Basic Trope: A strange thing shows up as a boss during a video game with little context or foreshadowing.
- Straight: The Grim Reaper shows up as a boss in a graveyard level of a platform game when previous enemies haven't been supernatural in the least.
- Exaggerated: The Grim Reaper shows up as a boss in a dessert level in a puzzle game.
- Downplayed: A NPC mentions seeing The Grim Reaper wandering the graveyard level, but it's not mentioned again after you beat it.
- Justified:
- The Big Bad of the game has the power to summon anything that the player character fears.
- The Grim Reaper has been pulling strings to make sure no one knows he is in the graveyard.
- Inverted:
- You play as the Grim Reaper after spending time as an adorable cartoon animal.
- In a way, The Unfought. A threat that is built up as a potential boss, but is never fought at all.
- You spend the entire game fighting off all kinds of out-of-this-world enemies such as monsters, zombies, mutants, robots, and after a boss battle against a Mutated Zombie Alien Robot monster, you brace yourself for the Final Boss... a human.
- You take on Lord Evulz as a bunch of minor characters who have nothing to do with the main heroes at all and were only mentioned, maybe several hours back during the early game.
- 11th-Hour Superpower
- Subverted:
- The Grim Reaper is revealed to be the One-Winged Angel form of the game's Big Bad.
- The Grim Reaper turns out to be an ordinary bad guy in disguise.
- The Grim Reaper wasn't there for you but one of the recently deceased.
- The Grim Reaper is merely out shopping.
- Double Subverted:
- But on the next to final level, you meet the real Grim Reaper.
- Unless you annoy him enough. Then he'll 'fight' you simply to Off The Annoyance.note
- Parodied:
- The Grim Reaper lampshades his entrance by saying "I am the Grim Reaper from nowhere."
- The player character is knocked insensate by a bowl of petunias.
- The Grim Reaper shows up as the boss in a setting where you wouldn't expect to see him, such as a soap opera. He even sings a few verses that contains "I came from no where to fight you as a boss, I gain nothing from your loss" in it.
- The Grim Reaper apologizes for ending up in the wrong game.
- When the Player Character is fighting rats in a basement at the start of a game, suddenly an Eldritch Abomination comes of nowhere, trying to end the game early.
- Zig Zagged: The Grim Reaper shows up at the end of the game without warning, only for it to be a Hopeless Boss Fight Disc-One Final Boss. The second disc integrates the Grim Reaper into the plot and sets him up as the Big Bad only for an Eldritch Abomination to show up just before the big fight, eat the Grim Reaper, and become the actual Final Boss.
- Averted: All of the bosses fit into the plot.
- Enforced:
- "This game has pieces of an artifact for the players to collect — so the Grim Reaper would be a good boss for the game."
- The grim reaper was an Orphaned Reference. Originally there was going to be a twist that Bob was Dead All Along however that lead to too many plot-holes and was incongruous with the tone so it was cut out. The Grim Reaper was still a good boss fight so he was left inside without the context.
- The Grim Reaper is a leftover stock Boss from early development that can still be triggered if you perform a few specific glitches.note
- The developers know that there might still be some Sequence Breaking bugs left, so set the Grim Reaper as an Intentionally Unwinnable default boss, allowing them to use players complaining about him as a way to identify and fix said bugs.
- Lampshaded: "Where did that guy come from?"
- Invoked: The Big Bad summons the Grim Reaper to defeat the heroes.
- Exploited: The heroes have the Big Bad cornered when suddenly the Grim Reaper appears out of nowhere. The Big Bad comments on his luck and takes the opportunity to escape.
- Defied: The player character breaks the fourth wall and demands the game use a logical boss.
- Discussed: "Hey, do you remember the Grim Reaper in the desert?" "Yeah, where did he come from?"
- Conversed: "What's the Grim Reaper doing here? I thought this game was about cute little bunnies."
- Played For Drama: The fact that the Grim Reaper showed up in an otherwise grounded, realistic setting is just as WTF-inducing for the characters as it is for the players. It's treated just as seriously as it would be in real life, with the heroes (and even the villains!) shown to have serious trouble coping with the revelation that he exists and are left wondering what else is out there that none of them knew existed. It may or may not be the first indication that there's something seriously wrong with the world the characters live in, but either way, Nothing Is the Same Anymore.
- Deconstructed: The Grim Reaper's appearance causes the people of the world to live in constant fear that he — or another Giant Space Flea — will pop up out of nowhere and attack them. And with no way to anticipate what kind of threat could come out of nowhere, there's no way to even try to prepare for it, which doesn't help assuage fears at all.
- Reconstructed: At least one person takes all the necessary steps for when the Grim Reaper pops up.
- Played For Laughs: The Grim Reaper showing up causes everyone present to hilariously lose their shit. Stoic characters freak out, everyone is going "WHAT THE FUCK?!" while some of those present decide to exit the situation via the nearest wall, window, or cliff and the scene is milked for as much comedy - black or otherwise - as possible.
- After defeating Lord Evulz the true final boss shows up - an IRS agent upset about how the heroes haven't been paying any taxes on the obscene amount of wealth they have earned and churned through over the course of the game.
Hey, Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, can you do TV Tropes a favor and please return to your main page?
