For Massive Damage - Television Tropes & Idioms

Otacon:If you can shoot a Stinger missile into the cockpit, you'll destroy the computer control system.

Snake: You intentionally designed it with a weak point?

Otacon: It's not a weak point. I like to think of it as a character flaw. People just aren't complete without some type of character flaw, don't you think?

-Metal Gear Solid

Bosses are usually invulnerable all over their body, with the exception of one or a few weak points.

Therefore, if you see a shiny or glowing target anywhere on the boss' body, chances are that's where you need to attack. Common targets are the head, eyes (particularly if it's a cyclops), hands, tail, or a soft underbelly. If the boss is particularly large it might require a difficult trip to get there. Sometimes, the weak point may not be exposed right away, meaning it may require a little ingenuity on your part to get it out in the open.

This is particularly true for Platformers, Action Adventure games, and Third Person Shooters.

This trope gets its name from from a meme involving a promotional video from E3 2006

. It involved the PS3 game Genji: Days of the Blade, and producer Bill Ritch expounding on how it was based on "famous battles which actually took place in Ancient Japan" -- immediately before introducing the audience to a "giant enemy crab" and explaining that in order to defeat it players must "attack its weak point for massive damage!" while (unrelatedly) explaining "new" game features such as "...real-time weapon change..." and shouting "RIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRR!"

For "massive damage" in Dungeons & Dragons games, see Chunky Salsa Rule.

Examples:

Many bosses in the The Legend Of Zelda series. For example, the recurring Gohma bosses are typically invulnerable in all places but its eye.
- Twilight Princess bosses seem to be obsessed with eyes of any kind as their one weakness. Some boss fights involve Link riding the boss, repeatetly stabbing a mysterious eye on the back of it until he's shaken off.
- In any Zelda game, visible eyes on monsters or in architecture mean "arrow goes here". The first time a player sees an eye is usually a joyful moment, as it almost always means, "I'm getting the bow in this dungeon!"
The colossi in Shadow Of The Colossus all possess glowing sigils on their flesh that can only be revealed by sunlight reflected off the hero's magic sword. Hitting this spot is the only real way to inflict any injury to them; somewhere between half to ninety percent of the fight (depending on the boss) is exposing it/getting there.
The bosses in the House Of The Dead series take minimal damage if hit anywhere other than a designated weak point, though blasting at that weak point really will deal out huge damage to them. However, the first boss in the first game - Chariot - subverts this just a tad by having its armor blown off when its health gets down to a third, allowing you to fire at the soft, pink body underneath anywhere you wish.
Thardus in Metroid Prime is only vulnerable in one of a series of specific parts of its rocky body, the section changing after taking enough damage; the trick is that Samus needs a specific visor active to see which part it is.
- Of course, the series uses this trope rather liberally, although some bosses are merely hard to hit or need the right weapon to be hit with. Or any combination of the three things.
The bosses in the original R-Type used this system, and the third level took it to extremes by featuring just a single, giant enemy with a number of weak points; the player had to pilot his ship around the boss itself, blowing up each part in turn.
In Chrono Trigger, there is a boss called the Son of the Sun, who is a giant eyeball surrounded by a ring of flames. When attacked, all but one of the flames counterattacks, the one that doesn't damages the boss. To make this worse, it uses an attack called "Roulette Shuffle," that spins the flames around so the one you attack is in a completely different area. To make this battle easier, you should use Magus' Black Hole ability to kill off the front two, making the battle 1 in 3 rather than 1 in 5. Alternatively, the whole party can wear Fire Absorbing equipment making the boss heal the party, while Crono uses Cyclone to decipher which of the flames is the real one (only the real one doesn't counterattack).
- Subverted by Chrono Trigger's final boss, Lavos, who appears to be a humanoid figure flanked by two orbs that fire energy blasts. It turns out that the "Lavos Core" is actually one of the orbs, and both the humanoid figure and the other orb are its defenders that get regenerated. Many parties die before finally discovering this crucial fact.
- Similarly, many FF games feature at least one boss composed out of multiple parts (mostly body and two arms). While the minor parts are fairly easy to kill, they regenerate after a while as long as the main part is alive. In some cases (like in Chrono Trigger), the minor parts need to be defeated to expose the weak point for a while.
The Star Fox series is fond of this, often in the obviously-glowing-red variation. Of particular note is one boss in Star Fox Command whose weak point is essentially a giant glowing butt. The enemy forces are mainly apes and monkeys, you see, and this boss is a Humongous Mecha baboon.
- The series also features some subversions, though. Andross in the 64 version seems like the eye-type, but shooting his eyes only stuns him briefly. To defeat him, the player has to first shoot his hands off, then shoot the head anywhere BUT the eyes. On the right route, he then reveals his true form: a giant brain with detachable eyeballs that shoot lasers.
Lost Planet takes this to an extreme. Every single Akrid--from the weakest cannon fodder that can barely take normal hits, all the way up to the Bonus Boss--has one or more glowing orange weak points. It's worth noting, however, that although Akrid make up a significant portion of the enemies in the single-player game, they're not the only ones; humans and machines don't have obvious weak points in this style.
The majority of the Heaven's Smiles in Killer7 have a glowing yellow spot somewhere on their body. Shooting this kills them instantly and grants you far more blood (used to heal and for power-ups) than gunning them down the standard way. Heaven's Smiles without the yellow spot have similar vulnerabilities - the enlarged part of a Phantom Smile, the eye of a Giant Smile, and so forth.
Traditionally, the only way to harm Dracula's first form in the Castlevania games is to hit him in the head.
In a few boss battles in the third Sly Cooper, particularly those fought in Sly's biplane or with Dimitri's speargun, the weak point is Dr. M, who is connected to the boss monster via the massive plug in his head.
A small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port...
The final boss of Doom 2, the Icon of Sin, has you firing rockets into the brain of the Icon. When using the idclip cheat, however, you can go into the brain and see... John Romero's severed head impaled on a stick. Also, if you reverse what the demon chants at the start of the battle, you'll hear the message "To win the game you must kill me, John Romero!" 'Nuff said.
Both the larger and smaller versions of the 'Children of Karras' in Thief 2: The Metal Age have a glowing-red coal hatch on the rear of their boilers. Unless you have an implausibly large amount of fire arrows or explosive mines available, hitting that coal hatch with water arrows is the only way in the game to disable one.
The "headshot=death" rule has become more-or-less universal, providing players with an intuitive, sensible advanced technique for dispatching foes. Famously, completing the Halo games on the punishing "Legendary" difficulty requires a mastery of it.
- This was subverted, though, in Team Fortress 2 (for everyone but a zoomed-in sniper, anyway), which deliberately removed them (and replaced them with more-or-less random criticals) because the developers felt that headshots rewarded obsessive players at the expense of casual gamers and were unfriendly to team play.
- Also avoided/subverted in Planetside. The justification is apparently that the Auraxian factions were smart enough to give their soldiers durable enough helmets to take your average rifle round without causing more damage than a body-shot. The sniper rifle takes off 75% of your average armored grunt's HP in one shot no matter where you hit, anyway.
- On the flip side, Metal Gear Online (at least the version packaged with MGS 4) has an in-game option in which players hosting a match can decide to enable a "Headshots Only" mode, in which you're penalized if you shoot an opposing player anywhere but their head. And considering just how headshot-unfriendly the game's controls are to begin with...
The MDK games.
Lampshaded in Conker's Bad Fur Day. One Terminator-like robot boss sports a huge flashing red button on his back reading "Do Not Push."
Inverted in Mega Man ZX. The eight main bosses have a weak point, but hitting them there damages the biometal you are trying to take from them, resulting in costly repairs after the fight, or a rematch. The ideal outcome is to defeat them without ever hitting the weak spot. A few bosses actually have annoyingly easy-to-hit weaknesses.
Attempted justification in Metal Gear Solid - the Humongous Mecha's designer was an eccentric soul who felt that it needed a "personality flaw" to make it complete. Therefore the only part of the mecha which isn't practically invincible is the target-shaped box of sensors sticking off the side, without which the pilot is deaf and blind.
GLaDOS in Portal is a massive supercomputer taking up an entire room... but she also happens to have a massive Venus-like structure hanging out from the roof... with 4 glowing orbs on it. Hmmm... oh look, it's your old pal, the rocket turret!
- Subverted in that the first orb is actually her morality core. It was installed to stop her from filling the room with poisonous gas, after she started filling the room with poisonous gas. Time to cue...The blinking timer!
Lampshaded in this clip from Heavenly Sword, where Kai threatens a guard with a very painful Groin Attack if he doesn't cough up the password to the armory where the titular sword is.
The enemy ships in the Squaresoft shooter Einhander, aside from small-fighter type cannon fodder, were usually segmented. Shooting the main body of the ship would destroy it eventually, but simply destroying the cockpit and (in some ships) the engines would cause the ship to crash and explode.
Destroy the Core!
King Hippo in Punch Out has two weak points: His belly-button and the back of his throat. And you can't get to either right away.
It's hard to notice, but this is actually subverted in the PC version of Far Cry. The large, glowing green orbs in the chests of the rocket launcher-wielding Giant Mooks are actually part of their armor, and they actually take less damage when shot there. Their real weak point is, common-sensibly enough, their head.
- Played straight, but in a fairly tongue-in-cheek manner, for the final boss. He's a super-mutant with loads of health, but he can be killed in less than a second by shooting him in the crotch (something of an easter egg, as there is no in-game indication that shooting him there would have that effect).
The ex-Russian military helicopter that Rife used as an escape vehicle in Snow Crash was made of reinforced steel, capable of shrugging off the type of small-arms fire that Rife (and the Russians who used to use them) was expecting. However, as Hiro (and incidentally, the Afghan rebels years before him) realized, the cockpit glass was just that: Glass. That's right: the Russians made an armoured helicopter that had a cockpit of completely non-bulletproof glass. Hiro was never given an opportunity to demonstrate this, however, as the magnetic properties of the belly of the chopper turned out to be a much more deciding factor in bringing it down in the end.
- Sad to say, it's likely that Stephenson Did Not Do The Research; the only Russian armoured helicopter used in Afghanistan, the Hind, has a canopy made of bulletproof glass. It seems that the other Russian helicopters of the period were not armour-plated.
A TV example: in the late fourth season, most of Angel's cast is fighting Skip and getting hammered. Wesley, though every shot he's taken has bounced off the creature's armor, sees one of the few wounds it has sustained: a horn has broken off. He aims for the hole...and thanks to the Million To One Chance, the bullet enters the head. This is lethal even to super-badass demon guys.
Beowulf from Devil May Cry 3 can be struck in his eye for greater damage than attacking the rest of his body. If Dante or Vergil lowers his health to the points where he Turns Red by hitting the eye, Beowulf will stumble and give a few more vital seconds for dealing damage. Cerberus from the same takes more damage from getting hit on either of his three heads. The Leviathan Heartcore, also from the same, needs to have its two accompanying "organs" destroyed before it opens up and makes itself vulnerable.
The final boss in Descent 2 is covered by a force field in the front, and thus can only be hit from the rear. Worse, unless you happen to be cloaked, he will always turn to face you.
In Code Lyoko, all of XANA's monsters in the game-like virtual world have one or more eye symbols (or actual eyes) somewhere on their bodies. Hitting this spot will usually de-rez the monster instantly.

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