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Ambiguous Name: Bonus Boss

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To-do list:

  • Move wicks to either Optional Boss or Superboss. The former is the supertrope for optional bosses in general, while the latter is a subtrope for bosses that are harder than mandatory bosses, including the Final Boss. If an example is clear about a boss being optional but not how strong the boss is, Optional Boss should be the default trope to move examples to.

    Original post 
Looks like we can finally get this done.

So, Bonus Boss is supposed to be an optional boss that is significantly harder than even the final boss, and is meant to provide an extra challenge to veterans. However, most wicks just use it as “any optional boss”. This is undoubtedly because of the name- the usual/proper name for “really-hard optional boss” is Super Boss.

So, after discussing it in Bonus Boss nuances, we have decided to split the trope- Bonus Boss should be renamed to Super Boss, the redirect, while the misuse should be sent to Secret Boss and other such pages that we will create, which have been outlined in the wick check.

Speaking of, here is the courtesy wick check.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 8th 2023 at 1:46:33 PM

GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#151: Jun 8th 2022 at 3:05:12 AM

I think they could be removed or commented out as Partial Context Examples.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 8th 2022 at 5:05:30 AM

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Asterlix Waffle Cat (she/her) from Ooo Since: Feb, 2022 Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Waffle Cat (she/her)
#152: Sep 13th 2022 at 5:25:36 PM

What about this one? It's not the hardest boss of the video game but a pretty hard one for low-level players.


  • Redhelm Arzuros is the first Deviant unlocked and by far the most punishing for unsuspecting players. Its quests are unlocked at a mere HR 2, which is equivalent to the 3 or 4-star village quests. Arzuros is a slow, predictable, and surprisingly frail Warm-Up Boss. This should be just a little bit tougher, right? Once you actually encounter the Redhelm and hear a different Scare Chord than usual, and then it stuns you with a roar, you know This Is Gonna Suck. Its health and attack power are on par with upper High-Rank monsters, it has extremely powerful and wide-hitting claw attacks, can use a Ground Pound like Lagombi, and it's heavily armored so half your attacks will bounce off. The Deviants were designed to change the way players fight them compared to normal members of the species, and the Redhelm hammers that fact in hard.

Here there be cats.
Berrenta How sweet it is from Texas Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Yindee Just stoic wisdom. from New England Since: Jul, 2016
Just stoic wisdom.
#154: Nov 11th 2022 at 8:27:45 AM

[up] This one has been stagnant to the point of gaining wicks, per Cleaning Project thread.

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Saturn500 The LEG From Now On Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: It's complicated
The LEG From Now On
#155: Nov 11th 2022 at 9:00:56 AM

I've gotten to the listings on the individual character pages for BlazBlue, but after moving Izanami's entry to True Final Boss, I started wondering: since Unlimited forms of her, Ragna, and Nine are all potentially encountered at the end of Centralfiction Arcade Mode Act 3 under certain conditions (and only one of them can be fought in a given run), should the secret bosses be listed as superbosses instead?

GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#156: Nov 11th 2022 at 11:02:01 AM

[up]If you know for a fact that the bosses are optional, but aren't sure if they count as superbosses, then I don't see anything wrong with listing them under Optional Boss instead. All examples of Superboss are already examples of Optional Boss anyway due to examples of subtropes always being examples of the supertrope, so if it turns out the bosses are superbosses, someone can adjust the example later.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 11th 2022 at 1:02:39 PM

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Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#157: Nov 11th 2022 at 11:05:36 AM

Optional Boss is still a Super-Trope, which allows examples that don't fit elsewhere.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Saturn500 The LEG From Now On Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: It's complicated
The LEG From Now On
#158: Nov 11th 2022 at 11:12:51 AM

[up] Moved the Bonus Boss entries on those character pages to Optional Boss.

GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#159: Nov 11th 2022 at 7:18:03 PM

[up][up]That's what I was trying to get at, but I think I ended up kind of going on a tangent because I was tired at the time, so thanks for clarifying it for them.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 11th 2022 at 9:18:26 AM

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CompletelyNormalGuy Am I a weirdo? from that rainy city where they throw fish (Oldest One in the Book)
Am I a weirdo?
#160: Feb 5th 2023 at 8:30:55 PM

We're down to 4400.

Hopefully a bump can attract a little bit of attention to this as it seems to be languishing at the bottom of TRS.

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CompletelyNormalGuy Am I a weirdo? from that rainy city where they throw fish (Oldest One in the Book)
Am I a weirdo?
#161: Feb 8th 2023 at 11:20:46 PM

4300. Also, people keep adding new wicks. Hopefully once we're further along in the cleanup people will realize it's been renamed.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
badtothebaritone (Life not ruined yet) Relationship Status: Snooping as usual
#162: Feb 8th 2023 at 11:27:56 PM

Might be worth advertising the cleanup effort on ATT to help speed things up a bit. If things get really bad, bulletining might be worth considering.

GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#163: Feb 8th 2023 at 11:37:18 PM

Honestly, while this project is a bit more complex than the Chairs-y projects we usually reserve bulletins for, maybe it would work since the only real targets for moving examples to are Optional Boss and Superboss, and since every example of the latter is already an example of the former due to the relationship between subtropes and supertropes, it might work since when in doubt, wicks can be moved to Optional Boss.

I'll ask the other mods about this because I'm not going to put it up unilaterally (but since it's past 1 AM for me, I probably won't get a response for a while).

Edit: Added a new sentence to the to-do list saying "If an example is clear about a boss being optional but not how strong the boss is, Optional Boss should be the default trope to move examples to."

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2023 at 5:04:22 AM

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Twiddler (On A Trope Odyssey)
#164: Feb 8th 2023 at 11:53:40 PM

I don't understand why Roaming Enemy is listed as a subtrope to Optional Boss. Isn't it non-boss-specific?

GastonRabbit One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#165: Feb 9th 2023 at 12:07:10 AM

[up]Removed it because that's probably a holdover from when the name Optional Boss was used for a disambiguation page between those tropes rather than a formerly Missing Supertrope, and thus less restrictive when it came to what could be listed.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2023 at 2:08:15 PM

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Twiddler (On A Trope Odyssey)
#166: Feb 9th 2023 at 1:18:26 AM

As for the bulletin idea... I suppose it could work?

GastonRabbit MOD One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#167: Feb 9th 2023 at 5:05:22 AM

That's at least three mods who commented on the bulletin idea (between this thread and the mod chat), so it's up.

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MasterN Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button from Florida- I mean Unova Since: Aug, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#168: Feb 10th 2023 at 6:05:59 PM

Out of curiosity and unfamiliarly, what and where is this bulletin?

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badtothebaritone (Life not ruined yet) Relationship Status: Snooping as usual
#169: Feb 10th 2023 at 6:07:34 PM

Look on the right side of your screen. It's right under the Important Links. You may need to scroll to the beginning of the page first.

CompletelyNormalGuy Am I a weirdo? from that rainy city where they throw fish (Oldest One in the Book)
Am I a weirdo?
#170: Feb 11th 2023 at 7:56:38 PM

Down to 4000 now.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
CompletelyNormalGuy Am I a weirdo? from that rainy city where they throw fish (Oldest One in the Book)
Am I a weirdo?
#171: Feb 23rd 2023 at 11:29:32 PM

3500 now.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
CompletelyNormalGuy Am I a weirdo? from that rainy city where they throw fish (Oldest One in the Book)
Am I a weirdo?
#172: Mar 6th 2023 at 6:29:13 PM

3300 and the main namespace is clear. Any additional wicks that show up in main are newly added, and should be met with a "not a trope" notifier.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
GastonRabbit MOD One album, Please (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I've got the brains, you've got the looks. Let's make lots of money.
One album, Please (he/him)
#173: Mar 7th 2023 at 4:10:31 AM

Since the bulletin was only supposed to stay up for about a month even if it didn't work out as well as other bulletins (which it didn't), I took it down and put up one for Bare Your Midriff (which is the type of Chairs-y ZCE magnet we usually reserve bulletins for) and another for the deprecation of the LARP/ namespace.

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CompletelyNormalGuy Am I a weirdo? from that rainy city where they throw fish (Oldest One in the Book)
Am I a weirdo?
#174: Apr 2nd 2023 at 1:20:25 AM

Down to 3100 now.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#175: Apr 7th 2023 at 9:26:23 AM

Tried my hand at cleaning some Character pages. I think some of the usage falls outside the bounds of Optional Boss and its subtropes, and with a page as heavily used as this one even small categories of misuse can be significant in terms of raw number of examples. Here are some specific examples that I wasn't sure what to do with:

Characters.Another Eden Antagonists:

  • Bonus Boss: Most Horrors can't be fought the first time around, due to them completely slaughtering your party the first time around be virtue of being a higher level.
I get the sense some examples emphasized the "difficulty" element over the "optional" or other elements as opposed to the other way around. I don't think this qualifies as a Superboss as it's not hidden and might not really be a boss, it's just an enemy you can fight before you're ready for it. But I'm not quite sure I want to file it under Skippable Boss either.

Characters.Ar Tonelico II Melody Of Metafalica

  • Bonus Boss: Raki can be fought multiple times after her required story fights and gets progressively stronger each time. This goes on until the 15th fight is won and the final reward image is gotten, as she won't power up anymore after that point.
Do we have a trope for enemies you fight once as part of the story, but can then fight again and they get progressively stronger?

Characters.Arknights Reunion Movement:

  • Bonus Boss: Crownslayer appears in a significant amount of side materials and events outside of the main story, including: The second Vanguard/Supporter chip operation, Inferno stage H5-3, Contingency Contract #1 - Operation Pyrite, the "Unequal Split" stage in the second season of Integrated Stategies, and the Chernobog stage of the Annihilation game mode.
I'm pretty sure this is pretty badly misused, but I'm not sure what it thinks the trope is.

Characters.Assassins Creed Origins Others:

  • Bonus Boss: They're extremely powerful opponents that roam certain parts of the world. The "weakest" is level 20 (but can wreck you in seconds even at level 30+ if you underestimate him) while the rest goes up all the way to the maximum level of 40. Their presence actually triggers a warning siren and a text message if you get within 100 meters of one. You can avoid the Phylakes if you prefer, but it's recommended to get rid of them ASAP because they drop some of the best items in the game and tend to join battles you're involved in out of nowhere in the worst possible moments as long as they're around.
Another example that thinks the trope is about difficulty more than anything else. They aren't hidden and while technically optional/skippable the entry actually suggests you do take them down if you can so they don't get in the way of the main quest.


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