Video Games / Musical Spoiler

Examples of Musical Spoiler in video games.

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Straight Examples

Advance Wars: In Days of Ruin, if Admiral Greyfield/Sigismundo's unsettling behaviour (or the very title of the mission in the North American version) didn't clue you into the fact that he's a villain, there's also that a negative jingle plays when he builds a temporary port when he's nominally working alongside you in Mission 13: Greyfield Strikes/Rearguard Action.
Guilty Gear: In Xrd -SIGN- Ky Kiske and his theme Magnolia Éclair (meaning Lightning Magnolia), is very similar to Judas Priest's Electric Eye. Close to the end of the story mode of Xrd -SIGN- it's heavily implied that Ky became part gear, with the side effect of that not only he's stronger now, but also that his left eye can now turn red, with an electric flow of energy. Literally, an Electric Eye.
If the music in Halo makes you think "How did they MAKE those sounds?!" then load your shotgun and bare your Energy Sword, you're about to be Flooded.
In Chrono Trigger:
- You know when Lucca, Frog, Robo, or Ayla is about to do something cool because their Leitmotif starts playing. Although in his first appearance (a Big Damn Heroes moment), Frog uses Lucca's Leitmotif.
- If you listen to Schala's theme the first few notes are the same as those from Magus's battle music.
- How do you know that the Undersea Palace is important to the plot? Plenty of Mook battles, but no battle music. The Palace's background theme plays throughout.
In Chrono Cross, after the incident at Opassa Beach where you first travel between the dimensions, the first clue that you're not in your own world anymore is that the overworld music has changed from "Fields of Time" to "Dream of the Shore Near Another World".
In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, you know you've walked into a boss room (it doesn't have special doors like later installments) when the music stops. It doesn't happen for the boss in the Long Library, though.
Final Fantasy:
- In Final Fantasy IX, the intro to the "Fairy Battle" theme is meant to sound just like the intro for a standard battle, probably to avoid the Musical Spoiler — but the instruments are different enough that if you're paying even a bit of attention, you can tell the difference.
- It's fairly obvious that Seymor is a villain in Final Fantasy X. If you don't get it by his looks you will surely get by his creepy leitmotif.
- In Final Fantasy VII, if you have the Chocobo Lure materia on, you will know right away whether there's a chocobo in the encounter or not, even while the battle transition is still happening.
- In XIII-2, a slightly different victory theme plays if you achieved a 5-star ranking on a battle. Since the victory music starts up the moment the lat enemy has been killed, you know how well you did long before getting to see your actual rank.
Akitoshi Kawazu has a lot of fun playing with this trope in his work for Square:
- In Final Fantasy Legend II, the heroes are spying on a secret meeting between several villains. As soon as the villains spill the beans on their nefarious underworld dealings and the Heroic Tune fires up. The villains all start looking around, asking "Where's that music coming from?!", then you bust in on them.
- In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, the party reaches the end of a library-themed dungeon and runs into a spacious arena-style gallery as the boss fight music strikes up, then peters out as the heroes look around and no boss monster is evident. Then one of the bookcases grows teeth and claws, and the boss battle music kicks in for real as it attacks.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, during the mission "The Bounty," Marche meets with Clan Ox to discuss information on a wanted criminal... only to find out that he himself is the criminal. The surprise is somewhat spoiled by the fact that the battle music plays during the entire pre-mission dialogue scene, along with the fact that Clan Ox are the only enemies you'll face.
In Dragon Quest III, there are exactly three battle themes. Most bosses don't get their own... but... Baramos, the Disc-One Final Boss, gets a special theme.
- In Dragon Quest IV, Chapter 3, Taloon will sometimes run into traveling merchants. Since these traveling merchants are accompanied by the town theme instead of the standard battle theme, you can tell you're OK as soon as the music starts.
- In Dragon Quest VIII, if you successfully flee from a battle, your first indication is that the music stops.
Lampshaded in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Every time Tristam is about to make an appearance, his Leitmotif plays, and the main character reacts in surprise and starts looking around for him.
At one point in Metal Gear Solid, your comrades actually advise you to listen to the volume of the Background Music in order to judge whether a helicopter is near you or not.
- Plus Snake actually wonders aloud "What happened to the music?" shortly before the battle against Psycho Mantis.
  - Given that Psycho Mantis' entire schtick is that he has No Fourth Wall (you beat him by switching which port the controller's plugged into) this is unsurprising.
- In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Olga's theme plays whenever she is in the scene and only when she is in the scene, from her very first appearance. This particular theme of hers plays when Raiden is about to be shot by Revolver Ocelot and then the ninja shows up to save him, nearly cutting off Ocelot's hand ala the first game and at the end when the ninja jumps in to knock Raiden out on Snake's command, revealing it to be Olga decked out as the ninja. Anyone who listened to the game's OST will recognize the theme.
- And then, as the voice actor credits roll at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots you may be wondering "Why is Big Boss's Leitmotif playing?", then, "Why does Big Boss have a voice actor credit?", and then, "How can Big Boss possibly still be alive?!"
In Banjo-Tooie:
- An ominous theme (aptly named "There Comes Trouble...") always starts playing when the duo is about to face a Boss Battle. Eventually, upon entering a curiously empty room, Kazooie points this out by declaring: "The music's changed. Every time that happens we always end up in a fight," before, oddly enough, fighting Klungo for the third time.
- Subverted in Terrydactyland. Considering the number of massive dinosaurs about, it helps add to the grandeur of the area, but it's still bizarre. An area obstacle gets the ominous theme and boss description (Triassic Steamroller). A minigame gets the ominous theme and boss description (Stomach-Cramped Carnivore). A completely harmless NPC gets the ominous th... no, no theme, but he still gets a description (Seeker of Beverages). Even the actual boss of the area becomes a friendly NPC after his defeat.
Egregious in Deus Ex, where both the music and enemy chatter can alert you to the fact that there are enemies nearby. In fact, this can easily tip players off that something's up with Maggie Chow before you've even had a conversation with her.
Also Splinter Cell, the best way to know if you've been seen is if the music suddenly starts. Being a stealth game, the music is usually off. Also - not sure if you've killed everyone after being seen? Listen to the music. Especially in the first game, it'll start winding down the moment you're in the clear.
In the 2nd and 3rd versions of The Amazon Trail, the normally peaceful jungle music when you're rowing down the river switches to a series of frantic themes if you go down the wrong fork of the river.
In Painkiller, you know when enemies are about to attack because the heavy metal soundtrack will kick on, and you know you've defeated all the enemies in the current area when the music fades away.
Similarly, in Kingdom Hearts, the music changes when you get within a certain distance of Heartless — whether you can see them or not.
- Ventus' Theme has bits of both Roxas and Sora's music in it.
- In Kingdom Hearts coded, Roxas's theme starts a few seconds before he pulls out his signature weapons.
The music in Donkey Kong Jungle Beat changes constantly to indicate the presence of different enemies, enemy vulnerability windows, combos, combo breaks and boss-damaging flurries.
In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, the music changes whenever you're close to an enemy, even when you can't see them. This is actually rather helpful, but pushes the Willing Suspension of Disbelief just a bit further than usual.
The Legend of Zelda:
- The 3D games all replace the normal music with a combat theme when an enemy is near. In addition, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess also has a special remix of the Hyrule Field overworld theme that plays whenever you've exposed an enemy weakpoint, and is generally your cue to commence button mashing (or Wii Remote waggling) to get in as many sword-hits as possible before the boss recovers.
- The Legend of Zelda: Despite lacking a Battle Theme Music for bosses (or any sort of battle music in general), the game manages to warn you when you are approaching boss territory. If any of the adjacent rooms hold the Dungeons boss, there will be "roaring" sounds every few seconds. Though some boss-like monsters will make those sounds while onscreen anyway.
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is the game that introduced boss music to the series. The lack of boss music when facing a foe is a big hint that this is a Mini-boss. When Thunderbird, the apparent Final Boss apears, the background music doesn't change. Of course, this changes when the actual Final Boss appears in the next room...
- In addition, in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, the easy way to tell if you're being chased by the Phantoms in Temple of the Ocean King (other than the giant "I HAVE YOU NOW" or whatever across the bottom of the screen) is by listening to the music changes. When the ominous music goes away, you know they've stopped chasing you.
- Boss battle themes don't usually spoil since they only start after the enemy has been "introduced" to you. However, the music stops when you first enter a boss room, and the series isn't known to throw you into unexpected boss battles. Also, the boss music itself usually stops once you've landed the final hit on the boss, signifying that you've beaten it (though the fact that the game also switches to a cutscene of the boss dying can be a spoiler before even that).
There's a severe difference in style between the normal Background Music and the battle music in the Devil May Cry games. Thus, if you enter an area and the music abruptly shifts gears, prepare yourself. This is especially true for the third game onwards, where most of the battle music tracks have vocals.
Occasionally, when you kill an enemy in God Hand, their soul becomes a demon and attacks you. You'll know it when it happens, even if the enemy is offscreen, because the music suddenly switches to a distinctive guitar sequence (or, if one of the horribly powerful Four-Armed Demons arrives, an orchestra).
In Tales of Symphonia, if it wasn't obvious that the thing you went to the Latheon Gorge to get has a boss guarding it by genre alone, the music stops when the enter the room.
- Another example: whenever you fight a boss, the theme that plays will depend on who or what you're fighting. For example, 'Fighting of the Spirit' will play when fighting a summon spirit and 'Fatalize' will play when fighting a human unaffiliated with one of the major antagonistic groups. 'The Law of the Battle' plays when the boss is a Desian. However, a different boss theme plays when you battle Vidarr and Botta(and later, Botta and Yuan). This is one of several hints that they and their associates are not Desians, despite looking like them.
- If you are underleveled enough when facing an enemy, the normal battle music is replaced with the aptly named The Struggle to Survive, which is the game's regular boss theme.
In Cave Story:
- It is immediately obvious when the fight with Perfect Run Final Boss Ballos begins that the form you start out fighting won't be the only form, as the music then playing is the miniboss or minor boss theme.
- You can be certain that the Doctor isn't the final boss because of the music.
- An earlier boss battle subverts it. The player activates a robot which attempts to destroy him, and in the robot's dialogue the standard boss music starts playing. Then the music is suddenly cut off as Balrog steps on the robot.
In the second half of the combined Sonic 3 & Knuckles, touching a Giant Ring teleports the player to Hidden Palace Zone, where a Super Emerald can be obtained. Later, Lava Reef Zone Act 2 having the same theme as Hidden Palace Zone indicates in no uncertain terms that the latter is physically near/within the same volcano as the former, and the next Zone.
The Sonic Advance Trilogy has the "Boss Pinch". When a boss hits critical HP, the music suddenly changes to reflect it. The first games featured a total different tune for the Boss Pinch but in the third game, it's actually an awesomely frantic remix of the regular boss theme.
Bomberman Generation. The music switches to a variation of the Standard (Multiplayer) Battle theme when a boss is in critical condition.
Sonic Generations, if you know your Sonic music. While standing outside a stage / boss, a medley will play. If you can correctly guess where the medley comes from, then you have an idea of what to expect. Averted for the last two bosses. The sixth boss plays a remix of E.G.G.M.A.N. from Sonic Adventure 2 it's actually the Egg Dragoon from Sonic Unleashed, and the final boss plays no music at all.
Planescape: Torment uses this occasionally, especially in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. A few seconds into the area's music Deionarra's theme can be heard, and sure enough walking a few steps you meet her again.
Knights of the Old Republic:
- As you enter the roof of the Temple of the Ancients, Bastila's theme music plays. It's not very long before you meet the person in question.
- Darth Revan's theme music plays at character creation. The first time through, players are of course unaware of its significance, but may start wondering why the character creation music keeps playing every time the topic of Darth Revan comes up...
Parasite Eve does this fairly often; when a boss is in the next room or a major event has happened, the music will stop. Also occurs during the Bonus Dungeon when you arrive in a very large room where a boss would be.
Hostile NPCs (and animals) in Gothic tend to chase the player if he tries to flee from a fight. It's possible to tell when they've given up the chase without having to turn and look, because the dramatic music stops playing.
You can tell how close you are to winning or losing a boss fight (on foot) in Skies of Arcadia by how panicked or triumphant the music sounds.
Same thing in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, which are also by Bethesda. Players should especially take notice when the danger music starts up here, because a Deathclaw could be bearing down on you. Another caveat is that the Pip-Boy radio overrides the Background Music. The latter game also has creepy music when enemies are nearby but haven't detected the player yet, which transitions to the full-on battle music when they spot and attack you.
The Elder Scrolls series:
- Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim all switch to battle music whenever you aggro an enemy — regardless of whether you've actually spotted said enemy.
- The disease carrying, Airborne Mook, hard-to-hit, plentiful Cliff Racers in Morrowind also have their own special leitmotif battlemusic for when they detect the player.
- The dragons of Skyrim are the spiritual successors to the Cliff Racers in that regard. And come with convenient Dovahzul chanting, often in the form of Triumphant Reprise of the game's main theme, to let you know annoyance-from-above is on its way.
In The End Times: Vermintide, the sound of a war horn indicates a wave of Clanrats and Skavenslaves is on the way. In Vermintide II, a wave of enemies is heralded by the ringing of bells.
Left 4 Dead has musical cues for a lot of things. Zombie hordes attacking, special events, atmosphere cues, etc. Most prominent of all would be the leitmotif that kicks in when certain special zombies are nearby. And yes, people have already figured out how to replace said music with renditions of Yakety Sax. Here are the Witch and Tank themes. If you hear them in gameplay, you know that you're in for a near-death experience.
The freeware PC game Survival Crisis Z varies the number of instruments used for its Background Music based on the number and type of enemies near the player, ranging from a simple bass beat to an almost-overwhelming cacophony of industrial, glass, and synthetic noise. Given that zombies can randomly appear en masse just by entering and leaving buildings, it's not at all uncommon to walk through a door and instantly know you're in trouble by virtue of several additional instruments kicking in.
Wonder Boy in Monster World was an exception to the boss rule: even the second stage of the final boss used one of the stock boss tracks, with original music only coming in for the end credits.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune plays scarier action music when you go into fights. Since bad guys come in waves and sometimes hide in weird places, you can occasionally lose track of one or two enemies. Thankfully the music doesn't change back to the ambient sound effects until you've killed them all, so you know to use caution going around corners and such.
Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario Bros. 2: When it's not otherwise obvious, the change to the boss theme can let the player know that a boss is coming up.
- Super Mario Galaxy:
  - There's an example heard in a few cases, there's a certain ominous theme appropriately titled "A Tense Moment" in the small section of the level before a boss battle, as can be seen when on the UFO before fighting Topmaniac, the small section of level before Tarantox and before the first King Kaliente battle (although really, it's kinda ironic the only bosses this happens for are those that don't need the warning because they're generally easy). Similarly, there's a kind of dead obvious giveaway of the boss battle about to start in Bowser Jr's reactor levels, in that his theme tune starts just before the boss starts attacking (and Bowser Jr himself will fly in and taunt you.)
  - This game and its sequel also use a method similar to Twilight Princess, in that during the fights with Bowser, Ominous Latin Chanting will be added to the music when he's vulnerable to attack.
  - Galaxy subverts this with Bowser Jr's appearance in the final level, where at first it looks like you're going to fight him before actually fighting Bowser for the last time, but it turns out that you actually fight Bowser directly instead. Although he does rain meteors down on the stairway.
- Super Mario Galaxy 2: "A Tense Moment" is remixed, but it only plays for the Daredevil Comet on Bowser Jr's Boom Bunker—which is a pretty ominous level in itself, featuring the wreckage of Megahammer, a castle with prison-style spotlights, a planet consisting of little more than a slew of spinning platforms and a black hole, a subspace swamp, and the sun as a massive fireball looming in the background.
- In Super Mario RPG, "The Weapons Show Up" music plays the moment you arrive in Seaside Town, immediately before you happen upon any of the townsfolk, who are obviously acting suspicious. That music immediately tips players off to how the Smithy Gang is in control of the town.
The presence of enemies in F.E.A.R. and its sequel can often be given away by changes in the music and the occasional dramatic sting. Especially helpful for revealing Replica Assassins before they kill your face.
In La-Mulana, if you enter a boss room before unlocking the boss, the area music keeps playing. Once you unlock the boss, entering the room replaces the area music with the pre-boss music.
In Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, if the music stops without "Mission Accomplished" flashing on the screen, it is guaranteed that Strigon Team, cruise missiles, or both are going to show up in the next few seconds.
In the Tetris: The Grand Master series, if the music cuts out, the next section is going to have a Difficulty Spike. In TGM1 and TGM2's Master mode, this famously first happens at halfway through the game—once you get to the next section, pieces will start dropping instantly. In TGM3, this can happen as early as three-tenths into the game if you're fast enough
Super Robot Wars generally started up an easily memorizable musical cue that comes in about two seconds before either The Cavalry arrives or you're about to get swarmed by a dozen new units right as you'd gotten by the last wave through the skin of your teeth.
- Plus many Original Generation characters have their own musical theme that plays when they take a turn in battle. Original enemies also have this, and it usually overrides the heroes theme. Take a good listen. If the music is inspiring or heroic, then they'll be pulling a Heel–Face Turn before the end. There's no way that "Trombe" or "I am Baran Doban" could belong to total villains after all. And Shura General Alion's joining of you would have come right the hell out of nowhere, since he didn't do this in the original game, were it not for his very non villainous music playing every time you fight him before hand. There are only two exceptions. Shu's sinister and epic "Dark Prison" is blaring whether he's shooting at you or saving your hide, and Alpha 3's Hazal Gozzo has the oddly cheerful "Clown Master" as his theme, despite being evil and never even has a chance to join you.
- Most prominent example comes from Super Robot Wars W. The first Database member that appeared is Aria Advance, and her leitmotif, if listened closely, is a rearrangements of Kazuma's leitmotif.She is his clone.
In Alien vs. Predator:
- In 2, xenomorph encounters would be accompanied by the orchestral soundtrack...of AvP 1. For some reason the original installment, though packaged with a soundtrack, never utilized it in-game, which is why it is much, much scarier than the sequel. This is also the reason that the actual film Alien cut back on its original bombastic musical score, replacing it with mostly silence.
- Aliens vs. Predator (2010) followed the example of its 1999 predecessor, leaving the score mostly unaltered except for certain scripted events. Arguably less effective, however, as the 1999 game used silence to emulate the score of Alien as described above, making it one of the creepiest games to date, matching the likes of Silent Hill.
Averted in Dual Orb II... for the simple reason that the developers didn't bother to make more than one battle theme for the entire game. Even the final battle uses the standard music.
In ICO, the music is your first warning that the shadow-wraiths are approaching, or that some are still lurking nearby even if you can't see them.
In EarthBound (1994), you know a visit to the Threed Sunset Hotel is about to go very, very wrong when the usual hotel theme is distorted into an eerie parody of itself.
Etrian Odyssey: You know you've reached a Boss Room, the whereabouts of a very dangerous FOE, or the setting of a sinister plot reveal, if the background music associated with incoming threats ("Red and Black" in the first two games and their respective remakes, "Unknown Menace" in the third and fifth games, and "Imminent Calamity in the fourth and sixth).
The music in Syndicate shifts to a much more tense and fast-paced theme when an enemy cyborg is nearby. The manual advises the player to use the music as an early warning system for imminent combat.
In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a deep note followed by ominous music means a Juggernaut is after you. Be very afraid.
Because Tomb Raider games tend to have ambient soundtracks for levels, musical cues become key means of distinguishing when a trap, puzzle, or hazard is nearby. And the more dramatic the cue, the more imminent the danger is (sometimes you will only have seconds to live unless you react quickly).
Dead Space:
- It's not over until the music goes away. This makes it rather disorienting to fight in a vacuum, where the battle music is typically absent.
- Made even worse by the fact that the music seems to be stemming from the Necromorphs themselves. If you run away from a group of Necromorphs, you can hear the music slowly fade away as the distance between you grows larger and hear it slowly fade back in as the distance grows smaller, meaning that if you lose track of a Necromorph in a large area, you simply have to listen to the volume of the music to help clue you in as to whether or not you're getting closer.
In Metroid Fusion you can often tell that you're nearing a boss battle when a certain piece of ominous music plays. The soundtrack is non-apologetic about this, calling itself "Tension Before a Confrontation".
- The game's Big Bad, the SA-X, has its own (very, very chilling) theme as well, rendered more terrifying by the fact that the thing is stalking you through the station and can show up just about anywhere, with no warning. If you enter a room and suddenly the music turns to a quiet, ominous piece, you know it's nearby.
In Professor Layton and the Curious Village, the professor's theme has a subtle ticking as punctuation. This foreshadows the revelation that the villagers are all robots. And when Layton's about to reveal something about the mystery, the music stops.
Mother 3:
- There's one that, if you're paying attention to it, hints at the twist that Fassad is really Locria, the seventh and final Magypsy. When he confronts your party as 'New/Miracle Fassad,' the musical horns he now has fitted to him play an even further distorted version of the saxophone line in the Magypsys' leitmotif.
- Additionally, all player characters and enemies have a certain instrument or sound (electric guitars, horns, animal noises, etc.) that plays when they attack, incorporated into the "sound battle" system. Because of this system, the player characters' combo instruments tend to stand out a bit more than the enemies', so it's easy to miss one of the first giveaways to the Masked Man's identity. When you first fight him, his combo instrument is the same as Claus's when he fought alongside you at the beginning of the game. In a similar fashion, knowing that Duster's combo instrument is a bass helps to remove any lingering doubt you might conceivably have as to Lucky's true identity, though this isn't as strong (or, indeed, as obscure) as the former example.
Both the Penumbra series and its spiritual successor Amnesia: The Dark Descent play this trope straight. Hide or run until the caution/danger music stops playing and the enemies are guaranteed to have left the area.
Bayonetta:
- One of the very last boss fights is accompanied by a song named You May Call Me Father. Yes, that kind. Needless to say, a single look at the game's soundtrack blows that particular reveal right out the window.
- Bayonetta 2: "Lumen Sage and Temperantia" samples and rearranges parts of "You May Call Me Father", hinting at the true identity of the Masked Lumen. Once it's revealed, the original song gets used once again.
In certain Kirby games (such as Nightmare in Dream Land), the music completely stops before a boss room. That and there's usually a few recovery items and free copy abilities. For the most part though, this series averts this- the Boss Battles you'd expect to be the Final Boss have unique music to them, even when there's a second form or even another battle afterwards. It also often averts the other forms of Musical Spoiler, for example, the fight music will often pause after you've beaten the first form of a boss, only to come back for the real battle.
Used in many ways in the Silent Hill games. If you hear particularly ominous ambient noise/music, it usually means enemies are nearby or something big such as a Boss Battle or transition to the Dark World is about to happen. However, sometimes it's just a false scare. Interestingly, starting in the second game, the presence of an obvious "combat theme" renders the radio item redundant. The radio is ostensibly there to alert the player to the presence of monsters, but almost every encounter features a clanging music score, making the radio somewhat moot.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis: When "Feel The Tense" starts up, Nemesis has entered the area. In RE 2 and others, if the music is replaced by silence, it means something such as a Licker is going to jump out at you. In fact, more or less all the RE games use this trope in some way.
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne:
- At one point in the Bonus Dungeon, Dante will hunt the Demifiend through a series of tunnels. If his theme replaces the background music, it means he's close to finding you.
- The Demifiend himself appears as a Superboss in Digital Devil Saga, but the theme playing when you fight him is just the usual Random Encounter theme. Nocturne's Random Encounter theme, that is, signifying that he is so powerful that your party is just another Random Encounter to him.
In Iron Tank, the music changes to static noise, or sometimes the boss music itself, shortly before a boss fight.
In Syphon Filter, the music intensifies when the enemy is targeting you, and calms down when they lose sight of you. The later games such as Omega Strain have special music themes for high-ranking terrorists or Timed Mission objectives.
Mass Effect: It's not much of a spoiler, per se (talking to anyone suggests basically the same thing), but when the time comes to have it out with Wrex on Virmire, even walking towards him turns on the Ominous Drumroll.
Haunting Ground uses this specifically as a game mechanic: Belli castle has its ambient music, and it has the chase music for each of Fiona's pursuers. However, because those pursuers are actively searching for Fiona, they're running around the castle the same as she is. Whenever one of them is in a room adjacent to the one Fiona's in, the music slowly fades out into complete ''silence'', leading to one of the best uses of "Wait, it's too quiet" ever to be visited on a player.
Appears accidentally in Dungeons of Dredmor. If the normal Background Music stops when you open the door to a room, instead of changing quickly when you walk through the door, it just means the game is having trouble loading both the massive amounts of enemies in the room and the awesome 'Monster Zoo!' theme.
In Hanako's bad ending of Katawa Shoujo, the ominous "Cold Iron" theme starts playing as the last scene begins, before things start going wrong.
The music in Battlestar Galactica Online picks up when you engage in behaviour that triggers the Threat indicator. Unfortunately, it's easy to trigger the indicator by accident.
Portal 2: Along with Wheatley's innocent-turned-sinister laugh, the ambient lighting turning red, and THE F**KING PANELS BOUNCING WHILE HE LAUGHS, the music suddenly becoming a lot more dramatic makes us realize that maybe it wasn't such a great idea to install him into GLaDOS's body. Similarly, Wheatley's boss theme, Bombs For Throwing At You, is labeled as a "Five Part Plan". But he only goes through four parts at the start of the fight. Eventually, he reveals the fifth part- rig the stalemate button with bombs in the event someone tries to push it.
Psychonauts. For just one or two seconds at a time in the BGM during the fight with the first brain tank, the BGM from Oleander's mind will suddenly play quietly, and then shut off again, cluing you in that he's behind it all. Although, you may have known already, and the full revelation does hit you in the face a few moments after the boss fight.
The music in Receiver changes and crescendos as you approach enemies.
Lumine's theme in the eighth installment of Mega Man X. The tune is just so ominous when he first appears that it's almost a dead giveaway that he's the true villain... even if you don't get to fight him if you play on Easy.
In Xenogears, ''Light From the Netherword plays in the opening sequence, where a ship's systems mysteriously go out of control and result in its destruction. Omen, a remix of it, plays in Babel Tower when humans mutate into Wels, and other areas and events related to Deus and the Eldridge.
Live A Live subtly foreshadows that all the chapter bosses are one single demonic entity in the boss theme "Megalomania". The last 15 seconds of the theme before it loops are accompanied by an Ominous Pipe Organ, which seems out of place when fighting Wild West bandits and martial arts masters until The Reveal.
Slender: The Arrival does this twice. Once you get the third page, more ominous music starts playing and it increases as you continue to collect more pages. Later, after you activate two generators, strings start playing sinisterly and Kate the proxy starts chasing you.
Jet Force Gemini only has a single boss battle theme used for every boss. As such, this trope might appear to be played straight if you've only got as far as the first battle with Big Bad Mizar and are expecting the True Final Boss to have a unique theme, but since said final boss uses the same theme as all the others, it's technically a subversion. Even the final portion of gameplay that comes after the final boss reuses a common gameplay theme used in several previous areas too.
If you ever hear the 'Boss Intro' theme from Donkey Kong 64, then you can pretty sure trouble isn't far away. It works kind of like 'There Comes Trouble' from Banjo Tooie, and plays in many of the same areas (as well as the cutscene before the boss appears).
Lampshaded in Conker's Bad Fur Day, as the Haybot rises from the flames:
Conker: I don't think I like the sound of that music!
Frankie: I don't think I like the sound of that music either!
Very subtle example in Bravely Default. The normal boss theme seems to be a standard looping track... but if you listen closely you'll notice that the second loop of the song has notably different backing, particularly the guitar riffs. This foreshadows the "Groundhog Day" Loop nature of the game, where the same events repeat with subtle differences each time.
This was averted with Freedom Planet's collectible cards. To prevent players from playing a track out of level they've never played, the game requires the player to finish the game at least once to play the tracks.
In The Forest, an eerie chime indicates when you've been spotted by a cannibal, and action music plays out when they become aggressive and start running towards you. Since visibility in the titular forest island is usually low for the player, this is very helpful.
In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Emperor Vigarde appears to be the Big Bad, but when he's fought in Chapter 15 of Ephraim's route, the generic "major boss" theme for Grado's major generals and a few other characters, plays. Vigarde turns out to have died before the start of the game. His son Lyon reanimated his corpse, having been manipulated by the true Big Bad, the Demon King Formortiis.
In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, it's not hard to tell that something tragic is going to happen to Pelleas when his theme is one of the bleakest, most depressing sounding songs in the series.
In Fire Emblem Fates:
- The track "Puppet's Feast" is normally reserved for Vallite bosses. So when it's suddenly used as the battle theme for Takumi in Chapter 13 and 23 of Conquest, you know there's more going on than meets the eye.
- Outside of major bosses, the game has two different boss themes for each nation: one for those who are playable on at least one route, and one for those that are never playable. This can sometimes spoil whether or not someone will join. For example, on Birthright, Silas uses the playable Nohrian boss theme when fought in Chapter 7, and sure enough he joins your army afterwards. Later on, Zola seems to make a Heel–Face Turn, but he used the non-playable Nohrian boss theme when fought. Sure enough, he's a Fake Defector. Then there's Shura, who not only uses a Hoshidan boss theme despite claiming to be a Nohrian bandit, but it's the playable Hoshidan boss theme. There's also Fuga who, despite not being playable in either Birthright or Conquest, uses the playable Hoshidan boss theme as well, as a result of him being playable only in Revelation.
Ao Oni: No chase music plays at all during the final chase, cluing you in that it's a never-ending pursuit.
In Pokémon Red and Blue, the theme of Team Rocket's Hideout is a Dark Reprise of the already creepy theme of the Viridian Forest. The boss of Team Rocket, Giovanni, can be encountered in the hideout; the Viridian Forest is next to Viridian City with the abandoned Gym. The Gym Leader of Viridian City is actually Giovanni.
In Pokémon Sun and Moon, Team Skull boss Guzma's battle theme contains a snippet of the Aether Foundation's Leitmotif, hinting that Team Skull is working with the Aether Foundation.
In many Pokémon games, legendary encounters have different battle music than normal wild encounter music. If the legendary Pokémon in question is encountered randomly (instead of as part of a scripted battle), this music (along with, in many but not all games, the unique fade-in animations) can clue a player in that they're about to face something special.
Undertale:
- The majority of the boss battle themes are about two to three minutes long, but Mettaton NEO's theme only plays for thirty seconds before looping. He's a guaranteed one-shot and never actually attacks the player. Subverted with "Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans". You can fight Sans on a Genocide route, but the song never plays. The title only said it might play, after all. Instead, you get "Megalovania".
- In "Finale," played during the final boss of the Neutral Route, you might hear some faint bells in the background. This is Asriel's leitmotif ("Memory"/"His Theme"), foreshadowing the reveal of Flowey's original identity in the True Pacifist Ending.
In a Monster Hunter hunt, if the "you've been spotted by a monster" Scare Chord suddenly overrides the current battle theme before kicking off a new one, you instantly know something bigger and nastier has just shown up. The culprit is usually Deviljho, but it can be anything with its own Leitmotif that takes priority over the current theme.
Hollow Knight: While you encounter mid-bosses at different points in the game, as well as rooms that are locked and need to be cleared of spawning enemies before you can move on, the sign that you're about to fight a major boss is the subtle yet intense Background Music before entering the boss area. When about to face the Final Boss, there is no music in that area at all. This indicates that you're gonna be fighting the True Final Boss here if you meet certain criteria. Also, the Final Boss's Leitmotif will change into a sad orchestra halfway through the fight, indicating its formerly-friendly state but is now corrupted and forced to fight you.
Normally in Gradius Gaiden's eighth stage, there are 6 bosses, with bosses 1-3 having one theme, bosses 4 and 5 having another, and the last boss having the standard boss theme. However, if you're playing on the second loop or above, the second of these tracks continues to play for the sixth boss, tipping you off that something is very different about this stage this time. Sure enough, there's a seventh boss, and only then does the normal boss theme finally play.
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The epic final showdown with Risky Boots is set to the regular boss music. Sure enough, she's not the final boss, and after her, you fight The Tinkerbrain, the real final boss, whih has a unique music for both its forms.
Mario Party 2: Each board ends with Bowser showing up to cause trouble, accompanied by his ominous theme song, followed by the Super Star (the winning player) showing up to do a Big Damn Heroes moment with a triumphant and heroic theme song. In the last board, Bowser's theme continues when the Super Star makes an appearance, and the Super Star is unable to defeat Bowser alone. When Toad, the other players and the Koopa Troopa, who give the Super Star a star, the aforementioned heroic theme plays, and the Super Star manages to turn the tide and win.
I=MGCM: At the beginning of the scene at Chapter 4 Episode 5 in the main story, when eerie music plays in the background, you know something extremely bad will happen. Kaori, one of magical heroines, screams in pain and dies from fatal injuries after being ambushed by a demon. The next scene is even worse: She's subsequently corrupted into a demon. Spoiler Title is also involved in that episode as the title of it is "The End of Daily Life".
A meta one for the reveal of the eighth DLC fighter for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Shortly after Galeem gets cut in half and the halves fall out of the sky and the Fake Master Hands start vanishing, the song "Advent: One-Winged Angel" (yes, that one) starts playing and zooms onto a black speck in the sky that was behind Galeem, immediately giving away the identity of the star of Challenger Pack 8, revealing it to be none other than the Trope Namer for One-Winged Angel himself, Sephiroth.
Dead by Daylight, the game about a group of survivors trying to escape the killer, has tendency of playing its chase music long before Killer player closes in enough on the target, cluing Survivor players on the fact that they're about to be attacked. To an extent, it also works for Killer players - who may accidentally detect hiding survivors by chase music kicking in.
Ys:
- The disciple trials bosses in Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys use "A Great Ordeal" for their battle theme, as opposed to "Battle 58".
- In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, the music is silenced before the first boss appears.
Hotline Miami does this very subtly; the M|O|O|N track "Hydrogen" only plays in the background of levels which have a boss fight at the end.
In the final mission of Homeworld the initial wave of Taiidan warships and the following reinforcements coming out of hyperspace are scored with the Imperial Battle Music. When one wave comes out of hyperspace right over the Mothership, however, the music changes to Agnus Dei, the theme that played when the Mothership was launched and in a number of key moments, hinting that these ships are in fact the Taiidan rebels coming to the rescue.
While the typical Exploration Zone music in Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis can be somewhat calm (if it's not in the Stia region) and the towns have their own themes, that music tends to be overridden whenever an Urgent Quest is scheduled to go down. That tends to be the usual tense theme to get you ready for some big nasty DOLLS unit to slap the crap out of you or die trying, but if you hear a different theme while in the Aelio region, you better buckle up, because your opponent is none other than Dark Falz itself. ^note

Subversions

Axiom Verge: "Apocalypse", which was used previously in the game as a variant boss music plays during the battle against Athetos, who turns out not to have a second form or unique Final Boss music at all.
Chrono Trigger has a funny pair of subversions involving Ozzie. The first time you meet him, he brings up a series of monsters with a crank, and they drop onto a conveyor belt. The battle music starts, and your characters even get into their battle poses... then the enemies fall into a pit at the other end of the conveyor belt. Insert "record winding down" sound here. Then, the second time you meet him, the boss theme starts playing, and then a small cat comes in and trips a lever, and the boss theme fades out as Ozzie drops into the Bottomless Pit.
- And who can forget Dalton? When he epically turns the Epoch into the "Aero-Dalton Imperial", Crono's "fanfare" theme starts up, prompting Dalton to yell, "No, no, no, no...! Stop the music!" The music then changes into "A Spot of Crisis", a tense theme, and he says, "Ha! There we go! Ready for takeoff!"
The final boss of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is an inversion: it had special music for its first forms, but used the mini-boss music for its final form. This was changed in the Switch remake.
- Also, in Twilight Princess, in Hyrule Castle, the final dungeon, aside from the mini-boss songs that play when fighting a Darknut and King Bulblin for the last time, no danger music plays while fighting enemies, adding to the mounting climactic suspense.
- Both the Ganondorf and Ganon battles in Ocarina of Time have their own unique theme, making the first form (Ganondorf) seem like the final battle.
In the Greenwood area of SoulBlazer, there is a dog who, when talked to, will tell you that "today's special is...you!" accompanied by an abrupt end to the Background Music. The dog will then proceed to explain that he was only joking, and the Background Music starts up again.
In Shining in the Darkness, despite the fact that the fight against The Dragon had a special boss theme, the final boss uses the normal combat theme you've heard all game. That is, until he gets serious...
Every plot-required boss battle in The World Ends with You has a theme that can play for a random battle. The only exception is the final boss, of course, who gets his own unique remix of Twister.
The first Xenosaga game uses the same battle music for every fight. Common enemies and bosses have the same tune. The sole exception is the final boss, who has its own theme.
Scratches subverts it near the beginning, on the first time you go down to the basement, creepy Psycho-like strings start playing giving you the feeling something is gonna jump at you from the shadows at any moment, this effect makes you want to leave that place as soon as possible. Later it's played straight when for looking for Catherine Blackwood's corpse on the yard the music changes when you happen to dig on the right spot, also on Last Visit after solving all puzzles the music changes to the same creepy strings heard on the basement hinting of the scare lurking nearby.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Project, a first-time player will probably think that they're fighting the final Boss Battle when they fight Shredder for the first time, and when they fight Krang. (The final Boss Battle is a rematch between the Turtles and Shredder.) Both of these bosses have a special Boss Battle music of their own to help give the player this illusion.
Mushihime Sama Futari's Final Boss gets its own theme, but on Ultra difficulty, the True Final Boss uses the regular boss battle music. That is, unless you're playing Black Label (which replaces Ultra mode with God mode), in which case the TFB gets some...rather unfitting music for a climatic boss battle.
In Golden Sun, the battle against Saturos and Menardi has its own unique theme (if you didn't fight Deadbeard) and one might think they're the Final Boss. Then they turn into A GIANT TWO-HEADED DRAGON that dwarfs the party (and all other enemies up to this point) and actually shatters the screen as the combat intro.
Amagon's fourth stage keeps the same creepy music all the way through, even when in Super Mode or fighting the boss.
In Blaster Master, the Final Boss reuses the Stage 7 music.
In the arcade version of Super Contra, the penultimate boss gets its own theme, but the final boss just uses the main stage music.
In Mega Man 2, the final boss against the alien hologram has the same music as every other boss.
Mega Man X Command Mission pulls a nice trick coupled with Disc-One Final Dungeon in Chapter 9 with Epsilon. He gets his own battle theme—two, in fact—and his fight is insanely tough. One may think that since his music was so different he was the Final Boss... until you notice that the game hasn't ended, and you haven't gone through the series' trademark Boss Rush yet.
In Slime Rancher, if you encounter a Tarr (or, more likely, a swarm of them), an ominous theme starts playing -but it only plays when you've actually spotted the Tarr, averting this trope. However, their theme ends on a slow violin note when you've killed or run away from all of the Tarr, meaning that if the theme continues even though you think you've killed them all, then you haven't.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: The fourth world's Brutal Bonus Level subverts the trope. The "Room Before Boss" theme usually plays when Yoshi is approaching a boss (and it gets an extended play in the room before the Final Boss, where Yoshi has to dodge Kamek's attacks). But in this level, it's the only theme that plays in the background, hinting that there's a boss at the end when there actually isn't (when Yoshi reaches the end, all he finds is the standard Level Goal).

Musical Spoiler / Video Games

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