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So you aren't doing too well at a game. Maybe it's Fake Difficulty, or maybe you just aren't too good at it. So you go back to the opening menu and set the difficulty a level or two lower. You replay the game and...

Wait, where are my special abilites? Why are there only three stages? And why has the Bad Ass changed into a Waddling Head Joke Character?

This is Easy Mode Mockery, where the game radically changes when you play on easier difficulties. There are two ways to go about this:

1) Serious Way: You cannot unlock extra gameplay modes or features on the easier difficulties. The game may also end early. This is to prevent you from just unlocking all the extras on the easiest levels and then ignoring the main game, but if you aren't too good at the game in general, this is something of an insult.

2) Humiliating Way: The game turns ridiculous in one way or another on easy difficulties. For example, all the enemies turn Super Deformed and your weapon becomes a broomstick.

Related to Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels, where the names of the easy modes often contains taunts. Compare No Fair Cheating, where making the game easier through cheats is discouraged. For some cases where Easy Mode Mockery is provided by other players, see Stop Having Fun Guys.

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Examples:

• The king of the trope is Guitar Hero. On the first two games, you earn no money in Easy Mode and cannot access the Store. The second game is particularly mean, as you aren't allowed to perform encores and cannot access the last set of songs, preventing you from playing them in Quickplay, and are told to try the harder difficulties on the loading screen. (This is rather frustrating when you realize you must complete Easy and five-star all the songs to unlock two of the guitars.) The third game, which is somewhat harder on all difficulties than its predecessors, removes these limitations.
  • Rock Band, made by the same company that made the first two Guitar Hero games, returns to this trope in the solo modes, preventing you from unlocking the last sets of songs on the Easy career tour. The multiplayer Band World Tour mode takes this further: after a certain point, the Easy difficulty is locked out, forcing everyone to play at least on Medium.
  • Rock Band 2 continues the tradition. If certain songs are in your setlist in tour mode, Easy difficulty is locked out. On some late single-song gigs, Easy and Medium difficulty gets locked out, forcing everyone that was on Medium to jump to Hard.
  • Here's a challenge: Guitar Hero: World Tour's new beginner mode has no notes, just strumming at a VERY slow speed.
• The obscure Namco Shoot Em Up Dragon Spirit: The New Legend for the NES (not to be confused with the arcade game Dragon Spirit) gives you a much easier game if you lose in the prologue level... but it consists of five stages (out of twelve) and has a joke All Just A Dream ending.
• The NES and Game Boy versions of The Lion King end early if you play them on "Cub" mode (as Scar puts it on the ending screen, "Well done, my little cub, but that was Easy"). The Game Boy version, being longer than the NES version in a twisted form of logic, ends at The Stampede on Cub mode; the NES version ends after the Elephant Graveyard.
• Ninja Gaiden Black has "Ninja Dog" difficulty, which forces you to wear a girly purple ribbon and mocks you in the opening cutscene. And Ayane will insult you throughout the game when she helps.
  • Mind you, Ninja Gaiden isn't exactly the easiest of games even in its normal mode.
• "Kids" difficulty in Viewtiful Joe unlocks nothing, and your power-ups in that mode don't transfer to the other difficulties. The one exception was the Play Station 2 port of the original, which unlocked Dante from Devil May Cry on completion in any mode.
  • The PS 2 version also has an even easier difficulty level called "Sweet".
• And speaking of our demon slayer hero, in the original Devil May Cry, if you use a Vital Star anytime during the first three missions, or die three times, you are offered Easy Automatic Mode. Choosing this mode locks you into this difficulty, and you cannot unlock anything other than New Game Plus.
  • And even then you're stuck in the Easy-Auto difficulty. The only way to get out of it is an entirely new file.
  • The same thing happens in Devil May Cry 3. Penny Arcade would inavertedly notice this, and do a little mockery of their own.
  • The Onimusha series also offered Easy Mode after three deaths.
• In I Wanna Be The Guy, setting the difficulty to Medium (the easiest level) puts a pink ribbon in The Kid's hair. Also, the save points that aren't there in Hard mode have the word "Wuss" in place of "Save".
  • Early versions had an Easy mode. It would kill you in the title screen to save you the trouble of playing the game.
• The secret movies at the end of Kingdom Hearts won't unlock if you're playing through in Easy mode.
  • In the sequel you can only see the secret movies on medium difficulty if you get One Hundred Percent Completion (with plenty of Guide Dang It all around). On Proud/Critical Mode, though, you simply have to finish a few bonus areas.
• Even the old One Must Fall fighting game got in on the trope: you had to have the difficulty set to a particular level—or else the end boss of the story mode would mock you when you reached him and you couldn't complete the storyline.
  • Or in Tournament Mode, the "unranked challengers" only appear if you're competing on a high enough difficulty (among other conditions). If you want to get all the secret upgrades for your bot, you need to be playing on either the second hardest or hardest difficulty.
• In Pokemon Puzzle League for N64, the story mode ended at different points on each level. Easy Mode stops you after Giovanni, Medium stops you after Bruno, Hard stops you after the second Gary. You get a cup at the end of Hard, but the true ending isn't seen until you beat the game on Very Hard or Super Hard.
  • The same applies for the SNES game Tetris Attack, which Pokemon Puzzle League was basically a straight port of with a Pocket Monsters theme and extra features. Easy mode ends after the second boss, Medium ends after the third, and only Hard and higher allow you to actually face Bowser himself. The original Japan-only Panel De Pon (which Tetris Attack and all the later Puzzle League games are based upon) had an identical system.
• Golden Axe, at least the versions that have a Beginner setting, ends a few levels early. So does Streets Of Rage 3.
  • Which for SoR3 is just plain mean, as the NA version bumped up the difficulty, with Normal being the equivalent of Hard in the original Japanese version. In other words: you get punished for playing on Japanese Normal. A highly unnecessary case of Nintendo Hard gameplay. A code that lets you choose a level to start from can bypass this.
• Volfied ends the level before the final boss in easy mode.
• Rick Dangerous 2 has something similar: the game allows you to start in level 2, 3 or 4; however, you don't actually unlock the final level, or see the ending, unless you start from level 1.
• Barbatos, the Bonus Boss of the PS 2 version of Tales Of Destiny, if fought on the Simple difficulty, will immediately start the fight off with an attack named Cheap Eliminate. It is actually possible to dodge and defeat him, but it's kind of hard.
• Home versions of Street Fighter II would give you a "Try again on a harder level!" screen on beating the game if you set the difficulty below four stars.
• Parappa The Rapper's spiritual sequel Um Jammer Lammy gave you an Easy mode, where the game ended after the Hell/Desert Island (depending on your locale) level, preventing you from playing the last song or seeing the ending.
• In Metal Gear Solid 4, the difficulty levels are all named after characters. In order to emulate the single most kickass and heroic character in canon, you have to beat it on The Boss Extreme difficulty. (Other than that, though, other than her signature firearm, the unlocks are all related to the the namesake of the Big Boss Hard difficulty.) However, if you're not up to that standard and decide to play it on Easy Mode, you're stuck in name as Liquid. (Strangely enough, there's two Normal difficulties — Naked Normal and Solid Normal.)
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 had a few bonus extras you could only see on Hard or Extreme mode - if you played in Hard, you could give a Shaver to a character, meaning that when you encounter him at the end of the game you get to see him without his stubbly beard. If you played in Extreme, in addition to the Shaver, you could also open a locker, locked on all other difficulty levels, which had a Konami Easter Island head in it.
  • In addition, playing Metal Gear Solid 3 on the easiest difficulty setting gives you the EZ Gun in your inventory - a tranquilizer pistol with infinite ammunition and a silencer that never wears out that instantly bumps your camo index up to 80% and has a laser sight to ease aiming, making every encounter in the game a breeze to bypass.
• If you change the difficulty setting in Mass Effect, you cannot get the achievement for Hardcore difficulty to unlock Insanity, or the achievement for Insanity. (The only way to change the difficulty on a New Game Plus so you can is to change it on the Normandy before touching down on Eden Prime.)
• Embodiment of Scarlet Devil gives you the Bad Ending after the fifth stage if you play through on Easy. So far, this is the only Windows game to do this, although Mountain of Faith gives you the Bad Ending if you beat the Final Boss on easy. The community also participates in no small share of this; see photo up top.
  • It's tradition for early Touhou games to prevent you from even fighting the normal final boss if you're playing on the Easy difficulty.
  • Similarly, the eleventh Touhou game, Subterranean Animism, does not let you unlock the Extra Stage if you complete the game on Easy. In fact, if you already have the Extra Stage unlocked and then complete the game on Easy, it will lock the stage right back up, though there is a way to make the higher difficulties easier than Easy mode.
• In addition to naming its Easy Mode "Child's Play", the SNES title Plok not only gives you slower-moving enemies, but also cuts out many of the game's levels, including the Legacy Island world and the final Fleapit stages (ending the game instead on a screen challenging you to play on Normal).
• Project: Sylpheed has a rather nonsensical version. You earn half the usual upgrade points on easy. This can actually make easy mode harder than normal due to the lessened ability to buy better weapons.
• In Postal 2, the easiest difficulty level is "Liebermode", which arms pretty much all characters with shovels instead of guns. Not exactly a punishment, although you do miss out on how the game was meant to be experienced.
  • Also, since no one really has guns, finding ammo is nearly impossible.
    • As far as punishment goes, the police meter goes down much slower in the easier difficulty levels.
• In the 5th and 6th Metal Slug games, your game ends in the second-to last level if you play on easy mode.
• The first X-Men game for the Sega Genesis ended halfway through on 'Amateur' Mode (the easiest difficulty level) with a closeup of Magneto's sneering face and the text, "Amateurs can never defeat me! Try being a hero!" scrolling by.
• Mega Man X 5 if you play on easy, you cannot get ANY parts from the bosses, because they are low level bosses.
  • X8 stops you just before the final boss if you play on easy.
• The Game Boy version of the original Killer Instinct just rolled the credits after the fight against Fulgore on the easier difficulties, so no one could see the ending or even the final boss.
  • The Nintendo 64 version of Killer Instinct Gold was also guilty of this. If you play through the game on Very Easy, you won't even get to the end boss; you instead get some saditty message about not being worthy, then the credits roll. At Easy, you fight him but will not get an ending after winning.
• Konami's Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 (which should not be confused with the SNES Sparkster, which was simply called Rocket Knight Adventures on the Genesis) uses a surprisingly subtle form of this, skipping levels instead of ending them early; unfortunately, the very first skipped level contains one of the MacGuffins you need to unlock the true ending. (All the others are available in all difficulty levels, of course.) Oh, and having all seven MacGuffins gave you significant advantages against the final boss: namely a fast-charging rocket-pack and immunity to one of the first form's attacks.
  • Speaking of the SNES Sparkster, it has this even at Normal Difficulty. Easy mode is labeled Digest (which is their way of saying "this mode is missing lots of stuff"), but there's really no excuse for Normal mode to not have the final boss in it unless they really wanted it to be a True Final Boss.
• Contra 4 not only ends at stage 7 on Easy mode but outright taunts you, telling you that you'll never see the ending on Easy. With that exact wording!
  • You do, however, still get to unlock Challenge Mode. This is a good thing, because some of the challenges give you glimpses of the final stage, so you can practice a bit before you get to the real thing. Because beating Normal mode in one shot is more than difficult enough without the added challenge of playing a level you've never seen before.
  • Contra 3 will only let you fight the Perfect Run Final Boss on the hardest setting. Easy mode will stop before the final stage, and Normal difficulty will stop after the Final Boss reveals it is Not Quite Dead. Instead you get a message telling you to play on a higher difficulty and are promptly booted to stage 1.
• Quitting a Skirmish in Age Of Empires III and opting for an easier difficulty will make the NPCs comment on your weakness.
• In DJMAX Portable 2, if the difficulty in the Options menu is set to Easy, you will not be able to level up after Level 30, unless you change the difficulty to Normal or Hard. You also can't unlock any songs for "8-Button Mode" play unless you bump up the difficulty.
• The Disney Hercules computer game, when played on the Easy setting, ends on the Mount Olympus level with Hercules freeing Zeus. It ends with a nice little still image and the usual "now try a higher difficulty" message.
• If one beats the Special Edition version of the original Earthworm Jim on Practice Mode, you do not get the "UR'E THE BEST" screen after beating the Queen, and the ending cutscene is gone. Instead, you see a still shot of the ending's location, with the voice of series creator Doug Ten Napel saying "What a worm! Playing on the easiest difficulty?". Feeling bad, he decides to explain (in a non-serious manner) everything (and we mean EVERYTHING) he knows about worms.
• In Metroid: Zero Mission (the remake of the original NES Metroid for Game Boy Advance), there are numerous ending images that you can see showing Samus in various states of disarmament: from full Power Suit, to helmet removed, to armor removed and in the Zero Suit (blue jumpsuit), to armor removed and in short-shorts and a small top. Which image you see is determined by your completion time and item percentage. But if you play on Easy, you'll only ever see the image of Samus in full armor, sitting atop a rock.
• In Sonic The Hedgehog 3, Tails Alone mode is essentially an Easy Mode, due to the two-tailed fox's ability to fly over large chunks of level. However, Sega decided to be cruel to Tails players with the Marble Garden Zone's Act 2 Boss. The boss destroys the floor when fighting Sonic or Tails, causing Tails to have to fly at it. While playing as Sonic, Tails swoops in and carries you, allowing you to jump at the boss. However, as Tails, you can't jump at it, and you can't attack the cockpit. This means that you have to hit its EXTREMELY small hit-box with your tails and leave before the boss runs into you. Plus, you do not get to play the Doomsday Zone in Sonic 3 & Knuckles as Tails (or, for that matter, as Knuckles), even if you collect all the Super Emeralds. (Though considering series traditions as of now, that last bit seems less like mocking you nowadays...)
  • Ironically, this is almost inverted if the player chooses to use Tails Alone mode in Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. While both Sonic and Knuckles achieve a 'Super' form after collecting all 7 regular Chaos Emeralds, Tails himself is unable to achieve anything similar until he further collects all 7 Super Chaos Emeralds. This grants Knuckles and Sonic a 'Hyper' mode, giving them further powers and abilities, while Tails himself finally achieves his 'Super' form for once - but few players have the patience to unlock it, even if said super form is actually an insane Game Breaker.
• Playing Easy mode in Valkyrie Profile cuts out a significant amount of content from the game, leaving out many dungeons and some items, and making it impossible to get the best ending (which is admittedly almost impossible to get without the guide anyway.) Ironically, this actually makes Easy mode harder than either Medium or Hard, since some of the content which Easy omits is extremely helpful for winning the game.
• Wolfenstein 3D and its sequel showed the protagonist B.J.Blazcowicz's face next to the difficulty selector, with increasingly fierce expressions as the difficulties got harder. The easiest mode, "Can I play, Daddy?", shows him wearing a baby's bonnet and sucking a pacifier.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose has the game skip parts of the levels, ONE WHOLE LEVEL, and even the ending if you happen to play the easiest mode... And it's the only difficulty where you get passwords.
• Clover Studios (Viewtiful Joe) love this trope: if you select Easy on God Hand, Gene will mock you by saying, "What, you want me to hold your hand?" In actual gameplay, Easy mode restricts the in-game difficulty meter to the two lowest levels, so players will only earn low rewards on the enemies they kill.
• Subverted in Battle Arena Toshinden 3, in which the easiest difficulty level (the one below "Very Easy") is called "Stress Relief." It's like the game is inviting you to release your real-life stresses on your foes in this difficulty level.
• Mickey Mouse and the Castle of Illusion, at least in the Master System version. Only heavily shortened, boss-less versions of the first three levels were playable, and instead of fighting the big bad Mizrabel you'd buy her off with gems.
• In KOEI's Warriors franchise (the Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and Warriors Orochi games) the availability of and quality of weapons are based on difficulty with some leeway, except that the "ultimate" weapons for each character require that you set the difficulty to Hard. (Averted in the Samurai Warriors: Xtreme Legends expansion, where for a certain number of Bonus Points you could "buy down" those 5th weapons to Normal difficulty, and the "newly ultimate" 6th weapons to Hard difficulty.) In the first Warriors Orochi game you simply play any three-stars-or-higher stage on Hard, and in the second it's that or any stage on Chaos (called "Hell" difficulty in the Japanese version).
• In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, cheat codes disable certain unlockables, Achievements, and for difficulty-based game completion Achievements you must play on the same difficulty from beginning to end. (This is to prevent, for example, playing the last stage on Sith Lord after playing all previous missions on Sith Apprentice.)
• "Lil' Kids" mode in ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron made it impossible to die, but ended the game after level five, thus robbing players of the chance to collect the Funkopotamus' favourite things and get the good ending.
• In the first Sailor Moon video game for the Super Famicom, a sidescroller released only in Japan, you can only complete the first two levels in easy mode before the game ends.
• Played mostly straight in Psygnosis's Novastorm, which had two difficulty levels ("Easy" and "Hard"). The only differences in the two were the number of enemies, the value of the coin pickups dropped by some enemies, and the special weak point locations on some bosses. This means that someone playing on hard and defeating ONLY the enemies that showed up on Easy will still get stronger weapons faster than on Easy mode. Surprisingly enough, you don't take more damage on Hard for any given hit or scrape, so as far as this troper is concerned, you had a choice between "weak weapons" and "more enemies". Of course, the high score board didn't care what difficulty you played (or how many times you died...), so any real attempt at a high score needed to be made on Hard.
• The Lemony Narrator offers you a choice of difficulties at the beginning of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2, and taunts you if you choose Easy.
• In Beatmania IIDX 15 DJ TROOPERS: while the normal EX and OMES still require you to be able to handle difficulty 12 ANOTHER charts with Hard Mode enabled, the Military Splash EX stage system will permit players to access the One More Extra Stage while still being on NORMAL. of course, there's the matter of the UNKNOWN TARGETS you might get in there...
• Painkiller will disable levels unless you play on Trauma (the hardest) difficulty. Frustratingly, playing on Trauma disables the 5th chapter of the game because the game's semi-true ending takes place at the end of the 4th chapter. Not to mention Trauma changes the rules such that certain bonus objectives are impossible to achieve. You get the option of starting with all the bonuses from your last playthrough at the second hardest difficulty, but that's actually easier than starting over on the hardest. Whee.
• Inverted in Iji, where several secrets are not accessible except in easy mode. This is because the areas require a minimum level to enter, and higher difficulty settings enforce a maximum level.
• Double Dragon II for the NES gave it to you on this one. You could only get to the final stage and boss on "Supreme Master", the hardest difficulty. Each difficulty level under it ends at a certain stage tell you that you have to play the game on a harder setting to get farther. "Practice" ends the game after the third stage, while "Warrior" ends the game on the eighth level, at the same point the arcade version does.
  • This was actually a case of Difficulty By Region, considering the Japanese version actually allows you to fight the final boss and get the ending regardless of the difficulty setting.
• Apogee Software's fighting game Xenophage does not allow you to fight either boss on the easiest difficulty. The next one up only lets you fight the first boss, and you have to be playing on at least the middle difficulty to fight the second boss. Even on the easiest difficulty the game is still pretty hard.
• Spider-Man on the Playstation has a Kid Mode (or the "Easy mode that's so easy it's no fun" mode). The Official New Zealand Playstation Magazine issue #40 page 102 gives this lovely gem:
  • Fight like a Baby — Kid Mode is a quick way to ruin the game. Avoid it. It bypasses several of the puzzles and trickier bits and it will even complete parts of the game for you.
• Averted in The World Ends With You. The only real penalty for "Easy" difficulty is losing the special bonus to BPP. Setting the difficulty to "Easy" is in fact required to obtain certain pins since Noise sometimes drop different pins on different difficulty settings. That said, the best prizes are still usually dropped by Noise at the "Ultimate" difficulty.
• The Civilization series gives you a score at the end of the game that compares you to other world leaders. If you play on Easy mode, you are saddled with a horrible ranking like "Warren G. Harding" even if you beat the computer by a country mile.
• In Galactic Civilizations II, a turn-based space strategy game, the AI of computer players is circumscribed on lower difficulties. As an example, on an easy setting, the AI will not react to your assembling an invasion fleet directly next to one of their planets. It will, however, pop up the diplomacy screen and tell you he knows what you're doing—-it's simply that his generals are too stupid to take appropriate action. Interestingly, this may count as subversion, since the intent was not actually to mock players. Print game journalists often play games on easy settings to work through them more quickly, and Stardock was concerned that because the AI was nerfed on those difficulties, reviewers might unjustly pan their AI players. The AI notifications were put in to forestall this possibility, and it was largely due to the overall tongue-in-cheek feel of the game that it took the form of mockery.
• The Wii version of GHOST Squad has an aiming cursor feature turned on by default, as opposed to the arcade versions, which don't have the feature to begin with (save for sniping and hand-to-hand missions). Turning it off will allow you to score more points.
• Metal Slug 6's Easy mode gives you the luxury of an unlimited-ammo Heavy Machine Gun. However, you only get to play the first four missions, at which point you get a "To be continued" screen.
• The absolutely Nintendo Hard arcade version of Gradius III has an Easy mode in which you only lose some of your powerups when you die, as opposed to the traditional Gradius way of losing all of them. However, you only get to play the first three stages.
  • Gradius Rebirth's easy modes either weaken or remove normal enemy bullets, but cannot be used to access to the second loop.
• Inverted in Mega Man 9. On any difficulty other than the easiest, you aren't allowed to earn any achievements or play as Proto Man.
• In Resident Evil 4's Easy mode, some areas (containing key items) are sealed off (and the related doors are left unlocked), and some of the more difficult secondary bosses are removed; however, you don't get to unlock any new toys for use in Normal or Professional modes. This can be somewhat disconcerting to those who try Easy mode after Normal and Professional (e.g., to beat the game in every possible form), as one of the sealed off areas contains a piece of a composite treasure item (which is moved to a different location in the Easy version). Also, you have to wonder what kind of crazy architect designed a parapet that cuts off your access to the staircase - and in two different instances, no less.
  • For those scratching their heads and wondering what the heck this entry is talking about (like me), easy mode was only on the PC and PAL versions of the game.
• Marathon's easiest mode was called Kindergarten, but this troper doesn't remember if it was in the first, second, and/or third. It has been dropped from Aleph One.
• In Punch Out!! (Wii), losing 100 times in single player mode unlocks the headgear, which protects your face from attacks, rendering you invincible. However, it means you're as much of a loser as the game's resident French punching bag, Glass Joe.
• Hammerin' Hero unlocks "Apprentice" difficulty (the lowest setting) if you should get Game Over three times at any point in the game. Playing any level on Apprentice starts your hero off with a blue helmet, which allows him to absorb two extra hits before dying.
• Playing the CD versions of the frist Earthworm Jim game on easy takes away the ending and instead has Jim tell you to "step up the difficulty if you want to see the real ending" then dives into a rather long lecture about worms.
  • Beating the game on Hard gets you a very different speech giving you the right to state "I'm the best" even if everybody else hates you.
• In the American PS1 port of RayStorm, if you change any of the stages' difficulty settings to lower than the default, or change your starting number of lives to higher than 5, the game switches from Combat Mode to Training Mode, in which you can only play the first four stages.
• Clearing Tetris Attack's VS mode on Easy would reward you with a simple "Congratulations!" message, accompanied by Yoshi wishing you good luck on the next difficulty level. Idling at this screen would cause Yoshi to inform you that you won't be getting any special reward for finishing Easy mode, and you should just press Reset (which wasn't actually necessary— the localization lets you just push A to exit the ending screens). Further idling causes him to yell at you.
  Yoshi: HEY! I'M NOT KIDDING! That's all, there isn't anymore. Press RESET!
• In "Alien Hominid", the easiest difficulty gives you a ridiculous amount of lives to complete only one third of the game. Upon completion, the game insults you and tells you to play on an actually challenging difficulty.

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