The Worf Effect / Video Games

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• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: Cesare Borgia's first appearance has him beat, humiliate and kill Mario Auditore, who was shown in Assassin's Creed II and the opening of Brotherhood to be a capable leader and skilled condottiero. On the flip side, Cesare himself is at the mercy of his trope by the end. Despite his aforementioned victory and Machiavelli respecting his abilities, the Cesare we see at the end, now without the money or troops to support his military campaign, is a whiny wreck of a man who can't back up his Badass Boasts.
• Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2: The lead heroine summons massive demons that, throughout each game, usually kill and eat the various angels fought after she had weakened them without fail. Towards the end of the first game, Father Balder breaks Gomorrah's neck and blows up Scolopendra, in the only instance where the "Climax" prompt doesn't actually finish the boss off. In the second, Loptr kills Labolas and Hydra in quick succession during a cutscene, right before he gets the Left Eye and becomes Aesir.
  • Bayonetta herself also suffers this trope in the second game. While her only defeat in the first game comes from a sneak attack, the Lumen Sage matches her blow for blow in the first two fights with him and knocks her to her knees when he finally goes all out in round 3. A friend's intervention is required for her to survive there. And the final boss beats her down multiple times, requiring aid from three allies in order for her to turn the tables.
  • The third game does this to a rather infuriating degree. It *starts* with an alternate version of Bayonetta being killed by Singularity. Throughout her trip through the Multiverse, Cereza encounters multiple alternate versions of herself and watches all of them die one after the other, either directly by Singularity's hand or indirectly as collateral damage from his actions.
• BlazBlue:
  • Hakumen was The Leader who destroyed the Black Beast, which itself almost destroyed the world. Further, almost every character states how powerful he is, and it is often noted that he isn't even at full strength. Naturally, he loses every plot-critical battle, and is even bested by some of the weaker characters (even if they don't seriously threaten him), with most of his victories being cutscene based.
  • Bang is more of an inversion of this. He starts off as a complete joke that nobody in the series takes seriously. This results in it being unsurprising when he loses most of his fights and very surprising when he manages to get the drop on Hazama of all people in Continuum Shift. However, he steadily gets stronger and goes from inverting, to downplaying this trope. In Chronophantasma, he becomes strong enough to stalemate characters like Ragna, Azrael, and Relius. He doesn't outright win, but the fact that he fought evenly against them shows that he's come a long way from being the BlazBlue world's designate Butt-Monkey.
  • Similar to Ryu below, Ragna the Bloodedge may be the main character, but that doesn't stop him from being used as the measuring stick from whatever powerhouse drops in. Kagura, Terumi, Relius, Hakumen, Azrael, and Nine are the most notable characters to have inflicted this trope on him. Though in Ragna's defense, many of his losses are usually a result of outside manipulations or having some sort of handicap.
    • In addition, Ragna himself has inflicted this trope onto others as well. At the time of Calamity Trigger, Jin was hailed as the greatest warrior in the NOL for his accomplishments during the Ikaruga Civil War. Their first fight ends with Jin easily beaten, with Ragna never activating the Grimoire and the implication that he held back out of whatever concern he had left for his brother at that point. He also inflicts this on Tager and Tsubaki in early Chronophantasma story mode to show how strong he became since the aftermath of Continuum Shift.
    • A downplayed case involving Hakumen and Nu-13 during Chronophantasma. While prior fights with them ended with Ragna getting utterly thrashed, he ends up stalemating both in individual fights. He wins neither fight, but he also doesn't lose like he did prior.
    • Speaking of Nu-13, Ragna also ends up inflicting this trope on her again at the end of Chronophantasma without once activating the Azure Grimoire. To add insult to injury, she was actively going all out and trying to kill Ragna, while he was holding back and trying to save her.
  • Iron Tager is billed as an incredibly powerful cyborg and the strongest fighter at Kokonoe's disposal. However, he frequently gets his ass handed to him to showcase someone else's strength and abilities. Ragna, Terumi, Kagura, Noel, and Makoto are among the characters that have beaten him down (though he did admit that he was holding back with Makoto and he initially underestimated Noel and didn't put much effort into the fight as a result).
  • Despite being billed as the "most powerful being alive", Ragna's master, Jubei, also suffers from this. He was beaten by Phantom AKA his wife, Nine, off-screen, leaving him heavily injured for the remainder of the series.
  • In Central Fiction, it's established just how much of a threat Izanami is when she crushes Kagura with no trouble. He even ends up getting beaten by Azrael despite having previously equaled him (though in fairness, The Embryo was weakening him and all but a few characters, so he wasn't at his strongest).
  • For the best example in the series, look no further than Susano'o, Terumi's true identity, who effortlessly annihilates Ragna, Noel, Jin, Jubei, hell, everyone! He even inflict this trope on Es, who was more or less treated as The Dreaded and The Juggernaut up until he came along.
• Borderlands
  • The Vault Hunters of the first game get a massive Worfing in the sequel. Most notable among them is Mordecai losing Bloodwing, Roland being killed by a single gunshot, and Lilith is kidnapped with insulting ease.
  • Continued in Borderlands 3, where Lilith is easily and quickly depowered by new villains the Calypso Twins, Maya is reduced to dust by Troy Calypso while she was holding him hostage, and Aurelia Hammerlock is reduced to an easily-dispatched generic Alpha Bitch villain despite her Even Evil Has Standards character development in the Pre-Sequel.
• Bravely Second: The very first thing you see is the Big Bad Kaiser Oblivion utterly obliterating Braev Lee, Alternis Dim and Agnes, the last of which was the protagonist of the last game who helped kill a God, with their strongest attacks failing to deal as much as scratch damage to him. How was he able to take no damage from their attacks? The game never tells you. When you fight him later on, with two other God-slayers from the last game, Edea and Tiz, he's able to be damaged just fine.
• Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium: God Rugal is one of the True Final Bosses of the game, and is introduced by defeating his counterpart, Street Fighter's Akuma. Not content with that, the opening animation has him throw Akuma's body offscreen like trash. Akuma has the last laugh though, as his power turns out to be too much for Rugal to control.
• Case 02: Paranormal Evil: For most of the game, Brucie is shown having an easier time against enemies than Marty, due to his prior combat experience as an exorcist. However, he's knocked out by the evil goddess Gla'aki to show how much of a threat she is once she has a physical body.
• Castlevania:
  • Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: Dario proves easily able to defeat Julius as a way of showing how much more powerful he's become since the last time (Julius also got Worfed by Soma himself in the previous game). Later on, Dmitri defeats Arikado/Alucard, albeit by using Celia's sacrifice to cause him to lose control of his dark powers.
  • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: This is the purpose of the Warg enemy: they're the first enemies you encounter in the brief period when Alucard has his full equipment, and they're also firebreathing wolves that look to be the size of elephants. They're the sort of thing that could easily be a boss fight in any prior Castlevania game... and then Alucard takes Scratch Damage from them and brings them down in a single blow. This serves to immediately impress upon the player that Alucard at his full power is a very different animal from the Belmonts.
    • A few minutes later, after Alucard's starting equipment is stolen, you'll come across Gaibon and Slogra, who you may remember as end-game bosses from Super Castlevania IV. Even together, they're barely a challenge for Alucard.
  • In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, Gabriel/Dracula actually Worfs his own ultimate attack from the first game. When Gabriel uses a Dark Crystal, it summons a devastatingly powerful demon that no enemy in the game can lift a finger against. But come the sequel, Dracula's power is so vast that he easily kills this same demon when it's summoned against him.
• Champions Online: The eponymous Champions seem to take a beating even more than their tabletop counterparts: in fact, Defender's status as class punching bag has become a bit of an In-Joke among the playerbase (during the years of the tabletop version's fourth edition he was regularly shown defeated on the covers of books, starting with the core rules themselves), despite his status as Millennium City's premier hero.
  • To start, during the tutorial level, intended to take a new character from level 1 to 5, Kinetik is captured by mooks the player can easily handle, and during the battle with Black Talon, Defender gets permanently restrained and the player has to finish the fight themselves. The prologue has since been revised, removing the mission with Kinetik entirely and having Defender take on enemy reinforcements instead of being outright taken out of the fight.
  • During her first appearance outside of the tutorial, Witchcraft is almost easily captured by her sister, whom as you might guess, the player defeats. In the Demonflame adventure pack, the Champions' resident mystic Witchcraft gets her ass handed to her by a Giant Mook while taunting the villains about their inevitable defeat.
  • Foxbat captures Sapphire, and though it's arguable that with an army of vampires he could do so, even winded after you rescue her she's able to handle herself in a fight against said army.
  • In Issue 6 of the Aftershock series, a few as a single King of Edom, i.e. a player soloing the series is able to take out at least Defender and Witchcraft.
  • During the Crisis in Vibora Bay, every single one of the Defenders is killed, and when we see it happen, it happens fast.
• Chrono Trigger: Magus is probably going to be a Wake-Up Call Boss for many players, if you don't know the trick to beating him he'll quickly curbstomp you. Later on, he gets taken out by the Big Bad Lavos with no real effort on its part.
• Crescent Prism: Thanks to the power of five Prism stones, Count Chroma is able to curbstomp the entire party and Astrid, with the latter being the strongest person in Merryday Village. Even when Professor Tide shows up with a device to weaken Count Chroma, the latter still isn't down for the count. The party only survives because Astrid seemingly sacrifices herself using Violet's power, and even that didn't kill Count Chroma.
• In Dark Souls, when the player first encounter Pisacas there is a bunch of Serpent Soldiers/Mages who are running away from them, even ignoring the player if they are attacked. While their regular attacks are quite weak their grab is devastating.
• In Dawn of War II — Retribution, during the Exterminatus of Typhon Prime, a Carnifex tries to flee from the planet. This completely pisses off a Chaos Champion who's offended that all these escapees aren't accepting the "honor of such a glorious death" and so he single-handedly kills the Carni with a synch-kill. While the Chaos Champion is a minor-boss, he's certainly no match for a Carnifex in-game or table-top. Your heroes will only take seconds to finish the guy off and hopefully collect a shiny from him too.
  • Happens in the intro sequences for Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. The former has the Space Marines getting slaughtered by the Necrons. The latter has the Imperial Guard being cut down in droves by the Tau's formidable plasma fire, only for the Sisters of Battle to show up and shrug it off, delivering a righteous ass-kicking to the Tau in turn.
  • Retribution has this for the first level. Each race will have a character from another race as a relatively weak tutorial boss. The Space Marines have Eliphas, the Chaos Space Marines have Davian Thule, the Orks have Autarch Kayleth, the Eldar have Kaptin Bluddflag, the Imperial Guard have the Tyranid Hive Lord, and the Tyranids have Lord General Castor. For the Tyranid campaign, the opening cutscene has the Tyranid Hive Lord butcher Sergeant Merrick "Clever Girl" style.
  • Happens in the final level of Winter Assault for the Imperial Guard. On the map are some imposing looking Ork and Chaos bases. The Necrons roll through them with very little difficulty. This basically says to the player that you really need to get the Titan's weapons systems up and running if you want to win. ^note However, it is a Self-Imposed Challenge to ignore the Titan and beat the Necrons with what you can scrounge together plus the Baneblade and the Leman Russ tanks the level provides, and show those Xenos bastards why mankind is destined to rule the galaxy.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening:
    • The Hell Vanguard is fought as a boss by Dante. But when that very same Vanguard shows up in Vergil's first appearance, he just kills the demon in one cut. This should let you know that he's not one to be messed with.
    • The Abyss are faster and more aggressive elite variants of the scythe-wielding Hell-type fodder demons. In Vergil's campaign from the Special Edition, he just effortlessly defeats a crowd of them during his opening cutscene.
  • Devil May Cry 4: The Alto Angelo makes its debut by killing two Assaults at once with a single slash, even if the Assaults were previously established to be formidable and aggressive demon types.
  • Devil May Cry 5:
    • Urizen is shown to be a serious threat by defeating Dante, Lady and Trish during the prologue (when visiting this from Dante's point of view in Mission 10, he lampshades this by pointing out that Lady and Trish are the most badass women he knows and that there's only one possible person who's strong enough to beat them). Dante is by a fair margin, the most powerful protagonist in the series and one of, if not the, strongest individual in the first four games. So there's no better way to show Urizen is serious business by having him completely overpower Dante's Devil Trigger, seemingly with little effort, and shatter the Rebellion sword into pieces. This shocks Morrison, who knew Dante and his capabilities for a long time.
      Morrison: This can't be happening... Dante lost?!
    • The mysterious hooded man who visits Nero at his garage easily rips the Devil Bringer off Nero's arm in one fell swoop as he's tossed around and can only scream for Kyrie to run as he bleeds on the floor. It's a stark contrast when DMC4 already hinted Nero as an Uneven Hybrid, and revealed his Devil Bringer to be strong enough to defeat Sanctus Diabolica then crush the giant Savior's face, and durable enough to block Dante's Rebellion. This is subverted later on as the man is revealed to be Vergil, a recurring series character whose power was already established in the previous games, and he was exhausted enough to be defeated by a powered-up Nero in the final mission.
    • Urizen is surprised that Dante's Sin Devil Trigger form can easily overpower him even if he defeated Dante in their prior match. This is also reflected in-game; if it took Nero an entire boss fight to shatter Urizen's crystal barrier, Dante's Sin Devil Trigger form shatters it in just a few hits.
• In another dinosaur example, the one-eyed T. rex in Dino Crisis 2 (who was nigh invulnerable to your weapons, as well as taking on a tank and surviving gets ripped apart in seconds by a Giganotosaurus. This is even more egregious than the Spinosaurus example above, as the Giganotosaur is depicted as so huge it can pick up the Tyrannosaur in its mouth and toss it around like a rag doll. A real-life matchup would be much more evenly weighted, as the real Giganotosaurus is only marginally bigger than T. rex, possesses a more gracile build, and lacks the Tyrant Reptile's bone-crushing bite strength.
• In the original Doom, the Barons of Hell served as the Dual Boss of the first episode, scores tougher than any other enemy faced so far — they could take five rockets, when everything else was gibbed by a single one — and even when demoted to a more common enemy in the rest of the game and the sequel, with more monsters introduced, were among the most powerful foes and easily took the most hits to down. Yet the final level of the second episode started inside a room with four Barons gutted and hung on the walls. Cue the strongest monster in the game, the almighty Cyberdemon, who towers above everything else, takes dozens of rockets to kill, and can kill you in one or two hits with rockets of his own.
• Dragon Age:
  • The Antivan Crows are (allegedly) the greatest assassins in Thedas. Yet, every time they go up against the Warden/Hawke they get soundly defeated, just to prove how tough s/he is. This is somewhat justified in the Warden's case, as even the Crows are somewhat unwilling to go up against the people responsible for stopping Blights, so any assassins that take those assignments are either stupid or suicidal.
  • In the Mark of the Assassin DLC for Dragon Age II, while hunting for a wyvern, you end up coming across the corpse of a dragon that was killed in a fight with a wyvern, marking perhaps the first time in any Western RPG that has ever happened. Granted, it's just a regular dragon and not a high dragon but it's still a pretty impressive feat.
• Lu Bu is generally treated as the strongest man in China, and due to how early you can run into him, you're generally advised to not pursue him whenever possible. In Warriors Orochi 3 however, he exists to be beaten into the ground by Nezha repeatedly.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • Gormlaith Golden-Hilt was a Nord heroine who had a very "hands-on" approach to dealing with dragons. She was famed for killing four of them in a single day, one after the other. To highlight how powerful Alduin is, in the quest where you exploit the time-wound, you watch through a flashback as he kills her easily, even after being weakened by the Dragonrend shout. The other two heroes with her barely fare any better against Alduin and are forced to use an Elder Scroll to cast Alduin outside of time, settling for a temporary victory.
  • The Dragonborn DLC offers a an example on a meta level. Seekers, a Cthulhumanoid form of lesser Daedra in service to Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge, are practically designed as a counter to the "stealth archer" build which is well-known for its dominance in Skyrim. A stealth archer attempting to take out a Seeker will find its physical damage resistance absorb most of the damage of the initial stealth shot, while the Seeker then either quickly moves in for a close range fight or fires off powerful spells which home-in on the target, even if undetected.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 2 has Final Boss Frank Horrigan, via Scripted Event, punching a Deathclaw in half. Deathclaws are perhaps the single most deadly creature in the wasteland.
  • In Fallout 3, Liberty Prime, the nearly unstoppable Humongous Mecha that blazes a trail to Project Purity in the final core game quest, is blown to smithereens by an orbital missile strike at the beginning of the Broken Steel DLC.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • The NCR Rangers are built up throughout the game to be a crew of ultra-badasses that only the best of the best get to join. Right before the Final Boss fight, there's a scripted sequence where two of them charge Legate Lanius, only to be immediately cut to shreds.
    • A Deathclaw plays this role once again in the Lonesome Road expansion. In a scripted fight, it gets killed by a Tunneler, setting the strength of them to scale against the Deathclaw, an enemy you're likely familiar with.
  • Fallout 4:
    • While tracking down Kellogg, you come upon an Assaultron he has torn to pieces, leaving just it's head functional. Assaultrons are one of the toughest foes in the game and their head laser attack can One-Hit KO even high-level player characters deep into the game.
    • Your first combat encounter with a Courser will likely be in the quest "Hunter/Hunted", when you must chase one through Greenetech Genetics as it effortlessly slaughters its way through dozens of Gunners, the Commonwealth's most prominent and well-armed faction of mercenaries.
    • The MK.II version of Liberty Prime does this to a Super Mutant Behemoth, a giant enemy that normally serves as an arduous boss fight for the player character. Liberty Prime disposes of the abomination by simply picking it up, crushing it in his hands and then casually tossing the lifeless body aside like trash.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy VII:
    • SOLDIER is heralded in the backstory as a group of unrelenting hardcases who can mow down countless enemies with ease. In-game, however, at the beginning you knock down 3rd Classes (recruits) like wheat, in the mid-game you're against 2nd Class and by the end you're easily dispatching SOLDIER 1st Class, the elite of the elite of which Cloud, Zack and Sephiroth are supposed to be from. By the time you fight the 2nd class, the fate of the world is in your hands and personally gunning for the strongest SOLDIER that ever lived. This, however, might be justified: Having lost their most decorated warriors and being worn down by both the Wutai War AND the Genesis War in Crisis Core, it's clear that Shinra just promoted warriors in SOLDIER who were loyal to them rather than counting on them to be anywhere on the level of the original roster of SOLDIER 1st Class, which only consisted of four out of the entire group originally, so it's more like SOLDIER originally was worthy of all that hype, but by the time the party gets to fight them, they've been downgraded a lot due to the events of prequel games.
    • Another example would be the Midgar Zolom. When you first encounter it, it's almost impossible to beat, and the game encourages you to evade it instead. When you get to the other side of the swamp where it lives, you find that Sephiroth already killed one and left its remains dangling from a tree.
    • The Midgar Zolom suffers this more than once. After it being nearly impossible to beat in the early game, you lose access to that part of the map for most of the game. At the end of the game, however, you are granted easy access to the entire map, including where the Midgar Zolom is. If you choose to return at this point, considering you’ve probably made about 40-50 level-ups at least, you can now take it out easily in just a few hits. Additionally, it now does pitiful damage to you due to your party’s insanely high defense. In the end, both Cloud AND Sephiroth put the Worf Effect on this creature to show how incredibly overpowered they are.
  • Sephiroth has a real knack for this. In Crisis Core, he engages in a two on one fight against established powerful 1st Class SOLDIERS Angeal and Genesis and overwhelms both of them. Then, while traveling to Nibleheim in the original game, he kills a dragon (which can oneshot the player) in two strokes. After going mad, he worfs both Tifa and Zack, the latter of whom in Crisis Core could beat the planet-busting Bahamut Fury, though Zack at least puts up a decent fight (in the Crisis Core and Last Order: Final Fantasy VII versions). In Advent Children, Sephiroth easily dominates a newly-improved Cloud after he's taken on all his Remnants and held up, only "losing" when Cloud suprises him with the Fusion Swords. In Final Fantasy VII Remake, despite the party becoming Adaptational Badasses and managing to defeat the Embodiment of Fate which keeps Railroading the story, Sephiroth successfully fights the heroes to a stalemate and easily disarms Cloud, telling his archenemy that he still has a long way to go before he can be a Worthy Opponent to him.
  • On the flipside, in the Nibelheim incident, despite all his established feats from prequel Crisis Core, Sephiroth still gets worfed by rookie Cloud, who surprises attacks Sephiroth while he was distracted by his “mother” JENOVA, running him through with the Buster Sword. Even after recovering and impaling Cloud right back, Cloud just lifts Sephiroth up by his own blade (which is still in his own torso) and tosses Sephiroth into the Mako reactor, essentially killing him. What’s more this was before Cloud even got the Bio-Augmentation from Hojo which made him a Super-Soldier.
  • Tifa gets this in Advent Children. The original game, its remake and other Final Fantasy media establish Tifa as epically strong Action Girl who’s able to lift and piledrive giant mecha and the mountain-sized ancient weapons and even fight Sephiroth herself. In Advent Children, however, Loz needs to be established as a legitimate threat so he effortlessly beats Tifa upon activating his Super-Speed.
  • Reno of the Turks gets the Worf Effect in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Reno is established as a literal Lightning Bruiser in this continuity and is even able to Flash Step Cloud at start of their duel, but Reno still gets his butt kicked and almost beheaded by Cloud before the Whispers of Fate step in. Matters don’t improve for Reno later on either, as he challenges the whole party boldly declaring to AVALANCHE "You ain’t got shit on us" right before Cloud, Tifa and Barret clean his clock and force Rude to come in and help Reno out.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has Cid Raines. When Lightning (who ties for second best strength and magic in the whole game) attacks him, he blocks every single one of her hits with his gloved hand, proceeding to grab her gunblade, and use it as leverage to throw her back at the rest of the party. Needless to say, the following battle is a toughie.
  • Final Fantasy XIV gives us Zenos, the Big Bad of the Stormblood expansion. In his first combat appearance within Rhalgr's Reach, he effortlessly stops and slaps around Lyse, shatters Y'Shtola's Deflector Shield (nearly killing her in the process), blows back Tarpin and Alisaie without taking much damage, then proceeds to get bored with the Warrior of Light and knocks them out. It takes one more event like this before the player is "strong" enough to actually inflict damage on Zenos before he got bored.
    • Fordola, one of Zenos' generals, gets to partake in this once she's subjected to a process that grants her Echo-like abilities. She effortlessly dodges Lyse's attacks the proceeds to one-shot Alisaie before she escapes.
  • On a larger scale, the Garlean Empire's conquest of Ala Mhigo served as this. Ala Mhigo was the most militarily powerful of Eorzea's city-states, having a history of military aggression. Many of its citizens sought work as mercenaries, giving it ample and highly capable manpower. Additionally, the city-state itself was a veritable fortress and surrounded by unforgiving terrain for any attacker, whereas other Eorzean city-states had little more than walls.
• Fire Emblem is guilty of using this.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, General Cecilia is established as Roy's teacher and one of the best generals in Etruria, yet she promptly gets taken out in one hit by Zephiel. It gives you a sneak peek at how powerful he is and he even stays on screen for a couple turns afterwords to show off his stats.
  • Zig-Zagged in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. In one scene, Athos uses Forblaze on Nergal, andd while you can see that it does scratch him (Athos is at a magic triangle disadvantage after all), it forces Nergal to retreat. The next time, you can have Athos confront Nergal, and he can use more appropriate tomes and can even possibly solo the guy if need be.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Seth (the Crutch Character of the game) is escaping Renais with Princess Eirika, when they run into Valter. Seth fights but is wounded, forcing him to flee with Eirika.
  • In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, the right hand to the Beast king, Ranulf, takes beatings to show how outclassed he is.
  • Basilio gets hit with this twice in Fire Emblem: Awakening. Despite being one of Ferox's two khans and having a huge army, the Valmese army nearly decimates his midway through the game, and the other characters even directly comment that Valm's army must be pretty strong if Basilio can't beat them.
• Gears of War 2: Skorge's first act in the game is to leap onto the battlefield and immediately saws a tank in half. He then begins to solo both The Big Guy and a Mauve Shirt while the player character(s) can do nothing but watch. Granted, the exact ending of the conflict was never shown and The Big Guy wasn't actually killed, but still. His predecessor, RAAM, proved that he was Serious Business by killing your Lt effortlessly, though the Lt only really showed his badass-ness in the same cutscene he was killed.
  • Marcus then directly references this trope by yelling "This guy makes RAAM look like a pushover!"
• Johnny Klebitz is considered one of the most badass protagonists in the Grand Theft Auto series. During the mission Mr. Philips in Grand Theft Auto V, he gets his head stomped in by Trevor. Of course, it doesn't really help that he and his gang have since fallen on hard times...
• Opalneria Rain from GrimGrimoire is a powerful necromancer and a respected teacher at the school, yet in every single repetition of the "Groundhog Day" Loop she is either killed or rendered unconscious, often by the main character (Three times and counting). You begin to wonder towards the end if she's offended some great cosmic force or something!
• .hack
  • .hack//Infection begins with Orca getting quickly defeated by Skeith, the first of the Eight Phases. Just to put it into perspective, Orca is a legendary player who became famous for Defeating the Undefeatable Hopeless Boss Fight known as "The One Sin" alongside Balmung. The fact that he's unable to get a hit on Skeith and gets curb stomped before getting Data Drained and rendered comatose in the real world illustrates the threat the Phases pose.
  • Early in .hack//G.U. Rebirth, Haseo is established as an utterly badass PKK, seen killing three Player Killers with ease. In his first fight with Azure Kite, he furiously attacks him with everything and doesn't land a single blow before being beaten down in two hits and being reset to level one.
• Halo:
  • Halo 3: As the only competent human still alive besides the player character, Sergeant Johnson falling victim to this trope was inevitable. A Pelican gets shot down? Johnson was on it. Enemies storm the base? Johnson gets pushed back and you have to finish the job for him. Need a third team leader for a crucial operation? The normal human takes the riskiest spot, while the Super-Soldier and the Proud Warrior Race Guy get targets that are not directly connected to the nearby enemy stronghold. It gets to the point where our Badass Normal becomes a Distressed Dude of sorts — and a rescue attempt is mounted by the person whom you'd expect to fill the role.
    • Johnson seems aware of his status — when overwhelmed, he admits "there were too many, even for me"
    • Subverted in his final moments. 343 Guilty Spark easily one-shots him, and does the same to both the Arbiter and Chief, putting all but the Chief out of the fight. It follows up with what could only nominally be called a boss fight.
  • A Covenant cruiser gets worfed by the UNSC Infinity (the largest and most powerful UNSC warship ever built) at the beginning of Spartan Ops, when the Infinity jumps out of slipspace and rams into a Covenant cruiser, not even slowing down. Before, a Covenant cruiser by itself was more than a match for even several UNSC warships, and the Infinity literally smashed through it like it was nothing.
  • The Infinity would itself be worfed in the promo for Halo 4, which shows the UNSC Infinity going down from a single blast of the new enemy.
  • Spartan-II Red Team cut through an army of Sangheili honor guards in Halo Wars, but come Halo Wars 2 they are barely able to land any hits on Atriox and one of the Spartans ends up seriously injured, with Red Team forced to retreat.
  • Even the Master Chief himself isn't immune to this - at the start of Halo Infinite, he engages Atriox in a one-on-one duel and loses. However, unlike the entirety of Red Team, the Chief lands a few punches on Atriox and comes incredibly close to killing him with a headshot, before he's ultimately defeated and thrown into space. In addition, the aforementioned UNSC Infinity gets a taste of its own medicine in the very same cutscene, when it's rammed and very heavily damaged by a Banished warship.
• Honkai Impact 3rd: At the end of Chapter 19 there is trailer to the next chapter, which starts with Durandal, a powerful S-rank Valkyrie getting beaten by a new Herrscher.
• Iji manages to do this on a species-wide scale. Granted, we only see the last major battle, but the backstory states that these wars have been going on for decades, so it still counts. Specifically, at the beginning of the game, the Tasen seem like a rather frightening, imposing warrior race, but once their ancient rivals appear on the scene they're absolute jokes.
• In Jurassic Park: The Game, even the Velociraptors flee from the territory of the new, super-scary dinos for this game, the Troodon. Fully justified, as the Troodon are highly toxic and a single bite is lethal without treatment.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising:
  • Thanatos, the boss of Chapter 7, is brought Back from the Dead in Chapter 14 only to be curb-stomped by THAT chapter's boss, Phosphora.
  • The Three Sacred Treasures, very powerful weapons of light, were used in the first game and Uprising to defeat Medusa. When Pit uses them to battle Hades, Hades destroys them by blowing on Pit real hard.
• Kingdom Hearts II uses this trope to establish the Nobodies as credible opponents. Over the course of the game, they constantly one-up the Heartless and even at one point best Maleficent.
• Kirby Star Allies: Galacta Knight gets one heck of a worfing at the hands of the one of the characters you would least expect: right as he appears, his epic music theme starts playing... and the innocuous butterfly seen in every recent Kirby game intro flutters down and lands on his lance. The butterfly casts judgment on Galacta Knight while absorbing his own power and becomes Morpho Knight, usurping his role as the Guest Star mode's Final Boss! The same character later appears in Kirby and the Forgotten Land to worf Fecto Forgo, whose power gets absorbed by the butterfly in much the same manner for another battle against Morpho Knight.
• In Legacy of Dorn: Herald of Oblivion, your character Brother Nabor starts off with Terminator armor plus a Storm Bolter and Power Fist. While both are solid weapons, the Power Fist is significantly weaker than in almost any other game as the normally weak Chainsword you may find on the Space Hulk is just as powerful in damage and chance to damage as your Power Fist. The only thing weaker than your Power Fist is your combat knife.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: In the previous games, the four Guardians are established as aging but still powerful masters of their elements, and Ignitus in particular has a number of scenes where he's show using his mastery of fire to swiftly clear whole rooms of enemies that the player would struggle against. During the Siege of Warfang, however, their role is limited to flying in to attack the golem and being effortlessly swatted out of the air one after the other, in order to impress just how powerful and dangerous the monster is.
• Like a Dragon:
  • Daigo Dojima, the Sixth Chairman of Tojo Clan since Yakuza 2, who is acknowledged by Kiryu Kazuma himself to be formidable, repeatedly becomes a Badass in Distress because he is caught off-guard and blindsided by a gun in a way that seems to be rather underwhelming his abilities. Not only that, whenever he is a boss fight, he is quite tough, but storywise he is regularly used to demonstrate just how badass the opposing hero is. While Daigo can be forgiven for losing to the World's Strongest Man Kiryu, who is of course heads and shoulders above almost everyone else, he even straight out admits he is no match for him and Kiryu clearly didn't seem to have as much trouble as he did with Majima and Saejima. The other enemy who beat him is Ryuji Goda, who proves to be a tough opponent for Kiryu. Even Tatsuo Shinada, a civilian, is also able to push him back and even though Daigo was being Willfully Weak at the time, it still demonstrates Shinada is still an Action Survivor worthy of being a playable character in Yakuza 5.
  • To showcase exactly why Saejima is a legendary Yakuza, he is able to fight Kiryu to a stalemate and defeat Majima twice. Notably, he is the only person who is able to completely stalemate Kiryu, while other characters are shown on the losing end even if they didn't entirely lose, displaying that he truly has comparable physical strength and might to him. In fact, the one confirmed time Kiryu beats him is in the Victory Road Tournament Finals.
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon really demonstrates just how overwhelmingly strong Kiryu, Majima, and Saejima are compared to the other heroes. All three are fought as the only Heads I Win, Tails You Lose bosses and that's with them being Willfully Weak! While Majima and Saejima didn't quite beat Ichiban and his friends, they are clearly holding back and yet Ichiban and the others are still clearly not even coming close to beating them. At least Majima is somewhat bloodied, while Saejima isn't even injured at all. Against Kiryu, all that they were able to do is slightly push him back and afterwards Kiryu has had enough and demonstrates just how far stronger he is than Ichiban by casually unleashing a Megaton Punch that shatters Ichiban's imagination.
  • In Judgment, Kuroiwa demonstrates just how he is formidable enough to be a match for Yagami by utterly kicking the ass of Kaito and Higashi with just a blackjack.
• Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects: Captain America, The Punisher, and The Hulk are all implied to have been defeated/killed by the current Alien Invaders, with the first two not being shown (although the PSP version has Cap as a playable character), and the Hulk being knocked into a building, buried under the rubble, and transforming back into Bruce.
• Mass Effect
  • Mass Effect: The asari dreadnought Destiny Ascension is said to be able to "rip through the kinetic barriers of any ship in the fleet." It's portrayed as a perfect example of the Council's power. And it either nearly gets blown up, or does, during Sovereign/Saren's attack on the Citadel.
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • This happens to the Normandy: what better way to establish the Collectors as a credible threat than have them blow your trusty ship in half?
    • Whoever you take to fight the Shadow Broker gets this — he throws a desk into them with enough force to knock them out for the rest of the fight.
  • Mass Effect 3:
    • When Kai-Leng is around, he worfs somebody in a very specific way. When you finally fight him in gameplay, Kai-Leng is a decent but not particularly challenging boss, but during scripted sequences he defeats Shepard repeatedly by essentially cheating: unable to put Shepard down himself, Kai-Leng will call in flunkies, gunships and more. He's effective because he recognizes his ineffectiveness. He also kills either STG major Kirrahe, Thane or the Salarian councilor despite Shepard being right in front of him. And takes the crucial Crucible data right under Shepard's team's nose with a gunship. Thankfully it makes finally giving him a proper fight that much more satisfying Breaking his sword and impaling the guy as a finisher just being the perfect way to end the douchebag.
    • The turians get this from the Reapers; they're at best barely holding, most of their homeworld is on fire and most of their fleets are wreckage, although the fact that they even are holding for basically the entire story is better than can be said for just about any other species in the galaxy.
    • The Batarian Hegemony and Systems Alliance both get this in the Reaper invasion. While the turians and asari were specifically noted to have put up a fight despite losing, the humans and batarians (despite being modern interstellar powers each with tens of billions of people and thousands of warships) each lose the majority of their territories and navies in less than a day. In particular, the Reapers cut through the fleets defending Earth (after their screening force routed the main fleet clusters at Arcturus Station) and occupy Earth within literal minutes. The batarians put up even less of a fight.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man 8: Possible inversion/subversion during the fight with Duo halfway into the game—Duo being a space robot that managed to hit an enemy hard enough to disrupt the atmosphere AND RING SYSTEM of what is clearly a gas giant planet (Actually, Duo was responsible for 50% of that force, as the enemy robot hit Duo with the same amount of strength, which managed to take them both out)—Mega Man himself noting that Duo was basically pulling his punches. More or less played straight during the final battle with Wily Machine No. VIII as Duo stunned/injured himself taking out the Machine's giant Evil Energy laser cannon. Remember, this is the same Duo that, even with Dr. Light's repairs (possibly with inferior but passable components due to his status as an alien made robot), managed to utterly own a giant Evil Energy-powered Wily-bot that was literally crushing (and shocking) Mega Man to death.
  • Mega Man & Bass: The first thing King is shown doing is chopping Proto Man in half.
  • Mega Man X: Magma Dragoon, regarded as one of the toughest bosses in Mega Man X4, is demoted in Mega Man X5 to the boss of the game's tutorial, where X and Zero's newfound ability to duck trivializes a lot of his attacks.
• Metal Gear: The player characters seem to fit that role in the later games.
  • Metal Gear RAY also falls into this role. Originally designed to destroy the numerous Metal Gear REX knockoffs that appeared between the first and second Metal Gear Solid games, Raiden destroys anywhere between three to twenty of them on foot just before the ending of MGS2. Then in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Snake defeats the original RAY using the heavily damaged Metal Gear REX, which on top of being the design RAY was designed to fight, had one of its main weapons removed (which not only reduced its firepower but also severely screwed up its balance) and had been exposed to the elements for almost a decade. By Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, an unmanned RAY is the Warm-Up Boss before Raiden receives any upgrades.
• Metroid
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption subverts this. The Berserker Lord can't be hurt by your weapon's standard fire and has to be worn down. You then see Ghor defeat a Berserker with two hits, making it seem like this trope but it was really a weaker lookalike you can beat even faster than he did.
  • Played straight in Super Metroid twice. The Metroid hatchling can not only take out enemies Samus can barely scratch in seconds, but it is completely invincible to her bombs, power bombs, ice beam and everything else she can use normally. This escalates when Mother Brain then kills the hatchling without even using her strongest weapon... which was luckily transferred to Samus by the hatchling before it died.
  • Metroid: Other M features Ridley appearing again and scaring the shit out of Samus, making him seem like a credible threat. Later in the game, Ridley is owned by a creature you don't see until you fight it as the final boss — a Metroid Queen. You know it's not messing around because it killed Ridley.
  • Metroid Dread:
    • Samus, fresh off Metroid Fusion (where she’s been beefed up with Metroid DNA), rocks up on planet ZDR and gets worfed hard by Raven Beak, the new Big Bad who No Sells her Arm Cannon and effortlessly overpowers her with a Neck Lift. Justified since Raven Beak is a Chozo, the alien warrior race responsible for turning Samus into the badass she is in the first place.
    • The EMMI robots are horrifically powerful killer robots that are immune to conventional weaponry and turn Samus into a shish-kebab if they catch her. The seventh and final one only exists to get wrecked by Samus' new Metroid energy absorption powers.
• Monster Hunter likes to introduce any number of huge monsters that will most likely give the player trouble...and then introduce stronger monsters by having them destroy the monsters you previously fought:
  • Monster Hunter 3 (Tri):
    • The game introduces the Jaggi and Jaggia, and their King Mook counterpart, the Great Jaggi. One High Rank quest in 3 Ultimate features a Great Jaggi being savagely torn apart by a Deviljho.
    • The Agnaktor is a massive leviathan that wanders around in a volcano, performing vicious attacks such as drilling through the earth and firing a Wave-Motion Gun of fire to get at you. In 3 Ultimate, we're introduced to the Brachydios, who is shown in a cutscene using its slime punches to beat the Agnaktor to a pulp.
  • Monster Hunter 4:
    • The intro begins with a Tigrex hunt, only for the Gore Magala to drop in and crush its neck.
    • 4 Ultimate introduces the Seregios, a highly territorial Flying Wyvern who frequently interrupts High Rank Caravan quests. In a cutscene right before the final mainline Caravan quest becomes available, a whole flock of them are seen fleeing from a territory under attack, and one is shown being beaten to death. The predator behind all of this? A single Apex Seregios.
  • Monster Hunter Generations introduces Nakarkos, a massive Eldritch Abomination of a dragon that feasts upon and takes the powers of the carcasses of monsters that are already big and scary enough on their own, including Brachydios and even Glavenus, the latter of whom was introduced within the same game.
  • Monster Hunter: World:
    • The game introduces "Turf Wars" where two giant monsters who venture into the same area will turn and fight each other, inflicting heavy damage. For example, in the Ancient Forest, Anjanath will always kick the crap out of Great Jagras and Tobi-Kadachi will put up an admirable effort but be too weak to push it back — in an Inversion of this trope, Rathalos will ruin Anjanath's day. Likewise, in the Wildspire Wastes, both Barroth and Rathian will lose horribly to Diablos — so much for Herbivores Are Friendly. Odogaron will always destroy every other monster it faces in the Coral Highlands, but just to let you know how dangerous it is, Vaal Hazak will dispose of Odogaron easily. And to the surprise of absolutely nobody familiar with it, Deviljho turns every other monster it fights into a joke — you know how tough Diablos is? Deviljho grabs it mid-charge and suplexes it.
    • One of the DLC updates involves Alatreon, a Black Dragon with full control over all five elements suddenly appearing in the New World for unexplained reasons where the hunter must put it down before it can cause catastrophic damage and although the hunter ultimately triumphed, it managed to put up an incredibly difficult fight. Then moments later, it is revealed that the reason Alatreon appeared is because it's in fact fleeing from Fatalis; and despite being a fellow Black Dragon, it actually loses, clearly demonstrating Fatalis as the top of the food chain above all other monsters including Alatreon itself. To demonstrate this even further, another Alatreon appeared and despite being just as strong as the previous one, is swiftly defeated by the more experienced hunter but then when it fought Fatalis, it is clearly stronger where even the hunter struggled really hard against it, even being forced to use the Dragonator in order to even stand a chance.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise: There is a dedicated pecking order to the many monsters present, but chief among the regular monsters is Magnamalo. It is introduced to the player literally carrying a severely wounded Arzuros in its mouth, intimidates the player hunter and two allies into a hasty retreat in that same moment, and its pre-fight intro has it cornering and killing a Tobi-Kadachi (not that it was easy, mind you). Even in Turf Wars it is not to be underestimated; it can ravage earthbound foes with its hellfire, and use the explosions from said hellfire to chase after flying monsters and rocket them into the ground. Even Bazelgeuse, another nasty monster from World who loves to crash hunters' parties, is not safe from the Wyvern of Malice. The only monster which can easily best Magnamalo is Narwa the Allmother, which is the functional fusion of the two Elder Dragons that cause the very Rampages Magnamalo feeds upon, each of which can reshape the landscape and both together wielding apocalyptic power. Kushala Daora and Teostra fare no better against the Allmother, either.
• Mortal Kombat
  • Mortal Kombat 9 does this a lot:
    • In Smoke's chapter of Story Mode, he faces off against Kitana and Sektor and triumphs without much difficulty. When they meet again (Kitana and Nightwolf's chapters, respectively), Kitana beats him alongside Cage, and Sektor treats Smoke like a ragdoll, with Smoke being unable to successfully land a blow before Sektor gets him into a chokehold and Nightwolf has to intervene.
    • If the Story Mode is any indication, Sub-Zero punked Kratos (PS3 version only) off-screen and put him on ice.
    • Sindel, having been empowered by Shang Tsung's soul/essence, attacks the heroes after the automated Lin Kuei warriors fail to kill them. It quickly escalates into a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown like no other. Nightwolf, Kitana, Sonya, and Cage are the only immediate survivors; one of them dies of their wounds and another has to pull a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Mortal Kombat X also does this:
    • The series mascot ninjas Scorpion and Sub-Zero get the Worf Effect at the hands of Johnny Cage (who before then had been largely regarded as a joke), in the opening mission Johnny fights both of them simultaneously and kicks their asses easily. If that wasn't enough, Johnny goes on to beat up Physical God Shinnok as well, weakening him enough that Raiden could seal him away again. Justified though as Johnny's MK9 arcade ladder ending revealed he is descended from a Mediterranean cult that bred warriors for the Gods and that explanation is worked into the sequel allowing Johnny to Take a Level in Badass.
    • The series regulars Baraka and Mileena fall prey to newcomer the insect woman D'Vorah who brutally kills both of them, although their deaths would later be rectified in MK11.
  • Mortal Kombat 11 does this to quite a few characters, but Kotal Kahn, Shao Kahn and Scorpion are the hardest hit.
    • Kotal is introduced in MKX as an incredibly powerful Proud Warrior Race Guy who can harness The Power of the Sun, in the tie-in comic Kotal even manages to rip all four of Goro's arms off, proving he is legitimate replacment for Shao Khan as Emperor. MK11 is not kind to him however as after his chapter in the storymode (where he managed to defeat Shao Khan and several others in the Koliseum) Kotal gets defeated by his own lover Jade for being a Conflict Ball and is captured and made to fight Shao Khan again who breaks his back (ironically a injury that happened to Trope Namer Worf in TNG). Aftermath takes this even further as poor Kotal spends most of the DLC in a Healing Vat and when he comes out of it is immediately defeated by Sheeva and then defeated again by Shao Khan and Sindel before getting executed by decapitation.
    • Shao Kahn was a borderline Invincible Villain in the previous games and original timeline, but when Back from the Dead in MK11 he is: wounded and beaten up Kotal and Liu Kang before being defeated outright by the former and has to be saved by D'Vorah. Then later on after being overshadowed by new villain Kronika, Shao Kahn fights his formerly brainwashed and kidnaped daughter Kitana and she manages to blind him with her fans and defeat him becoming Empress of Outworld. Aftermath isn't any better as despite getting his eyes healed, he needs his wife Sindel's help for most of the DLC and is eventually defeated by his former minion Shang Tsung who took Kronika's Crown to power himself up and overwhelms Shao Kahn and Sindel, taking their souls.
    • Scorpion aka was Hanzo Hasashi got turned back into a human in MKX but was no less powerful as proven in the tie-in comic where he fights Raiden, Sub-Zero and Havik and wins and in the main game was able to subdue Johnny, Sonya and Kenshi and kill Quan-Chi himself. In MK11 he gets rather unceremoniously poisoned by D'Vorah in the middle of a cutscene and dies in younger undead's self arms.
  • In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Liu Kang, the protagonist from the first three games, is killed by the titular Deadly Alliance of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi to show that they are Not Messing Around anymore.
• In the Need for Speed: Rivals trailer that revealed the undercover cop, two cops in SRT Chargers are shown rolling a suspect in an Aston Martin with ease at the beginning of the video. Later on, when the race involving the undercover cop is underway, the cops in the Charger are sent as backup to apprehend a high-value target in a Lamborghini Veneno. When they reach the suspect, they're immediately tossed by it.
• Outlast: Chris Walker is a terrifying homicidal lunatic with enough strength to effortlessly Neck Lift the player character. So when the Walrider turns up and repeatedly slams the screaming Walker into walls and eventually grinds him through a vent, that gives you a really good idea of what you're dealing with.
• In Pokémon Black and White, N manages to defeat the regional champion in an offscreen battle to show how powerful he and his dragon really are.
  • Justified as a deconstruction of what happens when you call the Retired Badass out of retirement; it is clearly stated that not only was N very powerful, but Alder and his team were also badly out of practice, which also contributed to his loss. In the post-game, Alder shapes up and becomes a Superboss.
  • It's also used to prove that the legendary dragons can only be defeated by each other, which makes the player character beating Fusion Kyurem without either one in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 an instance of this trope.
    • Though it's perfectly possible to beat Reshiram or Zekrom without using the counterpart. N just wants the theatrics.
• You will know how dangerous Mr. Sandman is in Punch-Out!! Wii as soon as you unlock the final fight. That is, by watching the 8-seconds clip that shows him effortlessly knocking out every other opponent you beat before him. When he enters the ring, even Doc Louis is afraid of him.
• Occurs throughout the Ratchet & Clank series. At certain points in nearly every game, your fully-upgraded weapons will do very little against enemies who will fire two shots and send you to critical health, telling you that you need to buy new weapons and armour.
• RefleX features the Virgo, a high-speed fighter piloted by Spica Astrea, a top-ranking pilot in the Global Unified Army. Except she's only the Area 1 boss, though she does flee intact after sustaining enough damage from the Phoenix. To add insult to injury, her ship is destroyed for good by ZODIAC Virgo at the beginning of Area 7, forcing her to retreat.
• Resident Evil:
  • The main purpose of the titular Nemesis from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. The surviving badass S.T.A.R.S members in Raccoon City, whom in their previous appearance killed numerous creatures and a Tyrant in RE1, encounter The Dreaded new monster Nemesis, who completely wrecks them killing Brad Vickers and runs Jill Valentine ragged. The RE3make takes this even further as, despite Jill having Super-Reflexes and heaps of powerful weapons in gameplay, Nemesis still clobbers her in the cutscenes.
    • Nemesis gets the reverse treatment later in the original, with Jill pushing him off a bridge like a sack of potatoes and dumping acid all over him, rendering him a pathetic crawling hunk of flesh, before finishing him off with the Rail Gun. Carlos in the remake also gets the better of Nemesis three times thanks to a Anti-Tank Rocket, mines and a crane.
  • In one of the many odd plot choices made in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, the series' biggest major antagonist, Albert Wesker, shows up after his supposed death in the first game, only now with superhuman physical abilities. The first thing he does is getting his ass handed to him by that game's main villain, Alexia Ashford, in a show-off of their superpowers, and then run away so Chris Redfield can fight her instead. What follows is usually considered to be a laughably easy boss fight, as Alexia is extremely slow and easy to hit, with attacks that while damaging are easy to avoid, and she takes exactly three shots of the magnum to put down. If only the superhuman Wesker had been carrying a pistol!
    • The Updated Re-release preserves Wesker's threat and alters this scene so that he is initially caught off guard by Alexia's assault, but quickly recovers to effortlessly dodge her attacks and get in a sweet slow-motion punch before leaving to let Chris deal with her. In the extended ending, Wesker blithely admits that Alexia's work didn't amount to much compared to what he could already do.
  • The Resident Evil 2 (Remake) has a memorable example of this in Claire’s scenario. The T-00 Tyrant a.k.a. Mr X has been effectively established as a major threat to Leon and Claire, laughing through their More Dakka as an invincible enemy who can Megaton Punch the heroes and easily crush their heads like egg shells, to the point where it takes a 11th-Hour Superpower in the form of the Anti-Tank Rocket for Leon to bring him down. Yet during Claire’s scenario, Mr X gets worfed hard at the claws of the mutant William Birkin who rips Mr X apart like he’s Made of Plasticine. Particularly odd considering Birkin is comparatively more easily dealt with by Leon and Claire than Mr X is.
    • Femme Fatale Spy Ada Wong gets in Leon’s scenario in RE2make. She quickly establishes herself as more competent than the rookie cop saving him from a zombie dog, and even slowing down Mr X by ramming him into a wall truck and then blowing the truck up with explosives when Mr X tries freeing himself. Later on, however, Ada gets utterly worfed by Mad Scientist Annette, who knocks her into a garbage pit and in the finale even shoots Ada in the shoulder, making her fall into a Bottomless Pit.
  • Early on RE4, Leon Kennedy (who’s become a badass super agent since RE2 able to send the Ganado flying with his kicks) encounters Father Bitores Mendez "the big cheese". Leon goes for a back kick, but Mendez just grabs his foot and tosses him into the air, sending Leon flying into a wardrobe and smashing it to pieces, and knocking him and Luis out cold. Leon gets the last laugh in the boss fight, though.
  • In RE5, Chris has taken a level in badass, gaining a epic Heroic Build and enough Charles Atlas Super Power to punch monsters and boulders out of his way, but he still gets worfed in a hand to hand combat by Wesker, who does a Neck Lift to Chris forcing Sheva to save him. If that wasn’t enough, a Brainwashed and Crazy Jill comes in to help Wesker worf Chris and Sheva as well, and only stops when Chris snaps Jill out of the mind control.
• RuneScape: Lucien spends most of his questline building up to be an Invincible Villain on the cusp of attaining godhood. He overuses the Stone of Jas, however, which attracts the unwanted attention of the Dragonkin. They only need a minute to kill Lucien, after which the rest of the Mahjarrat, happy as they are to see Lucien dead, quickly leave the scene before things can escalate further.
• In Saints Row: The Third, the Syndicate kill Johnny Gat, establishing themselves as a threat. Admittedly he made them work for it.
  • Subverted and Retconned in Saints Row IV. "The Gat came back." ...or more like, wasn't even killed in the first place.
  • In "How the Saints Save Christmas", Cyborg!Shaundi shows herself to be a badass by manhandling the Boss.
• In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, Krishna introduces himself and the Divine Powers by having Odin electrocute a defiant Flynn — the champion of Tokyo who is likely to be a level 80-90 boss-killing machine at the equivalent story point of Shin Megami Tensei IV — until the latter collapses to the ground and is forced into captivity.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Even as the archrival, Eggman is like this in the newer games. If he's set up to be the Big Bad, just imagine how tough that guy who destroyed his Death Egg in one shot is going to be!
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles shows a brief example of this at the beginning of the game, as Knuckles one-shots the 7 Chaos Emeralds out of the supposedly invincible Super Sonic.
    • Sonic Adventure actually sets this up in advance. When Eggman first shows off the Egg Carrier, he specifically notes that it "pales in comparison to the power of Chaos". The first time Sonic and Tails try to stop it, their plane is shot down, and it takes a concerted effort from almost the entire playable cast to finally take the thing down. During the Secret Final Campaign, after Chaos betrays Eggman and obtains its Perfect form, the doctor reveals his contingency plan: a second Egg Carrier. And just to demonstrate that Eggman wasn't lying about its power level, Perfect Chaos swats it from the sky in about five seconds.
  • Sonic himself suffered from this in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). All of his encounters with Silver end with him being dispatched rather easily^note although he wins the first battle thanks to a cheap shot, if you're playing as Sonic.
  • The final level of Sonic Mania actually averts this. Heavy King turns on Eggman at the end of the game, but instead of usurping Eggman's position as Final Boss like what usually happens, the two are able to fight on even ground, and the Final Boss is a Mêlée à Trois between the two of them and Super Sonic.
  • The first thing we see from Sonic Forces's new villain Infinite is them kicking Sonic around like a ragdoll without getting hit once. That's right, this guy is faster than the Fastest Thing Alive!
  • In Sonic Frontiers, Sonic's first encounter with a Titan ends with it effortlessly catching him and tossing him into a mountain, all without a single scratch of damage. This makes him realize he needs his Super Mode if he wants to defeat them, and for the other Titan encounters after he just runs for his life instead.
• Star Trek Online's two-year anniversary included the launch of the brand-new Odyssey-class flagship cruisers, including the Enterprise-F, with a great deal of publicity, fanfare and celebration. Eight months later and the Odyssey-class USS Houston shows up in the Special Task Force mission "Hive Onslaught", for the sole purpose of getting one-shotted by the weapons of the Borg Unimatrix ships. To make this example truly complete, the Houston is under the command of Worf's grandson, Admiral D'Vak.
  • Shoot ahead about a year later with Season 8 and the introduction of the Voth, who gleefully love to employ The Worf Barrage on your characters by No Selling your characters strongest attacks. Four months later, with Season 8.5 and the mission "A Step Between Stars", we watch as a Voth Dreadnought, a large and powerful ship that takes a five man team to tear through is one-shotted by the Undine, who undo four years of Badass Decay in one shot.
  • In the story arc Delta Rising, the Borg are made a textbook example when your captain discovers a Borg fleet that has been utterly obliterated. There's even dialogue from shocked characters asking "What could do this to the BORG?!", just in case the player missed the implications. This serves as foreshadowing for the arc's Big Bad the Vaadwuar.
    • Later, The Vaadwuar themselves are Worfed by the revelation that they are merely minions of an even bigger Big Bad the Iconians. In fact, virtually ALL prior arc antagonists are revealed to either be minions of this ultimate enemy or manipulated into fighting against the protagonist forces in an epic Chessmaster play, thus applying the Worf Effect to the entire plot of the game to that point.
• Revan and The Jedi Exile suffered badly from this in Star Wars: The Old Republic in order to make Emperor Vitiate seem more threatening, and the Hero of Tython look more impressive for beating him over and over. Much of Revan's background is retconned so that he was just brainwashed by the Sith Emperor rather than being a Well-Intentioned Extremist, and The Exile is unceremoniously killed off by The Dragon in a prequel novel while Revan is captured after the Emperor defeats the two of them. And to make matters worse, Revan even gets an expansion based around him which in the end was just a plot device to masturbate the Emperor more.
• Street Fighter
  • This is what happens to M. Bison if you win against every prior opponent without losing a single match; Akuma emerges and uses the Shun Goku Satsu on Bison, who up until this point was the unstoppable head of Shadaloo and an SNK Boss.
  • Like Mario, while Ryu is the main character Street Fighter and certainly one of the stronger fighters in the series, he seems to have horrible luck outside of Street Fighter. The first trailer of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 begins with him floored after a battle with Wolverine (though he does eventually return the favor with a Shoryuken to Wolverine's jaw) and in the fourth trailer, ends up floored again, this time by Doctor Doom, Magneto, Super Skrull, and Dormammu. The first Street Fighter X Tekken trailer once again begins with Ryu floored, this time with Kazuya crushing Ryu's face with his foot, and he spends much of the trailer outmatched by him. Finally, while Ryu (after succumbing to the Satsui no Hadou) is able to keep up with Asura in Asura's Wrath, he's immediately kicked back into his own universe when Akuma intervenes.
  • Chun-Li in the cinematic mode of Street Fighter V got hit by this trope pretty hard. She gets defeated by M. Bison, gets defeated by Rashid (who to be fair had just fought M. Bison earlier), and then the only time players get to control her, she's fighting F.A.N.G., who already was weakened by a fall from a great height and the beating he got from Rashid.
    • Ibuki also in the same game but to a lesser degree. In her debut she was able to defeat the Big Bad of the series Gill and he is shown to be rather messed up after their battle. In V every enemy she "defeats" shows very little to no battle damage and has to be saved from Balrog punching her in the face when she defeats him.
• Subnautica introduces you to the Reaper Leviathan, a gigantic eel-shark monster with prehensile arms on its face that it will use to rip your submarines apart, grab you, and eat you. You can't fight it, only hope to escape... And then you reach the Lava Zone biomes, which are littered with Reaper skeletons, picked clean. This is how you discover the Sea Dragon Leviathan.
• Super Mario Bros..:
  • If Mario fights in the opening of a game, he's getting a Worfing. A particular example is at the start of Super Mario Galaxy, when he doesn't even get in striking range of Bowser before getting blasted by Kamek. This despite Magikoopas being fairly minor enemies in their previous appearances (though it was Kamek, the Magikoopa leader, so it's not quite as egregious).
  • Bowser himself is not immune to the Worf effect, but his Worfings are nearly exclusive to the RPG titles (such as Bowser's Inside Story).
  • Mario Party 3 provides not one but two non-RPG examples, with both Daisy and Waluigi (newly introduced to the series) giving Bowser a Worfing when they make their appearances in Story Mode. Of the two, Daisy's is by far the more humiliating; whereas Waluigi beats Bowser in an actual scuffle, Daisy merely reacts to turning around and finding Bowser standing right behind her by immediately punching him, out of surprise... which somehow is enough to launch him into the background, Team Rocket style. When asked why she hit Bowser, Daisy casually responds, "He was in my way!"
  • History Repeats in Super Mario Odyssey, where in the intro Mario fights Bowser (now decked out in wedding gear) once more, only to get floored by a hat toss. Oh, and his hat gets stomped on and torn to shreds just to rub salt into the wound.
• Kyosuke and his Alt Eisen get subjected to this throughout the middle of Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2 with each new villain nearly destroying the Alt, ending with Axel nearly killing him before Alt Eisen's Mid-Season Upgrade to the Alt Eisen Reise saves them from further Worfing.
  • Enforced Trope. Kyousuke was well aware that the Alt had its limits. One of the first things he does in the game is tactfully pointing out to his superior that his team's machines need some serious tune-ups. Later on after getting Worfed a couple times he puts in a request for a major overhaul to his mech in order to avoid this trope. Unfortunately, he doesn't get the green light until after the Alt is ripped apart by Axel.
  • The final episode of the Masou Kishin saga, Coffin of the End, uses this trope to deliver a Wham Episode of epic proportions. Previous installments established that when an Elemental Lord activates Possession, their already-impressive power levels skyrocket. A new enemy force comes along...and completely trashes all of the Lords even with their Possession abilities activated (including Shu Shirakawa's beyond-godlike Neo Granzon), scattering all but Tytti Noorbuck and forcing her to use an ordinary mecha.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Mario and Link get this in trailers revealing new characters across the series. A price to pay, being two of Nintendo's biggest mascots.
  • In the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate trailers, this is especially prominent in the cinematics for specific characters. Examples include Ridley impaling Mega Man with his tail and crushing Mario’s head, Little Mac being launched into the screen by Ken Masters just for HIM to be knocked into the Boxing Ring's giant television screen by Incineroar, and in a later trailer King K. Rool being hit by Banjo's Final Smash, and dying a Disney Villain Death a la a cliff-fall, having been the previous fan favorite to be included in the game.
  • In Brawl, the first fight is a quick slobberknocker between Mario and Kirby. Then, the two of them hold off incoming waves of Primids and such. Then Mario's promptly shot by a cannonball. Just... blam, the most iconic video game character of all time, blasted off like Team Rocket to show that whoever the antagonist of the story is, they're serious (and the kicker is that he was blasted away by Petey Piranha of all people). This becomes the standard in any subsequent appearances Mario makes in any given cutscene... while Kirby and co. proceed to steal the spotlight whenever possible.^note Though it needs to be pointed out that this appears to be to make up for the lack of attention Sakurai gave to his own franchise in the previous games, as both Dedede and Meta Knight were intended to be included right from the start, but were always the first things to be cut for either development time or game space. Not to mention Kirby being Nerfed in Melee.
  • Nearly every single character in Brawl is Worfed by Tabuu, who in his first appearance reveals that he's been puppeteering Master Hand the entire time. He then effortlessly defeats Ganondorf, and uses his Off-Waves to turn the entire party into trophies before they can even get close to him.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate one-ups Brawl's story mode even further by introducing Big Bad Galeem with an entire army of controlled Master Hands, before annihilating every single pre-DLC character in the game except Kirby and destroying the universe.
  • Ironically, Galeem himself ended up on the receiving end of this trope for the December 10, 2020 fighter reveal. He's introduced similarly as in the World of Light opening, visibly defeating all of the heroes and ready to unleash his ultimate attack, but before he can do so he's easily sliced in half by the next Guest Fighter, Sephiroth.
• Sword of Paladin: Despite mastering the power of Arthur's Royal Gem, Alex is beaten by his brother, Augustus, who has the power of five Royal Gems. Nade notes that at this point, Alex would have been even stronger than when he previously transformed into an out-of-control dragon and therefore would have been stronger than Nade at his peak, yet still lost so easily.
• The intro cinematic to Sword of the Stars II: Lords of Winter includes a scene where a Sword of the Stars class dreadnought from the first game is simply bisected by a Suul'ka's tentacle.
• Tales of Symphonia uses this when Yggdrasil appears and promptly wipes the floor with you. It's impossible to win the first fight, but when he challenges you again, it is possible to beat him.
• In Tekken, ever since returning Back from the Dead, Kazuya Mishima has been suffering this a lot. He's beaten down by Heihachi, and then Jin consecutively. And if the newer bio of Tekken 6 is to be trusted again, someone beats him in the middle of the tournament (presumably Jin... again), opting him to leave the tournament to deal with the G Corporation. Then one of the leaked screenshots for Tekken 6's new Scenario Campaign had him being kicked in the ass by Heihachi. Was coming Back from the Dead really worth it? Subverted in Tekken 7, where Kazuya not only manages to match Akuma twice, but in the climax finally kills his father Heihachi in a Duel to the Death, although granted, the old man put up one helluva fight.
• Inverted in Undertale, where this happens in the Genocide Route, except it's actually you this trope applies to. Once the Genocide Route gets locked in, any boss that would have taken a long time in the other routes now literally dies in one hit. Until Undyne and Sans kick your ass, that is.
• Vanquish also plays strict homage to this trope with Colonel Robert Burns, a gruff old cyborg squad leader who so happens to survive almost everything that the robot legion throws at him WITHOUT A HELMET.
• The first Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, of all things, had this. In stage 5, the Devil Z (a legendary supercar which most of the source manga revolves around) shows up partway through. Not only is it way, way more powerful than your car at this point, it runs at a constant speed (the only non-traffic vehicle in the game that does this), meaning that you don't have the slightest chance of catching it. However, when you face it for real on stage 20, where it's affected by the same rubberband AI and power decrease in the final stretch as all your other opponents, and your car is near or at full tune, it's a complete pushover. Seriously, you almost have to crash on purpose to lose to it. And it's just as easy the second time you play stage 20, which is the only other time you race it.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Various NPC battles with the Lich King seem to be for the sole purpose of showing off how strong he is in comparison, with the fight in the Halls of Reflection being just the latest. Later, however, the Lich King ends up being on the receiving end of this, as Sylvanas Windrunner, now empowered by an entity known as The Jailer, returns to Icecrown Citadel and defeats the latest incarnation of the Lich King (Bolvar Fordragon) with very little effort, destroying the Helm of Domination in the process and kickstarting the events of the Shadowlands expansion.
  • The tauren are among those who play this role in Cataclysm — both the Earthen Ring and the Cenarion Circle lost high-ranking tauren members to show the threats the players must face.
  • The night elves as a race have infamously served this role for a good chunk of World of Warcraft. When they were introduced in Warcraft III, the night elves impressed even Grom Hellscream with their savagery, and the night elves were able to hold off against the Alliance and Horde until the Burning Legion forces them all to work together. In World of Warcraft, whenever the night elves come up, things tend to go poorly for them in order to establish the threat of another force (usually the Horde). Later, their distant and isolated city is infiltrated in order for the Horde to capture an important MacGuffin. Also, despite having lived for ten thousand years, their forces are overwhelmed in one battle by the Horde until the human king introduces new tactics. Then, to kick off the plot of Battle for Azeroth, the night elves' post-Warcraft III capital is burned down by the Horde to show how much of a threat Sylvanas is and how bad the war will be. It has even been stated that this nearly drove the night elves to extinction, despite it only being a single city that's only a few years old.
  • Malfurion Stormrage, one of the night elven leaders, gets this treatment personally. It was his plan and powers that the factions worked together to buy him time to enact in order to defeat Archimonde and end the Third War, and the novels establish that he stood a good chance against Archimonde by himself ten thousand years ago. Thus, in World of Warcraft, he tends to be the first character to go down to establish some threat. At the start of World of Warcraft, he was trapped in the Emerald Nightmare and didn't escape until Cataclysm, when it was revealed that it had been a plot by Fandral Staghelm (who took over in his absence) and the Old Gods all along. He spent the first part of Cataclysm holding what was left of the night elven zone, Darkshore, together, keeping him out of the action. In Legion, he is ambushed in Val'sharah and once again captured and sent to the Emerald Nightmare in order to establish the threat of the returned Nightmare (and to keep Malfurion from solving it by himself). Then, leading up to Battle for Azeroth, Malfurion manages to hold off the Horde army and some of their most powerful heroes at the same time, but is ultimately cheap-shotted and put out of commission so the aforementioned burning of the city could occur.
  • In Mists of Pandaria, the Klaxxi preserve some of their strongest warriors and greatest minds, the Paragons, in amber so that they can be released in times of great peril, such as when their empress is corrupted by the Sha of Fear and forces the Klaxxi to overthrow her to stop her from self-destructing their civilization. At the end of the Klaxxi quest line, after getting Exalted with the Klaxxi, one renowned warrior Paragon, Malik the Unscathed, so called because whereas most Klaxxi warriors bear their scars with pride, he came back with both eyewitness accounts of his valor and skill and no scars at all goes up against Imperial Vizier Zor'lok, an Empress loyalist and the first boss of the Heart of Fear Raid, and is instantly killed by Inhale.
  • Dragons. Because the very first raid boss of World of Warcraft was a Dragon (namely, Onyxia) the player base still tend to think of them as the ultimate in physical prowress. They are also lorewise some of the most powerful beings on Azeroth. If someone takes out a dragon, especially single-handedly, then they are officially powerful. For example, Garrosh Hellscream taking out Kairozdormu in Warlords of Draenor. There's even a scenario that revolves around this called "The Deaths of Chromie": where the player must investigate who could be responsible for infiltrating all four dragonshrines in Northrend. Dragons have even been used this way across Blizzard franchises. To establish Hanzo Shimada as a Memetic Badass for fans who weren't familiar with Overwatch in Heroes of the Storm they showed him dueling Alexstrasza and NOT getting totally creamed. Since Alexstrasza isn't just a dragon, but a dragon aspect, this is extremely impressive. Similarly, fans not familiar with Warcraft were discouraged from underestimating the sexy lady Alexstrasza via this cinematic since it showed her easily defeating Hanzo without even trying.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour, Joey loses to Bandit Keith and Yami Bakura, and Seto Kaiba loses to Noah Kaiba, forcing you to duel them in all cases. Kaiba's case is even worse because his loss to Noah rendered him unable to fight Gozaburo.
• XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen does this to show off the soldier-kidnapping abilities of the Assassin, who will cap off her first encounter with XCOM by kidnapping the badass Skirmisher Pratal Mox during the Lost And Abandoned story mission. Bonus points awarded for Mox being voiced by Michael Dorn himself, the original Worf.
• Ziggy gets this treatment a lot in Xenosaga; the largest, most experienced and most physically intimidating of the main cast, he's nevertheless been thoroughly trounced in encounters with Margulis, Voyager and T-elos.

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