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This is when levels come Back for the Finale. The final level is made of parts from and/or in the theme of most to all past levels, or at least it has a section like that. It's a good way to extend the final level and make it feel more epic, as the player is required to revisit their past challenges.

The level parts may or may not be lifted directly from the levels they are from, but they do have to include enough distinct design elements and/or distinct gameplay (such as types of platforms or vehicles); this includes the unique enemies encountered there that can help support the argument. The level parts can be encountered linearly, at the player's choice, or a mixture of both (with a forced starting or finish level part, for instance). The level parts can be jammed together or separated with novel content connecting them together; the new content, basically the actual final level itself, has a theme different from the others. This trope does not need to apply to the entire final level; in this case, it's usually just a major area where the level parts are all together.

If the level parts don't have visual elements from the past level they're from, they at least have geography/layout from the level; think of it as reskinning a level. Lastly, just because you're revisiting past stages you got the items and abilities from already doesn't mean you're going to find nothing new to grab. Don't get your hopes up, though.

This trope comes in a few different flavors.

  • Within the final level, there may be an area comprising sections based on the contents of the previous levels. The sections can appear either back-to-back in a linear order, or by way of access from a neutral hub room (with each door leading to a specific section). Bonus points if the level sections are direct extractions (with possible changes). This method often has players using the item/ability they got in a level a lot during that level section, but it can also focus on battles against enemies (thus serving more as arenas for gauntlets), including rematches against bosses (Boss Rush).
  • Unique (usually platforming) sections from previous levels may appear, but you won't notice at first because the aesthetics otherwise fit with the main final stage. Then you play it and it feels familiar. A cool bit of subtlety that has to be fairly obvious to qualify.
  • A more natural method of doing a final level would be a "final exam" approach. It puts the player at the start of a linear Death Course comprising level parts, often in game order, challenging them to apply everything they have learned and gained as they go along. Though not always, this flavor makes up the entire final level, and serves as the level equivalent of the Final-Exam Boss.

Sister Trope to Final-Exam Boss. Related tropes include The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, which this trope often still has elements of, and Hailfire Peaks, going along the theme of different terrains in one level. When it's made, the trope for any level with more than two types of terrain (Hailfire Peaks but more) will be a supertrope. See also Remixed Level, for a repetition of a single map. Contrast Final Dungeon Preview, where one is given a tour of the final level early in the game rather than revisiting versions of previous levels at the end. Examples of boss battles during which you're periodically warped onto snippets from previous levels fall under Multi-Stage Battle (or, for non-game instances, Fighting Across Time and Space). If an entire game references or reuses levels or concepts seen in its predecessors, it's a Megamix Game.

The trope name is a play on "All the world's a stage", the famous Shakespeare quote from As You Like It.

Since this type of level is the last, or at least one of the last, several spoilers are unmarked. Beware!


Examples

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    Action-Adventure 
  • American McGee's Grimm: The final part of Snow White's story, where Grimm goes and collects everybody from every story he's turned grim.
  • In Bastion, while going through Jawson's Bog, the Kid finds himself traversing a rather dark remix of previous areas in the game.
  • Bayonetta:
    • A level literally titled "A Remembrance of Time", which is made up of pieces of past levels. Uniquely, this level is only about halfway into the game. Ingeniously disguised in that most of the pieces that are reused from past levels are flipped around, so that you'll be exploring from back to front. As most of the game's levels never require any sort of backtracking, a simple flip is enough to make the reused levels feel more like callbacks than just straight-up rips.
    • The final level, "A Tower to Truth", features every single enemy in the game, up to and including the bosses and minibosses (excluding Jeanne, whose final fight occurs in the level prior to this one. Also excluding the bosses that come after this stage). The only enemy not to make a return is 'Irenic', the car-shaped Angel that ferries enemies along the road in "Route 666".
  • Blaster Master Zero: One of the keys in Area 9 requires navigating a maze of photo-negative versions of parts of previous Areas.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The final dungeon is Ganon's Tower, populated by a selection of enemies and traps from every other dungeon in the game, including remixed rematches with the four Light World bosses: Armos Knights, Lanmola, Moldorm, and Agahnim.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Following the awakening of the Sages, Link gains access to Ganon's Tower, with six sections on the bottom floor corresponding to each temple (identified with its Sage Medallion). Interestingly enough, the sections based on Forest Temple and Water Temple showcase elements based on wind and ice respectively, as a leftover of those dungeons being originally planned to be themed around the scrapped dungeons. Also, the only section that actually isn't based on a past dungeon is that of the Light Medallion, as the would-be dungeon associated to it (the Temple of Time) is just a regular overworld area, and the Light Medallion itself is given to Link directly as a Free-Sample Plot Coupon.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The final dungeon is the inside of the Moon, where you go through mini-dungeons themed after the four temples scattered across Termina, and their respective music tracks also play while you're inside them; the oddball is the one associated with the Stone Tower Temple, as it doesn't bring back its music and only consists of a Boss Rush against minibosses (though one of them did appear in the original temple, and another appeared in a graveyard found within the temple's hosting region, Ikana). Notably, going through these areas is completely optional, as you can directly fight the boss if you wish. In fact, you can only fully conclude the optional areas after collecting all masks in the game; this is because both the access and the closure of these mini-dungeons requires handing over the masks, and doing so awards the player with the Fierce Deity Mask, which turns the final boss into a Curb-Stomp Battle.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games: The penultimate dungeon in Oracle of Ages, Ancient Tomb, is not only the largest in the game, but also features a robust combination of assets and gimmicks from several previous dungeons: Lava and the setup that temporarily solidifies it like in Skull Dungeon, underwater chambers like in Jabu-Jabu's Belly (and two of them feature directional Roaring Rapids like those seen in the past-era version of Mermaid's Cave), a Minecart Madness section like those of Wing Dungeon and the aforementioned Skull Dungeon, and the color-coded toggleable barrier puzzles from Crown Dungeon. Its flagship item is also an upgraded replacement for the Power Bracelet from Spirit's Grave, so once again there's a focus on Link lifting obstructing objects along the way. It even features slippery ice tiles like those of Sword and Shield Maze, despite that dungeon belonging to Oracle of Seasons.
    • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The first half of Ganon's Tower features sections based on four of the game's main dungeons (Dragon Roost Cavern, Forbidden Woods, Earth Temple and Wind Temple) which must be completed in order to dispel the stone gate that leads to the second half; each section ends with a rematch against the dungeon's resident boss, fought in a black-and-white recreation of the battlefield where you're reduced to whatever items were available to you when you originally went through the dungeon (however, the Master Sword retains its full power, allowing you to defeat the first two bosses more quickly). The second half of the dungeon features an illusory puzzle set in mutiple chambers of identical appearance based aesthetically on Forsaken Fortress, and to solve it you must repeatedly face Phantom Ganon (a miniboss from that dungeon) and pay attention to the hilt of its sword when it falls down. The only dungeon that isn't represented in any form is Tower of the Gods, because it's a benevolent location (interestingly, its entrance also holds access to Hyrule, and by extension Ganon's Tower).
    • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The game has Sky Keep. Except for the entrance lobby and the Silent Realm rooms where you collect each piece of the Triforce, every room has the aesthetics and music of all the previous dungeons, with mixups and variations to keep them fresh (for example, the room based on Skyview Temple mixes the flora and music of the original dungeon with the architecture and atmosphere of the upper part of the Ancient Cistern, while the area of Ancient Cistern itself is based on the original dungeon's lower part and features a Boss Rush against minibosses). This dungeon lacks a boss on its own, but after completing it the endgame (which includes the final story cutscenes, a Multi-Mook Melee and the last two bosses, all of them in the overworld) starts immediately.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
      • The main setting of the "Master Trials" DLC is the Trial of the Sword, an extended Multi-Mook Melee dungeon in which you face enemies (and most overworld bosses) within areas thematically based on different parts of Hyrule as well as the Shrines.
      • The finale of "The Champions' Ballad" DLC takes place in The Final Trial, an underground dungeon which contains environmental and elemental aesthetics and puzzles evoking those in the four Divine Beasts.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Though it's primarily an Eternal Engine dungeon, the Construct Factory also incorporates the respective elemental motifs of the first four temples. As Link works his way to build a Construct body for Mineru, the Sage of Spirit, he has to visit four sectors which are tailored to produce and manufacture specific mechanical limbs. In each sector, Link has to transport an arm or leg across an obstacle course that presents a type of puzzle or asset previously introduced in a temple.
  • Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon: The final dungeon is Treacherous Mansion, a museum which has rooms with themes corresponding to the four previous areas, plus some themes not seen up to that point.
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: The final area, Phaaze, has you using every single Hypermode ability in order to progress to the final boss, since the Phazon-based obstacles you encountered in the previous worlds also show up here. Nearly every single Phazon-based enemy that you encountered previously also shows up, though some new ones are also thrown into the mix.
  • No Straight Roads: During the game's last playable segment, B 2 J have to revisit each of the districts they conquered to give power back to the megastars so that they can all stop the satellite from falling onto the city.
  • Scarlet Nexus: The game has the Very Definitely Final Dungeon Sumeragi Tomb, where the extreme amount of psychic energy causes your party and Karen's memories to merge into recreations of all the previous areas suspended in an endless expanse.
  • Tomb Raider II: The Temple of Xian uses all the traps and gimmicks that you've encountered throughout your adventure; swinging blades, Spikes of Doom, spiked walls that close in on you, swinging spiked balls, trapdoors, collapsing floors, Descending Ceiling large rolling boulders, springboards, and lots of swimming. The whole level practically screams The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, but you actually have to deal with a few more levels afterwards.
  • The Wonderful 101: The game has Operation 008: Blossom City: State of Emergency. The stage is made up of pieces from past levels (primarily the Blossom City levels, for obvious reasons) and consists of almost nothing except back-to-back fights of past enemies, most of which are the kinds of enemies that require specific use of certain Unite Morphs.

    Action Game 
  • Grid Warrior: At the endgame, you have to get back to the centre, while facing every single elemental and non-elemental Mook (save the Super Energy Capsle) along the way.
  • MadWorld: The first level of the final area features a lot of returning setpieces and traps from earlier levels in the game.
  • Prison City: Second CDP headquarters level features the elements from the previous stages. It still adds a few new ones.
  • Punishing: Gray Raven: Used almost literally in the story Renaissance du Fantastique, which takes Ayla's squad through a mysterious art museum filled with exhibits recreating the locations from previous chapters, such as the Arctic Route Union, Kowloong, and Pulia Forest Park. Amusingly, the exhibit based on A New Divide is left half-finished, and the machine replicating the chapter's boss is visibly incomplete.
  • Tonight We Riot: The final level has you facing one type of hazard encountered in each world on each elevator while you attempt to get to the roof of Whippleco HQ.

    Adventure Game 
  • Journey: Two levels near the end do this. One is a vertical ascent with each 'floor' making you use the different kinds of cloth creatures you met in each previous level, in the same order. The relevant part of the journey is depicted as a wall glyph on each floor. The entire series of glyphs is then displayed in narrative order as a flashback of your journey during the cutscene. The very final level does this again (adding a section for the previous example itself) and also imitates the environment of each level in succession, but subtly enough that it's not so obvious.
  • Life Is Strange: During Max's Nightmare Sequence near the end, a lot of places are "revisited" while trying to escape from it. They include Jefferson's classroom, the girls' dormitory hall, the school, the swimming pool lockers, the junkyard, Chloe's house, the Dark Room, the Two Whales Diner and a lot of Max and Chloe's moments that happened during the game.
  • Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Zero's Workshop is the last puzzle room (but not the last puzzle overall) in the true ending. It is believed by the characters to be where Zero tested their puzzles and machinery before building them into the other rooms, and contains variants of puzzles the player has seen previously. The final puzzle also foreshadows the fact that the final "9" door actually needs a digital root of 8 to pass through—and exactly which players will be passing through it.
  • Obsidian: The three moons of the Bismuth dream-world each harken back (or, well, sideways) to the setting and themes of one of the three dreams, and the ways in which they inspired Ceres.
    • The Piazza represents Lilah's dream - it is reminiscent of the dreamlike 'mariachi', 'cloud ring' and 'tilting mountain' sequences, and represents how the dream taught Ceres to achieve its goals through rebellion, this time via teaching Lilah how to do the same once more in the ornithopter.
    • The Church of the Machine resembles Max's robot spider (Abraxas) dream, and represents how Ceres realized that its god, Max, gave it the ability to become his equal... and replacement. Note that the goal of the puzzle is to give the robot spider a program that causes it to reprogram itself - and that the godly statues are what 'inspire' it to do that. And, of course, the whole point of this section is to obtain a computer chip that... gives control of the ornithopter to a robot.
    • The Statue resembles the Bismuth dream as a whole, and doesn't hide that fact that it is Shaped Like Itself. The automated tour outright tells Lilah what each of the dreams means to Ceres. The purpose of the Bismuth dream is to help Ceres look back in order to move forward by designing a new world... and the Statue is where the latter actually happens.
  • Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh: The Battle in the Center of the Mind at the end of the game brings back locations and characters from earlier in the game, some slightly twisted, and the rest outright nightmarish.
  • Sanitarium: The game has the penultimate subchapter called "The Gauntlet", right before the final Puzzle Boss subchapter with Dr. Morgan. In it, you find yourself in a mishmash of elements of all of the earlier non-"real world" chapters. Not only that, but to solve various puzzles you have to switch between Max and all of his alter-egos as well.
  • Virtue's Last Reward: The final puzzle room, Q, also consists of a series of puzzles the player has seen previously. Additionally, the last puzzle of the level concerns the Ambidex Game, a central theme of the game.

    Edutainment Game 
  • Super Solvers: Challenge of the Ancient Empires! features the Ancient World, a set of challenges each comprised of traps and challenges from all four main caverns. The gongs from Greece & Rome show up in an Egypt-themed level, for example.

    Fighting Game 
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The Great Maze from Subspace Emissary is a mashup of previous levels, all interconnected. Integrated with the story, as these levels were captured by Subspace bombs throughout the game (before this point, the assumption was that the areas were just blown-up, but it turns out Subspace bombs are different). The stage also incorporates Boss Bonanza, as the player not only has to refight all major bosses found up until that point, but also dark copies of all 31 characters who appeared beforehand.

    First-Person Shooter 
  • Call of Duty: Zombies: Revelations is incredibly fragmented due to the proceeding events, resulting in a number of previous maps "bleeding" into it. This includes Kino Der Toten, Nacht Der Untoten, Mob of The Dead, Shangri-La, Origins, Der Eisendrache, and Verruckt.
  • Death Wish (Blood): This Game Mod contains a Secret Level called "Nightmare", which is made up mostly of fragments of previous levels, all stitched together and floating in a black void and illuminated by a sickly red light.
  • The Doom Game Mod Scythe 2 has the final level, "Haunting Dreams". The map involves visiting (via teleporters) five areas, each taken from a previous level, but with stronger monsters.
  • DUSK: E3M8, As Above, So Below. The level is a mix of parts of previous levels in the game, warped and twisted to fit the Eldritch Location theme of Episode 3. This extends even to the soundtrack of the map, which is a remix of the music of previous levels.
  • Endless: The Endless Library contains every type of monsters and traps encountered in the previous three worlds.
  • Marathon: In a later level of Excalibur, all three time periods are visited through a hub area.

    Idle Games 
  • Antimatter Dimensions: In an Arbitrary Mission Restriction example, the very first Infinity Challenge has all the restrictions of the regular challenges save for Challenges 9 and 12. It should also be completed relatively quickly, showing just how much more powerful the player has become.
  • Factory idle: Each "next stage" of resource sold gets more lucrative, although it initially seems random. You start out selling Iron and Steel, then suddenly jump to selling Plastics and Electronics which require almost entirely different resources. Then it's back to using Steel, with explosives to produce Guns. After that, it's a mix of Steel, Electronics and Aluminium to make Engines. This all sounds quite random until the final stages, where you produce Tanks that require Steel, Electronics, Guns, and Engines to make, bringing all the production line resources together in one "finale".
  • FE000000: Infinity Challenge 1 has the restrictions of Normal Challenges 2 to 7 and a goal of 1.798e308 stars.
  • The Incrementreeverse: The Banned challenge in the Boson node combines all three previous Boson challenges (that said, the effects of the third one are kinda superfluous with the second).
  • Prestige Tree: The final unlockable hindrance for the 5th tree, "The Final Stockade", contains all the previous hindrances at once with the exceptions of "Slowed To A Halt" and "Anti-Enhancers". Later, there's "The Truly Final Stockade" that contains all the hindrances, including those two.
  • The Prestreestuck: "THE ULTIMATE RAGE" Rage challenge combines effects of all four previous challenges.
  • Replicanti Incremental: Infinity Challenge 1 runs all previous challenges at once with a goal of 1e480 replicanti.
  • Synergism: Challenge 10 runs the first five challenges at the same time, in addition to Coin production getting divided by e12,500,000 and a base goal of 1e3,500B Coins.

    Party Game 
  • Rayman M: On and On is a very appropriate name for the second-to-last level. What is it, you ask? You do a single lap of every single non-bonus race course through the entire game. And it's a Timed Mission as well... and the time you get is equal to the amount of lums you grabbed in Lums mode, at one second per lum. Good luck if you hadn't realized you were actually going to need the extra lums.
  • WarioWare: Any game without a Final-Exam Boss will usually have this as the final stage, mixing up themes from all of the previous microgame sets.

    Platformer 
  • 20XX: The final level 9 and 10 reuse enemies and gimmick platforms from all the areas in the game.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures: "Laughin' Jokin' Numbnuts" is a final-exam level reusing many obstacle setpieces from the previous stages, such as the circling fireballs, fire sharks, Lost Souls, and flame jets from "Thy Farts Consumed"; the jetpackers, phallic missiles, rotating lasers, switch platforms, disappearing blocks, and Silver Surfboard from "Future Fuckballs 2010"; the witches, ghost blocks, and snake platform from "Boo! Haunted House"; the death block gauntlet from "Assholevania"; the gummy bounce lifts from "Happy Fun Candy Time"; the condom blocks from "Beat it and Eat It"; the crumbling platforms from "Dungeons and Dickholes", etc.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation: "Virtual Insanity", the final level, is a combination of the toughest parts from every previous world.
  • Athena: The final world is made up mostly of bits and pieces of the previous levels strung together, including the bosses.
  • Banjo-Kazooie: The series employs a very literal final-exam approach for each game's final level. In the final part of Gruntilda's Lair in the first game, the eponymous duo enters Grunty's Furnace Fun, where they have to win a contest against Grunty to rescue Tooty. Over the course of the contest, they have to answer questions about the game's past levels. Some questions show directly a level in-game and the answer revolves around a specific part of it, or a character that is in that level. Other questions are about character voices or items' sound effect. At certain points, the duo has to replay a minigame or boss that appeared in a past level, now under a strict time limit. The game's sequels have each a Pop Quiz minigame that operates similarly to the first game's, but except in Grunty's Revenge nothing from past levels is directly brought back for the questions besides an occasional picture.
  • Banjo-Dreamie: Memory Meadows, the sixth world, is seperated into five areas, each one resembling one of the first five worlds.
  • BIONICLE:
    • The Mangaia, as seen in The Legend of Mata Nui, would have been included six short platforming challenges aesthetically modeled after each of the six regions of Mata Nui.
    • Makuta's Domain from the Nintendo DS version of BIONICLE Heroes is comprised of stage elements that resemble each of the six regions of Voya Nui, with flavor text revealing that Makuta is tearing Voya Nui apart to create more obstacles in your path.
  • Bonk's Revenge: The final stage has a hub linking to four "tunnels" based on the first four stages, each ending with a respective boss rematch.
  • Castlevania:
    • Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse: It's subtle, but the second to last level is like this. It's an insanely hard gauntlet of many of the challenges from throughout the game on both paths, including a stream full of mermen, Harpies dropping Hunchbacks, spiked crushers, a tower that scolls upwards in jolts, and the stairs.
    • Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow has the Chaotic Realm, made up of various parts of all the previous areas.
  • Celeste has its Chapter 7, The Summit, which borrows some visual elements and obstacles from all previous chapters, in order, expecting the player to have mastered those obstacles already. It also does this with the music! Each segment has Chapter 7's main theme (and key) is mixed up with elements of the guest chapter's music. The justification for this is that Madeline falls to the bottom of the mountain in the previous chapter, so she actually passes through the previous areas as she climbs back to the top.
  • Copy Kitty: Mission 7-8, Microcosm, incorporates elements of all the worlds to that point.
  • Croc: Both the original game and Croc 2 have this with their final stages. Many of the level portions in the Crystal Island levels of Croc 1 are similar to earlier portions of the game, while Croc 2 quite literally uses the same level structure, only with radically different (and more difficult) placements of objects. In both games, the levels also have a much higher amount of enemies in them and other dangerous obstacles (even in the hub levels!).
  • Donkey Kong:
    • Donkey Kong 64: Hideout Helm, the last regular world, starts like a standard area (albeit borrowing the aesthetics and presentation of Frantic Factory). But as the Kongs advance through it, they find setpieces and obstacles that were characteristic in previous worlds (such as slopes only Lanky can cross, small corridors only Tiny can cross, etc.), and are once again testing their learned abilities. Then, when the Kongs reach the central room and have to disable the individual sources of energy feeding the Blast-O-Matic, they proceed to play Bonus Barrel minigames (shaped like oil barrels with K. Rool's face) placed at the sides of said energy sources; many of these minigames are based on those of the wooden DK Bonus Barrels found in the standard worlds, though others are based on miscellaneous tasks the Kongs used to do to earn Golden Bananas. And to ensure the player has mastered the game at this point, the entire mission must be done under a time limit, or else it's Game Over.
    • Donkey Kong Country Returns: The Nintendo 3DS version has an expanded version of the Golden Temple, which now has 9 levels. The first 8 are thematically based on the standard worlds of the game respectively, while the ninth is original (a mixture of Level in the Clouds and Level Ate). In the original Wii version, only the thematically new level is present.
    • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: The last world, Donkey Kong Island, is a review of every world in Donkey Kong Country Returns, with each regular stage being based around the most iconic challenges found in that particular area in the first game. The Final Boss, Lord Fredrik, is also fought where Tiki Tong was in the previous game. The secret levels are brand-new, however.
  • Drawn to Life: The last world in The Next Chapter has themes and pieces of each of the previous ones.
  • Goemon's Great Adventure has Dream Castle, which is a merciless mashup of segments based on the previous four castles. The really hard parts.
  • Grapple Force Rena: The final stage contains gimmicks from all previous worlds.
  • Grey Area (2023): "Refractions", the final section of the game's normal route, consists of an obstacle course combining elements from all of the game's worlds.
  • A Hat in Time:
    • The Final Chapter: Time's End. A downplayed example as not every gimmick is present, but you have to use most of the things you've learned so far to enter and finish the level.
    • "Tour" is a purple Time Rift (introduced in "Seal the Deal") where each room is based on one of the base game's chapters. Fittingly, it's also accessed through the Attic.
  • In the final level of Heavenly Bodies, you travel through each of the satellites you fixed up in earlier levels. You start out in the ruins of the second level, go through the rest in order, and finish off in the first level.
  • Iconoclasts:
    • The Impact Zone consists of several rooms themed after previous locations, each containing enemies from previous areas infested with the blue eyes.
    • The Omega Controller constantly causes the terrain to cycle through the different area textures as you ascend the elevator shaft.
  • Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine: There are sections of the Aetherium that revisit past locations, and items found there are used in the boss fight.
  • Karmaflow: The Rock Opera Videogame: World 5 features fragmented bits and pieces of previous worlds floating in a dark void.
  • Kirby:
  • Knytt: Apart from a Jungle Japes-styled section that is completely original, much of the bonus area takes elements from the other areas in the game.
  • LittleBigPlanet: Several examples related to Sackboy: A Big Adventure:
    • The final world mixes in aspects from several of the worlds preceding it. Several setpieces come back, such as all three powerups; The Soaring Summit's moving platforms with faces (now on cycles instead of player-sensing) and yetis; The Colossal Canopy's tides, sticky Gloop, rotating platforms, and timed fire panels; The Kingdom of Crablantis's Glowsquids and bubbles; and The Interstellar Junction's touchscreens, Velociporters, teleportation panels and lasers. Several levels combine these aspects together in different ways not showcased in the prior worlds.
    • Multitask Force, the last co-op level, borrows from several of the co-op levels before it, using their setpieces in short, trial-like rooms to get Keys for a door. The bottom-left door uses the snow globe, tightropes and player-sensing moving platforms from The Soaring Summit which were a focus of the co-op level "Snowman Left Behind"; the bottom-right door uses the heavy animal and weighted crate platforms from The Colossal Canopy's "Weight For Me!" and the timed dropping platforms from the world in general; the top-right door uses the carryable Glowsquid from The Kingdom of Crablantis and the concept of having one player use it to create platforms for another, which was a mechanic of "Squid Goals"; and the top-left door uses the floating bubbles and the electric eels that debuted in The Kingdom of Crablantis, as well as the timed tongue platforms one player can activate for another, which were among the puzzle elements used in The Interstellar Junction's co-op stage "Lead The Weigh".
    • The very last stage of the game incorporates multiple things from prior levels, including (in no particular order) tightropes, Sixaxis-controlled moving platforms, spike rollers, timed tongue platforms, bubbles, the "flytrap" platforms that bite Sackboy if he lingers, batteries, turrets, and Glowsquids.
  • Mega Man:
    • Mega Man (DOS): The final level in the first game combines elements from all three Robot Master stages.
    • Mega Man 10: Wily stages consist mostly of elements and enemies from the Robot Master stages, all mashed together. These stages frequently combine something from one stage with something from another to make a more difficult combination.
    • Mega Man X5: Zero Space, the final area of the game, consists of levels that appeared in prior games in the series, including Quick Man's stage elements from Mega Man 2, a boss fight with the Shadow Devil (a new version of the Yellow Devil fought in the first Mega Man), and a retooled version of Sigma's first fortress stage from X1, with a boss fight against Rangda Bangda from the second fortress stage at the end.
    • Mega Man X6: Gate's Lab stages feature many hazards found in the Nightmare Investigators' levels.
    • Mega Man Rock Force: The original builds of the final stage had entire segments from the first 8 Robot Master stages recycled and stitched together, with only the visuals changed to give the level a unifying theme. The newer version instead merely take the gimmicks and enemies from those stages and combines them together, creating them a nostalgic feeling without making players re-tread old ground.
    • Rockman 4 Minus ∞: Wily Stage 3 is a maze that uses graphics from every previous level, fitting the whole Boss Rush theme.
    • Rockman 7 EP: Wily Stage 1: Thorny Paths repeats the gimmicks used in the Robot Master stages in order to get the Nova Adapter.
    • Rockman CX reuses parts of all previous levels for the second half of Dr. Light's Lab 5, after defeating Dr. Light the first time.
    • Both Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest games feature their own take:
      • The first game has a fairly straightforward example, patterned after the typical Classic series Boss Rush. The final level consists of a simple platforming area followed by a large room containing 20 teleporters, each of which contain mini-challenges based on every entry to the contest. Clearing all of them allows the player to challenge the Wily Machine.
      • Because of the Sequel Escalation that Make a Good Mega Man Level 2 underwent, the first game's formula is abandoned in favor of another. This trope gets played twofold, with the bulk of the final stage consisting of a Rockman 4 Minus ∞-style maze that combines many different stages from official Mega Man games, explained in-universe as a distortion in reality. Scattered throughout the maze are five "glitch" areas that serve as teleporters to substages which, once again, are based on the entries to the contest; due to how many more entries there were, these stages consist of a mash-up of two tiers each. While not every entry is featured in the substages, each one has its own boss, which are themselves mashups of two custom Robot Masters from the entries.
    • The first fortress level in Super Mega Man 3 is a series of segments based on each Robot Master's stage in the gamenote , each followed by a battle against a Metool mimicking a Robot Master from one of the previous Super Mega Man games (with the first four from first gamenote , and the last four from the secondnote ).
  • Meat Boy: 0xDEADBEEF's five levels each correspond to a previous world, while the sixth level is a glitchy mess that combines all previous worlds into one level.
  • The Messenger (2018): The final level of the game, the Music Box, forces you to use all of your ninja tools (Climbing Claws, Wing Suit and Rope Dart) and master the time travel rift puzzles in order to finish it.
  • Ori and the Blind Forest has this during the final Escape Sequence, requiring Ori to use every ability they have learned over the course of the game.
  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps: The Final Dungeon, Willow's End, is a multiple-choice final exam stage, reusing design elements of the Wellspring, Midnight Burrows, Silent Woods, Baur's Reach, and Windswept Wastes, as well as the Ginso Tree and Mount Horu from the first game.
  • Pizza Tower has "The Crumbling Tower of Pizza": one final Escape Sequence that uses almost every mechanic and level gimmick in the game, even sending you back through the hub areas of the game. Along the way, you pick up all the characters you've met along the way, including the bosses, as the titular Pizza Tower crumbles to the ground.
  • Poacher: The final stretch of the good ending thematically harkens back to previous areas; partly justified because you're exiting the Abyss and heading back up to the surface, with the final boss fight occurring on the surface outside the manor. Also occurs for the secret ending, minus the final boss, who's already dead.
  • Rabi-Ribi: The first "post-game" area is the Hall of Memory, where you run through a series of rooms modeled after other areas throughout the game.
  • Road Runner's Death Valley Rally: The last level combines traps and gadgets from all previous levels.
  • Rocket: Robot on Wheels: Jojo's World is a long obstacle course involving nearly every puzzle and hazard you have seen in every other level in the game.
  • Shovel Knight: The game has the Tower of Fate, where almost every gimmick and enemy from previous areas will be found during its climb. Makes sense, considering it's basically the headquarters of the Order of No Quarter, rulers of said previous areas.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrap Brain Zone has enemies from the game's previous stages. In addition, Act 3 is a re-colored, more difficult version of Labyrinth Zone.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) has the infamous End of the World stage, set in seven of the nine previously played levels as the world gets more screwed up.
    • Sonic Unleashed: Eggmanland is a giant gauntlet of some of the most difficult platforming challenges from both the Sonic and Werehog sections, including most of the game's enemies, a bobsled-esque portion like one from earlier in the game, a skydiving section, and generally recalls all your abilities that you've needed to use.
  • Spelunky: In the second game, stages in the ultra-secret Cosmic Ocean may be themed after any of the previous worlds (including the Sunken City) at random, featuring all of their respective enemies and hazards.
  • Stinkoman 20X6:
    • Level -0 was the final platforming level for more than a decade, and it's a mishmash of the rest of the game up to that point, including ground tiles and enemies from every preceding stage.
    • Level 10.2 includes short segments with mechanics and enemies from every level except for Levels 3 and 9. There's even a short section dedicated to Level -0!
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario World: When entered from the Front Door (the default entrance), Bowser's Castle starts with a hub in which you can choose a path to proceed. Each path, accessible through a door, has a concept or setpiece that was previously seen in one of the past Castles or Fortresses. When you manage to tackle it, you'll reach another hub with the second batch of selectable paths; crossing any of them leads to the final room leading to Bowser. The setpieces that return are: Large mallets and fences from Iggy's Castle, moving walls and floors from Morton's Castle, the fire-shooting statues from Roy's Castle, the flooded passageways from Vanilla Fortress, and the Skewers from Wendy's Fortress. The other major setpieces (Snake Blocks from Roy's Castle and the Magikoopas that turn blocks into other objects in Lemmy's Castle) are absent, but they were already brought back in the preceding level, Larry's Castle. The final level also has unique setpieces, such as a route with walls that cover part of the explorable space, gold-colored statues to jump at Mario or Luigi, a switch that turns on a disco lamp to illuminate a dark room, and enemies like Ninjis and Mechakoopas; the latter three appear in the final part leading to Bowser, which also constitutes the entirety of the level if it's entered from the Back Door.
    • Super Mario Sunshine: The "Shell Secret" obstacle course in Noki Bay (Episode 6) utilizes sections of almost every secret area that a player would realistically have visited prior, albeit not in order. For example, the beginning features a flipping wooden platform like one that a player would have seen in Bianco Hills' "Episode 6: The Secret of the Dirty Lake". Later on, closer to the end, there are flipping rectangular blocks like those that would be seen in Ricco Harbor's "Episode 4: The Secret of Ricco Tower". The mixture of familiar setpieces in this course is justified, because the remaining secret area ("Secret of the Underside Village" in Pianta Village) is also the last, and uses a gimmick that is frequent in the normal level episodes (Chucksters's throws) but is never seen in obstacle courses until then.
    • Super Mario Galaxy: The final level is Bowser's Galaxy Reactor, and consists of a large path to Bowser's whereabouts filled with obstacles and planets based on past levels: A crumbled castle passageway like those of Bowser's previous boss levels, a lava planet based on Melty Molten Galaxy and the fiery side of Freezeflame Galaxy, an ice planet based on the snowy side of Freezeflame Galaxy. a desert planet based on Dusty Dune Galaxy, a path that builds itself as you traverse it like in the first star mission of Space Junk Galaxy, and a hollow cylindrical lava area that mixes assorted elements like Bullet Bills and sinking platforms. Even the final battle against Bowser takes place on different planets, continuing the trend and crossing over with Multi-Stage Battle.
    • Super Mario Odyssey: The Darker Side of the Moon has parts with gameplay from every kingdom, although not in order. To this end, several music themes are brought back as well.
    • Super Mario Bros. Wonder: During the final level inside Bowser's floating castle, the effects of the Wonder Flower are magnified by Bowser's influence, to the point that nearly all effects seen in the previous levels of the game are showcased here while Mario and his friends make their way to Bowser.
    • Mario vs. Donkey Kong: The Star World levels in amiibo Challenge combine aspects of the various character-specific levels, such as including both Toad's bouncing mushrooms and DK's barrels.
    • Yoshi's Island DS: The final regular level in World 5. Each section of Bowser's Castle is tailored for one of the Babies that are being escorted by Yoshi, so the path he'll choose will depend on whom he's escorting. By extension, this means each section will provide a callback to a previous world (the jungle-themed World 2 for Baby DK, the icy levels of World 4 for Baby Bowser, the Athletic levels of World 1 for Baby Mario, and so on).
    • Yoshi's Woolly World: The final level, The Wonderful World of Wool, has mini-segments based on every world in the game.
    • Fangame examples:
      • Mario Adventure: The final world has seven levels themed around the previous seven worlds before the final battle.
      • Make a Good Level X: These two Super Mario Bros. X mods have each one post-game level that reuses the levels seen in the corresponding campaigns but with a few remixes. Another postgame level in MaGLX 2 ("MaGLX Redux") mixes it with Nostalgia Level, as it refers to levels from MaGLX 1.
      • An SMWC Production has this in Bowser's Castle — specifically, the part where you first enter the Void. You can go through any room of your choice. Each is thematically based on the eight main worlds of the game, but there are new gimmicks present (for example, spin jumps in the Mountain room switches on/off the red and blue blocks).
      • Super Demo World: The Legend Continues: Star World is like this; every world receives a level based on it here, accessed from the respective world. Additionally, it contains the Backdoor Star World, which provides a shortcut to Bowser's Castle, the Secret Star World, which leads to Star World's Bonus Stage, and the entrance to Big Boo's World. Big Boo's World's first level is also called "Big Boo's Star Road" and has the same mechanics as the Star World levels.
  • They Bleed Pixels: The Final Dream: The End is basically a long series of death courses that reuses a number of specific challenges and sequences from earlier chapters, usually with an Advancing Wall of Doom added if there wasn't one before.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Montana's Movie Madness. The final level puts you through four mini-stages (literally and figuratively: there are spotlights and movie cameras scattered around them) themed off of the previous levels before going up against the final boss.
  • ViViD: All of the interface screws come back for one or more screens each in Day 10. The music also changes to fit the types of distortion seen in the previous Days.
  • Völgarr the Viking: Stage 6 features all the enemies and some of the stage hazards from the previous 5 stages.
  • VVVVVV: Several levels each have their own unique features, such as The Laboratory's inversion planes, the Space Station levels' quicksand blocks, Space Station 2's Inconveniently Placed Conveyor Belts, The Tower's automatic vertical scrolling with an Advancing Wall of Doom, and the Warp Zone's wraparound rooms. Every last one of thesenote  returns in The Final Level.
  • Wonder Boy: The final dungeon requires you to switch between all of your previous forms (except Lizard-Man) and use their abilities to reach the final boss.

    Puzzle 
  • Antichamber:
    • The first of the three final rooms, "The Chase", uses the final-exam variation. After spending most of the game solving puzzles with your matter gun and blocks, this room brings back most of the elements from the earlier puzzles, including jump pads, bounce pads, transporter windows, eye walls, riot balls and vanishing platforms (most of these mechanisms seldom appear after you've acquired the blue gun). It even brings back the red and blue staircases from the "Many Paths to Nowhere" room (one of the very first rooms).
    • The "Failing Forward" room mentioned in the Empty Room Psych entry does this too, using all of the mentioned mechanisms (except for using laser beams and doors instead of bounce pads), which contributes even more to the anticlimax feeling at the end of the room.
  • Baba is You:
    • The Chasm world, as well as the endgame worlds ???, ABC, Depths, and Meta, don't stick to one solitary level theme.
    • The New Adventures expansion pack constantly mixes themes as well.
  • The final district of Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past, Capitol Peak, has most of its cases, crime scenes, and cutscenes happen in previously visited locations all over Concordia's districts, such as Lady Highmore's manor in Elysium Fields, the Crystal Palace in Century Mile, the sewers of Crimson Banks, and the courthouse in Ivory Hill.
  • Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: The final world, Modern Day, contains almost every single zombie and level gimmick from the previous worlds in the game.

    Racing Games 
  • Battle Racing Stars: Portal Mania mode’s stages take elements from all standard levels and mix them together.
  • Cel Damage: The PlayStation 2 version adds in an extra stage called "Boss Bash", which takes the previous four zones and mashes them all together into one large arena.
  • Daytona USA 2: The Updated Re-release adds a new "Challenge" course that combines the original three circuits into a point-to-point race.
  • Forza Motorsport:
    • Forza 3 and 4 have the Camino Viejo de Montserrat Extreme Circuit, which combines the main Camino Viejo circuit with the neighboring Iberian International Circuit and Ladera Test Track.
    • The Circuit of the Americas, which made its series debut in the sixth game, is a real-life example of a final-exam race course, deriving each of its segments from classic Grand Prix circuits.
    • The Horizon games feature the Goliath tracks that go through the entire game map, acting as a final-exam stage.
  • Mario Kart: Double Dash!!: The All-Cup Tour pits all drivers in a race across all tracks seen in the four standard Cups (Mushroom, Flower, Star, Special). The order of the tracks is randomized, but it always starts with Luigi Circuit (Mushroom) and ends with Rainbow Road (Special).
  • Monster Racers: The Sweden Cup, one of the very last tournaments you can unlock, has every single terrain type in it, serving as a culimation of all you've seen in the game.
  • Test Drive (2002): The final race series combines all of the previously raced course layouts as final-exam tracks for each city.
  • Uphill Rush: The last cup of the first two games has you taking part in races in all three previous race locations.

    Real-Time Tactics 
  • Freedom Force: In the later stages of the game, Time Master produces opponents and backdrops from earlier in the game to harass our heroes.
  • Pikmin 2: The last main area is Wistful Wild, and its three dungeon caves are amalgamations of the themes seen in several previous caves over the course of the game. The second cave (Hole of Heroes) combines this with Boss Rush, as it brings back several bosses as well. The surface area of Wistful Wild itself invokes Nostalgia Level instead, being a fusion between Impact Site and Final Trial from the first game.

    Rhythm Game 
  • DanceDanceRevolution Extreme: The True Final Boss song, "Dance Dance Revolution" by DDR All Stars, which you are forced to play on Harder Than Hard difficulty as a One-Hit-Point Wonder, reuses Heavy step sequences from "Brilliant 2U Orchestra Groove", "Dead End", "Dynamite Rave", "End of the Century", "AM-3P", "Celebrate Nite", "B4U", and finally "DDR" itself.
  • Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA: World's End Dancehall -Live Dance Edition- in Arcade/Future Tone takes Miku and Luka through numerous existing stages throughout the song's duration.
  • RoBeats:
    • The VIP mashups combine songs from an artist all into one giant song.
    • "RE:Beats! RoBeats Mashup Marathon" and "RoBeats Remix Ten" combine popular songs from RoBeats itself.

    Roguelike 
  • The Binding of Isaac:
    • The Afterbirth+ DLC has The Void. Every room is taken from a previous floor, both in visuals and what enemies spawn. It can lend itself to Schizophrenic Difficulty, as one room can contain a few simple flies while the next can contain several Degraded Bosses. In addition, there are multiple boss rooms containing bosses from earlier floors (potentially including other final bosses), and one containing the True Final Boss.
    • In Repentance, collecting Dad's Note causes Isaac to ascend through all the previous floors from the current run, going beyond Basement I and ending at Homenote . The Ascent floors are filled with extremely powerful Tainted enemies that harken back to iconic monsters from their respective floors.
  • WASTED: The final Cooler, CA-5, is occupied by members of every faction you encountered in the previous 4 Coolers (plus the usual mutants), all fighting each other as well as the invading S.O.B.

    Role-Playing Games 
  • 3D Dot Game Heroes: The Dark Tower. The first six floors are themed after the first six dungeons and at the end of each floor is a rematch with the boss that matches that floor's theme.
  • Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm: Distorted Dimension, the last dungeon, is a combination of Zey Meruze and the five other Alterworlds.
  • Boktai: Hel's Castle has four towers that resemble the four dungeons you had to go through and each end with a powered-up version of the boss character. The puzzles are so notably Nintendo Hard that one of them has a "loser switch" you can press to solve it for you.
    Plaque that appears if you use the Loser Switch: Here forever engraved is the name of the LOSER Django.
  • Bravely Default: The Dimension's Hasp is an illusory realm conjured by Sage Yulyana; the level consists of replicas of areas of past dungeons. The floors are, in order: Vestament Cave, the Anchem Ruins, the Wind Temple, Mount Fragmentum, the Witherwood, the Garderns, Starkfort, The Underflow, Central Command and the Everlast Tower.
  • Bravely Default II: The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, the Isle of Nothingness, is divided into five segments based on each of the five major kingdoms you visit over the course of the game.
  • Chrono Trigger: The various Dimensional Vortexes added into the postgame of the DS version, with randomly chosen rooms from throughout the entire adventure, with some new ones added in too, all culminating in a showdown with a Dark Clone of a random party member.
  • Crash Fever has Kadomatsu Tower, a tower that was used for celebrations until it was hijacked by the Guardians. It then became a warped and mildly crazed version of quests past, and Charon lurks at the midway point and the top, much like the Towers of his superiors.
  • Darkest Dungeon: Almost every single base game enemy and a majority of the bosses can appear during a run through the Endless mode, including enemies from the Darkest Dungeon and Brigand Invasion, though it's random which ones you might encouter. The only exclusions from the pool are the Final Boss, a few unique enemies and, with the exception of the Crocodillian, any of the bosses or enemies from the Crimson Court and Shieldbreaker DLCs.
  • Diablo III: The endgame is the Nephalem Rifts, a series of linear dungeons made from previous maps and hosting every enemy you could possibly fight. Even Whimsyshire.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: Two examples appear in the end- and postgame respectively:
    • The Forgotten Capital plays with the trope, as most of it is locked behind an ancient gate with four locks, and to open it the player's party has to detour to a multi-colored portal that takes them to a route that goes across previously uncharted parts of the game's cleared dungeons, each of which includes a lectern that can be activated to open one of the locks in the final dungeon. Activating all four wll open the Capital's entrance gate, allowing the characters to explore it. The connected dungeons are revisited in reverse order: Echoing Library (fourth), Golden Lair (third), Misty Ravine (second), Lush Woodlands (first); and in each of them the original setpieces and gimmicks will return, now applied to harder puzzles than before.
    • The Hall of Darkness, which serves as the postgame's Bonus Dungeon, mixes gimmicks seen in several previous dungeons. The first floor is a large, intrincate maze that uses the Wrap Around corridors of Misty Ravine (also seen briefly in Forgotten Capital); the second floor used brand-new setpieces (green damage tiles and a dark invisible maze that can only be mapped efficiently by studying the rooms with the aforementioned damage tiles); and the final floor mixes the previous elements with the miasma hall from Miasma Forest (a Mini-Dungeon), the ice walls and a mechanism to melt them like in Underground lake (another mini-dungeon), and a complex metapuzzle to weaken the True Final Boss (analogous to the puzzle to weaken the boss of Golden Lair). The entire dungeon also employs a darker, gorier palette of Echoing Library.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy V has the path to the depth of the Void, which is said to consume the world and so contains many locations that, if they aren't the actual previous locations that have been absorbed, are similar to previous locations.
    • Final Fantasy VI features this in Kefka's Tower. The tower itself is mostly a collection of ruins, but there are elements of the destroyed Imperial capitol of Vector and the Magitek Factory, and some rooms are exactly like they were when the player first visited them.
    • Final Fantasy VIII features this in the battle with the sorceresses during the Time Compression. As you defeat the sorceresses, the battle background changes, going through various locations you've visited during the game.
    • Final Fantasy XIV has the Hero's Gauntlet, the final dungeon of the main Shadowbringers story arc. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn race across Norvrandt to get back to the Crystarium and avert a cataclysmic disaster. Its three zones include regions from Ahm Areng, Ill Mheg, and Lakeland, with the dungeon's theme having motifs from all the Shadowbringers zones. Crosses over with Back for the Finale as a number of cameos from characters you've met across the expansion appear to help.
    • Final Fantasy Type-0: Featured in the penultimate trial of the final mission. Class Zero is presented with four portals representing the four nations of Orience, and they must visit each one and complete the respective battles within.
    • Dissidia Final Fantasy: The prequel Dissidia 012 pits the player against a barrage of enemy types from the ten previous Chapters in the Epilogue of Light to All. Furthermore, enemies in each individual Chapter tended to use the same accessories over and over between each other, in the Epilogue many of those accessory builds return in one or two gateways each. And of course there's all ten villains come back to fight again.
    • Final Fantasy Mystic Quest has Doom Castle, where each of the four floors the player visits are thematic recreations of the final dungeons of the four regions, complete with powered-up versions of their bosses.
    • Chocobo's Dungeon for Wii has this in the Bonus Dungeon. Justified as the theme is memories and the Bonus Dungeon is about Chocobo's memories — which, of course, includes the dungeons he explored during the game.
  • Guild Wars 2: The map of Dragonfall has five distinct parts, three of them being regions of The Mists that Kralkatorrik flew through before Aurene shot him out of the sky.
    • A jungle region (Melandru's), containing enemies from the Maguuma Jungle, Bouncing Mushrooms, and Oakheart's Essence (last seen in Draconis Mons)
    • A desert region (Grenth's), full of undead, spirits, and heavily reliant on Sand Portals and other mounts for traversal.
    • A burning forest (Balthazar's), filled with fallen warriors and firebreathing beasts, and with a network of Thermal Tubes for mobility.
    • The Pact field base, a callback to both the base in the Silverwastes and the three mechanically distinct combat lanes of Dragon Stand.
    • The normally inaccessible rocky center of the map where Kralkatorrik itself crash-landed, which, when cleared up, features three of the teleport Shrines last used in Siren's Landing.
    • Furthermore, War Eternal's final story mission takes place inside Kralkatorrik's mind, and teleports you around to fight against echoes of the Mouth of Zhaitan and the Mind of Mordremoth, both complete with their original battle music.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Kingdom Hearts: The final dungeon includes a series of platforms with portals to other worlds — the one for Halloween Town even takes you back inside Oogie's Manor, an area you can't actually get to in the "real" town at that point. It also includes the Hundred Acre Wood, but that's the one area without any enemies; it instead houses the save point before the gang's fight with Chernabog. Sora, Donald, and Goofy also change form while in the portals for Halloween Town and Atlantica.
    • Kingdom Hearts III: While restoring everyone's hearts towards the end of the game, Sora must enter portals to the worlds he's visited and fight a boss to revive his deceased friends. Like in the first game, Sora changes form while in The Caribbean, Toy Box, and Monstropolisnote .
  • In The Legend of Dragoon, the final level consists of elements of previous areas put together.
  • Mega Man Battle Network:
    • Mega Man Battle Network has a multi-part final stage where each part is a smaller copy of the main Net areas you've been to previously, with each containing the same level gimmicks as its corresponding levels, only generally harder (i.e. melting fires with ice blocks in the FireMan copy, opening doors with numeric passcodes in NumberMan's area, etc.).
    • Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar: The final area has you go through a short segment based on each of the previous dungeons in the game.
  • Monster Hunter: World: The Guiding Lands, the area unlocked after beating the final boss of Iceborne's storyline, is a Zorah Magdaros corpse that's given way to an ecosystem remarkably similar to a mishmash of all the locales in the game, complete with their respective monsters. It originally only had regions to represent the Ancient Forest, Wildspire Waste, Coral Highlands and Rotten Vale, but later updates added areas to represent the Elder's Recess and Hoarfrost Reach as well.
  • Namco × Capcom: The final stage consists of worlds that the characters have visited all joined and mashed together thanks to the Big Bad. The level sees you fighting nearly every major villain who had previously been killed in the events of the story — short of Grandmaster Meio, who had been killed in the previous chapter — before finally facing 99.
  • Nexomon: Various environments return for the post-game in the form of "Nightmares" that the Wardens of the Underworld use to cage Omnicron and his Tyrants.
  • Rune Factory 4: The Forest of Beginnings, which the protagonist travels to twice. The first time it is a nigh-literal amalgamation of previous areas (though only of those s/he traveled to previous, not the ones after, save Leon Karnek). The second time, it becomes a Mega Dungeon called the Rune Prana and must be accessed from Leon Karnek. Rune Prana is a different take (the area replicas are bigger than the one area per stage for examples).
  • Sands of Destruction: There's a place called the Depths of Memories. You have to revisit each location in the reverse order that you visited them in the course of your adventure.
  • Secret of Evermore: Omnitopia features numerous enemies from the past three worlds, or at least Underground Monkey variants: Raptors, Rimsalas, Aquagoth's Tentacles, Rats, the killer plants, and mosquitoes all appear. The final battle brings back the Bad Boy and Dark Toaster (evil copies of your heroes) and Magmar. Even the background is full of reminders of past levels, with images of Thraxx's face, machines shaped like Aegis, and the Volcano boiler reappearing as scenery.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey: The penultimate sector, Grus, is made up of sections modeled after the first four sectors: Antila, Bootes, Carina, and Delphinus, changing from area to area with no apparent pattern to it. This is explained as being the sector's Mother, Maya, drawing from the worst memories of the Investigation Team — which given what's happened to them is their memories of the Schwartzwald up to this point.
  • Stella Glow: Each numbered chapter takes place, and its Mission Time phases are developed, in either one of the four cardinal directions of the overworld map, or Lambert City. Chapter 10, however, requires visiting regions from all major parts of the land, including a brand-new one (a crater) in order to complete a plot-critical Fetch Quest that holds the key to defeat the Final Boss.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Paper Mario: There's such a sequence near the end where the protagonists pursue Dimentio through sections of previous levels. The pause menu even says which level you're in.
    • Paper Mario: The Origami King: The Sea Tower employs the classic flavor of the "final dungeon" having elements of all previous dungeons in the game by being a summation of the Vellumental dungeons specifically, as the final Vellumental dungeon precedes it.
  • Tales of Vesperia: The aptly named Labyrinth of Memories is comprised of sections of various locations throughout the game including towns, and everything is colored in sepia tones to give it an antiquated look. Powered up versions of the story bosses can be found roaming around, though they aren't necessarily fought in the same place they were originally.
  • Trials of Mana: The Mirage Palace makes you go through a gauntlet of illusions based your previous adventures to even reach the front door. The remake's Bonus Dungeon meanwhile attempts to torment our heroes by being made of corrupted, apocalyptic versions of everyone's hometowns.
  • Underhero: The final area has floors based around the the first 3 Worlds, as well as music that uses the same motifs.
  • Malduke from Wild ARMs. The main hub resembles the Gate Generator and contains traps from the Photosphere. The Statue area is a carbon copy of Pandemonium. The Residential area is a darker version of Adlehyde and Saint Centaur. The Mine area contains lava like Volcannon Trap.

    Shoot 'em Up 
  • The fifth and final stage of DOS shooter Slordax has parts based upon each of the previous stages.

    Simulation Game 
  • In Roots of Pacha, the glyptodons' final cave challenge requires you to use all your totem powers to clear it. You have to turn into Owl to fly around and rotate the pillars to reflect two beams of light into Pacha's eyes; transform into Monkey to hop on platforms and raise marked ones by playing instruments; and call upon Bear's power to smash rocks and find the hints to the cave painting riddle.

    Survival Horror 
  • Alan Wake: The DLC chapters follow this idea, being composed of pieces and segments from chapters of the main story that are haphazardly stitched together without rhyme or reason. This is caused by Alan being trapped in the Dark Place, which manifests itself as such due to being both an Eldritch Location and a Mental World due to Alan's own creativity shaping it.
  • Five Nights At Freddys VR Help Wanted: The final main stage, the Pizza Party level, contains a remixed and stitched up version of settings in the previous games, including the offices from the first three games, the Bedroom from Five Nights at Freddy's 4, and Funtime Auditorium and the vents from Sister Location.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's World: The latter part of Pinwheel Circus is the funhouse, which warps you around to hidden rooms in most of the game's areas to form one giant maze. Interface Screw is also in effect for this area, with a different distortion occurring every time you leave the menu or a battle.
  • Layers of Fear: After collecting the last... "item" the artist needs to complete his painting, you are suddenly warped into a room with a checkerboard. You then have to search through the now wrecked and warped versions of the six rooms in the house where the artist found each of the six MacGuffins (kitchen, master bedroom, basement, baby's room, study, and bathroom) to collect the checker board's missing pieces and finish the game.
  • Neverending Nightmares: Used in two of the three alternative last levels.
    • Wayward Dreamer's setting consists of mix-and-match rooms and corridors from the manor, the asylum, and the forest, while furniture from the asylum occasionally appears in the manor, and vice versa. The only enemies (killer dolls) are specific to this level, though.
    • Final Descent. Its setting is made of seemingly randomly linked level parts lifted straight from the manor, the forest/cemetery, and the asylum, each of them including its own specific enemies (giant babies, violent lunatics, and Gabby dragging a sword).
    • Averted in Destroyed Dreams, which is set in a unique place (an abandoned hospital that looks very different from the asylum in Insanity) with a totally new enemy (a murderous Thomas doppelganger wielding an axe).
  • Nocturne (1999): Episode 4 features most of the enemies from the previous 3 episodes all in a single dungeon. This is because Hamilton Killian essentially turned his mansion into a giant prison for torturing monsters, resulting in a very diverse population of "inmates".
  • Silent Hill: Nowhere is mostly comprised of corridors reminiscent of the Alchemilla Hospital connecting rooms from other parts of the game, such as Midwich Elementary School's classrooms and the Green Lion Antique Store.
  • Silent Hill 3: The final level — The Chapel — is actually an amalgamation of various locations from the game, as well as some that appeared in the first installment of the series, like aforementioned classroom or Alchemilla Hospital basement. This is because the whole area is actually an Eldritch Location which manifests Heather's memories from her previous life as Alessa.

    Third-Person Shooter 
  • Fortnite: Season X's map slowly evolved into this, becoming an island featuring landmarks, points of interest, and gimmicks from every season that came before it.
  • Jet Force Gemini: Mizar's Palace consists of three standard stages (plus a special area out of the classic format where you can participate in a race). Each area is tailored for one of the three main characters (Juno, Vela and Lupus), and not only features multiple enemies to defeat (except for Vela's area) as usual, but also requires the current character to employ a special ability exclusive to them: Juno's immunity to extreme heat to cross a lava room, Vela's ability to swim underwater to tackle an aquatic maze, and Lupus's ability to hover in the air to cross an extensive chasm. Those setpieces are based on hazards seen in the preceding worlds (lava in Eschebone and the foundry areas of Sekhmet and Spawnship, bodies of water in Tawfret, and chasms in Rith Essa and a part of Goldwood's second level). In the central area where all routes converge, the characters' sidekick (Floyd) has to complete a minigame that looks like those present in previous areas, but whose completion leads to the arrival of Big Bad Mizar. The twist is that this world is only a Disc-One Final Dungeon, as when Mizar is defeated he'll flee and the game's second half begins. The actual final world (Asteroid) averts this trope.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising: A stage evoking previous stages makes up for "Chapter 9: Medusa's Final Battle". It's part of what makes its status as a Disc-One Final Dungeon so convincing.

    Other Games 
  • Deep Town: Mining Factory: After beating the Obsidian Elder, the final few floors on Earth contain corrupted blocks that sprout the appendages of the previous elders you've facedIn order . This is because their powers were sealed into the Earth's Core, aka the Iron Elder.
  • Flower: A subtle version. The final dream passes through areas inspired by each previous dream: beginning with "awakening" the city; then restoring colour; speeding along the highway 'canyons'; the sky darkening to night; and finally an area overrun with girders.
  • Hamsterball: The penultimate course (was the final course in the non-Gold release) in the game, the Master Race, utilizes many obstacles that appeared in a majority of the preceding levels, some of which only appeared in their debut race otherwise, that you now have to get past all in one go.
  • Last Legacy: In Chapter 1, the credits level is made up of pieces of the other levels.
  • SpongeBob's Boating Bash: The final exams of the D.R.I.V.E. course consists of one stage dedicated to each of the five main components of D.R.I.V.E.
  • SpongeBob SquigglePants: The last two levels are Remix, which uses every nanogame from every previous level plus six new ones, and Hyper Remix, which is identical to Remix but starts at twice the speed.
  • Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds has multiple final-exam Stages with an added twist ending in each.
  • Deus Ex Machina 2: When The Defect starts to go senile at age 84, this is represented by wandering through his own fading memories, shown as small segments of several of the previous stages prerendered in very low quality, in reverse order: Soldier, Lover, Adolescent, Schoolchild, and finally Infant.
  • The Witness:
    • The town serves as one of these, requiring knowledge of all the mechanics introduced over the rest of the island to gain access to its beacon. Of course, unless the player is going for 100% Completion they can skip the town entirely as only seven beacons must be lit.
    • The inside of the mountain also qualifies, with a healthy bit of Interface Screw thrown in for good measure.

    Non-Gaming Examples 

Film — Animated

  • Wreck-It Ralph: The nightly qualifying race we get to see near the end seems to take the racers on a grand tour of all of Sugar Rush. If the Web game adaptation and the self-contained circuit of the Dummied Out volcanic cave track are anything to go off of, races are ordinarily three-lap affairs restricted to one of several shorter, themed tracks, just like in most kart racers, making the qualifying race a case of this trope.

Film — Live Action

  • Avengers: Endgame: The main plot revolves around the surviving Avengers performing a Time Travel to revisit familiar events and locations from all three Phases of the Infinity Saga in order to gather the Infinity Stones and use them to revive all vanished inhabitants of their universe.

Literature

  • Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.: The 10th Layer of New World Online, which is setting up to be the final layer that Kaede and Risa will be able to explore before their play time in the VRMMORPG becomes limited due to their senior year in middle school, features elements from the nine previous Layers in the game.
  • The Divine Comedy: As he leaves the Solar System and enters the sphere of the stars, Dante prepares himself to finally meet God by looking back and recalling his journeys through the seven spheres that lay behind him. He goes through each one individually and references specific conversations he had earlier in Paradiso while on them.

Roleplay

  • Happens during the Glitch event in the second game of Destroy the Godmodder, when various events from previously in the game are replayed for the players to acquire the Server Chips necessary to protect GodCraft against the Glitch.

Web Animation

  • Algicosathlon Camp has two episodes invoking this trope. Both episodes 17 and 20 have nods to previous events and challenges.
  • Battle for Dream Island:
    • The final challenge in Episode 23, "Hurtful," recalls every single challenge that had been completed up to that point, with only four contestants left in the game.
    • Battle For BFB continues this trend, with Episode 28, "B.F.B.: Back From Beginning," being one of the final challenges completed by the characters, with the Announcer even returning. However, it is not the final challenge.
  • Inanimate Insanity: The final challenge of season 1, just like season 1 of BFDI's. It consists of jumping off of the cliff and into the water, putting lemons into the basket, knocking off a prop of the opponent, throwing themselves across the gorge by slingshot, stacking golf balls, going through an obstacle course, collecting candy and putting them into the basket, and others.
  • Meta Runner: Downplayed. The show's final battle has the combatants fight inside a server containing portals to every video game the cast has played throughout the series, but the characters don't go through all of them.
  • Object Cringe: The final challenge of Object Cringe is every single contestnote  from the entire show combined in rapid succession. It ended with Brainy becoming the winner of Object Cringe although nearly everyone objects to this due to his status.
  • Rapal Dark Res: After Episode 2 of Season 9 was stuck in Development Hell well-past the finish of the real Season 9, the creator decided to save time by making Episode 2 a mashup of the plots of Episodes 2-5 of Drag Race Season 9, leading to a challenge that is a mashup of the challenges from those episodes.
    Rapal: "We're going cheerleading... and on a good morning show... in a Disney Channel fairy tale special... featuring Kim Kardashian."

Webcomic

  • DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: The arena for X's final game is an amalgamation of the previous significant areas in the series.
  • Inverted Fate: The CORE arc consists of Frisk and Chara traveling through four areas based off the Underground to unlock the final door and continue, all while the Mad Dummy tries to get in their way.

Web Video

  • Marble Hornets: #83. Tim's chase with Hoodie goes through some of the locations visited in the third season; the torched hospital, the college buildings, the parking lot from #65 implied to be The Operator's domain, Rosswood, and Tim's house. All done via what seems to be Operator teleportation and a heaping helping of Mind Screw. The same thing happens with Tim's fight with Alex in Entry #86

Western Animation

  • Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero: The season one finale has all the dimensions visited throughout the previous nineteen episodes threatened by vortexes that will suck them into a realm of nothingness if not repaired. The episode has the part-time heroes and villains, as well as allies from some of these different worlds, team up and travel to every single one of them to fix the problem.

Real Life

  • The concrete jungle can count as this, with many cities across the world having elements that parallel most major biomes.
    • City parks, farms, and national parks have large stretches of grass similar to a grassland.
    • Buildings in large cities are densely packed and connect to each other similar to trees in a forest.
    • Like with deserts and tundras, it's rare to find free food around that isn't heavily guarded by territorial creatures and/or predators like humans and their pets.
    • Artifical lakes and city waterways can be found in a city similar to lakes in rainforests and swamps.
    • Sewers underneath cities are similar in size and complexity as most underground caves.
    • Cities located near the shoreline can function like beaches and the two often overlap with each other.


Ah, but the memories...

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