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"He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
— Samuel Johnson
"BEHOLD MY TRUE FORM, AND DESPAIR!!!"
Classic Big Bads have the tendency, when push comes to shove, to turn into big honking monsters. A mad scientist in a fit of urgency might down his own mutagen, or a cyborg turns his body into a living bomb, or a mild-mannered enemy reveals her terrifying true form. Bets are good they'll become way more bloated, ugly, or plain disfigured. Sometimes this is more subtle, and the character will look perfectly normal (or even attractive) save for a few glaring monstrosities that give them a scary Game Face.
This shows the villain means business and it's time for the heroes to end it. And for those with firmer morals, this qualifies the villain as a monster, making it fine to kill him. (See also Karmic Death.) This is probably why item 34 in the Evil Overlord List says "I will not turn into a snake. It never helps."
Usually accompanied by the stock phrase. "No one who has seen me in this form has lived to tell about it!!!" or "I have only begun to fight!"
If there's one final final form after the heroes beat the bad guy, and it loses handily, it was a Clipped Wing Angel.
Named in honor of Sephiroth, Big Bad of the video game Final Fantasy VII. (Okay, named in honor of his theme music, as he has in fact seven wings, but just one in place of an arm.) Video games in general absolutely adore having their final boss do this, even when their original form is scary enough anyway. In fact, it's gotten to be somewhat of an arms race: thanks to the popularity of Freeza in 1991, three form bosses are now somewhat common, and those games going for "epic" will sometimes go for even more. In JRPGs, particularly, it is rather common to see two stages of One Winged Angel: the "bizarro" form, that is huge and scary, and the "angel" form, that is winged, eeriely beautiful and accompanied by Ominous Latin Chanting (the original One Winged Angel, Sephiroth, is the codifier of this subtrope). Once beaten, or on becoming even more powerful, the villain may cross the Bishonen Line and into safer territory for an Evil Makeover to work its magic.
Sometimes you never even fight their human form at all and they immediately turn into a monster. Can count as The Unfought if they showed fighting ability in their human form. This is more popular among minor video game villains who will often transform into tougher versions of earlier monsters like in the Breath Of Fire and Final Fantasy games, as it takes time to create a unique battle sprite for them.
Interestingly, heroes, particularly transforming characters, have been known to use this "turn into a big scary monster" tactic as well. It's extremely rare for it not to cross into Superpowered Evil Side territory.
Sadly, this transformation can often be anti-climatic, as it telegraphs to the audience that the villain will most likely face his final defeat soon. Outside of video games, it is quite rare for a bad guy to invoke this trope and actually WIN. This might be because the less human a character looks, the more "acceptable" it is to kill them.
Can easily qualify as Nightmare Fuel. Scaled Up and Make My Monster Grow are major subtropes. See also I Am Not Left Handed and Shapeshifter Showdown. Compare Emergency Transformation, Came Back Wrong, and Not Even Human. One subversion is to make it a Clipped Wing Angel.
For those looking for actual winged people, see Winged Humanoid.
Examples
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Anime
- When Sebastian reveals his true form, we don't get to see it, but it apparently includes black feathers and stripper boots, and is so horrible that Ciel is not allowed to watch. Ciel's seen some pretty messed up things.
- Digimon Frontier has a Big Bad named Lucemon who starts in the form of a child-like angel with wings and blonde hair and shiny light powers. He then turns out to be a fascist dictator and gets steadily deeper into One Winged Angel territory over three new evolutions.
- Akira is famous for this, thanks to the infamous giant fetus... thingy. It includes a final villain ultima-monster transformation, using it to introduce some fairly complex questions about humanity and monstrosity.
- Claymores can turn into one if they are willing to put greater reliance on the youma side of their souls.
- Happened quite a lot on Dragonball, though typically on less grand a scale - the villain announces that he's changing to his "true form", then becomes larger and more muscular. (Some do this more than once!) And of course the Saiyans have their Super-Saiyan forms.
- Freeza's initial form is small and rather weedy looking, but has proved to be extremely powerful in previous confrontations. He transforms into a much taller version of himself, then an even larger, monstrous beast with an elongated head and spikes on its back. However his much-hyped final form turns out to be just as small as his original, but more sleek and aerodynamic, effectively crossing the Bishonen Line. At first he is mocked for this, but soon proves that the extra speed and strength far outweighs what he lacks in height.
- And then a more muscular form of the same, and then an android form.
- Likewise, as Cell steps closer to his 'Perfect' form, he becomes steadily more humanoid.
- Zarbon's case is an interesting one - obsessed with his own beauty, he is incredibly reluctant to transform even temporarily into his ugly-but-powerful hulking monster form, and consequently determined to beat the shit out of the protagonist whose power forces him to do so or lose.
- Majin Buu has the most transformations of any character in the entirety of Dragonball: he starts out fat and goofy, turns muscular and savage, then absorbs Piccolo and Gotenks to become smarter and more powerful with a more human face and longer antennae, then reverts to a Piccolo-based form when Gotenks' fusion runs out, THEN absorbs Gohan to take on his most human form yet, and then finally when Goku and Vegeta free the fighters he absorbed, he gets SUPER BUFF...and finally reverts into a shrimpy little guy who has no vocabulary whatsoever and blows up planets for giggles.
- Then there's the whole Oozaru thing. In an episode of the Sayain saga Vegeta has a move that allows him to go oozaru by creating a ball of energy that looks like the full moon- he uses this move and turns oozaru but amazingly still is able to speak while being in this form.
- Which was explained as him being trained to have some control over the form (as opposed to the only other Oozaru appearing being entirely untrained kids - Goku and Gohan).
- What? The Super Saiyan transformations don't sorta count? Once GT brought SS 4 into play, a variation in form has definitely occurred.
- And pre-redemption Piccolo grew building-sized at one point; same for Lord Slug.
- Sometimes happens to individual Duel Monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh, particularly the Winged Dragon of Ra.
- Although in one episode Kaiba actually transformed into a Blue Eyes White Dragon.
- Naruto has this a fair bit. A couple of the purer "villain" forms of the transformation involved Gaara's grotesque mutation into his demonic Shukaku form, and Orochimaru's curse seal's second stage, which turns the bearer into a monstrous version of their former selves: various members of the Sound Five grow horns, spikes, deformed facial features, an extra eye, and a tail from using it, and Face Heel Turn Sasuke actually grows hand-like wings although he might not be able to now.
- Orochimaru himself has a grotesque "true form" that he transforms into whenever he performs his body-switch technique. He takes the shape of a giant white snake made up of a multitude of smaller snakes, with a monstrous, dragon-like face and shaggy black hair. He also has a jutsu that allows him to transform into a giant hydra, one of the mouths of which holds his normal body.
- Now Kisame himself is showing the true form of his Samehada, and fuses with it to become a
manshark sharkman even more shark-like man that can swim at super speed and eat chakra at will.
- In the non-villainous Super Powered Evil Side version, we have Naruto's Nine-Tails transformations. As he taps into the Nine-Tails chakra he goes through various stages represented by tails. Tails 1-3 is Naruto as still human, albeit with red slit-pupiled eyes, fangs, and claw like nails, surrouned by a bubbling red fox-shaped energy field with the requisite number of tails. At 4 he is completely obscured by the Nine-Tails chakra, looking like a sketchy vaguely humanoid fox thing with a Jack-O-Lantern esque face. 6-tails looks like 4-tails but wearing a giant fox skeleton like body armor. At 8 He turns into a Kaiju sized, skinless, fox.
- Spoofed on Bobobobo Bobobo. The villain Over has six lights on his chest that light up when he gets mad. When all six are lit up, he transforms into his true self... Torpedo Girl. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like.
- Another example is an enemy's true form being "Sambaman", an enemy whose method of attacking is... dancing the Samba. No, really.
- You know, there isn't much from that show that wouldn't warrant an disclaimer.
- Another spoof, I guess, would be Neko Majin Z, in which Neko Majin transforms in a way so subtle he is forced to point it out ("Look closer... I have double eyelids").
- The Arrancar in Bleach transform (or revert back) into massive hulking demons when they release their zanpakutous. One of them even utters one of the page quotes above just before doing this.
- Chad, a protagonist, had a similar line, "This is my right arm's true form," when he used his new ultimate technique, "Right Arm of the Giant", against the Arrancar Gantenbainne Mosqueda. Also, during Ishida's climactic, personal fight in which he gained a monumentous amount of power temporarily at a permanent cost, he took on a literal manifestation of the trope, complete with a spirit-particle-absorbing wing.
- Ulquiorra Cifer actually grows gigantic wings during his two releases. In fact, his final fight with Ichigo even ends with one of his wings missing, although he's really more of a devil than an angel.
- Let's not forget Yammy Rialgo, who grows gigantic, and reveals that his number is not 10, but 0.
- Unfortunately, the Arrancar have a habit of always getting killed in the same fight that they first transform in. It's gotten to the point that fans are fond of saying things like "Okay, he transformed, t-minus three chapters until he's dead."
- Dii in Utawarerumono; initially an actual angel-winged White Haired Pretty Boy, he transforms into something best described as a black-armoured blue Godzilla.
- Hakuro does pretty much the same thing, only he has blue armor.
- Happens nearly every week in Vampire Princess Miyu. The exception is the last episode, where the final monster looks almost entirely human, making it somewhat less fine to kill her. The fact that the monster was Miyu's best friend all along does not really help either.
- A very, very nasty subversion takes place in the final episodes of the Fullmetal Alchemist anime. In the middle of his battle with Edward, Envy finally reveals what he really looks like. He actually looks a great deal like Alphonse... his younger brother...
- A few minutes later, of course, Envy plays the trope straight and turns into a giant snake (well, a serpentine dragon-thing at least). It doesn't help.
- Note that all of this is very different from the Manga, which uses a more typical version of this trope at first. Envy's true form is... well, you'd hate to meet him in a dark alley. Or a light alley for that matter. However, this is also subverted. Envy's true true form, devoid of all the souls that compose his body, is that of a physically harmless embryo-like lump of flesh. It can still talk, and it convinces Mei Chan to return to Central where it can get "healed".
- Some of the other Homunculi have monstrous true forms as well. Manga Gluttony opens up his torso to reveal a false Gate of Truth, Greed grows a black diamond skin over his body, manga Pride becomes a replica of the shadows behind the gate, a swirling mass of darkness, eyes and mouths. Manga Wrath/Anime Pride, Lust, Anime Wrath or either of the Sloths haven't or didn't show any alternate form other than small transformations(Lust's nails or anime Sloth's water body), though manga Sloth is pretty monstrous to start with. In the movie "Conqueror of Shamballa", Gluttony is seen roving about the sewers as a giant, monstrous version of his typically oafish body.
- In the new Brotherhood anime, Father Cornello transformed as well.
- Recently, in the manga, Father himself uses this trope; after being struck by Hohenheim's "finishing" attack, he leaves his physical body in the shape of a humanoid shadow covered in eyes and mouths, which then proceeds to eat his now-empty shell of a body off the ground.
- Played straight with Inugami Kotaru-kun in Mahou Sensei Negima. Big Bad Ass Wolf indeed.
- Subverted later on; after Negi single-handedly wipes out a gang of bounty hunters, the leader starts muttering about revealing his true form. Negi gives him a mean look, and he goes back to cowering on the ground.
- Used again when four of Fate's minions all revealed more powerful forms
 to fight Jack Rakan. Not that it helped any.
- Later it turns out that Negi can pull this off if he cranks Magica Erba up high enough.
- In Ranma 1/2, Pantyhose Taro is cursed to become a winged minotaur-like creature with an eel's tail (Spring of Yeti Holding an Eel and a Crane While Riding an Ox). Before, that is, he added octopus tentacles. Whereas most characters loathe or at least dislike being cursed, Taro loves the added power and takes advantage of it at every opportunity. (It probably helps that he was cursed as a baby.)
- The final arc of the manga pitted the Nerima crew against an entire race of people who could turn into angel-like creatures (to be fair, they were genetic mutations from having drunk Jusenkyo water for generations.) But the Biggest Bad of them all, the one enemy that puts all of Ranma's prior foes to shame, started out as an obnoxious little kid who transformed into a living, breathing nuclear power plant with great golden wings and the regenerative powers of a Phoenix.
- Happens in every Sailor Moon movie and the season finales.
- An ongoing theme in Soul Eater, where there are living beings that can transform into weapons, retaining human form to interact with others and maneuver of their own will. They can also temporarily transform into an amplified weapon form by merging their souls with their Technician. Moreover, one of the major villains of the series (The Demon God himself) assumes a large, grotesque form during the last battle of the anime.
- Practically a recurring joke with Arachne's ancient second-in-command, Mosquito. Every time the techs are just about to beat him, he invariably reverts to stronger and stronger (younger) versions of himself, proclaiming each to be when he was at his "physical peak". (He pulls a Bishonen Line when he fights kid. It's later subverted when he fights Noah. He goes into what he says is his most powerful form ever, and gets killed in about three seconds.)
- In the manga version of Gantz, a couple aliens have this, but the most extreme example is the Nurarihyoon alien, who goes through quite a large number of different forms, each appearing after the previous form is seemingly killed. The forms vary wildly, from an old man, to a hulking horned beast, a demon-like creature, a floating ball, a giant naked woman made out of other naked women, and at least one more demonic form after that.
- Berserk's demons typically have two forms. The first is their regular human form, often with some monstrous feature that serves as their "tell." The other is their full demonic form, which they typically go into when their regular form is not enough. Zodd has the form of a winged humanoid monster with a horned tiger's head and hooved feet that in the later parts of the manga has only one horn. Grunbeld has the form of a powerful dragon. And Rosine has a "fairy" form in addition to her true demonic form.
- Reinforce's berserked defense program from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. When it's Deflector Shields were destroyed and Hayate petrified it, it simply shed its feminine first form and took on a more grotesque one with giant toothy heads and more tentacles. When that one was frozen and destroyed with three Wave Motion Guns, it started forming a third form. Unfortunately for it, it was jettisoned into space and vaporized by the Arc-en-ciel before it could finish its transformation.
- The entire Living Ship Grey Geshpenst from Infinite Ryvius undergoes this process during the final battle, absorbing a bunch of Space Whales into itself and transforming from a normal-looking spaceship to a massive organic... thing.
- Stinger and Cohen from Getter Robo: Armageddon pull this at the end, fusing together and becoming some kind of planet sized Living Ship that can spew waves of Invaders.
- A few examples in One Piece. Virtually anyone with a Zoan fruit will have this to some degree, though only Rob Lucci and Kaku try fighting without their fruit powers. More notably, Eneru and Gecko Moria both go One Winged Angel shortly before being defeated, with the former turning into a giant thunder god and the latter absorbing a thousand shadows to become a giant four-legged shadow demon...lizard...thing.
- All of the Chevaliers in Blood Plus, but especially James...
- In Yu Yu Hakusho, Yusuke fights numerous demons, many of them start out fighting in human form, and then when they are losing they shift to demon form in order to increase their fighting power. Oddly enough, considering how violent demons are, many demons seem to prefer wandering around in human form even when there's no need to hide what they are (Hiei is a good example of this, since even when fighting the Saint Beasts in an all-demon town he says in his mostly-human form).
- Nyanko-sensei from Natsume Yuujinchou usually spends his time in the body of a Fortune Cat - except when in battle, then he turns into this.◊
- Sesshomaru from Inuyasha can transform into a giant dog. Of course, after Inuyasha cuts off his arm while he's in that form, he doesn't do it again throughout the series.
- Naraku also fits this trope: in the final battle in the manga he transforms into a monster-sized spider, whose body Inuyasha and gang then enter. They then encounter Naraku's human body once more, which undergoes a final form change.
- Alucard from Hellsing uses this frequently, to the point of not having much of a 'true' form. Paladin Anderson uses a nail from the Cross to become a thorn-monster. Also, Seras manages to pull off the One Wing (in place of an arm) look later in the series.
- The mikura of Karas have this, transforming into mechanical monsters for combat.
- In one of The Slayers OVA's, Lina and Naga aggrivate a vampire untill he shows them his "True Vampire Form". He sprouts wings and grows to forty or fifty feet... and then he collapses into a fox-bat and gets beaten unconsious by Lina.
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn has the Six Funeral Wreaths, a villain group who each have their box weapons embedded in their bodies. Their ultimate ability is to activate said weapons, which turns them into powerful half-animal beings.
- And three of them end up getting tricked into activating their transformation just so their boss can absorb their power, in order to fuel HIS one-winged angel transformation.
Comic Books
- Marvel Comics villain Onslaught had a second nasty form in the comics and in Marvel vs. Capcom.
- There was also an X-Man character whose power was transforming into whatever his opponent was afraid of (he may have even been named something like Nightmare). The twist was, he was a good guy, and actually otherwise really nice.
- That's Trauma from Avengers: The Initative who transforms into the fears of others. Nightmare is in fact his father.
- There are many mutants in the marvel universe who can transform, some of them really transform into ugly, instead of cool or powerful ones. The morlock Scaleface for example was a normal woman who could transform into a giant lizard.
- In the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga series (before they introduced the cardgame), the main charecters got trapped in a tabletop RPG and had to defeat Zorc. He did indeed transform into a more powerful state, but Yu-gi figured out that the reason he hadn't transformed before was that, while it did up his attack power, it also exposed his weakpoint, hence the form was a major risk.
- In Amulet, this happens to anyone who gets "devoured" by the amulets. So far we've seen Luger grow into a giant troll-like creature.
Film
Literature
- The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Silver Chair, Prince Rilian expresses relief that The Vamp who'd kidnapped him turned into a giant serpent when she tried to kill him, because he never could have killed a lady (but had no problem slaying her as a serpent).
- Given that she had literally put him through Hell for so long, it's a wonder that he didn't take exception to his rule and just outright killed her in her human form. We can't know for sure what he'd have done if she hadn't Scaled Up, of course, but given that he'd just practically allowed her to brainwash him again it doesn't look good...
- And an interesting twist from Night Mare, book 6 in Piers Anthony's Xanth series: the protagonist, Mare Imbri, literally is a "Night Mare." When, in a climactic scene, she confronts a shape-shifting villain, he almost saves himself by shifting from human form into horse form. Imbri does eventually defeat him, but it becomes much, much harder to do so. It isn't just because she can't hurt a fellow horse either, it's because she's in heat at the time. (Sigh, Piers Anthony...)
- As a heroic example, in the epic, Táin Bó Cúailnge, Cuchulainn enters a "Ríastrad" or "Warp Spasm". In this state he transforms into a horribly mutilated monster whose very appearance is enough to scare enemies away. The catch is that, while in this form, Cuchulainn may not know friend from foe.
- In The Dresden Files, Red Court vampires can either take the form of beautiful young men and women... or hideous black rubbery bat-creatures. Note that the human form is an illusion, which is bad news for anyone who's infected.
- Also, this is explicitly the main power of the Knights of the Blackened Denarii. They change from human into some horrible form for combat, with a twisted Angelic rune on their forehead and a second set of eyes. So far we have seen: A snake-man, a medusa-haired human/panther thing, a six-legged horned fanged bear, a normal human with a shadow that will strangle you, an obsidian statue, a feathery tentacled thing, a praying mantis with little praying mantises for blood, an emaciated grayish spiny humanoid, and various forms of big and ugly and scaly and hairy. Considering that the demon-forms are based off of the coin-holder's personality, one has to wonder what Harry would look like transformed with Lasciel.
- In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, Arkio starts to metamorphise under the influence of Chaos. Inquisitor Stele can contain it, but at the climax, fighting Rafen, he starts to bleed black blood, and then to change in form. Rafen shows him himself in a mirror and he breaks it in rage. Then the Spear of Telesto rejects him.
- The Storm King, Big Bad of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, upon being summoned back into the world by Evil Sorcerer Pryrates, takes on an Eldritch Abomination-esque form that must have been a lot of fun for the author to write.
- There's something of a sort like this in American Gods, as the deities seem to have a form that shows one of their believers whose faith was strong enough to make them real. Thus, Mr. Nancy/Anasi has this form of an African boy with a distented stomach and infected leg and Hinzelmann shows a child pierced by swords, which actually reflects his being created through human sacrifice. Interestingly, The Other Wiki novel for the character indicates that this was actually that character's true form in the original stories.
- In The Kalevala, the evil sorceress Louhi turns into the mythical thunder bird Kokko to pursue the heroes, wielding scythes for her claws. Which pretty much makes this trope Older Than Dirt.
Live Action TV
- The Mayor in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, spent a whole season getting there.
- Black-haired, black-eyed, black-garbed Willow at the end of season six could definitely be said to be at least partially this.
- Without their encounter suits, the Vorlons of Babylon 5 look like holy creatures from the observer's mythologies. But when angered, they look... different...
- Let's not forget Power Rangers: "Make my monster GROW!!!. Every Super Sentai (not counting the first two entries)/Power Rangers season has had this, with each Big Bad using a different growth method.
- Kamen Rider Den-O and Kamen Rider Kiva had monsters occasionally assuming gigantic monster forms (dubbed Gigandeaths and Sabbats, respectively). This typically only happened when they needed to show off the newest Den-O form's Cool Train car or Castle Dran. CG costs are expensive.
- In Spearhead from Space, the Doctor Who serial that first introduced the Autons, the creatures themselves look like mannequins unless tweaked to look (mostly) human; however, their leader gestates into the Ultimate Form with which Take Over The Earth. It is... a giant, tentacled squid.
- Beetleborgs has had it's share of transforming baddies. Kind of odd, given that many of the good guys were already monsters.
- Noxic in the first season had a super form called Hurt-Ulyles, in one episode Fangula the resident vampire became Super Fang and in Metalix- The Crustaceons themselves have this.
- In the episode Buggin Out which is a satire of the 80's remake of The Fly Flabber sees a drawing of a matter transporter, brings it to life and tests it out- but unfortunately much like in the movie a fly monster called Kombat Gnat gets in the machine with him- and when he arrives at Zoom Comics he's merged with the creature and gradually evolves into Kombat Gnat and the kids have to fight him in order to get him back to normal.
Music Video
- Michael Jackson pulls this off with great effect in his music video Ghosts as the Maestro. He also does a pretty good Demon Head near the end.
Other
- Satan himself in the Bible's Book of Revelation turns into a ginormous seven-headed, ten horned Dragon (with signature red color) before flying into Heaven to cause havoc.
Tabletop Games
- In Warhammer and Warhammer 40000, warriors of Chaos can be blessed or cursed with "gifts" from their patron Gods, turning them steadily more inhuman. Eventually, at a certain point, the weak-willed become mindless Chaos Spawn, while those with Villainous Willpower ascend into Daemon Princes who retain their sentience and control over their vast powers. In either case the warrior now becomes a full Daemon extra vulnerable to anti-Daemon abilities and armament.
- Fair mention should also go to champions who decide to play host to Greater Daemons. The individual in question, who usually looks mostly human-shaped before their transformation, while suddenly stagger about screaming before exploding/transforming into a massive chunk of otherworldly asskickery.
- It's less like them transforming and more like the daemons are using their body as a door/clothing for themselves while they kick the crap out of everyone. From the descriptions in the codices/books, the transformations are pure nightmare fuel.
- Consider Dawn Of War, in which they first levitate into the air - then slam into the ground in just one big shockwave of blood.
- Dhohanoids from Cthulhu Tech are Half Human Hybrids that can change between a human form and a mostrous one.
- Nyarlathotep tends to do this in mythos RPGs. Destroying his human form often causes him to manifest as some kinds of sanity-blasting monstrosity.
- While we're at it, Tagers, also from Cthulhu Tech are able to do this too... but in keeping with the fact that they're good guys, their One Winged Angel is a bit more streamlined than that of Dhohanoids.
- Ragnorra, the obligatory Body Horror entry from Elder Evils, tarnsforms from a bloated blob of wormlike flesh into a curiously human face made out of strands - her True Mother form. While spawning utterly abhorrent monstrosities that simply should not be.
- Erwin Stahler from Mutant Chronicles starts out as a human-sized model on the battlefield, but once he's down, he goes One Winged Angel and turns into a bigger, armored mutant with big honking claws.
- In Exalted, there is a powerful necromantic spell named the Birth of Sanity's Sorrow. It is cast at the moment of the necromancer's death, which transforms their dying corpse into a titanic monstrosity of grotesque design, inspired by the necromancer's delusions and nightmares of dead principles. Fortunately, BoSS is usually only accessible to boss-level NP Cs.
Video Games
- Used in an interesting way in Temple Of Elemental Evil. Towards the end of the game, your party can encounter a human adventurer deep inside one of the Elemental Planes. She explains that she came down there with her party, but they were killed and she barely escaped. She asks to go with you, and if allowed you'll find she's a decent-ish sorceress. But if in dialogue your characters detect something amiss, they can confront her about it. At this point she reveals that she's actually a succubus, and wants to come along with the party because she's bored. If you let her, she'll drop the pretense and switch back into her true form, making her a much more powerful companion.
- Naturally parodied in Barkley Shut Up And Jam Gaiden. The first form is already one-winged. So what happens when it's time for its true form? Umm...a dinosaur with Barkley's face on it?
- The 'Dragon of Fire' fight in Chrono Cross. While the first time you fight him he's fairly small and humanoid, partway through the second fight he will change into an even larger (and cooler) dragon in the style of muscle growth.
- Possibly the first video game example was the Dragonlord/Dracolord/King Dragon in Dragon Warrior. However, if you believe the original Japanese storyline, the dragon isn't a "true form" at all; it's his pet dragon, avenging its slain master. This could be another case of Gameplay And Story Segregation, though.
- Apparently Jossed—or at least Ret Con—in the Japan-only (well, and ROM) DW 1 + 2 for SNES; the dragon in the cave (where you must rescue the princess) is the pet, and King Dragon is real.
- Square/Squaresoft may love this trope even more then Disney does. As you well know, it is a rule that Squaresoft games MUST have a giant transforming final boss. Final Fantasy IV had Zeromus. FFV had Exdeath twice. FFVI had Kefka (who had angelic wings in his final form)
- Along with diabolic wings, and a pair that was a fusion of the two. This was probably a play off of Christian angelic mythos (Seraphim have six wings), designed to further highlight Kefka's actually being God (capitalization intended) at that point. Final Fantasy VIII had the fake president. And Ultimecia. Final Fantasy X had Yunalesca, Seymour, AND Jecht. Final Fantasy VII had several. Sephiroth, who is the trope namer, also returns to his normal form after the fight, for an un-loseable Clipped Winged Angel battle. Jenova had various forms, and Hojo turns himself into several different mutated monster forms before dying. Vincent Valentine had four different forms as his limit breaks. And if you really want to look too deeply at things, the WEAPONS can be seen as the Planet's own attempt at a One-Winged Angel.
- And Final Fantasy XII had Vayne...and don't forget Final Fantasy, the original, where Garland turns into the Chaos monster at the end.
- Final Fantasy XI is actually a bit more reserved about this. The Shadowlord and Promathia (initial release and second expansion) have two stage battles but don't physically change, the game is just loading up a new power set for them to use and a new hp bar. The third expansion features three bosses back to back in the final battle, though the final one Alexander, pretty much takes over the fight himself after you deal enough damage to the Prince who is piloting his current body. This is played a bit more straight in the first expansion, Rise of the Zilart when Eald'narche is knocked off his floating platform and his eyepatch comes off, revealing a glowing eye and he starts flying for the rest of the fight. What Lady Lilith and Atomos are up to in Wings of the Goddess remains to be seen.
- Final Fantasy X-2 had an interesting version of this trope - the main characters gain Dresspheres, which allow you to socket in gems that allow them to change classes (and costumes) in battle representing the various Final Fantasy 1/3/5/etc classes. Each girl gets a special Dress Sphere that allows them to turn into a huge multi-target monstrosity - essentially a Boss - for a limited time.
- Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core is quite possibly the hugest example of this trope. Two of the four main male characters become literal one wing angels - one of which is black-winged and the other is white-winged. (One of the ones who doesn't is Sephiroth - he saves it for the next game.) There are even several varieties of mooks and monsters who suddenly get one wing blooming out of their backs (they're genetically derived from the abovementioned two), all of which who can apparently fly with only big, feathery wing. The second half of the game feels like the monsters from the first half decided to reappear after having visited a grand Unpaired Attachable Wings clearance sale. It reaches a point where you expect everything that isn't a robot to have a bizarre feathery wing graft. In fact, the protagonist you play as should logically at some point sprout a wing as well. Thankfully, he saves it for the ending cinematic.
- Angeal, who gets his One Wing very early, apparently is annoyed at all the competition - when it comes time for his boss fight, he goes back to basics and mutates himself into a horrible, monstrous chimera. With one wing. Then again, he was doing it explicitly to force Zack into killing him, so... this one's kinda meta.
- This was brought to an extreme in SaGa Frontier, which offered us 7 characters and 7 final bosses. Unfortunately, Emelia's Big Bad was ultimately a rather unimpressive human, so they gave us a boss from nowhere who was giant and could transform. In a fun twist, the creators of the game decided to crush fan theories by telling us that, no, that boss really has no connection to anything up to that point. No, not even the hanging-plot-thread that the nice evil man told you to give to his lover as his dying wish.
- Ah, Kingdom Hearts. In the first game, Ansem has, by this player's estimate, a baker's dozen of "final" forms. In the second, Xemnas fights you as himself, as a spaceship, as a suit of armour hurling everything he can at you (including the landscape) while sitting on a throne, himself again with different powers, and very likely some other things we've forgotten. When Sephiroth is battled in Kingdom Hearts, unlike in the Final Fantasy games he does have only one wing. While he does not physically transform, as he becomes more injured he changes his attack patterns and becomes faster, more aggressive, and deadlier.
- In addition, in the
second third game, Sora can assume various more powerful forms to fight enemies including a demonic-looking Superpowered Evil Side and a benevolent "Final Form".
- In the first game, Cloud Strife gets a one winged angel form. Sort of. His wing is actually demonic looking, and he only uses it for an attack, but he does still gain a single wing. It's gone by the second game.
- For the record, the Xemnas battle has eight phases: the first rush to the spaceship, the second rush to the spaceship, the spaceship engines, the spaceship core, Xemnas as the dude on the throne with the big sword, the Xemnas dragon, dude on the throne again, and Zebra Xemnas.
- Unlike his heartless counterpart, Xemnas doesn't actually physically transform. He simply goes through several different outfit changes and makes use of his Dragon-esque space ship. This is presumably because only the most powerful Nobodies can maintain a humanoid appearance, so by not going all Eldritch Abomination on us, Xemnas is actually setting himself apart from the average mook. (Of course, What Measure Is A Non Human still kicks in. Due to the whole Nobody thing.)
- Not to mention it features quite a few of Disney's One Winged Angels.
- 358/2 Days brings us a One Winged Angel form for Xion. It's...rather difficult to describe...It's sort of like an armored monstrous Nobody form of none other than Sora. Interestingly, this is the form the boss assumes for all four phases of the fight, with each phase bringing new weapons rather than new transformations and the final phase bringing a bit of a growth spurt too.
- The Final Boss of Square Soft's "introductory" RPG, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, mutates through four different forms.
- In Super Mario RPG (co-developed by Squaresoft), Final Boss Smithy gains several forms after fighting with it once. The first looks like an evil bearded robot with a hammer. The second is the same robot, except with a giant skull for a head which can be switched to four alternate forms.
- Also, the Czar Dragon turns into Zombone.
- In Dissidia Final Fantasy, every character has an "EX Form" - for many of the villain characters it's their One Winged Angel form - Kefka, for instance, gains his angelic look. Sephiroth, interestingly enough, takes on his Kingdom Hearts single-black-wing look instead of his crazy mutant angel form from Final Fantasy VII.
- Sephiroth doesn't turn into his true One Winged Angel form (or at least a humanoid equivalent like Jecht and Kefka) during his Ex-Mode because it would have caused loading issues; his Ex-Mode is modeled after his Advent Children appearance, as his outfit would have gotten really crazy looking if it was modeled after his Kingdom Hearts appearance.
- That's also probably why Exdeath doesn't use his Neo form as his EX Mode.
- It could also be because Neo Exdeath was an unintentional effect of losing control of the Void.
- In Dirge of Cerberus Azul, one member of the Super Soldier Quirky Miniboss Squad is on his own a pretty large bruiser who hefts an assault cannon, but on top of that he can turn into a literal Behemoth for extra headaches. And unlike traditional Boss Encounters, he can switch between them at will.
- The original Final Fantasy Tactics 's entire villainous cast did this, with a Zodiac theme, giving at least six One Winged Angel forms The final boss does this as well, in typical Square fashion.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance we have Queen remedi, who turns into the Li-Grim, the spirit of the book and responsible of changing the world
- Chrono Trigger contains at least four instances of this, in various forms: Masa and Mune combine to form a hulking beast, Queen Zeal becomes a giant, crowned mask and gloves with increased magical power, and Lavos does it twice.
- In the final battle of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles The Crystal Bearers the big bad fuses with an airship and transforms the ship into a giant red crystal. At the same time the main character follows this trope more literally when his telekinetic powers manifest themselves as a blue surfboard thing, some sort of face guard and a giant blue wing.
- Dracula fills this role to the letter in almost every Castlevania game. In this series, he's more of an ultimate evil rather than just some vampire, you see. "Behold my true form — and despair!"
- Drac's most grotesque One Winged Angel mutations occur in Symphony Of The Night: a giant bat-winged monster with three alien heads and two gigantic claws, Circle Of The Moon: which looks like Bongo-Bongo from Ocarina of Time, and Harmony Of Dissonance: a giant brain in a half-skull with a clawed tentacle.
- The Symphony of the Night version is actually his throne. If you look you can see Dracula slouching villainously in the middle, human(like) as ever.
- Also, upon closer observation, the HoD incarnation seems to be a giant amalgamation of Dracula's relics. Note the beating heart and the single eye that tracks you, and so on - all six relics are in there somewhere.
- Castlevania 64 has him turn into some kind of 50-foot dragon/centipede hybrid. The game as a whole wasn't the greatest, but you will say Oh Crap the first time you see Drac's final for. And that's before he starts throwing miniature H-bombs at you...
- In Order of Ecclesia, this is notably avoided for the first time in decades, as the entirety of the final battle against Dracula is fought against the dashingly-handsome vampire we've known for so long. this may have been from the fact that the player is holding half of Dracula's power in the form of Dominus, which must be used to end the battle, but not before beating on Dracula for a goog long time.
- Super Castlevania IV did something like this as well, but as his health neared its end, Dracula's abode starts crackling with electricity again and pulses a red glow, and Dracula's head gets replaced with a demonic SKULL. This is when he starts breaking out the scary flashing lightning.
- And for the times when Dracula wasn't the final boss? Death took over in Lament of Innocence; Graham pulled a mutilated abomination throne on us; Chaos showed that it was a black orb with pulsing black prominence flares inside of a really chaotic room; Menace unrolled into a golem made of souls.
- Parodied in the patchwork freeware game I Wanna Be The Guy, where after delivering the line "look upon my true form and despair!", his true for is revealed to actually be A Waddle Doo that goes down in one hit.
- Played straight in the final battle against The Guy. After killing his (small, humanoid) form, you think you've won, only for him to crash through the wall in the form of a giant, laser-spewing, spike-laden, ill-tempered head.
- Almost every human or humanoid boss in Breath Of Fire 3 did this. Mikaba, Ballio and Sunder, the Professor, Tepo, Rei - hell, even the main character, Ryu, did this as his ultimate move. Just to hit the nail in further, when Ballio and Sunder combined to form Stallion and when Mikba turned into his true form, they each said, "No one has seen us/me in this form and lived!" But considering this game's great love of random bosses, its not surprising that every boss trope in the book was visited a few times. The rest of the the BoF games are just as full of transforming bosses.
- Likewise in Secret of Mana, only you never fight the human bosses in their normal form; instead they tend to go One Winged Angel right from the start. Even Big Bad Thanatos ends up becoming the Dark Lich for his fight.
- Legend of Mana does have human bosses, and they're much harder than the One Winged Angel bosses due to being smaller and faster.
- All the Bosses in the Romancing Sa Ga Trilogy had this: Romancing Sa Ga Saruin had 2 forms: His second being his upper half of his body sticking out of a sphere while he grew extra appendages to his torso and back (in the remake anyway). Romancing Sa Ga 2 The 7 Heroes gradually joined the amalgamated form every 6,000 HP dealt. Romancing Sa Ga 3 The final boss: Destroyer changes to a more crazed, shinier form with more wings that could also change into four other forms representing the four Devil Lords, but only if the form chosen was that of a Devil Lord not defeated. The protagonists can transform too.
- Taken to an extreme in Wild ARMs 3, in which the final boss has a whopping ten forms.
- The first Wild ARMs game has a few of these. Several bosses will take another form after their apparent defeat, only to return bigger and badder than ever (so they claim) such as Mother, Ziekfried and Boomerang (after his final death you can fight his resurrected form in the arena). Alhazad doesn't transform, but he has always worn a white cloak covering his body, and he finally takes it off to reveal his true form. But the best example in this game that fits the trope perfectly is Zed - a bumbling wannabe boss who in a side quest late in the game finally loses his cool and turns into his true form, a huge grotesque monster and becomes arguably one of the toughest bosses in the game.
- In Arc The Lad 2, every single human enemy will transform into some kind of monster or another before fighting the heroes.
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Grubba is already a monster, but a roughly-human-sized, comical one. Before you fight him, he turns into a much more menacing-looking giant creature.
- The original Super Mario RPG featured Culex, a Bonus Boss that looked like something right out of a Final Fantasy game - a small, unimposing sprite in the game world that turns out to be...well, this◊. He's a tougher fight than the final boss, but the game makes up for it by playing some classic FF fight music during the battle.
- In the original Ninja Gaiden series, the final villains (Jacquio, the Demon, some stupid scientist) all go through transformation sequences as Ryu defeats their forms successively.
- In Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox and its Updated Rereleases, humanoid Fiend Alma turns into a scorpion-like thing once her power gets Awakened. After Doku sheds his corporeal shell, he loses his legs to float and gains a nodachi worthy of the One Winged Angel himself. The Vigoorian Emperor goes from a vaguely angelic statue to a bony creature made of skulls. Admittedly, the first two don't occur immediately after they get defeated the first time, but still...
- Then, of course, there's Ganon/dorf from The Legend Of Zelda. In Ocarina of Time, you fight his phantom incarnation on horseback, then him personally first as evil sorceror-king Ganondorf, after which he calls upon the Triforce of Power to transform into the shadowy swine-monster Ganon. A later game in the series reversed this by having you fight Ganon first, who then changed back into Ganondorf. Would this guy just pick a form already?!
- In Majora's Mask, the final boss of the same name progresses from a mask with hair/tentacles (Majora's Mask) to a mask with arms and legs (Majora's Incarnation) to a giant, psychedelic, whips-for-arms demon (Majora's Wrath). It was also notable for allowing Link a supreme transformation into the Fierce Diety, only usable against bosses but still nigh impossible to lose with.
- Subverted in Oracle Of Ages by game Big Bad Veran: Her true form is human, but she immediately transforms into something that looks like a "mutant fairy"... And her final "combat form" is so ridiculous that she feels humiliated by having to resort to it.
- General Onox of Oracle Of Seasons, on the other hand, plays it straight by revealing his true form to be a giant skeletal dragon.
- In Twilight Princess, Ganondorf transforms early in the fight. The twist being that, this time, Link does it too.
- This also applies to Vaati in The Minish Cap. At the beginning of the battle, he morphs from his human form into a taller, more powerful-looking version of himself, and after that's beaten, he changes completely into a giant, spherical beast with one huge eye and giant claws.
- Bellum from Phantom Hourglass, however, is harder to classify. He starts out as a big, squid-like monster covered in eyeballs, then progresses to a possessed battleship. Once that's out of the way, though, he actually assumes a much smaller, humanoid form, via possessing Link's buddy Linebeck.
- Malladus, the final boss of Spirit Tracks plays this straighter than Bellum did, but is still a bit odd, in that he attains his last, monstrous form by taking over Chancellor Cole's body, mutating it in the process. In a strange coincidence, the result ends up looking somewhat like Ganon's Dark Beast form from Twilight Princess, only more goat-like than pig-like.
- In Bioshock, the final boss has himself pumped so full of ADAM he turns into an eight-foot tall, inhumanly sculpted humanoid with powers of ice, fire, and electricity.
- The "Devil Trigger" power of various Devil May Cry playable characters involves them turning into an uglier demonic form. This overlaps with Super Mode and Limit Break. More straightforwardly, bonus points to Credo for literally turning into a one-winged "angel".) Arkham of the third game goes from an already unpleasant humanoid demon form to an even worse blob form.
- It isn't clear why, as even the heroes comment that he is still easy to defeat, being slow, weak and generally useless. Which is of course Cutscene Power To The Max for them and Cutscene Incompetence for him - there are good reasons why he is counted as a That One Boss (nevermind the grammatical issues).
- His in game profile states that his blob form is a reflection of his inner evil.
- The main Antagonist of Sonic And The Secret Rings, the Erazor Djinn, suffers a surprisingly unintentional version of this, turning into an ugly "incomplete monster" called Alf Layla-wa Layla after absorbing a few of the World Rings.
- Devan Shell transforms from a wimpy and nerdy turtle to a big winged turtle-demon at the end of Jazz Jackrabbit 2, appropos of nothing.
- By beating the Adventure mode of Super Smash Bros Melee on a hard enough setting, the last boss Bowser transforms into the giant beast that is Giga Bowser.
- Brawl actually has this as Bowser's Final Smash, Gigabowser; Ganondorf gets a similar transformation, based off his Twilight Princess beast form. Mr. Game & Watch's Final Smash has him transform... into an octopus.
- In the Subspace Emissary in Brawl, Tabuu, the Man Behind The Man (behind the other men), transforms into a winged version of himself that can transform the heroes back into trophies. But then Sonic comes and damages one of his wings, thus weaking his power, turning him into an almost literal One Winged Angel.
- The Star Fox series does this surprisingly little, but at the end of Starfox 64, Andross transforms into a giant brain giving the quip "Only I have the Brains to rule Lylat".
- Although he doesn't refer to it as his "true form", Fox does.
- Then there's Great Commander's second form from Star Fox/Starwing.
- And the Phantron, which morphs into a jumping frog-like mecha for its second form, with a Scare Chord during the transformation.
- Tales of Phantasia has Dhaos, who is first fought in his human form, then reveals his "True Power", a giant monster vaguely reminiscent of a giant armored purple-and-red Praying Mantis, then crosses the Bishonen Line by invoking his gods and turning into an angelic-like being -much like Yggdrasil from the later Tales of Symphonia.
- Speaking of Yggy, Tales Of Symphonia does have Yggdrasil transforming from Cute Shotaro Boy into some odd mechanical form in his boss battle.
- However, the angel form turns out to be a Clipped Wing Angel.
- As with most Tales tropes, this one applies to all of them. All the final bosses have at least two forms, usually with a spike in difficulty between the two (Yggy mentioned above would be the exception). Though Tales of Destiny's final boss deserves an honorable mention for being a cheap bastard, the most brutal is probably Tales of Vesperia: Duke gains a third form that's unlocked by collecting all the Devil's Arms and defeating his usual first two forms. The third form makes pretty much everything you've fought up to that point look like a joke, and if you've made the mistake of fulfilling the requirements to unlock it (which isn't hard), you must fight and defeat it if you want to finish the game. Thanks, Namdai!
- All of the characters in the "Bloody Roar" series are capable of switching between normal human form and superpowered creature forms AND a glowing 'hyper' version of the beast form, but in "Bloody Roar: Primal Fury", the hyper-beast form of the true final boss, Uranus, is identical to her human form. Her beast form is a chimera, which is interpreted as blue and scaly with red lines, covered in spikes, and kind of bull-like, so yeah, it's a monster.
- One character in Primal Fury's normal beast form...is a little, unimposing penguin. His hyper form is a seven foot tall phoenix-man perfectly capable of annihilating your world ten times over.
- Not to mention that in her beast form as a bat Jenny looks extremely hot.
- Sigma does this at the end of every Mega Man X game. So do the final bosses of every Mega Man Zero and the first Mega Man ZX game.
- Subverted in the final battle of Mega Man 2; Dr Wily appears to morph into a green alien and the background changes to a starfield. After you defeat him, however, it turns out it was just a virtual reality machine.
- The Zero series for the GBA is pretty fond of this as well. Not only the various final bosses transform at least once, also the four elemental masters transform. Great subversion in the third game: The giant mass destruction Omega turn out to be really the original body of yourself, Zero, only contained within another giant robot.
- While certainly not monstrous or one-winged, in X8 the True Final Boss Lumine not only triggers an angelic battlefield platform, but also grows six wing-like mechanical limbs from his back, now has bright red, slitted eyes, thin, long, and pointed fingers, and has a red crystal produting almost a foot out of his chest.
- Drakengard has two examples: Manah, when the gods give her a Villain Override, and Furiae, after being placed inside a Seed of Resurrection.
- In Mass Effect, when you confront Saren for the last time on the ruined Citadel, he is initially in his (admittedly rather warped) normal form. However, after he is defeated or convinced to commit suicide (it depends on your dialog choices beforehand), the Reaper Sovereign uses its power to transform him into a large, spindly biomechanical monstrosity with exposed ribs and movements very similar to the earlier geth hopper enemy types, albeit far more dangerous.
- Trick there being, the second form is actually the rather extensive implants Saren had foolishly allowed Sovereign to implant him with. The 'transformation' is basically all his flesh being exploded off via red lightning leaving only his skeletal, glowing implants, complete with his jawless skull hanging from his neck.
- Arcanum's final boss, if engaged in combat, transforms into a massive bone snake-dragon..thing. Although in this case, he started out as a cloaked figure (so the transformation didn't really make him more 'morally OK' to kill) and the dragon isn't really very good at fighting, so I guess he just thought it looked cool.
- He was supposed to be a lot tougher, but Troika accidentally flagged him as humanoid. Humanoids are hard-coded to deal no more than 10 points of damage in unarmed combat. Unofficial patch fixes it.
- Kangaxx the demilich from Baldurs Gate II starts out as a moderately tough spellcaster, then transforms into a levitating skull that is immune to magic, immune to weapons of less than +4 enchantment, regenerates, has an AoE instant death attack and casts some of the most powerful spells in the game, including 'Imprisonment', which not only causes instant irrecoverable death for the duration of the fight but can also break the plot.
- You can recover people from Imprisonment with a Freedom spell. It's just that there are very few of these available.
- There's also Abazigal in Baldurs Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, who you fight first in human form, and then in dragon form. Ironically, the dragon form was easier to defeat than the human form.
- Parodied with particular glee in Kingdom Of Loathing, where the Naughty Sorceress reveals her supposedly true form. After you beat her in her hideous true form, she then assumes her actual true form: a sausage. Then again, she is an evil sausage brimming with dark magic. Your character then loudly proclaims, "How many times do I have to kill you? This battle has taken over a half an hour and there's no save point!"
- Later in the history of the game, Ed the Undying was introduced, who had seven forms, each weaker than the last. Even people who hate the quest in which he's involved love his dialog.
- Parodied with the Fallen Archfiends, a minor enemy in the Gate to Hey Deze. One of their "failed" attacks... well, a summary just wouldn't do it justice:
He glares at you and his arches glow a bright gold. "Now you will see my true... my true... ugh..." the fiend clutches his right arm, shouts "I'm comin', Elizabeth!" and falls down.
- Dr. N. Brio in the first Crash Bandicoot game, who drinks his own Psycho Serum to mutate into the penultimate boss.
- A lot of the bossess from the Crash Bandicoot games are mutated Australian animals, one being Koala Kong who is a mutated koala and very similar to the Hulk.
- The Fake Boss in Adventures of Rad Gravity, Agathos, is a human mutated into a giant living brain.
- In Ys V, the Dragon, Dorman and the Big Bad Sealed Evil In A Can, Jabir mutate into grotesque monsters for their boss battles; Dorman resembles Gadis's one-winged angel form from Dawn of Ys, while Jabir looks similar to Galvaran (he may be one of the Ash Emelas monsters).
- In Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys, the Big Bad Arem transforms into a gigantic humanoid blob, after you defeat his normal and Super Mode forms. Actually more of a Clipped Wing Angel.
- In Ys VI, Ernst uses the power of the ark to become a "two-winged dark angel". After his defeat and subsequent return to normal form, he tries to draw more power from the Ark, but suffers a fatal Super Power Meltdown and causes Napishtim to go haywire.
- The Final Boss's first form in Monster Lair is a clone of the original Wonderboy riding a dragon, but for his second form he grotesquely morphs into a green "space ghoul" type monster. Nightmare Fuel, considering this is a rather "kiddish" game, although Nintendo Hard. However, this form is relatively easy compared to his first form and a few other bosses, thus it may be considered a Clipped Wing Angel.
- The end boss of Legend Of Dragoon had four different forms, each one symbolizing one of the seven days of the creation of the world. None of them actually looked like anything in particular.
- Giygas from Earthbound. At first, he looks like a giant eyeball with Ness's face on it, but this is just the result of using a machine to stabilize his form. After you damage Pokey enough, he turns off the machine and Giygas assumes his true form, which has to be seen to be believed.
- The initial Giygas fits the bill as more alien like, seen in preceding game Mother as a more humanoid alien with vaguely lengthy appendages (who looks suspiciously almost exactly like Mewtwo), within a chamber attached to a huge machine. The previous information continues to apply.
- Skies Of Arcadia First you fight Ramirez, then he sacrifices his life to control Zelos, the Silver Gigas, and then he crosses the Bishonen Line. Interesting in that the boss's original form is perfectly visible inside his translucent One Winged Angel form.
- All three of the major bosses in God Hand fall into this, since they generally appear humanoid but are actually extremely powerful demons. Fat, cigar-smoking, and inexplicably Mexican Elvis turns into a 20 ft tall gray giant with huge mouths for hands, another huge mouth and eyes on his stomach, and a very small featureless head., Succubus Shannon is actually Her own upper body with the lower body of a demonic cat thing and a giant eye on her face., and Bezel, who in human form looks like a guy in a suit with gray hair and skin and long pointed ears, but in demon form is First a worm with a fly-like upper body and blade-limbs, then a huge fly with blade limbs. Both forms have Bezel's face on their back.
- The Tekken series has such boss characters as Ogre's transformed state True Ogre (which resembles Beast from Disney's Beauty And The Beast but with a snake for a left arm). In 'The Devil Within' subgame from Tekken 5 Ogre goes through even more transforming states. While you don't fight them always (never Jinpachi, sometimes Jin) in their normal forms prior to their transformed forms, Devil Jin and Jinpachi from Tekken 5 are transformed characters. They are for most characters the second last and final bosses. In both cases, they are infected with the Devil Gene, so if the Devil Gene is seen as the enemy, it is incarnating within two separate people. If Devil Jin defeats Jinpachi, he absorbs his power and transforms further, though he is not someone who can be played or fought.
- The Mortal Kombat series has this in almost all of their later games including Zombie Liu King from Mortal Kombat Deception.
- Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero had Shinnok transform into a polygon demon once Sub-Zero takes the amulet, but fighting him in this form is optional, as a portal leading to the end of the game opens up anyway.
- The boss of Monster Madness: Battle For Surburbia is Mr Huggles, a parody of Barney the dinosaur. At first, he attacks by singing and hugging. After you fight him his suit comes over revealing his hideous true form, a slimy Jabba The Hutt-like creature.
- Primal has a main character who can turn into different monster forms.
- The World Ends With You beats Sephiroth out in both religious symbolism and overkill on its Final Boss forms for its Big Bad: He turns into a giant serpent and then fuses with Joshua who was making some sort of cross, after which he turns into a five headed dragon that takes up the majority of both screens while holding your other two partners in his claws. In fact, most of the bosses turn into Noise during their boss fights.
- The Shadow Hearts series does this a lot. In the first game, every human boss enemy transformed into a monster of some sort to fight you. Largely due to powers of Malice or a pact. Or both.
- In the Gungrave series, many bosses become like this due to the series' Psycho Serum / phlebotinum / green rock, the Seed drug. All of the "Big Four" bosses Grave fights usually morph to a mutated "overkill form" in the second round or as soon as he encounters them. Oddly enough, the final boss of the second game doesn't transform, he just gets some new attacks during the second phase of the fight.
- MS Saga, the Gundam RPG, has this. The final boss starts off piloting the Alpha Azieru from Chars Counterattack. Defeat that, and he uses the G-System to reconfigure it into...a demonic-looking version of the Wing Zero Custom from Gundam Wing, complete with two pair of realistic black wings.
- In Diablo, the Dark Wanderer character (Diablo in the Diablo 1 Warrior's body) slowly transforms into Diablo starting from the beginning, up until just before Act 3 is completed. Similarly, Baal, having taken over Tal Rasha's body in a similar way, slowly transforms him beginning with his release prior to the completion of Act 2, until the final form seen in the opening movie (and final battle) of the Lord of Destruction expansion pack. King Leoric, the Skeleton King, also underwent a similar transformation, though he was able to resist full possession by Diablo. The Warrior's use of the soulstone may have made him more vulnerable to this though. Prince Albrecht pretty much succumbed immediately though, similar to how Griswold instantly became a zombie.
- King Leoric was able to resist because at the time Diablo had just reawakened in the Soulstone. Prince Albrecht could not resist because as an infant he had little if any willpower to resist. The Warrior fell relatively easy because most the deeds Diablo caused Tristan were perpetrated to strengthen Diablo as well as perpetuate a Xanatos Gambit to attract a hero powerful enough to kill him in Prince Albrecht's altered form and who would think that they were able to imprison Diablo in there mind, body and soul. Of course, Diablo by this time became powerful enough to gradually takeover the Warrior's body gaining a much more powerful host.
- Joka from Klonoa: Door to Phantomile has the ability to change between his normal floating-jester-balloon form and a conspicuously monstrous form which resembles some sort of sea monster. This form is invincible, but can only be used during an eclipse; he can be forced to revert by stopping the magically-caused eclipses taking place during his boss fight.
- In Klonoa Heroes: Legendary Star Medal, he has an entirely different second form: "Flower Joka", which is basically his normal self, except flower-shaped instead of spherical. Again, he shifts between this and his normal form during the fight, this time at will; luckily, his Flower Joka form can be damaged as normal.
- Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil features a variation: Leorina, thought by the heroes to be the Big Bad, is forced to go One Winged Angel by the real Big Bad, the King of Sorrow. She's not the Final Boss, either. Surprisingly, the King of Sorrow does not go One Winged Angel during his boss fight, instead preferring to attack you from within a weird orb thing.
- Happens twice in Destroy All Humans 2:
- In the first instance, Agent Oranchov shoots some drums of Alien spores to mutate himself.
- in the second instance, at the end of the game, Milenkov reveals his true form, a heavily-armored Blisk.
- Resident Evil quite likes this trope. In the second game, William Birkin initially appears as a somewhat mutated man and keeps reappearing in progressively less human forms until by the end, he has degenerated into a mass of teeth, bones, and tentacles. Mr. X initially appears as a large man, but grows a pair of massive claws by the end of the game. In RE3, Nemesis first appears as a bazooka-wielding Mr. X-like humanoid, then grows Combat Tentacles, then finally resembles a giant squid with legs. Later, in Code Veronica, Alexia appears as an ordinary human at first, but mutates into a hideous giant (albeit immobile) blob and then a dragonfly-winged thing by the end. In Resi 0 Dr. Marcus becomes a huge mass of leeches just before fighting the characters. Finally, in Resi 4, Mendez, Salazar, and Saddler all have hideous final forms. To make things rather more disturbing, they all seem to be in complete control of their mutations, unlike bosses in the previous games.
- Krauser goes "One-Clawed Angel".
- Resident Evil 5 continues the tradition in grand style. An interesting example is where this is forced by the hero with Albert Wesker. Realizing that the Bishonen Line has made him Nigh Invulnerable, Chris injects him with The Virus, and he ends up having to mutate into a perfectly killable monster to fight it off (yes, even his biggest mistake wasn't his own fault).
- An even earlier example RE 5 is Ricardo Irving, who injects a mutagen given to him by Excella and turns into a hideous sea-dwelling, multi-tentacled monster.
- Parodied in Bloodrayne. The final boss of Act 2 is General Mauler, a 10-foot tall Nazi cyborg with incredible durability. When you first empty his life bar, he collapses to the ground, then gets back up again, raises his arms high, triumphantly declares "You can't beat me that easily!'', then... promptly falls over dead.
- Baten Kaitos has several examples. In the first game there's Geldoblame, Fadroh, and the final boss Malpercio (who started out as a giant monster to begin with). The second game has all of Malpercio's Afterlings. The oddest example would be one from the first game, in that after Kalas's Face Heel Turn, he grows a second wing, as he only had one wing to begin with and had to make due with a mechanical prosthetic for the other. So... he goes from being a One-Winged Hero to a Two-Winged Villain.
- Fadroh transforms into a huge, vaguely jester-looking giant monster with a crotch-mounted eye. His main special attack consists of leaning back and firing Eye Beams from his pelvis.
- Metroid Prime has the titular monster starting out as a huge armored monster, then becoming a squid-like creature.
- In Metroid Fusion, the SA-X's form after being defeated in its Samus form is a freakish monster, then a Core-X.
- Kirby has faced a fair few of these. In Kirby Super Star there's Marx, and Kirby 64 has both Possessed King Dedede and the final form of Dark Matter, sorta. And there's even a regular enemy, Scarfy, that pulls this rather terrifyingly.
- The recently released Kirby Super Star Ultra manages to one-up on Marx in "The TRUE Arena" — if you get to the final battle, you will see a movie where Marx brings back his soul by absorbing Nova's power. You will then fight Marx Soul, which is a more powerful and even freakier incarnation of Marx that has an absolutely terrifying death scream.
- Several bosses in the Tomb Raider series: in II, Bartoli turns into a dragon, in III, Dr. Willard is mutated into a grotesque human/spider hybrid creature, and in Angel Of Darkness, Boaz is shoved into a pod of some sort and mutated into a giant slime-spitting cockroach-like creature.
- In Silent Hill 2, Maria transforms into a gray-skinned tentacled levitating upside-down-in-a-cage abomination for the final battle.
- In Silent Hill 3, after Claudia ingests the regurgitated Fetus Terrible, it mutates her into a 20-foot tall semi-skeletal thing sporting Alessa's head.
- In the original version of Lunar: Silver Star Story, the main villain would announce that it wasn't over after being defeated. He then turned into a rather stereotypical anime demon for no explicable reason. In the Silver Star Story Complete remake, this transformation was left out completely. Chalk it up to cliche overdose.
- Parodied hard in the Sega CD adaptation of Space Adventure Cobra. When a rather fragile sentient plant is confronted, it proceeds to laugh mockingly at Cobra before turning into a gigantic demon. Its speech is cut short at "My name is..." when Cobra blasts it, splattering it all over the room. Afterwards he notes "Next time I'll just whack it upside the head with a newspaper."
- Revelations: Persona does this to its Big Bad, Guido, when you defeat him. The associated dialogue is just too ridiculous, funny and Macekred to not include:
Guido: This can't be! I'm a God! I'm invincible! (pauses) Something's invading my body!!
Massacre's voice: Hahaha! Stupid human, I shall give you the power you desire!
Guido: Stop!!!!!
Mary: What's happening?
Mark: What the heck!?
Nate: He was taken over by his own Persona!
Guido: Now I'm Super Guido!
- From Persona 3, the Appraiser of Death first shows up in human form ( two of them, in fact.) When it is time to make a choice concerning the fate of the world, he claims that he will soon turn "into something unrecognizable" —sure enough, during the Dark Hour of the Promised Day, he becomes Nyx Avatar, the Shadow of the Death Arcana with four midnight-black wings and a grinning white mask.
- No mention of {{Persona 2: Eternal Punishment}} yet? Sure in Innocent Sin, Nyarlathotep transforms but is clearly just screwing with the players. But when you fight him in Eternal Punishment, he assumes the form of the Moon Howler who you saw briefly in Innocent sin, but when you fight the Moon howler...
Nyarlathotep: Hahaha! This is splended! You are the first to see this form! Die, with my highest praise!
Obviously you can tell that he became not a one-winged angel but a tentacle monster.
- Persona 4 loves this trope. The first time is just before the fight with Nametame, who is possessed by Kunino-sagiri and turns into him. Then, the real killer does it, transforming into Ameno-sagiri, God Of Fog. If you get the True Ending, Izanami does it twice, first becoming her Goddess form, and then turning into Izanami-no-Okami when you use the Orb of Sight. On top of that, everyone's Shadow (arguably) does this. There are eight major Shadows... so Persona 4 does this twelve times in total.
- Mimi from Super Paper Mario is not the Big Bad (in fact, she turns good at the end), but she transforms into one of these frequently. It's also really disturbing. Oddly enough, you don't battle her regular girl form until the second time you battle her.
- This is later played straight with the actual Final Boss, Dimentio, when he merges with the Chaos Heart and Luigi, believe it or not to form a giant, harlequin monstrosity.
- The final boss of La Mulana is Mother, who takes five forms: a large stone face, a white flying silhouette, a disturbing Virgin Mary look-a-like complete with what resembles Baby Jesus in her arms, a pair of eyes, and finally, a smaller but no less deadlier version of her second form.
- The DoDonPachi series has the Perfect Run Final Boss Hibachi, which starts off as a giant bee. When destroyed, it turns into a much smaller bee with an aura. And then it proceeds to obliterate you six ways from Monday with a Category 5 storm of bullets.
- Subverted with great gusto in Dark Cloud 2: the true form of the terrible, Dark Emperor Griffon who has been erasing people and places out of existence is a cute anthropomorphic bunny (or "Moon Person" in the Dark Cloud world) no taller than Max. However, when he absorbs the power of the Sun, Moon, and Earth Atlamillia, he becomes a towering, muscular behemoth with enormous sapphire wings. During the battle with him, he can even rip off these wings to use as swords; as his power destabilizes, he grows even more muscular and his veins shine with the magic running through them. Defeat reverts him to his small, fluffy, and adorable lapin form.
- The previous game in the series, Dark Cloud, played this one straight, more or less, but also pulled a bait and switch with it. The enormous, fat, oafish-looking Dark Genie, when destroyed, turns out to have been a mouse that got sealed in the urn with the Genie, and had absorbed some of its power. Then the REAL Dark Genie manifests itself as a tower of muscle with no lower body, arms that can punch up out of the floor, and killer magic beams. THEN, when you kill it in THIS form, it turns into its final form—a massive creature resembling Gospel from the Mega Man franchise.
- Even a vertical shoot'em'up with space fighters can have this. In the final level of Tyrian Vykromod, the alien assassin who's been stalking the player for some time, seems to turn into a giant floating face - a pair of eyes, a nose and a mouth
- Sort of a Narm Body Horror moment, played for fun. Vykromod certainly isn't pleased with the process, or the result.
- World Of Warcraft has several bosses that transform during battles; Illidan Stormrage shifts into and out of a fully demonic form (as opposed to his normal, half-demonic form, I suppose); similarily Leotheras the Blind shifts between being a Blood Elf and a Demon (until eventually splititng into two separate forms); similarily several dragon bosses who start out in humanoid forms. Saidan Dathoran/Balnazaar and Baeren Westwind/Mal'ganis revert to their true demon forms mindway through battle, being previously disguised as humans.
- Demonology Warlocks can learn the "Demon form" talent that transforms them into a demon for a short period, buffing their armour and spellcasting.
- A few other bosses go through consecutive transformations throughout the fight. Thus, Eldritch Abomination C'thun starts out as a giant eye, before turning into a huge bloated body with a lot of teeth and eyes. Even more proeminent with Yogg'saron, whose first form is humanoid, and second form is... well... his title is "The Beast of a Thousand Maws".
- The Black Knight is a regular NPC you fight in a mounted duel after a short (but annoying) quest chain. Being an agent of the Lich King, he comes back zombified as the final boss of the Trials of the Champion instance, resurrecting the announcer who he force choked earlier as a ghoul. You kill him, but you can't loot him. Because he's back AGAIN, only this time, he's a skeleton. And then he summons about 10 ghouls. And then you kill him. And THEN he comes back as a ghost, even more powerful than the ten ghouls of the previous phase. Which you kill. He finally stays dead - until tomorrow, when you do the instance again!
- In the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon, we have Professor Putricide. He imbibes some of his own concoctions during the fight, causing him to become extremely muscular and grow a pair of tentacles from his back a la Doctor Octopus. Disturbing...
- Similarly, in Warcraft III demon hunters like Illidan and mountain kings like Muradin can transform into bigger and monstruous version of themselves.
- In Golden Sun, after defeating Saturos and Menardi, they transform into the two-headed Fusion Dragon.
- Nearly everyone that gets possessed by Rhapthorne in Dragon Quest VIII pulls some version of this.
- Several overlords in Makai Kingdom start in One Winged Angel mode, instead crossing the Bishonen Line when they go all out... The exception to this amongst those with 'true' forms is the otherwise humanoid King Drake the Third, whose 'true' form is... Um... Unusual, to say the least.
- In Soul Calibur 3 Nightmare pulls this off at the end of his story, an imput from the player turns him into Night Terror, a glow-y Nightmare with wings (and the true final fight of the game).
- In Soul Calibur 4 Nightmare actually has a COMBO that transforms him into Night Terror.
- City Of Heroes has Romulus, who, after you beat him with only moderate difficulty in the third mission of his arc, merges with a Nictus in the fourth. His new self easily rates as one of the most challenging fights in the game.
- Panzer Dragoon Saga. In a single, long, psychedelic battle you first fight the five extreme forms of your own dragon, then Sestren - the final final boss, who of course changes into an even more horrible form.
- ESP Galuda 2's 4th stage boss starts small, then becomes gradually bigger (by assimilating mechanical accessories) as he's nearing his defeat (as seen here). Normally, in shmup games, many non-final bosses feature minor weapons or parts that are (optionally or not) destroyed or discarded, as the boss start using increasingly more difficult attacks, and this example comes as an unexpected, uncommon inversion
- Parasite Eve has this for Eve, the main antagonist. She starts off by possessing the body of a woman, changes into a slightly disturbing form by having a giant fin instead of feet, long arms with sharp claws, and crazy hair. By the time you see her near the end of the game, she becomes a multi-breasted bloated monstrosity as she prepares to give birth to the Ultimate Being, which changes slightly when you fight her for the last time, but she also changes form from here by becoming an almost angelic figure once her HP gets low enough.
- The sequel also has the final boss look and fight in a similar way as Eve's final form from the first game.
- Of course let's not forget that the protagonist accomplishes this as well in the first game, with her ultimate attack(of the two pure attacks in the game)'Liberation', the form being quite literally angelic, but in a biological manner. And of course, the 'secret boss' from the first one manages the -same- form. Only she remains in it throughout the fight
- In Blue Dragon, Big Bad Nene merges with a giant eternal engine to supply himself with infinite magic power for the climactic showdown. And let's not forget the REAL final boss, Destroy. When Deathroy (the little guy by Nene's side for the whole game) swallows Nene's soul, he reveals his true form as the monster that previously ended the world.
- The final boss of Vandal Hearts 2 has two One Winged Angel forms; you fight his human form earlier in the game.
- Nero Chaos in Tsukihime when he finally realizes that he is getting his ass kicked but refuses to run away eventually joins all the chaos left in his body into its ultimate destructive form, which isn't very well described except that it looks 'efficient.' The motion blurred picture given looks something like a worgen.
- Dark Corvo from Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg} turns into a giant shadowy crow, with white eyes, and (eventually) covered in sparks after he hatches the titular Giant Egg.
- Played straight for a few bosses in Batman Arkham Asylum, but subverted for the final battle; Joker uses Titan to turn himself into a 15-foot tall hulking monster... then spends most of the fight mocking you from the sidelines while you fight waves of his Mooks, just like always.
- To be fair to the guy, this wasn't his original plan: he actually wanted to force such a monstrous transformation upon Batman, then uses the drug on himself in an attempt to overcome Batman's Heroic Willpower to resist it.
- Viking Battle For Asgard: Hel's final form manages to edge it's way into Nightmare Fuel.
- Super Metroid: At the end, you blast away at Mother Brain in her case, like in the first game, and then she grows a body.
- Cave Story does this multiple times.
- You fight Balrog on four separate occasions; on the third, he's transformed against his will into a giant frog.
- In the fight against the Doctor, he starts off looking like himself. Upon defeat, he loses control of the Demon Crown's magic and transforms into a muscular berserker. After this, he dissolves into a red mist, which transforms Misery (who you fought right before the Doctor) into a monster and forces her to fight as his flunky, and he possesses the Core (which you also fought earlier in the game). So the final round of the Doctor's fight is against One Winged Angel versions of three prior bosses.
- The True Final Boss starts off as a humanoid, then transforms into a giant, freakishly-smiling head (with two further stages that are even scarier variations on that design).
- Disgaea 2 plays this trope straight as an arrow with its final boss. Disgaea 3, meanwhile, lampshades it.
- Super Robot Wars has several, such as the R-Gun and Dark Brain.
- In Lego Indiana Jones 2, the end bosses of Raiders (Belloq), Crusade (Donovan), and part 2 of Crystul Skull (The Soviet Colonel) are all given a One-Winged Angel makeover.
- Alpha Prime has a strange case where the hero actually inflicts this upon the villain. The hero had previously heard that Glomar's heart reacts to the thoughts and personality of those who touch it, so he puts doubt into the villain's mind that it will not, in fact, give him power, but destroy him. When the villain touches the heart, it warps his body into a hideous abomination.
- The Phantasy Star series has LOADS of these.
- In the first game, the Saccubus turns out to be a projection of Dark Force.
- Phantasy Star 4 has the Profound Darkness, which starts out monstrous, then gets more streamlined, and then turns into a naked lady a la 2's Mother Brain.
- Phantasy Star Online has Vol Opt/Vol Opt Version 2, an insane computer with two forms; Dark Falz, which starts out as a strange three-legged THING, then turns into a floating spell-throwing machine, and then in the higher difficulties it turns into a much meaner floating thing with seriously unpleasant physical attacks and periodic invulnerability; and Olga Flow, who turns from an upside down six-legged warrior-thing into a two-legged warrior thing about the size of a large BUILDING.
- C.A.R.D. Revolution has a double-barrelled final boss that turns from a girl with a sword-arm and monstrous chunks of mutated flesh that defines Body Horror into a thankfully less-messed-up creature vaguely reminiscent of a Delsaber.
- Universe has a couple of versions of Magashi, and a double-barrelled Dark Falz with the added bonus of one of the coolest yet least feasible arenas of all time. Dark Falz reappears in Ambition of the Illuminus in a side mission.
- Portable has Helga, Vivienne and Dark Falz AGAIN.
- And finally Zero has Mother Trinity, who turns out to have been hosting Dark Falz.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive has a handful of them:
- Hedge plays it normal, able to turn from a normal guy into a beastly hedgehog-man man form, though he prefers to stay human outside of combat.
- Due to the incident that produced Ellen (long story), Elliot wound up permanently able to change into the cat-man form he'd asked Tedd to zap him into afterwards in order to chase her down. Unlike most examples, though, he didn't know he could do it until he involuntarily did it again to fight Hedge.
- Grace has a metric buttload of One Winged Angel forms, most also of the Cute Monster Girl variety.
- And Vlad does this in reverse. Ellen zaps him with a Gender Bender ray, turning Vlad the part bat, part bird, part Nightmare Fuel monster-man into Vladia, the relatively normal girl, the only change Vlad's likely to undergo due to a Painful Transformation problem that nearly killed him the last time he tried to be human: she's not sure she'll survive a gender shift, and doesn't want to risk it now that she's finally human.
- It wouldn't be a proper RPG-spoofing webcomic if Adventurers! didn't have an instance of this. (Also pictured in title)
- Parodied much earlier in same with "Wing-B-Gone!" Which brings up a good point: wouldn't this be really inconvenient?
- Lampshaded in Golden, when the villain sorcerer decides it is times to turn into his combat form to end the protagonists, and promptly turns into... a binturong with white spots. (And not a badger at all, whatever anyone is saying, no Sir.). The protagonists even comment on this:
Sorcerer: "Enough games! With all the powers of HELL at my command, I now take the form of the Ultimate Destroyer, a [...] fiend so diabolical, so terrible, that all who lay eyes upon his visage fall into..." (his bad guy monologue drones on the background)
"...yeah, he's going to turn into a dragon, isn't he?"
"Seems rather cliché. Perhaps a giant octopus with multifarious appendages?"
"No. Giant snake for sure."
- Wyler, a rich, weak mastermind from Art Of Fighting 3, became one after drinking and elixir that more or less turned him into The Incredible Hulk.
- One of Prof. Broadshoulders' (from Zebra Girl) defining characteristics is a "Mr. Yuk" face branded onto his forehead. Turns out It was actually a demonic third eye, and by opening it he turned himself into a demon.
- Inverted in archcriminal Fructose Riboflavin's first appearnce in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob. He first appears disguised as a handsome, muscular human, and does all his ranty monologuing in that form. It's only after his scheme has failed that he drops the disguise as pointless, revealing his mildly creepy but not very frightening wizened old alien form.
- Parodied in this Sunday At Ten strip.
- In Acorn Grove you only get a hint of the devil's true form in silhouette. Can't really make out anything other than lots of tentacles.
- In The Non Adventures Of Wonderella, Nixon supposedly does this.
- 8-bit Theater has Super Double Evil Sarda, created from absorbing the power of the elemental orbs and Black Mage's super evil. However, this also turns out to be his undoing.
- In Problem Sleuth, Mobster Kingpin's imaginary self becomes Demonhead Mobster Kingpin for the final battle, which takes up nearly half the story.
Web Original
- In The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Super Mario Bros. 3, during "Super Mecha Death Christ 2000 B.C. 4.0 Beta"'s battle with the possessed cartridge, it reveals its true, demonic form and the battle really begins.
- In the Flash Series Madness Combat, Tricky the Clown morphs into a horrific monster of white flame for his final showdown with Hank in Madness Consternation.
- In the Godzilla Fan Film Godzilla vs the Kaiju Killer, Stalkkus transforms into a dragonlike monster in order to fight Godzilla, who's been freed in order to kill him.
Western Animation
- Disney loves this Trope:
- The Queen's "perfect disguise" in Snow White certainly counts, depending who you ask; it's absolutely terrifying enough and—more importantly—it reflects the Queen's true nature.
- And of course supremely ironic given that the Queen wants to be "Fairest of Them All".
- In Sleeping Beauty and Kingdom Hearts, Maleficent turns into a dragon to fight Prince Philip and Sora, respectively.
- Disney parodied that scene as early as The Sword in the Stone, when Mad Madame Mim comes very close to ending her Wizard's Duel with Merlin by turning into a goofy-looking Dragon. Then Merlin wins by turning into an infectious disease.
- In Aladdin and both Kingdom Hearts, Jafar turns into a giant cobra, then into an "all powerful" genie. The thing is, Aladdin actually tricked Jafar into wishing he was a genie, so he'd be trapped in a lamp.
- Appropriately for an Affectionate Parody of their own movies, the villain of Enchanted turns into a big dragon that will NOT shut up.
- "You're crazy!" "No. Spiteful, vindictive, VERY large but never crazy."
- Parodied in The Emperor's New Groove: Yzma is exposed to one of her own potions, and emerges laughing maniacally from a huge cloud of smoke only to be revealed as... a cute little kitten.
- In an even more comical version, Kronk's New Groove features Yzma using a potion that will turn her into something that her enemies (in this case a bunch of old people who she sold fake potions to) cannot harm... a cute little bunny. Unfortunately for her, while they don't harm her, the local condor doesn't mind taking her for food.
- In one episode of the Emperor's New School Yzma does turn into a giant snake. And in another episode she and Kuzco have a transformation potion duel—one of the things Yzma turns into is a Tyranosaurus Rex.
- And she once made a potion that would turn her into the most hideous, terrifying thing imaginable, so frightening the other wouldn't be able to do anything about her... comically subverted when she transforms into herself.
- Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit is almost a sick parody of the "Look at my true form and despair" variation.
- Drawn Together: When the King of Mexico drinks the worm . . .
- In the Teen Titans: Trouble In Tokyo OAV, the human bad guy leaps into a tank of magical ink, turning into a giant inky monster with metal tentacles, constantly spawning four-color minions.
- A few characters on Powerpuff Girls pulled this trick. In the episode "Knock It Off", for example, Professor Utonium's slacker roommate from college, Dick Hardly, gets some Chemical X and starts making hordes of Powerpuff clones, renting them out to big cities as a new crime-prevention system. When the Girls learn about his scheme and confront him, he tries to hide the remaining Chemical X by swallowing it... and turns into a giant monster.
- Him also did this in the episode Speed Demon.
- On the Osmosis Jones series, a corrupt mayoral candidate who has been illegally using growth hormones to sabotage his rival's campaign gets caught red-handed with the stuff, downs it in a panic, and you can guess the rest.
- Kevin 11 from Ben 10 is an odd spin on this: His true form is his first form, an orphaned eleven-year-old boy with the power to absorb energy. Attempting to absorb the Omnitrix's energy, however, resulted in him losing the only thing he had left... His humanity.
- Doctor Victor, from the third season finale, is another straight example, an absurdly large NASA scientist at first appearance but secretly a hulking Frankenstein's Monster-esque alien beneath the facade.
- Parodied with typical relish in a Halloween episode of South Park. The spirit of Wall-Mart revealed his "terrifying true form"... by removing his stick-on moustache.
- Korn (stay with us here) tried to do a heroic version of this during their guest appearance in another Halloween episode. It didn't quite work out. "Korn powers activate! Form of - CORN!!!"
- And in Pandemic Part 2, there was an evil United States head of Homeland Security who, after revealing he was the leader of the guinea creatures, transformed into a GUINEA PIRATE.
- Appropriately for a film that (ahem) was an intentional homage to the classic Disney films, the villain in The Swan Princess has the ability to become "The Great Animal". His monstrous true form was teased throughout the entire movie until the very end - only to have him bring the Narm and change into what appears to be a big fruitbat.
- Don Bluth likes Disney movies as well and has used this at least twice:
- In the already insane Rock A Doodle, the Grand Duke appears to puke his evil magic up all over himself and mutates into a sort of gigantic owlish... tornado-ish... thing...
- In Anastasia, which is also pretty damn weird when you stop and think of it, Rasputin's evil spirit seems to be building up to a spectacular One-Winged Angel act but the worst he does is scare people by dismembering himself. And then he sends an animated statue of Pegasus to do the big honking monster act. The hell?
- The spin-off movie Bartok The Magnificent has Ludmilla (voiced by Catherine O'Hara of SCTV) steal a potion that Babayaga has given Bartok to aid him in his quest - it turns you into whatever you are, deep down inside. She drinks it and...
- Hexxus, the spirit of destruction in Ferngully, has three different monstrous forms. He starts out as a wad of toxic waste, turns into a cloud of poisonous gas, and finally appears as a NightmareFueleriffic burnt-looking skeleton covered in a cloak of pestilence.
- Characters, particularly Batman Villains, in the DCAU like this trope a lot as well:
- The Joker loved disguising himself and then revealing his true Monster Clown face (he's better known for doing this in The Movie);
- Clayface... it's easier to say he really liked to turn into horrifying things during combat;
- "I!!! AM!!! '''BANE!!!!!"
- One of the more way-out examples is the episode "Home and Garden", where Poison Ivy created a race of plant people who start out as normal-looking babies (save for the fact that they've emerged from giant seed pods) but may suddenly mutate into huge, green, ogrish thugs;
- Eventually it got to the point where the Preserver assumed a monstrous form to fight Lobo in an episode of the Superman series.
- It was even nastily subverted by the time the "Batman Beyond" episode "Splicers" came along. The evil scientist leader of the Splicers pumps himself full of Lego Genetics Juice, transforming into a fearsome monster combining the features of many creatures. Terry fights him normally for a bit, then gets the bright idea to inject more of the serum into the baddie, horribly mutating him into a blobby thing... that is actually still quite capable of fighting and, worse yet, is even more powerful than before.
- Speaking of Batman Beyond, the writers liked this trope enough to play it fairly straight in just about every other episode. The episode "Curse Of The Cobra" is a good example; as a matter of fact it used Lego Genetics as well.
- In the terrible trio episode of The Batman, The Trio uses skin patches to administer the Langstrom serum. In the end Fox (a guy turned anthro fox) ends up turning into a griffin-like monster.
- In Biker Mice From Mars, Fred The Mutant, Karbunkle's sidekick/assistant, is mixed up of different parts and absolutely loves pain. Another episode had a villain called Evil Eye Weevil, a skeleton like thing who is a No Celebrities Were Harmed parody of Elvis and Evel Knievel. Evil Eye Weevil could shoot a "hostility beam" at anyone and anyone hit by it would start fighting like crazy. Then again the Plutarkians were never the picture of beauty either.
- In the 2006 revival, Stoker (the Biker Mice's mentor) turns into an insane rat-like monstrosity called "Stoker Rat" by the light of the sun due to radiation.
- Parodied in an episode of Catscratch. While the brothers are watching a scary monster movie, they are interrupted by Human Kimberly at their door with a gift of broccoli. Gordon is fiercely allergic to the broccoli and he puffs up so bad that he looks just like the monster in the movie. Mr. Blik and Waffle think he is the monster from the movie and run for their lives. When they can no longer run they are faced with their only option: fight the beast.
- It also subverted in the episode with the Banshee. The true form of the Banshee is revealed to be a "beautiful" seal woman - depicted as a seal with a dress and long blonde hair.
- Monster House contains one of the most bizarre versions of this ever. Bizarre, because the Big Bad in question is a house that has transformed into a monster.
- Happens a lot in Jackie Chan Adventures. This happens to anyone who wears one of the oni masks, and in the final season it happens to the villain Drago, or anyone else, who absorbs a talisman power. When Drago gets all the talisman powers, the end result is quite...monsterous. Most people would probably say that Ultimate Power is not worth the price of looking so ugly.
- In Cubix: Robots For Everyone the second main villain a female Corrupt Corporate Executive who runs Rubix Corp turns out to actually be an alien and in one episode reveals her true form.
- One episode of Danny Phantom had Freakshow turning into a large and grotesque ghost to combat Danny. He didn't realize it until the last minute that Danny tricked him into being a ghost so that he could easily suck him up in the Fenton Thermos.
- In all versions of Spawn, Violator eventually changes from his Monster Clown appearance into a huge horned monster whenever he wanted to smack some stupid out of Spawn.
- Spoofed in Igor where Jackyln runs out of pills and turns into her true form- a cute little Igorrette.
- Possibly spoofed in the game The Dark Spire where you encounter a "One Winged Angel" in a circus exhibit
- The Fairly Oddparents has The Lead Eliminator, who eventually morphs into the powerful Destructinator in the "Wishology" trilogy.
- Captain Simian And The Space Monkeys has "Gormungus", an alter-ego of Gentle Giant Gor. For roughly the first third of the series, pushing Gor's Berserk Button sends him into an Unstoppable Rage. After the malevolent alien Apax captures Gor and decides that the temper and strength make him the perfect gladiator, but that gentle side just has to go, he zaps Gor with a home-made mutagenic raygun. As a result, whenever Gor gets angry, he grows into a massive, more feral-looking gorilla creature, sort of a cross between The Incredible Hulk and King Kong, until he gets calmed down.
- This happened to Valtor in Winx Club.
- Aa'une went from glowing Evil Overlord to a giant monster with several tentacles when exposed to the energies of Lake Blakeer. Then in the next episode he goes down right Eldritch Abomination by growing extra mouths and even more tentacles.
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