Not So Harmless Villain / Video Games

• Alice: Madness Returns's Dr. Bumby. He's set as an mildly antagonistic hypnotherapist apparently dedicated to helping Alice and the other orphans in his care forget their past traumas; apart from being inconsiderate and rude, he doesn't seem to be genuine villain material. Then you learn that he started the fire that killed Alice's family- in order to cover up his rape of Lizzie, Alice's sister. And it doesn't stop there: the hypnotherapy he practises is designed to break down the patients' minds and reduce them to empty shells that can be pimped out to wealthy clients. In Alice's case, he wants to make sure she never remembers the fire or the part he played in it by destroying Wonderland and taking her mind with it; as such, his Wonderland persona is none other than the Dollmaker, the Big Bad behind the Train currently destroying the world.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt: Merak is an extremely lazy and apathetic person who'd rather play video games than fight, but he's just as dangerous as the rest of the Swordsmen and should not be underestimated. Teseo learned this the hard way.
• Gruntilda from Banjo-Kazooie and its sequels is a gross goofball with an endless supply of rhymes even after she's decided to throw down. At the same time, she reveals some mean magic skills and a surprisingly good aim. Every battle with Gruntilda is a multi-phase marathon where she will pull out all the stops to defeat you. And, just in case you had any doubts, she kicks off her return in Banjo-Tooie by destroying the grey Jinjos' house, zombifying the king of the Jinjos, destroying Banjo's house, and killing Bottles. Oh, and she's not forced to rhyme or anything, she can stop whenever she feels like it.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum is widely regarded to have turned the Riddler into this after his goofy presence in Batman Forever. Batman: Arkham Origins fulfilled this trope the hardest. Even in the other Arkham games, Nigma is treated as an annoyance, barely tolerated by the rest of Batman's rogue's gallery and always getting humiliated in the end. Origins, however, introduces Enigma, Nigma's alter ego from before he became the Riddler, who's far more composed and competent and who not only gets away in the end, but actually manages to succeed in his master plan of releasing incriminating dirt on the mayor of Gotham.
• Deathroy from Blue Dragon. What appears to be an annoying sidekick turns out to have been the Big Bad all along. In fact, he's the Big Bad that killed all of the Not-Really-The-Big-Bad's people.
• The Book of Unwritten Tales: Munkus at first seems as nothing but a Nerd in Evil's Helmet. However over the course of the series he manages to outsmart the heroes repeatedly due to a combination of being a master of disguise and frequent use of the Batman Gambit, the only reason he loses is because being Genre Savvy is common in this setting.
• Handsome Jack, from Borderlands 2, is recognized as being a major threat to Pandora, but for much of the game, he tries (and fails) to kill you and your friends while acting like a dick at every turn. Then his daughter Angel dies, and he goes on to murder Roland and kidnap Lilith. Once he puts his mind to it, he becomes dangerous.
  • Even before this, he reveals himself as more dangerous than expected when he explodes Bloodwing's head after her boss fight and even before that, when the Hyperion-brand energy core you just installed deactivates Sanctuary's defenses.
• The Leader's Force from Brave Fencer Musashi are played for laughs the moment they enter the scene, with Ben's crippling stupidity, Ed's stuttering which he even writes in his letters, and Topo's Alpha Bitch-ness. Then you face them in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon and they're amongst the most difficult bosses in the game.
• Played with by Mayor McNeil in Breath of Fire III. He is a completely useless Upper-Class Twit and no threat to anyone. However, he's paying protection money to The Mafia, and stealing from them brings in their enforcers, who are terrifyingly-powerful recurring adversaries.
• The Brief and Meaningless Adventure of Hero Man: Lord Doldrum can be beaten at a fairly low level and the NPC outside his room states that he's not that strong for a Demon Lord. His depression is also played for Black Comedy and he seems rather unmotivated as a villain. Despite that, he's capable of destroying the world of Somewhere in endings 10 and 15.
• Chrono Cross gives you Solt and Peppor. Two bumbling minions that are often weaker than the regular encounters but are often accompanied with a powerful enemy (Karsh and Ketchup). Then they find out that Karsh is possibly Dario's murderer and they get serious for once. During this battle they are quite stronger, have combination attacks and use powerful innate boosted elements like Earthquake to wreck your party.
• Chrono Trigger:
  • Dalton is best known for Breaking the Fourth Wall when inappropriate music is playing, getting sucked into a portal when the Trick Boss he tried to summon fails to appear, and generally being an incompetent ham. Then you meet him in a bonus dungeon in the DS version, where he mentions his plan to build an army in Porre and try to take over Guardia. Nothing to worry about, right? According to the backstory of Chrono Cross, Porre's rebellion succeeds, and the kingdom of Guardia falls.
  • You have the opportunity to fight Ozzie, Flea, and Slash again during an optional side-quest. At this point, you're stronger than Flea or Slash could ever hope to be, while Ozzie, per the norm, does nothing but run away and set ineffectual traps. Then you fight them all together, and they counter any attack with combination techs that range from "nasty" to "devastating." (depending on who you attack) Suddenly, they don't seem so wimpy anymore.
• A beloved, time-tested tradition of the Dead Rising series is to sideswipe you with dangerous Psychopaths who in no way should be much of a threat. You think Antoine the fat delusional chef, Adam the clown, or "Slappy" the guy in the children's mascot costume aren't dangerous? The clown juggles chainsaws, the chef can restore all his health in about five seconds if you let him, and the children's mascot roller skates around shooting fire at you. They can all take one hell of a beating, they all want you dead, and they will kill you in a matter of seconds if you underestimate them. Of course, as you can dress however you want and wield whatever you want you get to invert this and be a not so harmless hero as well, being the man in a bright pink onesie with a Servbot head armed with a cactus who took all these Psychopaths down and saved the day.
• Queen from Deltarune is very eccentric and is "trucies" with Kris for a large portion of the game, so it comes off as a surprise when she captures the Lightners once they arrive at her mansion. She has a second moment right before her boss battle, when she reveals she caught Berdly and Noelle breaking out of Noelle's room, recaptured Noelle, and inserted one of her control plugs into Berdly's face.
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening gives us Jester, goofy clown demon who shows up randomly to annoy Dante and give him advice on how to proceed. Then you have to fight him as a boss and that ends up being funny due to Jester's personality, but during The Reveal you find out he's Arkham's Devil Trigger and has been manipulating Dante, Vergil, and Lady in a Evil Plan to open the portal to the demon world, give him the sealed power of Sparda, and generally bring Hell on Earth.
• Dragonfable. Nythera starts off as a somewhat bratty and powerless apprentice to Warlic, the greatest mage in the world. She's pretty blatant about wanting Warlic to give her her powers back, and insinuates that she'll take his powers if he doesn't. This is all played for laughs at first. Then she kills Warlic and steals his powers and issues a challenge to all of the Elemental Lords at once, which drives them to attack your town. To add insult to injury, she even thanks you, since she used the potions YOU helped her to make to finish off Warlic. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. Later in the quest line, when she faces the Elemental Avatars, the player gets the chance to control her. Her basic attack consists of several hits that do hundreds of damage each. Due to the way the battles work, it's still a Hopeless Boss Fight, but damn.
• Porky from EarthBound (1994). He starts out as Ness's friend, and after he turns, he's still just a harmless nuisance. By the end of the game, though, he's Big Bad Giygas's right-hand-man. In Mother 3, he's a full-on Big Bad himself. Who manages to take over what is left of the world.
• In Fallout 3, the Capital Wasteland largely considers the Enclave to be a joke, since their only presence outside the borders of their base is a looping radio broadcast of Patriotic Fervor. Most people you talk to assume that the Enclave is either an automated pre-War broadcasting system or some crazy old man in a bunker somewhere. Turns out, not so much...
• Final Fantasy:
  • Garland, of the original Final Fantasy. Wussy first boss of a knight that you'd probably forget about once you reach the final dungeon, where he turns out to be the Big Bad.
  • Borghen in Final Fantasy II comes at the end of a dungeon after a tough boss, having decided that if the Emperor is certainly going to have him killed for his failures, he's going to take the party down with him. That doesn't go so well... until he triggers a boulder trap just before his dies, forcing Josef to make a Heroic Sacrifice to save the others.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Kefka, to a certain extent. Comically-loony jester sidekick of the real villain? Uwa, ha ha! Wrong. He double-crosses Emperor Gestahl and becomes the God of the world, destroying it.
  • Chocobo's Dungeon 2 has several examples. One is that enemies can actually kill each other to level up and become much stronger. Another is the cute vampire mage kid who dies in one hit from most attacks, but can cast a spell that takes you down a whole level. The biggest example, though, is when the weakest enemy in the game gets access to a wish-granting crystal and wishes to become powerful enough to be the bully instead of the bullied, thus becoming the Big Bad.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Remember Zorn and Thorn, the annoying jester twins whose asses you handed to them in Disc 2? They're not twins. The resulting monster spams the more harmful status ailments (Virus and Venom) while also bombarding you with powerful black magic (notably Bio... which also inflicts Poison!), making for a surprisingly challenging - and satisfying - Climax Boss. ^note Particularly when one factors in that your dedicated Black Mage runs off before the fight, and your more offensive-based Summoner is currently mute and has a high chance of failing to cast her spells.
  • Kefka again in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Due to the way that universe is built up, when a character dies, s/he will simply be resurrected again, though of at expense of the memories of his/her previous life. All through the 13th resurrection circle, Kefka is trying, with the help of the Cloud of Darkness, to get Terra Branford to join their side. Again. See, she actually was on their side in the 12th circle, but due to Kefka being neglectful she pulled a High-Heel–Face Turn... So, why does the Cloud of Darkness not call Kefka out on it being his fault? And why does she act like she had never seen Terra before? Well, because during the 12th circle she tipped the heroes off on how to stop the invasion of Manikins, beings that can nullify the resurrection process, and Kefka did not like that... so he killed her. The gibbering Psychopathic Manchild, Kefka, pulled a You Have Failed Me on the Anthropomorphic Personification of the realm of nothingness. ^note  To put that into further perspective; not even the Onion Knight, the Cloud of Darkness' fated nemesis, could kill her in his main storyline.
  • Moreso than Kefka is Exdeath in Dissidia. Despite bumbling about, there is literally nothing that gets past him in regards to Dissidia's plot. He knows half his team is scheming for their own muses, knows that Golbez is a traitor and knows exactly about previous cycles and what will happen again and again. Gameplay reflects this with his Difficult, but Awesome Turtling and counter-offensive strategies. The only reason he doesn't put up more of an active threat against the heroes is simply that he does not care as all outcomes will lead to what he wants. He considers offing Golbez for his mutiny, but when Cecil makes that more of a hassle, he just drops it.
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game subverts this. Obstructive Bureaucrat Walter Peck is back... but hints start getting dropped partway through that he's actually the Big Bad, and his obnoxious bumbling obstruction is a cover for his nefarious motives. In the end, it turns out he is just an obnoxious Obstructive Bureaucrat, and the real Big Bad is the ghost of Ivo Shandor — and Peck's not even the one who was possessed by him, it was the mayor.
• "The Stranger" from the opening of God of War (PS4) initially looks like he's just a random drunken asshole with no idea that he's antagonizing a literal god. Kratos knocks him to the ground with a single punch—then the Stranger says "My turn," and delivers an uppercut that sends Kratos flying over his own house. Then the fight is on. Kratos eventually learns that the Stranger is in fact the Norse god Baldur, explaining why he's such a formidable foe.
• Alex of Golden Sun fame is little more of a Smug Snake in the first game, whereas his companions always throw themselves into the thick of combat and are more than willing to risk their lives to achieve their dream of restoring Alchemy to the world. Then the sequel rolls around and in the first five minutes he curb stomps the same elite soldiers that Saturos and Menardi did a game ago before nonchalantly responding to their threat of backup by asking if they thought even a hundred of their soldiers would be enough to stop him. He then reveals true colours, employing tactics such as hiring replacements for his old companions in order to intimidate Felix into lighting the remaining beacons. He then (presumably) steals Isaac's ship so he can be there when the Golden Sun forms over Mt. Aleph after all four Elemental Lighthouse beacons are lit so that he can obtain absolute power and Immortality.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: While OG Loc at first appears to be an idiot who is ridiculed for trying way too hard to convince his friends that he's a gangster, he then sends CJ to commit several atrocities to further his career as a rapper: kidnap and kill Madd Dogg's manager (alongside an innocent woman who just happened to have the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time) for telling everyone how awful his music is (which is not an exaggeration, his music is awful) and killing all of his security guards to steal his rhyme book. It gets worse when he becomes famous off of Madd Dogg's stolen lyrics, nearly driving Madd Dogg to suicide!
• Lord Zur in Guardian Heroes spends most of the game as a Harmless Sissy Villain, except on one ending path where he absorbs Valgar's abilities to morph into Super Zur, giving him new powers and vampire-like wings.
• Guild Wars to Guild Wars 2:
  • In Nightfall Palawa Joko was talked up as being a great threat in the past but his actual behavior and performance left him looking like a buffoon in-game. Between the first game and its sequel, Joko conquered the entirety of Elona, butchered the heroic Sunspears, turned the Ossa royal line into his personal henchmen, and instituted an unnervingly thorough rewriting of history which has brainwashed most of his subjects into slavish devotion.
    • This continues in Path of Fire where Joko is initially met imprisoned in the afterlife, yelling petty insults and coming off as a failure. However once he escapes, Joko proves to be a horrifyingly effective enemy with a disturbing fixation on making the player character suffer.
  • Mad King Thorn's status as The Caligula was well-known in the original game but it was distant enough that it could be overlooked. The sequel throws his insanity into the player's faces, with interviews of people he murdered starting as a child and how his magical power was so great his killers were afraid he'd resurrect himself.
• In Half-Life the humble Headcrab is one of the easiest enemies for Gordon to deal with. However, Gordon has an HEV suit, while other people don't. Come Half-Life 2, the Combine have taken to using the Headcrabs as terror weapons against rebel cells, and an infestation caused a Zombie Apocalypse in Ravenholm.
• Halo:
  • Guilty Spark. Sure, he originally seemed like a rather annoying sidekick in Halo: Combat Evolved, until you realize he was leading you into destroying all life in the galaxy. When Master Chief and Cortana refuse to activate Halo, Spark tells the Sentinels to "Save his head... dispose of the rest.". At the end of Halo 3, after doing little more than float, blabber on, and occasionally send Sentinels to kill whatever, he kills Johnson and actually kicks Master Chief and Arbiter's asses in a case of Cutscene Power to the Max. Sure, he becomes an Anticlimax Boss as soon as you realize Johnson's Spartan Laser to be the tool to end his whining, but until then he was putting down some serious hurt.
  • Grunts are the Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Butt-Monkey of the Covenant. They can also be surprisingly badass, starting in Halo 3 they can drive Ghosts, and will occasionally activate two Plasma Grenades and suicide rush you. A plasma grenade from a Grunt will kill as well as anything else, and there's nothing funny or harmless about a Grunt with a Fuel Rod Cannon. Even In-Universe, as one of the biggest crises the Covenant faced was the Grunt Rebellion, in which a very large number of extremely angry Grunts came this close to destroying High Charity, the Covenant Capitol, and only the intervention of an Arbiter (who are only created in "times of extraordinary crisis") managed to stop it. In fact, it was that incident that convinced the Elites to permit Grunts to enlist in the Covenant military, as they'd proven they had what it took to be a real threat.
• The Nyakuza, a Cat Folk Yakuza, in A Hat in Time. Their leader, the Empress, is obviously not someone to trifle with, but the rest of the gang are apparently only nominally gang members; they're mostly found hanging lampshades, discussing food truck and pop culture, and selling Hat Kid new aesthetics. At least, until the Empress puts a bounty on Hat Kid's head. Then they turn out to be vicious fighters, numerous enough to block off escape routes with sheer numbers, and cunning enough to disguise as civilians and only put on their masks when they can corner Hat Kid into a trap she only barely escapes with her life.
• Old Lorenzo Belli in Haunting Ground, the Big Bad and Mad Alchemist responsible for the events of the game and creating the various other homunculi you had to fight. While not "harmless" considering what he's responsible for, he's also a Dark Lord on Life Support who can't even stand or speak without wheezing or gasping. Not a problem once you've taken out his Mooks, right? While he can't stand he can move, like a spider scurrying on his belly, and faster than you can run. Also if he so much as touches you it's an instant death. Also you can't kill him; blowing him up in an explosion or mauling him into hamburger in a rock grinder only briefly slows him down. Yeah, Fiona better start running her ass off.
• Played with in Hollow Knight with Zote the Mighty, an arrogant Miles Gloriosus hero who keeps getting in trouble and needs to be bailed out by the player. At first he seems utterly harmless, but then you fight him in the Colosseum of Fools... where you confirm that he really is harmless, as his "Life Ender" weapon can't even damage you, and he constantly trips over himself. But then there's an Optional Boss battle against "Grey Prince Zote", a much beefier version of Zote who still bumbles around as he fights, but is far more lethal. Even then, it's not actually Zote you're fighting, but an idealized version of him created by Bretta's subconscious after Zote convinces her that he's every bit the unstoppable hero that he claims to be.
• The King of Fighters '97 has the New Faces Team. At first they appear to be just some punk kids (or whatever kind of band they had) with upbeat attitudes and realistic fighting styles. Supplemental materials suggest that they hate Iori and may have punked the '94 Sports Team, but otherwise they're pretty normal. Then it is revealed that all three of them are villains from the Orochi bloodline, and they display highly powerful elemental abilities in their new forms. And then one of them becomes Orochi himself, and you're suddenly fighting a world-destroying god. A world destroying god who was originally Chris, the Team's Fragile Speedster.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts II has Demyx. When he's first seen, he acts like a clumsy coward, running away and stumbling everywhere. His in-game profile even calls him a joke. However, when accused of being a truly emotionless being, he ditches the act. Suddenly he's leaping around all over the battlefield and using his sitar to unleash a huge barrel of watery whoopass on Sora and company. Many players were unpleasantly surprised, to say the least.
  • Kingdom Hearts coded has Pete of all people. Taking full command of the Bug Blox glitches that infest the datascape, he gains a lot of power, going from the incompetent and minor threat he normally is to a genuine and terrifying threat to Data-Sora. For example, he takes full advantage of the fact that Donald and Goofy are going to try and protect Data-Sora and uses that fact to trap the two and nearly kills them as a result.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Captain Pete of Country of the Musketeers is significantly more competent than his "normal" (and inept) incarnation, nearly succeeding in his coup of Queen Minnie due to his own cunning. He only fails because Sora and Riku show up and help Mickey, Donald, and Goofy.
  • While The Heartless aren't exactly harmless, being creatures that exist As Long as There Is Evil and being a world-destroying force in the original game, it's easy to forget that when Sora is literally killing them by the thousands with little trouble. Then comes the Secret Episode of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep where Aqua is trapped in the Realm of Darkness. Suddenly The Usual Adversaries are actually dangerous, to the point where even Shadows can kill you in a few hits. To drive the point home, the player isn't facing the cute, cartoony Emblem Heartless here; no, you're pitted against Purebloods, the original, far more terrifying variety of Heartless, culminating in a boss fight against a monstrous Animalistic Abomination that's one of the largest Heartless bosses in the series.
  • The Shadow Heartless are normally The Goomba. In 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage we learn what happens when they team up. The Demon Tower is a large number of Shadows combining their power and serves as a competent boss twice. The Final Boss of the storyline is the Demon Tide; an even larger number of Shadows surrounding an orb of dark energy and takes the combined strength of Aqua and Mickey to take down and it still has enough strength to cause one of the cruellest Hope Spots in the series.
    • Kingdom Hearts III takes in further when said Shadow Heartless all proceed to join together into one giant tornado that is too much for even the Guardians of Light to defeat. Or more accurately, said Heartlesses curb-stomps each and every one of the Keyblade wielders (and Donald and Goofy) and have their hearts taken away by the Lich, something that not even all 13 Xehanorts together could ever accomplish.
• MadWorld: The Black Baron seems to be a harmless character despite clearly being part of Deathwatch at first, constantly being killed to demonstrate how his Bloodbath Challenges work yet coming back just fine for the next one. Then he turns out to be the Final Boss, and he proves to be a formidable foe.
• Mass Effect: A backstory one. In Mass Effect 2, the Patriarch, an old krogan warlord and former ruler of Omega, mentions that when Aria T'Loak first came to Omega, he thought she was just another asari dancer. After crushing multiple organs and breaking many bones, Aria has spent centuries ruling over Omega and reigning as one of the most powerful crimelords in the Terminus Systems.
• Mega Man has several examples:
  • Dr. Doppler of Mega Man X3 evokes this at least when it comes to physical power. Every other scientist ever in the series has hopped behind the controls of a Humongous Mecha to deal with Mega Man, while Doppler just tosses off his lab coat and battles X all by himself^note of course, Doppler at least has the excuse of being a Reploid, whereas previous scientists were all human. He isn't an easy fight either; Doppler has surprisingly powerful attacks and is bit of a Puzzle Boss as he can regenerate his health if you attack him at the wrong time.
  • Double in Mega Man X4, a rookie Hunter that was assigned to be the title character's Mission Control. Obese, clumsy, incompetent, and not-too-bright, so what's so meaningful about his name? He's Sigma's mole, assigned to throw X off Sigma's tracks, Ax-Crazy, and is capable of annihilating a dozen Hunters on his own.
  • Speaking of, Dr. Wily falls under this. In Mega Man & Bass, one of his creations, King, chopped Proto Man in half. In Mega Man 9, he managed to con the world into thinking Dr. Light was after world domination, getting the good doctor arrested. And in Mega Man 10, if not for Roll, he would've won. And this is just in the Classic series. In the X series, he is responsible for The Virus that causes much of the conflict. Plus, it's hinted that he may still be alive...
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: When Senator Armstrong is first seen, it's assumed that he's a (admittedly huge) bespectacled, suit-wearing politician who is only a danger to Raiden when piloting Metal Gear Excelsus. But once you destroy Excelsus, Armstrong proves to be just as dangerous in hand-to-hand combat as any of his underlings— particularly when he bulks up and demonstrates other nanomachine-enabled superpowers.
• Inverted by Sutekh, the Big Bad of Nightshade (1992), who is revealed at the end to be a dorky weirdo with absurd plans for taking over the city. This is after he was established as a very dangerous and credible threat who had already murdered one superhero offscreen and repeatedly tries to do the same to Nightshade.
• Pokémon:
  • Team Galactic. Just another goofy Team Evil capable of only doing mainly ineffectual things like hijacking windmills, stealing honey, and trying to beat you at Pokémon matches? Sure, you might think that, until they bomb one of Sinnoh's Sacred Lakes, kidnap all of the sacred sprites, and begin summoning one-to-two Pokémon capable of undoing the world.
  • In the same vein, Team Flare. So they're just fashion-obsessed villains that want to make money by stealing fossils and Pokéballs? Sure, until the part where they try to commit mass genocide via Fantastic Nuke as an utterly insane measure to secure limited resources for all (and by "all" we mean Team Flare). Said nuke is powered by draining the life from and killing thousands of Pokémon and possibly the nearby trainers on Route 10, which is also meant to make the group not only the sole survivors of their global holocaust, but immortal superhumans.
    Team Flare Grunt: Only Team Flare is stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
  • Miror B. The poster boy for Disco Dan in dark and edgy Orre loves dancing with his Ludicolo, more so than his actual job as a Cipher Admin. The same guy who moonwalks around Pyrite Town in mockery of the police, distributes Shadow Pokémon to unsuspecting competitors at the Pyrite Colosseum, orchestrated Rui's kidnapping because she can differentiate Shadow Pokémon from regular Pokémon, and has Mayor Duking wrapped around his finger because he holds the mayor's Plusle hostage. He's the nicest Admin in all of Cipher. In the sequel, he's the proud "owner" of a Shadow Dragonite, probably the strongest Shadow 'mon in the game next to Lugia.
• Punch-Out!!:
  • You wouldn't imagine that Glass Joe, the shining example of a Warm-Up Boss, could ever put up a fight. When he returns for a rematch in the Wii game's Title Defense mode, however, he's equipped himself with a helmet that deflects all jabs, and has added a surprisingly effective fake-out punch to his arsenal. As a result, he often ends up defeating players who were able to defeat Mr. Sandman, the Champion and Final Boss.
  • In the NES version, Don Flamenco. The first time you fight him, he's a Breather Boss about as difficult as Glass Joe, standing in place when hit, and showboating with his dances too much to launch an effective offense. The second time you fight him you'll probably be expecting more of the same only for you to land your first punch... and find him dancing around dodging your attacks like crazy. And he doesn't screw around when he attacks anymore, making his offense fast, hard to predict, and giving the player little respite..... oh crap.
  • King Hippo can be this for some players, being a fat stupid looking guy from a Tonga like country called "Hippo Island". He gapes like a hippo and looking at him you'd think he's slow and easy to hit.... he isn't. Remember, hippos are among the most dangerous animals on Earth.
  • Your own cuddly, overweight, chocolate bar chomping manager boxes you in a downloadable spin-off game. Know that Star Punch that lays waste to your foes? This guy invented that move. Granted, he's no villain, but try punching that chocolate bar out of his hand and see how well he takes it.
• RuneScape: The finale of the Void Knight quest series, widely considered one of the hardest quests in the game, reveals that the mastermind planning to unleash a horde of Eldritch Abominations on Gielinor is none other than Professor Melville Grayzag, a crazy summoner who'd previously been the comic-relief bad guy of the extremely old, extremely easy quest "Imp Catcher." Several players actually managed to call this before The Reveal, owing to the fact that the first quest in the Void series has "Imp Catcher" as a prerequisite despite otherwise having nothing to do with it.
• In Saints Row 2, in the beginning Maero, the leader of the Stilwater Brotherhood, sees the Boss as a "washed-up gangbanger" and for this reason offers him/her only 20% of his shipment and by extension, 20% of Stilwater. And after the Boss angrily turns him down, he barely does anything in response, still seeing him/her and the Saints as a nuisance. Then the Boss permanently burns his face with radioactive waste, then s/he kills his girlfriend and has his best friend crippled. After that he devotes all energy to killing the Boss and destroying the Saints.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Dr. Eggman is a Ditzy Genius who kept forgetting that Evil Is Not a Toy for quite a while and generally rather buffoonish and childish. But it's made clear time and time again throughout the series, especially in Sonic Forces, that if Sonic wasn't his adversary, he'd be ruling the world right now. It's even lampshaded in Forces; Knuckles remarks that he'd normally laugh off any of Eggman's schemes, but Eggman's already taken over most of the world.
  • Fang the Hunter is usually being the butt of the joke and pretty inefficient for a villain. Despite that, he proves himself on occasions that he can be quite a threat throughout few of his appearances in the series, which lead to Sonic Superstars where his boss battles become much tougher and he even serves as a Final Boss in Trip's story.
• Spookys Jumpscare Mansion: Specimen 1 is a cheep, cute looking cardboard cutout that jumps out to harmlessly scare the player. That said, while they have the lowest body count, they have killed people, and they can also halt the player if they’re running from another, more deadly specimen, leading to damage and possibly a death.
• If you ask Hayes about the Spathi in Star Control II, he will warn you not to underestimate them. They may be utter cowards, they may be humorous, and they may look silly... but their Eluders are some of the toughest ships in the game and can be very difficult to take down. The Spathi may avoid combat at all costs, but if they're forced into it, they're really good at it.
• The Rebel Alliance in Star Wars: Battlefront gets this from the members of the 501st Stormtrooper Legion. A member of the 501st talks about the Rebels, mentioning that the stormies had treated them like disobedient children, but were repaid for their tolerance with treachery on an unimaginable scale. The "treachery" in question was Luke destroying the Death Star, so sympathy for their anger is difficult.
• Suikoden V's Lord Barrows is an over the top Smug Snake and Fat Idiot. Initially, the only threat he seems to pose is that allying with him makes other potential allies reluctant to join you. It later turns out that he's far more devious than he lets on. He masterminded the uprising at Lordlake as part of a power grab, which means that a large part of the game's conflict is his fault. Finally, he comes close to forcing the Prince to ally with a foreign army as part of a plan to betray Falena to that army's country.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • The first Paper Mario games have these:
    • Jr. Troopa from the first Paper Mario is a baby Koopa fresh from the nest (with most of his egg's shell still on him) and a comic relief Recurring Boss who can actually be a real hassle to beat at many stages of the game.
    • The Koopa Bros. in the same game, as well, are treated as complete losers but prove formidable in the actual fight with them. That's teamwork for you.
    • Bowser in the first Paper Mario as well, where he's the Big Bad. Although he's extremely dumb (he'll believe Peach if she tells him Mario hates healing items), he possesses the Star Rod which makes him a god, and he actually manages to defeat Mario at the start of the game.
    • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Beldam appears to be just another incompetent lackey of Grodus, and the worst she ever seems to do is mistreat her sisters, especially poor Vivian, and Doopliss later on, and Grodus himself doesn't seem to think much of her. It's then revealed that she was actually manipulating Grodus all along and was only using him in order to revive her mistress, The Shadow Queen, the demon that destroyed Rogueport a thousand years before the game's events took place. She took advantage of his ambition and told him that the Shadow Queen was bound to serve the one who released her. She isn't.
    • Doopliss in the same game is a goofy Bedsheet Ghost who doesn't seem all that threatening aside from turning people into pigs For the Evulz. His boss fight happens relatively early in Chapter 4, and his only real trick is turning into a shadowy Mario clone at low health. So, short chapter, right? Nope, he then steals Mario's name and body, taking his partners and the Crystal Stars, leaving Mario as a nameless shadow until he can figure out the fiend's true name. In the ensuing rematch after you do so, not only can Doopliss use Mario's abilities, he even tricks your partners into fighting on his side!
    • Dimentio in Super Paper Mario seems to be at first a jester-like character, light-hearted and playful. Later, as his true intentions unfold, his true menace becomes apparent.
  • From the Mario & Luigi series:
    • Compared to the above example from Paper Mario, Bowser has a kind of character arc in this series where this happens to an even greater scale. He starts off in Superstar Saga as a Harmless Ineffectual Sympathetic Butt-Monkey before becoming a slightly better threat in Partners in Time but still minor compared to the true villains - the Shroobs. In Bowser's Inside Story, he is a Villain Protagonist who, with help from the Mario Bros., is capable of beating Fawful and the Dark Star. Dream Team makes him a true and credible threat after teaming up with Antasma and betrays him, becoming the true main antagonist and final boss with reality warping powers thanks to a MacGuffin, which sets the stage for Paper Jam where he is the main antagonist (along with his paper counterpart) for the whole game and about as threatening as he is in the main Mario games.
    • The Ensemble Dark Horse of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Fawful, poses very little threat when he fights the heroes at the end of the game, and refers to himself as "Fawful, who is just a toady!" Then, after spending the next game in the series plotting his revenge in the sewers beneath Peach's castle, he returns as the Big Bad of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story.
  • Dino Piranha, the first boss of Super Mario Galaxy, is definitely one of the easiest bosses in the game, but when you run into him in the second-to-last level before fighting Bowser, he's now on fire and therefore much difficult to kill.
• Tales of the Abyss has Dist the Reaper. Or Rose as he prefers. He's a Sissy Villain who gets picked on by the Token Evil Teammate Jade, has no respect from even his allies (who see him in-universe as The Scrappy), and generally is just so ridiculous no one takes his seriously. This is mainly because Jade is tormenting him; for all his eccentricities, he's a genius inventor, having made all the fon machines being used by the villains, and ultimately he nearly stops them from being able to save the world from the miasma in the third act by massacring the replicas of the Tower of Rem with a massive fon machine. He's also the only villain to survive the events of the game.
  • In the years and sequel quests since "Defender of Varrock", Zemouregal suffered so much Villain Decay that it's a genuine shock to see him ruling over the ruins of "New" Varrock in "Dimension of Disaster". Even better? Varrock had already been destroyed, and all the townspeople killed, by Delrith, the demon from the tutorial quest "Demon Slayer". One Not-So-Harmless Villain conquered the city from another Not-So-Harmless Villain.
• The Scout from Team Fortress 2 seems to have been designed like this. In the previous Team Fortress games, Scouts were a borderline Joke Character, existing to capture the flag and very little else while the other classes do the actual fighting. Team Fortress 2 makes the new Scout's character model even smaller and gives him a big smack-talking mouth. It also gave him the deadliest shotgun in the game as his primary weapon and a speedy double-jump to make him nearly untouchable. Competitive teams adore competent Scouts for being perhaps the deadliest single class in the game.
• Father Karras from Thief II: The Metal Age, especially considering your last threat was a god and he has a silly, high-pitched, slurred voice. He can't be too much of a threat, right? Then he sics the entire police force on you, is the head of a major religion that has access to advanced tech for this age (seemingly half of which he invented himself), is a pretty clever Chessmaster, kidnaps people to be turned into mindless robots, and his ultimate plan, if successful, will kill everyone in The City.
• Touhou Project:
  • Nazrin is a pathetic Stage 1 mid-boss and boss, with easy to dodge horizontal patterns, but she shows up later as the Stage 5 mid-boss and absolutely murders you with curvy and splitting lasers.
  • Kogasa Tatara shows up as a Stage 2 mid-boss and boss, and proclaims that her main goal is to scare and/or surprise people. Her patterns were also fairly easy to dodge, and people made fun of her when the demo was released; she returns in the full version as the Extra Stage midboss, and with difficult spellcards that make it hard for many to reach the relatively easy Extra Boss with decent resources. Surprise!
  • Cirno was originally just a Stage 2 boss, and later a far from notable minor playable character amongst other minor playable characters. Then she got her own story route in Hisoutensoku, pitting her against a Physical God and a Person of Mass Destruction. Then she got her own game in which she manages to put up a decent fight against Marisa, one of the most feared beings in Gensokyo. The strongest fairy is still not a severe threat compared to others, but she has accomplished much.
  • Clownpiece in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. Ridiculous name aside, she is a fairy (actually a lampad from Hell, but still), like most of her kind she is a prankster (with a side of insanity), and she wears one of the silliest costumes a Touhou character has ever worn, which is really saying something. She is also a stage 5 boss, which ranks her below only the Final Boss and the Extra Boss. What's more, she is beyond any doubt one of the hardest stage 5 bosses in the series, with many fans finding her harder to beat than the bosses that come after her, making her the most brutal and infuriating fight in a game that has increased difficulty compared to previous Touhou games in the first place, and by extension one of the hardest bosses in a series already known for its unforgivable Bullet Hell. And her signature power? Driving people insane, possibly violently, with a side order of Power Born of Madness, which is exactly as nasty a combination as it sounds. Well, trying to get through that frustrating boss battle of hers, you'll probably go crazy too.
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: Rafe is a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who was competing against the Drake brothers in finding the lost treasure of Henry Avery. Then in the climax, he turns out to be a very good fencer and actually came closer to killing Nate than anyone else in the game.
• Undertale:
  • Papyrus isn't exactly what one will call a villain, but he repeatedly tries and fails to halt the player's progress with puzzles, and ultimately ends up growing fond of his prey, though this doesn't stop him from ultimately confronting you himself. Said fight starts off almost pathetically easy, with all of his projectiles travelling along the ground and being almost effortless to dodge, and even his secret Blue Attack is easy to get through since his brother Sans tells you how to avoid getting hurt by it beforehand; standing still allows blue attacks to pass through your SOUL harmlessly. Then it turns out that what Sans didn't tell you is that said Blue Attack also causes your soul to be affected by gravity, and now you have to dodge all these ground-based projectiles like your typical platformer, while the patterns get more and more complex and challenging. It is hinted that he is even stronger than that, and if you stop a No Mercy route by sparing him, his dialogue afterwards heavily suggests that his real "special attack" involves the same Gaster Blasters used by the most difficult boss in the game, his brother Sans. And to add more to his hidden badassery, Undyne admits that Papyrus is tough, Flowey admits it took him a while to get bored of Papyrus, and in the True Pacifist Ending, everyone except Papyrus is covered in two vines, with Papyrus being covered in four. Also, according to one fan theory, monsters' movement is inversely proportional to how much they're holding back. Photoshop Flowey, Asriel, Mettaton, Undyne, and Mad Dummy, characters who want to kill you at all costs, move around a lot during their boss fights, while Toriel (who will do her best not to kill you), Asgore (who, while still trying to kill you, really doesn't want to), and Napstablook (who is unintentionally hitting you with his tears) are all not giving it their all to kill you, and move the least out of the enemies. Papyrus moves less than even these characters, standing completely still and not even moving his mouth to talk (which he does when not battling you), only changing expression when taking damage, which implies that, even while using as little of his power as possible, he can still control his attacks enough to not kill you, and spell words with them. He also knows when Sans is pranking you across time and space, implying that he can remember resets. Adding all that together...
  • Zigzagged with Undyne, who first appears as an inversion more than anything, going from a genuinely terrifying, threatening and inexorable Black Knight to... basically an over-the-top Hot-Blooded anime character. While not harmless by any means, it's hard to take her seriously after that. However, on a No Mercy route, Undyne will remind you that being basically an anime hero has its perks. Like the obligatory Heroic Second Wind in the face of impossible odds and certain death. Like being able to harness the Toxic Phlebotinum that no one else but the villain can use. Like the Transformation Sequence. Meet Undyne the Undying, the second hardest boss fight in the game.
  • Heavily downplayed with Flowey the Flower, who first appears at the beginning of the game as a friendly flower who wants to teach you around here... and then brings you health down to 1 and says that in this world, it's kill or be killed. Most players would forget about him afterwards... until he appears at the end of the Ruins, judging you for what you've done while playing throughout the game so far. And then, in the Neutral Ending, he kills Asgore, becomes an Eldritch Abomination and the Final Boss. And in the True Pacifist Route, he becomes his true form, Asriel Dreemurr, and turns into a literal God who is so close to defeating you in hopes of gaining control over the entire timeline.
• Shrowdy von Kiefer, villain of A Vampyre Story, is black magic incarnate. This means he has every negative trait you can think of—childishness, selfishness, a complete lack of dignity, an obsession with his mother, a fondness for torture, the capacity to coldly kill someone he claims to be in love with...
• View from Below: Bell seems like a Laughably Evil thief at first, but during Chapter 5, he'll put Ash through difficult Bullet Hell segments where losing will result in a game over and an increase to the death counter.
• Joshua in The World Ends with You is incredibly hard to fight with, until you get him floating. Then he can shoot very powerful Jesus Beams, and he's actually The Chessmaster for the game.
  • Kariya generally comes off as The Slacker who's highly unmotivated, but he manages to deduce that Joshua is in he game illegally, and becomes a very challenging boss, especially when paired with Uzuki. It's fairly telling that Beat, who's hotheaded and reckless, is nervous about facing Kariya in battle.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Individually, Murlocs aren't much of a threat. They're about two feet tall aquatic humanoids of limited intelligence. However they are rarely found individually. They are usually in large social groups and will come to the defense of one another, and almost always flee at low health; returning with several more. They are extremely deadly at low levels where several quests require killing them. Many a new player has made the mistake of laughing at the little fish man with the incoherent grumbling growling noise. Then that player finds themselves facing a dozen or more and is overwhelmed quickly. Murlocs were finally patched in the Cataclysm expansion to be easier to kill and not summon as much help, but they can still overwhelm an unlucky or unprepared player.
  • Deathwing's attack on Stormwind was probably intended to be this, a way to showcase him as a major threat who could do serious damage to the Alliance and the Horde after the previous expansion's antagonist, the Lich King, was called a Saturday morning cartoon villain by the fanbase one to many times. But this attack happens almost entirely offscreen, is barely mentioned after the fact, didn't kill anyone important, and has never been given any (canon) reasoning as to why he chose Stormwind and only took out the park when he apparently could have leveled the entire city.
• Xenogears:
  • Miang is introduced as the unassuming girlfriend of Ramsus. Much later, it is revealed that she is the Big Bad, the human form of the creator "god," and has existed for 10000 years via body surfing. It also doesn't hurt that the battle against her gear is one of the hardest in the game.
  • From the same game: Krelian. He's presented as an antagonist from the beginning, so he's never exactly "harmless," but at first he seems pretty insignificant compared to Grahf, the Gazel Ministry, and Id. Turns out he's a Chessmaster Magnificent Bastard who's been manipulating everyone of consequence for the last five centuries. In the end HE WINS.
• zOMG!:
  • The beginning introduces Frank◊, a cute little nerd boy who is the second-in-command of a group of mad scientists who are destroying the world For Science!.
  • The Fluff enemies. You get used to crushing these guys with minimal effort in the first two areas... and then the Zen Gardens introduces suicidal Cherry Fluffs that gang up on you and then explode for massive damage. Later areas include Fluffs that sink you in quicksand as well.

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