Actually Four Blokes - Television Tropes & Idioms

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On the way to vanquish the Big Bad your party comes across some opposition: a single enemy sprite approaches you to block your path.

"HA!" It is to laugh! To even think a single elite Mook can stop your advancing party. Even without your mage you can finish them with no trouble at all. Right on cue, the Battle Theme Music kicks in and the fight starts! But wait! That single sprite on the screen turned out to be Actually Four Blokes! What's the deal?

Well, you've just encountered this fake out: an enemy appears on the main map as a single sprite, but is actually the Mook version of the Party In My Pocket (and they're not happy to see you – not at all).

Compare Party In My Pocket. See also Preexisting Encounters.

Examples:

The Trope Namer comes from a Flash RPG called Mardek, which Lampshades many RPG tropes. Early in Chapter 2, you fight a bandit who, just before attacking you, says, "Now, Guards, you stand no chance against me, 'cause I'm actually four blokes!" Cue a battle with four bandits.
The Final Fantasy games do this a lot, though averted in Final Fantasy XII, as there isn't a separate battle screen.
- Final Fantasy I had Bikke the pirate, who had only two henchmen visible on the map. When the fight starts, there's suddenly nine pirates.
- Final Fantasy IV had several, including:
  - A single bomb that turned out to be a boss bomb that could split into 6.
  - A set of 4 doll sprites that were actually 6 that could combine into a boss.
  - Hooded enemies that attacked you but were often nothing more than a couple of imps, soldiers or other weak enemies.
Pretty much every single fight in Super Mario RPG, as you'll only see one sprite on the main map, then go into battle and see a lot more.
- Super Mario RPG was especially egregious, though, as there were numerous enemies that had no map sprites and only appeared in battle. You could run into a goomba and find yourself fighting one goomba and two much larger, nastier monsters.
Both the Mario And Luigi and Paper Mario series have this. One enemy on the map can easily be between three and five enemies in battle, including those that only show up alongside other enemies in battle.
Averted in Chrono Trigger, as it doesn't have a separate battle screen. However many enemies are on-screen are the enemies you'll be fighting.
- Usually, anyway. Sometimes some jump in from offscreen, sometimes a second person jumps out from the first enemy, and sometimes the screen scrolls a bit to encompass an enemy that had been just offscreen.
- But played straight in Chrono Cross. You touch one enemy on the map, you're in battle with 2-4.
Averted and played straight in The Reconstruction. The Preexisting Encounters on the main map are only one sprite but usually trigger a few monsters in battle. However, all unavoidable Preexisting Encounters have you fight exactly the number of enemies as there are sprites. This includes boss battles, almost all of which have flunkies that you can see clearly on the map pre-battle. (Except for the boss of chapter 1 and chapter 2, whose flunkies come out of nowhere)
Destiny of an Emperor has battles between armies of thousands, but only the generals leading each army are seen.
In Advance Wars, every unit is depicted as a single soldier or vehicle on the map, but (unless it's a particularly big unit like a bomber or megatank) is shown to contain between one and five units in battle animations, depending on how much HP the unit has left.
In the Heroes Of Might And Magic series, groups of enemies on the map are represented in the form of a single sprite. The game lets the player view the size of the enemy, though.
- Heroes of Might and Magic actually takes this a step further as the images on the batlle screen don't represent single monsters either, but whole stacks of them. This can lead to situations where you see a picture of a single green dragon on the map decide to engage it and suddenly find yourself in battle with five pictures of green dragons that actually represent 10 dragons each at which point you probably wished you had checked the size of the enemey group before attacking it. To make matters worse armies aren't always soley composed of the enemies that are shown on the map since sometimes a small number of upgraded versions of the monster is mixed into it.
Averted in Earthbound: When you engage an enemy on the map screen, you can see other nearby enemies rushing to join the battle. If there aren't any, or they don't reach you in time, you only fight the one you touched.
Pokémon justifies this by having the Pokémon be inside the Pokéballs before they're sent out to battle.
In Age of Wonders a squad was composed of one to eight creatures. On the game map the current strongest creature in the squad, a Wizard (e.g., you, Merlin) or a hero unit if that was the case, was the only member visible and represented the whole.
Spoofed in this 8-Bit Theater strip.
"Blarg! I'm a dragon! Or twelve!"
Both Lunar games for the PS1. Enemies are visible on the map as somewhat indistinct figures. Touching one of them starts a battle with up to 8 monsters.
Persona 3 and Persona 4 have an... interesting version of this. Shadows always appear on the map as a single creature... but its size changes depending on how many enemies will be in the fight. The larger the Shadow, the more enemies you'll fight. (Be careful - the tiny Shadows have a tendency to be solo Demonic Spiders.)
Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen has the typical "arena" scene, and the last guy you face (the Abominable Showman) pulls this trope off to perfection as one sprite becomes four, and you have to pick and hit the right one. Failure to do so results in him sticking his tongue out at you and swatting you back very hard. (Hint: always pick either the very left or the very right, 95% of the time the real him is one of those.)

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This trope page is up for dicussion here. There is a Single-Prop Crowner and an Alternate Titles Crowner. Your considered opinions are desired. Thank you for your contributions and have a nice day.

Examples: