One Winged Angel / Video Games

One-Winged Angel in Video Games.

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• Ace Attorney:
  • A minor, nonfantastic version of this occurs in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. A common theme in the series is for villains (especially the Big Bads) to take on different demeanors after you've exposed their true nature but before they're defeated, with one of the most dramatic being Matt Engarde in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All. However, Quercus Alba practically changes into a different person when you expose him as leader of the smuggling ring. He stands up, throws away his shawl, snaps his cane in two, and goes from cowering to smirking. And then shit gets serious.
  • Gyakuten Kenji 2 has Souta Sarushiro/Simon Keyes, who, upon being revealed as the mastermind behind the recent deaths, seems to change his makeup and demeanor for no reason other than to look awesome. And it works.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies:
    • Aristotle Means, upon being accused of murder, will change his hair into something resembling a war helmet, then begin scowling, shouting, and throwing objects at the defense.
    • It also has the phantom (written in lowercase), the Big Bad of the game, who spent the whole of the game disguised as Bobby Fulbright and whose "true form" is The Faceless, as he has spent so long disguising his true identity that even he no longer remembers it.
    • Finally, from the DLC case, there's Marlon Rimes, who, upon being accused, drinks his entire barrel of fish, and throws it aside. Cue instant bulk-up, a large fish to carry out of nowhere, a massive gold chain bearing his name, and pirate hat to top it all off, along with a much more tough and boisterous personality. And there is where you begin to understand how he got his rapping career.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice:
    • A variation in the first case's villain, Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin. His appearance doesn't change that much, but his attitude changes so radically it has to count for something; from peaceful monk with a dahmalan he enjoys playing to a heavy metal rocker complete with amps, extensive soloing and a much lower, growlier voice. Because of this, he is sometimes called "Heavy Metal Jesus".
    • In Turnabout Revolution, Ga'ran Sigatar Khura'in undergoes a drastic transformation as soon as the trial starts. Her Royal Guard surrounds her, and then suddenly she's wearing her old prosecutor's outfit, which is very revealing (though it becomes a plot point) and looks more akin to an evil sorceress outfit.
    • The DLC case has Pierce Nichody, who upon being accused, suddenly starts acting more like his old occupation as a surgeon, and also goes completely silent in testimony.
• Tanzra in Actraiser starts out as a teleporting devil head, then turns into a much tougher skeleton demon.
• In The Adventures of Lomax, Evil Ed (the Big Bad) transforms into a huge grotesque version of himself when defeated for the first time.
• The final boss of Super Adventure Island transforms into a freaky pig-elephant-gargoyle creature after becoming a normal angel as you kill its normal form.
• The final boss of Adventure Island II is a larva that forms into a giant fly once destroyed. Yes.
• In AdventureQuest Worlds, after being called pathetic for hiding in his teddy bear disguise by Lord Krom Wrath, Deady insults him for his lack of style sense and complies with his desire to see his true form before pulling off his teddy bear head and revealing his true form to be a giant tentacled skull with white eyes with light purple pupils in its eye sockets that goes by the name of Urkor Malravenus.
• In Albion, the Cuain, leader of the Kenget Kamulos, gets this as a perk with the job. He can turn into the avatar of Kamulos, the god of war. You fight the current Cuain and it's one of the very few real boss fights in the game.
• Alpha Prime has a strange case where the hero actually inflicts this upon the villain. The hero had previously heard that Glomar's heart reacts to the thoughts and personality of those who touch it, so he puts doubt into the villain's mind that it will not, in fact, give him power, but destroy him. When the villain touches the heart, it warps his body into a hideous abomination.
• Altered Beast (1988) was built around this trope. The player(s) fight their way across a scrolling platform landscape until they have collected enough power orbs to transform into their final beastman form (with special attack!). Then, when they next run into the member of the brotherhood of evil (a bald man in a coloured robe) that inhabits that stage, he says "Welcome to your doom!" and transforms into a huge (and usually surreal) boss monster.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation parodies this trope with Sir Werepire, who transforms from a vampire to a wolf, to a Vampire Werewolf Knight, to a Vampire Werewolf Knight GHOST. When his corpse rises up as a zombie, the Nerd gets fed up with the fight, ends it, and tells him to fuck off.
• ANNO: Mutationem: After C is beaten during the last battle, his body becomes weakened enough to allow Sigrid to use her ability to expel all the malice in his body, causing it to evolve into Nidhogg, the ancient dragon from Norse Mythology.
• In Aoi Shiro, the Big Bad Ba Rouryuu melds himself with the chaos-stuff for the Final Battle inside the titular Blue Castle.
• War, the third horseman in Apocalypse, grows to 50 feet tall in his second form.
• In Ar nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star, Zill starts an Assimilation Plot that transforms her into an extradimensional being called the Maternal Overseer.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura's final boss, if engaged in combat, transforms into a massive bone snake-dragon... thing. Although in this case, he started out as a cloaked figure (so the transformation didn't really make him more 'morally OK' to kill) and the dragon isn't really very good at fighting, so I guess he just thought it looked cool. He was supposed to be a lot tougher, but Troika accidentally flagged him as humanoid. Humanoids are hard-coded to deal no more than 10 points of damage in unarmed combat. An unofficial patch fixes it.
• In Arc the Lad 2, every single human enemy will transform into some kind of monster or another before fighting the heroes.
• ARK: Survival Evolved has a storyline detailing the history of the arks through notes left by past survivors. One of these survivors is Edmund Rockwell, who progressively gets more and more obsessed with a miraculous "element" found on the ark before injecting himself with it and mutating into a grotesque Godzilla-sized tentacled monster. He serves as the final boss of the Aberration DLC.
• A rare heroic example with the Title Character of Asura's Wrath. he starts out with Two arms and can gain up to a maximum of Six arms, which is more of a Super Mode for him than anything else. The real example is the form after this one. His 4 extra arms are giantic and he looks more inhuman than ever.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt Series:
  • Nova from Azure Striker Gunvolt, after being defeated by Gunvolt, proceeds to absorb three Glaives and Joule and then become a towering, multi-armed black/white robotic monstosity that's aided by two other robots.
  • The Mysterious Girl from Azure Striker Gunvolt 2, after being confronted by Gunvolt/Copen, steals their Mirror Shards and absorbs the power of the Muse from Mytyl and transforms into a fairy-like form resembling a dark version of Joule/Lola.
  • At the climax of Luminous Avenger iX, Copen reaches the heart of the Sumeragi's secret bunker and is confronted by Sumeragi's AI, Demerzel, who assumes the form of Asimov. After Copen defeats Asimov, Demerzel reveals his true form, a being of pure electricity who ascended from his powers as an Azure Striker.
• Baldur's Gate II:
  • Shadows of Amn (the original game):
    • Kangaxx the demilich starts out as a moderately tough spellcaster, then transforms into a levitating skull that is immune to magic, immune to weapons of less than + 4 enchantment, regenerates, has an AoE instant death attack, and casts some of the most powerful spells in the game, including 'Imprisonment', which not only causes instant almost irrecoverable death for the duration of the fight, but can also break the plot.
    • The player gains the ability to turn into the Slayer, an avatar of Bhaal the god of murder and a Superpowered Evil Side. In the final battle, the villain, having co-opted the power of Bhaal, does the same.
  • Throne of Bhaal:
    • Half-dragon, partly-divine Abazigal and his son Draconis both have both a humanoid and dragon form and turn into the latter after fighting in the former.
    • The final boss, again, is stealing the power of Bhaal for themselves and trying to become a god; they get as close as becoming an immensely powerful, giant version of themselves for the final battle(s).
• Naturally parodied in Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. The first form is already one-winged. So what happens when it's time for its true form? A dinosaur with Barkley's face on it. And not just any dinosaur, but the body of Diablo from Primal Rage!
• Baten Kaitos has several examples.
  • In the first game, there's Geldoblame, Fadroh, and the final boss Malpercio (who started out as a giant monster to begin with).
  • The second game has all of Malpercio's Afterlings.
  • The oddest example would be one from the first game, in that after Kalas's Face–Heel Turn, he grows a second wing, as he only had one wing to begin with and had to make do with a mechanical prosthetic for the other. So... he goes from being a One-Winged Hero to a Two-Winged Villain.
  • Fadroh transforms into a huge, vaguely jester-looking giant monster with a crotch-mounted eye. His main special attack consists of leaning back and firing Eye Beams from his pelvis.
  • Geldoblame tramsforms into a giant, deformed monstrosity. With Jiggle Physics. It will make you want to blind yourself. During the ending, he shows up once again, this time as a giant head sticking out of the ground.
• Played straight for a few bosses in Batman: Arkham Asylum, but subverted for the final battle; Joker uses Titan to turn himself into a 15-foot tall hulking monster... then spends most of the fight mocking you from the sidelines while you fight waves of his Mooks, just like always. To be fair to the guy, this wasn't his original plan: he actually wanted to force such a monstrous transformation upon Batman, then uses the drug on himself in an attempt to overcome Batman's Heroic Willpower to resist it.
• In beatmania IIDX 19, STN (representing Wrath of the Seven Deadly Sins) starts off as a mech soldier. Once you defeat him and get the Demon Feathers from him, Levaslater and Rche, you unlock Neulakyussra, who represents the apocalypse. In its video, you see STN's armor crumble to reveal a white-haired man who then becomes a four-armed, three-headed being with the crests of the seven sins on each arm and head.
• The eponymous Bendy of Bendy and the Ink Machine starts off as a deformed Toon. A failed attempt to create Joey Drew Studio's star creation in fact, a demon named Bendy. His regular form is skeletal and seven feet tall. It's got horns, a permanent Slasher Smile, and a twisted foot. It's got mismatched hands and spines sticking out of its back. In that form, he's already the strongest, fastest, most powerful thing in the studio and is Nigh-Invulnerable. Due to him being The Dreaded, and Henry (even when he has a gun) having no weapons that can harm him, the Player Character has to run and hide from this form. It is The Unfought. However, in Chapter 5, Henry decides he's going after Bendy. He goes into Bendy's lair and retrieves "The End" reel that can kill him. Bendy sees him doing this and transforms into a more threatening form. He shows off his transformation, his hands and arms grow bigger, his horns grow larger, and he finally opens his mouth to reveal fangs.
• Dark Raven from Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg turns into a giant shadowy crow, with white eyes, and (eventually) covered in sparks after he hatches the titular Giant Egg.
• In BioShock, Big Bad Fontaine has himself pumped so full of ADAM he turns into an eight-foot tall, inhumanly sculpted humanoid with powers of ice, fire, and electricity.
• BlazBlue:
  • Ragna the Bloodedge transforms into... some winged creature covered in shadow as part of his Astral Heat. Then reverts to his normal form for the winpose.
  • Yuuki Terumi serves as one for Hazama, since the latter is a vessel for the former and tends to manifest whenever they need to kick someone's ass hard.
  • Terumi gets another one in the fourth game when he recovers the armor that Hakumen currently wears, which is actually his original body to begin with and therefore, his true form. It also reveals his identity as Susanoo, one of the three units that maintain the series` world.
• All of the characters in the Bloody Roar series are capable of switching between normal human form and superpowered creature forms AND a glowing 'hyper' version of the beast form, but in Bloody Roar: Primal Fury, the hyper-beast form of the true final boss, Uranus, is identical to her human form. Her beast form is a chimera, which is interpreted as blue and scaly with red lines, covered in spikes, and kind of bull-like, so yeah, it's a monster.
  • One character in Primal Fury's normal beast form...is a little, unimposing penguin. His hyper form is a seven foot tall phoenix-man perfectly capable of annihilating your world ten times over.
  • Before she was Promoted to Playable in the second game, Uriko used a more classic example of the trope as the Final Boss of the first. She turned from her normal child form into her Prototype Uranus form at the start of the fight, then into a big honking monster in the middle of the second round.
• Bloodborne: The Beast Scourge's end stage involves exploding into a werewolf (or something even worse), and bosses like Father Gascoigne and Vicar Amelia undergo this transformation as part of their boss fights, and many more bosses have transformed before you meet them.
• Parodied in BloodRayne. The final boss of Act 2 is General Mauler, a 10-foot tall Nazi cyborg with incredible durability. When you first empty his life bar, he collapses to the ground, then gets back up again, raises his arms high, triumphantly declares "You can't beat me that easily!'', then... promptly falls over dead.
• In Blue Dragon, Big Bad Nene merges with a giant eternal engine to supply himself with infinite magic power for the climactic showdown. And the REAL final boss, Destroy. When Deathroy (the little guy by Nene's side for the whole game) swallows Nene's soul, he reveals his true form as the monster that previously ended the world.
• In Body Harvest, the war with the aliens seems to be effectively over as Adam derails their last desperate plan and kills their leader, the colony Hive Mind. The Man In The Black Suit who's been menacing you throughout the entire course of the game then shows up and glibly informs you that upon the Hivemind's death he inherited all its powers, promptly transforming into the alien behemoth Tomegatherion, the True Final Boss.
• In Borderlands 2, the final skill of Krieg's Mania skill tree is "Release the Beast", which causes him to transform into a Badass Psycho when activating his skill at low health, giving him a massive boost to damage resistance and melee damage. This causes his torso and right arm to grow to massive size while causing his left arm to shrivel up into a stump.
• In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!'s DLC Claptastic Voyage, you face off against 5H4D0W-TP in a penultimate final boss fight in which he uses giant versions of himself and duplicates. He still has access to the H-Source, and decides to use it to fight you. As a result, he fights you in a gigantic robotic armor suit called Eclipse, then attacks you in a duplicate of the Helios Space Station called EOS.
• In the Wii version of A Boy and His Blob, the Emperor of Bloblonia begins as a single blobby mass on a giant throne who goes down in a single hit. He then flees back to Where It All Began, and his form as the True Final Boss is an immense, be-tentacled writhing black beast that can only be defeated with the power of Mecha-Blob.
• Virtually every human or humanoid boss in Breath of Fire III did this. Mikba, Balio and Sunder, the Professor, Teepo, Rei - even the main character, Ryu. Just to hit the nail in further, when Balio and Sunder combined to form Stallion and when Mikba assumed his true form, they each said, "No one has seen us/me in this form and lived!" But considering this game's great love of random bosses, it's not surprising that every boss trope in the book was visited a few times. The rest of the the BoF games are just as full of transforming bosses.
• In the climax of Bug Fables, the Wasp King eats a leaf from the wilted Everlasting Sapling and transforms into the Everlasting King, a Planimal version of himself with levitation and healing powers.
• Burgmund Trilogy: Burgmund turns himself into the Pigman Mothership.
• Capcom's arcade game installment of the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs franchise: stage boss Morgan (a hunchback with a sub-machine gun) transforms into Morgue (a pachycephalosaurus knock-off) when defeated. Final boss Dr. Fessenden does this twice: first into a Morgue-alike, then into a two headed tyrannosaurus shivat with Fessenden growing out of its belly.
• Dracula fills this role to the letter in almost every Castlevania game. In this series, he's more of an ultimate evil rather than just some vampire. This started right from the get go in the very first game where he turned into a jumping bat demon, which is the most common transformation.
  • Drac's most grotesque One Winged Angel mutations occur in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: a giant bat-winged monster with three alien heads and two gigantic claws, which is actually his throne; Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: which looks like Bongo-Bongo from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time; and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, where (sort of) Drac turns into a giant brain in a half-skull with a clawed tentacle. The last one is actually an amalgamation of all six of the Dracula relics you're required to find to get this far.
  • Castlevania 64 has him turn into some kind of 50-foot dragon/centipede hybrid. The game as a whole wasn't the greatest, but you will say Oh, Crap! the first time you see Drac's final form. And that's before he starts throwing miniature H-bombs at you...
  • In Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Dracula fights you with Death at first, then after beating on one of them for a while, he uses Soul Steal on Death himself, absorbing him and turning into a giant demon.
  • In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, this is notably avoided for the first time in decades, as the entirety of the final battle against Dracula is fought against the dashingly-handsome vampire we've known for so long. This may have been from the fact that the player is holding half of Dracula's power in the form of Dominus, which must be used to end the battle, but not before beating on Dracula for a good long time. Super Castlevania IV did something like this as well, but as his health neared its end, Dracula's abode starts crackling with electricity again and pulses a red glow, and Dracula's head gets replaced with a demonic SKULL. This is when he starts breaking out the scary flashing lightning.
  • Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and by extension the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night prologue, had Dracula become a huge demon that bounces slowly and isn't that hard. It's reused also in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow's Julius mode, where Soma gives in to his powers. While the first form is classic Dracula but using soul abilities you yourself as Soma can get, the second form is the Castlevania: Rondo of Blood one, except much more dangerous as while he leaps, he uses various other soul abilities. Rondo's remake in Dracula X Chronicles has Dracula fight you with wings in his normal form AFTER the One-Winged Angel form.
  • Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and Castlevania The Adventure Rebirth have three forms: one standard Drac, then two different transformations. You don't get to fight the last one in Rebirth if you're playing on Easy, though. Castlevania: Bloodlines also has a three phase final boss, but the middle phase is actually Drolta Tzuentes and not a form of Dracula.
  • And for the times when Dracula wasn't the final boss? Graham pulled a mutilated abomination throne on us akin to Symphony's Dracula; Chaos showed that it was a black orb with pulsing black prominence flares inside of a really chaotic room; Menace unrolled into a golem made of souls.
  • Death does it a few times. He becomes a giant skull in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, he turns into a scythe-like skeletal creature. In Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, he turns into a turtle creature. In Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, he turns into a skeletal worm with a skull and claws that floats around the screen. He's usually easier when he transforms than in his normal Grim Reaper state.
  • Various other bosses sometimes have multiple forms. Examples include Camilla and Olrox. Whether the first form is fought or not is a case by case basis.
  • In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and its sequel, all of the Lords of Shadow have a mostly human form and a form that reflects their true monstrous selves:
    • Cornell transforms into a huge muscular man-wolf with a human(ish) face.
    • Carmilla transforms into a hideous bat monster.
    • Zobek, the Lord of the Necromancers, transforms into a wizened lich. In the sequel, he changes his look into a more intimidating Grim Reaper-like figure with a skull for a head.
    • Gabriel Belmont as Dracula calls himself Dracul "The Dragon" for a reason. With the aid of his dragon amulet, he can tap into his full powers to transform into a mighty dragon.
• Cave Story does this multiple times.
  • You fight Balrog on four separate occasions; on the third, he's transformed against his will into a giant frog.
  • In the fight against the Doctor, he starts off looking like himself. Upon defeat, he loses control of the Red Crystal and transforms into a muscular berserker. After this, he dissolves into a red mist, which transforms Misery (whom you fought right before the Doctor) into a monster and forces her to fight as his flunky, and he possesses the Core (which you also fought earlier in the game). So the final round of the Doctor's fight is against One-Winged Angel versions of three prior bosses. And Sue.
  • The True Final Boss, Ballos, starts off as a humanoid, then transforms into a giant, freakishly-smiling head. When you beat that, the head grows eight more eyes. When you beat that, his shell partially crumbles and you can see moaning faces within.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale: After the Brush's Pizza, Chicory, and Blackberry forms are bested, it quickly cycles through its other past wielders before fighting as its true form: a winged brush.
• Choo-Choo Charles: In the final act, Charles becomes Hell Charles after you summon him and give him a power boost, which increases his size, power, and aggressiveness. He also gains the ability to teleport and won't retreat, meaning you have to kill him before he kills you.
• City of Heroes:
  • The game has Romulus, who, after you beat him with only moderate difficulty in the third mission of his arc, merges with a Nictus in the fourth. His new self was one of the most challenging fights in the game at the time, and even now can wipe a unprepared team.
  • Incarnate Content doesn't use this trope as often as you would think, but it does have several notable examples. The first is during the Minds of Mayhem Trial, where you fight Mother Mayhem in three different bodies before facing her true form, a humanoid psychic projection formed from dying neurons that seems to be falling apart. Diabolique does this as well, though not during her trial. When you first face her in Dark Astoria, she looks almost identical to her Alternate Universe counterpart, Numina. After she kidnaps Praetor Duncan she reveals her "empowered" form as a towering, Stripperific Death Goddess.
  • Finally, Big Bad Tyrant skips the formalities and nukes his own city before absorbing the souls of its dead to become a 30-foot-tall (but otherwise identical) version of himself.
• When the Hrumians land on Planet Hivez in Combat Instinct 3, they grow legs and frills as the gravity is too high for them to float. Their last survivor then fuses with all their corpses and ships' wreckage to become a huge killing machine.
• In Conduit 2, John Adams infiltrates Atlantis, bringing several of his Trust soldiers in to fight you while he tries to snipe you from far away. After you damage him enough, you knock him back through a portal and end up in Agartha, the center of the Earth. There, Adams is no longer a chubby old man, but a giant, armored, and horned alien. He laughs and comments on how it had been a while since he had been in his "true" form.
• Dr. N. Brio in the first Crash Bandicoot (1996) game, who drinks his own Psycho Serum to mutate into the penultimate boss.
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Lampshaded in the final trial, when Monokuma decides to skip to his "final form" and undergoes a power-up sequence that reveals him to be an AI based on Junko Enoshima, which manifests as a giant version of Junko.
• Darksiders has a heroic example and a villainous inversion.
  • Main protagonist War begins the game as a gigantic flaming monstrosity, having been sent to play his part in The End of the World as We Know It. Getting Brought Down to Normal (or as close as a Horseman can get) is what tells him that something is not right. Later in the game, he can return to his monster form at will once he gains enough Chaos and it serves as his Super Mode. In a Perspective Flip of this trope's usual applications, some enemies have the power to shut off this form.
  • Inverted with the final boss, Abaddon the Destroyer. He starts out as a huge dragon, but after beating him enough, he reverts back to his original Angel form, although as a Fallen Angel.
• Dark Cloud: The enormous, fat, oafish-looking Dark Genie, when destroyed, turns out to have been a mouse that got sealed in the urn with the Genie, and had absorbed some of its power. Then the real Dark Genie manifests itself as a tower of muscle with no lower body, arms that can punch up out of the floor, and killer magic beams. Then, when you kill it in this form, it turns into its final form — a massive creature resembling Gospel from the Mega Man franchise.
• Subverted with great gusto in Dark Chronicle: the true form of the terrible Dark Emperor Griffon who has been erasing people and places out of existence is a cute anthropomorphic bunny (or "Moon Person" in the Dark Cloud world) no taller than Max. However, when he absorbs the power of the Sun, Moon, and Earth Atlamillia, he becomes a towering, muscular behemoth with enormous sapphire wings. During the battle with him, he can even rip off these wings to use as swords; as his power destabilizes, he grows even more muscular and his veins shine with the magic running through them. Defeat reverts him to his small, fluffy, and adorable lapin form.
• In Dark Realm Queen Of Flames after you shoot Olca with a magic arrow she transforms into a giant flying vaguely scorpion-ish being that can summon disgusting-looking bugs.
• Possibly spoofed in the game The Dark Spire where you encounter a "One Winged Angel" in a circus exhibit.
• Dawn of War has a few of these:
  • Chaos Champions and Heroes can function as the host of the Blood Thirster, a Greater Daemon of Khorne, the Necron Lord can transform into the Nightbringer or the Deceiver and an Eldar is sacrificed to bring about the Avatar of Khaine, though the latter isn't a game mechanic and the Avatar is produced like any other unit. It is shown in a cutscene, though; they summon Khaine from a Dark Reaper aspect warrior, to fight against the Blood Ravens in the last mission against the Eldar.
  • The chaos sorcerer Sindri Myr who does this during the intro for the final mission, screaming "bear witness to my ascension" while tapping into the power of the Maledictum in order to become a daemon prince. It doesn't help, though; the Blood Ravens still kill him.
  • A rare case where the user is on your side occurs near the end of Dawn of War II: Retribution, where during the Eldar campaign, a dying Howling Banshee offers herself to the heroes to awaken an Avatar.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: After the confrontation, the Final Boss Elen in desperation transforms into a dark-skinned angel Hanin.
• In Demon's Crest, if the player gets close enough to 100% Completion to trigger it, Phalanx will use the Crest of Heaven to become a large hulking snake demon.
• Happens twice in Destroy All Humans! 2:
  • In the first instance, Agent Oranchov shoots some drums of Alien spores to mutate himself.
  • in the second instance, at the end of the game, Milenkov reveals his true form, a heavily-armored Blisk.
• Deus Ex has Big Bad Bob Page with drastically enhanced nano-augmentations hooked up to a large ultimate augmented machine-thingy. Though it just makes him immobile, and one walkthrough even points out that he's every bit as threatening as you'd expect a naked man in a snow globe to be.
• The "Devil Trigger" power of various Devil May Cry playable characters involves them turning into an uglier demonic form. This overlaps with Super Mode and Limit Break. (More straightforwardly, bonus points to Credo for turning into a one-winged "angel" in the fourth game.) Arkham of the third game goes from an already unpleasant humanoid demon form to an even worse blob form. His in-game profile states that his blob form is a reflection of his inner evil.
• In Diablo:
  • The Dark Wanderer character (Diablo in the Diablo 1 Warrior's body) slowly transforms into Diablo starting from the beginning, up until just before Act 3 is completed. Similarly, Baal, having taken over Tal Rasha's body in a similar way, slowly transforms him beginning with his release prior to the completion of Act 2, until the final form seen in the opening movie (and final battle) of the Lord of Destruction expansion pack. King Leoric, the Skeleton King, also underwent a similar transformation, though he was able to resist full possession by Diablo. The Warrior's use of the soulstone may have made him more vulnerable to being possessed. Prince Albrecht succumbed immediately, though, similar to how Griswold instantly became a zombie.
  • King Leoric was able to resist because at the time Diablo had just reawakened in the Soulstone. Prince Albrecht could not resist because, as an infant, he had little (if any) willpower to resist with. The Warrior fell relatively easily because most of the deeds Diablo caused in Tristan were perpetrated to strengthen himself as well as perpetuate an Evil Plan to attract a hero powerful enough to kill him in Prince Albrecht's altered form and who would think that they were able to imprison Diablo in their mind, body, and soul. By the time this plan came to fruition, Diablo had become powerful enough to gradually take over the Warrior's body, gaining a much more powerful host.
• Happens in Diablo III during the final fight in Act II, when Belial transforms into a larger version of himself when his health reached 10%.
• Digital Devil Saga's Hari-Hara has a reasonable first/first and a half form (it switches between them)... and then turns into a huge elemental core-creating thing. Heat also does this in the second game, evolving from Agni into Vritra.
• The Disc-One Final Boss in Adventures of Rad Gravity, Agathos, is a human mutated into a giant living brain.
• Disgaea:
  • Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories has the final boss, having fake Zenon transform into a bizarre creature that's covered in masks.
  • Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice plays it straight and lampshades it, when Aurum takes on an angelic-looking form, which is commented on as being cliche and boring.
  • Valvatorez of Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten provides a heroic example, with his final attack transforming him into a humanoid dragon. Emizel, Fenrich and Desco likewise transform in their final attacks (Ironically enough, the latter is a Final Boss-in-training). Also lampshaded in the story, whereupon defeating President Hugo, Valvatorez warns the party that they're not done yet, as Hugo has "three levels of transformations, with additional power multipliers every time!" And then when everybody's gotten themselves warmed up to fight those three other forms, Hugo just throws in the towel and admits that his power has dwindled enough that he can no longer transform. Valvatorez does not find this anticlimax amusing.
  • Disgaea D2 has Xenolith become overwhelmed by his power, gaining wings, a huge Laser Blade, and Black Eyes of Crazy.
• In the Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, and PC versions of Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers, the final boss fight has the Big Bad Merlock become a winged monster by using his magic talisman to transform as he did in the DuckTales movie, and also turns into a different winged monster whenever he gets hit, changing back to his normal form after he is beaten. This is averted in the other versions of the game: In the Game Boy Advance version, he only shapeshifts briefly as one of his attacks, while all other versions have him fighting Donald while still in his normal form.
• The DonPachi series has the Perfect Run Final Boss Hibachi. The battle with it begins with the Supreme Killing Weapon inside of its gigantic mecha-container (whether it's DDP's Hachi, DOJ's Kouryuu, or DFK's Golden Disaster). When that's destroyed, it reveals itself as the much smaller robotic bee with a flaming aura. And then it proceeds to obliterate you 6 ways from Monday with a Category 5 storm of bullets.
• At the end of Doom³, Betruger transforms into a dragon-like demon called the Maledict, which is the Final Boss of the Resurrection of Evil expansion pack.
• .hack//G.U.: Azure Kite reveals a form called the "Azure Flame God" after the player defeats him in the first volume. The true Tri-Edge, fought at the end of volume 2, also has a transformation of this kind. Finally, in volume 3, Sakaki also brings one out. Interestingly, most of the heroes in the games (including the protagonist) have One-Winged Angel forms alternately called "Avatars" or "Epitaphs", which they use to combat AIDA, as well as the various aforementioned transformations. These Epitaphs are... not the safest of powers to use.
• In homage to the aforementioned Super Shredder, Double Dragon Neon's Big Bad, Skullmageddon, transforms into Giga Skullmageddon for the true final battle.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, the demonically possessed mage Uldred (who is responsible for driving the Circle Tower into disarray) reveals his true form as a Pride Abomination.
  • In Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, the Baroness does the exact same thing.
  • Should you choose to fight her, Flemeth turns into a High Dragon for her boss battle. The second game implies that this might be her true form... at least, no one has a clear idea what in Thedas she actually is.
    Flemeth: Perhaps I am a Dragon... if so, count yourselves lucky. The smell of burning Darkspawn does nothing for the appetite.
  • In the finale of Dragon Age II, no matter if you side with him or not, First Enchanter Orsino uses Blood Magic to transform himself into a Harvester, similar to the one from the Golem of Amgarrak DLC of Origins. And Knight-Commander Meredith's Artifact of Doom turns her into a floating glowing red-eyed mutant thing. In the end, though, she gets turned into a statue.
  • The second game's Legacy DLC features an optional boss called Malvernis. He starts out as a spectral mage-like opponent, then turns into a ghostly dragon. Oddly, he turns into a flesh-and-blood dragon after you kill him.
• Giygas, the Universal Cosmic Destroyer, from EarthBound (1994). Originally, he was a cat-like alien reminiscent of Mewtwo from Pokémon. He even had great psychic powers. However, following his traumatic defeat in EarthBound Beginnings, his psychic power, as well as his hatred, becomes so vast that his body and mind are completely obliterated, reducing him to a gigantic spectral maelstrom that is near incomprehensible by human standards. He resembles a monstrous reddish vortex that sports his face, twisted and screaming as if in constant agony, in the center. When Ness and his friends begin to damage him through prayer and human emotion, his defenses become unstable, causing him to expand, taking up the whole screen as he turns into a monstrous mist with multiple screaming faces all throughout.
• Elden Ring:
  • Godrick has tried to do this via Grafting, the art of cutting off others' limbs to add to your own body. It's a tossup as to how much this actually helped him; he's stronger, sure, but his misshapen grafted body is awkward and unwieldy, and he's still nowhere near the other demigods in strength.
  • Way later in the game, the Superboss Malenia shows him how it's done; after a brutally difficult fight where she's holding back the influence of the Scarlet Rot and still kicking your ass, she is reborn by embracing the Scarlet Rot to kick your ass even harder. Her 'Goddess of Rot'' form has her going naked (the effects of the Rot make it not as sexy as it sounds) with wings made up of butterflies and her long hair. As the Goddess of Rot, Malenia is more aggressive, gains extra attacks (including a massive AOE that will shred you if you don't run away), and some of her moves now apply Scarlet Rot.
  • A number of bosses who have a second phase display One-Winged Angel tendencies. Apart from Malenia mentioned above:
    • Mohg, another optional boss, actually grows a full pair of black wings as he begins zooming around the area where the fight takes place, alternating between spamming heavy-hitting attacks from his trident and erupting in blood;
    • Rykard plays with this trope; while his first phase, the God-Devouring Serpent, is technically a distinct entity, he does directly morph from it, as once it's defeated, he reveals an entire second face in the back of the creature's head, has a bunch of arms emerge from its body, and pulls out a massive sword from its mouth;
    • Godfrey, while not transforming physically, proceeds to graphically tear off the head of the Beast Regent Serosh (that essentially acts as a Power Limiter) from his body, as well as get rid of his armor. The resulting shirtless, brutish and slightly cheesy barbarian Hoarah Loux who, covered in blood, screams in rage before aggressively and relentlessly pursuing you all around the arena, seeking to pummel you into a pulp with his bare hands, contrasts heavily with the much more dignified Godfrey. He also marks a sudden and intense shift not only in the rhythm of the fight, but also in how intimidating he is.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • This is a common trait of liches in the series and in background lore. While many can maintain a facade of humanity using powerful illusion magic, they will switch to their powerful undead forms if they are slain, and must be defeated again. Famously, this was done by Mannimarco, a lich and the "King of Worms" in Oblivion.
  • In Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion, this was pulled by the Skaal chieftain, Tharsten Heart-Fang, during Hircine's hunt. When encountered during the hunt, Heart-Fang reveals himself to be a werewolf, transforms, and then attacks the Nerevarine.
  • In Skyrim's Dawnguard DLC, if the Dragonborn sides with the titular Dawnguard against the Volkihar vampires, the final battle against Lord Harkon sees him immediately transform into his Vampire Lord form.
• Espgaluda 2's 4th stage boss starts small, then becomes gradually bigger (by assimilating mechanical accessories) as he's nearing his defeat (as seen here). Normally, in shmup games, many non-final bosses feature minor weapons or parts that are (optionally or not) destroyed or discarded, as the boss start using increasingly more difficult attacks, and this example comes as an unexpected, uncommon inversion.
• Celestia Lindwurm, final boss of the shmup eXceed 3rd: Jade Penetrate, transformed from a girl with wings into... a girl with larger bizarre-looking wings. Then Black Package came along, and she instead becomes a something like fifty-winged angel.
• Fairune 1: Mega Dark grows into the monstrous Giga Dark before crossing the Bishonen Line and turning into the Terra Dark. Exaggerated in 2: Morphoglia has a total of five forms, one of which is an upgraded, revived Giga Dark!
• The Final Boss's first form in Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair initially presents as a clone of the original Wonderboy riding a dragon, but for his true form, he grotesquely morphs into a green alien demon knight. Horrifying, considering this is a rather "kiddish" game, although Nintendo Hard. However, this form is relatively easy compared to his first form and a few other bosses, thus it may be considered a Clipped-Wing Angel.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In the Hard and Maniac modes of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, upoon beating the Final Boss Ashnard, he will go berserk from using Lehran's Medallion to boost his power, forcing you to beat him a second time to finish the game. He gains glowing red eyes, and his skin becomes visibly decayed, but otherwise he averts the trope, as he keeps his human body.
  • The Final Bosses of Edelgard's, Dimitri's, and Rhea's route in Fire Emblem: Three Houses undergo a transformation before battle.
    • In Edelgard and Rhea's route, the final boss transforms into a giant dragon, though the reason why Rhea transforms depends on which of the two routes you chose.
    • In Dimitri's route, Edelgard tranforms into a huge, vaguely humanoid... thing with long boney arms and freaky eyes.
    • Claude's route's final boss, Nemesis, averts this, remaining as human-shaped and human-sized to the end, though pumped up with dark magic and wielding an evil version of the main character's relic weapon. Ironically, he's arguably harder than the other two final bosses.
    • In the DLC route, Aelfric transforms in the final chapter using the Chalice of Beginnings to merge with the corpse of his beloved, who is also the protagonist's mother, turning into the grotesque Umbral Beast as the Final Boss of the DLC.
• The first five games of the obscure platformer series Virus Invasion put you against various forms of the Virus King as the final boss.
  • 1. At first, he's just a Scaled Up version of the normal yellow viruses.
  • 2. In the second game, he has a green cyborg form.
  • 3. When that's destroyed, he transforms into a metal form.
  • 4. The fourth game shows the metal form heavily damaged with wires coming out.
  • 5. As a sort of Bishōnen Line effect, the fifth game gives it a giant purple form.
• Forsaken Chronicle:
  • Gage Novus, also SNK Boss from the first game.
  • Shin Mitchell and Shin Scourge from the Ultra sub-series count as well.
  • Ultimate Replica from 4 who grows wings...and horns...and a tail.
• All three of the major bosses in God Hand fall into this, since they generally appear humanoid but are actually extremely powerful demons. Fat, cigar-smoking, and inexplicably Mexican Elvis turns into a 20-ft-tall gray giant with huge mouths for hands, another huge mouth and eyes on his stomach, and a very small featureless head. Succubus Shannon is actually her own upper body with the lower body of a demonic cat thing and a giant eye on her face. Bezel, who in human form looks like a guy in a suit with gray hair and skin and long pointed ears, but in demon form is first a worm with a fly-like upper body and blade-limbs, then a huge fly with blade limbs. Both forms have Bezel's face on their back.
• In Golden Sun, after defeating Saturos and Menardi, they transform into the two-headed Fusion Dragon. The sequel has Agatio and Karst being turned into a pair of dragons, and the final boss is also a dragon created by forcibly fusing normal people, just not evil dudes going One-Winged Angel. And now Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has the new villainous pair being absorbed into a dark beast thing while trying to power up the morphed Volechek.
• The boss of "Green Inferno", the 6th stage of Gradius Gaiden, takes on three different forms before going down.
• For his battle against That Man in Guilty Gear II: Overture, Sol Badguy uses the Dragon Install, but this time he finally goes all-out and unleashes his Gear form, a monstrous Draconic Humanoid with flaming wings, five eyes in the shape of his Gear Seal, a crustacean-like carapace and his word become a blade entirely composed of fire. As of Xrd, Sol enters a similar but much more humanoid form whenever he activates the Dragon Install, a first for the series. It's stated that this is due to his already impressive powers growing exponentially and that even his limiter can't fully restrain his power anymore...
• Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock may be considered a heroic example. The player characters turn into fearsome warriors once you complete their setlists: we've got the Headless Horseman, a wereboar, a mummy, a snake woman, an elf, a demon, a hobgoblin, and a cyborg.
• In the Gungrave series, many bosses become like this due to the series' Psycho Serum / phlebotinum / green rock, the Seed drug. All of the "Big Four" bosses Grave fights usually morph to a mutated "overkill form" in the second round or as soon as he encounters them. Oddly enough, the final boss of the second game doesn't transform, he just gets some new attacks during the second phase of the fight.
• All the stage bosses (sans the very first one) in Hagane transform into part-robot, part-organical creatures before taking on Hagane.
• Hard Corps: Uprising has Tiberius Chaos and Tiberius Invictus.
• Haunting Ground has Lorenzo, who starts out at first as a creepy old man with paralyzed legs who can only crawl pathetically towards you. He then proceeds to turn into a much younger version of himself with seemingly superpowered punches. You defeat this version by pushing him into a pit of fire. He emerges from this in his final form: a flaming skeleton who can kill you in one hit.
• Hidden Dragon: Legend have it's True Final Boss, Zhou Zong, thanks to consuming the elixir from the Dragon Cauldron. You fight him to the end as a human, and if you win, he lets out a This Cannot Be!... before transforming into a skinless, muscular, ogre-like monstrosity several times larger than you. Cue Round 2.
• Arfoire in Hyperdimension Neptunia. Her final form? A dragon. It seems rather typical, but the game was also made to make fun of all video games.
• inFAMOUS 2:
  • Bertrand. As a powerful Conduit, he possesses the ability to transform into a gigantic half-insectoid half-reptilian beast called the Behemoth. Trouble is, it's his only ability besides transforming other Conduits into monsters, and it usually leaves him out of control until he returns to human form. As such, he's reluctant to transform into the Behemoth even in an emergency.
  • Inverted in the case of the Beast: he spends most of the game as a rampaging lava-skinned monster, laying waste to cities and showing no desire to communicate... up until the climax, when he transforms into a relatively ordinary-looking human to explain a few things to Cole.
• Augustine in inFAMOUS: Second Son uses her mastery of her Cement Conduit powers in the final battle to create what can only be described as a beast-like, shapeshifting cement mecha around herself.
• Parodied in the patchwork freeware game I Wanna Be the Guy, where after delivering the line "look upon my true form and despair!", Dracula's true form is revealed to actually be a Waddle Doo that goes down in one hit. Played straight in the final battle against The Guy. After killing his (small, humanoid) form, you think you've won, only for him to crash through the wall in the form of a giant, laser-spewing, spike-laden, ill-tempered head.
• Jak II: Renegade has a twist at the end where friend to the Underground, Kor, transforms into the Metal Head Leader, a house-sized monster that can fly and shoot lasers out of its mouth.
• Devan Shell transforms from a wimpy and nerdy turtle to a big winged turtle-demon at the end of Jazz Jackrabbit 2, appropos of nothing.
• The final showdown of Jonathan Kane: The Protector sees the villain, Hakan Akhbar, finally stealing the sacred Aztec Mask, despite your efforts. He then puts it on and turns into a monstrous deity with lightning powers and flight abilities, that you must defeat in a lengthy Final Boss fight.
• Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death: Exaggerated with the Final Boss Judge Death, who's already an undead monster before he bodyjacks a mutated behemoth that's even less recognizably human.
• Kingdom of Loathing:
  • Parodied with particular glee, where the Naughty Sorceress reveals her supposedly true form. After you beat her in her hideous true form, she then assumes her actual true form: a sausage. Then again, she is an evil sausage brimming with dark magic. Your character then loudly proclaims, "How many times do I have to kill you? This battle has taken over a half an hour and there's no save point!" (Said sausage is a Clipped-Wing Angel, as you just have to have the Wand of Nagamar in your inventory to beat it.
  • Later in the history of the game, Ed the Undying was introduced, who had seven forms, each weaker than the last. Even people who hate the quest in which he's involved love his dialog. In Ed's case, though, it's not so much transforming as it is coming back with progressively more body parts hacked off.
  • Parodied with the Fallen Archfiends, a minor enemy in the Gate to Hey Deze. One of their "failed" attacks... well, a summary just wouldn't do it justice:
    He glares at you and his arches glow a bright gold. "Now you will see my true... my true... ugh..." the fiend clutches his right arm, shouts "I'm comin', Elizabeth!" and falls down.
  • Played straight with the final, demon form of your Nemesis. As opposed to other examples of this trope, however, if you beat the first phase but lose to the demon phase, you can buff and heal yourself, change your equipment, even adventure elsewhere, and when you attempt the fight a second time, you don't have to fight the first form again.
• In Kingdom Rush, the Final Boss will turn into a huge firebreathing demon after he is "slain".
• Kirby has faced a fair few of these:
  • Scarfy's usually look like a normal enemy, but if you try to inhale one, or hold a key in the presence of a red one it turns into a terrifying one-eyed monster that will blow itself up trying to kill you.
  • It's easy to forget that in Kirby's Adventure Nightmare has one, as after that his main form (the one that actually like a living being), is his one winged angel form. Before that he was just a starry ball.
  • In Kirby Super Star, there's Marx, who sprouts a pair of translucent bat-like wings and now smiles madly, showing he was Evil All Along. Kirby Super Star Ultra manages to one-up on Marx in "The TRUE Arena" — if you get to the final battle, you will see a movie where Marx brings back his soul by absorbing Nova's power. You will then fight Marx Soul, which is a more powerful and freakier incarnation of Marx that has an absolutely terrifying death scream.
  • Dark Matter will give the people it possesses a minor example of one, such as giving King Dedede a hidden Belly Mouth and the ability to float, or Whispy Woods a creepy face, but apart from that, it's victims are indistinguishable from how they normally look and act.
  • In Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, after beating the first four phases of Dark Mind's fight, he transforms into a giant flaming eyeball.
  • The final boss of Kirby's Return to Dream Land also pulls this twice. The first time is when Magolor steals the Master Crown, he doubles in size, his body becomes blue, red and and fiery, he gains the ability to open portals to Another Dimension, create dimensions, and easily defeat Landia. After you defeat him, he switches into a much more grotesque form with a white Slasher Smile, giant ears, and the crown wrapping itself around his body. This all because he's been corrupted by the Master Crown's hatred and darkness fueling his soul. He gets even more disturbing as Magolor Soul. The crown itself does this in Deluxe's Magolor Epilogue, where it merges with the restored Gem Apple Seed and turns itself into a Botanical Abomination.
  • The final boss of Kirby: Triple Deluxe does this, as well, having Queen Sectonia do a Fusion Dance with the Dreamstalk to become a gigantic insect/flower hybrid. After you defeat Sectonia in ''The TRUE Arena'' she does this again, by eating 3 miracle fruit, and detaching her head to continue to fight Kirby.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot: After Kirby defeats Star Dream for the first time, it merges with the Access Ark and pulls it out from Popstar's atmosphere to continue the battle against the Halberd Mode. Then, after that phase finishes, its true face is revealed: a giant cat-like face - a face that is exactly identical to Galactic Nova from Super Star.
  • Kirby Star Allies:
    • Hyness' battle starts out very easy, as he only attacks by shooting dark orbs at Kirby and using the elemental abilities of the Three Mage Sisters. But when you knock his hood off, he loses any semblance of sanity left in him and reveals his true face, with a large Squidward-esque Gag Nose, Magolor-like ears, and bulging eyes. He then stops fighting with magic and just starts smacking the living hell out of Kirby and his allies with the lifeless corpses of his mages.
    • Void Termina changes forms with every phase: first, he starts out as a giant humanoid being who only attacks by punching the ground, creating Shockwave Stomps, and slashing the ground with giant blades. Then, when kirby and his friends enter his body, he reveals his "First Core", which attacks with symbols and dropping blood from the ceiling. Then, when they leave his body, his arms turn into massive wings and his legs turn into one long tail, and he begins attacking by swooping down at the Star Allies Sparkler, using the Three Mage Sisters' elemental weapons, and creating copies of the Master Crown to fire lasers. Then, when they enter his body again, he reveals his true form: a pink orb with three dots forming a face. A face identical to Kirby. He gets even stronger as Void Soul and eventually Void.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land:
    • When fighting the Pre-Final Boss, Forgo Dedede gives up his hammers in his second phase, and starts charging at Kirby like a boar, his mind finally snapped. This is because of the boar mask that he's wearing, driving him insane and causing him to act like a wild beast. Once the mask is destroyed, Dedede is brought back to normal and calms down.
    • The final boss has Fecto Forgo combine itself with Elfilin (its other half) to become its original complete form, Fecto Elfilis, a slender flying creature with gigantic ears and a spear as a weapon.
    • The True Final Boss, as the figurine says, is "a unique convergence of elements, from native-beast souls to ethereal butterfly, gave a stubborn soul one last chance at revenge." It's the last opponent of the game's hardest Boss Rush, and it has everything that made the original fight difficult cranked up to maximum difficulty.
  • The final boss of Kirby: Canvas Curse has Drawcia transforming into her true form, a giant blob of paint, dubbed "Drawcia Soul".
• Klonoa:
  • Joka from Klonoa: Door to Phantomile has the ability to change between his normal floating-jester-balloon form and a conspicuously monstrous form which resembles some sort of sea monster. This form is invincible, but can only be used during an eclipse; he can be forced to revert by stopping the magically-caused eclipses taking place during his boss fight.
  • In Klonoa Heroes: Legendary Star Medal, he has a different 2nd form: "Flower Joka", which is his normal self, except flower-shaped instead of spherical. Again, he shifts between this and his normal form during the fight, this time at will; luckily, his Flower Joka form can be damaged as normal.
  • Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil features a variation: Leorina, thought by the heroes to be the Big Bad, is forced to go One-Winged Angel by the real Big Bad, the King of Sorrow. She's not the Final Boss, either. Surprisingly, the King of Sorrow does not go One-Winged Angel during his boss fight, instead preferring to attack you from within a weird orb thing.
• Scotia, the final boss of Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, as soon as the fight starts, transforms into a giant toad, like the ones you encountered earlier in the game, then, after taking some damage, into a snake-like monster, and finally into an invincible quadrupedal monster with toothed tentacles. The only way to beat the game is using the Ruby of Truth to prevent one of her transformations (ideally the first one).
• The end boss of The Legend of Dragoon had four different forms, each one symbolizing one of the seven days of the creation of the world. None of them actually looked like anything in particular.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: After Agahnim is defeated for the second time, he transforms into his true form: the pig-like Ganon.
  • The final boss of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, the Shadow Nightmares, shifts through six forms in rapid succession. The first few are based on Link's memories of bosses from this game and A Link to the Past, including Agahnim and Ganon. Its final form, DethI, is a particularly monstrous beast with a single eye and giant claws. It can only be damaged when its eye is open.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you first fight Ganon's phantom incarnation on horseback, then him personally first as evil sorceror-king Ganondorf, after which he calls upon the Triforce of Power to transform into the shadowy boar-monster Ganon.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the final boss of the same name progresses from a mask with hair/tentacles (Majora's Mask) to a mask with arms and legs (Majora's Incarnation) to a giant, psychedelic, whips-for-arms demon (Majora's Wrath). It was also notable for allowing Link a supreme transformation into the Fierce Deity, only usable against bosses but still near-impossible to lose with.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games:
    • Subverted in Oracle Of Ages by the game's Big Bad Veran: Her true form is human, but she immediately transforms into something that looks like a "mutant fairy", and her final "combat form" (which were actually three in one) is so ridiculous that she feels humiliated by having to resort to it.
    • General Onox of Oracle Of Seasons plays it straight by revealing his true form to be a giant skeletal dragon.
  • This also applies to Vaati in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. At the beginning of the battle, he morphs from his human form into a taller, more powerful-looking version of himself, and after that's beaten, he changes completely into a giant, spherical beast with one huge eye and giant claws — very much resembling DethI.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Ganondorf transforms early in the fight. The twist being that, this time, Link does it too. Also inverted in that you fight Ganon's human form after you fight his monster form in this game.
  • Bellum from The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, however, is harder to classify. He starts out as a big, squid-like monster covered in eyeballs, then progresses to a possessed battleship. Once that's out of the way, though, he actually assumes a much smaller, humanoid form, via possessing Link's buddy Linebeck.
  • Malladus, the final boss of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, attains his last, monstrous form by taking over Chancellor Cole's body, mutating it in the process. In a strange coincidence, the result ends up looking somewhat like Ganon's Dark Beast form from Twilight Princess, only more goat-like than pig-like.
  • Then The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword goes and inverts it, having the final boss Demon King Demise fought several times in a monstrous, demonic form before assuming his true, humanoid form for the final battle. Meanwhile, Ghirahim turns into a Chrome Champion for his final battle. This is alluded to in the game when Fi mentions that his muscle mass went up by 90 percent in that form.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has the already monstrous Calamity Ganon, whose first form resembles a fusion of the bosses from the Divine Beasts. After besting it, it transforms into Dark Beast Ganon, which resembles a massive boar made of Malice.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sees Ganondorf return. When first encountered, he resembles a withered mummy, but when it comes time to fight him, he assumes his Gerudo form. The second phase of his fight has him take on his Demon King form, which blackens his body, makes his hair glow red, and gives him Black Eyes of Crazy along with a power boost. Then when you beat this form, he swallows his secret stone and mutates into a Demon Dragon, so massive in scale that its body eclipses even the Light Dragon that joins you in the battle.
• Library of Ruina goes to the next level by having every single Reverb Ensamble member get a new form as they're all fought as the Final Boss:
  • Philip/The Crying Children is a literal example, becoming a fusion of his Distorted form and his E.G.O armor, gaining a single huge flaming wing and a red halo above his head, all the while holding what seems to be a miniature eclipsed sun in one hand.
  • Eileen turns into a mechanical angel that looks like it's made of porcelain.
  • Greta is a downplayed example, simply gaining more eyes and going shirtless to show off even more monstrous mouths covering her body.
  • The Musicians of Bremen become an amorphous blob-like creature with their animal masks as 'heads' and tubas growing out of their body.
  • Oswald gains a new outfit, sporting a more jester-like hat and a long cape, as well as four additional arms.
  • Tanya turns into an Anubis-esque form with a shadowed face and golden, glowing tattoos across her body.
  • Jae-Heon/The Puppeteer turns into a bandaged patchwork monster with spider legs growing out of his back.
  • Elena transforms into a vampiric monster made of blood, alongside glowing red eyes and Cape Wings.
  • Pluto turns into a skeletal black-and-gold demon with long horns, bat wings, and a golden pentagram on his chest.
  • Finally, Argalia fuses with his outfit, his head turning into a vortex with his hair turning into what looks like clouds, and in the middle of his head, at the center of the vortex, is a singular glowing blue eye. He also gains a new Sinister Scythe in the process.
• Ursula does this as the Final Boss of the Little Mermaid game, turning into a monstrous Kraken-mermaid hybrid like she does in the movie. She repeats the action once again in Kingdom Hearts II.
• Luminous Arc: the last boss turns into a beautiful white feathered serpent with lots of angel wings for its final form. Luminous Arc 2 does a similar thing as well, except it resembles a fiery phoenix/giant plant.
• In the original version of Lunar: The Silver Star, the main villain would announce that it wasn't over after being defeated. He then turned into a rather stereotypical anime demon for no explicable reason. In the Silver Star Story Complete remake, this transformation was left out completely. Chalk it up to cliche overdose.
• In both versions of Lunar: Eternal Blue, Zophar has multiple forms. When he finally appears on-screen, he's this giantic Eldritch Abomination, but after he kidnaps Lucia and takes Althena's power, that form turns into his fortress and what he turns into... saying he looks like a crossdresser would be an understatement. Despite how powerful the plot makes him out to be, the general opinion is that he is very easy, which even the game's characters seem to notice, but then he goes into his ultimate form, in which he takes up a big chunk of the screen. In the original version, he still looks very feminine, but in the remake, the designers realized they freaked the player out enough and made him look more masculine. Both versions, you can't hurt him until Lucia frees herself. His first form was just a warmup, really; his 2nd is going to a nightmare unless you've done a lot of level grinding. He has one more form after that, which you only fight with Hiro and Lucia. This form is, not supriousingly from the look of it (a chunk of his upper torso attached to his head in the original, and a wierd disembodied beak in the remake), is a cakewalk even though you only have two characters (Zophar's 2nd form was meant to be the ultimate challenge of the game, the 3rd one is practically a scripted fight).
• In LEGO Indiana Jones 2, the end bosses of Raiders (Belloq), Crusade (Donovan), and part 2 of Crystul Skull (The Soviet Colonel) are all given a One-Winged Angel makeover, in forms that overlap with Rent-a-Zilla.
• Several overlords in Makai Kingdom start in One-Winged Angel mode, instead crossing the Bishōnen Line when they go all out... The exception to this amongst those with 'true' forms is the otherwise humanoid King Drake the Third, whose 'true' form is... Um... Unusual, to say the least.
• Parodied in Maka Maka, where the final boss starts out looking like a baby doll. After beating up on him enough, he turns into his FINAL FORM... only to go down after one hit.
• In Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, the final boss Onslaught has two forms. His first form is his standard armored form who strikes out with a variation of Magneto's attacks from X-Men: Children of the Atom. His second form has him grow larger, dump the helmet in favor of a metallic face and resort with energy blasts and striking you with his Mighty Hand.
• In Mass Effect, when you confront Saren for the last time in the ruined Citadel control room, he is initially in his (admittedly rather warped) normal form. However, after he is defeated or convinced to commit suicide (it depends on your dialog choices beforehand), the Reaper Sovereign uses its power to transform him into a large, spindly biomechanical monstrosity with exposed ribs and movements very similar to the earlier geth hopper enemy types, albeit far more dangerous. Whereas Saren's first form is a humanoid character not unlike some of your party members (Garrus and Tali, for instance), his second is a highly mobile quadruped that vaguely resembles a metallic, skeletal lion. Only with the top half of his face still attached.
• Mass Effect 3 has the Illusive Man augment himself even further with Reaper technology for the final confrontation, causing his face to start to peel off, revealing the cybernetics under it. However, this is ultimately a subverted example, because you don't get to fight him: Shepard either convinces him to commit suicide or shoots him in a Quick Time Event.
  • The initial design for the game, however, had this in mind. The art book for the game has concept art for the Illusive Man's massive, grotesque final boss form. Ultimately, it was decided that this trope had no place in the overall design because it goes against the Illusive Man's character as The Chessmaster Magnificent Bastard, thus leaving the game without a true final boss.
• After you blow up his mech in Mechanic Man, Dr. Bronze uses his hat to transform into a suit of Powered Armor.
• Mega Man:
  • Sigma does this at the end of almost every Mega Man X game, going from his humanoid form to usually a giant battle body built just for this occasion. Unlike most examples though, he isn't actually transforming; his humanoid body explodes and either his head or his malignant AI simply transfers to the giant robot to control it. Ironically, according official works, he has a bad habit of not getting them fully tested or even finished before he's forced to use them, something he even admits to in a few games.
  • Subverted in the final battle of Mega Man 2; Dr Wily appears to morph into a green alien and the background changes to a starfield. After you defeat him, however, it turns out it was just a virtual reality machine.
  • Zero is pretty fond of this as well. Not only do the various final bosses transform at least once, the Four Guardians also transform. Interestingly, in the third game, it was played straight and inverted, the former between Omega's large first form to the enormous second, and the latter to Zero form, with its own legitimate battle rather than Zero-Effort Boss scene (no pun intended). Subverted in the same game when Copy X, former Final Boss now Disc-One Final Boss, tries to go One-Winged Angel like before, but ends up triggering the self-destruct put inside his body by Dr. Weil for this very moment and killing himself.
  • While certainly not monstrous or one-winged, in X8 the True Final Boss Lumine not only triggers an angelic battlefield platform, but also grows six wing-like mechanical limbs from his back, now has bright red, slitted eyes, thin, long, and pointed fingers, and has a red crystal produting almost a foot out of his chest.
  • While Mega Man ZX plays this straight with Serpent first Megamerging with his Model W fragment paralleling Vent/Aile's own transformation before merging with the Model W Core, Advent inverts this in that Master Albert starts the two-phase fight by fighting inside his transformed throne turned giant-three-headed dragon, then crosses the Bishōnen Line after it's destroyed to become the angelic Ultimate Mega Man.
• Metroid:
  • In Super Metroid, you blast away at Mother Brain in her storage container, like in the first game, until the case explodes and she drops to the floor, dead. And then she grows a body.
  • Played with in Metroid Prime; the titular monster does this prior to the events of the game (by creating an armored exoskeleton armed with missiles and various energy weapons), and inverts the trope when you fight it (reverting to its core form once the exoskeletal form is defeated).
  • In Metroid Fusion, the SA-X's form after being defeated in its Samus form is a freakish, crossbred monster, then a Core-X.
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes:
    • Emperor Ing goes through two very bizarre alternate forms during the battle against it, with the second form being a cocoon for his final form. Also, the larval Chykka metamorphoses into its dragonfly-like adult form midway into the fight. Dark Samus has also undergone a serious mutation as a result of chowing down on too much Phazon and is nigh invulnerable.
    • Any time an enemy gets controlled by an Ing mid-fight (the Alpha Sand-Digger and Alpha Splinter are prime examples).
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has Dark Samus merge herself with Aurora Unit 313 to provide the final boss battle.
  • Metroid Dread has an extremely rare heroic example in Samus herself, who, due to the full awakening of her Metroid genes, mutates her Power Suit into a green, Metroid-esque suit that allowed her to copy Raven Beak's Hyper Beam. However, this also causes her to lose control of her energy-draining abilities.
• Mickey Mouse games:
  • During the final battle with Mizrabel in both the Sega Genesis version of Castle of Illusion and the HD remake, Mizrabel uses Minnie's youth and beauty to transform herself from an ugly old witch to a beautiful young woman. This is actually an inversion of Queen Grimhilde's "perfect disguise" in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which makes sense since Mizrabel's character model is based on that of the Queen's.
  • After Mickey defeats the Sorcerer of Darkness in his normal form in Legend of Illusion, the Sorcerer transforms into a dragon and Mickey has to fight him in this form.
  • In The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey and Minnie, delivering a couple of hits to Baron Pete will make him transform into a dragon, leaving Mickey and Minnie to continue fighting him in this form.
• Monster Girl Quest! has every single boss in its final Boss Rush do this. Though of them, only Ilias is fought in her normal form right before transforming. Eden instead transforms before attacking you, while Promestein and Black Alice have their normal form fights occur earlier in the game. The one thing they all have in common is their One-Winged Angel forms being enormous masses of tentacles (and other things).
• The boss of Monster Madness: Battle For Surburbia is Mr. Huggles, a parody of Barney the dinosaur. At first, he attacks by singing and hugging. After you fight him, his suit comes off, revealing his hideous true form, a slimy Jabba The Hutt-like creature.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • The series has this in almost all of their later games, including Zombie Liu Kang from Mortal Kombat: Deception.
  • Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero has Shinnok transform into a polygon demon once Sub-Zero takes the amulet, but fighting him in this form is optional, as a portal leading to the end of the game opens up anyway.
  • Shinnok's demon form ends up being the hyped surprise final boss in Mortal Kombat X.
• In Mother 3, Miracle Fassad fights like an upgraded version of his previous fight. After dealing enough damage, however, he reverts back to his New Fassad form and reveals that he is a PSI user, using high level PSI, including Starstorm.
• The final boss of La-Mulana is Mother, who takes five forms: a large stone face, a white flying silhouette, a disturbing Virgin Mary look-a-like complete with what resembles Baby Jesus in her arms, a pair of eyes, and finally, a smaller but no less deadly version of her second form.
• In Mutation Nation, the wimpy Big Bad suddenly collapses and morphs into a huge monster right as you meet him.
• Mystic Heroes has Emperor Kang's son, Cyrus, transform into a ridiculously ugly (and poorly rendered) dark greenish monster for the real final battle. The fight is somewhat lengthy, though, so be sure to take your time on this one.
• MS Saga: A New Dawn: The final boss starts off piloting the Alpha Azieru from Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack. Defeat that, and he uses the G-System to reconfigure it into...a demonic-looking version of the Wing Zero Custom from Gundam Wing, complete with two pairs of realistic black wings.
• Oogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge turns into a giant monster after merging himself with mountains of bugs and trash.
• Ninja Gaiden:
  • In the original NES series, the final villains (Jacquio, the Demon, some stupid scientist) all go through transformation sequences as Ryu defeats their forms successively.
  • In the game for the Xbox and its Updated Rereleases, humanoid Fiend Alma turns into a scorpion-like thing once her power gets Awakened. After Doku sheds his corporeal shell, he loses his legs to float and gains a nodachi worthy of the One Winged Angel himself. The Vigoorian Emperor goes from a vaguely angelic statue to a bony creature made of skulls.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: When you first see him, Lord Malachi looks like a large man encased in bone with a giant skull and set of bones attached to his back. When he wakes up, the bones expand and uncurl and he transforms into a giant skeletal horned demon dog thing.
• Played with in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle with Jasper Batt Jr. Played fairly straight for his second form, for which he injects himself with steroids and dons a themed superhero costume (not unlike Batman's), before unleashing hell on you. Outright spoofed with his ridiculous third form, for which he somehow turns into a massive flying mascot-like balloon version of his former self — with a good dose of Clipped-Wing Angel, for this battle is much easier than the second phase.
• Mr. Big of NARC is a fat man in a wheelchair who fires rockets while dozens of his henchmen dogpile you. After he is killed, he comes back as a giant head on a floating platform whose flesh gets blown off to reveal a giant metal skull.
• The final boss of Odium, Vasili Dobrovsky, bursts into the room as a human, provides some exposition while announcing that he's the only man immune to the Viral Transformation that turned everybody into monsters, and when he's outed as The Dragon, he proceeds to turn into a giant monster anyway.
• Oracle of Tao frequently uses this trope. Not only does one of the middle game bosses do this, but the final boss of the game does it twice once during the normal conditions (two forms, unless you also count the one he abandons before the battle even starts), and again if you qualify for the Playable Epilogue (3 more). To say nothing of enemies that cheat the HP limit by having multiple attack patterns with the same form (one of those you have to kill nine times).
• In Overlord II, the final boss encounter is the Great Devourer. The Emperor, having gathered magic from across his kingdom, submerges himself in it and is transformed into a massive, glowing, zombie-spewing larva. Link.
• OFF has Elsens, who become Burnt and start spouting fountains of a thick dark substance, possibly blood or smoke, from their heads, sometimes gaining huge claws in the process, Japhet, whose real phoenix form comes bursting out of his cat form which is an actual cat named Valerie, and The Batter, who turns into a.... thing. Or maybe he was one all along, we never know, but it's pretty freaky.
• Panzer Dragoon Saga. In a single, long, psychedelic battle, you first fight the five extreme forms of your own dragon, then Sestren — the final final boss, who changes into an even more horrible form.
• Persona series:
  • Revelations does this to its Big Bad, Guido, when you defeat him. The associated dialogue is just too ridiculous, funny, and Macekred to not include:
    Guido: This can't be! I'm a God! I'm invincible! [pauses] Something's invading my body!!
    Massacre's voice: Hahaha! Stupid human, I shall give you the power you desire!
    Guido: Stop!!!!!
    Mary: What's happening?
    Mark: What the heck!?
    Nate: He was taken over by his own Persona!
    Guido: Now I'm Super Guido!
  • The Final Boss of the first game, Pandora, also goes through this, doubling also as Bishōnen Line: her first form is that of a horrifying, multi-limbed, vaguely phalloid creature. Her second form is that of a completely humanoid, giant naked woman with butterfly wings who resembles Maki. Makes sense, considering that in a way, it is her.
  • In Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Nyarlathotep first fights the party as Hitler, then transforms into a monstrosity that's way too hard, considering he's just screwing with the party by that point. Later in Eternal Punishment, he gets slightly more serious, fighting in his default form of the Moon Howler, and once you beat on that enough...
    Nyarlathotep: Fuhahahaha! This is! Splendid! You are the first to see this form! Die with my highest praise!(sic)
  • He turns into a tentacle monster instead of an angel. Considering the Tabletop RPG above and that he was behind Guido's transformation before being Macekred out, it becomes obvious that the Crawling Chaos just can't stay away from this trope.
  • From Persona 3, the Appraiser of Death first shows up in human form (two of them, in fact.) When it is time to make a choice concerning the fate of the world, he claims that he will soon turn "into something unrecognizable" — sure enough, during the Dark Hour of the Promised Day, he becomes Nyx Avatar, the Shadow of the Death Arcana with four midnight-black wings and a grinning white mask. She has 14 phases. And that's just Nyx Avatar. The real Nyx resides inside the Moon, and is only reached when the Protagonist's bonds let them attain the Universe Arcana. All leading to one final Post-Final Duel Boss. ^Spoilers!Despite being impossible to lose, Nyx doesn't qualify as Clipped-Wing Angel, due to only being survivable at all thanks to The Power of Friendship. Nyx hits the damage cap every turn.
  • Persona 4 loves this trope. The first time is just before the fight with Namatame, who is possessed by Kunino-sagiri and turns into him. Then, the real killer does it, transforming into Ameno-sagiri, God Of Fog. On top of that, everyone's Shadow does this. There are eight major Shadows... so Persona 4 does this ten times in total.
    • And if you're playing Persona 4 Golden, the True Final Boss Izanami does it twice, first becoming her Goddess form, and then turning into Izanami-no-Okami when you use the Orb of Sight.
  • Persona 5 continues the trend, as almost every human's Shadow you face transforms in order to fight you^note Exceptions are Shadow Futaba, Shadow Mishima, and Shadow Okumura. Lesser antagonists' Shadows in Mementos turn into Persona spirits, while Palace owners' Shadows become personalized monsters. The Holy Grail also does this, changing from a giant, golden goblet to Yaldabaoth, a massive Angelic Abomination.
  • Persona 5 Strikers follows similar story beats to its predecessor, so most of the bosses transform before fighting the Thieves. The final boss goes from a box to two different Angelic Abominations.
• The Phantasy Star series has LOADS of these.
  • In Phantasy Star I, the Saccubus turns out to be a projection of Dark Force.
  • Phantasy Star IV has the Profound Darkness. It starts out as a disgusting mass of mouths and eyes. After this, it gets more streamlined as it transforms into an insectoid monstrosity with less teeth and more spikes. Then finally, it assumes its true form as a gigantic, unclothed woman with spiky wing-like protrusions on her back; this final form possibly references PSII's Mother Brain.
  • Phantasy Star Online has Vol Opt/Vol Opt Version 2, an insane computer with two forms; Dark Falz, which starts out as a strange three-legged THING, then turns into a floating spell-throwing machine, and then in the higher difficulties it turns into a much meaner floating thing with seriously unpleasant physical attacks and periodic invulnerability; and Olga Flow, who turns from an upside down six-legged warrior-thing into a two-legged warrior thing about the size of a large BUILDING.
  • C.A.R.D. Revolution has a double-barrelled final boss that turns from a girl with a sword-arm and monstrous chunks of mutated flesh that defines Body Horror into a thankfully less-messed-up creature vaguely reminiscent of a Delsaber.
  • Phantasy Star Universe has a couple of versions of Magashi, and a double-barrelled Dark Falz with the added bonus of one of the coolest yet least feasible arenas of all time. Dark Falz reappears in Ambition of the Illuminus in a side mission.
  • Phantasy Star Portable has Helga, Vivienne, and Dark Falz AGAIN.
  • And finally Phantasy Star Zero has Mother Trinity, who turns out to have been hosting Dark Falz.
• Pico's School: Main antagonist Cassandra unleashes her true form as a Penillian conqueror when Pico confronts her, a form he then delivers several hundred assault rifle rounds to the genitals of.
• Pillars of Dust: The Final Boss, Almorigga, turns into a floating head with an exposed brain. This is because his previous weaker form made the heroes bleed enough that their blood can be used to undo the seal on his powers.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, after Ghetsis fails to freeze the player alive, Kyurem absorbs N's Reshiram/Zekrom and becomes a flaming/electrified (depending on the version) man-eating ice dragon. However, you fight it first before tackling Ghetsis.
  • Introduced in Pokémon X and Y, Mega Evolution allows certain Pokémon to gain a boost in most of their base stats^note 100 to the base stat total and, in most cases, a new ability. Sometimes, it will even change the user's type; for example, Ampharos becomes part Dragon-type. While there is never anything in the storyline to indicate that using Mega Evolution is considered a last resort, it seems to be treated as such in gameplay as AI trainers who have access to it will always save their Mega Pokémon for last during battles, sending it out only AFTER everything else on their team has been KO'd. Team Flare Boss Lysandre and Champion Diantha use a Mega Gyarados and Gardevoir, respectively.
  • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, Lusamine performs a Fusion Dance with a Nihilego. However, you don't actually fight the result directly; instead it's a normal Trainer battle, only Lusamine's Pokémon are all buffed with Totem Power.
  • The climax of Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon has Necrozma achieve its true form; Ultra Necrozma, a giant dragon made of golden light, complete with an exclusive Z-Move. And unlike Lusamine, you do fight it directly, complete with a stat-boosting Totem aura to make things harder.
  • Wishiwashi is a weak fish, but if it's at level 20 or higher, it joins a whole school to become a much larger and more dangerous creature (which even terrifies Gyarados). If its HP gets low enough, though, the school dissipates, leaving behind the original small fry.
  • The Olympus Mon Zygarde can do this mid-battle; if its HP drops below 50% and it has the Power Construct Ability, it will transform into its Complete Forme, with a small boost to most of its stats and a giant boost to its HP, making it even harder to take down.
  • In Pokémon Sword and Shield, Eternatus is fought in three stages. For the second and third stages, it goes into it's Eternamax form, which is not only more powerful than Dynamaxing or Gigantamaxing, but has the highest base stats of any Pokémon in the entire franchise. It even stops the Player Character and Hop from attacking it at all in the second stage. They only manage to defeat it in the third stage because Zacian and Zamazenta came to help them.
  • In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, your first encounter with Giratina requires you to defeat it in its Altered Forme, upon which it immediately switches into its Origin Forme and returns to full health.
• GLaDOS from Portal, although it's more of an inversion, with Forms of Morality, Anger, Curiosity, and Cake being lost.
• Primal has a main character who can turn into different monster forms.
• Alarune, the final boss of P.N.03, transforms from a giant robotic skull to a beam spamming scorpion tank. Prior to that, the second version of Orchidee reforms into a Spider Tank after you destroy its initial centipede form, and Loewenzahn II turns into a robo-phoenix.
• The final boss of Press Space To Win Adventure Action RPG shouts "Now, face my true power!" before changing color and gaining 999999999 health points.
• In Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, a defeated Reflux the Knaaren teams up with Big Bad André and steals his people's sacred scepter, the Scepter of the Leptys, becoming the Final Boss. The thing empowers him differently than when he first faced Rayman (lightning-based powers mostly) and when that's not enough, he embeds the stone of the scepter in his back and grows more monstrous and gigantic. Rayman fights this form of him until the end.
• The final boss in Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 is a hulked-out version of Michael Buffer.
• Scion, the final boss of Red Earth, has to be downed twice. After the first time, he mutates into a more horrific form that exposes his brain, and gets more powerful attacks.
• Resident Evil frequently uses this trope:
  • In Resident Evil 2, William Birkin initially appears as a somewhat mutated man and keeps reappearing in progressively less human forms until by the end, he has degenerated into a mass of teeth, flesh, and tentacles. Mr. X initially appears as a large humanoid in a trenchcoat, but grows a pair of massive claws by the end of the game.
  • In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Nemesis first appears as a bazooka-wielding Mr. X-like humanoid, then sheds his Bad Ass Long Coat revealing his Combat Tentacles, then finally resembles a giant squid with legs.
  • In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Alexia Ashford appears as an ordinary human at first, but mutates into a hideous queen ant/human hybrid and then a dragonfly-winged thing by the end.
  • In Resident Evil 0 Dr. Marcus becomes a huge mass of leeches just before fighting the characters.
  • In Resident Evil 4, Mendez, Salazar, and Saddler all have hideous final forms. To make things rather more disturbing, they all seem to be in complete control of their mutations, unlike bosses in the previous games. Downplayed with Krauser, whose final form only changes his left arm, mutating into a bloodstained claw.
  • Resident Evil 5 continues the tradition in grand style. After his plans fail and the heroes are trapped in a volcano with him, Wesker hops himself up on Uroboros; while the mutation isn't as drastic as most RE examples, it still leaves him with giant tendrils in place of arms and glowing weak spots. There's also Ricardo Irving, who injects a mutagen given to him by Excella and turns into a hideous sea-dwelling, multi-tentacled monster, complete with Narmtacular Lampshade Hanging:
    I just had an extreme MAKEOV-AH!!
  • Also in the fifth game, Excella herself becomes The Worm That Walks, similar to Marcus.
  • Every final boss in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
  • In Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, there was Sergei Vladimir, who went from a scary and intimidating Renegade Russian to a horrific-looking Tyrant after losing control of the T-Virus.
  • Special mention has to go to Morpheus Duvall of Resident Evil Dead Aim. A Sephiroth pretty boy who is obsessed with beauty turns himself into a transgender electrical Tyrant, and then mutates into an absolutely enormous green blob with large claws, rib cage halves sticking out of its back, and a malformed head popping in and out of its torso as it drags itself along at a lumbering pace.
  • Resident Evil 6's antagonists both become this. Derek Simmons becomes a barely humanoid jigsaw of flesh capable of morphing into one of several forms; in the final confrontation, he takes on the form of an insectoid creature. Meanwhile, the other Ada/Carla Radames turns into a massive white blob of goo that overtakes the ship she oozed over, both the exterior and interior. The fight is spent in the interior having to avoid the goo-slathered walls which spawn either limbs trying to grab and absorb you, duplicates of her humanoid slime form, and explosive forms. The only way to combat her was the use of nitrogen.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard's Evelyn becomes a betentacled kaiju-sized Eldritch Abomination for the final battle.
• Rise of the Kasai features four bosses (two are fought at the same time) who transform before the battle even begins because... who can blame them? The heroes just infiltrated their impenatrable fortresses and slaughtered their mook armies. Three transform into dragons, and the final one transforms into a hideous spider-like monster with the animated corpses of its mooks fused to its legs still lashing out at the heroes.
• In RosenkreuzStilette, Graf Michael Sepperin assumes his demon form once he Turns Red. Also, in the final battle, Iris' One-Winged Angel form is that of her own humble self with three pairs of golden seraph wings. In Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel, Eifer becomes this, but in two separate fights.
• Sacred Earth - Alternative: All of Konoe's friends transform into boss monsters.
  • Wynne transforms into the Envoy of the Beginning, a minotaur.
  • Ryuna transforms into the Envoy of the Present, a black dragon.
  • Kell transforms into the Envoy of the End, a more ethereal looking version of her original beastkin form.
• Sakura Wars:
  • At the end of Sakura Wars (1996), Ayame transforms into the demonic Fallen Angel Aya-me thanks to the demon seed planted inside of her. Later on, Aoi Satan transforms into a more demonic version of himself, named Satan.
  • In chapter 6 of Sakura Wars (2019), President G uses the Amamiya Kunisada, which is the Imperial Key, to change into his true form: a gigantic demon named Sotetsu Genan.
• Subverted in the Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space episode "What's New Beelzebub?" with The Soda Poppers. Their "demon forms" are just different outfits, two of which differed only in color.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game:
  • The game parodies this in Gideon's first boss fight. His main mode of attacking is transforming into a statue of an actual One-Winged Angel.
  • The first form of Gideon you face is Super Gideon, which is by itself a hulking, brutish form of him. Then he transforms into the aberration known as Gigadeon, which is a bona-fide One-Winged Angel and references Kefka Palazzo's boss fight (see above). Subverted as the real final battle involves fighting a human-sized, robotic lookalike of Gideon wielding a pixelated katana. Immediately after the robot is defeated, the real Gideon just begs for mercy before being taken out with one hit.
• Shatterline have it's Final Boss, Alan Seer, who absorbs the remaining powers of the Crystalline - turning himself into a half-silicon, half-human monstrosity to fight you.
• The Shadow Hearts series does this a lot. In the first game, every human boss enemy transformed into a monster of some sort to fight you. Largely due to powers of Malice or a pact. Or both.
• Shining the Holy Ark: Panzer absorbs some of the evil from the Holy Ark to turn into a monstrous final boss — an interesting variation in that Panzer is actually The Dragon.
• In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Kagutsuchi starts off as... well, as one person described it, a giant disco ball. His second phase is a giant face... that spends the rest of the fight firing off a super-powerful almighty spell every other turn. There's also Chiaki, who, upon rejecting the last scraps of her humanity and becoming Baal Avatar, becomes a literal One-Winged Angel. The other Reason bosses might also count upon their respective ascensions.
• Shin Megami Tensei II gives us two examples in the Law and Chaos representatives. Zayin and Louis Cypher are human looking enough, but when the former fuses with Seth to become Satan and the latter reveals his angelic form as Lucifer, they qualify as demons. Then you actually fight them, and they turn into horrific monstrosities - Satan is a giant purple beast with six breasts while Lucifer is a demonic seraphim. Averted with the Final Boss, who only takes one form.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse:
  • Upon his revival, Maitreya is transformed into the stronger Mitra-Buddha, who is fought shortly after.
  • The last boss of the penultimate dungeon is Vishnu-Flynn, a fusion of an empowered Krishna and Flynn.
  • YHVH is introduced as a giant head again. Beat him, and he turns into a giant black and purple demon.
• In Shin Megami Tensei IV, both Merkabah and Lucifer have one of these, which is pretty impressive as neither of them were that pretty in the first place.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey:
  • Mem Aleph, the Normal and Law path final boss, turns into a fetal being in a technicolor force field after you defeat her normal-looking form. This trick has been pulled in other games, notably Ōkami, but Mem Aleph's "empty" form makes up for it by being one of the hardest RPG bosses in existence.
  • The first four bosses come back in bigger, more powerful shapes in Fornax (their power is fully unhindered there); Morax evolves into Moloch, Mitra evolves into Mithras, Horkos evolves into Orcus, and Asura evolves into Asherah. Jimenez and Zelenin also enter their respective One-Winged Angel shapes as Awake and Soil Forms for Jimenez and Judge and Pillar Forms for Zelenin.
• Shovel Knight: The Enchantress is able to maintain her human form by possessing the body of Shield Knight as long as the amulet that holds her powers is intact. When the amulet is destroyed and Shield Knight is freed from its influence, her magic goes haywire and coalesces into a mindless force of destruction known as the Remnant of Fate.
• In Silent Hill 2, Maria transforms into a gray-skinned tentacled levitating upside-down-in-a-cage abomination for the final battle.
• Armon Ritter of Sin and Punishment: Star Successor has based most of his fighting style around this. He has three One-Winged Angel forms: The first is an enormous bat-looking protozoa capable of summoning missiles, floating balls of goop that attack you at both long and close range, and fighter jets. His second is an giant insectile seahorse that can box you in and play a game of deadly pong in that energy box with you in it. And his final (and hardest) form? Five killer whales. Scareeee. At least all of his forms have a Godzilla/Mothra-esque scream that accompanies every charge shot you throw at him. Later on, it turns out that every single one of the Nebulox has a One Winged Angel form, as well as you. This makes for one of the most entertaining levels in the game, along with one of the most challenging bosses.
• Skies of Arcadia: First you fight Ramirez, then he sacrifices his life to control Zelos, the Silver Gigas, and then he crosses the Bishōnen Line. Interesting in that the boss's original form is perfectly visible inside his translucent One-Winged Angel form.
• In Skylanders, you can count on the series' Big Bad Kaos to provide examples.
  • In Skylanders: SWAP Force, he gets buried under a pile of the petrified darkness and gets powered by them, growing into a giant with the ability to create shockwaves by stomping and shoot fire out of his hands.
  • In Skylanders: Trap Team, he infuses himself with the power of Traptanium turns into a crystal hybrid who attacks with Traptanium swords and black magic auras, can heal himself, and can even see the Portal Master on Earth all the way from Skylands.
  • In Skylanders: Imaginators, he gets Brain to power him up with the best of Mind Magic, and gets turned into Super Kaos, who can summon his Doomlanders from throughout the game to aid him in the battle.
• In Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Arpeggio attempts to hijack the resembled body of Clockwerk to become immortal... and to finally fly. However, Neyla betrays him and takes the body for herself, becoming Clock-La, and serving as the final boss. Considering that Clockwerk is powered by hatred, and Neyla's heart is deathly black, it's fitting.
• The arcade game Smash TV features a difficult boss named Scarface: an enormous green, well, face who spits swarms of bullets and ricocheting mines at you. You'll spend five to ten minutes (and about that many lives) grossly disfiguring him with ammunition until he finally dies and explodes, only for his skull to scream "NO WAY!" and blast you with death beams from his eye sockets.
• In Solatorobo, when you come to finally fight against Bruno, who up until then had been a regular-looking Caninu, he's been transformed into a hulking monster by Lares. Although Bruno does state that it's his true form, it's debatable whether this is true, or if Lares is simply using him as a puppet.
• Following Sonic Adventure, the Sonic the Hedgehog series frequently uses this trope almost as much as Square-Enix does. For instance:
  • The original Sonic Adventure has Chaos Zero, who actually has seven different transformations, one for each Chaos Emerald he absorbs^note He never transforms into Chaos 3 or Chaos 5, as he was given two Emeralds at once as Chaos 2 and 4, respectively, and while Chaos 1 is seen in a cutscene, it's The Unfought. After absorbing all the Emeralds, he transforms from a water elemental-like mutated chao into a watery leviathan powerful enough to destroy entire airships in one blast.
  • In 4th Dimension Space, the fifth and final board of Sonic Shuffle, Void returns to the Temple of Light so he can become whole. Lumina leads Sonic and his friends after him to prevent him from smashing the Precioustone that they spent the whole game collecting pieces of. Once they find Void in the temple and Lumina tells him to stop, Void gets upset and transforms into a giant monster. The final mini-game, "Void Battle" involves Sonic and his friends jumping on the light switches to restore the temple while avoiding Void's attacks, which include smashing the ground to create shockwaves, zapping one player, and stomping players. Once the switches are hit sixteen times, they will activate the master switch in the center of the temple to defeat Void.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, there's the Biolizard, the prototype of the Ultimate Lifeform. After it was initially defeated by Shadow, its successor, it uses Chaos Control to warp right out of the room and binds itself to the Space Colony ARK ^note a giant space station housing, among other things, a weapon capable of destroying a planet and begins a crash course for Earth.
  • Sonic Heroes has this happen to Metal Sonic, who, after spending most of his time in the shadows, transforms into a titanic metal dragon called Metal Madness, armed with the power of the aforementioned Chaos, as well as that of Team Sonic and Shadow. Three-quarters into the battle, he sprouts huge metal wings, further transforming into the Metal Overlord. Metal Sonic goes through a similar and even more threatening-looking transformation at the end of Knuckles Chaotix, nicknamed Metal Sonic Kai by fans. A similar transformation to the latter form also occurs when Metal uses the Phantom Ruby in Sonic Mania.
  • Following a botched attempt to mind-control the main protagonist, Black Doom, the main Big Bad of Shadow the Hedgehog, transforms into Devil Doom, which was a giant 2-headed dragon-like alien that melded itself into the Black Comet.
  • The handheld title Sonic Advance 3 has Gemerl. Following the initial final battle with him and Eggman, he swipes the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic, akin to Sonic The Hedgehog 3's intro cutscene, and uses them to transform into a berserk orb-like machine with laser-firing claws.
  • The main antagonist of Sonic and the Secret Rings, the Erazor Djinn, suffers a surprisingly unintentional version of this, turning into an ugly "incomplete monster" called Alf Layla wa-Layla after absorbing the World Rings following a botched sacrifice.
  • In Sonic and the Black Knight, there's Merlina, the Dark Queen. Throughout the course of the game, she goes from a harmless cute wizard to a scary evil sorceress to a giant armored knight with four arms, two of which are armed with building-sized swords.
  • Dark Gaia in Sonic Unleashed goes through two transformations, first absorbing the energy Sonic inadvertently stole at the start of the game to become the Werehog and opening three giant green eyes on its head. The second transformation, which it activates after fully maturing, has it grow two more pairs of arms (that rip out of its body with Alien Blood) and open the seven giant eyes that are contained inside of its giant mouth.
• Soul Series:
  • In the first game, Soul Edge, after defeating Big Bad Cervantes de Leon, a cutscene shows how his body is burnt by hellfire to become "SoulEdge", a souped-up Cervantes with a body of fire and a skull for a face.
  • Soulcalibur III features two. The first is the regular Final Boss Abyss, a corrupted form of Zasalamel after being infused by a large amount of energy from the Soul swords. This turns him into a rotten, zombie-like Eldritch Abomination with two rows of teeth and a horned skull-like head with Psychic Powers.
  • The second is Night Terror, the True Final Boss only accessed by taking the correct path in the story mode, and represents a form taken by Nightmare after absorbing the power of Soul Edge and Soul Calibur into itself, offscreen. This transforms the azure knight into a flesh-colored, bigger, and more savage form with two large, fiery-feathered wings on its back (which allow him to fly back up if knocked off the stage). Nightmare also pulls this off at the end of his story, turning into Night Terror with an input from the player.
• Parodied hard in the Sega CD adaptation of Space Adventure Cobra. When a rather fragile sentient plant is confronted, it proceeds to laugh mockingly at Cobra before turning into a gigantic demon. Its speech is cut short at "My name is..." when Cobra blasts it, splattering it all over the room. Afterwards he notes, "Next time I'll just whack it upside the head with a newspaper."
• Purge from Space Channel 5 Part 2 doesn't transform into a One Winged Angel, but rather he MAKES it himself. He places his human body into a Giant P, and allows himself to become Purge the Great: A giant holographic being with blue gloves and goggles.◊ He then starts firing electric shots at you, and you have to dodge them to survive. All to incredibly awesome music.
• Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2: Once Sparkster defeats King Gedol in his normal form, the second phase of the battle (which is skipped on the easiest difficulty) involves Gedol growing to an enormous size and shooting lasers from his eyes. Sparkster has to attack the jewel in the center of his head to damage him.
• In Spider-Man (2000), Doctor Octopus finds himself bonding with the Carnage symbiote, becoming the deadly Monster-Ock. Between it and Ock's base exploding, Spidey decides the best thing to do is turn and run. Doing anything short of running away from it leads to a game over and you have to start the run again.
• In Spiral Knights, Lord Vanaduke does a variation of this. Although he starts out already big and monstrous, he takes the trope up to eleven in his final form. Upon significant damage, he will lose his mask and reveal his shadowed face, commencing the transformation. Fire and lava burst from cracks in his armor, he begins to glow as if possessed, and orbs of cursed flame spin around him, forming a halo as if he has become a god. In addition, he is surrounded by corrupted Slag Guards. The Jelly King/Royal Jelly does this as well, except he loses his crown to become more powerful, rather than gaining it.
• Star Fox:
  • The series does this surprisingly little, but at the end of Star Fox 64's hard route, Andross transforms into a giant brain, giving the quip "Only I have the Brains to rule Lylat".
  • Then there's Great Commander's second form from Star Fox/Starwing.
  • Phantron, which morphs into a jumping frog-like mecha for its second form, with a Scare Chord during the transformation.
  • In the first game's Hard route, Andross morphs into a horned demon about halfway through the battle.
• The Grandmaster from Strider averts this in the first two Arcade games in the series, but then turns to it in the 2014 game. Upon being defeated by Hiryu, he transports himself into outer space and adopts his true form: a massively large Eldritch Abomination of an alien with two serpent-like Cognizant Limbs known as "Meio Prime".
• Suikoden: At the end of the first installment, the human antagonist transforms into a three-headed dragon.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Bowser's signature One-Winged Angel tactic in the Yoshi's Island and New Super Mario Bros. series is growing giant.
  • In Super Mario 3D World, Bowser pulls off a different method of transforming for the final battle. Instead of merely growing to giant size, he decides to take a page out of Mario's book and use a power-up on himself, absorbing the power of a Super Bell to become a giant cat monster known as Meowser.
  • Mario Party 10: In Bowser's Tank Terror, after Bowser is reduced to only half of his remaining health, his tank explodes and sends him flying into the surrounding lava pit, only for him to rise back up as a giant Dry Bowser for round two.
  • Bowser in the original Paper Mario super-sizes, and gains some cool blue flames on his shell, before the final fight with him.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door:
    • Grubba is already a monster, but a roughly-human-sized, comical one. Before you fight him, he turns into a much more menacing-looking giant creature.
    • The final boss has two forms, starting off as her form where she first possesses Peach, then going into her true form.
  • Super Paper Mario:
    • Mimi is not the Big Bad, but she transforms into a Giant Spider frequently. It's also really disturbing. Oddly enough, you don't battle her regular girl form until the second time you battle her.
    • Dimentio possesses Luigi and turns into Super Dimentio.
  • In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Bowser turns giant again, only this time he's made of cardboard.
  • In Paper Mario: The Origami King, the titular villain King Olly takes on different monster forms across all three phases of his battle. In the first phase, he uses his own Magic Circles to transform into one of the four Vellumentals. His sister, Olivia, needs to assume these forms herself to counter his attacks. With the second phase, he folds himself into a giant paper sumo. Olivia uses the same transformation on Bowser (subsequently being a rare heroic instance of this trope for the Koopa King) to fight Olly on equal footing. Finally, Olly uses all his power and hatred to grow supersized, gaining his own Thousand-Fold Arms in the process.
  • Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time features one with Princess Shroob, who turns into a multi-tentacled beast. This is the older Princess Shroob, and you don't learn that until after you beat the first Princess Shroob.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story:
    • When Bowser fights Midbus for the final time, Fawful uses his ray gun to transform him into Blizzard Midbus.
    • The main antagonist, Fawful, transforms into Dark Fawful, and during Bowser's battle with Dark Bowser, the Mario Bros. fight Dark Fawful in a giant form with many limbs that must be attacked (similar to the previous two final bosses before him).
  • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team:
    • The Final Boss is a larger, rainbow-colored Bowser called "Dreamy Bowser", powered up as a result of swallowing the fragments of the shattered Dream Stone.
    • The game also features Antasma, who is first encountered as a dark fog cloud with eyes, then proceeds to turn into a bat when teaming up with Bowser, then in the overworld assumes a vampire-like form while not using his second form for travelling, and finally, when he's fought in the Dream World, takes on a much more powerful-looking variation of the latter. Somewhat subverted in that his final form, albeit with only one attack and automatically going down after being attacked twice regardless of damage (which isn't even displayed for either side), is also fought as the game's tutorial battle.
  • The final boss of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, Shiny RoboBowser, is not an example of this for the regular Bowser, who merely does his usual Make My Monster Grow routine, but for Paper Bowser, who performs a Fusion Dance with a bunch of his paper minions to transform into a massive suit of cardboard Powered Armor for his counterpart to wear.
  • Princess Peach: Showtime!: Once Grape is defeated for the first time, she assumes a much bigger form named Grape the Great, who ended up destroying the entire Sparkle Theater, leaving it in rubbles.
• Super Robot Wars has several, such as the R-Gun Rivale and Dark Brain.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • By beating the Adventure mode of Super Smash Bros. Melee on a hard enough setting, the last boss Bowser transforms into the giant beast that is Giga Bowser.^note Specifically, this requires completing Adventure Mode in normal or higher difficulty within 18 minutes without using any continues. Brawl actually has this as Bowser's Final Smash, Giga Bowser; Ganondorf gets a similar transformation, based off his Twilight Princess beast form. Mr. Game & Watch's Final Smash has him transform... into an octopus.
  • In the Subspace Emissary in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Tabuu, the Man Behind the Man (behind the other men), transforms into a winged version of himself that can transform the heroes back into trophies. But then Sonic the Hedgehog comes and damages both of his wings, thus weaking his power to just an instant KO.
  • In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, Master Hand gets his own One-Winged Angel form: Master Core. Triggered when he takes enough damage on higher difficulties (5.0 and up) in Classic Mode. Depending on the difficulty, Master Core comes in a total of four forms to fight. Master Giant, Master Beast, Master Sabres, and Master Shadow. Once all forms are defeated, Master Core will be reduced to a simple Smash Ball that the player needs to knock off the stage fast, otherwise it will send a series of shockwaves that will instant KO the player. Master Core can only fire five of these before it self-destructs. The Wii U version takes it up to eleven with an additional form called Master Fortress, which manifests if the current difficulty is within the 8.0 - 9.0 interval.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate includes Dracula as a boss, who will assume his true form from Symphony of the Night after you beat him for the first time; and introduces as DLC the Trope Namer himself, Sephiroth. Not only can he sprout his eponymous one wing from Advent Children, but he also turns into Safer Sephiroth as part of his Final Smash.
• Sweet Home (1989): Lady Mamiya turns from a regular-looking ghost of an old woman to a horrific blue-skinned monster with the right side of her face burnt, spindly arms, and lots of tumor-like bumps (which are actually faces of children who she burned alive) covering her and forming a massive hunchback in the final battle.
• Tales of Phantasia has Dhaos, who is first fought in his human form, then reveals his "True Power", a giant monster vaguely reminiscent of a giant armored purple-and-red Praying Mantis, then crosses the Bishōnen Line by invoking his gods and turning into an angelic-like being — much like Yggdrasil from the later Tales of Symphonia. In the original SNES version, however, he only has the first two forms.
  • Kronos/Miktran from Tales of Destiny turns into an Eldritch Abomination after being defeated once in the original game, but takes on a form resembling a purple demon in the remake.
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • The aforementioned Yggdrasil transforms from an Adorably Precocious Child into some odd mechanical form in his boss battle. Unfortunately for him, the angel form is much easier than his first form.
    • Earlier in the game, Rodyle is confronted by the protagonists, who have learned he's been using a farming method even crueler than the one used for making normal Ex Spheres, to create specialized stones called Cruxis Crystals, which transform people into angels. When he's cornered and left no option but to fight, he equips what he believes to be a Cruxis Crystal, intending to become an angel and put the smack down on the heroes. It turns out his "Cruxis Crystal" is an ordinary Ex Sphere that hasn't been equipped with a proper seal, making him pull this trope instead.
  • The final boss of the main story of Tales of Legendia starts off looking human, but transforms after he absorbs the power of the Nerifes and becomes its physical avatar, which looks like a blueish humanoid robot.
  • Mathias from Tales of Innocence ditches her human form immediately, changing into a freakish centaur-like form that has her torso situated on the body of Asura in place of his head. In the remake, she additionally takes on a human form after that, then becomes a near-perfect copy of Asura for her final form.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, Duke starts off looking perfectly human, then changes into an ethereal form with a ton of Attack Drones floating around him. If you collected all of the Fell Arms, he'll change into a third form, which is similar to the second, but with dark skin and no shirt.
  • Downplayed by Van in Tales of the Abyss and Gaius in Tales of Xillia, whose Final Boss power-ups are marked by little more than a costume change. It's still played straight with Mohs in Abyss.
  • Bisley in Tales of Xillia 2 chooses to activate his Chromatus for the final battle, which manifests as a suit of black and red armor with black wings.
  • In Tales of Berseria, after beating both Artorius and Innominat in the first phase of the final fight, Artorius fuses with the latter. He becomes much taller, his hair comes loose, starts to float, and his sword turns into a massive One-Handed Zweihänder.
• In most every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that came out after Secret of the Ooze, Shredder would turn into Super Shredder. In the SNES version of Turtles in Time he would do this without you even fighting him as normal Shredder.
• The Tekken series has such boss characters as Ogre's transformed state True Ogre (which resembles Beast from Disney's Beauty And The Beast, but with a snake for a left arm). In 'The Devil Within' subgame from Tekken 5, Ogre goes through even more transforming states. While you don't fight them always (never Jinpachi, sometimes Jin) in their normal forms prior to their transformed forms, Devil Jin and Jinpachi from Tekken 5 are transformed characters. They are for most characters the second-to-last and final bosses. In both cases, they are infected with the Devil Gene, so if the Devil Gene is seen as the enemy, it is incarnating within two separate people. If Devil Jin defeats Jinpachi, he absorbs his power and transforms further, though he is not someone who can be played as or fought. Tekken 8 takes it further in its story mode when Kazuya defeats and absorbs Azazel, transforming into "True Devil Jin". It isn't until Jin gains his "Angel Jin" form that anyone is able to do anything other than stall Kazuya.
• Used in an interesting way in Temple of Elemental Evil. Towards the end of the game, your party can encounter a human adventurer deep inside one of the Elemental Planes. She explains that she came down there with her party, but they were killed and she barely escaped. She asks to go with you, and if allowed, you'll find she's a decent-ish sorceress. But if, in dialogue, your characters detect something amiss, they can confront her about it. At this point, she reveals that she's actually a half-succubus, and wants to come along with the party because she's bored. If you let her, she'll drop the pretense and switch back into her true form, making her a much more powerful companion.
• The Final Boss in Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven takes on different One-Winged Angel forms depending on the character chosen: when facing Rikimaru, Tenrai will summon previous Big Bad Lord Mei-Oh's power to empower himself into a darkness-based magical form; when facing Ayame, he will instead use the powers of the MacGuffin to transform into a snake-like form with poisonous powers.
• Happens to the T-1000 at the end of the SNES version of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. After a Ring-Out Boss fight where you shoot it to knock it into the steel vat like in the movie, the T-1000 emerges from the vat as a giant man-shaped blob that spits molten steel at you.
• Terminator Rampage ends with your confrontation with the latest Skynet AI, Meta-Node, who assimilates the machines in the base to become a gigantic, hovering robotic monster to fight you as a boss.
• Most bosses from Terraria go through this. An early example is the Eye of Cthulhu, which changes from "slow laser projectiles" to "fast ramming" about halfway through the fight.
• In Time Crisis 5, Robert Baxter's Humongous Mecha undergoes this in the final battle.
• In Tomato Adventure, King Avira becomes Abiwrath, a powerful robotic being with pacifier cannons after merging with the headless robot. This is the result of the robot merging with its now different head.
• Several bosses in the Tomb Raider series:
  • In Tomb Raider II, Bartoli turns into a dragon.
  • In Tomb Raider III, Dr. Willard is mutated into a grotesque human/spider hybrid creature.
  • In The Angel of Darkness, Boaz is shoved into a pod of some sort and mutated into a giant slime-spitting cockroach-like creature (then turns into a skeletal Clipped-Wing Angel).
  • Honourary mention goes to Natla from the original game, who fixes herself up as a two-winged version for the final showdown.
• A variation, in that it's not exactly a transformation and does not instantly follow the first battle: one PC-98 Touhou Project game features an early boss that fights you using a flower-themed tank. She returns in the game's extra stage with a much more intimidating Eldritch Abomination-looking tank consisting of a humongous eye with bat wings, tentacles and an angelic halo. This form is widely considered as the hardest extra stage boss in the series.
  • The same game (which happens to be Touhou Fuumaroku ~ the Story of Eastern Wonderland) has a similar concept with the final boss, Mima, but only if you beat the game without using any continues. She says she wasn't trying before and now she's serious. Oddly enough, she dies a lot faster in this form than in her normal form.
  • In Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom, Yuyuko turns into a completely invincible shadow of her being in the last stage of the Final Battle. The music of this battle is appropriately named "Border of Life".
  • In the very first game, Touhou Reiiden ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers, the final boss of the Makai route gets that kind of second form. It has a surprisingly low number of hit points compared to the first form, though.
    • That said, if you don't know that Sariel has a final form, you are likely to have blown all your bombs defeating its first form — and thus have no bombs, one life, and are fighting something with unknown attack patterns.
  • In Touhou Hyouibana ~ Antinomy of Common Flowers, Shion Yorigami, one half of the two main villains, turns into her Super Poverty God form after their trump card was overcome, and fights Reimu alone.
• In Trails in the Sky SC, at the climax of the story, Weissmann forcibly fuses with the Aureole and becomes Angel Weissmann, a gigantic angelic monster which acts as the final boss of the game.
• Nero Chaos in Tsukihime, when he finally realizes that he is getting his ass kicked but refuses to run away, eventually joins all the chaos left in his body into its ultimate destructive form, which isn't very well described except that it looks 'efficient.' The motion blurred picture given looks something like a worgen.
• Even a vertical shoot'em'up with space fighters can have this. In the final level of Tyrian, Vykromod, the alien assassin who's been stalking the player for some time, seems to turn into a giant floating face — a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
• Dr. Crayborn in Undercover Cops locks himself into one of his experimental machines and mutates into a giant monster for the Final Boss battle.
• Undertale:
  • The final boss of the Neutral route is Photoshop Flowey, a hideous monster form Flowey takes on after destroying King Asgore's soul and stealing the six human souls. In a world where bosses are usually depicted in monochrome, Photoshop Flowey is something akin to an Eldritch Abomination, an uncanny mix of colorful photo-realistic sprites situated around a monitor depicting either Flowey's hideously-grinning Slasher Smile or photorealistic sprites of a shouting human face. He fights in all sorts of bizarre ways, including bullet hell patterns, tentacle-like vines, flame-throwers, finger guns, bombs, and twisted versions of previous weapons found in the game (like the Toy Knife and the Ballet Shoes) .
  • Then there's the final boss of the Pacifist Route. Flowey steals the six human souls and the souls of nearly every monster in the underground, allowing him to return to his original form as Asriel Dreemur. Then he uses the power of the souls to become an aged-up, super-powered version of himself. And in the final stage of the battle, he goes one step further and becomes "The Absolute God of Hyperdeath", gaining ethereal wings and a more demonic appearance.
  • On the Genocide Route, Undyne, after being seemingly struck down by the player, gets back up in a flash of light as Undyne the Undying, her one-winged form. In addition to being referred to in the start of her fight as "the heroine" and gaining new, spike-clad armor, her new forms' arrow attacks become much faster and deadlier than her usual set prevalent in the other routes, and she gains more spear-based attack patterns. Her new speed, patterns and attacks, as well as the circumstance of being the first actual boss battle of the Genocide route, make her harder to fight than Photoshop Flowey.
• The normally body-less Big Bad of An Untitled Story takes a total of five forms^note four on Simple, starting from The Boss look-alike, a duo of flying rings, a walking mecha (and its head), and a disturbing pair of disturbing eyes.
• Dii in Utawarerumono; initially an actual angel-winged Bishōnen, he transforms into something best described as a black-armoured blue Godzilla. Hakuro does the same thing, only he has blue armor.
• The final boss of Vandal Hearts 2 has two One-Winged Angel forms; you fight his human form earlier in the game.
• Viking: Battle for Asgard: Hel pulls one of these in your final fight with her.
• Similarly, in Warcraft III, demon hunters like Illidan and mountain kings like Muradin can transform into bigger and monstrous version of themselves.
• In Wardner, the eponymous Final Boss takes a few licks in his evil wizard form, then transforms into a giant brown demon and starts spitting out a continuous maze of descending fireballs.
• In Warframe, the Grinner councilor Vay Hek was once a relatively normal Grineer mook boss who happened to have some better equipment and abilities. However, once he seriously pissed off the Tenno, he fled and began a regime of comprehensive combat augmentations. Now little more than a head mounted on a flying platform, he's a far more dangerous. In his Assassination mission, once "defeated", he will laugh before calling down a Humongous Mecha that his body hooks into.
• The Watcher grows wings to become this in Heart Of Ice. In the hardcore fight with him, a literal example of this trope occurs.
• Taken to an extreme in Wild ARMs 3, in which the final boss has a whopping ten forms. The first Wild ARMs game has a few of these. Several bosses will take another form after their apparent defeat, only to return bigger and badder than ever (so they claim), such as Mother, Ziekfried, and Boomerang (after his final death, you can fight his resurrected form in the arena). Alhazad doesn't transform, but he has always worn a white cloak covering his body, and he finally takes it off to reveal his true form. But the best example in this game that fits the trope perfectly is Zed — a bumbling wannabe boss who, in a side quest late in the game, finally loses his cool and turns into his true form, a huge grotesque monster, and becomes one of the toughest bosses in the game.
• The World Is Your Weapon: The Final Boss, Ameno Ohbari, has a second form once her first form is injured enough, which turns her lower body into a head with many hands. The first form cannot be captured and has no entry in the glossary, but the second form can be captured in a rematch.
• World of Warcraft has several bosses that transform during battles; Illidan Stormrage shifts into and out of his fully demonic Metamorphosis form (as opposed to his normal half-night elf, half demon form); similarily Leotheras the Blind shifts between being a Blood Elf and a Demon (until eventually splititng into two separate forms); similarily, several dragon bosses who start out in humanoid forms. Saidan Dathoran/Balnazaar and Baeren Westwind/Mal'ganis revert to their true demon forms mindway through battle, being previously disguised as humans.
  • Demonology Warlocks can learn the "Demon form" talent that transforms them into a demon for a short period, buffing their armour and spellcasting. In its later form, it also grants defensive bonuses that often make it overlap with Emergency Transformation.
    • In the Legion expansion, Demonology Warlocks lose this ability, as it is returned to its original owners (see the notes about Warcraft III below): Demon Hunters. Havoc-specced Demon Hunters transform into the traditional winged form, and Vengeance Demon Hunters transform into hulking armoured brutes, as is fitting for their role as tanks.
  • A few other bosses go through consecutive transformations throughout the fight. Thus, Eldritch Abomination C'thun starts out as a giant eye, before turning into a huge bloated body with a lot of teeth and eyes. Even more prominent with Yogg'saron, whose first form is humanoid, and second form is... well... his title is "The Beast of a Thousand Maws" and it fits him to a T.
  • The Black Knight is a regular NPC you fight in a mounted duel after a short (but annoying) quest chain. Being an agent of the Lich King, he comes back zombified as the final boss of the Trials of the Champion instance, resurrecting the announcer who he force choked earlier as a ghoul. You kill him, but you can't loot him. Because he's back again, only this time, he's a skeleton. And then he summons about 10 ghouls. And then you kill him. And then he comes back as a ghost, even more powerful than the ten ghouls of the previous phase. Which you kill. He finally stays dead — until tomorrow, when you do the instance again!
  • In the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon, we have Professor Putricide (who happens to be one massive Shout-Out to Professor Farnsworth). He imbibes some of his own concoctions during the fight, causing him to become extremely muscular and grow a pair of tentacles from his back a la Doctor Octopus.
    • Putricide is very much a parody of this trope. During his two transformations (it's a three-phase fight), he stuns the raid with "Tear Gas," runs to his lab bench, grabs a potion and declares "Hmm... I don't feel a thing. Whaaa?? Where'd those come from?" first, and "Tastes like... Cherry! Oh my! Excuse me!" the second time.
    • Also during the fight, one of the raiders has to do this and become a Mutated Abomination and eat the ooze around the room that the Professor throws around and forms puddles.
  • The trash (ladies of the night) before the Maiden of Virtue (see the irony?) transform into their true form (succubus or undead) when they hit half health.
  • In the Dragon Soul, the final raid of Cataclysm, Deathwing undergoes a transformation between his first and second encounter. At the end of the first, he crashes into the Maelstrom, and at the start of the second, emerges from it as a hideous monstrosity, complete with molten tentacles and appendages clinging to the platforms and attacking the players.
• Xenogears: Deus is first fought at a pivotal point during Disc 2 in a weakened state. After Fei defeated it, it regressed into an abyss to evolve itself until it regains its complete form for the endgame.
• The final bosses of the main Yo-kai Watch games tend to resort to this:
  • After being beaten the first time, Chairman McKraken from Yo-kai Watch manages to break the seals between the two worlds, absorbing their aura to become a crazy-looking head monster whose arms now function as his legs.
  • Likewise, Dame Dedtime from Yo-kai Watch 2 decides to absorb the positive thoughts of every human in Old Springsdale to become Dame Dreadful, a serpentine beast with a coiled body, four thin arms, black-feathered wings, and some thinner tentacle-like appendages she uses to steal your Yo-kai's stats.
  • Ghoulfather from Yo-kai Watch 3 also fights with a second form that drastically changes his appearance, using the power of the UFO Stone to become Don Spiracy, a monstrous version of himself with a second mouth which can spam various objects and creatures for each of his attacks. In the Blasters-T mode, he pulls if off again when it's revealed he survived, transforming into Goldfather (a golden dragon with treasure-like skin) by absorbing all of the Pyramid of Clu's gold.
  • Unlike the Shadowside anime, the final form of Overseer in Yo-kai Watch 4 mixes this with Bishōnen Line. He sheds a single tear, which proceeds to absorb his entire mass and clouds. After crashing to the ground, Overseer takes a humanoid shape, with black armor and his "clouds" serving as his cape. His sword is a more menacing version of the swords he uses in his first form.
  • Subverted with the final bosses of the Blasters Games: Whisped Cream (both of his versions) will grow several times his size and fight the Blasters in Excellent Tower, and Kanaendesu will just stop possessing Catleen to fight the heroes directly. Also, Norukasoruka from Yo-kai Three Kingdoms actually is a desperate Fusion Dance of Noruka and Soruka, and it's stated they will be unable to undo the fusion.
• Yoku's Island Express: As soon as Kickback reveals himself to be the God Slayer, he takes on a sinister clawed form. Then he takes on an even more monstrous form partway through the battle with him.
• In Ys
  • Garland in Wanderers and Oath does this, as well as becoming Large and in Charge.
  • In Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys, Arem transforms into a gigantic humanoid blob, after you defeat his normal and Super Mode forms. Actually more of a Clipped-Wing Angel.
  • In Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand, The Dragon, Dorman, and the Big Bad Sealed Evil in a Can, Jabir, mutate into grotesque monsters for their boss battles; Dorman becomes a bat-winged spiky-shouldered fire demon with Floating Limbs, called "Adeptos Dorman" in the Fan Translation, while Jabir becomes a six-winged Draconic Abomination.
  • In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, Ernst uses the power of the ark to become a "two-winged dark angel". After his defeat and subsequent return to normal form, he tries to draw more power from the Ark, but suffers a fatal Super-Power Meltdown and causes Napishtim to go haywire.
• Doctor Tongue in Zombies Ate My Neighbors quaffs his mad scientist potions and becomes, first, a giant spider, then a giant floating head of himself — that fires tongues!
• Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner features Anubis fusing with the super weapon Aumaan, becoming Aumaan Anubis which stripped the mech of most of its armor and barely held together by a small number of wires and gaining a white color scheme. In place of its wings were a massive set of hexagonal plates ripped from the arena. Its already absurd power is shot up to eleven thanks to being fused with a weapon capable of destroying the entire universe. Luckily, you get to fight it in Jehuty's own One-Winged Angel form it gets by absorbing regular Anubis's Metatron, which gives you the ability to one or two-hit kill any enemy and boss in the game.

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