Steven Heck of Alpha Protocol is a very silly individual: He rambles on about conspiracy theories involving the Federal Reserve having William McKinley assassinated and the government tinkering with the price of strawberries to control people's minds, gives Word Salad Titles to every covert operation that occurs in Taipei, is willing to use the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on someone to get him to remember where he put his car keys, and takes Time Cube quotes seriously. He is also, however, one of the most dangerous men alive, capable of wiping out entire rooms full of soldiers and elite intelligence operatives singlehandedly. His method of dealing with the Chinese secret police agents who have Mike Thorton pinned down in the Taipei subway perfectly captures Heck's mix of silly and lethal:
"During the pursuit, Steven Heck (at Agent Thorton's request) arrived to offer emergency backup. Said backup came in the form of Heck crudely mounting a minigun to a subway car and firing wildly at Chinese secret police officers as his train passed the platform."
Baldur's Gate: Minsc is an over-the-top Boisterous Bruiser who screams stuff like "Evil, meet sword. Sword, meet evil!", gets distracted by the sight of squirrels, and takes advice from a hamster. He's also capable of mowing down mooks by the dozen, especially if he goes berserker.
"John Doe" from Batman: The Telltale Series. Granted, no fan would normally ever underestimate The Joker, but this iteration of him seems much more innocent and much less capable and threatening than other iterations due to his lack of experience as a criminal. He's so childish with his obsession with selfies, wanting to settle differences over milkshakes, and naïve crush on Harley that he seems far too simple to be a threat. Emphasis on seems. Throughout the game and sequel, he repeatedly shows himself to be much smarter and more capable than he looks: he repeatedly saves Bruce's skin with spur-of-the-moment thinking in Arkham Asylum and the Pact's Hideout; repeatedly escapes, fights off, and even kills armed Agency members; and of course swiftly figures out that Bruce is Batman by using only very disparate clues. It's largely unclear though if he's intentionally Obfuscating Stupidity or if his mind is so broken that he himself doesn't even realize it.
The Battle for Middle-earth II: As noted on the literature page, Tom Bombadil's weirdness is matched only by his power. In the game, he skips merrily along, crushing anyone he smacks into. His one ability, Sonic Song, causes a shockwave which sends entire ranks of enemies flying. He also has 5000 hit points, meaning you'll need a lot of firepower to bring him down.
Though pretty much all the characters in Brave Fencer Musashi are fairly silly, the trophy goes to the Leaders Force members. They're petty, childish, constantly argue over who the leader of the team is, and Ed phonetically spells his stuttering in letters, but they're also among the last bosses in the game and will deliver a pretty solid beatdown if you underestimate them.
Maria Renard from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. Oh what's that? Silly little 12-year-old who attacks using animals and heals herself with desserts? You must've missed the part where she can cheese the entire game and her power surpasses that of the Belmont clan. In a subversion, when she grows up, she has enough power and skill to fight one-on-one with Alucard.
Solt and Peppor of Chrono Cross are the Quirky Miniboss Squad, He Knows About Timed Hits, and Goldfish Poop Gang tropes all rolled up into two rather silly and bumbling brothers. That is until they call out their superior, Karsh, for the murder of Dario, upon which they drop all the silliness and become a genuinely challenging boss fight, dropping their general stupidity and using potent elemental attacks.
Crash is essentially a Looney Tunes character in bandicoot form. He's a complete Cloud Cuckoo Lander who also manages to be one of the prime sources ofslapstick humor in the games, and he always wears a large, goofy grin on his face. But don't let the goofy exterior fool you; he's adept with many forms of technology and has thwarted most of his foes through his quick thinking. Considering that N.Tropy and even Uka Uka couldn't take him out, it goes to show that Crash is not one to be taken lightly.
Cortex is this to an extent in the later games. Even with him being reduced to a mere Butt-Monkey as well as being more suggestive and campy, he can remind anyone why he is the series' main Big Bad in an instant, most notably in Crash: Mind Over Mutant.
Darksiders Genesis: Strife constantly jokes around, teases his brother, and snarks at his enemies. He is also perfectly capable of walking into a den full of demons and casually killing their leader, who is at least three times taller than Strife himself, before anyone has a chance to react.
Mushroom Parents look hilarious with their stubby limbs, and their children are completely helpless cannon fodder, both of which has led many a player to allow one to get within striking distance and realize just how absurdly durable they are, right before they get utterly destroyed in a single punch◊.
Mimics are... strange. Being very tall, giggling humanoids with a treasure chest head that perform spin-kicks while giggling. As odd as their behavior is, though, they should not be underestimated. Opening a mimic will usually result in a One-Hit Kill, while awakened mimics hit hard regardless of how stupid their attacks look.
Dawn of War II: Retribution: While Warhammer 40,000 orks are plenty silly in general while also being plenty deadly, the ones followed in the Ork campaign take both of these traits further than usual. The silly? They treat a gigantic war machine like one'd treat a puppy (complete with walks), have a stealth specialist that once tried to hide in lava, and their leader is a space pirate, complete with hat and attire, among many moments of gleeful lampshading and general black humor. The dangerous? This band of lunatics easily stomps several recently-defected chaos bases, takes down the Eldar campaign's own hero, finishes off an entire craftworld, manages to track down a Space Marine chaptermaster through logic alone (where even the Eldar failed at first, mind you), beats the living hell out of him when he ascended to greater Daemon only minutes ago, and blows his head off with a captured asteroid, and, to top off these and many other acts of wanton looting and burning, depending on the optional missions taken, they simply leave on their new ship, looking for more planets to loot. The new ship being a gigantic dreadnought that had been stuck in the Warp for so long that it's basically the Event Horizon's bigger brother. Oh, and their leader also mugged Inquisitor Adrastia for her hat.
Queen, the boss of Chapter 2, is eccentric, childish, hilariously egotistical, and surprisingly friendly, but she's also extremely powerful, cunning, and dangerous. In the chapter 2 epilogue, the King admits that Queen is even stronger than he is.
Spamton G. Spamton is an utterly insane failure of a salesman that just seems to ambush you in an alley looking for a deal, or your soul, spewing amusing nonsense the whole time through a meme-worthy Electronic Speech Impediment. But if you interact with him beyond this, he proves to be shrewd, cunning and very aware of what's happening, and will quickly rope you into a plan that'll turn him into a bigger threat than even the aforementioned Queen. And since he's utterly desperate to cast off his fallen, miserable condition, there is no line he won't cross to become [BIG].
Dante from Devil May Cry fits this trope incredibly well. He constantly messes around with the demons trying to kill him, such as pretending to fall for Dagon's trick by flirting with the Rusalkas, playfully sits on the flaming tail of Berial, treats the giant Cerberus like a puppy, and acts like the deadly Cavaliere Angelo is just Trish in an oversized halloween costume. The reason he acts like this, however, is because he's just so powerful that none of these are an actual threat to him. He could easily defeat any demon that faces him, but that's not nearly as fun for him. Not to mention that, despite using conventional weapons such as swords, gauntlets, and guns, he also tends to use strange objects as weapons, including a guitar, a briefcase, a motorbike, and a cowboy hat. And these are just as powerful and useful to him as slicing demons up normally. However, should the situation get serious, Dante stops toying with his enemies and becomes deadly. The only times he does this are at the end of Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, and when facing Urizen and Vergil in Devil May Cry 5.
King K.Rool of Donkey Kong Country fame is easily one of Nintendo's goofiest villains; he's a fat crocodile king with a Mad Eye who is obsessed with stealing DK's banana hoard, and is known for taking on multiple personas in relation to his plans. However, beneath the silly exterior lies one of Nintendo's most ruthless and unrepentant villains, whose plans escalated from stealing the Kong family's banana hoard to eat them himself and take over their island, to eventually trying to wipe them out along with the entire island with the Blast-O-Matic.
The protagonist can be played with this personality. Snarky!Hawke frequently uses Buffy Speak and Obfuscating Stupidity to lure their opponents into a false sense of security that they can't possibly be that dangerous, right? In reality, s/he frequently shows him/herself to be arguably the most intelligent of the three possible personalities. A good example would be when the party runs into a group of slavers.
Slaver: Why, look here boys, Volunteers! Clap 'em in irons and let's see what the Tavinters will pay for them. Hawke: I'd make a terrible slave. I talk too much. [suddenly draws knife and puts it to the leader's throat before the bastard even has time to blink] ...And, I do that.
Merrill's social unawareness and clumsiness form a major portion of the humor in the game. She's also a blood mage with no spells other than those designed to inflict very painful deaths.
Dragon Ball Xenoverse: You can create a male Majin character, which, much like his ancestor, is fat and goofy-looking while also being able to take on some of the most powerful individuals in the series.
The Goof-off/Jester/Gadabout class of Dragon Quest III is just that — they will often disregard your commands and do something random and useless. Plus, they have all-around low stats, so they do very little even when they follow orders. Then they get a free class change into a Sage, which is one of the best classes in the game.
Porky Minch from EarthBound (1994) is a cowardly fat kid with a stupid name. By the final act, he's acting as the herald of a deranged cosmic entity, and by Mother 3, he's the immortal leader of The Empire, has learned how to use PSI to the point of using Giygas-like incomprehensible attacks, and is so insane from having lived so long that he'll gleefully destroy the entire world just because he's bored.
Throughout the series since practically the beginning, the Lizard Folk Argonians were largely considered a joke among the fandom and in-universe. Given their tendencies towards being Cloudcuckoolanders, coming up with Zany Schemes, being a Slave Race to the Dunmer, and having names like Hides-His-Eyes, Scouts-Many-Marshes, and Nine-Toes, it isn't hard to see why. That all changed when, in between Oblivion and Skyrim, they took severallevels in badass as a race. They were one of the few races to not only successfully endure the Oblivion Crisis, but to take actually take the fight to the invading Daedra, forcing the invaders to close their own Oblivion Gates because Argonians were invading Oblivion. When Morrowind, homeland of the Dunmer, was devastated following the RedYear, they took the opportunity to invade, biting back for generations of enslavement while capturing Morrowind's plentiful valuable ebony reserves. By the time of Skyrim, it is strongly implied that they're one of two nations who could hope to stand against the AldmeriDominion, the other being the Redguards of Hammerfellnote This may largely be due to the ineptitude of the Cyrodilic Empire and the political disarray of both High Rock and Skyrim. Their development into a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass race is implied to be a result of the Hist, sentient and possibly Omniscient trees native to the Black Marsh whom the Argonians worship. Young Argonians drink the sap of the Hist to grow, and the Hist can communicate with the Argonians via visions transmitted in the sap. It is said that the Hist foresaw the Oblivion Crisis and other coming troubles, so they've been changing the Argonians to make them stronger and more aggressive tools of war. It also works to justify their changing appearance throughout the series.
Sheogorath: Now you. You can call me Ann Marie. But only if you're partial to being flayed alive and having an angry immortal skip rope with your entrails.
This is also the case for Sanguine, the Daedric Prince of Debauchery and Hedonism. As "fun" and affable as he might seem, it is important to remember that he represents the "darker" aspects of human nature as well. For all the revelry, his actions turn someone into an alcoholic. For all the fulfilled lust, there are broken relationships and failed marriages. He exists to tempt mortals into sin through vice. Not to mention that some people can derive pleasure from things other than getting drunk and laid every night. That said, he does have limits. Things such as murder and torture, for instance, do not fall under his sphere, but Mephala's and Molag Bal's.
In the series lore, the Tang Mo, an Akaviri race of "monkey-folk", are said to be kind and brave but also simple and mad. Despite this, they are able to raise armies when they must in order to defend themselves from their many hostile neighbors, always succeeding.
In Morrowind, Mages Guild Archmage Trebonious Artorius is one. He is an extremely talented Battlemage, but he is utterly incompetent at managing Guild affairs. To keep him from causing problems elsewhere, his mainland superiors, in a combination of Kicked Upstairs and Reassigned to Antarctica, put him in charge of the Vvardenfell Guild branch, the branch in the most backwater district of the Empire where he would do the least damage. He spends his days giving his underlings (who consider him a Pointy-Haired Boss) Impossible Tasks (like counting all of the silverware in Vvardenfell or digging a tunnel to the mainland) while acting petty and immature to those who offend him. One option for taking over the Guild is to defeat him in a duel to the death. Need we remind you that he is still a very talented Battlemage?
Skyrim has Cicero, the mad jester and Keeper of the Night Mother. At first, his wheezing giggle, eccentric personality, and high-pitched voice are merely obnoxious. Then he attacks Astrid, wounds Veezara, and disappears to the empty Dawnstar Sanctuary after wounding Arnbjorn (a werewolf) in hot pursuit. He will continue to taunt the player from the shadows of the Sanctuary as the player fights through a legion of Spectral Assassins, though he grows increasingly panicky as the player continues to progress. When you finally reach him, he surrenders, already mortally wounded from his encounter with Arnbjorn... except he lied; he's not mortally wounded, and if you decide not to spare him, he will get up and prove way tougher than any scrawny, bleeding jester should have any right to be. He will make mincemeat out of you if you aren't ready.
Caesar's Legion. Look past their constant misuse of Latin and their ridiculous costumes (sports gear kitbashed to resemble Roman legionary armour) and you'll see nothing more than a pack of misogynistic slavers and cruel sadists who possess the cunning, ruthlessness, and numbers to pose a grave threat to the people of the Mojave and, unless someone stops them there, potentially far beyond.
The entire Think Tank, along with Dr. Mobius. They're severely displaced in both time and general common sense, they frequently screw up their own experiments or just take extremely stupid directions to start with, and are so disconnected from reality that they think your fingers are penises. Generally, they mix their Mad Scientist-tier intelligence with general stupidity brought on from several factors to hilarious effect, with each member bringing their own quirk to add to it. And then you realize that they want your help to escape the Big Empty, and just what they intend to do with the Mojave Wasteland. An ending cut from the game lets you know that, had they run rampant, they'd have turned the entire Wasteland into their own personal laboratory, and would've killed millions in experiments both cruel and idiotic. Even their previous exploits show some of this danger: Mobius alone was capable of building a giant robot scorpion that'd easily trample a small army. Borous made Cazadores and Nightstalkers, more or less because he just wanted to. The five working in tandem subdued Ulysses. And every single thing you find in the Big Empty that tries to kill you? They made all of them.
The original silly villain is Garland ("I will knock you all down!") from the first Final Fantasy. Who knew that the very first boss you fight would wind up being the final boss, Chaos, in a hugeEvil Plan?
Kefka Palazzo of Final Fantasy VI. Over the course of the game he goes from a cacklingnutjob in clown makeup with fairly unremarkable combat abilities to a Physical God (but still a cackling nutjob in clown makeup, with the exception of the final boss fight). This carried over to the Dissidia Final Fantasy games. Yes, he's the Chaos Warrior most likely to crack a joke about farting and has a walk silly enough to get him into the Ministry, but when the situation calls for it, he's incredibly conniving and dangerous. In fact, it even turns out that he's the one who jumpstarted the rivalry between Cloud and Sephiroth.
Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy V. Every times he opens his mouth, it's for either a Badass Boast, a biting insult, or some random pop culture reference. Sometimes all at once. And despite being both a complete nutter and the source of most of the game's funniest moments, he's still able to level entire armies singlehandedly, survive onslaughts from ancient sealed monsters, and one-shot an endgame boss. And this is before he started hopping The Multiverse.
Vauthry from the Shadowbringers story in Final Fantasy XIV is a hugely obese man that rules Eulmore with an iron fist; what he says is the law and everything he does is righteous and just in his eyes. Anyone who crosses him even slightly is either kicked out of the city, killed, or gets turned into a Sin Eater. When Alphinaud insults him and walks away, Vauthry throws himself to the floor, bangs his fists in a tantrum, and demands to have Alphinaud killed. The scene makes him look incredibly childish, and it's easy to dismiss him as a big fat baby that can't get his way. Much later on, he brainwashes his citizens to attack the Scions and player character when they arrive in the city to confront him. By the time the heroes reach him, Vauthry becomes eerily calm while stating that he is going to get his revenge on the Scions for killing his precious Sin Eaters. Vauthry then reveals that he is a Sin Eater himself and flies away while uprooting a mountainside into the air to make a new paradise for himself. He also proves to be very deadly in battle when confronted for the last time.
Also from XIV is Godbert Manderville. A known business mogul and philanthropist, Godbert is one of the richest men in Eorzea and a genius goldsmith. He also walks around with a dapper tuxedo jacket and very tight shorts, regularly gets oddly in-depth oil massages, does childish dances at the drop of a hat, and is known to strip to his underwear at the slightest provocation. What hasn't been mentioned yet is that his idea of a morning constitutional is to slaughter giant monsters with his bare hands, he can perform wrestling maneuvers that send both himself and his victim sky high, and is himself nigh-invulnerable to harm. Thankfully, he's an acquaintance and ally of the player character.
Henry: Oh, don't let all the joking around fool ya — I've got kind of a thing for killing.
Setsuna from Fire Emblem Fates is an extremeCloud Cuckoolander and Butt-Monkey, to the point where several other characters are absolutely baffled that she managed to become Hinoka's retainer. However, Hinoka chose her because Setsuna is a genuinely skilled archer who's capable of pulling her weight on the battlefield despite all her quirks.
A heroic example: Tyrell from Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is blatantly set up as the bumbling sidekick. He starts the game by getting into trouble over his head and breaking valuable equipment, he makes fun of the bad guys' names, he identifies an extinct settlement as such by the lack of food, and he flips out and attempts a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Arcanus.
Halo: the Grunts are mostly comic relief cannon fodder enemy units, but that doesn't make them harmless. They can be surprisingly accurate with their grenade tosses and some of them carry heavy weaponry like Fuel Rod Guns, which can ruin your day real quick. Even in-universe, there was an event known as "The Grunt Rebellion" in the Covenant's past, which the Prophets refer to as a "time of extraordinary crisis". A Terminal in Halo 2 shows that the Grunt Rebellion very nearly destroyed High Charity, the Covenant capital, which could have ruined the entire empire.
Hiveswap's Marvus Xoloto is literally clown-themed and speaks in an unholy mangling of text-speak and ebonics: "U JUGGZ REDDY 2 COOK?" He's also casually responsible for the deaths of almost everyone at each of his concerts just for his own convenience, forces Joey into playing a deadly game requiring her to kill, or at least fake killing, randomly-selected trolls, and is heavily implied to be mind-controlling/brainwashing his whole fanbase.
Jade Empire: The prime source of comic relief is BlackWhirlwind. He's half as tall as anyone else on your team, he's got more chest hair than every other person in the game combined, and he dual-wields axes that look like the main character might have trouble lifting one. Also, you can ask him about his past, and be regaled with cheerful and silly stories that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he's a terrifying sociopath who is capable of killing anyone for any reason, sees nothing wrong with this, and should not be allowed to be anywhere near innocent people.
Palutena, the Goddess of Light and the Big Good of the series, is more of a Genki Girl than a goddess, a certified Deadpan Snarker who trolls Pit at every opportunity she gets. But if the situation calls for it, she's just as capable of kicking ass. In Chapter 3, if Pit takes too long to defeat Hewdraw, she'll summon the Sacred Goddess Clobberlaser to one-shot it. She also serves as the boss of Chapter 20, showing just how powerful she can be when she decides to cut loose.
Hades is essentially this game's Tim Curry. His flamboyant, snarky and sometimes flirtatious attitude makes it hard to take him seriously. But this is the God of the Underworld we're talking about, and he's every bit as powerful as a Physical God should be, as his fights with Pit will attest. This is a guy who can and sometimes will destroy entire countries for fun and is cunning enough to get entire nations to fight each other over a nonexistent item.
Thanatos, the God of Death, is basically an Expy of the Mad Hatter. He's childish, goofy, and a bigger Butt-Monkey than Pit himself. But he is likewise far from harmless. This is especially evident in the anime short Thanatos Rising, in which he effortlessly defeats a human army and takes control of their Trojan horse tanks. And he nearly kills Pit soon after.
Viridi, the Goddess of Nature, is one of the snarkiest characters in the game and looks (and acts), like an 8-year-old brat. But as her debut chapter shows, her capacity for destruction is deadly real thanks to her Reset Bombs.
Phosphora, Viridi's Dragon, is a laid-back and flirtatious Valley Girl... one who has the power of the storm at her disposal and is just as capable as Pit of taking on gods. Thanatos learns this the hard way.
Pyrrhon, the self-proclaimed Sun God, is the biggest ham in the game and the epitome of the over-the-top superhero parody. His loud, boisterous attitude makes it hard for anyone to take him seriously... At least until it's revealed that he was using everyone's help to take control of the Aurum Brain and become the strongest god in existence. But then his plan backfires a few minutes later.
Nugget from Kindergarten is generally just a very odd little boy obsessed with chicken nuggets and digging holes who is, in his own words, "relatively harmless". Keyword being "relatively". He also considers using a Poison and Cure Gambit to get his prospective new Only Friend to poison the resident Barbaric Bully to death an appropriate retaliation for said bully throwing food at him during lunch, and if you hit his Berserk Button by throwing something into the Nugget Cave, the very deep pit he dug in the sandbox, without his permission, he'll throw you in after it, causing you to fall to your death. And that's not even getting into how he knowingly causes the apocalypse in the secret endings of both the first and second game.
Demyx is a great example. The first time you run into him, in Hades's lair, he is running away from him. Then, during the battle at Hollow Bastion, you have to fight him. Pushover, right? No.
To an extent, Axel, for those who haven't played Chain of Memories. At first, he's just a Punch-Clock Villain who wants to grab Roxas and go home. Then you fight him as Roxas. Somehow, you never really forget that moment whenever you deal with Axel afterwards.
Donald Duck frequently served as comic relief throughout the series. Then in Kingdom Hearts III he casts the most powerful Black Magic spell in existence Zettaflare unassisted, a feat only previously accomplished by a powered-up Airy in Bravely Default, making Donald one of, if not thesingle most powerful mage in the Square Enix multiverse. That is why the King appointed him as Royal Court Magician. He's goddamn dangerous.
Kirby has had his fair share of silly characters, but the one that takes the cake is Sillydillo from Kirby and the Forgotten Land. An armadillo with a face hard-locked into a dopey gaze, Sillydillo is a Collector of the Strange, his lair littered with detritus of the titular Forgotten Land. However, he is also a cunning fighter, luring Kirby into a trap with a doll of his buddy Elfilin, and being able to do something no Kirby enemy, not even the various Eldritch AbominationTrue Final Bosses have ever been able to do: One-Hit Kill the pink puffball.note The only attack that comes close is Star Dream Soul OS'Desperation Attack, and even that attack would leave a sliver of health if Kirby had full health when hit. With Sillydillo, it doesn't matter how much health you have. If you don't escape that cage in 10 seconds, you're done.
Kirby Super Star: Marx looks like a jester, but turns out to be a Manipulative Bastard who tricks Kirby into finding Nova in an elaborate plan to conquer Popstar.
Knights of the Old Republic: HK-47 isn't the most effective combatant on your team note Well, unless you upgrade him, but he's an assassin droid tailor-built by the greatest Sith Lord in recent memory and has a very impressive kill count.
League of Legends is full of these characters, both gameplay and lore wise:
Veigar is generally seen as ridiculous, in large part thanks to being short, having a very high-pitched voice, and then there's the whole scheme to steal Bandle City's monument-thing using helium balloons and horseshoes. He also happens to have one of the highest burst damage potentials in the game, as well as being one of only two characters that have a potentially infinite offensive scaling.
Dr. Mundo. He's huge, he's purple, he talks in the third person, he has a silly voice, and he has silly dialogue. He is also a serial killer who regularly engages in human experimentation.
Tahm Kench exploits this trope. A giant, fat catfish humanoid with a comically tiny hat atop his big head, two coats sewn together to fit on him, and an almost stereotypical Cajun accent. Which leaves his victims vulnerable, as this goofy fish man is in truth a man-eating, deal-making, soul-stealing demonic monstrosity that can go anywhere in the world like it's a casual stroll because to him, it's all just a river, and he's its king.
Ghirahim, the Big Bad of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, could be considered an inversion, as the "beware" side is seen first when he mentions that he created the tornado to capture Zelda. He displays his silliness in his campy lines and hand gestures after Link gets to meet him.
The Yiga Clan in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Their obsessions with Mighty Bananas, combined with the goofy Large Ham persona of their leader, may lead you to think that the Yiga Clan are just comical foes like the Bokoblins. But then you learn about Dorian's backstory as a former Yiga Clan member. The Yiga Clan, in response to his defection, killed his wife and now threaten to kill his children if he does not give up information about Link and Kakariko Village. Even when he complies to their wishes, the clan members decide to execute him for outliving his usefulness, and would have succeeded if Link had not intervened. Despite their goofy demeanor, they are still a ruthless and murderous clan carrying out Ganon's will.
Green Lantern from The LEGO Movie Videogame, like his movie counterpart, is annoying, dopey, and just a little too interested in Superman. In the movie he's only there as Comic Relief and to take a beating, but in the game he's not only the only character with flight and a projectile-type attack, but is also the only character capable of moving green bricks. Once he's unlocked there's little reason to use any other character unless you need their unique abilities for a specific task.
It would be easy to dismiss the incredibly odd Goro Majima. Between the bad haircut, seeming allergy to shirts, eyepatch, occasional cross-dressing, and constantly calling the incredibly intimidating Kiryu "Kiryu-chan", he doesn't seem a threat. He's also a high-ranking Yakuza captain, and has proven himself capable of dismantling entire rival yakuza families on his own when he's pissed off.
The Hirose family in Yakuza 6. Their patriarch is a semi-senile old fart, and his four subordinates aren't exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer. However, said subordinates are more than capable of wiping the floor with dozens of competitors, and the patriarch is a still-active assassin with a body count in the three digits who runs on Obfuscating Stupidity and is more than capable of scaring the living daylights out of a man half his age who holds a gun to his head, without raising his voice.
Tom Bombadil does it again in The Lord of the Rings Online. In this game, he rambles nonsensically about his past and the place he lives in, and at one point goes so far as to accidentally (maybe) scatter Bingo's manuscript all over the Old Forest and Barrow-downs. He's also the one who saves the player during their first encounter with Sambrog the Wight-lord, and is personally responsible for the cursed spirits haunting the Red Swamp. Long ago, a sect of Arnorians was assigned to keep watch over his sister-in-law, but failed to do so, allowing her to turn evil. Tom cursed them in much the same way Isildur cursed the Dead Men of Dunharrow — they may never depart the world until their oath is fulfilled. Tom Bombadil may act silly, but he can be downright nasty when he wants to be.
Jeff "Joker" Moreau is the snarktastic guy who flies the ship, and would snap in half if you picked him up and shook him hard. He's the guy who fires the shot that kills Sovereign. By the third game, he's considered the best pilot in the Systems Alliance, and possibly all of Council space. By a significant margin, at that.
Mass Effect 2: Mordin Solus is an unintimidating salarian doctor who sings Gilbert and Sullivan and participates in children's shows about science. He also has purely offensive combat powers, used to be part of the salarian Special Tasks Group (his outfit is a lab coat worn over a commando uniform), and he once killed a krogan by stabbing him (or possibly her) in the face with a pitchfork. It is revealed that the reason his clinic in Omega was left alone is because when gangmembers came to threaten it he simply strode outside, shot them dead where they stood before they could react, and went back to work healing people.
The Volus in the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer are 3-foot-tall mole men with an obsession with cash, and while they can't exactly take on a 10-foot tall-mech by beating it with its face like a krogan can, they have a lot of tech and biotic powers that manage to turn enemy troopers into so many red smears. You can also add the Batarian Gauntlet to their equipment. With it, they can punch their enemies in the nuts so hard it causes their heads to explode. Explanation Killing an infantry-level opponent with the Batarian Gauntlet Heavy melee causes their heads to splatter. However, this effect happens on every species, even when you're playing a volus, who are waist-high at most.
In Mass Effect: Andromeda, Snark!Ryder comes across at times as the last person who should be given a position of influence and power, but all Ryders get some beautiful lines in. At one point, Invictor, a leader from the evil alien antagonist faction, keeps taunting Ryder with messages that begin, "I am Invictor!" and then go on to describe something horrible. Ryder responds to one about how he would kill any captives, but he wouldn't bother taking any, with:
Mega Man (Classic) has Dr. Wily, who loses to a blue guy on a regular basis, but at the same time is a brilliant scientist capable of creating robots with great powers. His greatest creation, Zero, even outlasts Dr. Light's last creation, X, and saves all of humanity (though X is active for much longer). Even after he's dead and buried, his legacy has yet to fade from the series. The Virus he made with Zero was the origin of Sigma, and was adapted to make the Dark Elf. His Battle Network counterpart never stops being a credible threat; every time he's stopped, he's minutes from causing The End of the World as We Know It.
Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat is Hollywood royalty and acts the part completely, being vain, selfish, always cracking jokes, and never seeming to take things seriously. The other kombatants mock him for either his films, his lack of discipline, or simply his attitude. Even Raiden doesn't give him any respect. But he's just as capable in kombat as anyone else. Oh, and he beat the shit out of an elder god who was threatening his family. No, really.
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide brings us Deekin Scalesinger, a kobold bard whose songs are the wrong kind of good, and who constantly makes some of the silliest, lampshade-laden observations possible. By Kingmaker, he's the best support character you can get, and also an epic-level adventurer who's got enough draconic blood to sprout wings and have fiery breath, not to mention being the only one capable, without your intervention, of telling an archdevil to go screw himself when asked to betray you.
The Multi-Tier Type machine lifeform is a comically tall Stubby made out of the torsos of multiple Stubbies stacked on top of each other. It has no arms nor any method of attack whatsoever, and simply lumbers around awkwardly until the player slaughters it. Later in the game, though, these extra torsos get equipped with guns and start rotating, turning these previously harmless enemies into walking Bullet Hell generators.
Emil is just a cheerful, spherical disembodied head with a child's voice attached to a tuk tuk. Not a character to take seriously in the slightest. There are certain things you can do to trigger a couple of boss fights with him, however, at which point he quickly reminds the player that not only was he a Person of Mass Destruction in the original Nier, but he was able to single-handedly hold off the alien invasion for thousands of years.
Jasper Batt Jr. from No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Setting aside the fact that he used his pizza empire to climb to the top of the UAA and was the one who ordered the hit on Bishop, most players will think, "He's just a scrawny, bucked-tooth nerd with a hilariously bad sense of fashion. How bad can he be?" Then they actually fight the guy and he turns out to be one of the most irritating bosses in video game history.
In OFF, the first two Guardians have intimidating designs: Dedan is a foul-tempered Monstrous Humanoid with a wicked-looking jaw and Japhet is a beautiful phoenix. Enoch is... an enormously fat man in a suit with a silly smile. However, he is also the most powerful of the Guardians and is completely invincible until the Batter tires him out. And even after that, he still can put up a good fight.
Temenos from Octopath Traveler II is a snarkytroll who constantly shows diregard for things like rank and protocol during investigations and the very church he's supposed to be serving. However, he's more than capable of taking care of himself, as he immediately knocks out a heretic who tries to kidnap him in his first chapter, and unleashes a surprisingly-furious beatdown on Cubaryi and Kaldena for all they've done throughout his story, in particular killing Crick.
Florian from Overlord II is a bumbling, useless buffoon whose entire purpose appears to be to embarrass the elven race, right up until it's revealed that he is actually the Big Bad and built The Empire purely so he could transform himself into a god. He also happens to be the one who triggered the magical disaster that turned everyone against magic in the first place.
In Persona 5, the Shadow Selves your party targets are often ridiculous looking, but they rule their own Palace and serve as major Boss Battles. These include: a giant-headed, lazy-eyed pink demon wearing nothing but a crown, cape, and underpants; a gray-haired man dressed like a Jidaigeki lord in a tacky golden kimono, too much white face paint, and giant fake eyebrows; a purple fly (and fly) man with a mustache, bad comb-over, and white tuxedo; a bubble-helmeted blue alien straight out of a sci-fi B-movie; and a Black Knight wearing the evil version of the hero costumes from a children's Sentai TV Show Within a Show.
The modrons in Planescape: Torment are practically comic relief, behaving like socially awkward and poorly programmed robots that are very easy to kill. Then you get hit by the Mechanus Cannon spell for the first time — the first spell to get its own cutscene — and they cease to be as funny.
While most players know that Badass Adorable creatures run rampant in the franchise, there are still a few 'mons that are hard to take seriously on the surface. For example:
Vanilluxe, the double-scoop that tops off a line of smiling ice cream cones. Goofy looking, sure, but statistically tied with Lapras as the strongest non-legendary Ice type. It's got especially good special attack, learns Sheer Cold naturally, and as of Generation VII it gets Snow Warning as an ability.
Palossand and to a lesser extent its pre-evolution Sandygast. They are haunted living sandcastles, with a spade still stuck in them. Not exactly the most badass object to haunt; how dangerous can they be, really? And then you find out that Sandygast can Mind Control anyone who puts a hand in its mouth to be its slave. Now think, who would be most likely to do that? And Palossand are able to trap creatures in sand vortexes and Life Drain them until they straight-up die, their vengeful spirits turning into new Sandygast.
Gholdengo, which can best be described as "golden string cheese man." It may look as goofy as the description sounds, but not only does its Good as Gold ability make it immune to any status moves that target it, it also has a monstrous Special Attack base total of 135, putting it directly behind Chandelure as the most powerful non-Mega non-Legendary Ghost-type. On top of that, it can learn Metal Sound and Nasty Plot to boost its special attacks as well as Recover to guarantee that its wide-spreading signature move, Make It Rain, hits hard.
Wheatley from Portal 2 starts off as a chatty, dense little Robot Buddy who attempts to guide Chell through the facility and keeps her under GLaDOS's radar. While his advice isn't always helpful, he saves Chell multiple times and is generally quite nice to her. That is, up until the very end of Chapter 5, during the Core Transfer-scene. After Wheatley is put in charge of the facility in GLaDOS's place, he — at first — attempts to get Chell out. Except when the lift is almost at the top, he starts laughing, which quickly turns into an Evil Laugh. Wheatley's Face–Heel Turn is set in motion, and when GLaDOS reveals that Wheatley was built with the express purpose of being stupid (to be specific, he was built with the specific purpose of making bad decisions in any given situation, which perfectly explains him suddenly turning on Chell), he completely loses it. He stuffs GLaDOS's consciousness into a potato and punches you both down an elevator shaft, into Old Aperture. Wheatley has now become the newBig Bad, and not only does he have one hell of a grudge against you, his gross incompetence in running the facility paired with the fact that Aperture uses a nuclear reactor as a power source make him a more dangerous villain than GLaDOS could ever dream of being.
Sheath from Project X Zone 2 speaks in broken English and acts bubbly and air-headed. While she's a fairly manageable enemy normally, in the penultimate stage, she's piloting the 9-9 Mini-Mecha, which has a massive range, is mobile, and can hit for tons of damage. Underestimate her and she'll do to you what she does to the Japanese language.
Reverse: 1999 has some silly characters that have some very dark, serious sides to them.
Diggers is portrayed as a hypocritical radical activist hippie, wanting to use his art to upend the "System" and bring about his ideal utopia, but is also willing to use that same "System" to take down others who disagree and mock his plans by suing them in court. He is also a highly competent criminal who knows how to break into police stations, forge official documents, steal and illegally modify firetrucks, and has drugged countless innocent pedestrians using his dream-inducing bubble fluid, possibly for days at a time.
X is an analyst for the Laplace Scientific Computing Center, associated with the St. Pavlov Foundation. He has an obsession with Rube Goldberg machines and overcomplicated gadgets, the latter of which oftentimes backfires on him in hilarious fashion due to lack of proper testing or lethal oversight on his part. He still has a body count in the dozens using all of those Rube Goldberg machines to kill people, though he still prefers not to be sent out in the field if he can help it.
Dimwit the Goblin, AKA Yelps, is a scrawny wannabe game-show host who lives up to both of his names. His sole purpose in life was to operate a Wheel of FortuneExpy and to get punched in the face by a crude machine as part of said minigame, and he reveled in this. However, his voice when he cheered players on was apparently so annoying that 42% of the playerbase voted to have him killed off. No one expected this to occur in the form of a boss fight wherein the tiny goblinoid transformed into a spinning, teleporting dervish capable of dealing massive, rapid damage, summoning groups of high-levelled minions, becoming temporarily invincible, and sporting a health bar exceeding that of the literal mother of all dragons.
Sliske looks and acts like a hunchbacked snarky clown when he's not double-dealing or outright forcibly controlling mortals into becoming his undead thralls, murdering Guthix, kidnapping Death and the Dragonkin to bring about a new God War, or urging you to cripple Zaros, his own patron god. Possibly the worst part is that he manages to be darkly hilarious even while committing the aforementioned atrocities.
The Boss from Saints Row. Has been known to do such things as streak, vehicle surf, vehicle surf naked, spray feces on buildings from a stolen septic truck, dress up as a sex doll, dress up as a toilet, wield a dildo bat and fart bombs, get electrocuted by licking a flagpole during a thunderstorm, auction themself off as a sex slave, star in a godawful B movie, sing along very badly to 80s songs, and participate in amateur night at a strip club. Also, has killed more people than the average war, became president of the United States, has a suit of Powered Armor and a time machine, is currently God-Emperor of the universe, and was handpicked by Satan to be his successor until two of their subordinates caused enough trouble to get them permanently banned from Hell.
Mara, a reoccuring foe in the Shin Megami Tensei series, is notorious for taking the form of an enormous phallus-shaped worm riding a bladed chariot who threatens the player characters with blatant Double Entendres like "It will only take one thrust to penetrate your frail form and finish you off completely!" He's also notorious for being a powerful high-level demon, sometimes serving as a Superboss.
Kaos, the Big Bad of Skylanders, is an Expy of Invader Zimnote right down to the voice. His first battle with the heroes ends with the Core of Light, the only thing keeping Skylands safe from the forces of Darkness, destroyed along with most of their HQ, and all the Skylanders plus their Big Good MIA.
Consider that Sonic Unleashed starts off with Sonic tearing his way through Eggman's space fleet. Let's read that again: Eggman's space fleet. Said opening also shows what happens when anyone — Sonic included — underestimates Eggman, as it ends with him nullifying Super Sonic and breaking the Earth into pieces.
In Sonic the Hedgehog CD, Eggman single-handedly conquers Little Planet, reducing it to a post-apocalyptic dystopia with no organic life in sight in the future. That should give you an idea of what the Earth's fate would be if Sonic wasn't around to put a stop to his every scheme.
In Sonic Adventure 2, he starts off the plot by personally destroying a big chunk of a top-secret military installation and hacking the computer security system surrounding the Sealed Evil in a Can. Mind you, he accomplishes all this using just the Egg Walker II, a mech that is among Eggman's most modest creations. Later, the first thing he does after getting the ARK and the Chaos Emeralds is blow up half the moon and give the entire world a 24 hour "surrender-or-die" demand.
In the ending of Sonic Chronicles, Eggman doesn't go with the rest of the gang to stop Ix, claiming that he needs to operate some groundside machine to let the others through. Thanks to the differential time flow inside Ix's prison, by the time Sonic et al get out, Eggman's rebuilt Eggmanland and may well have taken over the world.
And then there's Sonic Colors. Not only is Eggman the Big Bad for the entirety of the game, but had it not been for a broken piece of a robot damaging a vital component of his latest weapon, he would've succeeded in his ultimate plan to mind-control the entire population of Earth with Sonic and Tails none the wiser. He has also managed to enslave three planets and an inhabited Asteroid Thicket, as well as build the largest space fleet seen yet, completely under Sonic's nose, and covered much of the land on all of the planets and asteroids with his own metal facilities. He would've completely snuffed Planet Wisp of life as well had Sonic not caught on in time, and he may have succeeded with Sweet Mountain. Really, Colors would have ended up as a victory for Eggman if it weren't for one simple fact: The hero was actually being proactive rather than atypically reactive. Rather than wait for the villain to begin his rampage, the hero decided to investigate his machinations without any reason other than he is an irredeemable villain.
In Sonic Forces, Eggman has actually taken over the world, thanks to a mysterious gemstone called the Phantom Ruby. With the help of a former mercenary named Infinite, they have defeated Sonic and taken him to the Death Egg's prison cells. He even shows up with a Phantom Ruby-powered Death Egg Robot near the end of the game, but is defeated by a trio consisting of Sonic, Classic Sonic, and the Avatar.
Sonic. He is generally a plucky, carefree guy who often searches for excitement, spends most of his time cracking jokes, and is hardly ever serious. His silliness usually annoys his more serious rivals, like Knuckles or Shadow, or even the aforementioned goofy Eggman himself. And where he goes he's usually wearing a grin on his face... all while plowing through destructive forces of nature. And when he gets all of the Chaos Emeralds... one might want to watch out. And let's not forget the time Sonic turned into Darkspine Sonic and ruthlessly kicked Erazor Djinn's ass.
Purge from Space Channel 5 Part 2. At first, he seems just as goofy and camp as everyone else in the game. He constantly giggles, pelvic thrusts, and dons a sparkly purple disco suit for your penultimate dance-off. With Michael Jackson and a giant laser at your side, all it should take is one attack to finish him off! ... "Tch,yeahright!"
Star Control has its fair share of ridiculous aliens who are much more dangerous than they seem:
The Spathi are these ridiculous clam creatures who live in perpetual fear of virtually everything. They also advanced from the Bronze Age into the Atomic Age in under a century in response to the arrival of the Evil Ones (they wanted to escape to the Moon, you see), and a Spathi Eluder is one of the best ships in the game as long as you fight like a Spathi (AKA running away the entire time, blindly firing homing missiles behind you while the decoy crew compartments soak up all the damage). A human veteran of a war against them compared them to "mobile, cowardly clams armed with howitzers".
Orz are weird things that look like floating parrot faces, with a Starfish Language so alien that your translator needs to make guesses, which leads to insanely strange conversations about "parties" and "campers". They're also one of the few races confirmed to have entirely wiped out another, and are, as a whole, just one creature; each individual Orz is just one of its fingers in this dimension.
Pkunk are essentially a pacifistic offshoot of a species of proud warriors which devolved into space hippies with a fondness for word salad metaphors, visions about mundane stuff, and arguing with the supposed spirits giving them their visions. Some of their beliefs are very real, however, including the one about reincarnation; this manifests in how their ships, which are already decent and charge their power by having their crew insult you, can spontaneously resurrect themselves after getting destroyed. Not a good idea to get on their bad side. Their flimsy little ships are also absolutely devastating against the game's final boss.
Thraddash would seem like ineffective brutes; they themselves tell you that they're on their 19th attempt at having a civilization (they nuked themselves to hell 18 times already), and they lose more ships to infighting than to the enemy. However, their Torch ships have vicious afterburners that make them impossible to even touch if properly controlled, and their bullets, while weak, cannot be blocked by anything. Hence, a competent pilot can kill anything through Death of a Thousand Cuts and be untouchable in return.
The Utwig are essentially space emos due to entering a collective depression after breaking their beloved artifact (the Ultron). Even before that, they were silly, what with having a culture revolving around expressing every emotion through a mask, including those involving bodily excretions (they burned them all aside from their mask of ultimate shame to atone). They're also one of the most formidable races out there, having ships with absorbing Deflector Shields that make them almost indestructible if properly used. This is even shown in-game if you fix the Ultron; they join the war and proceed to hold off the Kor-Ah (your main antagonists) for an entire year where most other races couldn't do anything other than get wrecked.
From the Origins continuity, there are the Mowlings, lemming-like critters that worship an ancient AI space probe and die in droves no matter what it is they're doing. But their race's high reproduction rate means that they quickly replace their losses, and Jeff (the aforementioned worshipped space probe) says that they advance in technology astonishingly quickly, and could easily become Sufficiently Advanced Aliens within just a few hundred years. He recommends you keep your distance from them by the time they start fiddling with n-field tech.
Captain: Wouldn't becoming more advanced mean they wouldn't die as often, though? Jeff: That doesn't seem to be how it works.
The same continuity also has the Tywom, who are basically stereotypical nerds who just want to have friends. They're generally (physically) slimy and unpleasant to most races. Their ships are some of the easiest to control and can be pretty devastating if used right. They also don't hesitate to show up to the Final Battle to help you defeat the Big Bad.
Inquisitor:If you think this is bad, you should meet my other personality.
Being the archetypal Lovable Rogue, a good chunk of what The Smuggler says is a snarky or witty remark of some kind, and many enemies dismiss them as a criminal and a trickster. By the end of the story, they're a famed Republic privateer and potentially one of the most powerful crime lords in the galaxy.
F.A.N.G. has a weird fascination with the number 2 and a ridiculous Ultra move, and he prances around like a child. But underneath it all he is Bison's second-in-command and a deadly assassin who can kill you in seconds with his poisonous touch. He also threatens to kill Sean and Li-Fen, who are no younger than roughly 14 and 7, respectively, without a second thought.
Zigzagged with Z-Mega in Super Cosplay War Ultra. He's very blatantly based on Rugal Bernstein, an infamous SNK Boss from the The King of Fighters series, only he's comically weak, all his specials being a sillier version of their original version (i.e., his Repukken has him throwing bowling balls at his opponent, and his God Press has him shoving a cake in his opponent's face). The only particularly hard thing about him is that you get one round to beat him, and if you don't your run instantly ends in a bad ending. But then there's an upgraded version called Shin-Z, based on Rugal's God Rugal incarnation from Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium, who's fought at the end of Battle Royale mode and is just as much of an SNK Boss as you'd expect.
Bowser is often portrayed comically, and sometimes Mario will indeed Go-Karting with Bowser or challenge him to other games, but it's clear that he would probably succeed in taking over the world if Mario and Luigi and allies didn't keep thwarting him. The fact that he manages to actually kill an empowered dark version of himself and pretty much comes close to actually ruling the entire universe in the Super Mario Galaxy games pretty much confirms this.
Mario himself. He's very happy-go-lucky, doesn't think twice about Going Karting With Bowser, and is just a straight-up Fun Personified due to his overall lack of consistent traits. He's also incredibly strong and very nearly never loses a fight, even if his opponent has an unfair advantage.
Luigi. He is often clumsy and skittish and has rather quirky mannerisms, but has been explicitly stated to be even superior to Mario in a lot of areas thanks to his quirks, and has easily managed to save the day both with and without his big bro.
Wario and Waluigi can be this at times. They're always involved in wacky plans when it comes to outdoing the competition, look (and act) pretty strange and bizarre for a pair of humans, and are always outdone by the Mario Bros. However, when push comes to shove, they can be more competent than people actually give them credit for: Wario's taken down plenty of bizarre and uncanny creatures/monstrosities in his own series, and in Mario Party 3, Waluigi takes on Bowser in a one-on-one fight and wins. Heck, in Mario Super Sluggers, they probably would've even killed Mario with their Bullet Bill had Bowser not intervened.
Fawful in the Mario & Luigi series. Oh, he may be funny with his similes and engrish and funny comments... but he manages to conquer the entire kingdom/world unresisted, mind controls pretty much the entire population, and unleashes a monster that wants to destroy reality. He's especially this in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, where he gets promoted from The Dragon in the form of a villain's sidekick to the Big Bad and driver of the entire storyline.
This in turn gets taken up a notch in Paper Mario, thanks to the greater liberties taken with writing and character design:
All the villains of Super Paper Mario are pretty silly, consisting of a loud and stupid Scotsman who can fly by farting, a bratty child obsessed with money, a secretary who talks in Buffy Speak, a Villainous Harlequin prone to incomprehensible metaphors, and the Big Bad who named himself after his own goofy laugh and who reads his own dialogue out of his book of prophecies, complete with dialogue tags ("...said Count Bleck."). They plan to destroy the multiverse, and succeed in destroying at least one universe. And then Dimentio turns out to be The Starscream...
Most characters from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door are silly in their own right, but two of the villains really stand out. Lord Crump is a bumbling, goofy trash talker who is allegedly Grodus's most incompetent henchman, but when the chips are down he repeatedly shows himself to be a savvy schemer, adept at laying traps, and a real threat in battle, since he plays dirty and either brings along his X-Nauts or the Magnus Von Grapple to give himself an advantage. Doopliss, on the other hand is laid back, fun loving, has a sharp mouth, and when faced in battle he has very low stats (being less of a threat than the local enemies). He's also a mercilessly cruel Voluntary Shapeshifter who utilizes a powerful magic only usable by people who keep their name a secret from everyone. Said magic lets him transform an entire village into pigs and outright steal a person's entire identity and appearance, leaving the victim a featureless shadow who can't even say their name anymore. Mario falls victim to this mid-battle, making him unable to harm Doopliss at all, who intends to kill Mario and keep his body for good.
In Paper Mario: The Origami King, Hole Punch has a kooky Disco Dan personality that might seem pretty innocuous compared to his fellow members of the Legion of Stationery, but this groovin' perpetrator is actually one of the most harmful, having punched out the faces of forty Toads just so they would eternally dance with him and punched the sun out of the sky to use it as his personal disco ball.
In Tales of Maj'Eyal, the Embers of Rage expansion includes Nektosh the One-Horned, an undead minotaur who thinks that he's part-unicorn on account of his two horns twisting together into a spiral. He's fought about a third of the way through the campaign, and has given at least one hammy speech that would put Skeletor to shame by that point. The magical beam he can shoot from his "horn" is the most powerful attack in the entire game. (It's easy to see where he's pointing it and get out of the way, but still...) This is because he has an ancient Sher'Tul wand stuck in his "horn" — it's running out of energy, so his last few blasts won't be as impressive as the first few, and eventually he runs out of ammunition entirely.
The Tales Series loves to do this with its mole characters. There's usually one traitor per game, and while they mix it up enough to keep you guessing, it's often the biggest idiots who screw you over the hardest:
Tales of Symphonia has Zelos, team Butt-Monkey and The Casanova, turn on you last second and hand Colette over to the Big Bad. In a way, this scene can double as a Beware the Silly Ones for the villains; they, too, underestimate Zelos, and in certain paths that enables him to save the entire party and rejoin you with a key plot item. Even before his defection is revealed and in spite of his goofiness and apparently dumb behavior, he's still The Chosen of Tethe'alla (read: The Chosen One with Angelic power), much smarter than he looks, a brilliant tactician, and a capable swordsman on par with Kratos.
Tales of Vesperia has Raven, who acts like a grown-up and less flirtatiously successful version of Zelos. He, too, hands your female protagonist over to the Big Bad, and then reveals himself to be Captain Schwann, and then promptly kicks your ass so hard that he's That One Boss for a lot of people. Like Zelos, the Big Bad makes the same mistake, and Raven returns to you later, despite the fact that the villain could literally kill him at any time.
Tales of Graces has a temporally inverted version of this. The bewaring comes first and the silly second. Young Richard is relatively quiet and melancholy, but then he gets possessed by the Big Bad Lambda and goes on the rampage. You spend most of the main plot bewaring of Richard and his terrifying winged form and his Voice of the Legion... and then he gets better, and Richard in the future arc is a Troll and a completely incomparable Large Ham goofball with his own line of fruit snacks.
The final Team Fortress 2"Meet the Team" video reveals something very disturbing about the Pyro: that he, she, or it (take your guess) doesn't see the world the same way everyone else does. The Pyro sees a rainbow blower, a bubbler, and lollipops; everyone else sees searing flames, explosive flares, and a mean fire axe. The Pyro cheers for joy in a psychedelic dream world; others see the Pyro cheer in sadistic glee, a burning town for a backdrop. In a way, it makes the Pyro even scarier.
It'd be hard to find any Touhou Project characters who don't qualify as this, due to their wacky plots and hijinks, and the dangerous (or potentially-dangerous) powers they're capable of using.
Sans is introduced as a terrifying presence stalking you through the woods... up until he lets loose with a ridiculous "whoopee cushion in the hand" gag. From that point on, he presents himself as a lazy, laid-back comic relief character who'd rather hang out with you at the local restaurant than actually do his job. As he eventually confesses, he even promised Toriel that he'd watch over and protect you... and if it hadn't been for that promise, he would have killed you when he first laid eyes on you. It's implied that he knows far more about the situation than he lets on, and even Flowey, in certain lines, admits that he's terrified of Sans and considers him the most dangerous monster in the Underground. If you kill absolutely everyone you run across, you find out why. Painfully. Sans will decide that he can't ignore such a threat and fight you himself. He is, by a wide margin, the most difficult challenge in the game.
Sans's brother Papyrus also fits the trope, although on a lesser scale. When introduced, he's a bumbler whose unrelenting naivete and obsessions with puzzles and spaghetti hinder his goal of joining the Royal Guard. He repeatedly tries to capture you with tricks and traps throughout Snowdin, with no success. Even when he decides to fight you himself, his attacks are inaccurate, he's easily distracted by flirting, and his supposedly legendary "Blue Attack" is totally ineffective... until gravity kicks in. What follows, although not on the level of most of the late-game fights, is one of the game's first real challenges, and note that he's not even paying attention to you during the fight. Indeed, if you compare stats, Papyrus is, going by raw strength, the third most powerful monster in the Underground (and yes, that means that he's stronger than Undyne). Undyne even says that the reason she won't let Papyrus join the Royal Guard isn't because he's weak, but because he's too innocent and nice, and she's scared that he'd get "ripped into little smiling shreds" if she let him fight an actual bad guy. It is often theorized that his battle would be even harder if Papyrus wasn't too nice to want to hurt you. This is corroborated by his dialogue if you spare him on a previously No Mercy playthrough, which strongly insinuates that he can use Gaster Blasters.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Smiling Jack is the first vampire you interact with, and he generally seems to be the vampiric version of your Cool Uncle, gives you solid life advice and generally just seems like a hoot to be around. Make no mistake, though; Jack is the oldest vampire you'll encounter in the game, and has all the skills, powers, cunning and ruthlessness that come with that.
Wild ARMs has Zed. Normally he's a comic relief villain whom neither the heroes nor the other villains take seriously. Then comes a sidequest where you fight his One-Winged Angel form, Monster Zed. Let's just say that you won't be laughing if you're not prepared to have your ass kicked.
Sho Minamimoto doesn't seem like such a big deal when he first appears. He's just some annoying Reaper who screams in a megaphone and makes junk sculptures while talking in math metaphors. Even when you first fight him, he's not too bad. Oh, and he unleashed an army of nearly indestructible monsters on the UG and managed to come back to life in a new body that ends up being one of the hardest optional bosses in the game. Also, HE'S TRYING TO KILL GOD AND ALMOST DID IT TWICE.
There's also Joshua, a smug, spoilt 15-year-old Jerkass who becomes your partner in the second week. He's pretty weak for a while, with powers that include dropping pianos from the sky with his cellphone, constantly teases and mocks Neku, is the only male character who can wear girl's clothing the moment he becomes playable, and is the only person in the entire game who can use a mobile, apparently because he didn't get the message about them being banned. When it becomes apparent that the current situation is more dire than he thought, he stops playing around and becomes the most powerful partner of them all, raining huge beams of holy light down onto enemies with his cellphone rather than pianos. He's also the Big Bad. And God.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Zeke von Genbu is a ridiculous man who constantly makes exaggerated gestures, gives himself silly nicknames, wears an eyepatch just because he thinks it looks cool, and is more than a little dumb. He and his Blade, Pandoria, are introduced as an ineffectual recurring boss who are more a joke than an actual threat. However, the third time they're fought, it's revealed he wasn't taking the previous fights seriously, and is in fact one of the strongest combatants in Alrest, and his skill is such that even Morag, one of the most deadly and fearsome soldiers around, respects his abilities (if not his personality). The battle is considerably tougher than previous fights against him... and it's implied he still wasn't going all out, since his purpose was merely to test you, not to harm you.
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