This page deals with recurring monsters from the Final Fantasy series.
- Debut: Final Fantasy II
Common variants: Gil Turtle, Land Turtle
Turtle-type enemies with thick shells, they boast nigh-impenetrable physical defense, but are vulnerable to ice magic.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: As normal enemies, they tend to be quite tough. They're occasionally boosted up to actually being bosses.
- Giant Mook: Especially in XIII, where they tower over the party like buildings, and a stomp from their feet shakes the ground.
- Even larger in XV where they can be mistaken for the landscape. That one looks like a small island.
- Kill It with Ice: Ice is nearly always their elemental weakness, which makes a certain amount of sense for a reptile.
- Made of Iron: It isn't called Adamantoise for nothing. Physical attacks usually do nothing but tickle them.
- Mighty Glacier: They aren't too fast, but hit hard and have massive defense.
- PiƱata Enemy: Their Gil Turtle variants are aptly named as they frequently drop large amounts of gil.
- Sturdy and Steady Turtles: Usually slow, but very sturdy and strong.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- In XIII, the baby Adamanchelid can deal a Total Party Kill if you challenge it the first time you encounter one, and the adult Adamantortoise can do the same even to a party with maxed out Crystarium. The even stronger Long Gui and Shaolong Gui are effectively Super Bosses.
- Taken to infinity and beyond in XV. The Adamantoise becomes a lvl. 99 Superboss with a whopping 5 million HP that takes players on average about an hour to defeat.
- Debut: Final Fantasy III
Common variants: Evil Eye, Floating Eye, Plague
Flying enemies that specialize in Death and Doom spells.
- Airborne Mook: Always depicted as a winged, flying enemy.
- Degraded Boss: First featured as a boss in Final Fantasy III, it's now a high-level enemy usually found in endgame dungeons.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Often have access to the powerful Quake spell, and occasionally other Earth-aspected magic.
- Giant Eye of Doom: Their iconic trait is their giant eye.
- Oculothorax: They're usually just giant round bodies with an eyeball on the front.
- One-Hit Kill: They wield spells like Death, Doom, Roulette, etc, that can kill party members instantly.
- Debut: Final Fantasy II
Common variants: Dark Behemoth, Kaiser Behemoth, King Behemoth
Some of the most powerful enemies in the game, they're huge monsters that have massive physical power and top-tier magic like Flare and Meteor.
Useless trivia: which side Square chose in the console wars ultimately hinged on which 5th-generation system could handle this enemy in its full 3D complexity.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: They usually appear as random encounters, but are very powerful and challenging.
- Catlike Dragons: The original art◊ for behemoths gave the mammalian creatures dragon-like wings, but said wings didn't make their debut until Final Fantasy XV. Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XVI likewise feature behemoths with vestigial wings, all of which is to imply that even wingless behemoths may have had them at one point, which alongside their innate magic indicates a draconic heritage.
- Counter-Attack: Very often just sits and waits for you to attack it, at which point they unleash a powerful counter blow.
- Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: While behemoths are generally shown to be able to rear up on their hind legs, which they often do when casting Meteor, the specimens encountered in Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 are full on bipedal, and even capable of wielding weapons. In Final Fantasy XIII, most Behemoths start out on four legs and then go up on two legs to wield their swords when their health gets low.
- Giant Mook: They're usually among the largest enemies in a game.
- Guest Fighter: Shows up in Monster Hunter: World, as part of a collaboration event, and is also a boss in Mario Sports Mix, alongside their King Behemoth comrades.
- King Mook: There are often more powerful King Behemoths.
- Lightning Bruiser: In games where they don't just counterattack, they hurt a lot, and are about as fast as a regular Mook.
- Meteor-Summoning Attack: Behemoths frequently have access to Meteor, one of the most powerful spells in the series.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The typical Behemoth looks like a a big cat or bear with bull horns and a finned tail, and rarely wings.
- Taking You with Me: In some games, they cast Meteor on you when they die.
- Debut: Final Fantasy II
Common variants: Balloon, Grenade, King Bomb, Purobolos
Living balls of explosive flame, they react to being damaged by growing angry and inflating themselves larger until the pressure buildup causes them to explode.
- Action Bomb: It's even called "Bomb"!
- Airborne Mook: They float in the air.
- The Cameo: Bombs appear as stage hazards at Bowserās Castle in Mario Hoops 3-on-3.
- Cephalothorax: They're round, sapient bombs with mouths, eyes, and stubby arms.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: They're explosive bomb-like enemies called Bombs.
- Feed It with Fire: In the games where they're not weak against fire, they absorb it. In those cases, Kill It with Ice.
- Guest Fighter: Bombs and Grenades make an appearance in Dragon Quest Tact, being fought during the gameās crossover event with Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.
- An Ice Person: Before Crisis, a prequel of Final Fantasy VII introduces the Ice Bomb, an icy variant of the normal Bombs.
- Kill It with Fire: Often weak to fire. But if it doesn't kill them, it may light their fuse.
- King Mook: Several games feature the King Bomb or Mom Bomb as a boss. Final Fantasy V also features the Purobulos, a stronger variant of them fought in a group of six as a boss.
- Playing with Fire: They can use fire-type attacks, and Exploder is sometimes fire-elemental.
- Punny Name: A group of Bombs you can fight in some hot springs in Final Fantasy XVI are called... Bath Bombs.
- Signature Move: Despite other enemy types having said move, they're always associated with Exploder/Self-Destruct.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Bombs are usually recurring monsters in various games from Final Fantasy II onwards, but their story appearance in Final Fantasy IV, consisting of Cecil and Kain using them to blow up Mist, which is Rydia's hometown note on the King of Baron/Cagnazzoās orders, causes the last straw that broke the camel's back for Cecil's service to Baron, and starts his HeelāFace Turn, and thus, his fight against Golbez note and Zemus.
- Taking You with Me: Has a tendency to blow up on you if you don't kill it quick enough.
- Theme Naming: Its subspecies are often named "Balloon" and "Grenade"; these are other objects that can explode.
- Debut: Final Fantasy VI
Common variants: Gigantuar
Rare enemies, they leave a large amount of Exp, AP and/or gil. The catch is killing them, because they usually boast high defenses or high evade.
- Armored But Frail: Cactuars don't tend to have much health, but their defenses are usually so high that any attackers will struggle to deal more than 1 damage. They also have a high dodge chance, making them even harder to beat.
- Cactus Person: They are cactus creatures that look like people running.
- The Cameo: Shows up in crossover events with the Dragon Quest series, note and is a playable character in Mario Hoops 3 on 3 and Mario Sports Mix.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: Damage from "Thousand Needles" is sometimes applied one HP at a time. Blue Mages who can survive the attack can learn it for their own use.
- Defeat Means Friendship: In games where they're a summon, you usually need to defeat their leader to do so.
- Evolving Attack: Stronger versions of them have 10,000 Needles, and rarely, 100,000 Needles.
- Fixed Damage Attack: Their trademark 1000 Needles always does 1000 damage; it's even the former Trope Namer.
- Killer Rabbit: They're some of the cutest enemies ever... and they will end you if you underestimate them.
- King Mook: Gigantuar/Jumbo Cactuar/Cactuar King
- Last Ditch Move: Some games will have them counter with 1000 Needles on their killer when they die.
- Mascot Mook: Along with the Tonberry, one of the iconic monsters of the series.
- Metal Slime: They give a lot of AP, exp, and/or money, but are very rare and very hard to kill.
- One-Hit Kill: Sometimes they use 10,000 Needles; in most games where they have this, the needles will do at least one point of damage each and your character's max health is 9,999. You do the math.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Usually no taller than a foot.
- Shout-Out: Based off the Japanese Haniwa figurines◊. Their Signature Move is a reference to a Japanese kid's poem, the fate of someone who breaks a promise on a "pinky swear" (a western counterpart would be "cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye").
- Signature Move: 1000 Needles is often all they use, and though it predates their appearance by one game, it's now associated primarily with them.
- Spike Shooter: Their Signature Move, 1000 Needles, has them launch a huge volley of spines at the target.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: Usually you have to hunt down their leader to earn them as a summon.
- Debut: Final Fantasy III
The Anthropomorphic Personification of the void, seeking to return any worlds it manifests in to nothingness.
- Balance Between Good and Evil: In Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy XI it appears whenever this balance is upset to enforce a sort of cosmic reset by destroying all existence with what is called the Flood of Darkness. It III it had even previously manifested as a Cloud of Light, with an accompanying Flood of Light, when said balance tipped too far towards the good side.
- Beam Spam: Its preferred method of attacking is an overwhelming number of lasers, referred to as various flavors of Particle Beam.
- Casting a Shadow: Owing to the common overlap between darkness and the void, its powers frequently appear as dark in nature, not to mention its name is the Cloud of Darkness. This is more explicit in Final Fantasy XIV, where the void it rules over is specifically a world that was flooded with dark energy.
- Eldritch Abomination: The ancient, living embodiment of darkness and/or nothingness, complete with Combat Tentacles. In Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy XIV it also falls into Humanoid Abomination territory, appearing as a human-ish womanāwith tentacles.
- Fighting a Shadow: In all appearances, the Cloud of Darkness cannot truly be destroyed so long as the void it personifies represents exists.
- Final Boss: Of Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy XI: Rhapsodies of Vana'diel.
- No Biological Sex: Despite frequently appearing as woman, the Cloud of Darkness is a genderless manifestation of nothingness. Even so, many people and in-game characters still use female pronouns when addressing the Cloud of Darkness.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Despite being an inherently destructive being, the Cloud of Darkness is driven more by instinct than any malice, and has been described in-universe as more force of nature than villain. Notably averted in Final Fantasy XIV, where the Cloud is a voidsent demon rather than an eldritch immune response.
- Power of the Void: As the manifestation of the void this is its main power set, represented by myriad purple lasers.
- Debut: Final Fantasy II
Common variants: Bandercoeurl, Coeurlregina
Feline enemies with long tentacles in place of whiskers, they often attack in packs.
- Cats Are Magic: some of the more common enemies to use magic attacks without being outright mages.
- Cats Are Mean: Very mean with their nasty Blaster attack.
- Combat Tentacles: Their whiskers/tentacles are often used to attack.
- Panthera Awesome: Large felines that can be hunted for pelts in some games, and are very beautiful but very dangerous.
- Shock and Awe: Sometimes their whiskers are depicted to shock enemies, or otherwise their lightning magic is channeled through them.
- Shout-Out: Based off the feline monster from The Voyage of the Space Beagle.
- Signature Move: Blaster, which either paralyzes you or inflicts a One-Hit KO.
- Debut: Final Fantasy III
Common variants: Iron Claw
Insectoid creatures that look like walking, clawed hands.
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: Essentially the anthropomorphized form of this trope.
- Bears Are Bad News: Final Fantasy VIII's version resembles a bear with four claws in place of its forelimbs.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Literally in Final Fantasy V. During the escape from Karnak Castle, the party is harassed in Random Encounters by a generic looking Sergeant and attack dogs, with the Sergeant always fleeing when the dogs are slain. Once they exit the castle a scripted encounter occurs that looks identical to these prior encounters, except this time instead of fleeing the Sergeant will transform into the boss Iron Claw, a Death Claw Palette Swap.
- Giant Hands of Doom: Their traditional appearance looks like a clawed hand with legs at the base and a face in the palm. Their Final Fantasy XIV appearance does away with the legs, playing this up even further.
- Mecha-Mooks: The common Final Fantasy XIV version is a magitek construct employed by the Allagan and Garlean empires.
- Signature Move: Also called Death Claw, it can inflict HP to One, paralysis, or even One-Hit Kill depending on the game.
- Slaying Mantis: Final Fantasy XII forgoes their traditional appearance in favor of a giant mantis, which also appears in XIV alongside the Giant Hands of Doom appearance. Final Fantasy XV's version has elements of both the mantis and hand forms.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Giant mechanical enemies that tend to be extremely powerful.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Most notable in their first appearance, where (as WarMECH) they're about as powerful as Chaos, essentially making them a superboss in mook clothing. In some games, they appear as actual bosses.
- Chicken Walker: The joints on their mechanical legs appear to bend backwards.
- Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Their Nuke attack is undeniably deadly, but survivable ā something you wouldn't expect for an attack which consists of launching a nuclear missile at the party.
- When All You Have Is a Hammerā¦: They don't tend to have much variety to their attacks, but the moves they do have make them deadly. For example, the original WarMECH has two attacks: a strong physical attack... and nuking the entire party.
- You Don't Look Like You: Some Death Machines in the franchise adopt their Final Fantasy I look, but others look quite different. For example, the one in Final Fantasy VI has two propellers and a human pilot in lieu of legs.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Bahamut, Black Dragon, Blue Dragon, Brachioraidos, Red Dragon, Tiamat, White Dragon, Yellow Dragon
Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Dragons appear through the series as powerful enemies and bosses. While dragon may also refer to larger categories of dragon-like creatures, straight-up western dragons tend to be their strongest representatives.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: If they aren't a boss outright, dragons are often among the strongest enemies encountered.
- Breath Weapon: Their most notable attacks usually involve breathing their element of choice on you.
- Color-Coded Elements: A dragon's elemental affinity can often be identified via their colorationāred dragons for fire, yellow dragons for lightning, white dragons for ice, and so on.
- King Mook: The recurring summon Bahamut, one of the strongest in the series, is oft stated to be the king of dragons, and frequently needs to be defeated in battle before becoming available as a summon.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Mostly stock western-style dragons, though eastern dragons, dinosaurs, and other more bizarre variations are not unheard of.
- Playing with Fire: In games without a large array of dragons, what few dragons there are tend to be associated with fire, using it in their attacks and resisting or even absorbing it when used against them.
- Superboss: Often a games' most powerful Optional Boss is a dragon. Shinryu was the first such boss and gained enough notoriety from that to have his own lore.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Bone Dragon, Skull Dragon
Even dragons die but that doesn't mean their strength goes with them. Brought back to life with undead might, dragon zombie's now add putrid powers to their already frightening repertoire.
- Breath Weapon: Distinguishing from their living counterparts, the breath of dragon zombie's is acrid filth that poisons and debilitates those affected by it.
- Deceased and Diseased: Most often have status inducing attacks to go along with their undead form.
- Revive Kills Zombie: Their biggest weak point is that revival spells and items will instantly defeat them.
- Undead Fossils: Often the representative variant doesn't look so much as an undead member of the local dragons but an ancient relative brought back to unlife, such as in III and V.
- Debut: Final Fantasy II
Common variants: Black Flan, Flan Princess, Purple Bavarois, Red Marshmallow, White Mousse, Yellow Jelly
Slime monsters that come in a wide variety of colors, they have strong physical defenses but fall easily to elemental magic.
- Blob Monster: They're rarely little more than globs of colored slime.
- Color-Coded Elements: One can often figure out what elements they use, and what they are weak against, based on their color.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Flans have variable weaknesses to elemental magic.
- Stone Wall: They are often highly resistant to physical attacks, but weak to magic.
- Theme Naming: Flan-type monsters tend to be named after desserts; Pudding, Jelly, Mousse, Bavarois, and so on.
- Underground Monkey: Comes in many variations.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Hill Gigas, Glasya Labolas
Powerful giants whose gargantuan blows are not to be underestimated.
- Dishing Out Dirt: A recurring ability of theirs is to use Quake magic. Variants can change their magic preference for the element they want though.
- Giant Mook: As Gigas translates to Giant, this is as literal as it gets.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: Often one of the larger enemies to be encountered. The VII incarnation rivals the Kaijuesque Weapons in game size.
- Smash Mook: Most often are physical beat sticks capable of hitting hard and not much else. Some however..
- Strong and Skilled: Some incarnations add skilled attacks to their repertoire. VI in particular gave the later types moves like Uppercuts and Throat Chops.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Black Goblin, Goblin Mage, Goblin Prince, Hobgoblin
Basic enemies armed with daggers.
- Devious Daggers: They usually wield daggers.
- Fixed Damage Attack: Goblin Punch is sometimes depicted this way, especially if it can be learned by a Blue Mage. In these cases, it will always deal damage equivalent to a player's level, or sometimes it will deal more damage if the user and their opponent are the same level.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Tend to have a move called "Goblin Punch".
- The Goomba: Usually the first monster you run into. (Though the later on the series you get the more likely this is to be subverted. See below.)
- Our Goblins Are Different: Especially in XIII where they look vaguely mechanical, generally have wheels on the bottom of their feet and have a gaping hole in the middle of their torso instead of a mouth. XI has their own distinct take on Goblins which carried over to XIV.
- Signature Move: Goblin Punch.
- Underground Monkey: There are frequently multiple versions of them, some of which are found much later and with respectable stats.
- Debut: Final Fantasy VII
A supremely powerful caster.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: In his FFV appearances he is the most powerful random encounter enemy in the game, even being able to cast Neo Exdeath's own Almagest spell. And since a random encounter could include more than one Hades, he is more than capable of wiping out a full team.
- Dem Bones: Was a skeleton in FFVII.
- Expy: In his FFVII appearance he is blatantly based on the Horned King from The Black Cauldron.
- Final Boss: A rare recurring final boss for the series, representing Final Fantasy XI: Seekers of Adoulin and Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers. Even before these appearances, he was originally planned to be the final boss of Final Fantasy IX before being replaced by Necron.
- Optional Boss: In Final Fantasy IX he is an optional encounter in the final dungeon that is triggered by interacting with an unmarked and unremarkable piece of scenery that players without a walkthrough would easily miss. Defeating him grants access to his synthesis shop, which provides some of the best equipment in the game.
- Signature Move: Has been associated with the move "Black Cauldron" ever since his FFVII appearance... How Square still haven't incurred the wrath of Disney's lawyers is anyone's guess...
- Debut: Final Fantasy II
Common variants: Red Giant
Massive iron golems armed with equally massive swords.
- Animated Armor: They're giant armored enemies animated by magic or technology, not by a wearer.
- BFS: Always seen with one, except in IV, where they traded it for an Arm Cannon. Lampshaded in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, where the party comment on how the Iron Giant that originated from Final Fantasy II (where they had swords, and so does this one) is different from the variants they're more familiar with.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: A rare and dangerous encounter in Final Fantasy II as well as Final Fantasy V. (and, in the case of the former game (its remakes to be specific), will have a boss theme playing when fighting it)
- The Faceless: They often go for a Face Framed in Shadow.
- Mighty Glacier: Very slow, but very powerful.
- Optional Boss: As even more of a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere than the Cloud of Darkness.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Their eyes glow red.
- Smash Mook: Iron Giants don't really have any fancy tricks up their sleeve—they typically just alternate between hitting a single target really hard, or all targets slightly less hard with their BFS.
- Spikes of Villainy: May have one on each shoulder.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
One of the original Four Fiends, this tentacled monstrosity is sure to make life difficult for whoever crosses its multi-armed path.
- Ice Magic Is Water: Often has a compliment of Blizzard spells at its disposal to go with its water theme.
- Kraken and Leviathan: Is the Final Fantasy's variation on Kraken, which looks like a humanoid octopus in its first incarnation and either a squid or regular octopus in others.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: It's most distinguished feature in 1 is how many attacks it can do in one round, making it a horrifically powerful beatstick.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Once the Fiend of Earth, this undead menace has risen time and again to stalk the living.
- Deceased and Diseased: Lich has the power of poison to go along with their decaying undead body.
- Demoted to Extra: Got hit the hardest of all the Four Fiends. While the rest have been relegated to non-plot important bosses, Lich is the only one who has returned as a random encounter.
- Our Liches Are Different: Lich has never had a soul stone and is pretty much shown to be an undead sorcerer most of the time.
- Poisonous Person: Lich's most consistent ability is to attack with poison.
- Debut: Final Fantasy II
Common variants: Carrot, Great Malboro, Malboro Menace
Highly dangerous enemies made up of a giant mouth with a mass of tentacles, their Bad Breath inflicts a slew of status ailments.
- Breath Weapon: Bad Breath.
- Combat Tentacles: Their melee attacks are done with their tentacles.
- Extra Eyes: Almost have more eyes than teeth.
- Giant Mook: Again, depending on the game. In Final Fantasy X they're friggin' huge, whereas in Final Fantasy XII, most Malboros are half the height of the player characters.
- King Mook: There are often more powerful Malboro Kings.
- Man-Eating Plant: Malboros are plant-based and eager to devour your party members.
- Mascot Mook: One of the more iconic monsters from the franchise.
- Meaningful Name: Named after the Marlboro cigarette company (also a potential Take That! to Marlboro). Their Bad Breath attack references the fact that said cigarettes cause, well, bad breath. May or may not be an intentional, as their name may also be derived from the Japanese for "bad breath".
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Rows upon rows of razor-sharp choppers line their mouths.
- Signature Move: Bad Breath, of course.
- Status Infliction Attack: The biggest danger with these creatures is their attack "Bad Breath" which tends to inflict characters with a whole plethora of annoying status ailments.
- Took a Level in Badass: They were just normal enemies initially, and fought in groups and alongside other foes. Since VII they've been upgraded to Elite Mook, fought one at a time, and Bad Breath usually affects the entire party now, enabling them to cripple the party in one attack. And heaven help you if you get ambushed by one...
- Weaponized Stench: Their signature attack, Bad Breath, is this, exhaling a noxious gas that inflicts a plethora of status effects.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
The flaming serpent of the Four Fiends has returned to coil her snake tail around the unprepared.
- Dual Wielding: More like sextuple wielding, every one of her six arms has a scimitar.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The human half has six arms, letting her wield six scimitars.
- Snake People: Usually takes the form of a woman with a serpent lower half.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Marilith's most common attribute is her snake features, which in XII go all the way and just have it being a giant snake.
- Stripperific: The most any of the human half wears is a metal breastplate with some jewelry adornments.
- Debut: Final Fantasy VI
A giant snake or serpentine dragon.
- Ascended Extra: Midgardsormr is a powerful but mostly unremarkable enemy or summon in most of its appearances, but XIV has it as the Father of Dragons and one of the most important beings in the setting.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: While always depicted as a huge serpent, the XIV variation is truly massive, easily hundreds of feet long and able to coil around an imperial dreadnaught.
- Dishing Out Dirt: The original version from VI used a powerful earth spell and taught the Quake spell.
- Poisonous Person: After VII, a common ability among the variants is the ability to inflict poison.
- Snakes Are Sinister: This giant snake is nothing to trifle with.
- Debut: Final Fantasy V
Small, unassuming spheres that attack in trios and combine power for their trademark Delta Attack.
- Combination Attack: When all three are alive, they may use Delta Attack to petrify one of your characters.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: They move, and not much else.
- Happy Fun Ball: They're just small red orbs... and then they unleash Delta Attack.
- Killer Rabbit: Aww it's a little red ball with eyeHOLY CRAP Delta Attack!?
- Metal Slime: Grant absurd amounts of gil and skill EXP, but are tough to defeat and will often ditch the fight on a whim.
- Sinister Geometry: Their Delta Attack takes the form of a triangle of energy.
- Terrible Trio: Always appear in threes, in order to perform their Delta Attack.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Classified as Undead enemies.
- Debut: Final Fantasy VI
Cute and adorable rabbits that burrow underground.
- Cute Is Evil: They're adorable and look like something you might keep as a pet, but they're still enemies.
- The Goomba: Usually one of the more basic enemies you find.
- Killer Rabbit: Defied; they're usually about as harmless as they look.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Microchu
Giant plant enemies with huge mouths and vine-tentacles.
- Captain Ersatz: They're otyughs from Dungeons & Dragons, but plants.
- Combat Tentacles: Attack with their vines.
- Eyeless Face: In several games, it doesn't have eyes, unlike the Malboro.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: In a couple games where they do have eyes (most notably, their first appearance), the eyes will be on vines that, at first glance, resemble arms.
- Giant Mook: They tend to tower over the party a bit.
- Kill It with Fire: It takes more damage from fire, being a plant and all.
- Man-Eating Plant: It's a plant and its preferred meal is your party members. Go figure.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Not as many as the Malboro, but a lot.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: Particularly in later appearances, Ochus will be towering boss-level foes and their offspring, Microchus, will infest the area. These Microchus are much weaker, generally innumerable in number, and can be indefinitely summoned during the boss fight against the adult Ochu.
- Debut: Final Fantasy V
Common variants: Prototype
An infamous boss built by an ancient civilization for mass destruction, a job it is well-equipped to perform.
- Arch-Enemy: It varies depending on the game, but it's heavily implied that it is hunting Shinryu in most of its appearances. Other games tend to have Omega matched against other draconic beings such as Yiazmat and Midgardsormr. In Final Fantasy XIV, Omega is actually attempting to create his own arch enemy to aid in its own evolution.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: In its first appearance in V, you would undoubtedly think a roaming mech sprite from the Pyramid of Moore would be out of place. Of course, the real problem is that fact that since it's roaming, it'll be hard to avoid an encounter with in order to continue on through the Rift, and the game tends to glitch and make you encounter it even if you're a space away from it. Even worse, if you miss or ignore the nearby save point, you are VERY likely to end up unprepared to face a boss at least three times stronger than the Final Boss that cannot be avoided when engaged.
- Cosmetic Award: After being defeated, Omega usually leaves behind some token of the feat that serves no purpose.
- Degraded Boss: Omega Mk.II's room in V is populated by several copies of the original.
- Dimensional Traveler: Omega Mk. XII, who might be the original. The contractor who built it was supposed to make a weapon to kill Yiazmat, note but during development they programmed reproductive, adaptive, and dimension-hopping abilities into it. And then it escaped.
- Giant Mecha: It's usually about the size of a car, but is sometimes much bigger.
- Kill the God: A common motive behind the creation of Omega's myriad variants: they all seem to have the objective of hunting down and killing beings of divine power, be it its traditional Arch-Enemy of Shinryu, or substitutes such as Yiazmat, Midgardsormr, the Astrals, or Ultima.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis:
- Generally its style of combat. No flashy cinematic attacks (if it's not solely using Wave Cannon as often as it can), no Interface Screw, and it doesn't particularly rely on status ailments or debuffs to enfeeble the party. Omega just hits really hard and has a lot of HP and defense.
- Omega enforces this on the player in most games. It doesn't have any elemental weaknesses or patterns to exploit and Contractual Boss Immunity is in full effect, and although the player can usually come up with creative ways to offset the damage from Wave Cannon, it's still a battle of attrition that depends on how well the player can balance healing, defense, and offense.
- Optional Boss: Final Fantasy XI is the only entry to feature a fight with Omega as a main storyline encounter. In every other appearance it is purely optional.
- Palette Swap: When they appear in the same game, they usually look very much the same as always, Final Fantasy XII being a notable exception. It was said that the Omegas that appeared in Final Fantasy series are from a same basic structure and merely improved themselves over time.
- It was also a Palette Swap of the Prototype enemy in V.
- Roaming Enemy: In Final Fantasy V. Especially problematic in the Bonus Dungeon, where there are about a half dozen of them walking around the room. What a relief!
- Signature Move: Surge Cannon/Wave Cannon.
- Theme Naming: In the game where it has a variation beside the Mk. series, it usually has a name based on Greek alphabet like Alpha and Upsilon.
- Underground Monkey: It uses the same frame as the Mimic Queen in XII and resembles a giant Mimic while it's dormant, but it's not as skinny as them and looks more man-made.
- Walking The Multiverse: Much like Gilgamesh and Shinryu, it is implied that the various "Omegas" across the series are either the same entity, or copies of the original, and travel to the various worlds seeking Shinryu.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Its signature attack is the Wave Cannon, a non-elemental energy beam that packs a wallop.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Desert Sahagin, Sahagin Chief, Sahagin Prince
Aquatic enemies that act as basic water-elemental Mooks.
- Defend Command: In Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX, they can withdraw into their shells to block your attacks.
- Making a Splash: They use water-elemental magics.
- Prongs of Poseidon: They're fish people who used tridents in some games.
- Underground Monkey: Desert Sahagins, which are fought in the desert. They also come in Chief and Prince varieties.
- Debut: Final Fantasy V
Along with Omega, one of the infamous Optional Bosses of the series.
- Arch-Enemy: Though the full backstory isn't clear, it is implied that Omega was created specifically to destroy Shinryu. They often appear together in games, suggesting that one is pursuing the other.
- Ascended Extra: Got to be a major character in the backstory of Dissidia Final Fantasy.
- Adaptational Badass: While there's no question of its difficulty as a boss, according to Dissidia, Shinryu may be one of the most powerful entities in the entire multiverse, outranking Chaos and Cosmos and who knows what other godlike beings.
- Begin with a Finisher: In V, it always opens the fight with Tsunami, an insanely powerful Water-elemental attack that hits the entire party.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Apart from the Infinity Plus One Weapons he tends to guard, V also gave you a medal for beating him.
- Chest Monster: In V. Doubles as Schmuck Bait for the unprepared.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Played with — it's never been worshipped, but it is literally a God-Dragon formed out of crystal.
- Final Boss: Of Final Fantasy XI: Heroes of Abyssea, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, and Dissidia Final Fantasy NT.
- Inconsistent Dub: Has also been known as "Nova Dragon" or "Lord Dragon".
- Infinity +1 Sword: It often guards one, usually the Ragnarok.
- Lonely at the Top: Dissidia suggests that Shinryu wishes to witness things "not from above, but as you do".
- Making a Splash: Opens most of his fights with a supremely powerful Tidal Wave attack. This attack can often wipe out an entire party in a single hit.
- Meaningful Name: "Divine Dragon".
- Optional Boss: Debuted as one in V, and has become a recurring one in a number of game remakes.
- Our Dragons Are Different: He's a serpent-like entity with wings and arms. He also abnormally powerful, the tidbits on his backstory in V state that he and Omega were so powerful than even the Legendary Weapons couldn't defeat them.
- Signature Move: Frequently has access to other recurring beings signature moves, in addition to his own, Protostar. He is strongly associated with Tidal Wave as well, almost as much as Leviathan is.
- Walking The Multiverse: As with Omega, the implication is that all the Shinryus across the series are the same being travelling between worlds.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Debuting in the original Final Fantasy as one of the Four Fiends, Tiamat has reappeared multiple times to face the player in assorted forms.
- Elemental Powers: Fitting for their multiple heads, Tiamat often has access to a full compliment of Fire, Ice, Lightning attacks alongside Blow You Away spells.
- Evil Counterpart: Often made a counterpart of Bahamut, as a nod to the Dungeons & Dragons shoutout permeating the original Final Fantasy. In VIII this goes farther as it is a Palette Swap that only uses a dark knockoff of Megaflare called Dark Flare.
- Multiple Head Case: Her original incarnation is a six headed dragon and other incarnations have had variable numbers.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Tiamat has varied from a hydra-esque dragon, a thin eastern dragon, a stock western dragon, and even a magitek bioweapon in XIII.
- Poisonous Person: The original Tiamat from I possessed poison attacks. Incarnations vary on retaining this ability.
- Debut: Final Fantasy V
Common variants: Master Tonberry, Tonberry King
Small reptile-like creatures armed with butcher knives and lanterns, they're among the most dangerous foes in the series.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Tonberries usually have a good deal of health on them, can select someone to use Karma on every time that hapless character attacks, and wields a knife that can kill-stab a player in one hit.
- Cute Is Evil: The Tonberry is creepy-cute, but one of the most dangerous enemies that can be fought in the games.
- Defeat Means Friendship: As with the Cactuar, beating one occasionally lets you summon them.
- The Dreaded: Is this to experienced Final Fantasy players all over the world.
- Evil Chef: Wields a kitchen knife.
- Finger Poke of Doom: Their Chef's Knife attack is usually depicted as them just jabbed the point of their knife into their target with a cute "Doink!" sound effect... and it does several thousand damage if not just an instant kill.
- Fixed Damage Attack: Depending on the game, Karma either does damage proportional to the number of enemies the target character had killed, or the number of Tonberries the party has killed.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: He will usually spend several turns approaching before using its signature "Everyone's Grudge" attack, which deals damage for every enemy defeated so far to one target.
- Killer Rabbit: These guys may look cute, but they are also scary, and for good reason; they pack a giant punch.
- King Mook: The Tonberry King and Master Tonberry.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Meant to be the incarnation of the concept, with a skill (usually even called Karma) that damages a foe proportional to the number of foes (or sometimes just number of Tonberries) killed.
- Mascot Mook: One of the most recognizable creatures from the Final Fantasy series.
- Mighty Glacier: Soaks up huge amounts of damage, slowly wanders up to the heroes, and One Hit Kills them.
- Numerological Motif: The numbers four, six and nine are frequently reoccuring in its stats.
- One-Hit Kill: The Tonberry always has a Michael Myers kitchen knife on them. If you let it get close enough to you, then... *Doink*. Get your Phoenix Down ready.
- Revenge: The Tonberries are THE Moe Anthropomorphism of its concept.
- Signature Move: Chef's Knife, as well as Karma.
- Super-Persistent Predator: XIV has a Giant Mook variation, aptly named the Tonberry Stalker. These massive creatures are slow and invulnerable, but if they spot the party, they will hound them relentlessly until the party manages to reach the next section of the dungeon.
- Took a Level in Badass: While they've always been very dangerous, in Final Fantasy XV they essentially become Jedi, surrounding their knives with large auras of dark energy and then performing brutal combos with them while leaping and spinning around.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Their Karma move makes a character take damage proportional to number of enemies he/she killed.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: Tonberry will make you know this via Karma.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Archaeosaur, Allosaurus, Earth Dragon
Garnishing the Story with Dinosaurs can always be a fun part of any story and that includes Final Fantasy, and the Terrifying Tyrannosaur is the nominal representee of the genus.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Tyrannosaurs and their kin are often labelled with the games' dragon types. V inverts this and makes it a Palette Swap of the local Draco Lich enemies.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In the original Final Fantasy 1, they had the now outdated kangaroo look of almost walking upright. When they fully returned by VI they were given their correct posture, which was back ported into every rerelease of 1 until the Pixel Remaster returned them to the original style for authenticity.
- PiƱata Enemy: Tyrannosaurs are often a massive boon to farm exp in the game they appear in. How easy to take down to get that boon varies.
- Smash Mook: Most often have purely physical attack skills, but beware the Magic Knight variants who can use some of the strongest magic attacks around like Meteor.
- Tail Slap: Often a part of their skills is to strike you with their tails.
Completing the trinity of series-wide optional bosses with Omega and Shinryu, the Ultima Weapon is a biomechanical superweapon.
- Badass Boast: It gets a quite impressive one in its debut:"My name is Ultima... I am power both ancient and unrivaled... I do not bleed, for I am but strength given form... Feeble creatures of flesh... Your time is nigh!"
- Bioweapon Beast: Often, such as in its debut VI, Ultima Weapon is a biomechanical beast created for battle.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Of Final Fantasy VI. He is the last boss fought in the World of Balance.
- Energy Weapons: A common feature of Ultima Weapon is that they can utilize energy attacks, making the Pure Energy boast all the more weighty. Party wide Wave-Motion Gun attacks, Macross Missile Massacre of energy blasts, a Chest Blaster Pillar of Light or just a palm shaped energy ball are all within Ultima Weapons arsenal.
- Fantastic Nuke: Appropriately, the Ultima Weapon is frequently capable of casting the dreaded Ultima.
- Final Boss: Of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
- MacGuffin Guardian: The Dawn of Souls release of Final Fantasy II makes it the guardian of the Ultima Tome in the Soul of Rebirth epilogue. Upon its defeat, it grants the tome to Minwu for proving his strength. Uniquely, this incarnation is a Palette Swap of the Behemoth.
- Magitek: The Ultima Weapon is oft presented as a fusion of magic and technology. This allows is to serve as a middle ground between the mechanical Omega and the magical Shinryu.
- Meaningful Name: Ultima is the latin word for both "farthest" and "last". Both of which gives the clear idea that this is the greatest weapon ever made and that this is the last thing you will see before you die. It also had a double meaning in VI, as it is the last being fought before the end of the current world.
- Mythology Gag: The primary iteration in Final Fantasy XIV is based off the centaur-mech style design from Final Fantasy VII, but an earlier prototype encountered in the players' return to the Fractal Continuum uses the design from Final Fantasy VI, seen above. Additionally, its model is based on that of XIV's Behemoth, referencing II's Behemoth palette swap.
- Optional Boss: In some of the games, such as VIII and X, Ultima Weapon is an optional boss encountered in that game's bonus dungeon.
- Organic Technology: As its sprite should indicate.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Final Fantasy VIII introduced a stronger version of Ultima Weapon called "Omega Weapon." While not the same entity as Omega, they are similar in stature as Superbosses, with Omega Weapon eclipsing Ultima Weapon in power. Since then entries that feature both Weapons typically use Ultima Weapon as a Warm-Up Boss to get you ready for the much more dangerous Omega Weapon. However, even in games where it is considered weaker than Omega/Omega Weapon the Ultima Weapon still stands out as a deadly opponent in its own right.
- Pure Energy: In VI, it declares itself raw power given physical form. It's not actually boasting, and it gives it one hell of a Weaksauce Weakness: since it's made of pure power it dies if it runs out of MP, and you very probably have Mana Drain spells on hand at that point.
- Debut: Final Fantasy
Common variants: Abyss Worm, Gigas Worm, Sand Worm,
Giant worms with an all consuming maw.
- Blow You Away: Fitting for their dessert origins, many can cast wind based spells like Sandstorm.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Their most common ability is to cast Earthquake.
- Eating the Enemy: A common skill they have is to eat a party member.
- Sand Worm: Variants change whether they are partially subterranean or fully out of the ground.
- Debut: Final Fantasy IV
Common variants: Bennu, Garuda, Rukh, Tot Aevis, Stratoavis
Giant bird enemies with massive wings.
- Airborne Mook: A giant bird that flies.
- Belly Flop Crushing: Zus often use belly flops as their main physical attack, simply using their weight as a weapon rather than their talons or beak.
- Blow You Away: If they do have a special attack, it would be a gale-based one of some sort.
- Giant Flyer: Again, giant bird.
- Giant Mook: Large bird that's probably big as a tree.
- Just Eat Him: In Final Fantasy IX, the Zu can swallow a party member whole, which counts as them being ejected from the battle and they won't earn any EXP or AP. It's possible to be defeated if a Zu manages to eat the entire party or the surviving ones.
- Smash Mook: Generally don't have any kind of special attack, but they hit hard.
- Toothy Bird: Has a lot of sharp teeth.