I believe the game Growl, which provides the page image, is the trope namer. Do not think the name was actually used in the game however.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
I had heard the Trope Namer was actually Yu Yevon, from Final Fantasy X ...was I misled?
The trope name sounds like the name of some obscure B-Movie's monster.
I thought the Trope Namer is the Geist Queen of Wolfenstein (2009) - she looks kind of like a giant flea and besides its underlings appearing when you enter the Veil, there's nothing indicating she's going to appear.
Humankind is like a train. No matter how powerful the locomotive is, it can only travel as fast as its slowest car allows it to.
MagBas
- Castlevania Aria of Sorrow's Good Ending. Soma Cruz decides to fight the force of Chaos trying to subvert him. Its form? Is it Dracula? Death? No it's a snake...thing with four gems shooting at you. And um, three statues? We call it "the last boss Contra forgot."
This boss is the force of chaos trying subvert Soma, in other words is plot important.
- Another example is Renon, the demon salesman from Castlevania 64. If you buy too many things off of him, he will show up towards the end and say your soul is forfeit, and then reveal his nasty true form to claim it. The fight isn't very difficult as he has the same style as Death, right down to the demon fish (?), but not once is this encounter ever commented on.
As noted, you already needs have found (and buyed) of Renon to this fight.
- If you think about it, the Exor and Smithy himself seemed like a giant space flea from nowhere. Considering he didn't care about the wish granting capabilities of the stars and only two of his lackies (well, two parties), actually cared about obtaining them.
The Big Bad with the existence hinted in the first cutscene?
- Lavos is a literal Giant Space Flea from Nowhere. It is a giant parasitic monster from outer space (that's the Giant Space Flea part), and its origins are completely unknown other than it crashing into the planet millions of years ago. That said, Lavos actually is relevant to the plot.
As noted, plot relevant.
- Surt of Valkyrie Profile didn't really have any build-up. The game more or less assumes you know Norse Mythology and knew who he was.
- The entire game involves recruiting soldiers to fight Surt's forces. He doesn't come out of nowhere, he just isn't mentioned by name very often. He's the leader of the enemy forces, so he doesn't come out of nowhere. It is more a case that Lenneth just never asked what his name was.
Perfect counter-edit.
- The Biolizard from Sonic Adventure 2 could half-count as a GSFFN. Some earlier context mentions a prototype ultimate life-form, but never actually refers to what it is (though all is explained after the battle). Imagine running through a space station to turn off a giant death-ray that was on a timer to destroy the world in an hour, reaching the control room, than seeing a giant orange lizard on life-support appear in a flash of light 3 feet in front of you. Then, once you fight it, you find out about one-tenth of the information needed to understand its existence, and it teleports away so that you can fight it while it's mixed with the previously mentioned death ray.
- It did appear briefly in the Dark Side story. Look closely at the picture Rouge finds when she's examining the data from Project Shadow.
As noted, the existence of a "prototype ultimate life force" was mentioned.
Hide / Show Replies
The examples from Binding of Isaac are all bad and written by someone who clearly didn't understand any of the subtext of the game. Quick breakdown: "The Binding of Isaac: Some of the True Final Bosses fall into this category. While the final fight against Mom makes sense, as does Mom's Heart in The Womb to an extent, the latter is eventually replaced by It Lives, which makes less sense." You're fighting Isaac in the womb, which is a big theme of the entire game. Isaac hates himself due to religion, and most of the bosses are just dark reflections of himself. He believes he is impure and deserves to die, so of course one of the bosses is himself. "The Halloween update adds Sheol and Satan, which make some degree of sense, but then Wrath of the Lamb adds two more space fleas: Isaac himself and Joke Character ???" Same issue. Isaac as a boss continues down the theme of self hatred established in numerous scenes shown while descending and through items like the Chest and pretty fly. ??? or Blue Baby is Isaac after he suffocates inside the chest, something you'd only know after you actually beat the game a few times, but anyone who quit before getting 10 wins (a really, really low bar for skill, and something you would obviously manage well before reaching ???) would be confused. The fact that this boss takes place IN the chest makes it even more obvious this isn't a giant space flea. "The first new Final Boss of Rebirth is a space flea as well. Apparently the next logical step after fighting Satan is to fight The Lamb, some random demon found in the Dark Room. And after him, at the very VERY end we get Mega Satan. It's just Satan again for no given reason." If you're not dumb and you bothered to pay attention when you fought the bosses, you fight Gabriel and Uriel, two angels explicitly mentioned in the bible. Angels, to get keys— to what? Golden gates. Adding in that The Lamb is a name used for Jesus in the bible, we can infer that Mega Satan is actually God. In fact, to reach Mega Satan, you have to enter God Rooms at least twice and avoid making deals with the devil. This fits nicely in with the main theme of Isaac as well, which is that 'religion is bad and just as evil'.
I feel that the Fallout 4 example doesnt quite qualify for this trope. Deathclaws are not exactly an unheard of enemy in the Fallout games, and this one is far from the only one you'll ever encounter. It's more of a Wake-Up Call Boss or Boss in Mook Clothing than anything.
Edited by danime91
Does a Space Flea have to also be a BLAM? The laconic mentions that it is never mentioned or given context "before." It mentions nothing about any follow-up context. Could a Space Flea be a twist-ending sort of deal, like the page image suggests? Could it possibly be a turning point in the middle of the game (i.e. Cosmic Horror Reveal's Knight of Cerebus)?
If not, then we need to clarify.
I was wondering, does a boss that comes out of nowhere, but is revealed to have played a critical role in the plot a GSFFN? Like for example, Chaos from Final Fantasy: The 4 heroes of Light. He had no build-up throughout the game. There was no clear indication that there even was someone pulling the strings behind the bad events of the game. And its not until the end that you learn he was behind everything, which technically asserts his place in the plot, but doesn't excuse the fact there was no build-up or indication that there even was a mastermind.
Hide / Show Replies
That seems like a subversion of the trope.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
No longer a forum herald
Is this really a subtrope of Lone Wolf Boss? It sounds, from the descriptions of this and the other tropes, to be more of a subtrope of True Final Boss.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
I noticed there is no mention of Diablo II. Isn't the endboss of Act 2 a perfect example? All the bosses of other acts are at least mentioned and somehow tied in to the story. At the end of Act II,which you spend chasing Diablo to stop him from releasing Baal, you end up...facing some giant larva-like demon with frost aura, which you had absolutely no knowledge of.
Hide / Show Replies
And,I forgot to add - he is not mentioned at all after you beat him.
Omega Overlord. Or superjwren329. Either or.
...On the subject of the current image and Growl, it's very accurate. But in the actual Genesis/Mega-Drive port...well, it actually IS a giant zombie-like flea. As seen here
◊ and here.
◊
On the Super Mario RPG example, would Cluex count? It seems sort of obvious for him not to be there, so I'm not sure if he was legitimately missed or left out on purpose. That boss was out of nowhere when you fough him.
MagBas
- Dark Force, the final boss of Phantasy Star, was initially one of these, but was retconned into having an expanded role in the Phantasy Star mythos in later games. You can say that he "graduated" from Space Flea status, but this would lead into a different trope entirely.
Dark Force has really blatant foreshadowing(as a nightmare in the exact place of the Final Dungeon)
I still maintain that Random Boss would really be a better name for this trope.
MagBas
Clean-up time!
- Arguably Zemus himself too—The Reveal that Golbez was just Brainwashed and Crazy was not foreshadowed very well, if at all, and the revelation comes just before the second-to-last dungeon.
...he is the reason to the heroes go to the final dungeon.
- Guardians of the Hood features repeated appearances of the Big Bad, a suit clad villain named appropriately named "Mr. Big", in short segments before each level where he taunts you about the gang you will fight in the next level. In the last level, you fight through a boardwalk carnival until you reach a fun house where you fight, in quick succession, a laundry list of hulked up versions of the game's female Mooks, before Mr. Big himself reveals himself to be a woman, and a superpowered dominatrix to boot.
This sound more as one example of Samus Is a Girl or other similar tropes-you already know that you will fight Mr.Big, after all.
- Shining Force II: The Kraken. There might have been passing mention of a sea monster, but this fight occurs in a river. It's at a junction in said river, and the fight comes out of nowhere. It doesn't hurt that this fight is so much harder than anything before or afterwards, so much so that it's probably one of the few cases of Sequence Breaking by the AI of a video game. If the Big Bad actually sent the Kraken or something, it's one of the few times a video game villain actually did something fairly logical with their immense power (i.e. blitzing the heroes before they can level up).
- As a knowledgeable and experienced gamer, I knew the very INSTANT one of the townsfolk said something like "there's a giant monster in the river" that I was going to have to fight it. Part of the reason that it's so hard, though, is because the game kind of encourages you to go in two different directions at this point. There's the ruins, giving you another couple battles to level, or accidentally bumping into the Kraken.
As the reply noted.
- Invoked in-story and Played for Drama in Final Fantasy VII when Sephiroth storms the Shinra building. Nobody was expecting it, and Cloud was especially shocked that it happened. Even crueller when you realise that Cloud had physically killed him beforehand. Weirdly enough, Cloud himself fits the bill from Sephiroth's perspective when you consider how he came out of the blue and killed him the first time around in Nibelhiem.
This is not one Boss Battle.
Does Grandmaster Nimzo really count? He's mentioned by NP Cs plenty of times, and it's blatantly obvious that Ladja isn't the true mastermind of the Order.
Hide / Show Replies
Really, not counts.
- DQV has Grandmaster Nimzo (Mildrath in Japan), whose world is a dull Scrappy Level and who takes away from the satisfaction of defeating the really hateable earlier villains (although at least the game hints at his existence before insisting that he has to die right now).
- The fact that the previous Big Bad was the High Priest of the Religion of Evil might have explained it somewhat. Also, there is the fact that it's made cool when you consider that you're basically invading Hell, killing Satan, and getting revenge on the being who orchestrated every horrible thing that happened to your family the whole time.
- DQV has Grandmaster Nimzo (Mildrath in Japan), whose world is a dull Scrappy Level and who takes away from the satisfaction of defeating the really hateable earlier villains (although at least the game hints at his existence before insisting that he has to die right now).
Considering the laaarge time between the reveal of his existance and the fact that to fight he you have that visit a world so large when the original Dragon Quest where his existence is regularly mentioned, this guy also not counts.
- DQIII drops Zoma on you in a Not so Fast, Bucko! that, admittedly, turns pretty awesome but isn't foreshadowed even a tiny bit. Unless you visit an easily-missable cave with a hole that leads to the "Dark World," and even then only if you remember the Law of Conservation of Detail.
- The only games which really avoid this are IV VII and VIII, who have villains who get some build up well in advance (DQVIII is particularly good about it, having him dog your steps from the very start of the game, even if you don't know it at first.)
Is there a trope namer for this page, or is this just a word salad title?
Hide / Show Replies