Recurring Boss, Big John, this time in a crappy Charlie Brown from Outta Town Bruce Lee disguise, Big Lee. His conversation with the heroes lasts for a good half-minute before he is taken down and replaced by the Noble Demon Rival Alastor from the first game. Oh, and did we mention that almost the exact thing happens in the next level, this time without even the excuse of being a different character? Almost immediately, the real boss, Frost Tiger, shows up, and cuts him down without a second thought before Big John is finished yammering. Unlike him, Frost Tiger has a hardcore attitude and is incredibly hard to defeat.
• Warframe: When you reach the Jackal's boss room and press the button that says "deploy Jackal", a lift rises from the floor, complete with warning lights...and reveals a small, kind of cute Test MOA. Then the actual Jackal, which is quite a bit bigger and way more menacing, drops from the ceiling, annihilating the poor MOA. It's even Lampshaded by your Voice with an Internet Connection, the Lotus:
  The Lotus: "I expected it to be...bigger."
• Wild ARMs: The Gate Generator sets you up to fight Zed at the very end. Then Zeikfried shows up, orders him to stand down so you have to fight him instead.
• WinBack: First, Cecile, The Dragon, pulls a Starscream and kills the Big Bad, Kenneth. Then Dan, The Mole and The Man Behind the Man, shows up and shoots Cecile in revenge for his brother. Then you fight Dan as the apparently Final Boss, but after you defeat him, it turns out that Cecile is Not Quite Dead, although he's an Anti-Climax Boss if you figure out how to get past the laser fences.
• Happens in chapter 10 of The Witch and the Hundred Knight whereby in the Old City Ruins, Hundred Knight encounters a giant spider which for some unknown reason died on its own after a while. When the Hundred Knight tries to leave the area, a giant half-golem will serve as the actual boss fight.
• The World Ends with You:
  • The first game tries to set you up expecting a rematch with a back-to-the-undead Minamimoto — which, judging by an earlier encounter, would be undesirable. It turns out that someone knocks him out first, and when your partners start celebrating, Neku points out that someone capable of that is their next opponent and that they shouldn't get too comfortable.
  • Similarly, in the sequel NEO: The World Ends with You, Shoka is set up as the boss of Week 2, Day 6, with the mission being to erase her and the majority of the day revolving around figuring out how to save Motoi from Shoka wiping the floor with him. You end up fighting Motoi instead, after you find out how much of a Manipulative Bastard he is.
• World of Warcraft:
  • In The Burning Crusade, the apparent final boss of the Arcatraz dungeon is an insane blood elf who hides in a magical bubble and releases three random minibosses (and an obnoxious but allied gnome) from the cells around him. After defeating them, the "real" final boss, a Sealed Evil in a Can (a Mind Rape insect mage) (and presumably the reason the elf was crazy, given all that babbling about a "master"), is released; he kills the crazy elf rather swiftly, then moves on to you.
  • The Trial of the Crusader raid has another, rather sad one. A gnome warlock named Wilfred Fizzlebang, rather confident about his abilities and his supposed immense power. He intends to summon a Doomguard (a rather powerful demon, but not ridiculously powerful, however). Instead, he accidentally summons Jaraxxus, Eredar Lord of the Burning Legion, and proceeds to attempt to convince Jaraxxus (who is about 20 times bigger than him) that HE, the gnome, is in charge here. Needless to say, he gets swiftly killed by Jaraxxus, who then proceeds to blast away at the players.
  • This also applies to Jaraxxus when he appears as a card in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Once he is played, he replaces the hero who played him, which comes with advantages (he gets to summon powerful demons once per turn) and disadvantages (he starts with 15 health instead of the normal 30).
  • In the Cataclysm expansion, there's another example of this in the Stonecore. The very first pull in the instance has you fight Milhouse Manastorm (incidentally the same gnome as in the Burning Crusade example above), who fights until he's at half health and runs to the next trash pull. Finally, you have him and his group of adds cornered, and he's channeling a powerful spell. But as soon as you engage him, a giant gyreworm named Corborus bursts out of nowhere, knocking the gnome and his group far away, never to be seen again. You fight the worm (who puts up a decent fight, especially on Heroic mode).
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel:
  • Sometimes a nearby duelist with a story connection to the person you challenge will make your opponent go away and you'll have to fight them instead. An example would be Marik and Bakura or Mokuba and Seto Kaiba. You could try to challenge Bakura, but then Marik shows up out of nowhere and drives him away with possibly the worst excuse ever to trick someone with this line: "If I recall correctly, there is something you need to take care of right away...you don't have the luxury of wasting any time here, correct." This works and you face Marik.
  • Every now and then, a Rare Hunter will show up to give an in-story example, and will replace any character.
  • Any character that has an alternate ("Yami") form can do this to themselves. Yami Yugi and Yami Bakura are their default forms, but can switch out with Regular Yugi or Bakura. Marik can switch out with Yami Bakura, who is a lot more aggressive. These examples have minimal consequence, though, as they use the same decks.
• Zuma's Revenge has the final boss, Zhaka Mu. After putting out the four torches, the mysterious cloaked figure reveals themselves to be a chicken-themed boss monster with an enormous health bar. He goes down in one hit, and the credits roll, at which point it turns out he was really Zhaka Mu's chef, Drumstick Willie. Cue the real Zhaka Mu's entrance, and the toughest boss battle in the game. Funnily enough, on repeat play throughs, Willie doesn’t even try to hide the secret and after being hit, just tells you to enjoy the fake credits.

---