Wake-Up Call Boss

"You'll be having a really good time...and then all of a sudden this boss will kick your fucking nuts out through your nose."

— Noah Antwiler of The Spoony Experiment on Persona 4's Shadow Yukiko

The Wake-Up Call Boss is more or less a boss that marks a massive Difficulty Spike, or at least the point where the game stops going easy on you. At this point, everything you've learned but haven't really considered yet will be severely tested: Everything before was just getting you used to the controls, this is where the true challenge begins.

Due to this, they usually appear early on, but can appear from early to early-mid game. They definitely shouldn't appear late. And it's not really That One Boss so much as it's very brutally drilling into you how to play: like a boss in a beat-em-up designed to very easily beat anyone who thinks they can button mash through the game, or a boss in a Role-Playing Game designed to beat players who just spam their most powerful attacks with no regard to strategy.

Sister Trope to Early-Bird Boss, a version of this that relies on the player's lack of key items, spells, or meta-knowledge early in the game to provide a challenge.

Compare with That One Boss, though this trope is specifically for bosses that appear early in the game and are merely a sample of the rest of the game's challenges. Also compare with Disappointing Last Level and Early Game Hell (for when not just the first or second boss is difficult, but also the early levels/chapters are as well). Contrast with Warm-Up Boss, a first boss that frequently is impossible (or at least very hard) to lose to. See also Hopeless Boss Fight and Final Boss Preview. Compare Skill Gate Characters, which are PvP characters/factions/whatever that serve a similar purpose in separating newbies from the experienced, and the Noob Bridge, which is another game element that tests whether you understand how the game works.

Compare the non-video game terms Threshold Guardians and Wake-Up Call.

Games with their own sets of Wake-Up Call Bosses:

Genres with their own sets of Wake-Up Call Bosses:

Other Examples:

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Action-Adventure Game

You think you're pretty tough for having taken out the massive sea monster that serves as the first boss in Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, but then in the next boss room holy hell here comes Zangetsu. He's a small hitbox, he's fast, he has a dozen or so attacks, has little to no telegraphs for his attacks, lights his sword on fire halfway through the fight, and he will rip your sorry ass apart if you think you can go wholly on the offensive or sniping from a distance the way you can against Vepar to render it an easy fight. Unlike everything else you've ever fought getting in close doesn't work as he can tear you apart before you can react while using Hit-and-Run Tactics doesn't work because he can close the distance more quickly than you can run away, so to even stand a chance against this guy you'll need to actually learn to use Miriam's backdash and attack canceling to hold him at mid-range and bait attacks which you can dodge and counter. And even then, unless you decided to take some time augmenting shards and crafting with Johannes to come into the fight with decent gear, Zangetsu is a Damage Sponge who can kill you in only a few hits so you'd better learn all of that too — without godly levels of luck you're not getting past this guy without a firm understanding of all the game's mechanics.
Cave Story has Balfrog, beating whom requires having mastered the Vent Physics introduced a little earlier that very level.
Belth in Demon's Crest is considered brutal for an early boss. He's durable, his size makes him difficult to jump over, and his attacks are both damaging and hard to avoid.
In Goof Troop, the second boss, while genuinely hard on his own, is impossible to beat until you realize you can catch projectile attacks.
The first miniboss of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, Weasleby's mech. Remember when, early on, it told you how to power up your projectiles using the puzzle mode? You're gonna need that; getting within melee range is very risky, and unpowered shots do pitiful amounts of damage.
The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda has several:
  - In the first quest, Aquamentus. Yes, he's the boss of the first dungeon, and yes, once you have a feel for the game mechanics he's pretty wimpy. Still, he spits unblockable energy balls that do a heart's worth of damage when you probably only have 3 and he's the first monster you encounter that you can't beat by just running up to it and stabbing. Either you learn the hit and run strategy you'll be using against tougher bosses like Manhandla and Gleeok, or you grind for heart pieces and better equipment, wait until you have the White Sword and Magical Shield, and then curbstomp him.
  - Manhandla in Level 3-1. He's incredibly hard to kill with just the Wooden Sword and basically exists to make sure you're being careful to get better weapons.
  - Gleeok from Level 2-2. Level 1-2 may have been tougher than level 1-1, but this is when the game makes it clear that the second quest is merciless. You'll likely be ill-equipped and it teaches you that you have to stock up to survive later fights. And if you don't have the Blue Ring, its fireballs deal a full heart of damage.
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past:
  - First, there's Agahnim. So the bosses have been fairly easy up to this point. Just a few swipes of the sword and it was over. And now you have a better sword: the Master Sword, the sword of evil's bane. Too bad directly attacking Agahnim with it hurts Link, not Agahnim.
  - The boss of Dark Palace, the Helmasaur King. The bosses of the Light World, Agahnim included, were pretty straightfoward and required only to do one thing. The Helmasaur King, on the other hand, is a bit more complex: you need to break his armor first with either the magic hammer or the bombs, and once its weak point is exposed, hit it with the sword or preferably arrows. All of it, while trying to dodge its brutal attacks. This is to show that bosses from this point onwards can't be just beaten with a single trick, or have more than one phase that requires different tools and/or tactics.
- The early morning receptionist for Link's Awakening is the Genie. He throws fires that also deal a full heart of damage which are hard to dodge, and the fact that you won't be used to his attacks at first (or at all) means that you'll get your power knocked out of you before long. On top of all this, he has a second phase.
- Ocarina of Time has a few:
  - For Child Link, Barinade isn't as hard as what comes later but still represents a big step up in challenge. The two prior bosses you faced moved rather slowly and gave ample time to simply dash away from their attacks, but Barinade is a much faster and more aggressive enemy, attacking you with a whirling shield of electrified jellyfish and intermittent blasts of well-aimed electricity from its upper appendages in the first phase. Once its jellyfish barrier is destroyed, it Turns Red and begins to spin around the boss chamber even faster, spewing much more precise electrical bursts at a frenetic pace. If you haven't yet learned how to quickly lock on, strafe and sidestep going into this fight, you'll have all three down by the time you win it.
  - Even though they quickly become regular mooks afterward, the Stalfos mini-boss counts as one. All the enemies you've fought up until then either had an easily exploitable weak point or could be blade-spammed to death. The Stalfos marks the point when enemies start fighting the same way as Link; not only can they block (and face towards Link as they block, as if they were Z-targeting you), but they also have a jump attack that —just like Link's— does twice as much damage as a normal hit.
  - Phantom Ganon. The previous bosses were Gohma, King Dodongo, and Barinade, all of whom were beaten easily provided you knew which tools to use (Slingshot for Gohma, Bombs for King Dodongo, and Boomerang for Barinade). But Phantom Ganon, your first boss as Adult Link, can't be beaten unless you know how to use more advanced game mechanics like reflecting his own attacks back at him, and he can easily defeat you if you don't adapt to the increased difficulty of Adult Link's dungeons quickly enough.
- Majora's Mask has Odolwa, the boss of the first dungeon Woodfall, who will kick your ass if you go in expecting him to be as easy as Lizalfos or Gekko, or expect him to go down with little effort like Gohma of the previous game. He's basically a giant Stalfos (as mentioned prior) on super steroids who requires a keen understanding of the game, like knowing you can explore the world and so sidequests to power up before facing him, and the boss room itself, like realizing you can use the bombs to distract and kill his Mooks, if you want to still be in one piece to finish him: you're basically as good as done if you didn't run around and gather a few extra hearts and masks before facing him. It's actually lampshaded by Tatl after the fight, who remarks that she's surprised how well you did and asks if you've done this sort of thing before.
- Skyward Sword introduces you to Big Bad Ghirahim as the boss of the first dungeon. Up until then, you can get by OK just by flailing your sword around at most enemies. If you do that against Ghirahim, he will utterly destroy you. And talk smack at you for playing like crap. Ghirahim is an interesting case in that he's a decent Wake Up Call for newcomers to the franchise, but for Zelda veterans, he's a nuclear missile siren, as he shows you this is not like previous games where you can relentlessly hack and slash at a boss' weak point once it's exposed, or spam with the item you just got in the dungeon prior (the Beetle is worse than useless against Ghirahim; only your sword can damage him). Skyward Sword uses the motion sensor, and if the Skyview Temple's eye puzzles and new and improved Skulltulas didn't make that clear, Ghirahim is there to hammer the point home.
- Breath of the Wild's Waterblight Ganon may not be the most difficult of the Scourges, but can easily serve as a nasty wake-up call considering the questline preceding him is by far the easiest to stumble upon by accident, when the player is fresh off the plateau and may not have much in the way of health or supplies (namely food, potions, and weaponry) or experience with the game's dodge/parry mechanics—which are nigh-mandatory lest he instantly knock off what little health an unlucky player may have by this point.
Mission Impossible (1990): The first actual boss fight in the third mission is incredibly hard. You have to fight a teleporting, duplicate-creating ninja on a crumbling floor. You can either try to deal enough damage to him, which can be tough as he spams you with shuriken, or make a section of floor collapse under him, which is easier said than done with how he teleports around.
Popful Mail has Muttonhead's Wood Golem. Whereas the Mad Bomber and Thrashmaster+ could be beaten with enough tenacity and slashing at them with your weapons enough times, the Golem is harder to hit and will try to bum rush you. Once you've destroyed its body, its head will pop off and bounce around, forcing you to destroy it before it rejoins with its new body, making you repeat the process until it's defeated. The fact that its head retains all of its damage every time it does this doesn't make the battle that much easier.
Pronty, for most of the first stages, is a relaxing, peaceful game set in an underwater environment, until you face Lamina the cyborg-shark abomination. Whose body is covered with blades that shaves away a big chunk of your health with a single scratch, and has an ability to spam a Storm of Blades at you constantly requiring you to put your dodging abilities to the test. It can perform a Dash Attack at you as well, and marks a massive spike in difficulty after the first few bosses.
In Shadow of the Colossus, it's generally agreed that one of the Colossi 3 — 5 is going to be this: Gaius is the first Colossus you cannot simply climb up and stab in the weak spot, Phaedra is the first that requires you to use the environment around you to your advantage, and Avion is the first Colossus who simply ignores you (and stays out of reach) unless you provoke it. Which one is the Wake-Up Call Boss depends on the specific player and the strategies they naturally employ.
Spider-Man 2 – Enter: Electro, while challenging, can still be doable if you know what you're doing... up until the first boss, Shocker. Let him be the gatekeeper standing between you and hell. He never flinches from your attacks, can knock you down with all of his, and your punches and kicks do jack all against him. The only way to deal significant damage to him is by using environmental hazards against him, whether by throwing oil drums at him or by web-yanking the overhead boxes onto him (which you can only select by using the newly added Lock-On button). And you gotta do it quick otherwise the fire surrounding you will get too extreme and the warehouse you're fighting in will explode. And as stated earlier, once you do manage to beat him, the game will only get harder from there.
Yakuza: The series is replete with them, usually appearing pretty much as soon as the tutorial ends, and designed to ensure that you understand the combat mechanics and don't just button-mash.
- In Yakuza 0, Daisuke Kuze fills this role. Dodge and block and you'll be fine, otherwise... hope you like respawning. It's also important to keep in mind that you have two fighting styles at this point, one of which makes you immune to punches for a bit when you block and comes with a better dodge than your first one, hammering home the importance of juggling between multiple fighting styles depending on the situation.
- In Yakuza, Yuya is the one to beat, introducing quick-time events in fights and Kiwami finishers.
- In Yakuza 2, Daigo Dojima. While he is presented as one tier above common street thugs in terms of story, don't believe it. Daigo has plenty of grabs that negate blocks and wide-sweeping attacks that go well beyond a quickstep. Fortunately, you fight him in a cluttered back alley, reminding you to make use of the environment for attacks and Heat Actions.
- In Yakuza 3, The first boss fights against a Willfully Weak Majima and Rikiya aren't so bad. Tetsuo Tamashiro on the other hand... whoo-ee. He's aggressive, has decent defensive skills, relies on weapons, and is the first boss with multiple health bars, a heat mode that prevents him from being knocked down, and Quick Time Events comprised of multiple button presses and harsh punishments for failures. Not helping matters is that him being fought rather early deprives you of upgrades that would make him far more manageable.
- Like a Dragon: Gaiden gives us Homare Nishitani III. If you haven't been keeping your inventory up to snuff, be prepared to die to this guy fast. And on Professional (Hard) difficulty, very often.

Card Battle Game

Calculords starts you off on Fancybot, who has very little in the way of tactics and average cards. Then comes Stardog, who likes cards that come with a fair degree of health for their loose tier, plus lots of cards with healing and support abilities. Nothing too eccentric...but THEN comes Corporal Krak, who stacks up cards that spawn packs of units along with a ''very'' squishy signature unit that self-destructs when killed, dealing damage...oh yeah, and it comes in hordes, all tactics you've likely never seen before by that point. Unless you learn how to organize your deployment order, buffs and deck construction to counter holes in an opponent's deck organization, you'll be dribbling out units desperately trying to plug holes in the deluge thrown at you from the other side of the screen and never get the opportunity to recover. And then the next guy in line uses the exact same tactic you're likely to use to get past Krak, which you've also never needed to learn to properly counter up until that point.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction has Panik, and the Millennium Guardian shortly afterward. Both have pretty good decks, forcing you to use what little cards you have effectively and strategically to win.

Fighting Game

Hakumen of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is a rather vicious jump in difficulty compared to every character in the Story Mode, as he's probably the first battle you'll fight where you'll actually have to have some form of strategy and understanding of the game's fighting mechanics to even have a chance at beating him. Nu-13, the game's Final Boss, is almost a walk in the park in comparison, simply because Hakumen forces you to actually learn how to play the game and not make stupid mistakes.
Dead or Alive 4: The first scripted (non-random) character you fight (which varies depending on who you play as). You can beat the first three random encounters, who are Nintendo Hard but far from perfect, by attacking with basic attacks and blocking at the right time. Not quite just through button mashing, but fairly close. A decent player should be able to do this with any character. But then during and after the first scripted encounter, the enemies become much closer to Perfect Play A.I.. Basic natural combos will get painfully countered. Hitlag will will be punished if you miss attacks. Inputting the wrong move will cost you at least a quarter of your health bar. You will need to use specific moves deliberately, and have at least some knowledge of how to not just play well, but play your specific character well, to proceed past the first scripted encounter without using tens of continues. And have fun fighting Alpha without a solid mastery of your chosen character.
Double Dragon Neon's first boss fight with Skullmageddon can quickly curbstomp inexperienced players; his most devastating attacks are the Overhead Slash->Skeleslam combo, and his Hat Teleport Impalement, which is hard to avoid due to its randomly chosen path.
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 features Great Ape Gohan. Until this battle, you could easily beat everyone by mashing the attack button and keeping the enemies stunlocked long enough to outlast them. Great Ape Gohan is your first Giant-class enemy, and Giants cannot be stunlocked. If you rush him and try to combo him, he will effortlessly wipe the floor with you, meaning you will not beat him until you learn to fight at a distance. What's more, you fight him with Piccolo, who has a terrible primary Blast 2 distance attack (which is what some control schemes default to) but a reasonably good secondary Blast 2 distance attack, which teaches the player that they do need to learn to try out both distance attacks with the character they use if they want to succeed in the long run.
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 hits you hard at the end of the Namek Saga. By the time you reach this point, you're probably a little on the overpowered side and most fights will seem like a cakewalk. As you prepare to fight Frieza on the critically wounded Namek, who should appear but Cooler, who decides to give Frieza a hand. Beat them up a bit and they decide to bring their A-Game, going 100% Full Power and Final Form respectively. Final Form Cooler, especially, is a real pain, as he'll happy attempt to plant a dumbass tree with you as the dumbass!
First-time players of Magical Battle Arena seem to have the same experience with it. "Great game, but Sakura keeps kicking asses with Fight and Firey in the second stage. Compounded if you picked someone like Nanoha, who doesn't fight well in melee. Note that Nanoha is the first highlighted character in the character select screen.
Mortal Kombat 9's first fight against Goro can be this. Up until that point, as long as you can learn a few of your character's combos and special moves, you can defeat most enemies without too much trouble. Then, all of a sudden there's a boss whose X-Ray takes away more than half of your health, who has several attacks during which he isn't staggered by your hits, and who, to top it all off, has twice as much health as you.
As an old Capcom game, some might find Power Stone to be a little easy given the mechanics and ease of decimating your opponents when you get your super mode. But then Kraken shows up. See, Kraken just LOOOVES his super mode and will do anything to get into it. Each player starts with one power stone with the third appearing later. Meaning Kraken will spam attacks that deal both heavy damage and knock out your power stone if you have one or if he's waiting for the third to show up. Guns won't save you from air attacks here.
In Sonic Battle, the first fight against Knuckles as Emerl is tougher than normal since at this point in the game you'll have very few skill points for Emerl to use for attacks, jumping power, or movement. Knuckles is reasonably fast, has a good heal skill, and has powerful moves, making the early fight much harder than later fights against him when you have more powers.
Soulcalibur IV only has one boss in the traditional sense, but after beating Story mode a few times, you feel like you can kill anything, so you move onto arcade mode, which is a wakeup call in itself (enemies in story mode are all the same difficulty, but in arcade mode they slowly get smarter), but then you run into The Apprentice, let out a little nerdsqueal, and then promptly get destroyed in a few seconds. Note also that the game is mildly realistic, not counting the magicky-weapons, and then you come up against this smartass using projectile force-bombs and the like. Vader fights a bit like Mitsurugi with some fancy additional tricks, so you are REALLY unprepared for Apprentice the first dozen times or so, as nobody else in the game fights anywhere near close.
Teleroboxer has this as early as the second fighter. Pagero can be easily dispatched with basic punches and defense. Then you get to Spokong. At first it seems the whole thing is going to be the same... until the enemy's head relocates in its stomach. You'll have to learn to aim your punches and counterattack properly if you want to survive this tactic.

First-Person Shooter

The first few Big Daddy fights in BioShock are practically impossible on the harder difficulties; they're actually weaker than the ones you encounter in the later stages of the game, but at this point you have limited weaponry, ammo, and plasmids.
The first boss of Descent I and the third of Descent II. Both launch instant-death Macross Missile Massacres, the former using Smart Missiles, the latter using Mega Missiles and a Phoenix Cannon, and like all bosses, randomly teleport, often directly in your face, launching a barrage just as they re-materialize. At least in Descent II you have more hiding places, but that game ups the stakes by giving the boss immunity to all energy weapons.
Barrett in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He shows up before the first Detroit chapter is even finished, and is almost unreasonably hard compared to other bosses: he's extremely tough, has a very powerful minigun for an arm, has an unblockable melee attack that finishes by setting you up to get shot point blank in the face by it unless you manage to duck out of the way, and as he takes damage, he begins hurling HANDFULS of grenades around the arena so that you'll often need to run directly into his line of fire to avoid getting blown up. To make matters worse, it's entirely possible build your character to be focused on hacking and stealth, which in the original version was entirely useless while fighting him. The game did have extinguishers, canisters and weapons in side rooms that you could use, but for the unprepared or poorly equipped he was a nightmare.
Doom:
- Doom: The Cyberdemon, first appearing as the boss of the second episode. If you haven't learned to strafe and circle-strafe effectively yet, you stand no chance whatsoever against his rocket missiles.
- Doom II: The seventh level, "Dead Simple", is a Wolfpack Boss consisting of groups of two of the game's new high-level monsters, Mancubi and Arachnotrons. Mancubi fire in a difficult-to-evade spread pattern, while Arachnotrons pelt the player with plasma balls continuously. Both are deadly. Unlike the original Doom enemies, merely strafing around each fireball as it comes near isn't enough – you had to pay attention to your surroundings and to the enemies' attack patterns and move smartly if you want to survive. The appearance of Chaingunners and Revenants in previous levels hint that the simplistic shoot-and-strafe combat tactics that could get you through the first game won't work anymore, but "Dead Simple" hammers the point home.
Halo 2: The boss fight against the Prophet of Regret can catch newer players completely by surprise, given that he's effectively Immune to Bullets outside of special circumstances. He's also packing the strongest ranged Covenant weapon in the game, which can easily one-shot a player on higher difficulties, and has constantly respawning mooks charging in.
The first boss in Halo Infinite, Tremonius, appears at the end of the game's second level. He is slow with a signature Ground Pound attack, designed to be easily countered as long as the player understands how to apply the new Grappleshot in combat.
House of the Dead 2 had Judgment, which consists of Zeal and Kuarl, an imp and a giant suit of armor respectively, who fight together, and are extremely easy... unless you don't realize that you have to target Zeal the tiny flying imp (as the weak point), and not Kuarl the giant knight. Most first timers most likely saw a giant headless Dread Knight-esque monster lumbering towards them and, panicking, shot frantically at it, causing them to suffer like G did? It's an easy way to get wiped out in a minute or two, but it's a reminder to be accurate and precise instead of panicky. This is, of course, if you ignore the large picture that blatantly tells you to hit Zeal. Also, it is possible to take Kuarl down with rapid fire; you are even instructed to do so in a training mission in the home versions. Afterwards, though, it's still hard for even a trained shooter to hit Zeal without getting hit (though hammering on Kuarl can cause happy accidents when Zeal flies right into the crossfire).
Paine, the first boss of Red Steel 2. Up until then, you've come across one miniboss which can shrug off attacks but telegraphs attacks so is easy to avoid if cautious, and other enemies have been unable to block and will go down to mutton-mask-esque wii-mote swinging. In contrast, Paine blocks attacks with few openings, will break your guard if given the chance, has a ton of health, some nasty specials, and can summon gun-wielding lackeys to chip away at your health from behind. May well qualify as That One Boss and Wake Up Call Boss.
Olaric, the first boss in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, is very fast for his size, casts homing spirit attacks that do massive damage, and has unlimited zombie support. Best to attack him from a distance, and use your Holy Crosses to take out groups of zombies.
Agent Tatsuo from Syndicate (2012). If you haven't gotten around to using DART Overlay optimally, you're going to die a few times before you get around to killing him.
Longhunter in the original Turok. Also an absolute pain because he calls two hummers to assist too. Partially justified in that he IS a mercenary.
While the preceding bosses in ULTRAKILL escalate in difficulty in various ways, they all end up becoming regular enemies later. V2 takes it to the next level by being a Mirror Boss to V1, possessing every bit of his predecessor's speed and mobility (meaning getting close enough to heal from his spilled blood will be difficult) along with every weapon the player has unlocked so far. If you have somehow not learned to parry, dodge and shoot while blitzing across the map by this point, then you better either learn pretty fast or prepare to die. A lot.
If you are playing the silly story mode on Unreal Tournament, every single time you are randomly slated to meet Malcolm is this.
Hans Grosse in Wolfenstein 3-D. Up until when you meet him, defeating enemies basically consisted of "aim in their general direction and keep the fire button pressed while standing still". If you try this on Hans, you'll be dead within seconds.
The flashback battle with Metamoq in Zeno Clash. Although he's hardly the first difficult opponent you've faced, he's a significant jump up from even the hardest of those, and you'll have to use almost everything you've learned so far to have a real chance of beating him. He actually acts as the final boss for the demo, because of the significant difficulty spike.

Light Gun Game

House of the Dead tends to have first bosses that ease the player into the format of the game's boss battles with a simple to hit weak spot. Not quite so with the fourth game's first boss, Justice. Hitting Justice's weak spot, his massive tongue, is a hard target to hit, due to Justice's wild movements of his head, as well as raising his arms to prevent block the weak point during the second phase of his fight. If you're out of grenades when he blocks, expect a very hard aiming challenge to keep yourself from taking a drop kick to the face from the mutant.
The first Time Crisis have its Disc-One Final Boss, Sherudo Garo, who hurls throwing knives at you with lightning-speed. The fact that he's flanked by Elite Mooks doesn't help either. It takes nearly 10 shots to take him down, and compared to the first boss - Moz, a Mook Lieutenant ninja that dies after 3 hits and doesn't really have any ranged attacks, its a seriously huge spike in difficulty.

Mecha Game

Armored Core games generally have a few. A good example is in For Answer, the end of chapter 1 boss, Spirit of Motherwill, is a walking fortress the size of a small city, and must be at least 1 kilometer tall. It's intimidating for newer players to see that, and realize they have to take it down, especially after the opening sequence where the player's AC has a rocket strapped to its back, is forced to dodge repeated cannon fire until they get close, and then has to worry about what can only be described as Bullet Hell in an Armored Core game. However, once you get over that element of fear, shock, and awe, SoM isn't actually that scary to defeat.
- There's usually an arena battle (Werehound, Fixer, etc.) a few fights in that's a lot harder than its predecessors. These are generally guys with more aggressive AI, and often heat weapons, which will wreck most basic mechs.
- The first time you face another AC outside of the Arena in the game. At the start, you can basically plow through the Mooks with your basic sword and gun without getting much into the customization aspect of the game. Then you get the message "Enemy AC Identified" from your handler.
- Armored Core: Last Raven, being Nintendo Hard overall, had a ton of these. Each story path would usually have at least one. Special distinctions should be made for Triturate, whose linear gun arms are an effective endgame weapon for you. Rim Fire, who dual wields 4 barreled machine guns, with back mounted chain guns and comes on the heels of another boss. Thunderstrike, a heavy energy weapon specialist who has the lovely distinction of being the first mission on some paths. How's that starter mech treating you? This guy is tough with an imported endgame file — didn't play the previous game? Tough stuff, man.
- Bullet Dragon from Armored Core 2 is basically Rim Fire with less fire control. You heard me. The nice thing is if you want to be a cheapass about it and want to exploit his ridiculously aggressive AI, just keep circling him and drawing fire. Pick either an arena with lots of cover or a big wide circular arena. He uses gun-arms so once he's out, he's out for good.
- Valkyrie from the original PS1 Armored Core. During what seems like an easy mission blowing up whatever you please (your income is based on the amount of destruction you cause) and then fighting off a handful of weak mooks, Valkyrie, the #2 ranked Raven shows up to put a stop to you. She introduces the fact that other mercenaries may have weapons or abilities that you can't use, showing it off with special rapid fire, shoulder-mounted gun that can easily stun-lock you and rip you apart if you're not careful.
The first three missions in MechWarrior 3 are relatively easy with the toughest enemy you face being a mech identical to yours, that being a 55-ton Bushwacker. Then mission 4 comes up and pits you against the first heavy mech of the game, a 75-ton Orion. Due to the fact that the Bushwhacker is not really a great mech and the rather weak weaponry you have this early in the game, if you have not mastered the art of "legging" (shooting out the leg of a mech to take it down quickly), the Orion will most likely tear you apart. They do it again in the next mission set, forcing you to defeat sizable foes (including several Thors) but always giving you a chance to engage enemies on your terms. And then for the mission finale you're forced into close combat with an Annihilator, a 100-ton kill-beast and bar none the most lethal close-range 'Mech in the game. It can and will kill you or one of your buddies with a single salvo. Learn to circle-strafe around it or die trying, Mechwarrior.
Phantom Crash has rankers that show up from time to time (Not counting the one you have to beat in that day's rumble battle) to take on everyone, but the worst of them is a ranker by the name of Mitch. Mitch uses a Ventuno Scoobee with hover legs, two Grenade Shoulder weapons, and the worst part, two L50 Javelin arms (a Ventuno-only weapon arm that fires a laser. And to make matters worse, unlike in SLAI lasers in Phantom Crash don't use ammo). Her AI seemed hell bent on trying to find you (And her AI isn't dumb enough to not use the Grenades to find you if you use your Optic Camouflage) unless other Scoobees were attacking her and once she found you, she was relentless in her attack until you got away from her or you got lucky and someone else got her attention. Even in a D-rank rumble or a Free rumble if Mitch shows up, you better hope the other Scoobees can lower her armor enough for you to take her out or you better hightail it out of the match if your Scoobee isn't up to par or if its too badly damaged.
S.L.A.I.: Steel Lancer Arena International makes your first ranker battle into this. Sure, you might spend a good few rounds with your basic SV, darting around and scoring kills on D-listers, maybe take a few moments to show off by shoving a chainsaw katana into someone's back. When you've scored at least one kill on everyone else, the D-ranker shows up, and suddenly it's not a shooting gallery any more. A ranker, even a D-ranker, is faster, tougher, and better armed than the rest of the pack, and leaping at them like you would any one else on the field will result in you paying a lot of money in repair fees.

MMORPGs

Toontown: Corporate Clash: Each playground has its respective Kudos Manager. The first, Prethinker, has a surprising gimmick but deals relatively low damage, his backup is easy to take care of, and he doesn't have too much health. The next, Rainmaker, is a massive step up in difficulty. She has a lot of phases with their own effects that make the fight harder, summons powerful enemies as backup, and can attack many times in one turn.

Platformer

Dullahan from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is quite hard thanks to a certain attack that kills you in two hits if you fail to dodge it. It comes in volleys of 4-6. This boss taught players that dodging things still counts in Metroidvania land.
In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia:
- The second boss of the game, the Giant Skeleton, is a massive spike up from the first, capable of killing an unprepared Shanoa in five hits. It teaches you to value safety over dealing damage and never allow yourself to be cornered.
- If Giant Skeleton doesn't give you trouble, the Giant Enemy Crab in the later lighthouse level will. It's a long endurance match and you need to be on your toes to avoid all of its attacks, as well as utilising Magnes and general platforming skills quite quickly. It's all worth it for the finisher where you crush it with an elevator, though.
- Finally, the tutorial level usually concludes with you fighting off four Skeletons. Simple. However, on Hard Mode, the skeletons are replaced by Skeleton Heroes, obnoxious mooks with projectile attacks from later in the game. The fight is quite winnable if you know what you're doing, but it's a surprise for a player who thought he could just coast through with New Game Plus gear.
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood has the werewolf. The first boss (the wyvern) has easy to avoid attacks and can be spammed with axes for a quick win. Stage 2 is already a Difficulty Spike in and of itself, but the Werewolf is much faster than your character, unpredictable, and requires you to think fast or die.
- The Werewolf battle is confined to a single screen. His being faster than you is virtually a non-factor. His penchant for Wall Jumping, bouncing all over the place, and launching energy blasts that move in a highly nonlinear fashion, on the other hand...
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair:
- Puppet Master. He's there to teach you that doing more damage isn't everything, if you don't take the precautions necessary to defeat him before going after him, you will get your party killed.
- Also, taking on Gergoth with the game's starter equipment is pretty difficult; not surprising, since he was That One Boss when he first appeared in Dawn of Sorrow.
The Doppleganger in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one not just for this game, but for the new Metroidvania style of Castlevania as a whole. He's quick, he's hard to hit, he spams attacks, and he'll be impossible if you just charge at him with your sword. You're going to need to use items or Dark Metamorphosis (taught to you by the manual) to replenish health to give yourself an edge, and also experiment with different equipment: you have two swords at this point and Doppleganger is weak to the cursing effect of the weaker one in order to teach players a weapon with the highest ATK does not mean it's always the ideal weapon.
In Claw you can pummel Le Rauxe in about six-seven seconds by mashing attack button. If you think you can do the same to Catherine, think again: she blocks much more frequently, can jump from one end of the arena to other in a flash and has a ranged attack. Once you know how to dodge she becomes much easier, but at your first try you're bound to get whipped with extreme prejudice.
Conker's Bad Fur Day has two examples, either of which can be the first boss depending on whether the player chooses to clear the chapters in order, or skips parts of them for a non-linear progression:
- Haybot: At first, it seems like the characters (Conker assisted by Franky the pitchfork, in this case), simply have to hit the hay-covered robot three times while dodging its attacks. But then the boss breaks the floors out of rage and all of them fall into a sewer basement, where the battle turns into a nasty Didn't Need Those Anyway! scenario. The boss loses parts of its body as Conker and Franky continue pressing the red button behind its body, which in turn can only be done after luring the boss into water (after, in turn, luring the boss's missiles into some pipes to break them). When Haybot is complete, it attacks by squashing the characters with both hands. When one of those hands is gone, it attacks by seizing them and then throwing them away. With both hands gone, it squashes against the characters, but with its own metallic base. With the rest of the body gone, the boss is simply defeated, but then Conker has to escape from there before it's too late.
- The Great Mighty Poo: Though its attacks are easy to dodge, the player has to know how to aim fast and precisely to throw the toilet papers to the boss to its mouth when he starts singing. As the battle progresses, the tempo of the music increases and it becomes much harder to hit him successfully. It can take several tries if, in the long run, the attacks end up depleting Conker's life bar.
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex: For being the second boss, Wa-Wa the Water Elemental will give you a lot of trouble if you're not careful. The reason: he sends out water waves that you have to jump over (if they're blue) or duck under (if they look like green fire) with really good timing. The first two hits aren't that bad, but starting on the third hit, he will send out bubbles in between the platforms. This sounds harmless until you see that the bubbles block your jumps and send you into the water. On his last hit, Wa-Wa will go nuts with the waves and bubbles. One more thing: the platforms sink if you stay on them for too long.
- In the first game, Papu Papu is an absolute pushover who most players will trounce in less than a minute. Ripper Roo, the very next boss, is a Puzzle Boss who must be defeated by carefully timing TNT detonations, all while navigating extremely tiny platforms surrounded by water (which, of course, is instant death). Most players will burn through many a life trying to take him down, and it's as sure a sign as anything that things are only gonna get harder from there.
Cuphead has two of them:
- Cagney Carnation is the last boss of the first island, and the point at which the game's infamous difficulty really starts kicking into gear, since he assaults you with tricky attacks and makes you keep track of multiple on-screen hazards at once. Every boss after him ups the ante in some way, making him serve as a test of whether or not the player has what it takes to make it to the end.
- For the plane levels, we have Wally Warbles. Hilda Berg mostly serves to get you used to the plane controls and her projectiles are fairly sparse, and Djimmy mostly avoids filling the screen with hazards until his last phase, but Wally is the first plane boss to utilize Bullet Hell from the outset and demands complete competency with the plane's entire moveset to beat. It doesn't help that every plane boss after him is a candidate for That One Boss, either.
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest:
- The second boss, Kleever, is this. He starts out fairly simply, shooting a couple fireballs at you and slowly chasing you down a line of hooks, but after you hit him three times, he sinks into the lava, faking death for about half a second before he bursts out, lunges at you, and proceeds to chase you across the hooks (now at several vertical levels) at a much quicker pace. And now he flies. Not That One Boss (especially not compared to, say, K. Rool himself), but still dangerous enough to cost you a few lives the first time you fight him.
- World 4 as a whole represents a Difficulty Spike in DKC2, but the boss, King Zing, drives the point home. Despite the fact that he's a mid-game boss, he represents an entirely different challenge than any boss in either the first or second Donkey Kong Country games. To wit, he's the first boss in the series that is fought as an Animal Buddy (namely, Squawks the Parrot; DKC3 would later have two bosses fought with Ellie the Elephant and Enguarde the Swordfish), let alone a buddy that had only been available for a few levels at this point, the only boss in the game that does not revolve around evading attacks until a convenient barrel or cannonball spawns, the first boss in the series that is invulnerable aside from one weak point (in this case, the stinger), and only the second boss in the series, second only to the K. Rool fight in the first game, that has multiple stages. While the second stage is decidedly easy, the first stage is highly irritating; hitting the weak point requires precision timing, aim, and positioning, as Hitbox Dissonance makes it difficult to hit the target while not crashing into Zing yourself. Worse, he becomes invulnerable every two hits and breaks his predictable flying pattern to chase the player while spewing an increasingly fast volley of spines in every direction. Fortunately, there's a Good Bad Bug that can allow the player to defeat the first stage without leaving the (mostly) safe corridor you start in, though this requires a good deal of patience.
Hornet, the second boss of Hollow Knight, is ruthless. She guards the dash ability, which makes moving and doging attacks a lot easier going forward, but at this point in the game all of the enemies you've faced so far are slow-moving and easy to dodge, and the first boss (False Knight) is such a pushover you can even choose not to battle him by jumping out of the arena through a breakable wall. In contrast, Hornet is unskippable, quick, can attack from halfway across the arena, has an attack that can hit you both coming at you and on the way back, and can dodge your attacks by jumping out of the way. You have little time to heal, you can't just button-mash her to death, and her stuns are shorter. So many new players get stuck on her that it's almost a meme, and her saying something that sounds a lot like "GIT GUD!" far later in the game If you go for the True Ending only adds to that.
Elite Krotera, the first boss of Iji, can easily wipe the floor with you. He's got powerful weapons, and the floor sprouts turrets that can eat through your armor like candy. On the plus side, he's a Skippable Boss. As the the creator's speedrun video shows, however, with the right skill loadout, you can kill him before he can get off a single attack. It's fun to watch.
Kirby:
- Kracko tends to be this whenever he shows up, as he's surprisingly mobile for a cloud and tricky to hit with projectiles as he tends to hover just out of range. Later games in the series tend to give him even more moves that make him even more of a chore to deal with.
- Kirby's Adventure has Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright. Up to this point, both of the bosses you've fought (Whispy Woods and Paint Roller) have been easy-to-hit targets that use only one attack at a time, and their attacks are either easily dodged, highly telegraphed, or both. Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright, however, are a Dual Boss: one will stay on the ground and fight Kirby head-on, while the other performs an attack from the sky, making their attacks much more difficult to dodge. While their attacks are still telegraphed, they're much faster than the previous bosses', and will require you to pay more attention to what they're doing. The fight is a lot harder without a copy ability, encouraging the player to experiment with different abilities if they're having trouble with a boss.
- Kirby 64: The third boss, Acro, ends the streak of Warm Up Bosses. His fast movement and projectile output is made more of a problem by the iffy underwater controls, and the fact that you won't be used to his attacks at first (or at all) means that you'll get your power knocked out of you before long. On top of all this, he has a second phase...that scrolls.
- Kirby's Return to Dream Land:
  - Goriath is the point where the game gets tougher. Unlike the previous three bosses, who had slow attacks and didn't move much, Goriath is much more agile, constantly jumping around the arena and even wall-clinging at times to do certain attacks, and most of his moves being fast, unpredictable, and being able to reach across the entire stage.
  - The Magolor Epilogue in the Deluxe remake gives us Electricky Dooter, who basically fights like Mr. Dooter, but he has electrical powers, his attacks cover more range, and he even pulls out a large sword when he Turns Red.
- Kirby: Triple Deluxe has Flowery Woods. Don't let his resemblance to Whispy Woods fool you. He attacks in an incredibly aggressive fashion for the first boss of the game, and his second stage starts assaulting you with attacks that fill up the entire screen. Although he still won't pose too much trouble to a skilled gamer, he can still put up a surprising amount of fight. They get even more dangerous as Flowery Woods EX.
- And then there's Clanky Woods from Kirby: Planet Robobot. Like Flowery Woods above, this guy has also proven to be more of a challenge than most players would expect at level one, once again showing off some pretty devastating attacks that could really give you a hard time if you're not prepared. While Flowery at least had the decency to remain in one spot most of the time, Clanky, on the other hand, does not want to stand still. Oh, and did we mention that he also gets first crack at you in the very first stage of the game? You can still defeat him even that early on, and get a nice rare sticker in return, but it's arguably even more of a pain than his actual boss battle with how little room and time you have. It's also rather easy to get crushed to death there. So yeah, Kirby's enemies definitely aren't playing nice this time around.
- Parallel Woods from "Heroes in Another Dimension" in Kirby Star Allies. The Whispy Woods battle in Story Mode was just a Warm-Up Boss as usual, and even his stronger counterpart Yggy Woods was still manageable. But in this mode, if you haven't taken the increased puzzle complexity as a warning sign, then Parallel Woods' projectile spam will hammer in just how much the challenge has ramped up.
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land:
  - Clawroline in the main game. The previous two bosses were mostly stationary and had quite sluggish attacks that can be easily avoided. But Clawroline, fitting for a cat character, is quick and agile, having super quick attacks that will really keep the player on their toes, as well as having strong close range attacks that will send Kirby flying.
  - The post-game has Phantom Gorimondo; if you thought this was gonna be the same as the real Gorimondo, then you're in for a rude awakening when a ghostly illusion of a gargantuan gorilla begins going ape on you.
Mega Man Zero:
- Aztec Falcon, the first real boss in Mega Man Zero is known to be quite a shock for players of the previous Mega Man games, even if he's quite doable after being used to Zero's gameplay.
- In Mega Man Zero 4, you get to do four missions of your choice, and all are not particularly hard (for the series). Then, Forced Mission time, and the boss of that mission, Commander Craft, shows up, and God have mercy if you didn't get some subtanks or elf upgrades. He's fairly swift, has three life bars (as opposed to the usual two), has an attack that requires split-second timing to dodge, and generally has a variety of attacks requiring you to be on your toes.
Mega Man ZX
- ZX: The Brainwashed and Crazy Girouette, in the third proper stage of the game. After dealing with the generally slow and easy-to-read bosses of the first two stages and even the two MiniBosses of this stage, Giro is a marked upswing as being both much faster and smaller than said opponents, and his attacks have decent coverage that require well-timed jumps and dashes to avoid being punished.
- Advent: Buckfire, the first boss after obtaining the eponymous Model A. Unlike the tutorial boss, who's stationary with obvious weak spots and easily telegraphed attacks, Buckfire's easily as fast as Grey/Ashe, his projectile attacks require good timing to jump over, and the small size of the boss room in question makes Collision Damage a very real hazard given how much he moves around.
Sonic the Hedgehog:
- The Marble Zone, the second stage of the original Sonic the Hedgehog. The level as a whole teaches you that speed without caution will kill you, the boss teaches you to be prepared for stage hazards while fighting bosses if you're not careful (the Chemical Plant Zone example above takes many cues from this, especially its' boss fight).
- The first boss in the Game Gear version of Sonic 2 is especially jarring, since the 16-bit Sonic games are traditionally pretty easy as exemplified by that Emerald Hill Zone digger thing. This is because the screen is narrower and it's harder to avoid the bouncing balls. On the Master System version, Sonic has enough space to easily jump over them until the boss destroys itself.
- The boss of Chemical Plant Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and the prolonged section of platforming immediately before it, serve as a wake-up call after the player has breezed through Emerald Hill (which features the quintessential Warmup Boss) and most of Chemical Plant itself. The boss itself isn't too difficult to hit or avoid, and can be killed very easily in about 7 seconds if Tails stays out of the way (see below), but the real danger is the Bottomless Pits on either side of the arena: if you do get hit or you try to get over-clever with your attacks, there's a fair chance you'll be knocked right into one of these pits.
- Casino Night's boss serves as a further wake-up call. Any attempt to attack it from below ends badly for Sonic, and the only way to get above it is to spin-dash up the walls (this being the quintessential Pinball Zone). Furthermore, it drops projectiles every time you pass under it, so simply going back and forth at high speeds to get your attack opportunities can often have you rolling right into an energy ball.
- Sonic the Hedgehog 3's Angel Island boss. After the wussy miniboss, you face the Act 2 boss, which can knock you into one of the bottomless pits easily. It's a lot easier if the fire shield is gotten, though.
Howl the wolf from Ori and the Will of the Wisps is disproportionately difficult for a Noob Cave boss encounter, since Ori has to fight it with the very short-ranged Torch while dodging his much longer-ranged attacks, and he can One-Hit Kill Ori either by contact during the preceding Chase Scene or crouch-crushing them during the battle itself.
Shahdee in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within can be like this. She's basically your first real fight in the game (up to this point, you've only fought a few random Mooks), and she can be brutally tough for getting used to the combat system.
The Amazon boss of the SNES Adaptation Expansion of Prince of Persia is a major Difficulty Spike up from the mooks (and the skeleton) you previously fought. You learn the hard way that unlike mooks, bosses can not only counter your attacks like you were doing to the mooks, but can also counter your counter attacks. You have to continue the chain of blocking and countering until they mess up, showing a nice display of Flynning.
- In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, the first real boss you face is a giant in the arena. He is impossible to beat if you have just been brawling through the game thus far and not working on your timing for Speed Kills.
Wario Land:
- Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3: The spiked Koopa boss — the very first boss in the game — comes under this. Not only is he a generally tough boss with multiple attacks and overpowering attack methods, but he just happens to also be the most difficult boss in the entire game (that includes the final boss as well). Only adding to this is the that the boss cannot be fought the way Mario fights koopas. The fire power up is a liability since the lack of a dash button means you have reduced Wario's speed and deprived him of an effective frontal attack. Even with running available Wario cannot adjust his speed in air and has to commit to his maximum jump height before leaving the ground, so the timing is still completely different from, say, a Koopaling. The fact that the level was aggravating didn't help things either.
- Wario Land 4: Depending on the mode you're playing, the first boss is either pitifully easy or this. Super Hard mode is the main offender — you have 15 seconds to defeat it.
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The first level and boss of the game aren't particularly difficult, and the second level has a bit more teeth, but is still fairly easy... and then you reach Giga Mermaid. Better pay attention to your movements, because over half of her attacks are lightning bolts of some kind with near instant launches. During her first phase, you had better be used to the platforming in the game, as you have to scale the moving scaffolding holding the boss prisoner while she continues firing lightning balls at you. Then when she's freed, she's angry and taking it out on you, and between raining lightning down, a deceptively large hitbox on her tail slap, and having to grapple up wreckage to jump and hit her at best once or twice per attempt, you're gonna have to learn how to dodge. If you think you've got her movement down pat and you're ready for hard mode, have fun with all of her attacks shaving 1-2 hearts off of your, at this point max 3 health, HP reserves while all of her attacks fire in significantly larger volumes and much faster. At the very least you can farm up gems to buy healing items and spells if you're absolutely stuck.
Super Star Wars is difficult, but manageable for the first four stages, but the Jawenko Lava Beast is the first taste players get of just how nasty this game can be. You have to fight it standing on a handful of very small platforms over a pool of lava which causes instant death if touched, and it attacks very rapidly and with an unpredictable and chaotic pattern making it very easy to get knocked from your perch. If you die, you'll go back to the half-way point of the stage and lose whatever blaster upgrades you had, potentially making the next round even harder.

Puzzle

All trial bosses in Elemental Story will force a continue if the players do not read the hint screen, bring monsters outside of its weakness and having them in low level and less evolved states.
Lady D in Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. The game up to her is fairly simple, but Lady D herself can be quite a challenge to a player who's new to the game. Once you get the hang of fighting her and dodging her attacks, she's a piece of cake (pun intended.) The rest of the game gets MUCH harder pretty quickly, and while the second boss is a joke, the THIRD boss is That One Boss.
The first chapter of Marvel Puzzle Quest is very light — even Doctor Doom is a bit of a wuss — but then Chapter 2 sends you up against Juggernaut, who is a beast. His red ability can one-shot even your toughest characters. His green ability is even worse, smashing random tiles to essentially reset the board and occasionally start ridiculous cascades. The game advises you to keep him from charging those abilities by matching those colors first, but that doesn't help much because he only needs to make two green matches to trigger his ability and refresh the board. As if that isn't enough, you have to fight him six times, and he get stronger with each battle. On the plus side, if you make it to Chapter 3 you get to make use of him yourself, and he's just as awesome on your side.
Puyo Puyo, Kirby's Avalanche, and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine have the second opponent in the game — Suketoudara, Whispy Woods, and Frankly, respectively. To newer players that aren't used to chaining yet, their stacking pattern is punishing, as uninterrupted, they will constantly get chains that will rain garbage on the player's side. The game only gets harder from there.
In Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords, most of the enemies you face can be defeated within a rematch or two (or on intentionally tough sidequests you can come back to later). Then you get to the first boss, Dugog, the two-headed ogre. Not only is he significantly stronger than any other regular enemy you can face up this point, he sports a spell (Double Roar) which can easily erase all your hit points and a weapon that randomly does near-triple damage. And you face his early enough that skill alone often isn't enough to take him down.

Rhythm Game

DanceDanceRevolution in its earlier years has "Paranoia" on Basic, a level 6 (on the pre-Dance Dance Revolution X scale). It's 180 beats per minute (which when it first appeared on DDR "1st Mix" made it the fastest song in the game) and features a handful of eighth notes (including a nasty "jackhammer" note section at the end). If you can clear this song, you're on your way to taking on more difficult songs. Moving past the intermediate difficulty starts introducing higher usage of 1/8 notes and more complex patterns or other quirks to upset your rhythm.
DJMAX Technika:
- In Popular Mode, each stage has a different songlist, with the minimum song difficulty getting higher with each of the three stages. If you're new to the game, you'll most likely pick "Jupiter Driving" as your stage 3 song. It's a level-4 song, is the easiest stage 3 song, and teaches you to handle patterns in which the timing line moves at double speed.
- "Area 7" on the first stage is a song whose repeat notes look awkward. You'll need to understand their rhythm rather than just relying on the timing line in order to survive this song.
"Canned Heat" in Elite Beat Agents on Cruisin' mode. The songs before it have relatively simple and consistent rhythms, but "Canned Heat" has a strange disco beat with syncopated rhythms everywhere. Because of this, most players mark it as the first song they ever fail. In Sweatin' and Hard ROCK! modes, it can happen as early as "Rock This Town".
Everhood:
- Zigg is the third fight in the entire game after Mr. Frog and the Automated Terror Machine, and they're a step up in difficulty. They're the first opponent with projectiles that can't be jumped, they sweep large areas of the field with their Eye Beams, and their fight is much longer, to the point of giving the player a checkpoint in between.
- The second Rasta Beast fight. For the first half of the game, you only need to dodge the notes thrown at you in fights. However, in the second half a new mechanic is introduced- using Red's arm to grab two notes of the same color and throw them back at the boss. The first few bosses with this gimmick are pretty easy to accustom you to it, but once you reach Rasta Beast, that changes. The boss combines a strict time limit with plenty of mirror notes that you cannot jump over and that block your attacks, and has two sections where they shoot very fast-moving notes at you. It's not too hard once you get the hang of it, but it will likely take a first-time player many tries to do so, and is indicative of just how hard the bosses will be from that point, so you better have gotten the hang of the new mechanic or you will not go any further.
Gitaroo Man has the first battle against Ben-K, which is purely guard phase (read: hitting a flurry of notes coming in from all directions). The notes come at you fast and thick, with a rather irregular rhythm, leading most rookie players to complete it with barely a sliver of health to spare if they pass it at all. In Master Play, it can happen as early as Flying O, which, mind you, is the second stage.
In Guitar Hero III, Tom Morello serves as a wake-up call boss, and not in a good way. He demonstrates how boss battles in this game will be determined by random chance. Surprisingly, though, he is actually easier to defeat on higher difficulties, seeing as in Easy and Medium mode the notes are simply stretched too far and few in between for players to be able to do significant damage by making him miss these notes.
Rhythm Heaven:
- Remix 2 in Fever. The first remix is nicely paced enough to help the player get used to the "no practice" nature of Remixes. The second remix is faster, but only lasts about a minute, meaning that just a few mistakes can cause you to fail the song and have to start over.
- In Megamix, the Machine Remix can trip some players up due to 16th note beats during the Rhythm Tweezers sections that aren't present in the original stage.
Friday Night Funkin': "Dad Battle", the final song of Week 1. Up until now, you had songs with relatively easy-to-hit note charts, with Fresh having a couple tricky beat-boxing sections. This song is where The Father, and by extension the game, takes off the gloves and puts on the anvils. It's fast paced, has a very tough chart, and introduces concepts of both rapid firing up to 3 different notes in succession and harmonizing with your opponent while they hit notes. Better get used to these quirks because starting with Week 2, each song will have at least two of them in play, if not all four.

Roguelike

In Bonfire, the battle against two Undying to gain Zhu's first rune is widely cited as a brick wall for new players. Undying, in addition to having a much stronger version of zombies' regular attack, can summon two zombies on their turn. Even one Undying can get overwhelming if you're not careful, but two means you'll be up to your eyeballs in zombies before you can blink. To make matters worse, zombies apply poison, which is an Armor-Piercing Attack — this means it chews through your primary tank Hildie much faster than you're used to. New players' strategies will typically meet defeat in this battle; it's designed to teach you to act fast instead of turtling.
Dungeon Crawl starts out fairly merciful for an old-school roguelike. (Noting that this is a relative statement.) After a player's died a few times to kobolds, goblins, and the like and gotten a feel for how the game works, they might start to think they're getting the hang of the game. Until they meet either Sigmund or Grinder. It's up to the Random Number God to decide which comes first, both spawn somewhere between levels 3 and 6, with Sigmund also having a chance to show up on level 2 if the player is really unlucky.^noteThey can also spawn on the same floor if the game is feeling especially cruel. Either one will teach the player two of the game's most important lessons about playing a game with permadeath: nothing is Too Awesome to Use, and retreat is a valid option.
- Sigmund is a Sinister Scythe wielding, spell-slinging Magic Knight who can confuse the player, make himself invisible, and deals a horrific amount of damage from afar with his spells and up close with his scythe. (And to add insult to injury, his feared scythe is useless in the player's hands.)
- Grinder the shadow imp enjoys Teleport Spam, the pain spell, and paralyzing the player so they can pick them apart at their leisure. And while a Wand of Polymorph is usually a good escape option to turn a powerful creature into something more manageable, Grinder automatically turns into a different kind of demon — almost certainly a vastly worse one.
Megaera the Fury in Hades is the game's first 'proper' boss and and defines the boss gameplay of subsequent floors. Until she shows up, the player has fought nothing but mooks in random rooms plus a pair of Mini Bosses, most of whom have slow, easily telegraphed attacks and have a few hundred Hit Points at most. Megaera always faces Zagreus in the same identical room (the last room of Tartarus), has several thousand Hit Points, has several additional attacks she unlocks each time she loses a thousand of them (with a period of Mercy Invincibility as she unlocks them), and her damage is high enough that she will kill a full-health Zagreus in four to five hits if you haven't picked up any Centaur Hearts. As you get better at the game and begin routinely beating her and entering the upper levels, Megaera switches to becoming a Warm-Up Boss whose purpose is to indicate how comfortable the player is with their current build: Losing lots of health (or a Death Defiance) to Megaera is a good sign that you're probably not going to have a good time against later bosses that run.

Shoot 'em Up

The early levels in Bangai-O have fairly simple bosses that shouldn't give you too much trouble (especially since Sabu is fought in the first four). Then, you get to 8 6, level 8's boss. She uses reflective lasers like Mami's, forcing you to use EX attacks and keep your distance more effectively in battle.
Chippy: The Gradual Regeneration of Overgrowth's plant-based parts (including guns that prevent you from hurting each main core) pressures you to face the boss's relentless attack patterns head-on and prevent the fight from dragging out.
In spite of being a Final Boss, Violent Ruler from Dariusburst Another Chronicle is this as well, due to the game being short and designed around replay value. Fought in Zone H, the topmost and therefore easiest of the five final stages, it has a lot of hit points and, unlike most prior bosses, has no parts that can be chipped off to disable or weaken attacks, effectively teaching you that it and the other four final bosses (nine in Dariusburst Another Chronicle EX) can't simply be cheesed.
Enigmata 2 has the Mega-Goliath. The previous bosses weren't very tough if you upgraded your ships and weapons accordingly, but this guy is different — it takes up about 2/3 of the field (you have the bottom 1/3 of the screen to avoid everything), has a main body and four destructible turrets that spew loads of painful fire, and even if you destroy the turrets, the main body still has a megaton of hit points, much more than any other boss you've fought so far. It quickly turns into a battle of attrition from the get-go.
Fire Hawk has a not-too-difficult first stage, then the boss is borderline Bullet Hell and takes a zillion hits to kill.
The hardest of the first four bosses in Giga Wing is the battleship. Two people have this as their first stage in the rotating stage lineup.
Big Core in Gradius counts by himself, and then there's Big Core Rev. 2.1 in the first stage of Gradius V. As is the Bubble Core (Stage 2) in the arcade version of Gradius III. The Yoragaton Chimera is this in the first stage of Gradius IV.
Heavy Weapon has three, depending on your level of skill:
- The first one is War Blimp, who has a Meteor Tractor Beam that makes meteors rain down on you. Sounds cool, but this is not as dangerous as its "Roto-Mines", which are basically homing mines that can take a lot of damage.
- If you found War Blimp easy, then War Wrecker is this if you don't get down the strategy to avoid its One-Hit Kill wrecking ball (otherwise, he's a Breather Boss).
- If you found War Blimp and War Wrecker pushovers, then it's Kommie Kong / Gorillazilla that will give you trouble. Getting stomped on is an easily avoided One-Hit Kill, but the Bursting Rockets it throws are a lot harder to avoid, especially in the PC version.
- Surprisingly enough, Twinblade in Boss Blitz can be this. To put it, you (probably) get at least one power, rapid fire, Spread Shot, and some Nuke and Shield upgrades during the first level before fighting it. In Boss Blitz, you fight it immediately, with only one level of shield, and nothing else whatsoever. If you can't makes its missiles misfire or shoot them down in time, you're toast in 2 hits.
The Rusted Dragon in Hellsinker is much harder than the bosses of the first three stages. Blowing off its parts, which normally weakens bosses, only serves to make it harder and more evasive. However, if the player is doing horribly, you can actually skip the entire boss fight.
Pixelvader: The second boss is likely to cause your first death. Its attacks deal a large amount of damage and can be tricky to dodge if you haven't gotten used to the game's controls yet or using the bullet-removing wave, plus it has a fair chunk of health.
Radiant Silvergun: The third boss of the game, Gallop in Stage 3C, features a pod on its front that blocks shots. Players who have relied on the basic forward-firing Vulcan weapon up to this point learn the hard way that they must use other weapons to defeat this particular boss, unless they want to hold out until the boss self-destructs for a forfeiture of bonus points.
Star Fox 64, if you go to Fortuna, has the first encounter with the Star Wolf Team. Up until then, if you haven't become used to All-Range Mode, or if you tend to dilly-dally when your teammates need help, you'll be frantically spinning plates trying to keep yourself from getting shot and keeping your teammates from being shot down while chasing these blips that keep whirling around in circles on your radar. Also, if you rely on homing charged shots instead of actually getting good at aiming, you will fail because the enemies are nearly immune to charged shots. You either learn to be fast and decisive when fighting, especially in All-Range Mode, or you die...or more embarrassingly, fail the Timed Mission part of the level. Which is also the boss encounter. And up until then, the worst thing that happens if you stall in a boss fight is that you don't get that many points!
Sunset Riders, for a super optimistic game set in The Wild West, had two of these:
- The second boss, Hawkeye Hank Hatfield. His henchmen shoot fast, he is very fast too and just to surprise the player/s he will JUMP into their zone and shoot at them while ducking. Way different from Simon Greedwell who just stood there taking shots, Hank moves around like crazy.
- The first of Sir Richard Rose's henchmen, El Greco. He actively blocks the player/players's shots, only whipping when he's not hiding behind his shield, and said whip has a lot of range. Players who thought they could get by just filling the screen with bullets usually end up losing a fair few quarters to this guy.
Thunder Force V's Stage 3 boss, Armament Armed Arm (aka A3). The bosses of the other two initial stages can be beaten in about 5-10 seconds each by simply getting up close to them and spamming Free Range's Over Weapon, but that's not the case here. A3 has three forms and each starts using attacks right away; carelessly point-blanking it will most likely result in losing multiple lives (and possibly Free Range).
Thunder Force VI has Gargoyle Perfect, the boss of the first stage. His flamethrower attack makes him a bit tricky to kill with a forward-firing weapon such as Rynex-R's Thunder Sword.
Touhou games usually make you start trying on the second or third stage boss. Some notable examples:
- Imperishable Night is pretty easy right up until you hit the stage three boss, Keine. Her patterns are all fairly difficult and can't be easily neutered by killing her familiars.
- Subterranean Animism starts out fairly normal, but lets you know what it's really about with the second stage boss, Parsee: Puzzle attacks! It's going to take a few tries to be able to handle her at all, and this is going to be true of most everything going forward.
- Ringo is the second boss of Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. The game isn't particularly brutal up to that point, and she provides a taste of her corridor danmaku during her brief midboss fight. In her boss fight, however, she opens up with long, curving corridors of bullets that require precise movements, followed by Strawberry Dango / Berry Berry Dango — a micrododging card with two overlapping layers of tiny bullets. After that, she also has a spell card that spreads bullets from multiple directions while restricting the player's movement by a ring of danmaku and finally her September Full Moon / Lunatic September card, which is just pure micrododging of tiny bullets in density that is simply unheard of by stage 2 standards. And woe betide any seasoned Hard / Lunatic mode veteran who tackles the harder difficulties straight away, as her nonspells not only turn from straight bullet corridors into steep corridors that span most of the screen's horizontal length, but also get tighter and tighter, finally transforming into plain, tight and fast grid of bullets to weave through and forcing the player to switch from macrododging to extreme micrododging in a splitsecond (reminiscent of Yukari's infamous Boundary between Wave and Particle spell card), making her an even more of an example on these difficulties.

Simulation Game

The enemy ace squadron encountered in the player's first trip to the Round Table in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is the first major aerial enemy you face in the game and can be quite difficult to take down in starter fighters within the time limit, although with more advanced birds in the New Game Plus, they are a good deal less tedious. Most of the ace squadrons across the series, in fact, qualify.
Armored Core For Answer has White Glint, who is notorious for chewing through newbies to the game, using its overwhelming speed to dodge all of their attacks.
Dwarf Fortress, specifically fortress mode, has the Werebeasts. They don't have most of the limits on when they can suddenly arrive at your fortress (and thus are among the few big threats that can drop on you in the early game), and any mishandled attack will end up killing your fortress either immediately or eventually due to werebeast infection. If you don't set up your fortress in a way that adresses them, be it entry routes you can easily block out at a moment's notice, a trap setup that can cover for the [TRAPAVOID] tag or a competent military that can minimize bites, the fort is as good as lost. If you don't make a point to check the Reports to screen out who got bitten and quarantine them, the fort is also as good as lost the next time full moon comes. And you will keep losing fortresses until you learn.
Gran Turismo 2, 5 and 6 put limits on what cars you can bring to certain events in the form of horsepower limits in 2, and Performance Points, tire selection, and car type restrictions on 5 and 6, typically after the first few cups you can participate in at the start of the game. Know what this means? You can no longer cheese certain races by bringing in a ridiculously superior hypercar or something with a turbocharger that could be mistaken for one of those steam turbines that power battleships while everyone else is puttering around in hatchbacks or by putting on soft slicks practically made of glue: you have to learn the art of tuning and car setup to squeeze out as much performance as you can rather than just showing up with more performance than the other guy.

Sports Game

In Arc Style: Baseball!! 3D, Fujieda and his pitching teammates from the Rhinos let you know that the game is not all about hitting slow fastballs in the center of the strike zone. The implementation of the forkball and pitching around the strike zone can really surprise you after 3 Easier Than Easy games.
The Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves, the first two teams you face in NBA Jam, qualify as these. In both the original and the tournament edition, the Mavericks are one of the fastest and most efficient shooting teams in the game; Jamal Mashburn (or Mike Iuzzolino) can easily make players' lives a living hell. The T'Wolves can slip up a careless player in the Tournament Edition due to the fact that Christian Laettner and Chuck Person sink 90% of their shots to end a quarter. And when you get to the Charlotte Hornets, the game tells you: "welcome to Hell." Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning are Lightning Bruisers who can shoot the lights out, while Hersey Hawkins cannot be discounted thanks to his own speed and shooting ability.
Punch-Out!!:
- In the NES game, King Hippo is effectively impossible until the player realizes that, no, you can't just mash the punch buttons to win — you have to be familiar with your opponent's patterns and their weaknesses. This is because he only takes damage when he opens his mouth; anything else results in the punch futilely bouncing off a layer of Kevlard. He's one of the easiest fights for a veteran (he only needs to be knocked down once, and his telegraphs aren't hard to spot), but newbies will wind up either trying everything, or consulting a walkthrough.
- Soon after King Hippo comes the first match with Bald Bull, who's another difficulty spike. His punches take off much more health than those of most other opponents you've faced up to this point, he has a lot of health and will get up plenty of times after being knocked down, and his attacks are delayed to catch you out if you're jumpy and dodge too early. His Signature Move, the Bull Charge, is a One-Hit KO if it connects, and the timing to counter-punch him in the gut is quite precise. A player who doesn't have the skill to evade and counter Bald Bull's punches will have little chance of getting far in the World Circuit.
- In the Wii version of the game, you'll learn plenty of tricks going through the Minor, Major and World Circuits, up to defeating Mr. Sandman. After you finally manage to defeat him you're rewarded with Title Defense Mode, where you'll fight all the fighters again, but with added gimmicks. If you think you can rely on the same strategies as the first time, then you'll get a real nasty surprise the first time Glass Joe wipes the floor with you.
Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby has Kanga and Roo. Eeyore, Lumpy, and Piglet all throw extreme fastballs that Pooh must home run each and every time... but at least they're flying straight. Kanga and Roo are the first of the 8 stages to start throwing physics-defying balls that move so erratically you'll strike out well before you even have a chance to compete.
- Owl becomes one after the relatively "easy" Breather Boss that is Rabbit as his start to zigzag through the air and requires Pooh to have split-second reactions to hit them.

Third-Person Shooter

Resident Evil 4 features a wicked and terrifying early encounter with the chainsaw-wielding Dr. Salvador. Aside from being horrifying, this nasty enemy probably killed 90% of gamers the first time they set foot into the opening village, because his chainsaw will instantly behead you if he gets close, and he has a whopping 40HP at a stage when your handgun only does 1 point per shot. Players can avoid this encounter by passing up the shotgun during the opening shootout and avoiding the eastern path out of the village (yes, if you really screw up you'll potentially have to deal with two of them), which given you have only a weak pistol and a couple of grenades is a sort of wake up call in itself.
Resident Evil 5 concludes the first level with the Executioner, whose hard-hitting reinforcements continually respawn until the timer expires, and who wields a gargantuan axe that will One-Hit Kill players on Veteran and Professional.
Robokill has the miniboss from the third mission firing bullets powerful enough to blast you to pieces in one salvo. It's the first battle in which it is necessary to either continually dodge fire or utilize cover, as the opponent's high HP and fast movements mean it won't go down easily.
Splatoon 2 has the 2nd boss, Octo Samurai, who attacks with a random pattern of moves and requires a lot more damage to take down. He's especially a wake-up call for players who played the first game, as he doesn't follow the "attack with a series of obviously telegraphed moves" method used by almost every boss there.
Vanquish's Bogey, despite only being the second boss, can be very frustrating, having high HP, fast flight ability making it difficult to hit with the heavier weapons, Roboteching beam spams just like the player's Lock-On Laser, EMP bombs that cause Sam's armor to overheat, a plasma Chest Blaster that can OneHitKill, and to top it off, a Press X to Not Die sequence at the end.
Warframe
- One of the first boss fights you'll encounter is the Jackal on Venus. This robot has an attack which summons four energy walls that rotate around it; touching the walls will take out most of your health, but you can avoid them by staying on the move and reacting when they change direction. This teaches you the importance of mobility. This fight also introduces you to your Parazon dagger, which can be used to perform a Finishing Move on low-health enemies; you have to use your Parazon multiple times throughout the fight to stop the Jackal from repairing itself.
- During the quest "The Second Dream", you'll encounter a Conculyst or Battalyst (the game chooses one at random), which is the first Sentient-type enemy the player will encounter. What makes it this trope? Besides having access to some very high damaging attacks, they also adapt to any damage inflicted on them, making them take up to ninety percent less damage from any damage type used against them. Worst of all? This "boss" is a mook, and you will be fighting more later, which are just as strong as it is, if not even tougher.
- Before travelling to a new planet, you have to defeat a Specter, a ghostly clone of a Warframe. The Saryn Specter, who guards the Sedna Junction, is a huge Difficulty Spike compared to past ones: most Specters can be cheesed by using a stun or blind ability, then doing a Back Stab while they're incapacitated. This is much harder to do on the Saryn Specter due to her Molt ability letting her remove status effects. The most reliable way to kill her is just to have a good weapon that's been upgraded with strong mods.

Tower Defence

Arknights has W, who's fought at the end of Chapter 1. She uses the map's unique mechanics to go around the obvious chokepoint that the other enemies use, requiring the player to either not use the chokepoint and split their defenses, or use it and prepare for the boss to go around the main defense. More importantly though, her main attack is to place timebombs on operators around her, which deal tons of damage to whomever is unlucky enough to get hit by them. W will probably be the first enemy faced that can actually pose a threat to your operators, even with Medic support.
The Battle Cats is very easy during Empire of Cats, until the Moon level in Chapter 3. The boss, Teacher Bun Bun, isn't a weak Mighty Glacier like the bosses of the first two Moon stages — he's a Lightning Bruiser with massive HP and powerful and fast attacks, and comes with a Zerg Rush of support enemies to take hits for him and punish advancing cats. If the player doesn't have most of the Treasures, or just mindlessly spams cats, Bun Bun will easily push to their base and destroy it. Beating him requires the player to farm for most of the Treasures, have a strategy, and defend their long-ranged cats well — which is true of most bosses later in the game, as well.
Kingdom Rush can pull this off as early as the first boss in each title:
- The original brings out Juggernaut, a towering mecha with great power. It's melee can two-shot your Paladins, it has infinite-range rockets that can target any of your units, as well as bomblets that summon Golem Heads as destruction. While it has a slow speed and long path to the exit, it's health and damage is greater than anything you've seen at that point and gives you the idea of why a proper defense is important and how boss encounters will work.
- Frontiers has Nazeru, the red Efreeti. Not only is he strong, but he shows how much more different and mechanical the boss battles will be, as he can one-shot your troops, turn them into his own flunkies from afar and turn towers into inactive sand castles. Even forgoing his other stats, the ability to directly affect towers was introduced in the first game during the second boss and only three bosses out of the whole roster were able to do that, one of which is a post-game one. And the worst thing is, you can do nothing to release the towers earlier than the stun period ends, so you have to adapt your strategy to make sure you defeat him despite his hindrances.
- While Hi-Hi Ehna from Origins is regarded as a Warm-Up Boss, Malicia picks up the slack with the return of her tower-stunning capabilities, both melee and ranged attacks with high damage and devastating support in form of Twilight Elves and forest denizens, not to mention the Twilight Zealots that can summon even more reinforcements for her.
- Vengeance has Bolgur the Golden King, a dwarves ruler in his personal throne mecha. If you thought Mecha Dwarf MK 9. was devastating, it has nothing compared to this killing machine, armed with an axe and a hammer, huge armor, high health and a range missle attack that reaches far and can one-shot or two-shot level 3 barracks and weaker heroes.
- Hammerhold DLC has Mirage and she's much stronger that her playable Frontiers counterpart. Not only is she a Proactive Boss that can summon Nomads and Djinni into the fray, but when the actual battle comes, she summons them even more often, can create surprisingly dangerous duplicates of existing enemies and annihilate your units in both close and long range combat, giving you the idea of how hard this dlc truly is.

Turn-Based Strategy

The Advance Wars series is known for this one:
- The first game has two cruel examples one right after the other:
  - After being guided by the hand through the tutorial mode and taking down Olaf in the first campaign mission, you're probably feeling pretty confident. The very next mission you face Grit, a commander who gets both a range and power bonus to the already powerful indirect fire units in a map that forces you to march direct units down a narrow path that is covered by his units from across the river. The entire point of this mission is to hammer home the fact that Olaf is the weakest commander in the game and there are much nastier battles ahead.
  - If you didn't learn your lesson against Grit, the very next mission you face Eagle, a commander who gets an attack bonus to the already deadly air units and who's CO Power allows non-infantry to attack twice in a row. Unlike the mission before where you can still bumble your way through thanks to the indirect unit's lack of counterattacks, when you face Eagle there is no room for error — unless you have a very specific plan to get an infantry to his HQ and keep it alive long enough to capture, and if you make even one single mistake along the way, his units swoop right in and blow you away.
- Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising follows suit:
  - The first few missions pit you against Flak (the weakest Black Hole commander) with characters like Andy and Max and in missions which are hard to lose even on purpose. Then you face Lash, who's a great deal more competent than Flak in both game and story. The enemy gets a factory to deploy new units while you don't, and you only get seven days to win the battle. It's not overly hard, but a huge step-up in victory since if you do less than perfect, Lash's terrain perks will bog you every step of the way. There's probably a reason why you control Sami, whose talents focus on capturing cities more quickly, and thus, it's a race to Lash's HQ.
  - You face Adder next, who's more of a Jack of All Trades with a Fragile Speedster streak. You'll likely face him as Grit first, who must pound his forces with artillery before his tanks get too close to you. It's a big deal to prioritize targets in this case.
  - In the Green Earth campaign, you finally face off against Hawke, who's far more deadly than any of his subordinates. There's a reason his CO meter takes so long to recharge: it'll both damage your units and repair his own, and you often fight him in large maps. It's telling when the previous two commanders, Lash and Adder, seem like comic relief when you fight them in said campaign (Flak is flat-out finished off as an opponent).
- And Advance Wars: Dual Strike does a hat trick with this:
  - The eighth mission is a brutal step up in difficulty from the previous battles you've been winning. You're facing both Jugger and Lash at the same, and this battle teaches you about one of the main gimmicks of the game. Long story short, if you don't plan out your moves and/or don't have Sasha as your CO, their Dual Strike will ensure that you have a bad time.
  - And finally, if you're still standing after that, the ninth mission steps it up again. It's your first dual-front battle, the first battle with an environmental hazard, and the first battle where you face a Black Crystal. Not only that, but it takes place during a sandstorm (which reduces indirects considerably) and said environmental hazard only harms your units. To have any chance of winning you'll have to carefully balance how many units you send to the second front: too many and you'll be overrun by Koal's superior force, and too few and you'll lose the second front and have to face Koal and Lash alone. It's called Victory or Death for a reason because, even if you're doing well, it's a long and drawn-out battle where one mistake can cost you the match.
BattleTech: After a hand-holding tutorial level and a prequel level setting up the story with over-powered 'Mechs, the first "real" level with your merc crew throws long-range missile turrets, irregular terrain, split forces, hard-hitting vehicles, and a surprise attack. The difficulty drops down noticeably after that, but it's a pretty clear message that it's not the kind of game you can faceroll. As the spiritual sibling to XCOM2, this isn't surprising.
The first battle with Mid-Boss in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. While neither he nor his troops are unusually strong, the battle does mark the first time where understanding both throwing and geopanels (two things which you can breeze through the first few stages without using) are vital. Without these, it's likely that a first-time player will have half of his army blown away by the geopanel-boosted Archer and Mage before he gets to his fourth turn. That said, even if you lose you get to see a unique ending.
Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance:
- The fights aren't particularly difficult up until your first fight with General Bloodis about four stages in. Bloodis fights alone, which may seem like the easiest situation (most fights up to this point are about crowd control and avoiding being ganged up on from all sides), however his health is exceptionally high, way too high in fact for a regular unit. Furthermore, his stats are pretty potent. The thing that really screws you, however, is his evility and his overload. His evility makes it so any enemies within 2 panels are given only 1 movement, which is downright cruel and makes retreating with a weakened unit an absolute non-option. This makes strategizing moves so you don't accidentally beat the hell out of your own army in the crossfire a daunting task. Then there's his overload... all stats doubled for three turns. If you were scratch-damaging him before, be prepared to be one-shot per hit now while likely either missing or doing 0 damage. Taking Bloodis on comes down to learning how to use your specials and attacking from behind as much as possible, so be ready to have him test you on your mechanics knowledge. If you try to cheese this fight by using the strategy of grabbing him and then holding him (which results in your unit dying, but he couldn't do anything that turn since he had been lifted), you can't. One of his common evilities increases his stats in return for removing his ability to be lifted.
- When you face Majorita at the start of the post-game, you find yourself really sandwiched between an army of undead and Majorita's whopping level of 300. The final boss was only around 100, so this is a massive jump. Furthermore, even after you beat her, you still have 1 more fight with her at level 500 before you finish the starting chapter of the post-game. Have fun with the rest of it. Your only saving grace is that, unlike the main game, she doesn't have access to her overload, which quite frankly would only drag this fight out even moreso. Hope you learned how to use your overloads and maxed out some weapons. Cheesing her with the grab strategy isn't easy either, as her casting distance is so huge that it's hard to get close without a high-movement unit or being tossed straight to her.
- Bloodis returns in the post game to really show you how rough the land of carnage is going to be. Not only does he have his overload, not only does he have his evility, not only does he have multiple units with him, but he also magichanges with a bear to get an extremely strong fist weapon, has access to most of the fist skills in the game and all of his specials, and has carnage level stats, meaning he's above and beyond a boss unit at this point. After you beat him, you still have one more boss before the post-game story ends, and then you gain access to the carnage world, where the enemies truly make Bloodis look like a chump. Additionally, it's highly likely that if you can beat Bloodis, you're still several 0's off in your stats from taking Baal down.
- Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless really smacks you down in Chapter 2. Upon entering, you're faced with Yeyasu, who uses the new Jumbility mechanic. This means he does a lot of damage, and he has a 5x5 attack radius he can launch anywhere on the field. Surviving him requires either abuse of the Rage Mechanic yourself, or overleveling to survive the blows, as your resources for power are limited this early in the game.
Mobile game Dragon Quest Tact has Level 3-3. You face a Healslime, an Orc, and two Bodkin Archers. The archers are the first enemy you've faced with ranged physical attacks, the Orc is carrying a lightning attack (and a lot of the monsters you can get early on are weak to lightning), and the Healslime heals everyone... for 25 HP at a time, enough that unless you've spent some time level-grinding it will probably undo any two attacks from your monsters. It's designed to teach you about the importance of party composition (and/or spending gems to get better monsters).
Energy Breaker has the SS System. If you haven't learned to use stat-buffing abilities such as Burning Arm and Windy Shoe, you'll be unable to do more than Scratch Damage to the boss. Also, while every battle in the game has a turn limit, this is the battle that hammers in its importance, as you must divide your party between attacking the main boss and fighting its flunkies, leaving little time to spare.
It's practically a Fire Emblem tradition that after six to ten chapters of relatively easy bosses, you encounter a promoted boss who is much harder than any you've previously encountered; said boss is normally a General or a similar melee class, and often has a fairly high commanding rank among his nation.
- Chapter 4 of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 is a Wake Up Call Level. The first few chapters are your standard FE fare where you get to kill a few bandits and storm a castle. Then in chapter 4 you start out with a new party out of which 4/5 of your members are locked in a cell and don't have any equipment at all save for everything Leif and Lifis brought with them but these are locked in chests all while one or two Soldiers come as reinforcements every turn. It's there to show that yes, this game will put you in sticky and disadvantageous situations like these often.
- The boss of Chapter 8x of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, Gomes, also counts. While previous levels gave you some means of dealing with threats (running away, Eyvel, Weapon of X-Slaying etc), Chapter 8x pits you against a throne boss with terrifying stats for this part of the game who you can't avoid because he blocks the seize point. Gomes has 18 Strength and two steel weapons, which will one-shot your squishier units, as well as 14 speed (and enough Constitution to not be weighed down) which prevents you from doubling him without Level Grinding your physical units since your only magic user, Asbel, is one point too slow to double^note. His high HP and Defense with throne boosts makes physical attacks a no-go, and even though his Magic isn't great, he'll still one-round anyone who tries. A lot of creativity and luck will have to go in taking this guy down.
- Although it is much more difficult all-around compared to the other two GBA games in the series, the first few bosses in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade are generally pretty easy—until you get to Leygance, who is your first promoted boss, a General. Being a General gives him such ludicrously high Defense that very few of your units can do much damage to him unless they're using anti-armor weapons (and the Rapier isn't going to cut it). It's common for players to promote Rutger during that chapter so that Rutger can become a Swordmaster and hopefully crit Leygance to death, as it's one of the few ways to beat him in a timely fashion. The boss right after him, Henning, is a Hero, which is in some ways even worse: though not as absurdly tanky, Henning is much faster, meaning that now the cast of characters who can hit him accurately and double him is basically just, again, a promoted Rutger. (There's a very good reason fans consider Rutger the best Myrmidon in the series.)
- Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon's highest difficulty, Merciless, notably eases up somewhat on you during the first chapter, with the enemy getting less stats than they otherwise would, putting the boss, Gazzak, in the "tough but still manageable" category (particularly when accounting for his lack of ranged weapons). And then you get to the second chapter, and meet Gomer—the terrifying intersection of this trope and Early-Bird Boss. While barely a threat on Normal, Merciless Gomer is arguably the hardest boss in the whole game—he can either double or one-shot every character you have at their base level except Ogma, Cord, and Barst, at a point in the game where you're lucky if anyone has gained more than one or two levels (Jagen can sometimes avoid doubling, since Gomer's Speed is a little variable, but if he isn't, he's pretty screwed). And of that crew, only Ogma has a serviceable hit rate on him, and none can survive a second round of combat. And most bosses in the game can be trivialized by using a Weapon of X-Slaying, such as a Hammer against a Knight or a Ridersbane against a Paladin, but Gomer is a Pirate, and anti-Pirate weapons don't exist. You also have very limited healing to work with, and Gomer has enough range and power to one-shot the one healer you do have. And unlike Gazzak, Gomer has a handaxe, which hits at range and means poking him to death with your bow-users and javelins doesn't work either. The boss of the chapter after that, Hyman, is even stronger than Gomer, but at least you have a Killing Edge to work with by that point; the only foolproof way to kill Gomer is to abuse Breakable Weapons and the healing effects of the nearby forts so you can break his handaxe, which takes forever.
- Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  - Prologue boss Garrick on Lunatic mode. As if surviving the merciless enemies in the chapter didn't drive the point home, he serves to teach you that you better have some strategy, fully healed units, and pair them up when you take on enemies and bosses alike, or else you will get slaughtered!
  - A Wake-Up Mook appears in the very next chapter on Lunatic: a Fighter with a Hammer. Your Crutch Character Frederick, whom you had to lean on just to make it through the Prologue, is weak to that weapon and will either take massive damage or die if he hits, proving the importance of using Frederick wisely. (On Lunatic+, it's possible this Mook will randomly obtain combinations of skills that render the chapter Unwinnable!)
  - Masked Marth actually serves as this. On the higher difficulties, his stats are considerably higher than anything you've fought so far, he moves, unlike most bosses, and the cheap tactic of wearing out the boss' weapons won't work because his Falchion has infinite uses just like Chrom's. (And unlike Chrom, he can use to heal himself, too!) If you haven't learned how to effectively use the Pair Up system, Marth will walk all over you.
- Fire Emblem Fates: Chapter 10 of Birthright/Chapter 11 of Revelation has Kotaro, both times using the same map:
  - In Birthright, he's equipped with a Dual Shuriken. Axes and Bows beat knives....but wait, why are you shown to be at at disadvantage? If you read the description, then you learn that it INVERTS THE WEAPON TRIANGLE AND DOUBLES THE EFFECT, meaning that the Bow/Axe user you just sent to engage him is asking to die. The fact that he's a promoted unit with a high AVO makes this all the better.
  - In Revelation he is even worse. He was smart enough to ditch the Dual Shuriken because it made him pitifully weak vs Swords. Instead, he came with both a steel shuriken and a steel katana, meaning that you have to look twice at their inventory before attacking. Getting to him is even harder since there are other promoted units besides him this time, and they won't make it easy getting to him.
- Fire Emblem Gaiden:
  - The Boss in Mook Clothing mercenary with a leather shield. This enemy teaches you to be ready to use magic since some enemies with high defence will reduce your most powerful attacks to Scratch Damage.
  - Berkut at the beginning of Act IV of Echoes. The gloves are off, so you better start making sure Alm's army is ready to face the might of the Rigellian Army since even standard Mooks are now promoted.
  - The first battle of Archanea Seaway sets the mood for the postgame, featuring much much more powerful enemies.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses has the battle in Chapter 5 against Miklan and his gang of thieves. While it looks like a normal boss battle with the exception of Miklan wielding a legendary weapon (that causes lots of damage to him when you engage in combat because he lacks the Crest to wield it properly), things get dicey when you defeat him and the Relic transforms him into a Demonic Beast, with a pop-up tutorial before the second phase of the battle to show the player how fighting monsters is much different from dealing with humanoid enemies. Monsters have armor that causes them to take half damage (among other effects) until it's broken, multiple life bars, new abilities that they gain after each life bar is depleted and area of effect attacks.
- Fire Emblem Engage
  - Abyme, the boss of Chapter 3, is the first armored unit to be faced. Her status as an armored unit not only means she has high defense, but she can't be broken(thus preventing her from counterattacking on that combat or the next one). The only viable options for damaging her are Emblem Marth's Rapier (which won't work on her in Maddening) or Clanne's magic(since armored units have high defense but low resistance).
  - Most of the early stages are fairly straightforward, even when you have your first encounter with bosses with Multiple Life Bars in Chapter 5. The first sign of things getting serious comes in Chapter 7, "Dark Emblem", where you have to plan around your enemies being able to wield Emblem rings, too. Hortensia carries Lucina's Emblem ring, which gives her a special attack that allows all allies in range to execute a Chain Attack, and her retainers, Goldmary and Rosado, have special abilities that lower the combat effectiveness of your male units.
The mission where you face the Hell's Wall Unit from Front Mission for the Super Nintendo. Up until know you've been outnumbered by weak, nameless units that go down easy. This mission pits you against five, extremely powerful units with custom wanzers who each have one or two Pilot Skills while you're lucky to have any and certainly haven't face any foes with them yet. You'd better pray you've figured out how to gauge weapon distances and movement ranges, or Hell's Wall will hand your ass to you.
Genjuu Ryodan has maps that will force the player to rethink their strategies:
- Map 7. This is the first map with terrain changes, path splits and the opponent fielding sea creatures which can move freely, gain defense bonuses in water and put units to sleep compared to most land units that cannot move well in shallow waters and immobile in deep waters that the player get when accessing the map for the first time. This map marks the importance of geo effects, unit condition's effect on combat, summoning the correct unit in response to your opponent's moves and keeping tabs on opponent's routes which are vital in the following maps.
- Map 13. The map is large, the enemy's summoning circles are spread out with three path splits on top of two of them hanging midair and the player's castle is surrounded with forest. If the player does not learn to step on enemy's summoning circles, keep units alive with backup support and keep important units in the summon list, there is no way the player can win this map.
- Map 15. This map has low crystal count, the enemy has access to the phoenix which renders "all unit kills" victory impossible on top of very fast mana regeneration rate and the lava terrain forces the player to use air units to avoid lava damage while the enemy sends powerful anti-air units to deal with them. If the players do not understand how to quickly capture crystals and use mana generator units to boost mana generation rate, the enemy units will quickly overwhelm the players'.
While Basic and Advance aren't insanely challenging in Gungnir, Nightmare starts off easily enough, making one wonder if it will actually live up to its name. Then comes the Gate of Lament battle, where even your Crutch Character isn't enough to carry you through without really good tactics.
Scenario 5 of Langrisser I is the first of multiple battles against Lance Kalxath, a general of the Dalsis Empire. He's stronger than most of the generals you've fought so far, and in the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version, his enemy-exclusive Royal Soldier troops are also stronger than yours and don't fall under the game's Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors pattern (being analogous to your magical classes' Guardsmen, who do well against Slimes and Lizardmen, but falter against all other troop types). To make matters worse, you've also got to traverse through heavy mountainous terrain, putting any of your mounted units (if you chose Horsemen, or any of your generals take the Knight promotion path) at a severe disadvantage. If you've been relying on your Crutch Character Volkoff (who is killed at the end of the mission) to do most of your fighting in the early game, then your other heroes won't have enough experience to challenge Lance or the generals in later missions without sustaining heavy casualties.
Super Heroine Chronicle has the dreaded stage 28 where you fight off Riko Lupin and Jeanne d'Arc the 30th and their army of Mooks. Up until then, you usually would use characters who are very powerful and are comfortable using for the past 27 stages (and some players may even invest in leveling Claude to 99 in the process). Not so in stage 28 where you're forced to use characters that, chances are, you've never used before. Fortunately, the Free Stages are available at the menu though now you have to waste time and level up characters who you've never used before. And it never lets up after this stage where you're now forced to level up characters evenly just to keep up with enemies.
In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, Maier V. Branstein is this to Kyosuke. He commands a battleship with 50,000 HP and an energy field that will negate weak attacks. To reach him you have to break through the Troye Unit (all of whom have support), some Barrelions, two other bosses, and two smaller but still resilient battleships. Use your best attacks too early and you're in for a slow agonizing defeat. Spend your Ammo, EN and SP wisely and you'll claim victory. EN drain the boss to disable his energy field and he'll be downright easy. Fridge Brilliance ensues when you remember that the Divine Crusaders' objective is to prepare humanity for the alien threat.
- Bian Zoldark could also count for Ryusei. Mostly because this is probably the first time you have to face a boss that has a unique robot (as opposed to others which were mostly just stronger variations of Mooks). His Valsion hits like a truck and can easily one-shot your weaker units if you're not careful, and like the above example, has a barrier that can strongly reduce the damage he takes, causing you to try to drain his EN and hoping that the one or two mech you have it equipped to doesn't get shot down. You also have to eliminate a horde of turrets just to get to him, which thankfully aren't that difficult by themselves but it does allow him to take potshots at you. But again, the Fridge Brilliance from above applies. And that's not even getting into if you are trying to get the Battle Mastery and take on Shu as well.
- In Alpha Gaiden, Gym Ghingham is a much higher step up from what you have been facing up to this point. With much higher stats than what bosses up to this point had, you will be forced to use your SP carefully so that you have enough to avoid his attacks, which are One-Hit Kill and to hit him as well. He also has a high percentage of regeneration to his health, and if that wasn't enough, at half health, he casts Guts, a spirit command that completely regenerates his HP and EN, and to top it off there is a 13 turn time limit, a few of which will be spent just getting to him. The only reason he is here and not just a That One Boss is that most if not all bosses after this point will employ similar tactics.
- In Super Robot Wars Destiny you have stage 6 of the Earth Route. At the very start of the mission you have only Mazinger Z and Mazinger Z versus a bunch of Ruina Mooks.
- In Dark Prison, you have Thomas Platt and his Guarlion Custom. Players may ask "So what? I've got Shu and the Granzon so how hard could this be?" First off, the battle mastery requires that players must shoot him down. Sounds easy, except the guy chooses to defend instead of counterattack, which then cuts the damage output. So players may go "eh, we'll just upgrade the Granzon then", except this happens as early as stage 3 so players won't even have any money to even upgrade any mech at this time. This is the point where players must figure out when to use an "Armor Breaker" from Shu's Granworm Sword and when to shoot down bosses via a Counter-Attack. And that is just one of the many weird battle mastery requirements of Dark Prison.
In a way, Silicoid encounters in Sword of the Stars. If you can't clear them without losing a single ship, you don't have anywhere near enough PD to take on enemy systems.
Symphony of War:
- Chapter 9 takes off the training wheels by introducing Gunners. Prior to their debut, the basic strategy is a tank wall of heavy troops in front with priestesses in the back, but Gunners have an Armor-Piercing Attack and armor tanking won't work against them. To counter them, you'll need to include a mix of troops in your army, such as light cavalry and archers.
- Once you get your Nephilim powers, try them out and learn how to use them. There will be a test soon, in the form of the Gaiden Quests. In a couple of these, brute force ain't gonna cut it; you'll need the enhanced mobility and ability to Draw Aggro that the Nephilim's powers give you.
There are two in the original XCOM game: Mutons and Ethereals. Mutons have heavy armor and are much more effective soldiers than the Sectoids, Floaters, and Snakemen you've been fighting up until now. Mutons shrug off anything less than a plasma rifle, and sometimes even that, with ease. Ethereals, on the other hand, are physically weak and easily taken down by plasma pistols, which you almost certainly will have at this point, but their psi powers will utterly wreck your soldiers time and again, proving that you can't just win through force of arms.
- XCOM Terror From The Deep has Lobstermen, who shrug off every single ranged attack (with the exception of a thermal shok launcher, which you may or may not have at this point) and laugh at you before killing your soldiers. They are only vulnerable to melee weapons, giving you a heads up that, unlike the original game, you can't just carry the biggest gun and win anymore.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown, on the other hand, has multiple: the Sectoid Commander, who introduces offensive psi powers (and will likely result in the death of at least one of your soldiers); Chrysalids, who boldly declare that cover will not save you, and then make you pay for it horribly; Mutons and Heavy Floaters not-so-subtly nudge you to get laser and plasma weapons if you haven't already; Thin Men on Impossible will almost always One-Hit Kill when they first appear if you haven't learned from Classic to always keep your troops in full cover.
- The Codex in XCOM2. They appear once you do some brain hacking on an ADVENT officer. Their first act upon spawning is to open up a Void Rift, that empties the magazines of your soldiers' primary weapon, forcing them to reload. The rift explodes next turn, dealing damage to units in it, making you lose a turn to get out of it and reload (unless you have an autoloader and haven't used it yet, lucky you...), and it follows by teleporting around the battlefield (making Overwatch useless and making it almost impossible to find decent cover against it), and damaging it causes it to divide into 2 codices with half the remaining health of the first codex after it is attacked. Hope you have learned about the wonderful thing that is the flashbang grenade that shuts down alien abilities in the blast radius.

Real-Time Strategy

Homeworld: The Turanic Raiders' second appearance in the original game is all devoted to this. At first they still act like the pushovers you defeated the first time... Until a squadron of ion array frigates pops out of hyperspace near the Mothership, while their flagship (that this time will use her heavy weapons) and two other frigates are charging at you. If you survive this major Oh, Crap!, you will take the rest of the game more seriously.
Iron Marines: The Fell Bishop is a Mini-Boss that's far tougher than everything else you've fought so far and will require a good strategy on the player's part. It has a gargantuan amount of health (over 13 times that of the Hammergrubs), hits for massive damage especially with its acid spit, and moves and attacks quite quickly. Furthermore, a neverending stream of mooks will keep entering the area to make things even dicier.
If you play as the Martians in Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, for the first month or so even your basic Scout Machines will sweep away anything the Humans can throw at you. And then, at some point, you will encounter an ironclad^note. As the Humans, you may recover from the initial Curb-Stomp Battle, but then you'll come up against the novel's iconic fighting machines.
Medieval II: Total War: The Mongols. No amount of rebel settlements, brigand warbands and occasional warring with neighbours will prepare you for several stacks of elite units including horse archers, led by competent generals with lots of nice traits and high Dread ratings, causing some of your lesser units to turn and run at the sheer sight of them.
Pikmin 3: The Armored Mawdad. Every enemy before it was fairly simple and could be killed by throwing a few Pikmin on top of it, or picking the right type to be immune to its attacks (Red for fire-shooters, Rock to avoid getting crushed to death). The Mawdad by contrast is much faster, has more tricks under its belt, and requires the player to use actual strategy between the two types of Pikmin introduced at that point. It's an early indicator of how the game will get more complex after it.
Warcraft III: In the "Founding of Durotar" campaign, at one point your group of heroes has to infiltrate Theramore Isle, and in order to escape, they need to take on a rather large Alliance force commanded by 3 level 12 heroes: A Paladin, an Archmage, and a Mountain King, all equipped with powerful items including Ankhs of Reincarnation. Up until that point, basic situational awareness and decent micromanagement skills could get you through every encounter pretty much unscathed, but this is the first point in the campaign where you're likely to die (over and over again if you haven't been leveling up, making use of stat boosts, and optimizing your equipment). Of course, in this particular campaign, resurrection is free and nearly instantaneous, so even if you're not prepared, this encounter is just tedious and annoying, not game-ending.

Visual Novels

The second cases in most Ace Attorney games^noteThe Great Ace Attorney, is an exception; van Zieks debuts in the third trial feature the debut of the game's main prosecutor, who ends up being much more competent than the ones in the respective games' first cases. The culprits are significantly more clever, too, and often don't fall under suspicion until late in the trial, often after the trial's first day. In most games, the second trials are significantly longer than the cases before them and, with the exception of "The Magical Turnabout," and "The Adventure of the Speckled Band,"(which does not include a trial) do not end on the first day.
- In the second Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Frank Sahwit, of all people^Explanation, is this when it comes to Logic Chess. The goal of Logic Chess is to ask the right questions while remaining silent if the opponent is defensive, but unlike the first two witnesses, Sahwit has an excellent poker face, so the player must pay attention to his words rather than his body language.

Wide-Open Sandbox

Skeletron from Terraria, even more so in Expert Mode. The two or four bosses you're likely to fight beforehand only require simple movement skills, and going through enough resources will usually result in a win for you. Skeleton requires masterful dodging skills, having to juggle both hands, his unusually fast and damaging skull, and the mini-skulls he summons when his hands are destroyed (which is required to beat him, as his skull simply has too much defense beforehand).

Other

Chapter 2's Samurai Goroh from F-Zero GX Story Mode, as he employs Rubber-Band A.I. in the worst ways possible after a relatively calm Chapter 1.
It's more a mission than a boss per se, but the second half of the mission "Mr. Phillips" in Grand Theft Auto V certainly counts. After playing relatively tame missions as Franklin and Michael up to this point in the game, You're given control of Trevor for the first time, and have access to a special ability that allows you to No-Sell damage to some extent, but you have to go up against an entire trailer park of heavily armed Lost M.C. bikers. Even with the special ability, it's quite easy to get overwhelmed and wasted, so you have to pick some strategy in addition to going in guns blazing.
The first time the player encounters the titular Nemesis in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis will show players why it's usually in their best interest to avoid this monstrosity. It can take a beating, and can throw Jill around like a ragdoll. It will also instantly kill her if her health is merely in caution as opposed to danger. The times you fight him in the city are a wakeup call because you have to A: learn his patterns, master the dodge mechanic, and use your gunpowder and reloading tool so that you have enough of the stronger munitions to take him out; and B: prepare for encounters with him that aren't optional. At this stage in the game, you are armed with the basic pistol and a shotgun, and if you want the drops he gives, you will have to take him out.
The first boss fight with Jack Baker in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. His sadism and nigh-invincibility are well established early on, so you know the inevitable fight to the finish will be no joke. Sure enough, he comes at you after a trek through a Molded-infested basement that's probably drained your ammo severely, attacking with a pair of enormous chainsaw shears that can kill you in only two or three solid hits. Your only real chance is to grab the other chainsaw and fight very defensively, blocking or dodging his attacks, stunning him by kicking a hanging body into him, and sneaking in a swipe or two before he recovers. It also doesn't help that your chainsaw tends to stall out at very inopportune moments, leaving you vulnerable while it revs back up...
DREDGE: Night Angler, the boss of the first area, is fairly easy to avoid: just don't go out at night, and if you do — stay close to the towns. Hateful Serpent, the boss of the second area, attacks at any time of the day whenever you so much as poke your nose into the tunnels (and you need to go there twice to progress the main plot). Also, since it's still early in the game, you don't have the magic to repell it yet, and your boat is too slow to outrun it and too dinky to take more than a couple of hits.

Non-Video Game examples

Anime and Manga

Accel World
- Cyan Pile is the first significantly higher level opponent Silver Crow faces; in the first volume, Silver Crow was Level 1, Ash Roller was Level 1 in their first battle and Level 2 in their rematch, and Cyan Pile is Level 4 (which is proof of being an experienced Burst Linker). Haru would have lost if he hadn't unlocked his Duel Avatar's ability of Flight mid-battle.
- Dusk Taker not only hands Haru a complete and utter defeat, but manages to take his flight ability in the process. His ability to steal his opponents' abilities is so powerful that the heroes realize that even Kuroyukihime, one of a handful of Level 9 players, wouldn't be guaranteed a win against him
- When Wolfram Cerberus fights Silver Crow, it's basically the fight with Cyan Pile, only with the roles reversed. Despite only being Level 1, Cerberus manages to use his Super-Toughness to defend against the Level 5 Silver Crow's attacks and win, proving that level isn't everything in Brain Burst, and that some abilities can negate an opponent's advantage.
Examples from Bakuten Shoot Beyblade:
- The first story arc has three: Kai appears after Takao has defeated the relatively strong Hiruta, and not only shows Takao that there's always a bigger fish Takao by disintegrating his beyblade with one shot, but uses a Goomba Stomp to do so. After Takao has apparently matched Kai, Max shows up with a defense-based beyblade that No Sells Dragoon's attacks. Rei, finally, makes it clear just how dominant international-level beybladers are, overpowering Takao's Dragoon in the first set of their match.
- In the American Tournament Arc, the protagonists feel invincible after winning the Asian Tournament, and have a couple friendly match with the American team... In which Max gets annihilated as soon as A-lister Emily steps into the ring.
- The following story arc, our guys feel too proud again... Cue Ralf. Whose aggressive style also revolutionizes the whole concept of bit-beast-powered beyblade fighting.
- At the start of the second season, Takao, now world champion, feels effectively invincible. Cue Curb-Stomp Battle on him and his team, with only Kai achieving a draw when the Saint Seals first show up.
- Takao being Takao, he starts the third season feeling invincible once more. Then at the world championship he gets his rear handed to him by Rei, who not only wins, but also makes him look an idiot.
Black Clover has Vetto, a beast-man from the Eye of the Midnight Sun. Previous villains that Asta fought could be dangerous and had their own threatening magic but many past battles were decided by Asta or other members of the Black Bulls seeing through their techniques and Asta defeating them with one or two hits of his anti-magic sword. Vetto, on the other hand, is so powerful that he can take far more than one hit of Asta's sword and leaves Asta and his teammates so injured and magically depleted that previous foes come across as a walk in the park compared to him. It also doesn't help that just when Asta and his team think they've won, Vetto just seems to get back up and reveal he still has a lot of reserves in his tank.
Bleach:
- The point where the manga and anime changed from Ichigo fulfilling Rukia's duties while he was borrowing her power, to a darker series dealing with the consequences of her lending him her power was the moment when Byakuya and Renji entered Karakura Town. Renji easily defeated Uryuu, followed by Ichigo and then dropped his guard giving Ichigo a chance to win. And then Byakuya ended the fight so fast Ichigo couldn't even see the blow that felled him.
- The entire Soul Society Arc turned out to be nothing more than a warm up. Ichigo and his companions went through hell and high water to defeat the shinigami, rescue Rukia and almost dying in the process. Even Byakuya was finally defeated in the climactic battle that ended the threat to Rukia... and then Aizen revealed he was the Big Bad and that all the skills Ichigo had learned to that point were just a foundation for the true threats that were yet to come. The true conflict, which had been slowly unfolding with the introductions of Uryuu and Byakuya was now kicked off in earnest.
A Certain Magical Index: For most the first volume, Touma has been using his Imagine Breaker to nullify the esper or magic attacks of his opponents coupled with some decent physical ability and quick-thinking to beat his opponents. Then he runs into Kaori Kanzaki, who is a Saint whose physical abilities and swordsmanship are just so much greater than his that she doesn't need to use any supernatural powers to beat him down, and she takes the one punch he does land on her without too much issue. The only reason he lives is because she never intended to kill him.
In Chainsaw Man, up until the Eternity Devil, most devils had been defeated in relatively short battles. The Eternity Devil's unique powers as well as its use of strategy and paranoia to turn the Devil Hunters against each other makes it a threat not so easily beaten. Denji has to fight/torture it with his chainsaws for three days straight before he finally breaks the devil's will and convinces it to commit suicide rather than go through any more pain.
In Episode 7 of the first season of Code Geass, Lelouch ends up fighting Cornelia for the first time. She deliberately sets up an attack that closely resembles the one from Episode 2. At first Lelouch seems to have it easy, but then Cornelia starts changing tactics around which Lelouch can't counter easily, and he's nearly discovered by the Britannia Army. He only survives because CC shows up in his Zero costume, which distracts them long enough for him to escape. Lelouch concludes that he needs to start developing new strategies in order to fight against the Britannians.
In Date A Live, Kurumi Tokisaki is the first Spirit that is against Shido trying to help her. On top of that, she also manages to prevent the other characters he's relied on up to that point from helping in their usual fashion.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba:
- Rui serves as this for Tanjiro during the Mount Natagumo Arc. As a Lower Rank of the Twelve Kizuki (Lower-5 specifically), his power is on a totally different level than any other demon that Tanjiro has ever faced before. The fight starts with Rui using one of his threads to cut clean through Tanjiro's (supposedly indestructible) sword, and then proceeds to kick the ever-loving crap out of him without ever expending any real effort. He also effortlessly strings up Nezuko when she tries to enter the fight. Tanjiro doesn't ever even land the killing blow on him throughout the entire fight. He does come close by using a Desperation Attack, but Rui still avoids it (although Rui does admit that if the attack had connected, it likely would have killed him). The only reason Tanjiro and Nezuko even survive is that Giyu, one of the Hashira, shows up and defeats Rui.
- Akaza is the first member of the Upper Ranks of the Twelve Kizuki faced off with (Upper-3), and goes to show why Muzan considers the Lower Ranks expendable in comparison to the Upper Ranks, the latter of which have killed members of the Hashira in the past. After Tanjiro defeats Enmu, the strongest of the Lower Ranks, with help from his friends and Kyojuro of the Hashira, Akaza shows up when Tanjiro's still injured. Akaza then fights Kyojuro, and is winning for most of the fight. Kyojuro manages to hold off Akaza long enough that Akaza is forced to flee before the sun rises, but Kyojuro is mortally wounded and dies not long after the battle.
- Daki and her brother Gyutaro, while technically the second of the Upper Ranks to fight, still serve to emphasize that all fights from here on out will have serious consequences for the heroes simply due to how much the stakes ramp up despite Daki being "just" the Upper-6, the weakest of them, and showing that most future fights with the Upper Ranks and Muzan himself will require both teamwork and sacrifice to overcome. While Daki gives a good showing of herself against the main trio and Nezuko, she's rather easily beheadeded by a Hashira like Tengen once he steps in who then claims she's not even worthy as Upper Rank material. But then Daki doesn't die despite being beheaded and Gyutaro (who Muzan considers the actual Upper-6) responds to her crying to come out, and at that point the two sibling demons fight together to force the heroes into a desperate struggle to survive. The demon siblings actually triumph on them, and it's only a Moment of Weakness on Gyutaro's part that lets the heroes get the edge back and win the day. Even so, were it not for Nezuko discovering her newfound healing powers several of them would be dead, and Tengen suffers a Career-Ending Injury regardless.
Dragon Ball:
- From the original series, Jackie Chun (really Master Roshi). For the entire first arc and even his training, Goku has no real challenger. Yamcha only did as well as he did because Goku was hungry in their first fight and Krillin has proven to be inferior to Goku. Then Goku fights Jackie Chun, who really pushes him to the physical breaking point, and the fight goes on for four hours. And Jackie won, handing Goku his first real defeat.
- In terms of life and death battles, the Red Ribbon Army introduces two of these. Goku easily defeats most of the titular Red Ribbon Army, including their early Androids and Elite ninja and fighters. Then he comes across General Blue, who is strong enough to defeat Krillin and hold his own against Goku. When Goku does prove himself stronger, Blue uses a powerful paralysis technique that allows him to very nearly kill Goku on three separate occasions. Later on, the Army hires Mercenary Tao, who takes out General Blue using nothing but his tongue, but first takes the time to No-Sell his special technique^note. Then Tao fought Goku and not only beat him, but brings him to the brink of death.
- For Dragon Ball Z Raditz who also doubles as a Starter Villain. He took on both Goku and Piccolo and beat them to a pulp, showing that the fights on Earth are a kid's playground compared to the rest of the universe.
- Zarbon was the first enemy on Namek that Vegeta couldn't immediately overpower, even beating him within an inch of his life. The second was Recoome, a member of the Ginyu Force, who tanked everything Vegeta had to throw at him and nearly wiped out the Z-Fighters by his lonesome.
- Captain Ginyu was this to Goku after he arrived on Namek. After making complete fools of his subordinates, Ginyu was the first opponent to actually keep up with Goku, and though the Saiyan was able to exceed his power by using the Kaio-Ken, he was still unprepared for Ginyu's Body Change technique. Goku needed help from Gohan, Krillin, and Vegeta (and some luck) to get his body back, and after that he was critically injured and had to spend the next several episodes/chapters recovering in a healing tank.
Fabricant 100: No 33 is one of the few who've managed to escape the mansion with a body part of a Yao family member. Despite his relatively low number, he's the first one to be as strong as No 100 and to show regenertive abilities, which other Yao Fabricants are said to share.
In Chapter 337 of Fairy Tail, Mavis notes that none of the Dragon Slayers were able to defeat a single dragon that came from the past during the Eclipse despite wielding the only type of magic that can even scratch them. Worse, none of those dragons were on Acnologia's level.
- Prior to that, Erigor was the first wizard shown Natsu couldn't simply bash into a wall with raw determination.
- Jellal Fernandez, in addition to being a Knight of Cerebus, was the first time any of the Five-Man Band had to go up against an opponent that was significantly stronger than they were. The previous Big Bads were all defeated by someone of similar power. (Natsu vs Erigor, Gray vs Lyon, and while Erza, albeit weakened, was able to hold her own against Jose for a time they still they had to wait for Makarov to recover to win).
Fist of the North Star has Mr. Heart. So far, Kenshiro has wiped out every enemy in his way, including Shin's other subordinates Spade, Diamond and Club, with a quick pressure point-based attack each, and has shown enough raw strength that he could have killed them by simply punching them hard if he had wanted. Then he fights Mr. Heart... and has barely enough time to realize his attack has failed before getting slapped hard enough to vomit blood. Turns out that Mr. Heart's fat has made him immune to any attack, be it weapons or martial arts, except for Shin's Nanto Seiken, and had Kenshiro's Hokuto Shinken not included a technique devised specifically to push aside an opponent's fat and then hit his pressure points, he would have been killed.
In Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Edward and Alphonse take down rogue alchemists with relative ease until they encounter Scar, a radicalist serial killer targeting State Alchemists, who comes extremely close to murdering the Elrics themselves and would have succeeded if not for Roy Mustang and his crew pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- On a strictly emotional level, Shou Tucker. The Elric brothers realize the kind of cruelty and evil that alchemists are capable of after meeting him, and the Heroic BSoD Ed has after Nina's death is partly what leads to him almost getting killed by Scar. Most of the enemies before then were just power-hungry bullies with delusions of grandeur, but Tucker represents something more insidious, since he appears friendly and reasonable at first, but ultimately shows what happens when alchemy is used to overstep the bounds of nature, and gives Ed and Al a nasty and uncomfortable reminder of their own mistakes, despite theirs being well-intentioned, unlike Tucker's. It's something of a Wake Up Call Boss for the viewer too, since it's a glimpse at just how depressing the series can get, especially in the 2003 anime.
There are a couple in Gundam Build Fighters Try:
- The first is Minato Sakai, who deals Sekai his first loss while the two were using BB Senshi models (SD character), forcing Sekai to realize that hitting things with your fist will only take you so far.
- The second is Saga Adou of the Gunpla Academy, the one who forced Yuuma into a 10-Minute Retirement spiel. He showed that Team Try Fighters were nowhere near the Gunpla Academy's level, scaring the wits out of both Fumina and Yuuma. This one is followed up with the third and fourth, Meijin Kawaguchi III for Yuuma and Lady Kawaguchi for Fumina. They both challenge the kids to get over their hang ups and become better builders.
The Dark Precure of HeartCatch Pretty Cure!. After about 8 episodes of Cure Blossom and Marine doing well against the Desertians, the Dark Precure shows up, beats them around, tanks their ultimate Combination Attack, then flattens them and leaves them on the ground and depowered.
In High School D×D, while up to that point Issei hasn't had any real fights on his own yet due to being new and unfamiliar with his powers, when he first runs into Freed, a rogue exorcist, its clear he's outclassed. Only with the unexpected arrival of Asia who delayed the fighting by trying to plead for Issei's life (and nearly getting raped by Freed in the process), and more importantly, dropping the barrier which masked their presence, were Rias and the others able to show up and save him. Rias even apologizes to him for sending him out on what was supposed to be a mundane mission until Freed showed up to kill the person Issei was supposed to meet due said person's affiliation with the devils.
- Kokabiel is much more of this trope than Freed, being able to curb-stomp the entire Occult Research Club all by himself. But then comes Vali to kick his ass.
I Left the A-Rank Party has the Steel Crab which is known as the "Novice Slayer". Its reputation becomes an Informed Attribute when main character Yoke one-shots it by accident with support magic.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Santana acts as this in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency. After spending previous fights flawlessly outsmarting his opponents, Joseph meets his first true challenge in Santana, who also shows just how much stronger the Pillar Men are compared to the average vampire. Wammu is also this to an extent, as he's the first opponent Joseph couldn't win against without training.
- N'Doul acts as this in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders. While the Crusaders had already faced some dangerous opponents, their fight against N'Doul shows that the Egypt 9 Glory Gods are going to be much more of a challenge by badly injuring Avdol and nearly blinding Kakyoin, forcing the latter to spend some time in a hospital to recover.
- Stardust Crusaders also has J. Geil/Centrefold, who fights with Hol Horse. The duo are the first of the Crusaders' opponents who are faced in a two-part episode^note, and manage to seemingly kill Avdol.
- Formaggio is this for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. While Black Sabbath, Zucchero, and Sale weren’t exactly pushovers, they were fairly easy to beat once the gang figured out their tricks. But Formaggio is in a different league entirely, and he signals that Team Bucciarati is up against the deadliest of the deadly now.
- Urban Guerrilla acts as this in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: JoJolion. While battles against the previous Rock Humans were most definitely not easy, the danger Guerrilla poses to the heroes shows that the ones they'll be facing from then on will be much, much deadlier.
Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple:
- Kenichi often fights foes who are usually tougher than him, although his first serious fight where he nearly got killed, or at least seriously injured, was against Shinnosuke Tsuji, who was able to evade and counter everything Kenichi had. Tsuji was then in the process of attempting to break Kenichi's legs when Takeda shows up to rescue him. With some help from Kensai Ma, one of his masters, who normally abide by Helping Would Be Kill Stealing, Takeda is able to get his friend out of there. Kenichi makes it up later by swiftly delivering a Curb-Stomp Battle to him the second time they fight.
- Shinnosuke pulls this a second time after the Ragnarok arc, whose end he missed because he was training in the mountains. By the time he comes back Ragnarok, of which he was a member, has disbanded, but he wants to fight Kenichi anyway to prove a point. Kenichi by now is stronger and faster, and mops the floor with him... Then Kenichi gets distracted and Shinnosuke places one hit, knocking Kenichi out.
Koroshiya Yametai: For the first half of the series, Rose has little trouble disposing of her targets, effortlessly eludes some pursuers her employers dispatched as a test of her skill and defeats several disguised hitmen and paladins. However, Hibai, a fellow hitman, is a considerable step up. Hibai is skilled at hand-to-hand combat, knows many of Rose's tricks of the trade and is clever enough to manipulate Benika.
Kuroko's Basketball has Daiki Aomine. Before him, the team struggles but finds a way to defeat Ryota's move copying and Midorima's full length three point shots. Aomine proves to be another beast entirely. With a street-ball move-set that throws them off, insane speed and power. He spends the whole game making the team look like grade schoolers playing Lebron James.
Mazinger Z: Up to Episode 14, Kouji had got mostly easy, quick fights against weak robots and he had got overconfident. Then Spartan-K5 trashed him and humiliated him. Since that point the battles turned harder and the enemies more dangerous.
Char Aznable in Mobile Suit Gundam. In his first battle, Amuro had mopped the floor with two Zaku II thanks to the sheer power of the Gundam in spite of his lack of experience. When the White Base escapes from Side 7, Amuro faces Char with his custom-model Zaku, and is summarily trashed by the vastly more experienced enemy ace, surviving only because Char did not know how resistant the Gundam was and brought only the ineffective standard weapons.
My Hero Academia:
- In Season 1, Tomura Shigaraki is the first seriously dangerous threat to emerge, because he marches in with an army of villains and gives Class 1-A and company a very intense fight. Even All Might is put to the test with the Nomu Shigaraki brought with him that was designed to take him down.
- In Season 2, Stain presents an even greater threat, because he is actively killing heroes or leaving them maimed if he wants them to survive, cripples Ingenium, and has a Quirk that is so insidious it takes three of Class 1-A to bring him down and Stain continues to bear down on the students and pro heroes before a broken rib punctures his lung.
- The League of Villains becomes this once it has assembled a group of career killers and criminals, as it wreaks havoc on the summer training camp and kidnaps Bakugo. After their rampage, comes a fight that makes this incident look like a gentle breeze: The terrifying destruction caused by All For One, who is a veritable smorgasbord of Quirks and so powerful only All Might can even hope to stand against him. The aftereffects of those battles had serious impacts on society as a whole in the series.
Naruto:
- Kakashi Hatake is the first opponent Naruto faces that he doesn't effortlessly defeat. In fact, he hands him and the rest of Team 7 their collective asses.
- Zabuza Momochi is the first genuine threat in the series, showing the Team 7 genin both how out-classed they are and also how brutal the ninja world can be.
- Deidara is the first really challenging opponent for Sasuke in Part II and encourages him to try to get even stronger to defeat his brother Itachi.
One Piece:
- Buggy the Clown was the very first example in the series, since he was the first Devil Fruit user to be introduced after the main character Luffy, thus having access to unique abilities no one else could develop. This showcased how dealing with enemy Devil Fruits was going to be a much tougher ordeal than just beating people with big, scary weapons like Alvida or Morgan from now on.
- The series has Dracule Mihawk, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea who shows up fairly early on in the Baratie Arc. He demonstrates this by cutting a galleon in half and gets challenged by Zoro in which he only uses a six-inch knife and curb stomps Zoro. It's also mentioned that he almost effortlessly single-handedly destroyed Don Krieg's armada, the strongest pirate fleet in East Blue (which, as Mihawk points out, has the fewest strong pirates).
- The East Blue Saga also had Smoker, the first person to ever hand Luffy his ass. This is mainly because Smoker is a Logia type and Luffy had no idea what Haki was at the time.
- Sir Crocodile, once the story moved into the Grand Line. After fighting a bunch of other weaklings, Luffy ended up fighting this guy, another member of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. It took Luffy three attempts to beat him, and even after he did, Luffy was on the ground literally dying due to the poison in his system. After Crocodile, almost every enemy from then was in some way a challenge to Luffy for the first half of the series.
- Admiral Kuzan (a.k.a Aokiji) might have made his appearance a bit late during the first part of the Grand Line (essentially halfway through), but the impact he had on the crew was tremendous, akin to the aforementioned Smoker, but on steroids. Not only did he completely curbstomp Luffy and several of the crew's heavy-hitters, he also left lasting scars on the crew's confidence regarding future opponents (as, before that, the Straw Hats hadn't completely lost once), which would lead to the Straw Hats going through an unstable period in the following arc, with some members like Usopp and Robin temporarily leaving the crew for reasons that could all be traced back to Kuzan. On the flipside, he is the one that makes Luffy realize he needs to get stronger and explore the possibilities of his Devil Fruit more, resulting in him learning Gear Second and Gear Third.
- While not as overt as Smoker or Crocodile, Rob Lucci of Cipher Pol 9 was able to overpower Luffy by sheer physical strength (being a practicioner of the superhuman Six Powers certainly helped) despite having a carnivorous Zoan Devil Fruit (for the record, Zoan are regarded as the weakest fruits unless you're lucky enough to come across an Ancient or Mythical sub-type), to the point that Luffy could only continue fighting and defeat him through willpower alonrthanks to some pep yell from Usopp, and even after the battle he had to escape Enies Lobby in such a ragged state.
- Admiral Borsalino (a.k.a. Kizaru) is another. After the Straw Hats barely defeat Pacifista 4, he shows up with another Pacifista and one of his subordinates, Sentoumaru, and proceeds to brutally trounce the Straw Hats. Only Silvers Rayleigh, the "Dark King" and Gol D. Roger's first mate, is able to hold him off, and the Straw Hats only survive because of Kuma using his powers to send the Straw Hats to other islands. The entire experience (as well as Luffy's own failures in both Impel Down and Marineford) convinces Luffy that the Straw Hats aren't ready for the New World, and so they spend two years training before meeting again after the Time Skip.
- Don Chinjao is a former but still quite dreaded pirate and Luffy's first true challenging opponent after his two years of training to show off what kind of monsters awaits him in the New World. Don Chinjao himself comments to Luffy that from now on he will have to face the contenders for the title of Pirate King, and that they will be much tougher than whoever he fought before.
- After the time-skip, the first massive challenge the Straw Hats and cohorts are presented with is Donquixote Doflamingo, yet another Warlord of the Sea. Not only was Doflamingo terribly strong and smart, he also had access to many resources and connections that the vast majority of pirates don't, operating in a way similar to the Four Emperors (the series' strongest pirate characters), albeit at a smaller scale.
One-Punch Man:
- The Deep Sea King was the first villain able to last more than one episode^note, defeating multiple heroes and even taking down two S-Class Heroes (albeit the lowest-ranked ones). In this case, it's Zig-Zagged because he's actually a fair bit weaker than several of the previous villains, but he's the first major villain who has the fortune not to go up against Saitama right away.
- Lord Boros is the very first opponent who's able to survive Saitama's usual One-Hit Kill punch through a combination of his own toughness and a ludicrous Healing Factor, and the first to ever force Saitama to fight "Semi-Seriously."
Shalltear Bloodfallen was this in the original YGGDRASIL game in Overlord (2012) for the Great Tomb of Nazarick. Strong enough to take on a Level 100 player by herself, can summon an army of familiars and equipped with some of the best gear in the game, not to mention has the ability to resurrect herself once. There is a reason she controls 3 levels by herself. And in a more traditional role, when she goes Brainwashed and Crazy she's the first opponent that actually poses a threat to Ainz himself.
Pokémon: The Original Series: Ash's battle with Lt. Surge. He's the first Gym Leader to make Ash earn a badge (and for once, compared to the earlier two Gym Leaders who gave him a badge for doing a random good deed, it was fair and square, no less). To beat him, Ash has to revise his one-note strategy of having Pikachu use electricity, especially since Surge's Raichu outclassed him in that regard, combined with finding a fatal flaw in his logic.
Dessert Witch Charlotte in Puella Magi Madoka Magica can be considered this. In the second episode, Madoka and Sayaka see Mami rather easily defeat the Rose Garden Witch Gertrud. The battle against Charlotte also starts out simply enough, with an excited Mami dishing out a total Curb-Stomp Battle to the Witch... which then goes One-Winged Angel and messily devours Mami, with only the intervention of Homura sparing the two observers a similar fate. This is the first time in the anime that the viewer realizes just how horrifying the life of a Mahou Shoujo in this series is. And it only gets worse from there.
Rurouni Kenshin:
- Udo Jin-e, or Kurogasa, is the first foe Kenshin faces off against that he couldn't defeat without going into Battousai mode and is debatably the strongest opponent Kenshin had to go up against early on in the series before Saito is introduced and gives Kenshin an even more difficult fight.
- Meanwhile, Saito is this to Kenshin in his Battousai state. In past battles, during those rare moments where Kenshin was brought back to being the Battousai, the battle was pretty much over for his unlucky foe. However, Saito can continue to fight the Battousai blow for blow and while their battle ends without a conclusion, it's presented as one of the few times even Kenshin as the Battousai was in serious danger of possibly losing a fight.
In Saki, Saki and Nodoka go up against Yasuko Fujita, a professional mahjong player, early on in the storyline, who proceeds to defeat them easily. She then tells them that because Koromo Amae, the strongest player in the prefecture, defeated her, they have no chance of winning the tournament.
- In Achiga-hen, Toki Onjouji is this for the Achiga team, after they easily won against Bansei on the prefectural level and repeated that in their first national match. Toki manages to hand a crushing defeat to Kuro, who otherwise had managed to win large amounts of points, ending with Toki's team in the lead with 140,000 points, and Kuro's team in last place with 60,000 points — the former retains its lead for the entire quarterfinals, while the latter only barely reaches second place.
  Kuro: Is this the true face of the nationals? What remains when tens of thousands have been eliminated on the road to the top...?
In The Seven Deadly Sins, Galand of the Ten Commandments is the first opponent in the series who is straight up stronger than all of Melodias and his group put together. The utterly brutal curbstomp he inflicts on them which they only survived thanks to Gowther's illusions makes them realize that they need to become stronger fast.
Shinzo: Gyasa, a Medusa-like reptilian monster, was the first major enemy whose plan spanned exactly three episodes. He turned the heroine Yakumo to stone and chucked her in an acid lake. Fighting him required the first transformation of the three male leads into Mushrambo to win, and even then after he went One-Winged Angel, Mushrambo was barely able to win. The guy had a touch of Implacable Man since he could shed his skin right before death and return with no damage even stronger than before. And he was just so creepy.
Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight: Karen handily defeats Junna in episode 2 once she adjusts to the auditions. But in the next episode, she's pitted against Maya, who easily curb-stomps her, causing Karen to take the auditions more seriously.
Shultz in Space Battleship Yamato 2199 is this. Before attacking his base on Pluto, the protagonists had easily bulldozed through any Gamilas opposition they encountered, learning how to use the wave motion engine without breaking it and the Wave-Motion Gun without overkill. Then they moved on his base... And the Yamato was nearly crippled by the first attack without even realizing how he hit them, and only survived and won because he was having a bad week and didn't think to check if he had actually destroyed them before reporting his victory.
Sword Art Online:
- Ugachi, leader of the group of goblins that abducted Selka when she wandered into the cave. He nearly kills Kirito and Eugeo, and wounds the latter so badly that Selka has to use a risky Sacred Art to save him. While Kirito's wounds are less serious, this is the first virtual battle he's had to fight when dealing with feeling real pain.
- Fanatio, vice-commander of the Integrity Knights, is the first Integrity Knight to pose a challenge to Kirito and Eugeo, wounding them badly and forcing them to use their swords' true power to win.
In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the Beastmen's Gunmen were never easy to take down but destroying them became easier and easier until Episode 3 where Viral and his mecha, Enki, were introduced. Viral then proceeded to completely wipe the floor with Kamina's Gurren and Simon's Lagann by evading all of their simple kicks and digging drills and striking back with his superior arsenal consisting of shields, blades, missiles, and a Wave-Motion Gun. But when their fight forced Kamina and Simon to combine their mecha to become the immensely powerful Gurren Lagann, Viral quickly became a Demoted Boss and lackey to the Villain of the Week.
Played With in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime:
- Ifrit is the first time Rimuru Tempest has truly fought an opponent that he couldn't just brute-force with a spammable offensive, but he ultimately proves easy once Rimuru remembers after taking a direct hit that he has Heat Resistance and can't be hurt by fire and the much weaker and more vulnerable bystanders are out of the way. At that point, Rimuru No Sells Ifrit's attacks and absorbs him.
- The Orc Disaster is the first time Rimuru truly fights a foe on a level on par with his own, requiring dodging and intentional nullification of attacks rather than just No Selling them head-on, and has him use Great Sage's Perfect Play A.I. to use his own abilities to their best advantage. The Orc Disaster also possesses a potent Healing Factor to match Rimuru's and ultimately is able to resist the effects of Predator better than any foe before him (and ultimately requires promising to help his people to finally accept defeat).
- Milim Nava is the first time Rimuru encounters a hostile opponent who is explicitly his superior in every way. In order to win their fight, Rimuru resorts to trickery and bribery rather than combat, using Milim's Womanchild nature against her by feeding her delicious honey and getting her to call a draw and make peace. Later events would transpire to reveal that was the correct decision, as Milim shows in a straight fight the number of people in the world capable of going toe-to-toe with her can be counted on one hand and it takes Rimuru most of the series to reach that level.
- Finally played straight with Hinata Sakaguchi, the first opponent Rimuru fights who is not only superior to him, but unlike Milim isn't interested in a peaceful solution for personal reasons and unlike Charbydis there's no way to contact reinforcements. To top it off, Hinata's a Combat Pragmatist who drops a Holy Field that restricts Rimuru's abilities and ability to call for help before attacking. The only reason Rimuru survives is by Faking the Dead until she leaves, and that took putting himself in the way of a fatal attack.
In Toriko, Tommyrod was the first Gourmet Corp Sous Chef Toriko fought for real. Starjun was operating a GT Robo that couldn't match his real power, and Grinpatch was just messing around. Tommyrod nearly kills Toriko during their brutal fight, and he is the first opponent in the series to actually defeat Toriko. Only Teppei's intervention saved Toriko.
Kaito from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL was the first person in the series to not only have full control of their senses while controlling a Number, but to also have more than one, plus have a monster that can take down Xyz monsters easily. Yuma & Astral lost to him when the first meet him, only surviving due to a fluke. He's the first person to show that other people are after the Numbers as well, which becomes the crux of the whole series after that.

Comic Books

Runaways: Early in the series the kids score a string of victories against the Pride, stealing the Staff of One from Nico's parents, liberating Old Lace from the Yorkes family basement, and pulling Molly away from her parents, and they start to feel overconfident. And then they meet the vampire Topher, who easily manipulates Nico and Karolina (the two most powerful Runaways at that point) into fighting each other, and then proves to be a hard bastard to defeat, and the only reason they survive is because he tries to drink Karolina's blood, which turns out to be loaded with solar radiation. It leaves them all badly demoralized at a time when the Pride are closing in on them.
Spider-Man: Doctor Octopus was this in his first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko), giving the wall-crawler his first real defeat. It shatters his confidence badly enough that he actually considers giving up crime-fighting, until a pep talk from the Human Torch prompts his Heroic Second Wind.

Fan Works

Magnaangemon possessed by a Dark Spiral from Zero 2: A Revision. Originally, most of the Digimons that the new generation Digidestined confronted were either Champions or Ultimate, Magnaangemon however is an Ultimate that is capable of going toe-to-toe with a mega like what he did against Piedmon. Knowing full well that Davis along with the other Armor-Digivolved Digimons are incapable of defeating the angel, Shaun decides to warp-digivolve his (Agumon) into (Wargreymon) to fight against him. And even then, without the efforts of the other Armor-digivolved Digimons assisting (Wargreymon) and Shaun's fake death ploy, they would have lost.
Chrysaor in Son of the Western Sea absolutely demolishes Percy, with only the Mark of Achillies keeping him from killing Percy with his first attack, before spending the rest of the fight effortlessly brushing off any counterattacks. Percy only manages to kill him because Chrysaor was unaware of his ability to control ships and thus didn't anticipate getting shot by Greek Fire cannons. In the aftermath, Percy reflects that he had become overconfident in his own capabilities and endevours to better hone his skills.
Hunter J in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines is this to Ash. To illustrate, up to this point, Ash and his Pokémon have been able to take on and defeat all of their opponents thanks to their knowledge and memories from the past timeline, even J's henchmen were no match for them. But when they're up against J herself, her Salamence quickly takes on Ash's entire team at once without breaking a sweat, and they only manage to escape with their lives because Goomy uses a Bide attack that blasts a hole through the ship sending them plummeting down to the ground.
Outsiders: Louise is very confident that Viola won't be too difficult, since she's just the first Gym Leader and both Brennaraki (a Fennekin) and Aile (a Fletchling) have type advantage, while ignoring the fact that she's only been a Trainer for a week. Viola's Surskit subsequently knocks out both of her Pokemon while taking little damage in return, making Louise realize that her goal is going to be much harder than she assumed.
Demon In Fodlan: Demon Pillar Sitri. Up to this point, Goetia has easily wiped out bandits, mercenaries and a whole army by himself with nothing but a flick with his wrist and a bored expression on his face. Then when he confronts Sitri, his opponent grievously wounded him with a sneak attack that would've killed him if he didn't act in on instinct at the last second, pushes him past the limits of his magical reserves that he needed an additional source of fuel to bypass this weakness, and needed the help of Byleth/Sothis, Rhea and Flayn to bring Sitri down. They even serve this on an emotional level for Goetia— being confronted by a Demon Pillar after so long forces Goetia to realize that they both have grown too much apart to reach an understanding that being forced to kill the supposedly last of his kind to protect the humans in Fodlan from their wrath, causes Goetia to become emotionally broken in the aftermath.
Fate Revelation Online:
- The First Floor Field Boss, [Worm Disciple], is there to force players to deal with debuffs. Unlike most games, magic resistance is active rather than passive; you have to circulate prana through your circuits to wear away curses and effects. Since the [Worm Disciple] is a Flunky Boss that paralyzes players, if you don't know how to resist debuffs, you'll die quickly.
- Even more so is the actual Floor Boss, [Illfang the Kobold Lord]. In the beta, it was designed for a Total Party Kill to set the tone of the game. Now that it's turned into a death game that Kayaba is using to train people in real magic, it's a little different. Up until it Turns Red, the fight is mostly like a normal game; a small group of players engage the boss until its aggro changes, and everyone else can just stand around waiting. The point of its final phase is to force the players to treat it like a real fight using real-world rules.
  The [Last Red Overkill Mode] would be used exactly as it had been intended. It would force the players to stop taking the flow of the game for granted, even if it was unfair.
  The players had already destroyed three HP bars. No, they had destroyed almost three-and-a-half, the final HP bar had just crossed into the yellow zone.
  It was tiny and hesitant. But Kayaba Akihiko sincerely smiled.
Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K has Saphran in Season 2. Prior to encountering him, the Jedi had been effortlessly cutting through the regular Imperial forces at the Second Battle of Axum through their teamwork, numbers, and mastery of the Force. Then comes along this Space Marine Librarian who easily wipes out Luminara's strike force of around fifty Jedi all by himself and later forces Obi-Wan's similarly-sized Jedi strike force to retreat after dealing them severe losses. Saphran is the first opponent at Axum that the Jedi can't defeat through simple teamwork or faith in the Force. Even Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the Jedi Order's greatest warriors, is unable to beat Saphran in a straight-up fight and it takes the combined effort of several legendary Jedi Masters (with two of them tragically giving up their lives as well as one falling to the Dark Side) to finally put Saphran in the ground for good. After Saphran's defeat, Mace Windu acknowledges that the Jedi were unprepared for an enemy like him and orders his corpse to be recovered so the Jedi can study it in hopes of being better prepared should they ever encounter another Librarian in the future.

Film

Thanos himself in Avengers: Infinity War. His easy defeat of the Hulk (and the Hulk's subsequent escape via Bifrost) allows him to warn Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and eventually the Avengers and Secret Avengers. His destruction of the Asgardian refugee ship, meanwhile, alerts the Guardians of the Galaxy to his activity and forces them to take action.
After recovering from a nasty bout of malaise, Batman returns to the fray in The Dark Knight Rises. His most pressing problem is Bane, who he thinks is just another generic terrorist who he expects to beat with his usual tricks of misdirection, stealth, and well-honed martial arts; and he cuts through Bane's henchmen without much difficulty. Unfortunately for Batman, Bane turns out to be a far trickier customer, having been trained in the same way Batman was. He proceeds to No-Sell his attempts of stealth and misdirection and give Batman one hell of a beat-down, eventually breaking his back and sending him into exile.
In The Empire Strikes Back young Luke Skywalker — filled with confidence from his first bout of hands-on Jedi training — rushes into battle against the vastly more experienced Darth Vader. Even though Vader is pulling his punches, Luke barely escapes with his life; he takes his training more seriously from that point. Also an inversion of Warmup Boss, as Vader is the first true Force-user Luke Skywalker confronts in battle.
In Pacific Rim, by the time it started, the Jaeger pilots had grown complacent with how decisively they had won battles against the Kaiju. Then the Kaiju Knifehead heavily damaged Gipsy Danger and killed one if its pilots showing they were adapting and escalating the threat. Five years later, the program is on the verge of being shut down due to the Jaegers now being destroyed faster than they can replace them.

Literature

The Witch of Knightcharm: Lily Rutherford serves as this to the protagonist Emily, being one of Emily's first major enemies at the evil Wizarding School they're both stuck in. Emily, who had previously been something of a dilettante that spent more time dreaming about fighting evil than actually training to do it, is forced to develop both her magical skills and her character in order to have a chance of defeating Lily in battle.

Live Action TV

Kamen Rider
- Episode thirteen of the original series has Tokageron, an exceptionally strong Shocker cyborg monster who No Sells Takeshi Hongo's trademark Rider Kick on top of leading an army of the previous monsters who have been brought Back from the Dead. It is only after Hongo advances his technique to Lightning Rider Kick that he throws Shocker's Barrier Destruction Ball back at them, wiping out Tokageron and his forces.
- In Kamen Rider Wizard, Phoenix was the first Phantom to beat Haruto, forcing him to advance to Flame Dragon to keep up.
The Queen's Gambit has Benny Watts, the US national chess champion. Up until she plays him, Beth has defeated all of her opponents without much trouble just on raw talent. He hands her her first defeat and forces her to think more about strategy.
Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has Deratsueigar, one of the Emperor Akudos Gill's elite guards, who proves much more a challenge than the usual Action Commanders when he curb stomps the Gokaigers on his first deployment.
The Ultra Series brings this trope into play from time to time, usually early on in a series. The original Ultraman gave us Antlar in episode seven ("The Blue Stone of Barraj"), a kaiju who confounded Ultraman with its burrowing and magnetic powers, and whereas the Spacium Beam had been a One-Hit Kill on previous opponents, Antlar shrugged it off like it was nothing, and Ultraman was pushed the furthest he had been up to that point, as his Color Timer nearly ran out. Ultimately, it takes Antlar getting hit with the titular stone to finally defeat it.
Return of Ultraman has Ultraman Jack taking on Kingsaurus III in episode four ("Certain Kill! Comet Kick!"). In their initial encounter, Kingsaurus wipes the floor with Jack, with the kaiju blocking all of his attacks with its barrier, forcing Jack to demorph for the first time and sending Goh to the hospital with injuries. Goh then spends the rest of the episode training himself, and when Kingsaurus returns, Jack delivers a flying kick to the kaiju's horns, the source of its powers, shattering them and rendering it helpless. Jack quickly defeats the creature shortly thereafter.

Mythology and Religion

Irish Mythology, The Battle of Ventry: While all the early clashes with Daire Donn's forces were tough, with several of his champions and generals being worthy foes, it wasn't anything The Fianna couldn't handle. However, that's when The King of the World sends out Dolar Dorbha. While The Fianna initially brush off his challenge to face 100 of them at once as empty bravado, Dolar Dorbha quickly proves his prowess by killing all 100 without taking a single wound. He then proceeds to kill 100 Fianna a day for 3-5 days without showing any signs of slowing down. It's not until Gall, Prince of Ulster, comes to their aid and pulls a Taking You with Me on Dolar Dorbha that he's able to be overcome. It's after this encounter that we see The Fianna start gathering allies from all over Ireland^note and The Otherworld for the oncoming battles. This also the beginning of a significant Difficulty Spike, as the champions and generals that follow are considerably more dangerous going forward and do considerable damage to The Fianna and their allies before being defeated.

Podcasts

The Adventure Zone: Balance has the Raven, who easily curb-stomps the heroes the first time they encounter her. The arc in which she appears, Petals to the Metal, arguably signals a much more serious turn for the show.

Tabletop Games

In the Dungeons & Dragons adventure Keep On The Shadowfell, the fight with Irontooth is this. It's actually 2 encounters — the fight outside the lair at the waterfall, and the fight inside the lair, where the party faces a tough force. If the party let any enemies escape from the previous fight to join this one, they will get butchered. If they didn't take necessary precautions, they will get butchered. Experienced players tend to find this fight beatable but still tough. Others, not so much.
Another Dungeons And Dragons example is Red Hand of Doom from 3e. The whole campaign has you dealing with the titular Red Hand which is a whole army. Yes, the party is actually going up against an entire army! The first encounter is meant to be above the party's experience level and is meant to drive home how tough the whole campaign is; the villains are not just Mooks but a professionally trained army backed up by spellcasters and powerful monsters. They think strategically and can be even more deadly in the hands of a clever DM.
Warhammer 40,000; up until the Horus Heresy, most of the enemies the fledgling Imperium had to fight were aliens or human civilizations that weren't too keen on bending the knee to the Emperor. Even the initial stages of the Heresy itself were still largely human affairs with little supernatural to get in the way. That all changed with Ka'Bandha and the Ruinstorm- one of Khorne's top-ranked generals, Ka'Bandha invaded the Material Realm at the head of a horde of daemons, tearing the Blood Angels a new one and nearly killing Sanguinius (one of the greatest among the Primarchs) in a straight up fight. While the Blood Angels did win the overall engagement against the Ruinstorm, this was the Imperium's first real encounter with the Warp and Chaos Daemons, and it shook the Flat-Earth Atheist humans to their core.

Web Animation

Extra Credits discusses this in "Balancing for Skill." It's presented as a necessary corollary to the Skill Gate Character. It's good to have an easy strategy to help the player get their feet under them and succeed in the first stretch of the game, but that'll become a Game-Breaker if you can go through the entire game with that strategy. So, the alternative is to provide a challenge that the Skill Gate Character can't beat, forcing the player to diversify their strategies and get good at the game.
In RWBY:
- Cinder Fall and Adam Taurus. Up until that point, Team RWBY really didn't have that much of a problem. Oh, sure Roman and Neo gave them a hard time, but they ended up having back up during those moments. Cinder's invasion of Vale would put everyone through the ringer and both Adam and Cinder would deal crushing defeats in the form of maiming Yang and murdering Pyrrha.
- In Volume 4, Tyrian gives Team RNJR an epic Curb-Stomp Battle that shows how out of their league our heroes are against the real villains. They only survive thanks to the timely intervention of Ruby's uncle Qrow, a far more experienced huntsman. Tyrian then goes on to fight Qrow to a standstill, evenly matching him in blows (apart from getting a small beatdown from Qrow when distracted), and inflicts an injury on Qrow courtesy of his scorpion stinger. He only loses when Ruby inflicts a devastating handicap of her own courtesy of lopping off his stinger with Crescent Rose, forcing him to retreat. He's part of the same group that orchestrated the assault of Beacon that Cinder, who is also part of the same group, was responsible for, and she's the runt of the group!

Webcomics

Cucumber Quest: Splashmaster was a brutish Manchild whom the heroes beat by challenging to Limbo long enough to confuse him before Almond showed her skills and took him down. The next Disaster Master, Noisemaster, was a hammy hype-man dj who exposited at length about his partner's weakness. Noisemaster is leagues more focused and threatening, having lied about his partner's weakness to goad the heroes into a trap, where he routed them and nearly blew up a city, only The Nightmare Knight's intervention stops him.

Western Animation

Princess Azula represents this for Avatar: The Last Airbender. In the first season, both Prince Zuko and Admiral Zhao were credible threats, with Zuko improving over the course of the series and Zhao having a massive amount of resources. However, even with those, neither of them together posed anywhere near the level of threat to the heroes that Zuko's younger sister posed to them by herself in Season 2, having the perfect combination of ruthlessness, brains, intimidating charisma and firebending skill that the other two lacked, in addition to her incredible determination and will like Zuko, and vast resources like Zhao. Even more so when she had her Badass Normal friends, Mai and Ty Lee with her. The heroes' inability to adjust to her threat level quickly enough resulted in her dealing them a crushing defeat at the end of the season.
The first enemies fought in Ben 10 were easy to handle for Ben when he first got the Omnitrix. Ben could handle them normally once he learned how to use his first 10 alien transformations. It's not until the fifth episode, "Hunted", that Ben meets his first true challenge in the bounty hunters send by Vilgax. Being unable to overpower SixSix, Kraab, and Tetrax with brute force like he usually does forces Ben to change tactics and start using his transformations more strategically. Even then, he only won because Tetrax was working against the other two and lectured Ben that he had to wise up if he wanted to survive.
Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness: Fenghuang was the first foe introduced in the television series to be more dangerous and threatening than the average villain. In her first appearance, she completely outclassed the Furious Five and Shifu, in addition to really giving Po a hard time. In the end, she wasn't even physically defeated but was captured by Po who had to utilize trickery and cleverness to make her drop her guard and leave her open for a surprise attack.
In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, by the time Reality Warper Discord rolls in as a villain, Twilight and her friends have saved the world with the Power of Friendship once, and spent an entire season learning about friendship. As such, Twilight assumes that their friendship is an unbeatable and unbreakable bond that can see them through any challenge. Discord essentially shows her, quite painfully, that the simple trials they've overcome are nothing compared to a real challenge, and effortlessly separates and soils the friendship that an entire season had built up. Twilight had been taking her friendships for granted because it was easy, but was never faced with just how hard friendship could be. Only by learning that friendship isn't so easy, and sometimes you need to fight for it, is she able to reforge their bonds stronger than ever.
Jasper of Steven Universe. She's the first Homeworld Gem warrior to arrive on the scene. During her debut, she easily defeats the entire Crystal Gem team and has technology that can ignore the strongest weaponry available to the Crystal Gems. She shows the Gems exactly how far Homeworld has advanced in their absence and that their thousands of years of relative peace are definitively over. She hits particularly with the younger Gems, Steven and Amethyst who were alive only after the Great Offscreen War that spawned warriors like Jasper and had faced nothing more dangerous than wild beasts before that point.
- Later on, Topaz and Aquamarine, beating most of the Crystal Gems with barely any effort, including Alexandrite.

Games with their own sets of Wake-Up Call Bosses:

Genres with their own sets of Wake-Up Call Bosses:

Other Examples:

Non-Video Game examples

Video Example(s):

Sawtooth

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Wake-Up Call Boss

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Games with their own sets of Wake-Up Call Bosses:

Genres with their own sets of Wake-Up Call Bosses:

Other Examples:

Non-Video Game examples

Video Example(s):

Sawtooth

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