The Very Definitely Final Dungeon

Surely, there can't be an Ultimate Decisive Battlefield! Right?

"This door just screams endgame."

— Shiki Misaki, The World Ends with You

A video game with any sort of combat (and a few without) can be expected to end with a dramatic Final Boss battle. Console Role Playing Games in particular tend to be downright obsessed with epic final showdowns. This clash needs an appropriate venue. Some get away with an ordinary castle, Elaborate Underground Base or the like, but that real twang takes a place that might as well bear the words "FINAL CONFRONTATION HERE" in a spiky font, colored red and black with a remix of the main theme blasting in a thousand-mile radius.

It could be the tallest of spires or the highest of mountains. It could be somewhere in outer space, or deep beneath the world's surface. In a Scavenger World, it's a fully armed and operational battlestation from legend. Often it's the very Weapon of Mass Destruction the Big Bad wants. In any case, it embodies the words "serious business," and just entering it can merit an FMV or a Boss Battle (on the first try; from there on, it's easy as pie). Extra credit if it forms/arises/descends/erupts just when everything seemed all right, if it's more dangerous than would be allowed for any real place, and if it has a pretentious, overblown name.

And sometimes, just to screw with the player, the Very Definitely Final Dungeon seems peaceful and quiet... too quiet. Of course, It's A Trap. Expect it to be also the Point of No Return and/or Point of No Continues.

If they're going for a nostalgia feeling, there may be a bit of each terrain/level/mechanism from earlier in the game put in there, making a final conclusion of the game as a whole.

Interestingly enough, it's usually stressed that it will be incredibly difficult, maybe even impossible to leave the final dungeon once you've entered it. This only applies in gameplay. Most characters who enter the final dungeon simply leave after the boss has been defeated, sometimes barely finding a means to escape, but at other times with no explanation at all. Unless they die there. This sometimes does not come into play, as it is the boss's power causing some obstruction to leaving. The game will sometimes warn players that there's no turning back and ask them if they really want to move forward. If they're not lucky, they could be walking into That One Level.

Where It All Began is a particular type where the final dungeon has some connection to — or in some cases even is — the spot where the game started. If the player can visit the final dungeon before the endgame, it's a Final Dungeon Preview. Can naturally be combined with Storming the Castle or Amazing Technicolor Battlefield. Compare and contrast Bonus Dungeon, an optional location that tends to be the only place that rivals the VDFD in terms of danger, and the Brutal Bonus Level, a Bonus Dungeon that most definitely will be more dangerous and challenging than the VDFD. For the exact opposite of the spelunking spectrum, see the Noob Cave. Beware of fake outs by the Disc-One Final Dungeon!

And if a game allows players to continue upon dying... that feature will often cease to be available once they enter the VDFD!

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Examples:

• Role-Playing Games

Action Adventure

• ANNO: Mutationem: The Consortium's Elaborate Underground Base serves as the final area. It is a Marathon Level consisting of multiple research stations and assembly lines that is split into several sections filled with Elite Mooks and a Boss Bonanza with the pathway leading to the inner center of the facility where C is located.
• Asura's Wrath has two. The main one has Asura and Yasha going into the center of Gaia to defeat the Vlitra Core. The DLC has you fighting the creator of the world, Chakravartin, inside of Naraka.
• Cave Story:
  • The normal final dungeon is the Final Cave, a small cave that is filled with tough obstacles and tight jumps, leading to a tower at the top of the island where you fight the Doctor.
  • If you meet all the requirements after you beat the bosses in the tower, you go to the Blood-Stained Sanctuary, a series of rooms full of dead bodies, falling debris, One-Hit KO spike traps, an army of demonic cherubs, and blood. Lots of it. Once you're through that, there's small room with a boss fight with the Heavy Press (which can kill you in one hit after death if you're careless), and then there's the fight with Ballos himself, who has by far the most HP in the game. And the only save point you can access for the Blood-Stained Sanctuary is at the very beginning.
• EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist has Zett's compound and the tunnels beneath, filled with his Body Horror experiments forming the last defense until the final bosses.
• Shadow of the Colossus takes this trope seriously when you fight the Final Boss who lives on a dark mountain - under a huge rain storm. Said Final Boss virtually counts as a Very Definitely Final Dungeon unto itself, as well; it's big enough that more than one player has initially mistaken it for a last obstacle to climb before you reach the Final Colossus — until they notice the tower is moving.
• Ōkami has the Ark of Yamato as the true final stage. Any previous dungeon that seemed to be the last one is only a Disc-One Final Dungeon, while this one shows that it's the real deal for having a Point of No Return.
• Ōkamiden: The role is filled by the Dark Realm, which is where Akuro awaits. Chibiterasu arrives there after the completion of Moon Cave in the past, which in turn is followed by Kurow's betrayal.
• The Castlevania games usually feature the top floor of the eponymous castle (or a different yet, similar one) as this, almost always featuring a very large staircase leading to the throne room, and occasionally after a Disc-One Final Dungeon. There are a few notable exceptions:
  • Simon's Quest, Belmont's Revenge, Curse of Darkness and Order of Ecclesia have Dracula's Castle in general as this, with the majority of the games taking place outside it.
  • Bloodlines has the Castle Proserpina in England, complete with a Boss Rush, and some of the most surreal level design in the series.
  • Symphony of the Night has the Inverted Castle, floating in the sky above the normal Dracula's Castle, with the Final Boss fight taking place in its center.
  • Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, has the Chaotic Realm, a bizarre dimension which isn't displayed on the map, and consists of parts of all of the previous areas.
  • Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, has The Abyss, which, like the Chaotic Realm, isn't on the castle map. Instead, it has an entirely separate map of its own. Fans of the series will recognize the very definitely final boss chamber as what was almost certainly the home of the Legion boss you had been expecting to fight all game. Someone got there first, though.
• The Legend of Zelda series never fails to offer these:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Level 9, Death Mountain. You know you're there: "Spectacle Rock" is the overground architecture in the first quest (and the map, a skull, is by far the largest in the game). In the second quest it's in the very top-left corner, and the dungeon map is shaped like Ganon's head and is roughly as large. The music is much creepier than that used in the first eight dungeons, there are much stronger enemies that only appear in Level 9 in either quest (including a new Mini-Boss called Patra), and these levels are much more mazelike than their predecessors. In addition, if you don't have all eight Triforce pieces, a guardian awaits in the first room beyond the entrance to shoo you away.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: The role is filled by the Great Palace and is the longest level in the game, big enough for you to get lost. To get to it, you have to travel through a lava-strewn terrain, which only exists in that one part of the world. The Great Palace also has unique music, unlike the previous six dungeons which all had the same music. Also if you lose all your lives there (which is very likely to happen) you will begin your quest again from the entrance instead of all the way back at the start of the game. It is the only dungeon to feature this trait.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Ganon's Tower is where Link goes after having rescued all seven Maidens (including, among them, Princess Zelda) in the prior Dark World dungeons. It is located where the Tower of Hera would be in the Light World, and is protected by an energy layer that can only be removed with the power of the freed Maidens. It is also the biggest dungeon in the game, and on top of devious puzzles and obstacles it also includes a Boss Rush gauntlet against the original four bosses of the Light World. That said, you don't actually fight the final battle here, as Ganon fights you here under his Agahnim persona and then flees the scene to the Pyramid of Power for the actual final duel.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Ganon's Tower is a giant black monolith floating over a sinkhole-shaped sea of lava, where Hyrule Castle used to be in the past era. After Link awakens all Sages and receives a sacred weapon from Princess Zelda (whose reveal and location also lead to her kidnapping by Ganondorf), he has to enter the Tower by crossing a rainbow bridge created by the freed Sages, and once inside he has to dispel the barrier to the top part by part.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The inside of the Moon, a terrifying grimacing moon, appears to be a beautiful field containing a single tree with children playing around it. Children wearing the masks of all the bosses. Most of it is optional (you can talk to the child wearing Majora's Mask to teleport directly to the final battle), and in order to fully complete the dungeon areas you'll need to have collected all masks in the game, as doing so will grant you a very powerful extra mask that is unavailable otherwise.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games:
    • In Oracle of Seasons, the final dungeon is Onox's Castle, which is protected by a force field that holds on during much of the adventure's duration.
    • In Oracle of Ages, Veran spends the entire game building the final dungeon, right next to the village, and it ominously gets taller and taller as her plot progresses; logically, this invokes It's All Upstairs From Here by the time you manage to get inside.
    • If you're playing both games in linked form, completing the second one will settle the climax into the Room of Rites, where the final battles occur and the combined story is wrapped up for real.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker follows the footsteps of A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time by giving this role to Ganon's Tower. This time, it's located next to Hyrule Castle in what used to be the land of Hyrule before its flood. Per tradition, a barrier prevents you from accessing it early and you'll need to empower the Master Sword with the help of two temple Sages to break it (as well as the Triforce of Courage in repaired form to return to Hyrule to begin with), but this time it's not in the Tower itself but in Hyrule Castle. The dungeon is divided into three sections: One in which you have to dispel a gate's seal by tackling rooms based on several previous dungeons, one which features an illusory puzzle and a sequence of rematches against a familiar Mini-Boss, and finally a long staircase leading to Ganon and the story's climax.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap opts for Hyrule Castle itself. While the location is technically visitable at several points before the endgame, Vaati's magic eventually warps it into a much more sinister structure than it was before. The dungeon itself is very tall, featuring numerous puzzles and enemies, including multiple Mini-Boss battles against Darknuts.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Hyrule Castle is visited twice during the game's first half, but it can only be explored in full once the diamond-shaped barrier protecting it is destroyed by Midna with the help of the Fused Shadows. The Castle, barrier and all, is visible almost anywhere in the overworld. Bits of the final battle take place outside the castle as well.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass shakes up the usual formula by portraying its Mega Dungeon, the Temple of the Ocean King, as the very last dungeon in completion order. You even get to visit the very last floor before the game's climax (in fact, you have to do it in order to unlock the last quadrant of the World of the Ocean King, as it's there where the last regular dungeon lies). The catch is that the large door located there can only be opened when you manage to defeat all Phantoms in the area, for which you must have forged the Phantom Sword with the Pure Metals guarded in their temples. Beyond the door is the area where the Final Boss (Bellum) awaits, but you only fight it there in the first two phases, as the other two take place in the overworld.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has the Dark Realm, a Final Boss, New Dimension accessible once you retrieve the Compass of Light at the very end of this game's Mega Dungeon (the Tower of Spirits). The Demon Train, as well as Chancellor Cole assisting the first form of Malladus, are confronted during the train portion and Phantom portion respectively, but the game kicks back to New Hyrule for the final parts of the battle.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Sky Keep serves as the ultimate destination, available once you learn the Song of the Hero and complete the final Silent Realm. The cinematic reveal of the location of this dungeon helps a lot, and its inner gameplay presents a novel set of puzzles that take advantage of its variable shape. However, the last two bosses aren't found here, as they'll only appear after you've completed it (namely in the past-era version of Sealed Grounds).
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: Lorule Castle, located at the center of Lorule and accessible after you've freed all Sages (though it's Hilda who breaks the seal with her magic, not the Sages with theirs). The second half of the game begins and ends in the domain of Hilda.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Ganon's Castle serves as this once more. This time, however, it was Hyrule Field until the events of the game allowed Ganondorf to corrupt it.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The player is explicitly told from the start of the game that Hyrule Castle is housing Calamity Ganon. If you ignore all the dialog and cutscenes, the giant darkened castle in the middle of the world map, with black smoke swirling around and hordes of giant death-robots on patrol, is still pretty conspicuous; and even if you don't pick up on any of that, each main dungeon's completion adds a miles-long laser-sight pointing directly at Ganon's lair. Interestingly played with in that not only can it be visited at any time to fight the final boss, stopping by sometime before actually confronting Ganon is encouraged — a few sidequests and one of Link's memories require the player to visit the castle early.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity: Hyrule Castle again. It gets corrupted by the emerging Calamity Ganon halfway during the game, forcing Link and Zelda to flee so they can gather the allies and powers they need for the final confrontation. Then when all the pieces are in place, the allied forces of Hyrule have to Storm the Castle for the final confrontation.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Hyrule Castle is NOT the final dungeon this time (in fact, if you're following the game's story in the suggested order, then Hyrule Castle will turn out to only be a Disc-One Final Dungeon, as there's still a Story Arc later on regarding an additional Sage). Rather, it's the Chasm beneath the castle where Ganondorf lies waiting beyond a series of tunnels teeming with Gloom-infested monsters, a Silver-Maned Lynel, and one last round versus Phantom Ganon, ending Where It All Began in the cavern Link and Zelda explored in the opening. Like before, this can be visited at any point, although this time there's little incentive to visit it early.
• The final battle in Beyond Good & Evil takes place in a gargantuan cavern inside a large moon, on a slab of rock surrounded by green glowing water, with a giant statue-like Domz creature looking over the battle, and all your friends and other citizens of Hyllis locked in permanent paralysis in green Matrix-like pods lining the walls of the cavern. Doesn't get much more final than that.
• La-Mulana has the Shrine of the Mother, where you don't quite fight the final boss yet. Only after defeating all the other bosses and chanting a series of mantras do you unlock the True Shrine of the Mother, a Palette-Swapped, badly-damaged version of the Shrine, the center of which you fight the final boss in.
• Predator: Concrete Jungle had a pretty epic final battle which started beneath a gigantic hologram of Earth and ended in the right palm of a two-hundred-foot-tall statue of the Big Bad.
• Krazoa Palace in Star Fox Adventures. Where better to end it than Where It All Began?
• The Mysterious Murasame Castle ends at Murasame Castle, where the floor is black and the walls are Nothing but Skulls.
• Mega Man Legends has the Main Gate, a mysterious ruin that you've spent the entire game trying to figure out how to get into, while the sequel has Elysium, the Utopia/Kill Sat that most of the series up to this point has revolved around. The Misadventures of Tron Bonne tops them both, however, by having its VDFD be a gigantic Reaverbot (as in, the gigantic Reaverbot isn't what you fight at the end of the dungeon, the gigantic Reaverbot is the dungeon). That's right, it beat out Shadow of the Colossus in the "VDFD actually being the thing you're trying to kill" department.
• Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon has Treacherous Mansion. It's a huge castle-like structure suspended on a tiny piece of land above a gigantic ravine/waterfall, which also happens to be a museum based on the earlier levels in the game. And it has things like a pirate ship sticking out the side and part of a tree sticking out the roof for no real reason.
• Folklore has the Netherrealm's Core, which holds the artifacts that make the afterlife work. The first half is made of floating islands, taken from Doolin's past history. The second, inner half is a dark crystal maze.
• In Axiom Verge, the final area, Mar-Uru, is structured like a tower projecting upward from the rest of the game world, with the Final Boss stationed at the top.
• In CrossCode, halfway through the game, Lea first reaches Gautham's tower in the Vermillion Wasteland. It's tall, dark, spiky, and contains a few goodly horrifying scenes. This turns out to be a false positive at first, since much of the game hasn't been explored yet. However, she inevitably returns (to beat it without punching through the walls) in the finale.
• Little Tail Bronx:
  • Every other stage in Tail Concerto is either one of the many flying islands making up Prairie or a fortress of some kind. Then all of a sudden, you're inside an ancient world-breaking monster fighting an organic robot for the last stage.
  • Solatorobo goes further by having you fly into an alternate dimension within the planet-sized Tartaros, where the Final Boss resides.

Action Game

• Gungrave:
  • The last stage of the first game is reached through an incredibly tall elevator which dwarfs the city it extends from. In stark contrast to the urban crime drama of the rest of the game, is an ancient floating temple with crystals hovering around, populated with blue-skinned monsters which look remotely human at best. And no, the game doesn't explain where it came from. There is an explanation, but it isn't in the game, it's in the artbooks.
  • The last stage of the sequel takes place in the "basement" of a previous stage (The Laboratory). Said "basement" is really The Methuselah Starship, an alien craft that crash-landed on the planet hundreds of years ago, and the very place where the technology necessary in engineering the Seed and Necrolyzation Projects originated from. Again, it makes more sense if you read the art book.
• Jet Force Gemini: While Mizar's Palace is hyped as this, it's revealed to be only a Disc-One Final Dungeon, since Mizar pulls a Rage Quit upon being defeated easily by Lupus (a dog). The true last level is the Asteroid Mizar is travelling with to reach Earth in a desperate attempt to cause a doomsday there, and it can only be intercepted by performing The Great Repair to a sacred apaceship, which makes up for the whole second half of the game.
• Metal Warriors: The ninth and final mission takes Stone into the Axis Central Command, the last bastion of the Dark Axis forces and the place where a devastating superweapon is being built. Stone has to storm the area, dismantle the superweapon and kill the chief figure of the Dark Axis to save the world. The level has areas where Stone has switch between going on foot and piloting his Mini-Mecha, as well as large moving machinery that makes navigation more difficult.
• Ninja Gaiden II:
  • During many of the game's cutscenes, you could see the final tower in the background, and after beating one stage, you see the tower in question in a final cutscene before actually entering it.
  • The Imperial Palace in the Xbox game. It's an enormous tower hanging upside down and covered in giant skulls, and features rooms that house fetuses like bees in honeycombs on the walls. It's so very definitely final, that even the item chests are evil and spiky.
• The final stages of DmC: Devil May Cry have Dante and Vergil assaulting Mundus's headquarters. However the final battle itself happens in the ruins of Limbo's collision with reality after you succeed in your mission to unseat Mundus.
• No More Heroes:
  • Played straight at first in the original game, with the 1st Rank battle taking Travis well outside Santa Destroy and through an ominous forest, with the battle itself happening right outside the 1st Rank assassin's personal castle. Ultimately subverted with the True Final Boss battle with Henry, however, which happens in the parking lot of the Motel No More Heroes where Travis lives.
  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: The 1st Rank assassin (Jasper Batt Jr.), awaits you at the very top of a large and ominous skyscraper, filled to the brim with his guards. Hilariously, it's also right across the street from Travis' home.
  • No More Heroes III: The 1st Rank assassin is Jean Baptiste VI, a.k.a. FU, and is fought at the top of the very tall, ominous Damon Tower (itself located in the central island surrounded by the other cities and towns).
• Dishonored has Kingsparrow Lighthouse, which is either sunny and relatively calm, or filled with dramatic rain, thunder, and way more guards, depending on your choices. The final confrontation is either relatively straightforward on a low-chaos playthrough, or dramatic on a high-chaos playthrough. The sequel gives us Dunwall Tower, which has been converted into a den for Delilah and her witches, and is filled with disturbing imagery no matter what your choices were.
• Versus Umbra: Nivaga in First Strike. Red sky, black ground, full of caves, and level names like "Satan's Backyard" all point to it being the final planet.
• Streets of Rage:
  • The first game has its final level taking place in a long hallway within a penthouse. Said hallway is filled to the brim with mooks and you have a Boss Rush with every single boss you've faced. Beyond the doors at the end of the corridor is Mr. X himself.
  • The second game does something similar with its final level by taking place in a penthouse again (along with a rush of mooks and bosses), except the hallway leads to an elevator that takes you up to Mr. X and his elite henchman, Shiva.
  • The third game does it again a third time, but subverts it by revealing the Mr. X sitting in the chair is a robot in disguise and it isn't the final level. Round 7 has two different paths that signify the definitive final area; the bad ending path has you fighting your way to City Hall and the good ending path has you fighting through the robot factory.
  • In the fourth game, after fighting Mr. Y on his private jet, it crash-lands on Y Island where you fight him and his sister, Ms. Y. After beating them up for a bit, one of them jumps into a Humongous Mecha...
• ActRaiser 2 has Death Helm, which is Hell reached through the mouth of a volcano. Entry requires taking the Sky Palace, the throne of the Almighty God, and crashing it through the walls. The final level is littered with dead cherubs and surviving angels are being exterminated, because shit just got real.
• The Wonderful 101: GEATH-Wahksay, a massive space fortress that appears at the end of the third-to-last level. It serves as GEATHJERK's trump card, and is so heavily fortified that even reaching it with an army of a hundred Humongous Mecha takes an entire level on to itself. The Final Boss of the game is fought in its core. It is revealed after the first two phases of the boss fight that he controls all of GEATH-Wahksay, to the point where it acts as his mechanical body. Because of this, GEATH-Wahksay doubles as both the endgoal area of the game and the final boss itself.

Adventure Game

• Professor Layton:
  • Professor Layton and the Curious Village has the Tower. You've been talking about it since the start of the game, heard strange noises coming from it, and just acquired the obscure key needed to unlock the way to it. Now you just need to complete 10 extremely difficult puzzles to get to the top and have everything revealed.
  • Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box has Herzen Mansion. Believed to be haunted by a vampire, Layton and Luke must traverse the woods, lake, and bridge leading to the castle where they must then be tied up by the Big Bad only to escape, solve several more puzzles, and prepare for the final confrontation where everything is revealed.
  • Professor Layton and the Unwound Future has a gigantic mobile fortress full of weapons ready to destroy London, controlled by The Man Behind the Man who ran away during The Reveal, kidnapping Flora in the process.
  • Professor Layton and the Last Specter has the Closed Factory, the main facility where the Big Bad creates Spider Tanks, and the climax has Layton confronting one of them.
  • Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask has the Reunion Inn, which was built by the search party led by Henry Ledore to look for Randall in the Akbadain ruins. It is now there where the Masked Gentleman (Randall himself) is secretly plotting his dark miracles.
  • Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy has the Azran Sanctuary, where the ultimate piece of Azran technology lays dormant. It is discovered after the power of the Azran eggs is awakened in the Nest (the headquarters of Targent), and is located in Froenborg, Where It All Began.
  • Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy has the mansion of the late Maximilian Richmond, and the original source of the riches that made the seven Dragons wealthy.
  • Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney has the Storyteller's Tower.
• Torin's Passage has the player spending most of the game trying to get to the next progressively deeper layer of the planet. The final battle takes place inside the Big Bad's house... located in the very center of the planet (which you've been banished to as a punishment, rather than seeking out and entering for yourself), where gravity pulls from every direction, causing one to float in midair except inside said house. The house itself isn't all that special, except that the entryway is lined with all of the people the Big Bad has imprisoned in giant crystals with her powers, including Torin's parents, some of the game's creators, Sailor Saturn, and Darth Vader.

Driving Game

• F-Zero:
  • The SNES game F-Zero (1990) has Fire Field as the final track in the King League. Not only it's longest track in the game, it also has every kind of obstacle thrown at you all at once; sharp turns, mines, dirt patches, ice, and magnets that pull you in from the sides. The race also takes place over what seems to be a field of lava.
  • F-Zero GX on the Gamecube has two of these. The second-to-last race in the storyline takes place inside a volcano, while the final race takes place on an ethereal virtual track that cycles through the colors of the rainbow.
• Mario Kart has Rainbow Road. A large, hazardous racetrack in space (usually. Once it was floating over a city) with dramatic, upbeat music and looks like it's made out of a...well, rainbow. There's one of them in every game and it is always the last track in the game (if you do the cups in order, as Rainbow Road is part of the Special Cup). The games with Retro Cups have the Lightning Cup end with a retro Rainbow Road (except in the DS and Wii games, where the last retro tracks are GCN Yoshi Circuit and N64 Bowser's Castle respectively).

Fighting Game

• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: You might think the final levels of The Subspace Emissary take place in Subspace. And you'd be right... mostly. Actually the final dungeon of Brawl is The Great Maze, which is a literal maze made out of previous levels, where you have to fight off every character you've unlocked, and every boss you've faced so far in order to open the final door to Tabuu. Needless to say, it does feel very definitely final, and even looks final. A big grapeshaped cluster of worlds floating in darkness, with an ominous staircase leading to it and everything. And the ominous shadowed gate with the trophies of all those you defeat inside the Great Maze. The Very Definitely Final Part of the Very Definitely Final Dungeon within the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: World of Light has the Final Battle, a war between darkness and light that the player must keep balanced. If not...
• Depending on the game, the final battle can take place in the inner sanctum of the final boss (such as Rugal's airship BlackNoah in The King of Fighters '94, Krauser's great hall in Fatal Fury 2, Seth's secret laboratory in Street Fighter IV, or Murakumo's operation room that also houses the biggest of the Blitz Motors in Akatsuki Blitzkampf).
• The final boss fight of BlazBlue takes place at the Azure Boundary, an otherworldly dark realm dominated by a blue singularity located beyond the Forbidden Gate deep within the Boundary. For context and reference, this is the place the villains have been trying to reach over the course of the entire series and whoever wins this battle wins the right to rewrite reality as they see fit.
• Mortal Kombat 11: The final fight in the Story Mode involves fighting Big Bad Kronika after she's already begun reversing time to the point all of mankind, including the characters in the game save for Raiden and Liu Kang, have been irrevocably erased from existence. This final bout even decides how far back history rewinds by the time of your victory; sweep both rounds, Kronika is stopped by the prehistoric era and therefore Kitana is saved, but take all three rounds, and history is rewound to the dawn of time itself. Kronika's stage even reflects these changes through the fight.

First-Person Shooter

• Medal of Honor:
  • Medal of Honor: Vanguard's final mission 'The Crucible' takes place in a large factory that is visible in the distance during the parachute drop in the previous mission 'Endgame' and is the largest most heavily fortified structure in the game. The mission also takes place on the 25th of March 1945, during Operation Varsity, just 45 days before the war ended in Europe.
  • Medal of Honor: Airborne has Der Flakturm (the Flak Tower), a huge structure brimming with anti-aircraft artillery, and the last German stronghold in Essen, Germany.
• You catch a glance of Xen at the beginning of the original Half-Life during the resonance cascade - having spent the first nine-tenths of the game in a mostly-underground military facility, you spend the final tenth suspended in the sky of an alternate dimension, fighting gigantic aliens atop semi-organic purple floating islands. Opinions are divided.
• The Citadel in Half-Life 2: towering ominously over the entire rest of the game, blaring alarms and occasionally releasing hordes of airborne enemies, this miles-high spire (lit by deadly balls of energy, and consisting almost entirely of poorly-safeguarded catwalks) clearly fits the definition.
• Dark Watch has Deadfall, an Mordor-esque town that is overflowing with fire, lava and brimstone, its populated by demonic ghosts and serves as an entrance for a hellish pocket dimension where the Final Boss takes place.
• Descent has the final level of Descent 2, Tycho Brahe. Previously, the player would be given an introductory cutscene for each star system they visited (each consisting of 4 levels), but this is the only level that has its own cutscene separate from the ones before it, and it's an ominous one indeed, playing creepy music as you approach the clearly artificial planetoid.
• Destiny has the Black Garden, the Vex "homeworld" and site of the main story's final mission.
• Deus Ex, which takes place at Area 51. Not only do you find out that you're a clone and there are more nano-augmented agents like you, but it's also the place which can bring down the entire world order, has the mastermind of the Gray Death virus stationed there, AND has a malignant AI that wants to merge with you. Either way, it doesn't go down well, especially since the following game retconned the fact that you killed the mastermind, merged with the AI and destroyed the government AT THE SAME TIME.
• Deus Ex: Invisible War has its Where It All Began final level.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution has Panchaea. A massive building hollowing out a section of the ocean built by one of the richest men on the planet. Due to his plans, it's also infested with augmented people being driven mad by their chips.
• Halo:
  • Halo: Combat Evolved has the crashed Pillar of Autumn. Also where the game began.
  • Halo 2 ends at the building that houses Delta Halo's control room. You fight a lot of Brutes, and then you get to the control room itself where the Final Boss fight with Brute Chieftain Tartarus takes place.
  • Halo 3: Bringing things full-circle, the final mission takes place on the Halo installation being built to replace Alpha Halo, the one the Master Chief destroyed in the first game.
  • Halo: Reach ends with a firefight taking place on a platform overlooking the yet-to-depart Pillar of Autumn in the far distance. After firing the MAC at a dozen or so Phantoms and destroying the glassing laser on the Covenant cruiser, Noble 6 is then left behind in a foggy wasteland as endless and increasingly difficult waves of soldiers advance to take you down.
  • Halo 4 has you single-handedly storming the Didact's giant spaceship in order to nuke it from the inside before he destroys Earth.
• The final part of The Darkness has you on a island with a lighthouse where the lighthouse is the where the final fight takes place. The area begins in full daylight, which as it's light you lose your powers, but soon after a solar eclipse happens, making the being inside you extremely powerful... for some reason, who then subverts this trope by destroying everything and body in a mile radius.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl ends inside the Chernobyl nuclear power plant itself, the location you've spent/struggled the entire game trying to reach. And during a period where you spent your time doing blind local teleportation, you surprisingly do one long distance teleportation on the very first place you began to play.
• Somewhat averted in the Turok games, as the rest of the game contains such interesting locales that the final dungeons aren't that much of a telltale shift. The biggest indicator they're the final areas are the fact they're named after the Big Bads of any of the games. (Primagen's lightship, etc.)
• Borderlands:
  • The first game has the Eridian Promontory, a winding, snowy mountain pass leading towards the Vault. In the DLC The Zombie Island of Dr Ned, with you heading to the giant lumber mill that can be seen from nearly everywhere on the island.
  • Borderlands 2 has Hero's Pass, a volcanic cavern excavated by Hyperion that leads to the Vault of the Warrior.
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has Eleseer, the core of Elpis, and where the final battle is located. As if Tycho's Ribs — the passage you had to get through to make it this far — was bad enough, making it to the location of the boss fight itself requires lowering a number of ramps, and contending with some high-levelled enemies. It is pretty though, with a very futuristic blue, black, and pink color scheme.
  • Borderlands 3 has Destroyer's Rift, a massive forming chasm near a small set of Eridian ruins on the surface of Pandora, where The Destroyer emerged after the opening of The Great Vault.
• Near the finale of F.E.A.R. you descend into a vast underground base with Star Wars-like bottomless pits, flashing lights and a massive sphere covered by a wave-like forcefield containing a murderous ghost girl who has been trapped in there for decades. Compared to the relatively mundane office buildings and warehouses that you spend the rest of the game running around in, the contrast is pretty jarring.
• The final level of Crysis 2 takes place in Central Park. A Central Park suspended more than a mile in the air by a Ceph lithoship previously buried underground. A Central Park you have to navigate while massive chunks keep falling off and the Ceph hunt you across its surface, while you have twenty minutes to reach and destroy the lithoship before U.S. command launches a nuke at it.
• Doom:
  • Doom: The second episode has the final level, "Tower of Babel" being actively constructed during the Marine's battle across Deimos.
  • Doom II:
    • Icon of Sin, named after the Final Boss. A giant lake of blood, a demon hundreds of feet tall, and a reverse shooting gallery with rows of monsters blasting away at you.
    • In the Master Levels, the level codenamed Teeth.wad ("The Express Elevator of Hell") serves this purpose (and it's also listed last in the map list in the expansion as included within the Unity ports of Doom II). The level is a complex, challenging facility with an elevator that branches into eight paths (one per floor) which are also identified by number; it is filled with powerful enemies, and requires cleverness for a successful navigation due to parts in some paths that can only open from others; it also features a secret exit leading to a Brutal Bonus Level. Its music is "Evil Incarnate", which was originally the theme for the final level of Spear of Destiny.
  • Doom 64: The Absolution is where the Mother Demon awaits, being a large battlefield with three large gates from which hordes of enemies will come to torment Doomguy one last time before their queen arrives. It's possible to shut down the gates if the secret levels' keys were collected prior.
  • Doom Eternal: Final Sin. The Icon of Sin is stomping across a ravaged Earth as Doomguy returns to finish what he started.
• Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death: After Dredd spends most of the game dispensing justice in Mega City One and tracking down the Dark Judges, the final level sends him to Deadworld again, an Alternate Dimension ruled by Judge Death where all life is a crime.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: The Count's Domain. More specifically, Malachi's Grave Tomb.
• Wolfenstein: The New Order has Deathshead's base, a gigantic Nazi fortress and where the Mad Scientist does his most terrible experiment. It, and Deathshead himself, are considered so vital to the regime's hold over Europe that the Resistance is more than willing to nuke it.

Idle Game

• FE000000: With a name like Finality, getting the achievement "Nearing the end" after performing it for the first time, reaching the star cap before it, and having golden buttons, you know that you're in the last stretch of the game from this layer onwards.

Light Gun Game

• The final battle in Time Crisis 2 takes place in a space center, where the Big Bad actually wields the Weapon of Mass Destruction against you. Of course, unless you're a real pro at that kind of games, that means you'll have to spend at least four usually expensive continues.
• Goldman's office building in House of the Dead 2 and 4.

Mecha Game

• Super Robot Wars Compact's final two levels takes in the Asteroid Colony Axis about to drop to the Earth because of Don Zauser and Koros.

Miscellaneous Games

• Katamari Damacy:
  • The first game doesn't present a "final dungeon" per se... but while you've been rolling around discrete areas and secluded locations in previous levels, the last stage is actually the entire world (which contains all the previous locations, but by the time you get to them you're likely far too large to recognize them.)
  • And then, We Love Katamari goes one step further. The final level is essentially rolling every planet and star around to roll up the sun. Keep in mind the planets and stars are made from levels. The final level is rolling everything you ever rolled in the entire game. In both games if you've imported the save data from the first. You actually have to play this final stage early on in the game, long before you're able to finish it successfully.
  • In Beautiful Katamari, you roll up all the stars and planets, asteroids, strata, constellations, nebulae, King of All Cosmos himself, and if you are exceptional at it, you can roll up the Black Hole in Space that the King caused at the very beginning of the game itself. Very Definitely Final indeed.
  • Katamari Forever. You start about 2m high and work your way up to rolling up everything as in Beautiful Katamari, but the four modes for each level mean you roll up every other level up to four times. Then there's sort of an encore level or two.

MMORPGs

• Final Fantasy XI gets special mention because of having several of these dungeons, all serving this role for their storylines. Such examples are the Shadowlord's Castle for the original storyline, the floating Zilart city of Tu'Lia in Rise of The Zilart, and the Zilart Capital of Al'Taieu... in another dimension in Chains of Promathia, which also has the very last boss fight take place above Vana'Diel! Special mention to the final fight in the Treasures of Aht Urghan expansion where you fight a newly summoned Alexander inside the giant shell of his previous summon. Although you don't have to fight your way there and you could enter the area before that, it is still kind of freaky.
  • The Wings of the Goddess expansion has the Threshold, a fragmented town suspended in ethereal space, with a massive maw in the "sky" over it.
  • The Seekers of Adoulin expansion has the ancient ruins of Ra'Kaznar, where Hades lies in its innermost sanctum.
  • The Rhapsodies of Vana'diel expansion has players go to the bamboo forest of Reisenjima to get to the temple where they fight the Cloud of Darkness.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, each expansion's main storyline has a climactic final dungeon to end on, with the Final Boss usually being unlocked after the completion of the dungeon itself.
  • In A Realm Reborn there's the Praetorium, a massive fortress of The Empire which houses the Ultima Weapon, which the Eorzean Alliance invade with the help of the Scions and the Warrior of Light.
  • Heavensward has the Aetherochemical Research Facility, the interior of the massive Allagan complex called Azys Lla, containing the bioweapons of the Allagan, along with the security systems left in place by them.
  • Stormblood has the Empire-controlled city of Ala Mhigo, invaded by the Alliance to free it from the yoke of the tyrannical Prince Zenos.
  • Shadowbringers has a recreation of the Final Days of the city of Amaurot, filled with eldritch monsters created by the fears of the Ancients. The final part of the dungeon even sends the party into space, allowing them to see the planet below being destroyed by falling meteors, all while Emet-Selch narrates the destruction of his people.
  • Endwalker:
    • The entire final zone of the Expansion could be considered one: Ultima Thule, an eldritch location made up of pure Dynamis and located at the edge of the universe, orbiting around a dead sun where the Endsinger Meteion has made her nest. The place is littered with small-scale recreations of dead or dying planets Meteion encountered, alongside the suffering shades of their long-gone alien inhabitants.
    • The proper final dungeon, the Dead Ends, manages to top Shadowbringers on sheer scale and drama. Essentially Amaurot on a cosmic scale, situated within the dead sun of Ultima Thule, with Meteion guiding you through the final moments of three of the worlds she visited as she narrates what happened like a macabre fairy tale in one last attempt to break your spirit. First is an aquatic world whose water-dwelling inhabitants conquered the surface. Then overpopulation and pollution made the oceans run dry and triggered a flesh-warping plague that turned the world into a toxic hellscape, leading the dwindling survivors to turn on each other in a futile attempt to halt its spread. Second is a futuristic planet whose tyrannical leaders fought a war against "freedom fighters", their desperation driving them to create an army of machines whose sole directive was to destroy anything they identified as a threat to peace. Which wound up including their makers. This led one soldier to nuke all three sides to end the fighting, leaving himself as the Sole Survivor as the world was engulfed in nuclear flames. And finally, an idyllic World Tree utopia whose people achieved perfection and immortality by removing all hardship and sorrow from their lives. No conflict, no illness, no problems at all. Then they realized their lives had no substance or meaning now that they had nothing left to accomplish or strive for, concluded that there was Nothing Left to Do but Die, and created a being similar to a Primal for the sole purpose of killing themselves as painlessly as possible; it's rather telling that the environment turns dark and lifeless once you defeat said being. Honestly, from seeing just these three worlds, it's no wonder Meteion went insane.
• In Phantasy Star Online, the bizarre and dark Ruins end incongruously in a flowery field with a pleasant stone monument in the center. Then Dark Falz appears and the ground turns into skulls. Animate, shrieking skulls.
• Although it's not the final final dungeon, the final dungeon on zOMG Chapter one is suitably epic. Divided into four parts, the final instance takes place below the Shallow Sea as your fight your way to Labtech X's Underwater Base. It is by far one of the most challenging areas in the game, so far.
• Mabinogi, set after Humans defeated the evil Fomors in a great war, ends 2 of its 3 mainstream storylines in a parallel universe in which the Fomors won instead. Interestingly, the ending area of Generation 1 is home to Zombies that are very useful for training the Windmill skill to rank 1. And most people who mastered it on a human can attest to how hard that is.
• An MMORPG like World of Warcraft doesn't have a true "final" dungeon as content is continually added, but major plot lines still conclude in epic dungeons.
  • While the era before the first expansion did not have an overarching plot, the final raid it added certainly fit the bill. Naxxramas was a vast necropolis that floated ominously above the blighted plaguelands, looming over you whether or not you ever confronted its challenge. Master of Naxxramas was Kel'thuzad, right-hand man to the Lich King (who himself was the main villain left over from his victory in Warcraft III), making it the most significant confrontation to the plot-light game to that point. The raid itself featured never-before-seen monsters and bosses that tested raids like never before.
  • Competing with Naxxramas in the original game was Ahn'Qiraj. While its story was developed for World of Warcraft and was mostly self-contained, it was introduced with a new epic backstory that established its relevance. Ahn'Qiraj is part blasphemous temple, part insect hive, and home to an Eldritch Abomination who whispered disturbing messages to the raid group. Sealed up by ancient protectors millennia ago, players have to undergo a massive quest chain that takes them all over the world to re-open it and bring death to the horrors inside. Populated by enough insectoid aberrations to wipe out several armies and reinforced by gargantuan colossi that were made in the image of one of the most terrifying Eldritch Abominations in the Warcraft universe, just opening the gates required a quest chain that took you to some of the longest and most challenging raids of the time and resulted in a world event that simulated a several day long war between the entire server and the denizens of the dungeon. The actual area was split into two regions each with about a dozen extremely hard bosses while the final boss of the forty man raid was completely unkillable until Blizzard scaled down the difficulty from impossible and fixed a few bugs. The actual mechanics of C'thun's fight could scale the damage to points that reached the tens of millions and massacre half a raid in a second.
  • The Black Temple. While it did not conclude the story of The Burning Crusade expansion as a whole, it did conclude the launch plot about Illidan teased with the introduction cinematic. A corrupted temple turned into a fortress, the entire zone that it lies in is designed so all the plot elements do nothing but lead you to the gates, and you need to complete a massive questline requiring completion of other raids just to enter it. A massive siege is occurring outside of the fortress, and the actual raid involves you entering through a hole you blew into the sewers, before you fight your way up and up until the final boss of the expansion waits on the roof.
  • Icecrown Citadel at the end of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion might be the most straight example. You know from the beginning that it's the lair of the Big Bad and thus your ultimate goal, and as you push his forces back the lands get more and more desolate until you reach the barren glacier upon which the citadel was built. The zone is so overrun with undead that the only safe bases of operations are floating airships, and the citadel itself rises high into the sky at the far end of the zone, designed with an extremely sinister architecture and covered in the black blood of an Eldritch Abomination.
  • While Cataclysm's final raid, Dragon Soul, doesn't stay in one place, instead splitting between breaking the siege at Wyrmrest Temple, and then taking the fight to Deathwing, finally ending in a desperate struggle to finish him off before he does the same to the entire world at the Maelstrom, a massive vortex at the epicenter of both the ancient Sundering that first tore the continents of Azeroth from eachother and the Cataclysm that nearly broke them altogether.
  • Mists of Pandaria ends with the Siege of Orgrimmar, which serves as Where It All Began for the Horde, but as this for the Alliance. Ever since Wrath of the Lich King, tensions between the Alliance and the Horde have been escalating, culminating in all-out war that's been raging throughout the expansion. The Siege itself takes place in the very capital of the Horde, first pushing through the bloodied streets of the city before plunging into a massive underground fortress built to house all of the terrible weapons he's plundered from Pandaria.
  • The Legion expansion has a subversion in the Tomb of Sargeras.
    • From the earliest previews, the Tomb of Sargeras was a massive corrupted temple that loomed over the environment and the great fel green beam it shot into the sky sustained the portal that the Burning Legion was using to stage their largest invasion ever. The expansion starts with the heroes besieging the island to reach the Tomb and seal the portal, and when the initial siege is broken, the goal of the expansion becomes to return with special artifacts in order to seal the portal for good. Approaching the Tomb before the counterattack was ready would instantly kill you due to the evil magic emanating from it. However, once the Tomb is attacked once more and the portal is sealed, the heroes decide that they can't simply wait for the Burning Legion to regroup and try again, they need to turn the tables and invade the demon's world to stop them once and for all, making it not the final raid after all (by the time the raid opened, players knew this, but early in the expansion it was often assumed to be the final location).
    • The actual final raid of the expansion, Antorus, the Burning Throne, manages to one-up the Tomb of Sargeras and secure its place as a straight example. The demon's world, Argus, is an utter hellscape that stretches all the way to a bleak and heavily detailed skybox. Antorus absolutely dwarfs the Tomb of Sargeras and getting even remotely close to it leads to nearly instant death that cannot be shielded against. Built into the core of a shattered planet, Antorus, like the Black Temple, must be entered through a makeshift entrance that leads the players through increasingly massive and ominous halls that include an absolutely colossal factory with lines of fel reavers stretching off into the distance.
  • Battle for Azeroth has Ny'alotha, the Waking City, a vision that depicts a possible future in which the Old Gods' ancient Black Empire has been restored and completely conquered Azeroth, and thus reflects the manifestation of all of the Old God N'Zoth's goals and his vision for the future of Azeroth made real.
  • Shadowlands has the Sepulcher of the First Ones, an ancient place of power in Zereth Mortis, containing secrets of the eponymous First Ones that The Jailer seeks to use to unmake the balence of the cosmos.
  • Dragonflight has Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope, growing in the Emerald Dream and meant to serve as the Night Elves' new home on the Dragon Isles. Azeroth's champions band together to defend it from Fyrakk and his molten allies, and keep Fyrakk from devouring it's heart in order to bathe the world in flame.
• EverQuest has had several new ones of these, as several expansions had one to cap off its plotline.
  • The Ruins of Kunark had Veeshan's Peak, the tallest mountain on the planet, which was an active volcano at the heart of a very tall mountain range, where the council of dragons that had been referenced in passing since the game was released apparently resides, and required a ridiculously long and convoluted route to get the key to access... which had to be done by every person in the raid (this was dropped later).
  • Planes of Power had The Plane of Time, a Place Beyond Time where you've learned that the entire pantheon of Norrath (including gods that normally won't cooperate for any reason) have worked together to imprison an outcast deity so that he can't share These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know that he wants to tell everyone. So of COURSE everyone wants to find out.
• While there still is some way to go until the players reach Mordor, which most likely will be the very final dungeon, in The Lord of the Rings Online, you will notice when you're at the conclusion for the storyline you're currently following. While Angmar itself felt like this from the start, that storyline didn't end until the final chapter, seven updates after the game launched. The Moria/Mirkwood storyline doesn't end until the players get to Dol Guldur, one of Sauron's fortresses. For raiders, the final challenge is climbing the fortress all the way to the highest tower, where they face one of the Nazgûl and its flying steed. Speculation is that the latest storyline will end at Isengard.
  • At the end of one of Isengard's storylines (fighting against Saruman), you fight through the different wings of Orthanc, overcoming bosses, empowered with rings created by Saruman himself. At the end, you fight Saruman at the pinnacle of Orthanc, using his rings to destroy his own master ring. In fact, most of Nan Curunír, especially inside Isengard, feel like this as well.
• Guild Wars tends to have these for each campaign. The first campaign ended on a volcanic island, for example.

Platform Game

• Klonoa:
  • Klonoa: Door to Phantomile has the Moon Kingdom, Cress, the home of Klonoa's friend Huepow. Klonoa and Huepow must navigate the halls of Cress to defeat Ghadius and foil his plan to create Nahatomb to destroy Phatomile.
  • Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil has the Kingdom of Sorrow, Hyuponia, where Klonoa and his friends must defeat the King of Sorrow to prevent sorrow from consuming the world.
• The Mega Man franchise:
  • The, ahem, architecture, of Dr. Wily's fortress makes it obvious in the Mega Man (Classic) series. A skull? Really?
  • Mega Man X2 subverts it thoroughly. After completing 4 levels in the North Pole, you see the X-Hunters' base utterly destroyed. So where does X teleport into? Bizarrely enough, Magna Centipede's stage, or just the opening half, replacing the annoying sword with possibly Zero and Sigma. In fact, going to Magna Centipede's stage at that point in time (rather than selecting Sigma) will still make it the closing level.
  • X4 has the Final Weapon, a Kill Sat that X (or Zero) is trying to stop.
  • X5, originally the final chapter of the X saga, has Area Zero as one of these. Notice how different the area feels from the final dungeons in the other games, including those after X5; the background solely consists of untouchable electric light animation, giving the creepiest and the worst feeling of loneliness out of all the final stages in the X saga.
  • The very final boss fight of Mega Man Zero 3 takes place in an even more ruined version of the same room where Zero was initially found by Ciel.
  • Mega Man Zero 4: The Ragnarok orbital cannon, falling from space and burning its way into the atmosphere, with only two minutes left to defeat the final boss of the entire series. Nintendo Hard indeed.
  • In Mega Man ZX, the landscape of the city is clearly dominated by the huge HQ of Slither Inc., a large tower decorated with things that look like a lotus flower. You visit many places inside the city and near the tower as the game's dungeons, it's possible to see the HQ in the background of some of them, and you can even walk by the front doors past the highway stage. Take a guess what the Final Dungeon is.
  • Mega Man ZX Advent: The final battle takes place on the Ouroboros, the ultimate Biometal and fusion of countless Model Ws, the center of the Big Bad's plan to Restart the World, the goal of the enemy Mega Men throughout the series, and heavily resembling the Ragnarok orbital cannon from which the Model Ws were originally spawned from.
• From the Rayman series:
  • After collecting all four masks in Rayman 2: The Great Escape, Rayman must confront the Robo-Pirates in their base of operations and the penultimate level of the game, The Prison Ship, in which Rayman enters the vessel titled The Buccaneer and frees all the slaves the Robo-Pirates have imprisoned. After doing so, Rayman then confronts Admiral Razorbeard in the final level, The Crow's Nest, which takes place at the tipity-top of the prison ship... in the first phase of the battle. The second phase takes place in a lava-filled room in the ship's bottom.
  • Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc has The Tower of Leptys, where the Big Bad and The Dragon have gone to absorb power from the god Leptys. It's filled with all of the game's toughest enemies in large swarms, the most difficult platforming sections in the game, driving sections, and turret sections all leading to the Final Boss at the top.
  • Rayman Origins has two. The first is Moody Clouds, a steampunk city in the sky. The second one, The Land of the Livid Dead, is your typical Brutal Bonus Level.
  • The final non-Bonus world in Rayman Legends is called Olympus Maximus, inspired by Ancient Greece. While the first level takes place on Mount Olympus, most others take place in the Greek Underworld, including tidied, trap-filled mazes maintained by Minotaurs, and fiery, lava-filled caverns housed by swarms of dark creatures. The final boss, the Hades' Hand, starts in the fiery depths of Hades, and slowly ascends to the heavenly skies above Mount Olympus.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Veldin in the first game, which is also Where It All Began, as it was also tutorial level, except now it's set during twilight instead of day, is much longer, and instead of local anklebiters you'll be fighting Drek's Elite Mooks, dropships and tanks (though anklebiters are still there).
  • Megacorp HQ in the second game, with dark atmosphere, two distinct segments which even have different music and loads of enemies going after you as you inflitrate the facility.
  • Mylon in the third game.
• The Sonic series has various examples over time, including:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog's Scrap Brain (and, in the GameGear version, the Sky Base) Zones, both of which being the base of operations in which Eggman's machinations are born.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles's Death Egg, a moon-sized space station made in the likeness of Dr. Eggman.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog CD has Metallic Madness Zone, the factory in which Eggman slowly mechanizes Little Planet. In the past, it is still under construction. In the present, it is simply an ordinary factory. In the Bad Future, it is a horrific wasteland devoid of plants and life slowly crumbling and perpetually malfunctioning, with the entirety of Little Planet implied to be in the same state. In the Good Future, it is a Solar Punk utopia where Eggman's machinations have all but been eradicated and plants and animals grow freely assisted by the same machines that once subjugated them, with only a few lingering deathtraps here and there.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 4 has the Death Egg Mk.II, a recreated Death Egg built around Sonic the Hedgehog CD's Little Planet.
  • Sonic the Fighters' Death Egg II, a new Death Egg where Metal Sonic and Eggman wait to challenge you.
  • Sonic Drift 2 has the Death Egg serving as the final track of the Blue Grand Prix.
  • Sonic Adventure's Final Egg, Eggman's final stronghold after the destruction of the Egg Carrier...at least for Sonic. Inverted for Gamma, for whom Final Egg is the first action stage.
  • Sonic Adventure 2's Space Colony ARK, a derelict space station made by Gerald Robotnik, the posthumous Big Bad, in the midst of preparing a laser to be fired directly at Earth, causing The End of the World as We Know It.
  • The Cosmic Angel, Egg Utopia and Chaos Angel from the Sonic Advance series, a pair of space stations and the slowly collapsing, space-distorted remnants of Angel Island, respectively.
  • Sonic Heroes's Final Fortress, the mothership of an entire fleet of Eggman airships set in the middle of a thunderstorm.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog's Black Comet, named in the Very Definitely Final PATH as The Last Way, the biological home base of the Black Arms where the invasion begins in earnest.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)'s "End of the World," the remnants of Sonic's world slowly falling apart and distorting after Solaris's rebirth.
  • Sonic Unleashed's Eggmanland, a hellish carnival city situated on a floating continent hovering over the Earth's Core.
  • Sonic Colors's Terminal Velocity, the space elevator connecting Earth to Eggman's Interstellar Amusement Park, the latter of which is being consumed by a black hole.
  • Sonic Lost World scales things back by taking place in a simple burning volcano, albeit with the added stipulation of Sonic's world slowly dying thanks to the Deadly Six.
  • Sonic Mania has the Titanic Monarch Zone, a Humongous Mecha the size of the Death Egg at LEAST situated atop Little Planet once more, and a distorted dimension in THERE caused by a malfunctioning Phantom Ruby. The Mania Plus update drives this home by including a new stage transition from Metallic Madness that accentuates that "this is the endgame". Check it out here.
  • Sonic Forces has the Eggman Empire Fortress, a titanic stronghold in the middle of a desolate and dead area of the world, standing as a symbol of Eggman's conquest of the whole world.
• The Legend of Spyro:
  • The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning: You fight Cynder in a world between worlds — a creepy place filled with unbelievably huge planets, weird floating objects that look like ribbons and whisper Spyro's name, and glowing jellyfish. The battle takes place next to a purple, sucking wormhole that functions as a portal to and from hell.
  • The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night: You fight Gaul in the Well of Souls, a looming Monster-Shaped Mountain with green sludge flowing everywhere and a skylight through which the corrupting lights of the moons' eclipses can shine on you.
  • The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: You start out fighting in a fiery void above the destroyed Dragon Temple, then end up falling down an erupting volcano, and end the fight in the center of the planet as it breaks apart. Damn.
• Prince of Persia:
  • Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones: The final battle occurs at the top of the Tower of Babel, which provides a panoramic view of ancient Babylon on your way up. Additionally, the battle is followed by an epilogue of sorts where you chase the game's other Big Bad through a weird landscape of swirling mists, neon platforms, strange perspective tricks, and an occasional flash of a scene from the previous Prince of Persia games. Finally, you confront him in a room where the decor is dominated by... a pair of elegant thrones.
  • Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has the Tower of Dawn, full of sword-wielding sand monsters and requiring precise jumps to be climbed up, without any sand powers. The Big Bad is battled a couple of cutscenes later.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid has Tourian, home of the Mother Brain and the only place you'll find the titular Metroids. Super Metroid also has a Tourian with the same defining traits, with the added bonus of also being the place you finally see the Metroid infant.
  • Metroid: Zero Mission has Chozodia, which happens to contain the Space Pirate Mothership, but considering it more or less just becomes another area later on and the entire anti-climaxiness of the end boss, it's pretty borderline.
  • Metroid Prime Trilogy:
    • Metroid Prime: The final boss fight(s) take place inside the Impact Crater, the source of the space-borne mutagen infecting Tallon IV, which you have to collect a bunch of Artifacts (twelve in total) and defeat Meta Ridley to get into.
    • Metroid Prime: Hunters has Oubliette, a surreal... place that Gorea was banished to. It can only be unlocked by gathering all Octoliths across the Alimbic system and placing them in a special chamber in Alinos.
    • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: To access the Sky Temple in Dark Aether, you have to get back all of the weapons and abilities you lost, steal the planetary energy from the rest of Dark Aether, obtain the Annihilator Beam, and collect the nine Sky Temple Keys. It doesn't hurt that you're told ahead of time that the lord of all Ing is in there, either. He's not the final boss, but shortly after its defeat you fight Dark Samus, who is. But given that the Emperor Ing makes up one-half of the Big Bad Duumvirate and you fight Dark Samus (the other half) in the temple entrance, it still counts.
    • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption brings you to the planet Phaaze, the source of all suffering and evil from the last two games. To access it, you have to take control of a Leviathan Seed that is within the domain of the Space Pirates, for which you must have destroyed the injected Seeds from all affected planets (including that from the Pirates' own planet), and input a Pirate Code that is only available in a wrecked vessel whose state requires a new set of Energy Cells (up to nine, if you want to collect all items and get the Golden Ending) scattered across the galaxy.
  • Metroid II: Return of Samus and by extension Metroid: Samus Returns have the final nesting ground that holds the source of all suffering and evil from the entire series. It's unlocked after all previous areas are devoid of Metroids, and thus only one such creature remains (though the final area itself has a few more hatch before Samus arrives to the Queen's room, so those have to be slain as well). The remake does hold an additional surprise after the final area's completion, however.
  • Metroid Fusion has two final dungeons, actually. The first one is the secret part of the space station, where the Metroids are being bred. AFTER that, you head to SR-X's secret underground labs, which resemble Tourian. Both this and the final bosses represent the trope Where It All Began.
• Super Mario Bros.: At first, only some games marked their respective final levels as truly being the last (for example, there is no indication that World 8 in the original game is the last, or that the seemingly-normal aerial shmup level in the last level of World 4 in the first Land houses both its regular boss and Tatanga), but over time it has become a tradition in the series:
  • Super Mario Bros. 2: World 7-2 starts with the drawbridge to Wart's castle completely open. Though this means World 7 only has two levels instead of three, this one more than makes up for it by being packed by enemies and hazards (including up to four boss fights, and the series' first appearance of conveyor belts), plus being very huge (almost twice as large as a standard level in this game and the majority of games in the series).
  • Super Mario Bros. 3: Bowser's Castle is reached at the end of an eerily desolate straight path in the final section of World 8's map (the only other level present there is the last Remilitarized Zone level). The level itself also has a unique castle design (plus a new hazard in the form of laser-shooting statues) not seen anywhere else in the game.
  • Super Mario World has Bowser's Castle making it clear it's the final destination by displaying the fifty-foot neon letters on the front saying 'BOWSER'; it also brings back several features from previous castles and fortresses, while also adding some new ones. Amusingly enough, the castle has both a front door that can be reached absurdly fast and a back door that leads directly to the room before the boss.
  • Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins has Wario's Castle, tantalizingly located at the center of Mario Land, and only accessible after Mario gathers the eponymous 6 Golden Coins that open the castle's entrance gate.
  • Super Mario 64 has Bowser in the Sky, complete with a Negative Space Wedgie if you don't have at least 70 stars. It is located in the highest floor of Peach's Castle, in the same room housing the last bonus level and the last two regular levels.
  • Super Mario Sunshine has Corona Mountain, a volcanic location whose entrance opens when Shadow Mario is defeated in all regular worlds and Delfino Plaza is flooded. It's a perilous path to the summit, where Bowser, Bowser Jr. and Princess Peach are.
  • Super Mario Galaxy: The Galaxy Reactor is the center of the universe with multiple planets, and it's there where Mario faces Bowser for the last time in the game. It can be accessed when five Grand Stars are retrieved and a minimum total of 60 stars overall are collected.
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2 has Bowser's Galaxy Generator, represented in the final world's map with the largest galaxy icon/diorama in the game and the duology (with the shape of Bowser's head).
  • New Super Mario Bros.: In all games, Bowser's Castle is hidden off the edge of the world map, when you get to it, the map extends to reveal a castle that fills the entire screen. New Super Mario Bros. U changes it up; the final dungeon is Peach's Castle this time, but you can't see what it has become until you enter World 8. And it's two stages long.
  • Super Mario 3D Land: The game appears to end in the World 8 Castle following up 8-5. However, when Mario defeats Bowser and approaches Peach, he notices that this "Peach" is a cardboard modeled after her, and Mario was fooled by it due to Depth Perplexion. Then one more level (8-6) is unlocked, and completing it leads to the real last Castle (where the real Peach is held captive as well), represented by a gigantic castle diorama at the very end of the world's path.
  • Super Mario 3D World: The world containing Bowser's Castle, World Castle, is actually the seventh world. World Bowser (a.k.a. World 8) is a neon amusement park Bowser creates using the sprixies, complete with a tower stretching into the sky that serves as the real final level.
  • Super Mario Odyssey has the Moon Kingdom, where Bowser is planning to have his wedding with Peach. The game introduces it by, instead of playing any music or fanfare, simply showing the sound of the wedding church's bells, audible in the whole place.
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Castle Bowser, while being technically part of Petal Isles (the game's Hub Level, and at the center of which the castle is located), serves the role of the setting for the game's Grand Finale once Mario and his friends help Prince Florian gather all Royal Seeds from the main numbered worlds and dispel the hovering Piranha Plants that guard the castle's entrance. Once inside, the characters have to climb their way to Bowser's whereabouts by conquering dangerous levels where warlike and electrical hazards await; it all culminates in a climactic final stage where Bowser triggers the Wonder Effect to the fullest extent, which the character will have to endure until they finally meet their enemy.
  • Yoshi's Island has King Bowser's Castle, always located in the last world (which in turn is signaled as the last for taking place in a shadowy and/or volcanic wasteland).
  • Wario Land:
    • The aptly-named "Really Final Chapter" in II. Wario has to beat all the other endings to fill out a map that contains the location of the Black Sugar Pirates' secret hideout. Additionally, this level is the only one in the game with a Time Attack.
    • The Golden Pyramid in Wario Land 4.
    • Wario: Master of Disguise has the deceptively serene Allergia Gardens, played in Chapter 10. It is here where the last fragment of the Wishstone is found and, once Wario finds it and the treasured relic is assembled, Tiaramisu reveals her evil side and serves as the Final Boss.
  • Super Princess Peach has Bowser's Villa, the eighth and final world of the game. A big storming castle on top of Vibe Island. The game stops pulling its punches and starts throwing a variety of challenges and enemies at you, on top of having the most difficult boss of the game, Bowser himself.
• Iji has a Very Definitely Final Rooftop, complete with an apocalyptic musical score, an enemy the size of a building himself, a skyline that is literally on fire from planet-destroying orbital bombardment, and the fact that if you win the fight you've put down almost everyone in the game who the writer gave names to.
• Sly Cooper:
  • Krakarov Volcano in Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, a sinister volcano containing Clockwerk's base.
  • Arpeggio's Blimp in Sly 2: Band of Thieves is a massive flying fortress and the final part of the Klaww Gang's operations.
  • The final level of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves is the Cooper family vault, where not only are you going through the entire history of the Cooper family, but you're also having to use all your moves to get through it.
  • The final level of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is Le Paradox's airship, which requires the use of all of the Cooper ancestors to navigate so the gang can advance through the airship. The final battle takes place inside a time vortex and on top of the airship.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: Subverted with the windmill. It's visible right in the middle of Windy for the entire game, but teasingly, there's no way inside. Then, after the War chapter, it gets destroyed by accident when Rodent is bounced away from the then-exploding Tediz island (he survives thanks to his armor). Conker says: "Oh no! Where did the windmill go? I was sure that was the final level!" Instead, the actual final level is the Feral Reserve Bank [sic] (which is part of the Panther King's castle), which has been just out of reach for the entire game until the very end, similarly teasing the player.
• Psychonauts The final level is Very Definitely Final not only in appearance, but also in its theme. Visually, it's a Circus of Fear made entirely out of raw, bloody meat—quite possibly the creepiest thing in the game thus far. Thematically, it's inside the head of the Big Bad himself, and, due to Applied Phlebotinum, the hero's head as well. In the previous level, you've fought the Freudian Excuses of assorted people; now you're fighting your own demons, and those that made the Big Bad who he is.
• Vexx teases the player with this. There's a giant, ominous floating tower visible in the sky from every stage (except for the ones taking place indoors.) You'd think that it might be the final stage, but ultimately it never comes to play, and instead the Final Boss is fought in his home dimension, which still is dark and ominous enough to fit this trope.
• The first Jak and Daxter game ends with a fight atop a mighty citadel tower and the second in an ominous lair. The second last level of the third game takes place on board an enormous spacecraft, however the final boss fight merely occurs in the wasteland outside Spargus.
• Shovel Knight has the Tower of Fate, an ominous structure that can be seen looming in the background throughout most of the game. It is the home of the vile Enchantress whose forces have invaded the land, as well as the setting of the final three stages.
• In Shinobi III: The Ninja Master, Round 7 is titled "The Final Confrontation," and it begins with Joe Musashi clinging to the underside of an airship.
• Super Monkey Ball has many of them.
  • The first game has a stormy palace at the end of the expert levels, but should you make it to the master stages, you reach Banana Sanctuary, a temple filled with all the bananas you can eat, should you make it past its trials.
  • The second game has Dr. Bad-Boon's space base, where you stop the mad doctor from firing a laser that makes all bananas on the earth taste like curry.
  • You face the final boss of Banana Blitz in the obligatory Space Zone, but the secret final world takes place in the sky.
  • Step and Roll has Siliconia, a futuristic city, which shows up after beating the other 6 worlds. Also the preceding world, Magma Valley, also counts.
  • Banana Splitz has a time paradox make up the final world.
• The Kirby series has its share of Final Dungeons:
  • Kirby's Dream Land: Mt. Dedede, a stage consisting of four sections of every stage and a Boss Rush.
  • Kirby's Adventure: Rainbow Resort, an icy region that is home to the Fountain of Dreams. You actually fight the main villain Nightmare using the fountain's Star Rod.
  • Kirby's Dream Land 2: Dark Castle, a bleak fortress from which Dark Matter corrupts Dream Land.
  • Kirby's Dream Land 3: Iceberg, a snow-filled trek ending at scaling Castle Dedede once again. The unlockable Hyper Zone is more of a Post-Final Level.
  • Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: Ripple Star, the once-peaceful and cutesy home planet of Ribbon, now corrupted by Dark Matter. Dark Star, similarly to Hyper Zone, is a Post-Final Level.
  • Kirby & the Amazing Mirror: The Dimension Mirror, a mysterious reflection in the Mirror World where you face off against Dark Meta Knight and his master Dark Mind.
  • Kirby: Canvas Curse: The World of Drawcia is a disturbing realm with paint splattered all over and creepy picture frames that attack Kirby, who he must avoid on his way to fight the titular Wicked Witch.
  • Kirby: Squeak Squad: Gamble Galaxy, a level up in the stars where Kirby fights one last battle against Daroach and Dark Nebula.
  • Kirby's Epic Yarn: Dream Land itself has been transformed into yarn by Yin-Yarn, so Kirby must venture through several stages and fight the usual bosses to reach and beat the sorcerer. More specifically, Castle Dedede is the last stage before the Boss-Only Level where Yin-Yarn lies.
  • Kirby Mass Attack: Volcano Valley is the fourth of the Popopo Islands and the last normal level where Kirby must fight Skullord. Necro Nebula is a Post-Final Level with only a Boss Rush and Necrodeus.
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land: Another Dimension, an interdimensional space through which Kirby and his friends chase after Magolor.
  • Kirby: Triple Deluxe: Royal Road, an elegant castle which is home to the Sectras and the destination of King Dedede's kidnapper.
  • Kirby and the Rainbow Curse: Purple Fortress is the final level of Seventopia where Claycia lies at the top awaiting Kirby.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot: The Access Ark, a massive spherical craft which is the main base of operations of the invading Haltmann Works Company.
  • Team Kirby Clash Deluxe: The aptly named Decisive Battlefield, which seemingly throws all sorts of badass background elements (fire, ruins, asteroids, at least two different planets and a colorful vortex) into one single stage. The battlefield as depicted on the Quest Board currently provides the page image.
  • Kirby's Blowout Blast: The Secret Path is the final stronghold of King Dedede and a long multi-part level with a Boss Rush.
  • Kirby Star Allies: Jambandra Base, a fortress in the far reaches of outer space that is home to the mysterious cult collecting Jamba Hearts. Specifically, the Divine Terminus, the last stage of Far-Flung Starlight Heroes, is where the cult is performing its ceremony to revive Void Termina.
  • Super Kirby Clash: The game not only brings back the Decisive Battlefield as a Disc-One Final Dungeon, but also has the Dreamscape, a stage somehow even more surreal and eye-catching than the Decisive Battlefield, and also where that game's final bosses are all fought.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land: The Redgar Forbidden Lands, a volcanic wasteland where the Beast Pack have made their base. Specifically Lab Discovera at the bottom, an abandoned labratory where Leongar and Fecto Forgo reside.
• Front Mission: Gun Hazard scores a double; first defeating The Society by crashing the The Sentinel, then it's time to head up the ATLAS Space Elevator which has been on the map since the beginning of the game but serves seemingly no purpose.
• Donkey Kong:
  • Donkey Kong '94: The Tower. In the earlier worlds, every fourth stage is a Boss-Only Level. In the Tower, every level is a Boss-Only Level, and the stage music during the latter half of the world turns extremely serious, emphasizing that this is really the end of the game and you've finally cornered Donkey Kong.
  • Donkey Kong Country: The trope is subverted, as DK and Diddy climb to the top of DK Island for Gorilla Glacier, climb slightly down from the top to reach Kremrock Industries Inc., an area named after the main villains of the game... and then just keep going further down the mountain to Chimp Caverns, a generic cavernous area (when there already was a cavernous area earlier in the game) that looks more like a mid-game stage (it even has a Palette Swap of the first boss as the area boss) but is the actual final stage of the game before boarding K. Rool's ship for the Final Boss fight.
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: K. Rool's Keep is posed to be the climactic finale of the game, not counting the bonus Lost World. It's located at the top of Crocodile Isle, and is where Donkey Kong is held captive. Diddy and Dixie traverse dangerous castle areas as they climb up to their destination. When they finally reach the final area (which is even called Stronghold Showdown), they see DK forcefully tied with a rope and approach him to free him... and then he's pulled upward to be taken outside, and the level ends. The two rescuers then venture into the true final area (The Flying Krock), which consists of a race level against Screech and then finally the battle against K. Rool. In the GBA version of the game, Stronghold Showdown does have a boss on its own: Kerozene.
  • Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!: Unlike its two predecessors, which toyed with the trope in different ways, this game plays it straight with KAOS Kore, a large Bavarian-inspired castle located in a deep jungle at the north of Northern Kremisphere (this once again doesn't count the secret Krematoa, which serves as this game's Lost World). Once Dixie and Kiddy arrive to the jungle, they can see the castle from afar and something... sinister happening withing, judging from the purple light leaking from the topmost window.
  • Donkey Kong 64: Hideout Helm is the last major world, and is accessed by entering the mouth of K. Rool's Island (which only opens when almost all Boss Keys are used in K. Lumsy's jail^note The only Key that isn't required is that from Frantic Factory, but you'll need that one eventually to fully open the jail anyway). It consists of disabling the large energy machine to prevent K. Rool from destroying DK Isles, but there's a time limit whose duration will depend on how many blueprints you retrieved. Interestingly, even after you succeed in your mission, K. Rool isn't fought here because he plans to escape before he's found; you even manage to grab the last Boss Key (provided that you have the required items) without any boss fight. K. Rool is only fought after you free K. Lumsy, in DK Isles.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns: The Volcano area of Donkey Kong's Island houses the lair of Tiki Tong, the leader of all the Tikis that have stolen all the bananas and hypnotized all animals except the Kongs and three of the Animal Buddies (Squawks, Rambi and Professor Chops). The levels within the Volcano are very challenging, and the one housing Tiki Tong himself averts the Boss-Only Level trait shared by all other boss levels in the game and the other 2D games in the series: Before meeting the Big Bad, Donkey and Diddy have to reach it by traveling upward through a perilous vertical section with a rocket barrel.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: The game makes use of DK Island as a whole for this purpose, since the Kongs' objective beforehand was to return to it after being exiled into other islands. The homeland they grew in is now a frigid tundra where all familiar locations from the game's predecessor are now shrouded in snow and ice.
• Played literally in Master of Darkness; Round 5 starts you off in the dungeon of Dracula's castle before navigating a maze that leads you to Dracula himself.
• The final location to restore in Ori and the Blind Forest is the inside of imposing Mount Horu on the verge of its eruption. The approach up to it is filled with strong enemies and lethal lava flows, the interior is full of dangerously hot surfaces and tricky platforming that requires you to jump off enemies, and your progress through the dungeon is interspersed with cutscenes of what is happening outside.
• In Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the endgame sees you bringing Seir, the soul of the Spirit Willow to Willow’s End, the hollow corpse of the Spirit Willow filled to the brim with glowing purple Decay that instakills Ori on contact. You also obtain the single most powerful movement ability in the game in the area leading up to this one—Launch. You will need it, both to navigate the area’s Mount Horu-esque platforming and to beat the final boss.
• Blaster Master Zero takes place in an abandoned underground human habitat, so most of the areas you traverse through are mostly what you expect. The last area, Area 8, where the Mutant corruption is heaviest, is a Womb Level. However, the real final area, Area 9, is a straight-up Eldritch Location with logic-defying environment.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures:
  • The first game has Laughin' Jokin' Numbnuts, the final level of Game Land unlocked after beating all the others. It is a rainbow-themed area that consists of every obstacle and enemy type in the game, all put together to create a tense finale.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation:
    • The main game has the Final Tower, the last world of the game. It consists of only two levels; Virtual Insanity, which is similar to the final level from the first game in that it contains every obstacle and enemy type, but goes upwards instead of right, ending with a final fight against The Rival; and the final boss fight at the top.
    • The Tower of Torment expansion's only world, Crappy Castle, essentially serves as the true final world, a four-level trek through the titular tower.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom: The Chum Bucket Lab, the origin of all the robots that have been harassing Bikini Bottom throughout the game. It is a massive arena where the Final Boss is fought, with the latter part of it devoted to platforming inside the boss after it grows gigantic.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Montana Max's Mansion, which serves as the sixth and final world in the game. It features guards that run onto the player's character, butlers who periodically turn the lights off and make everything harder to see, spiky corridors, cannons that shoot money bags, muscular enemies that run very fast, and moving metallic platforms. It all culminates with the Final Boss battle against Max.

Puzzle Games

• Catherine has the Cathedral at the top of the seemingly endless tower; from the beginning of the nightmares everyone's major goal is to reach the Cathedral and obtain "true freedom." Subverted; everyone, including the villains, thought Vincent's journey would end once he reached the Cathedral, but the game actually ends in the Empireo, the heavenly realm above the tower where the gods Dumuzid and Astaroth can be challenged.
• Antichamber: Behind some red bars at the beginning of the game, once you've acquired the Red gun, you can find the exit you've seen for a while behind the wall of glass - and this time, you can actually cross it. Behind it, you'll find a long series of corridors where you'll chase the black block you've seen for the whole game.
• Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters has one per every era, a level ruled by the local villain. The best and most traditional example of this trope is the Transylvanian Era, a dark and creepy locale ruled by the ravenous vampire Count Bloodcount. And then you get to his quiet, scary castle...
• The Talos Principle:
  • In the main game, there's the Tower. That's five floors with puzzles requiring all the mechanics you've used during the game, then some timed puzzles on top of the tower, with two robots (one helping you, one hindering you). After that, you finally get the best ending.
  • In the Road to Gehenna DLC, there's the Secret World where the gray sigils are located. Only accessible after you've acquired at least 10 stars, it requires to do a series of jumps across several fans over the void, just to reach the entrance. Once there, you'll find a collection of the seven hardest puzzles in the game (both the DLC and the main campaign), which provide you with the sigils required to free Admin, leader of the robots you've been freeing during the DLC. Just to reinforce it, the song played there isn't the usual music which plays in forest exteriors like that place, but instead the song that plays outside of the tower in the main campaign.
• The final districts in each season of Criminal Case are always expected to have much higher stakes and whammy moments in its plot. It also helps that the previous districts always have some form of reveal that serve to hype what's coming in the last stretch of the game.
  • Criminal Case: Grimsborough has the Airport district, where you arrive in the wake of Chief King's suicide in order to uncover his motivations behind it, only to slowly learn about an Ancient Conspiracy that is responsible for everything wrong across the city and the season, including the aforementioned suicide.
  • Criminal Case: Pacific Bay has The Wastes, a radioactive wasteland at the edge of the city where the masterminds of the previous district (one of which includes a former member of your team) have fled to escape justice, and it doesn't take long before an end of the world scenario is thrown at you by the now-revealed Big Bad.
  • Criminal Case: World Edition has North America, where SOMBRA, the Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy you've been dealing with for the entire season, is planning their final move to plunge the world into chaos by kickstarting World War III.
  • Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past has Capitol Peak, which deals with the player and their team trying to bring down Mayor Lawson's tyrannical regime as part of La Résistance before he gets all of them executed.
  • Criminal Case: The Conspiracy has Newmark, a futuristic district where the now-fugitive members of Ad Astra have escaped right after revealing the existence of The Man Behind the Man, who is responsible The Conspiracy you've been trying to bring down during the entire season.
  • Criminal Case: Travel in Time has the appropriately named The End, where the last hope of fixing the Bad Future lies before it's too late.
  • Criminal Case: Supernatural Investigations has the South, which is unlocked right after The Demon Queen is freed from her prison and has the player trying to stop her before she can complete her Evil Plan and destroy the world.

Real Time Strategy

• Age of Mythology concludes its epic-scale campaign "Fall of the Trident" with Arkantos and his companions successfully sealing the "last" gate to Tartarus, in the Norse lands, and bringing back the head of Gargarensis to Arkantos' homeland of Atlantis in the penultimate level. Just before they arrive, though, they find out that they've been tricked and Gargarensis is still alive and currently leading an invasion of Atlantis, Where It All Began as Arkantos originally left Atlantis to try and stop sea monster attacks against it. In the very last level, the effort to stop Gargarensis from opening the real last remaining gate into the Underworld results in Atlantis sinking.
• Command & Conquer:
  • The original game featured GDI forces assaulting the Temple of Nod, an evil looking building with tall spires that glows red. The temple serves as the main Nod headquarters and has its own built-in nuclear missile silo. Curiously, the final mission briefing implies that GDI had difficulty in locating Kane's headquarters, even though a temple with tall spires and red glow should have been quite distinguishable on satellite surveillance or aerial reconnaissance.
  • The final missions of Tiberium Wars certainly feels like a final dungeon. You start off the campaign in the Blue zones either containing Nod insurgents or causing havoc as Nod, where the tiberium levels are low and contained. Then the action moves into the yellow zones as the fight is taken to Nod's front door, where tiberium proliferates and structures are all dilapidated. The final levels take place deep in red zones, where tiberium contamination is so high there are whole glaciers of the stuff and the blasted landscape looks more alien than anything, and that's besides the gigantic, glowing towers.
  • Kane's Wrath features one where the Oh, Crap! meter boinks the roof. The enemy will spare no expense towards your destruction and you are awarded by Kane all three Nod Factions for use in the mission, allowing you to build three super weapons (normally restricted to one) and all of their units. There's also a count down timer to doom hanging over your head, with the Tacitus going ever more critical the longer you drag your feet.
• Pikmin:
  • Pikmin (2001) has the Final Trial, a short puzzle course that requires the abilities of all three Pikmin types leading up to the Final Boss, the biggest creature in the game.
  • Pikmin 2 has the Dream Den. The Hocotate Ship will warn that it's exceptionally dangerous, and it's right. The cave has fourteen sublevels with only one rest area and several difficult enemies combined on single floors. It is also found in an area modelled off of the first location of the first game.
  • Pikmin 3: The final area is the Formidable Oak. The entire stage is an ominous, towering termite mound in the middle of a desert.
  • Pikmin 4 continues the trend with the Cavern for a King. This cave has a total of twenty sublevels, of which only three are rest areas. The other seventeen are populated by a wide assortment of enemies and bosses.
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has Modern Day. Features include the setting of the tutorial and the first game's first map, gimmicks, zombies and music from all the past worlds, having the first game's credits theme, Zombies on Your Lawn, as the final wave tone, and being longer than the past worlds and having a boss rush at the last levels.
• In StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, when you go to Char, you cannot go back. The battles get a lot fiercer, at least in lore terms.
• In StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, when you invaded Korhal, you again cannot go back. This feature is actually used for each set of missions.
• StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void has the Void, Amon's home realm, a realm of shadow and darkness with floating desolate rocks. Fittingly, Word of God confirmed that this is the final level of the original storyline that started back in the first game.
• The final mission of either (main series) Homeworld game takes place in orbit around the eponymous Homeworld: Hiigara. Scenery Porn even despite the original's (relatively) limited graphics. It also happens to turn into Scenery Gorn in Homeworld 2.

Roguelike

• In all of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, the final dungeons involve some sort of floating structure. In order, they are:
  • In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team games, the final dungeon is Sky Tower—an enormous palace made of clouds that floats in the sky and serves as the home of the legendary dragon, Rayquaza.
  • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, the final dungeon (before the postgame, at least) is Temporal Tower: a floating, mystic structure which is the embodiment of time and in the middle of collapsing. However, the postgame continues the storyline, and storyline wise it's a Disc-One Final Dungeon; the real final dungeon of the storyline is Dark Crater, an active volcano shrouded in dark power which serves as the secret home of the true Big Bad, Darkrai.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity you have the Glacier Palace: a massive citadel made of ice, the top of which is increasingly warped into an Eldritch Location due to the presence of the local Eldritch Abomination.
  • Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon has the Tree of Life, a mountain-sized tree which is the source of all life on the planet. Currently being lifted from the surface of the earth, the top branches reach into outer space.
• The final level of NetHack is the Astral Plane (AKA Heaven) where you battle swarms of hostile angels and the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
• Similarly, ADOM has the final battle (with an Elder God no less) take place in the realm of primal Chaos.
• Exaggerated in The Binding of Isaac thanks to years and years of new content.
  • The first such dungeon was The Womb, until the Halloween update. After that came Sheol, where you fight Satan.
  • With the Wrath of the Lamb expansion pack, Sheol is sometimes replaced with The Cathedral, whose final boss is Isaac himself. If you manage to get through all that and have a certain trinket with you, you have one more place left... The Chest, whose final boss is ???/Blue Baby.
  • In Rebirth, you can choose between Sheol and the Cathedral, and while The Chest remains, Sheol has its own equivalent: The Dark Room, where you fight The Lamb. Both of those areas also house the Golden Door, which leads to the real True Final Boss (until Afterbirth+ that is...)
  • Afterbirth+ added yet another, the final dungeon to end all final dungeons, in The Void: An Eldritch Location where every room's decor is taken from a different chapter in the game, creating an incoherent, delirious mish-mash of locations. This one features the game's true ending, wrapping up a lot of speculation and marking it as the real final dungeon.
  • Repentance adds not one, but two final dungeons. The first is a fake out, the Corpse, the final dungeon from the Antibirth Game Mod that this DLC canonized. After beating that, you unlock the real final dungeon: Home. The path to this area is a backwards trek through every floor, containing extremely powerful Elite Mook variants of various enemies. Once you make your way back through the Basement, you end up in Isaac's house. His actual house, with no enemies... at least until you come across the actually-seriously-we-damn-mean-it-this-time final bosses - a sequential rush where you have to take on Dogma, the four Ultra Horsemen, and The Beast all in a row.
• Darkest Dungeon has the titular Darkest Dungeon, specifically its deepest floor, past ancient ruins covered in increasingly huge and increasingly disgusting amounts of Meat Moss, you find yourself walking in what seems like a background of stars, with no torch able to pierce the darkness. Once the real final battle begins, however, you find yourself in the literal belly of the beast, with the background being the internal flesh of some indecipherable abomination while you fight its imitation of your ancestor, and finally its heart.
• Darkest Dungeon II: The Mountain; it's ominous enough from a distance, but when you're on its slopes, it loses all pretense of being a normal Earthly place, as a lightning storm starts over it and the ground becomes awash in shadowy mist as you approach the cult Ziggurat at its center, where the chapter boss awaits.
• FTL: Faster Than Light: the final sector strongly implies this even in its name: "Last Stand". Instead of fleeing through space from the ever-encroaching Rebel fleet's advance, the entire sector is occupied right from the start, and the soundtrack eschews the standard Variable Mix and leaves you with always-on tense combat music. The Rebel Flagship is also Very Definitely The Final Boss - it's easily twice the size and has thrice the armament of any ship you have thus far faced.
• Hades has the Temple Of Styx, the area closest to the Gates of the Underworld, and aside from the Final Boss it's the final challenge the player has to do before ending a run.
• World of Horror has the lighthouse, where the Old God's summoning ritual is being conducted. It can only be accessed by solving all of the mysteries in a given playthrough, and is a gauntlet of traps, hazards, and a Final Boss who will try to accelerate the summoning.
• Returnal: after a fakeout end dungeon in the Derelict Citadel, the game truly ends in the Abyssal Scar, a deep-sea chasm in planet Atropos. The area is murky and oppressive, with only the bioluminescence of hostile creatures to light the way, and the Cosmic Horror Story vibes of the narrative are ramping to high gear, giving the entire area a dreamlike sense of nightmare logic. No mater which way you go, the branching paths always lead deeper, forcing Selene to descend downward and downward, a deliberate echo of the descent to the underworld in tales of Classical Mythology.

Shoot Em Up

• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance The Stage 5 ascent up the Shakun Star Central Computer tower is penultimate stage where the player is pursued by swarms of enemies from above and below before the final boss fights.
• If you can complete all the objectives in Xeno Fighters R, you get to make a decisive raid on the refitted space colony the BRES army calls home. And of course, that means a very, very large fleet of fighters is there to make life short and exciting for you. It doesn't help that this isn't just BRES's administrative base; it's also an industrial colony—in part, their main shipyard. So yes, a few of their capital ships and a lot of their recently-constructed higher-grade fighters are ready and willing to fight. Have fun!

Simulation Game

• Ace Combat series:
  • The Electrosphere in the American version of Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (and one of the multiple endings in the Japanese version), a stunning void space crisscrossed by infinite planes covered with shiny luminous grids, with a big green vortex on the background, where you must fight a really tough UI4054 Aurora fighter. Fortunately, by that point you're already flying the mighty XFA-36A.
  • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War had you raid the entrance of and then fly into a giant underground tunnel with an enemy ace on your tail. Except that it is not the true final dungeon. The very definitely final final dungeon is not really a dungeon, it's the open sky of a capital city.
  • Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War had you fly through a canyon with heavy anti-air fire, then into the interior of a dam.
  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown had you enter a series of underground tunnels leading to the International Space Elevator against a small agile drone that can start a Skynet-esque revolution.
• The Tower of Maximus from Sky Odyssey. As it's the goal of the game for the player to rediscover this lost city, it's no secret that this is the final level. When flying here the music suddenly changes to a more mysterious/ominous tone, the massive tower appears out of the mist, and the players has to avoid massive waterwheels along an underground river to reach the center of the city.

Stealth Based Game

• Thief:
  • In Thief: The Dark Project, after visiting such Victorian/medieval/steampunk locations as a mansion, a cathedral, city streets, an opera house, a prison, a thieves' guild etc., the last level is the Maw of Chaos, a hellish dimension of weird layout, magic and the Elements, spewing forth an unlimited horde of monsters. With an Elder God inside that most people in the enlightened world no longer believe in.
  • Thief II: The Metal Age has Soulforge Cathedral, the home of the insane religious leader who has spent the majority of the game trying to kill you, and has now sent a battalion of guards and robots to find you. Your strongest ally and the only other person who knows about his plan has just gotten herself killed in a last-ditch attempt to give you a chance to succeed in stopping him, and you're not going anywhere until you do.
  • Thief: Deadly Shadows actually averts this, as the final sequence of the game takes place all over the City's streets.
• In Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf, you have Marvin the Martian's Planet X.
• The Metal Gear series has a few.
  • REX's hangar in the original Metal Gear Solid, which even has its own ominous theme music (Rex's Lair).
  • Arsenal Gear in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
  • Groznyj Grad in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the fortress where Shagohod is being kept.
  • Outer Haven (a new model of Arsenal Gear) serves as the setting of the final mission in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
  • The US missile base in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is an aversion, since that's only the end of Chapter 5, the main campaign actually ends with a fight against Metal Gear ZEKE atop Mother Base, the player's base of operations.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has OKB Zero.

Survival Horror

• Bendy and the Ink Machine has Ink Bendy's lair, where Henry must reach the throne room to play "The End" in order put an end to Ink Bendy once and for all.
• In the Resident Evil games, it's usually a lab. 0, 1, 2, Code Veronica, Survivor, Outbreak and Umbrella Chronicles follow the normal formula, While the rest is a bit of a mix up...
  • 3's is a abandoned factory. The 2020 remake turns the final level back into a lab, however.
  • 4's is a military base on a island (Dead Aim also does this, but with a different island).
  • 5's is Wesker's personal battleship, which is bursting into flames by the final segment. And the final final showdown takes place inside an active volcano.
  • In 6, Leon and Ada's stories end in a zombified and exploding city, finishing with a trek up a skyscraper. Chris and Jake's stories end in an undersea research facility, and both have opposing elements surrounding the final bosses, water and fire.
  • Revelations ends in The Queen Dido, a sunken luxury cruise ship
• Fatal Frame generally has its final location be the site of the failed ritual, though later games have begun to play with this idea.
  • Fatal Frame: The Hellgate. A barren location underneath the Himuro Mansion, where Kirie was supposed to keep the gate closed and prevent the Malice from escaping.
  • Fatal Frame II: Two locations, actually. The underground path leading to the area just before the ritual's location, where the player has to defeat the Kusabi. Depending on certain conditions, the player may be allowed to proceed to The Abyss, the place where the ritual of the twins takes place, and pits them in one last battle against Sae.
  • Fatal Frame III: The Abyss of the Horizon. Located right next to the Shrine of Thorns, where the priestesses are laid and have to keep the Rift from leaking out.
  • Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse: Shaken up by making the final location the Lighthouse, which is not where the ritual took place. The final battle takes place at the top of the lighthouse.
  • Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water: The Shadowspring. Played with, as the shrine leading to the Shadowspring is one that Yuri has been heading to previously, but was not able to pass through the last door, until it came time for the showdown.
• You always know when you're at the end of a Silent Hill game - if the bizarrchitecture and increasing grossness of the environs don't tip you off, the increase of monsters surely does.
  • 1: About 90% of the way into Otherworld. Order? Logic? Sanity? Causality? You wish.
  • 2: The hotel itself is very final, but the true hotel is very definitely final.
  • 3: The Church of the Order. Welcome home.
  • 4: Walter Sullivan's Re-Birthing Dimension.
  • Silent Hill: Origins: Where it ALL began.
  • Silent Hill: Homecoming: The Chamber of Child Sacrifices
  • Subverted in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories; the Lighthouse looks this way, and is built up this way by the characters, but the end of the game comes right before you enter it.
  • Silent Hill: Downpour: The local island-based prison. Subverted in that Murphy had no plans to go there, and indeed, was in the clear until Anne shoots him, causing him to wake up there, reflecting the game's "Full Circle" theme.
• Haunting Ground: The House Of Truth has shifting rooms, much more linear gameplay, a fake-out final boss, a teleporting Implacable Man for a stalker, and one of the most foreboding tracks in the game on a loop in the background.
• The ObsCure games:
  • In the first game, after spending most of the experience fighting through a high school crawling with monsters, you enter the villain's lab beneath the school, which had been briefly seen in the prologue. The giant metal doors in one room are a pretty good indicator that whatever's behind them is probably the endgame.
  • The second game, however, tops the first by a long shot. What initially seems like the Final Boss fight takes place in the desolate ruins of the high school where the first game was set, in a Where It All Began sort of manner. Once that's over, however, the game waits until after the end credits to reveal that it's not over just yet, dropping the player in a No-Gear Level before you meet the True Final Boss. As if the giant football stadium where you fight him wasn't enough, you've also got the sun coming up over the horizon (the monsters are Weakened by the Light) and a mountain of weapons and ammo right at the gate. Yeah, it's goin' down.
• Until Dawn has the central hall of the Washington Estate, where up to five of the eight surviving characters^note Mike and Sam are definitely still alive by this point. Whether or not Chris, Emily, and Ashley are present depends on whether they lived long enough to reach that point. If Jessica, Matt, and Josh are still alive, then they are trapped in the underground mines, Matt and Jessica trying to escape and Josh having been taken away by the Wendigo-ized Hannah to suffer a Fate Worse than Death. must escape from the Wendigo. Doubles as a case of Where It All Began, as the central hall is the first main area of the estate that you explore.

Third Person Shooter

• The final showdown of Max Payne takes place atop the Aesir Tower, headquarters of Aesir Corporation and Big Bad Nicole Horne. Max Payne 2's final battle happens inside the Woden Manor, and is initially a two-person castle storm until Mona is gunned down by Vlad at the end of the second to last level, at which point Max chases the Big Bad straight to the top for the final level and faces off with him for the last time.
• The final showdown of the John Woo game Stranglehold has Tequila storming the gates of Wong's Manor in order to save his daughter, with the showdown with Wong and Dapang proper taking place in the big chamber with the huge jade dragon statue.
• Dead Space at least has quite a big change of scenery, while Dead Space 2 has you see the Artifact of Doom and the Convergence they have been talking about for all of the two games all through the final section. And all culminates in your own mind, fighting off The Plague.
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves' final boss fight takes place within the mythical neon-blue, glowing Life Tree that was mentioned very early on and then repeatedly discussed the entire game.
• The final dungeon of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is the Outsider space station where Origin is trying to rebuild Mozaic. Interestingly, you never actually square off against Origin. Instead, you are besieged by a never-ending swarm of enemies. Also, you control a different Player Character for this mission, unless, of course, you think of Asaru as your Player Character.
• Spec Ops: The Line subverts this with Konrad's hideout, which the player spends the majority of the game trying to get to. After finally getting there, the last of the Damned 33rd immediately surrenders, leaving the player with just Konrad to face, and after climbing the Burj Khalifa and finally meeting him face to face... you discover that he was Dead All Along, and the Konrad that was talking to you for most of the game (as well as the Damned 33rd who surrendered) were just hallucinations. While there is a "fight" with the hallucinatory Konrad, it just consists of "Shoot Konrad and win." There's an optional final battle after that, but it just takes place in some nondescript ruins against the rescue team who comes for you, and fighting and killing them just triggers one of the bad(der) endings.
• The last three missions in Robokill definitely give off this vibe. The scenery, previously featuring color-coded levels, is now all jet black with a post-apocalyptic look: partly molten holes in the hull, smouldering explosion craters and makeshift barricades, to name a few. There is a noticeable spike in difficulty as well, with much more dangerous enemies as well as generous usage of Bottomless Pits.

Turn Based Tactics

• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce has the Dark Force army's mothership.
• The XCOM games all feature some variation on this.
  • X-COM: UFO Defense (aka UFO: Enemy Unknown) had the 'Cydonia or Bust' mission on the surface of Mars, and the following base mission with the alien overmind.
  • X-COM: Terror from the Deep had the two-part assault on the alien underwater city T'Leth.
  • X-COM: Apocalypse had a series of raids to the alien world ending with a battle over dimension gate generators. With a stream of alien reinforcements teleporting in.
  • Even the final hidden star system in X-COM: Interceptor can be considered an example of this trope.
  • The Spiritual Successor UFO Aftermath stays true to the spirit and ends with a do-or-die assault on the Reticulan mothership docked on the far side of the Moon.
  • Another Spiritual Successor, Xenonauts, has your scientist switch on his FTL jammer, preventing further alien reinforcements from arriving. The alins already in orbit then move to plan B, sending down their flagship filled with Reapers to a large city to start a Zombie Apocalypse to wipe out humanity. Your team has to board it in mid air, then assassinate the alien commander on board and sabotage the ship to escape.
  • The final dungeon of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the Temple Ship, an enormous UFO that encompasses a decent chunk of the Atlantic Ocean. It is also crewed by almost every alien species in the game.
  • The final confrontation in XCOM 2 takes place in an alien facility, built at the bottom of the ocean. To hammer home the point that this is the endgame, you are allowed to take injured soldiers on this mission.
• Silent Storm ends with your squad storming the Thor's Hammer headquarters and facing off against the leader of the conspiracy who is wearing a flying version of a Panzerklein. The goal is to stop them from launching a Kill Sat that would allow them to dominate the ravaged post-World War II nations.
• In Jagged Alliance 2 The Capital of Arulco, Meduna is the final area of the game. It is by far THE hardest portion of the game. The garrison is almost all Blackshirt Elites, armed with the best weaponry available and have access to TANKS. So if you weren't stockpiling those M79 LAW's, you're in for a bad time.
• Battle for Wesnoth outright tells you when you're at the final scenario of a campaign with a bit of text at the bottom of the scenario objectives.

Visual Novel

• You read that right. Even a visual novel like the Ace Attorney series can have a Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
  • The final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies is tried not in a normal, run-of-the-mill courtroom, but in the exploded remains of one that had been bombed earlier in the game.
  • The final case in the duology of The Great Ace Attorney is in a secret courtroom, has a special judge, the Lord Chief Justice himself, and is full of plot points from all over the duology. Its name? The Resolve of Ruynosuke Naruhodo.
• Each Danganronpa game has the final chapter (usually Chapter 6), where the final investigation begins.
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has Chapter 6's investigation, where the remaining students must now investigate the truth about their time at Hope's Peak Academy in order solve the unfinished case of Mukuro Ikusaba's death and deduce the mastermind's identity
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has the Graduation. A simplified version of the class trial room, however, it's in a tower in the middle of nowhere, with the background constantly changing between a neon-orange with Monokuma faces and black with Matrix's green numbers behind as the Neo World Program glitches and threatens the survivors' very existence. When Junko finally reveals herself, some walls go down and a giant Junko shows up stares down at the survivors while another Junko on her cellphone interacts with them. The investigation leading up to this also had an example of this, taking the remaining survivors through a glitched-out, exposition-heavy version of Hope's Peak Academy, the setting of the first game and a key location to the entire franchise.
  • Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls has Towa Hills, the former headquarters of the Towa Group which are now used as the hideout of the Warriors of Hope, the antagonists. It is an Evil Tower of Ominousness that is scaled in Chapter 5, and consists of one long climb with several areas and tough enemies and puzzles.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has the investigation of chapter 6 as this: you investigate the entire school, now being destroyed by a battle between Keebo and the Exisals; this battle is happening while you investigate and you must fight the robots while investigating.
• Both Spirit Hunter games have a final location that is where the investigation of the last chapter takes place.
  • Spirit Hunter: Death Mark: The Underground Shelter serves as this for the main game, as it is the setting of Chapter 5, the last chapter, and where the endgame reveals start to happen. Like most levels, it is maze-like and has some puzzles and Live or Die choices in your way.
  • Spirit Hunter: NG: The Momoi Department Store is the final area of the game where the final chapter takes place. Unlike the Underground Shelter from the previous game, which was a big maze, this area only consists of four rooms and has a single Crisis Choice and only one puzzle (gathering the items to carry out the Demon Tsukuyomi ritual), albeit one that takes a little while and requires a lot of searching.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Scarface: The World Is Yours ends in Sosa's rather large mansion, fighting through his large personal retinue of mooks to finally give him his comeuppance. It's small hat compared to pretty much everything else on the list, but the game is fairly realistic as it stands, so it should be forgivable.
• Saints Row 2's main storyline (initially) ends with the player character singlehandedly assaulting the Philips Building, a massive Combine Citadel-esque black tower that's been standing in the middle of the Saint's Row district for the entire game. First with an attack helicopter, and then breaking in and fighting the rest of the way up the building on foot.
• Minecraft "ends" rather aptly, in The End, an Eldritch Location filled with nothing but endless expanses of air, a background that looks like TV static, making it very hard to see, tons of Endermen, massive Obsidian towers, and the Enderdragon. Although beating the Enderdragon serves as the final major scripted event in the game, the whole thing is a bit of a parody/subversion since it doesn't, well, end the game in any meaningful way. Once the dragon is dead, the game continues as before, and you can travel between the main world and The End at will, making it just another part of the open-ended sandbox.
• The final dungeon of Dead Island takes place on a prison island, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by floating mines, in a building run by the big bad and filled to the brim with hoards of hungry undead. And you can't leave once you've travelled there.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has Big Smoke's Crack Palace, an abandoned set of apartments that the Ballas have taken over to install their drug factory.
• The Golden Ending of Grand Theft Auto V (Ending C, or 'Deathwish') has two - the foundry, where Michael, Franklin, Trevor and Lamar must fight off waves of FIB and Merryweather agents, and Devin Weston's mansion, where Trevor must sneak past Weston's guards to kidnap the Corrupt Corporate Executive himself.
• Assassin's Creed II, with the majority of the game taking place in Florence, Tuscany, Venice, etc. has the last level as Rome, your objective being to head through dozens of Templars trying to stop Ezio getting to the Vatican. You'll have to use all your horseback, blending, and sword-fighting skills to make it to the end, and the final boss battle does not disappoint (Unless in terms of difficulty, but it's satisfying.)
• The final mission of inFAMOUS: Second Son takes place at Augustine's tower, a news building commandeered into DUP's base of operations and surrounded by concrete structures. The first half of the mission is a climb up the outside of the tower with the help of Delsin's smoke powers and support from Fetch and Eugene, culminating with Delsin breaking in through the roof. The second half is a battle against Augustine with Delsin absorbing Agustine's powers and memories, learning the truth of the DUP, and Augustine going One-Winged Angel with Delsin having to stall until Eugene can get him Core Relays so that he can actually use his new concrete powers.
• Level 7 in The Simpsons Hit & Run. It's the suburbs from Levels 1 and 4, but overran by zombies and given a Treehouse of Horror makeover. This is where Kang and Kodos' plan is at their peak, and the final missions of the game all involve driving across the entire map to blow up their alien ship.

Non-video game examples

Fan Works

• The Kingdom Hearts Fan Fiction Those Lacking Spines features one in the Fandom Hearts world "Los Machosexos", which Vexen, Xaldin, and Lexaeus lament about being a shoddy rip-off of The World That Never Was ("Except they have a bowling alley."), and our three heroes, as usual, lampshade this.
  "Let's go through the checklist," Xaldin suggested, one eyebrow raised high over the other as he examined their surroundings quizzically. "Dark skies?"
  "Check," Lexaeus nodded.
  "Foreboding, overly complicated architecture and/or some kind of ruins?"
  "Indeed," Vexen confirmed.
  "Epic-sounding technopop and/or metal music in the background?"
  "Yep."
  "Cryptic clues and references to the end of things, and/or excessively pretentious area names?"
  "We have stepped into the Haven of Wasted Epiphanies," Vexen announced, reading from a convenient nearby sign. "Up ahead is the Village of Twisted Thoughts and the Subdivision of Broken Endings. Triple check."
  "Yes. I thought so," Xaldin sighed. "This is a Final World if ever I saw one."

Literature

• In Sword Art Online, the Arc Villain intended for the dungeon of the hundredth floor of Aincrad, the "Ruby Palace", to serve this role. When Kirito uncovers the villain's plot, however, they allow him to fight the final boss right away, Subverting this trope. The video games Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment play this straight, as the player is tasked with fighting their way through the last twenty-five floors of Aincrad and beating the game the way the villain intended.
• The Great Orcus Labyrinth from Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest was intended by The Liberators to be this by its creator and leader: Oscar Orcus. His Labyrinth consisted of around 200 floors to it: the first 100 floors being the Upper Levels, and the lower 100 floors being known as the True Labyrinth which had far tougher enemies than the previous 100 floors, and required the usage of Magic learned from the previous six Labyrinths to successfully clear it. With those whom cleared the Orcus Labyrinth being gifted with access to Creation Magic as well as knowledge about the Liberators attempted fight against Ehit. Unfortunately for the Liberators, many of the inhabitants of their world 2,000 years later all thought that The Orcus Labyrinth was actually the Noob Cave due to how relatively easy it was to find, and aside from Yue and Hajime; nobody ever managed to get past floor 70 of the Upper Levels.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The 5th edition storyline Tyranny of Dragons has the Well of Dragons, the Volcano Lair of the Cult of the Dragon. The place is defended by armies of evil mercenaries, giants, devils, and chromatic dragons, and the Temple of Tiamat, an eldritch castle that exists simultaneously within the Material Plane and the Nine Hells, stands in the volcano's caldera. It is here that the Cult's leaders are performing a grand Summoning Ritual to bring the dragon goddess Tiamat into the Material Plane.

Real Life

• The Super Bowl, especially in modern times. Whereas the other major American sports leagues (the NBA, MLB, and the NHL) have the teams play at each other's stadiums and arenas in a best-of-seven series, the NFL schedules the Super Bowl years in advance, ostensibly in order to prevent a team from playing the one-off championship game on their home turf.^note It is theoretically possible for a team to do so, but until 2021 no team ever made it to the Super Bowl in a year when their stadium was hosting it. The 1979 Los Angeles Rams and the 1984 San Francisco 49ers both made it to the Super Bowl in years when it was held in their home cities, but both of those Super Bowls were scheduled for different stadiums (the Rose Bowl and Stanford Stadium, respectively). This streak was finally broken in 2021, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers reaching the Super Bowl played in their own Raymond James Stadium. Furthermore, they typically award it to the biggest, most modern, and most high-tech football stadiums in the country, often in a place like Miami, New Orleans, or Los Angeles that is virtually guaranteed to have warm weather even in the dead of February.^note Only six Super Bowls have been played in northern cities, and of those, only one was in a stadium that did not have a dome or a retractable roof, Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. This means that the two teams are facing off in one of America's biggest and fanciest sporting venues, one that was most likely built for exactly that purpose.
• For the other football across the Atlantic, the UEFA Champions League ends in a single game at a high-end stadium that is chosen years in advance. The South American version is the final of the Copa Libertadores (originally played in both stadiums of the respective finalists, but eventually changed to a grand single match in a neutral field).
• What the Super Bowl is to American Football, and The World Cup for everyone else's football, the Olympic Games is to most other sports, and sports as a whole. Host countries spend years building entire sports complexes and, often, entire towns from scratch to accommodate the ridiculously high-profile event. Afterward, since the locals can't possibly make sufficient use of all the enormous facilities, the area usually becomes a Ghost City.
• As far as college goes, the Capstone Project is this when it comes to classes. It takes your knowledge gained via your Bachelor's program, and puts it to the test in an actual real world scenario to prove that you earned that degree.

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