Starter Villain / Video Games

• The Beast in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, who is your main antagonist for eight of the first ten missions (that is, roughly a third of the game) before succumbing to The Virus secretly planted in him by Caulder, the game's actual Big Bad.
  • Olaf in the first game that was released outside of Japan also counts, being the main threat of the tutorial missions and the first few missions of the story.
  • Flak in Black Hole Rising counts as one too, being the primary enemy of the tutorial missions and a couple of later missions in the story.
• The Al-Samaad group in Alpha Protocol. Almost exclusively found in the first area, they're mostly poorly trained and equipped.
• Each season of Batman: The Telltale Series has a villain who plays an important part in the first episode and, even though they are taken out of action afterwards, have an impact on the rest of the season. The first season has Carmine Falcone, a mob boss who has some connection to Bruce Wayne's late father; and the second season has the Riddler, a villain from Gotham's past whose reappearance attracts not only a new group of villains, but the government as well.
• Bayonetta: Fortitudo is the first adversary in the game stronger than a basic mook that directly confronts Bayonetta, and serves as the main threat of the first four chapters. Despite being a giant Angelic Abomination with dragon heads that can turn an entire town in to a burning wasteland, he is still ultimately small fry compared to later bosses in the game, and later villains in the sequels.
• Bloodborne has a few options. The first enemy you face is a generic Scourge Beast (who's supposed to kill you so you can get weapons in the Hunter's Dream), the first boss is the Cleric Beast, and the first mandatory boss is Father Gascoigne.
• Borderlands typically starts off by having your first notable antagonist being a local bandit boss who's typically a King Mook with a special intro and a pack of goons before you move onto dealing with the corporations or the Vaults.
  • Borderlands has Nine-Toes as the first major bandit that you deal with before you move on to other areas.
  • The sequel has Captain Flynt, a bandit leader stranded in the middle of nowhere as your first obstacle before the plot actually gets started.
  • The Pre-Sequel has Deadlift, a bandit you deal with in order to get to the Hub City.
  • Tales from the Borderlands has Bossanova, a bandit king who serves as the main antagonist of the first episode, before the main plot gets rolling.
  • Borderlands 3 has Mouthpiece, who's a propagandist for the Children of the Vault and the guy you have to kill before you leave Pandora and travel to other planets.
• Breath of Fire:
  • Argus from Breath of Fire II is the first antagonist that attacks Ryu and co. directly in Colossea and his maniac ramblings about offering sacrifices to his God foreshadows the main plot of the game.
  • Balio and Sunder in Breath of Fire III are the first real threat for Ryu and the gang, and do so for a good third of the Childhood Chapter.
  • General Rasso in Breath of Fire IV, though never fought directly, just keeps attacking the party for most of the first half of the game, his actions eventually releasing Ryu's true powers and sending the plot into its main course. For Fou-Lu's side of the history, it'd be Yohm, the only enemy that poses any danger to the weakened dragon god.
• In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the U.S. Marines are tasked with overthrowing revolutionary Qurac dictator Khaled Al-Assad. After the Marines get nuked, Al-Assad is found to be harbored by his Russian backers by the SAS, and dies rather anti-climatically at the hands of the Player Character's commanding officer. The Dragon's cell phone then rings - it's Russian ultranationalist leader Imran Zakhaev.
  • Zakhaev himself ultimately turns out to be this in the sequels, to his ruthless Dragon Ascendant Vladamir Makarov.
• Cavern of Dreams: The first antagonist in the game is The Mighty Wall, a living stone wall who blocks Finn's path during the tutorial. He is easily taken out by one use of Fynn's Tail Slap move, and he exists primarily to teach players how to use said move.
• Chrono Trigger has Yakra, who kidnaps Queen Leene in 600 AD and stashes her in the back of a cathedral full of mooks, only to promptly get slain by the party as the first boss. In an amusing inverse But for Me, It Was Tuesday bit, his descendants plot against the party and the kingdom for 400 years and nearly the entire game, long after the player even remembers that Yakra was a thing, only for one of them to surface in one of the endgame subquests as basically the same boss fight, which usually ends in under a minute thanks to the now end-of-game party.
• Crescent Prism: The Scorchpion is the first boss of the game, who gained the power of Astra skills from the Violet Prism Stone.
• Dark Forces Saga:
  • General Rom Mohc, the Big Bad of Dark Forces (and its Final Boss), is retroactively this to the whole series. He's tougher than he looks thanks to his Dark Trooper Phase III armor, but compared to the many Dark Side Force users to follow he's nothing special.
  • 8t88 in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. He's the main villain that Kyle pursues for the first part of the game, but he's simply a hired information broker with no personal combat abilities (relying on random thugs to do his dirty work) and thus presents far less of a threat than the real villains, the Dark Jedi, who simply dispose of him after he gives them the map to the Valley of the Jedi.
• Deltarune: The King of Spades is the Final Boss of Chapter 1 and the Disc-One Final Boss of the whole game. After that, he gets locked in a hamster cage and you can visit him in your Dark World.
• Zeke Sanders and his anti-augmentation terrorist group, Purity First, in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Being ordinary, untrained street thugs with crappy weapons in a game where you end up mostly fighting transhuman spec-ops PMCs does that to you.
• The main characters of Desperados III fight against the DeVitt Company, a powerful corrupt railroad Company. Except in the first real mission after the tutorial, during which Cooper has to neutralize a bandit called Big Ann and her gang, who are attacking the train that Cooper is using to go to Flagstone.
• Dragon Age: Origins: Two of the origins have the player character face off with a Starter Villain. In the Dwarf Commoner origin, the character will have to take down the crime boss Beraht. In the City Elf origin, the PC will come up against Bann Vaughan in a "right of the lord" scenario. In an aversion, the latter may survive the story if the hero takes his bribe.
• Dong Zhuo from the Dynasty Warriors series is frequently one of, if not the first, enemy to be defeated in any game, and his defeat kicks off the conflict of the Three Kingdoms. As later games expand to cover more of the timeline of events, Yellow Turban leader Zhang Jiao becomes the earliest antagonist.
• Elden Ring:
  • Your tutorial boss is a Soldier of Godrick — a generic Lordsworn Soldier mook out in the Lands Between, but the game gives him a boss healthbar anyway.
  • There are four Shardbearers pre-Leyndell and you can fight any two, so in a way you can choose your own starter villain (you could even pick Radahn and Rykard if you like torturing yourself), but the game expects you to first go after Godrick the Grafted, the Lord of Limgrave. He's one of the most downright evil Shardbearers, having stolen limbs from thousands of people to turn himself into a misshapen ogre of a person (hence why he's 'the Grafted'), but the game goes out of its way to paint Godrick as a pathetic excuse for a lord, barely counting as a demigod, and the Butt-Monkey of his extended family. Killing him is both getting yourself closer to fixing the Elden Ring and doing pretty much everyone in the area a huge favor.
  • The first boss you're likely to meet unless you go out of your way to avoid him is Margit the Fell Omen, but he's actually a projection of the Climax Boss, Morgott, who predicted you'd choose Godrick as your first Shardbearer and is being proactive in stopping you.
• Mirmulnir, the very first dragon you kill in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, serves as this for the main storyline of the game.
• Banthus is the first major antagonist in Elsword. He's not a one-level wonder boss and his theft of the El Shard actually kicks the whole plot into motion. The heroes encounter him three times before he's finally dispatched and other, more dangerous recurring villains take his place.
• The Kuraselache (Shark) Leader in E.V.O.: Search for Eden. One or two major plot points haven't been introduced yet and he's the only boss in Era 1. You can run into sharks that are exactly the same as he is in Era 5. As a Degraded Boss, he's pretty easy.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout: Garl, the leader of the Khans raider group. His band has kidnapped the daughter of the leader of Shady Sands, the first town the player character encounters after leaving the Vault, bringing him into conflict with a good character almost immediately.
  • Fallout 2 has Metzger, the leader of the slavers in the Den. The first named human antagonist you come across (assuming you're a good character), but clearly small time compared to the families of New Reno, much less the actual main villains of the game.
  • Two candidates in Fallout: New Vegas. The first is Joe Cobb, the leader of a small Powder Ganger raider gang that the Courier can help repel in the very first quest of the very first town. The second is Benny, the man who shot The Courier in the beginning of the game, and is much more prominent. The first act of the game is all about tracking him down, getting revenge, and retrieving your stolen package, a platinum chip, to finish your delivery job. As it quickly turns out, this is when the real game starts.
  • Fallout 4 has Gristle, the leader of the raider gang in Concord who are the object of the game's first quest. He and his gang are quickly killed in a Curb-Stomp Battle by the main character. On a greater scale, there's also Kellogg, the man who killed your spouse and took your son; he lasts the whole first act. Like Benny, tracking him down is the first act of the game. After you deal with him, the Brotherhood of Steel arrive and the game really begins to escalate.
• Far Cry 5 has three bosses, and either one could technically be considered the starter villain. Jacob requires the least amount of points (10,000, compared to 13,000 for the other two); Faith is technically the first region the player will enter after leaving Dutch's island and so starting on hers is quite simple; and John's region is much more open, plus Mission Control will offer a Player Nudge and suggest the player go after John first.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Jeanne Alter is the first major villain encountered (compared to Altria Alter, who was more of an obstacle for the heroes to overcome in the prologue). She at first is played up as a major threat due to using a Holy Grail to summon a small army of Servants, all with Mad Enhancement as well so that they'd be stronger as well as follow her orders to destroy France. However, not only is Jeanne Alter awful at commanding, and not only does the Mad Enhancement end up weakening her Servants in the long run, but it's established in this Singularity that using the Grail to summon Servants causes a Chain Summon reaction which summons more Servants, who end up joining the heroes and evening the odds. This results in the heroes gradually building up their forces while Jeanne Alter's forces fall one by one, and her attempts to mend the situation by summoning more Servants only makes things even worse for her. Most villains after her are not only alot more competent, but also much more selective about who they summon, focusing more and quality over quantity and minimizing the Chain Summons, and stray Servants end up being a mixed bag on whether they end up being allies or antagonists.
  • Lev Lainur Flauros is a more personal antagonist, being responsible for the bombing of Chaldea in the prologue, as well as subjecting Olga Marie to a Fate Worse than Death, and acts as the Arc Villain for the second singularity. However, despite having a trump card in the form of his true form as the Demon Pillar Flauros, he makes alot of the same mistakes as Jeanne Alter: summoning too many Servants (which causes Chain Summons in response) and misusing the Servants that he does have (at one point Caesar, one of Lev's Servants, complains about being sent to the frontline despite a general more suited for commanding from the rear). In the end, he's not offed by the heroes, but instead because when cornered, he ended up summoning a Servant he couldn't properly control.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Garland from the original Final Fantasy, who kidnaps Princess Sara and is the first boss in the series. Subverted as he turns into the Big Bad, Chaos, at the end.
  • Kefka from Final Fantasy VI is a notable aversion, in that he's definitely Starter Villain material for most of the game, only to evolve into the game's true Big Bad.
  • President Shinra from Final Fantasy VII, the main villain for the first five hours or so of the game before he's killed off by the real Big Bad, Sephiroth.
  • Final Fantasy VIII begins properly with the newly-appointed SeeDs given orders to assassinate the fascist president of a powerful nation, and his top adviser. Things quickly go south when said adviser turns out to be one of the strongest beings on the planet and both executes the president herself and marks the SeeDs for death.
  • The Three Black Waltzes from Final Fantasy IX.
  • Judge Ghis from Final Fantasy XII, the first noteworthy villain the party confronts directly.
  • Legate Gaius van Baelsar from Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, who serves as the game's penultimate boss leading up to Lahabrea and is the main driving force behind the conflict in ARR.
• Most Fire Emblem games tend to have one, usually of the General class and also tends to be a Disc-One Final Boss or a Climax Boss as well. They may or may not be affiliated with one of the main antagonists, but they will typically be the most visible threat during the early game chapters, up to the point where you fight them.
  • Lundgren from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Lyn's great uncle, is probably one of the best examples. His plot to take over Caelin has nothing to do with the overarching Black Fang plotline, but he's the final boss of Lyn's Story, the first ten chapters of the game, and a dangerous villain and schemer in his own right.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening has Gangrel, king of Plegia, and the main antagonist for the first act of the game. Seeking revenge against Ylisse for the war the previous Exalt waged against him, he stirs up trouble, and eventually declares war.
  • Fire Emblem Gaiden has Desaix, the general who usurped the throne of Zofia. He's the final enemy faced in Alm's first chapter, and is faced again in Alm's part of Chapter 3.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has Kostas, a bandit leader who attacks the three house leaders in the prologue, resulting in Byleth coming to teach at the monastery. He's also the boss of the second chapter, which is the first real battle.
  • Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, a spinoff of Three Houses, places Kostas as the first boss again, but each of the story routes has its own separate starter villain that you fight after Chapter 2:
    • Scarlet Blaze (Adrestian Empire) has Duke Aegir and Lord Arundel, two of the greedy nobles who plotted to steal power from the previous emperor in a coup, prompting Edelgard to lead a surprise attack on the Imperial palace to wrest it from their control. Both villains stick around for a long time to plot in the background and resurface as bosses in Part II, with Lord Arundel/Thales being one of the route's Final Bosses.
    • Azure Gleam (Holy Kingdom of Faerghus) has Rufus and Cornelia, who stage an uprising in Fhirdiad to steal the throne from Dimitri. Rufus is executed for treason at the end of the chapter, but Cornelia continues to sow unrest throughout Part I until she is killed in Chapter 8.
    • Golden Wildfire (Leicester Alliance) has Shahid, a prince of Almyra who leads a massive invasion against Fódlan with the intent to conquer it. He tries this a second time at the end of Part I, ultimately forcing his brother Claude's hand in a fight to the death.
  • Fire Emblem Engage has a trio of Elusian generals (Abyme, Rodine, and Nelucce) who kickstart the plot by attacking Lythos and Firene in search of their Emblem Rings in the name of King Hyacinth.
  • The most blatant example of this trope for the franchise, however, is actually the type of plot-irrelevant ugly, evil bandit boss who leads a group of bandits to ravage villages because that's what evil bandits do. They're usually the first boss faced by the players and they also serve as a tutorial for the Weapon Triangle system: They wield axes since Lords usually wield swords and swords beat axes, thus encouraging the player to use the Lord character to finish them off. This type of villain has been there since the first game in form of the bandit boss Gazzak, who spawns successors taking similar roles in subsequent games.
• Freedom Force has the Soviet spy Sukhov as the first major villain, before he is transformed into the supervillain Nuclear Winter.
• In From the Depths, the Deepwater Guard pirates serve as the first enemy faction as you seek vengeance for their betrayal. The DWG are the game's weakest faction, using ships made largely of wood with a designed weakness to missiles, and have few top-tier units. Taking on the other factions results in a more difficult experience, such as the Onyx Watch's all-metal hulls.
• Nearsighted Jeego the hitman from Ghost Trick is the primary threat in the first chapter, as it focuses on preventing him from murdering Lynne. He gets killed off near the end of the chapter, immediately after which a different hitman takes his place, once that one is taken care of neither one is mentioned again, Not even in the end credits sequence, which shows every other character!
• The Persian King in God of War: Chains of Olympus. Kratos is sent by the gods to stop the Persian invasion of Attica led by their king, and he is dealt with at the very start of the game. That should have been the end since Kratos' mission was successful, but then the sun goes missing and the god of dreams Morpheus begins dominating the land...
• Vlad Glebov in Grand Theft Auto IV talks a big talk and Roman is scared of him and his Albanian thugs, making it look like Roman's debt to Vlad will play a major part in the game (or at least the Broker/Dukes chapter) but it takes very little time for him to push Niko's buttons too much and get his brains blown out. Killing him and getting made to work for Mikhail Faustin is what REALLY sets the plot in motion, as it lets Dimitri find Niko for Ray Bulgarin.
• Halo Infinite: Tremonius of the Banished is the first threat the Master Chief faces, and after defeating him, Escharum tells him to not let it go to his head as he considers him unremarkable in every way.
• The Turanic Raiders in Homeworld, the first enemies you encounter. They're fairly easy to beat, and Fleet Intelligence even says that their craft are inferior to your own... which is impressive, considering your race has been (re-)introduced to space travel only half a century ago, while the Turanic Raiders have been, presumably, at this for far longer. They're quickly shoved aside before the true threat of the game - the Taiidan Empire (canonically).
  • In Homeworld: Cataclysm, your first enemies are the Taiidan Imperialists, before they get pushed away by a new (or very old) threat - the Beast.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Clayton is the first Disney villain you fight, and the first enemy who isn't just Made of Evil or a vicious animal (Sabor). In a game where the villains include gods and evil sorcerers, he's just a stuck-up guy with a gun who needs a Heartless ally to put up a good fight.
  • Shan Yu in Kingdom Hearts II is very likely to be the first Disney villain you fight. Although being a skilled and powerful swordsman puts him slightly above Clayton's level, he still ranks the lowest in comparison to the more supernatural Disney/original villains you fight in the other worlds.
  • For the series as a whole, Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness, the final boss of the first game. Following games gave more focus on the villainous group Organization XIII, and through Arc Welding gave way to Master Xehanort, with Ansem merely serving as the Enemy Within for Riku. However, as of 3D Ansem is back as one of Xehanort's Co-Dragons and just as dangerous as ever.
  • Hades serves as this in Kingdom Hearts III. While you never fight him in this game, he is behind the main conflict of the tutorial chapter, releasing the Titans to attack Olympus and capture the gods.
• Brejik in Knights of the Old Republic. He is the Arc Villain of Taris in the early game, where he captures Bastila and tried to set her up as a prize for the swoop race, making him the main obstacle for the player trying to rescue her in the first part of the game. He is killed off before the player even reaches The Point Of No Return for Taris, and in the grand scheme of things, he was a small fry compared to Darth Malak or even Davik Kang.
• HK-50 in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. He is responsible for killing all the miners on Peragus and reprogramming all of the mining droids on the asteroid to turn hostile, and when he is confronted near the end of the level, he reveals his goal to capture the Exile and turn them over to Goto, and is promptly killed by the party. In fact, other models of HK-50 appear later in the game in groups as a Degraded Boss, culminating in T3-M4 defeating three models of the droid by himself.
• Fruegel from The Legend of Dragoon is the one responsible for destroying the main protagonist's hometown and capturing his childhood friend, but is largely inconsequential in the grand scheme of the game's plot.
• Mad Rat Dead: The Mob Rats serve as the bosses for the first two chapters: First as a Wolfpack Boss fight, and the second as a ghostly Advancing Boss of Doom.
• Mass Effect series:
  • Fist from the first game. A notorious crime lord who's been bribed by Saren to kill Tali and suppress all evidence of Saren's crimes, he acts as the main antagonist for the first mission chain following the prologue (which revolves around proving Saren's guilt), with three of the five most prominent series squadmates (Tali, Garrus, and Wrex) being recruited in the process of taking him down. Overall, he's the first real villain Shepard's team successfully takes down. Tali lampshades his starter villain nature (compared to the world-ending threats the team faces on a weekly basis from then on) in the second game.
    Tali: Fist and his men seemed so dangerous. We've come a long way. Don't know if that's a good thing, but... it's definitely more interesting.
  • Initially, it seems like Saren is the Big Bad of the first game since his assault on Eden Prime is what kickstarts the plot of the game. Later on, Sovereign is revealed to be The Man Behind the Man, and Saren turns out to be just an indoctrinated servant.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code has two characters fulfilling this role simultaneously in Chapter 0. Swank is the first corrupt Peacekeeper that antagonizes Yuma Kokohead and forces him to go into the Mystery Labyrinth for the first time in order to find the real killer framing him, with Swank's Mystery Phantom serving as an obstacle within the Labyrinth. The killer on the Amaterasu Express, an unnamed hitman who killed and replaced the Master Detective Zilch Alexander, is the first killer that Yuma must identify with the Mystery Labyrinth and the first culprit whose soul is reaped by Shinigami.
• Persona:
  • Persona 4 has Yosuke's Shadow, who serves as a starter boss that helps the player learn about exploiting enemy weaknesses for tactical advantages, as well as revealing that Shadows do not just represent the aspects of one's personality that are repressed, but can become Personas when one accepts them as a part of who they are. There is also Shadow Yukiko, the first kidnapping victim the protagonists can save and the first boss that has a whole themed dungeon to themselves.
  • Persona 5 has the Creepy Gym Coach, Suguru Kamoshida, take on this role. He's the lowest of the low when it comes to someone considering themselves above the law and has a personal connection to the first two friends the protagonist makes, fueling the desire to knock him down a peg. It later turns out that he's the only Palace boss completely unconnected to the overarching plot.
• Phantasy Star IV has Zio, the leader of a dark cult who serves Dark Force and, early in the game, kills Chaz's mentor, Alys.
• Captain Blackstar in the Qwark vid comics in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal. The only villain in the comics who has nothing to do with Dr. Nefarious. And he's still The Unfought!
• Brady Culture in the first episode of Sam & Max: Freelance Police. He's the antagonist of the first episode, but is almost completely unconnected to the bigger threat of the season.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Shin Megami Tensei I has Ambassador Thorman and Gotou, the two major figures in the invasion of Japan. Your choice of who to side with marks the first major alignment decision and boss fight(s), and when it's all over, Thorman (actually Thor) nukes Japan.
  • Shin Megami Tensei II has Haneda, the coach of Red Bear, as the initial "villain", for lack of a better word. After Red Bear is killed, actual villains such as Hanada, Basilisk, King Frost, and Betelgeuse come into play, though the first few are small fries. The most notable, however, is the last one, Daleth, who manages to win over most of Millenium and kill the love interest off. It's with his initial defeat that the plot gets serious and, suitably enough, Daleth becomes a joke soon after.
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has Forneus, who terrorizes the Shinjuku Medical Center after the Conception and refuses to let anyone leave. After his defeat, the Vortex World is explorable.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV comes close to it with Navarre, who, unlike fellow Luxurors Isabeau and Jonathan, is a bigot who believes Luxurors are superior to Casualries such as Flynn and Walter. He takes the position fully when he attempts to either humiliate or kill Flynn and Walter, only for the incident to break him completely.
  • Digital Devil Saga has Harley, the leader of the Vanguards. Despite being the rival of the protagonists, the Atma powers turn him into practically a scared child terrified of the Embryon, and he is killed in the first dungeon. After his defeat, the main plot is fully revealed.
• The Sly Cooper series has one in each game. Sir Raleigh in the first game, Dimitri in the second, Don Octavio in the third, and El Jefe in the fourth.
• Spider-Man (PS4) has The Kingpin. By the time the game starts, Spidey and Wilson Fisk have been bitter enemies for years, and the game's opening sequence revolves around the final brawl between the two before Fisk is finally put in irons. The game also focuses upon the power vacuum for crime left by Fisk's arrest.
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has Flint Marko, AKA: Sandman, who goes on a rampage during the game's opening moments. After he is subdued and imprisoned, however, it comes to light that his rampage was the result of his time being a captive of the Hunters, led by Kraven, who arrive in Manhattan not long after in search of new game to hunt.
• Tassadar in StarCraft is first seen as an enemy who is purging Terran occupied worlds to prevent the spread of the Zerg. He is defeated and retreats. By the third campaign, he becomes the hero.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Donkey Kong could be considered one for the Mario series as a whole, being the antagonist of the very first game.
  • In Mario games in general, the first villains you encounter are usually Goombas or Koopa Troopas who go down in one hit.
  • Bowser has a tendency to be the starter villain in Mario RPGs, prime examples being Super Mario RPG, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. This is to show a far greater threat eclipsing Bowser in terms of evil.
  • Lord Crump in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door takes on Mario almost as soon as the game begins. He tries to defeat Mario a few times later on, but he becomes increasingly outmatched even as Lord Crump himself continues to improve.
    • Hooktail from the same game could also count, being the Arc Villain of the first chapter and the first serious threat, who is actually quite a challenge unless you have a specific badge.
  • Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time: Each timeline has a tutorial boss. In the past, it's Baby Bowser, who attempts to kidnap Baby Peach — forcing Baby Mario to challenge him. In the present, the Junior Shrooboid is causing trouble, forcing the adult Mario to confront him.
• Mr. Big serves this role for the entire SNK mythos - despite being a rather formidable SNK Boss in his own right, it's quickly established that he's just a mere underling of South Town's kingpin of crime, Geese Howard. And when you factor in other major villains (Rugal Bernstein, Orochi, Igniz, Saiki, etc.), it becomes clear just how insignificant Mr. Big is in the grand scheme of things.
• This is actually pretty commonplace in a couple Tales Series games; but it's most prevalent with Barbos in Tales of Vesperia, and Cedric/Celdic in Tales of Graces.
  • Botta, The Dragon of the Renegades, is the first major villain of Tales of Symphonia, attacking Colette right before she begins the trial to become The Chosen One. He's fought in direct combat a while later, and continues on being a minor villain for most of the game.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge has Bebop and Rocksteady. In gameplay terms, Bebop is the first boss encountered since he takes over the Channel 6 building, but Rocksteady sets the game's main plot of chasing down Krang's robot parts in motion afterwards. Furthermore, the duo appears continually (in boss fights or otherwise) until their final defeat in Episode 7.
• Tenchu:
  • The very first boss in the first Tenchu game is Echigoya the corrupt merchant. In ancient Japan, merchants were on the lowest rung of the social ladder despite their wealth.
  • In Tenchu 2, neighbouring warlord Toda Yoshisaga sets the story into motion with his attempted invasion of Lord Gohda's Realm, but only last 3 chapters before being replaced by his own subordinate.
• In Tyranny, the Vendrien Guard are the starter Hero Antagonists to the Villain Protagonist Fatebinder. The Fatebinder needs to clear them out of the Spire or earn their loyalty to prevent the Edict of Execution from killing them and everyone else in the valley they occupy. Once they're dealt with, however, they don't show up much as antagonists, with the armies of whichever Archons the Fatebinder didn't side with (or both armies on certain paths) mostly their place as The Usual Adversaries. For their part, the Vendrien Guard are well aware of how screwed they are, and are fighting in the hopes of inspiring others in the Tiers to rise up.
• William Bishop in Vampyr (2018). Jonathan is under the impression that he is the vampire that turned him and is responsible for all the murders in the Docks, serving as the first vampire boss in the game. Turns out he was neither responsible for transforming Jonathan nor the only vampire around.
• Warcraft III:
  • Mal'Ganis was introduced as the Big Bad of the first campaign and as Arthas' personal nemesis, before the greater conflict of the story would unfold.
  • Before Mal'Ganis, Arthas had to first defeat the Blackrock Orcs, who were the enemies of the previous games.
  • The Sea Witch (named in WoW as Zar'jira) from the prologue campaign can count too. She was the main villain of the game demo before the game's release but her missions were cut in ROC. The missions are restored in TFT and Reforged.
  • The Warsong Clan is this for the Night Elves since they killed the demigod Cenarius.
  • The Rebel Leader Grand Marshal Garithos is this for the Blood Elves, who had to flee from him because they consorted with the Naga and Garithos was a big racist. Without the Blood Elves, Garithos' group is defeated and mind-controlled by the dreadlord Detheroc.
• Wild ARMs:
  • Berserk from Wild ARMs is the first demon your party faces. Unlike most Starter Villains, he's actually one of the strongest, and only ends the first couple of battles because he got bored and had completed the mission anyway. He's defeated before the halfway point via a plan to amplify his power backfiring and draining him instead, allowing your party to claim victory. He's killed by Boomerang shortly afterwards.
  • Odessa from Wild ARMs 2 are a team of Starter Villains, attempting to conquer Filgaia through various forms of terrorism. They are defeated at the end of Disk One, after which the true threat to the planet becomes clear... an evil parallel universe that's trying to eat it.
  • Janus Cascade from Wild ARMs 3 is a bounty hunter who's working for the Prophets and helps with their plans to revive a demon to terraform Filgaia. He spends a fair amount of time antagonizing your party being a colossal backstabber. He meets his end due to bad timing as he walked in to gloat to the Prophets right as Siegfried is being revived.
• Laambo in The Wonderful 101. Compared to the other GEATHJERK officers, he's not as taken seriously and has more silly moments than them. On the other hand, a later flashback reveals that he was responsible for mortally wounding Will Wedgewood's father before being taken out by the previous Wonder-Red, leading the former to become the next Wonder-Red. Fittingly, in this flashback, he is more of a challenge since you are limited to one Unite-Morph.
• Metal Face/Mumkhar serves as this for roughly the first half of Xenoblade Chronicles 1. While he's the responsible for the inciting incident of the game's plot (invading Colony 9 and fatally wounding Fiora), and he works for a greater villain, he really couldn't care less about the ultimate plan. He just wants to kill as much as possible.
  • Moebius D in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 the first Moebius that the heroes go up against, and it's there where they're forced to team up for the first time and become Ouroboros. However, he continues to be a recurrent threat like Metal Face was in the above example, as well as a personal antagonist to Eunie all the way through Chapter 6.
• Yakuza 0:
  • The first real villain Kiryu faces is Daisaku Kuze, one of the three Lieutenants of the Dojima Family and the boss of Chapter 1. Kuze goes on to become a Recurring Boss throughout the rest of Kiryu's side of the story, being fought no less than five times — he really doesn't take losing to a grunt like Kiryu that well.
  • As for Majima's side, he's sent by Sagawa to kill one Makoto Makimura, who he fights in a massage parlor during Chapter 4. Only it turns out that Makoto Makimura is not the man Majima fought, but rather his blind assistant, who is also being targeted by yakuza unaffiliated with Majima or Sagawa. The masseur, Wen Hai Lee, generally becomes an ally in the following chapters as he works with Majima to keep Makoto safe.

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