History Main / EasyModeMockery

* In ''[[VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy Bullet Heaven 2]]'' the purchasable upgrades that make your game easier are called "cheats", and reduce your score. (The game also offers "handicaps" which do the opposite.)

* ''VideoGame/Wolfenstein3D'' and its sequel showed the protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz's face next to the difficulty selector, with increasingly fierce expressions as the difficulties got harder. The easiest mode, "Can I play, Daddy?", shows him wearing a baby's bonnet and sucking a pacifier. The second easiest mode isn't much kinder: "Please don't hurt me." It shows him looking scared.

** The only way to enable full episode selection in SNES ''Doom'' is to play on a high difficulty. If you pick "I'm too young to die", you will get brutally murdered and chucked back to the title screen with no explanation at all after beating the boss of "Phobos Anomaly", and won't get to continue on to the later episodes until you run through it again on higher difficulties.

* ''VideoGame/RiseOfTheTriad'' insults you for the two lowest difficulty settings. [[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels One of the possible names for the lowest one]] is "I am a chew toy" with a picture of a doll in a dog's mouth, while the second-lowest is "Will of iron, knees of jello," with a picture depicting a dollop of smelted iron on a cube of jello.

* ''VideoGame/SpookysJumpScareMansion'' introduced options in the HD Renovation to disable specimens or jumpscares. If you disable both, you get a ''really'' lame ending where a rather unamused Spooky "congratulates" you for your achievement of... going through 1000 empty rooms.

** In ''VideoGame/SonicFrontiers'', reaching the end of the game on Easy or Normal Mode (as you can switch difficulty at any time in the game up to the final boss) will skip the Bullet Hell part of the final battle with The End, which is quite extensive. It will just skip to the Quick Time Eventss. To get the full experience, you have to reach/beat the Supreme Titan on the hardest difficulty.

* You can't unlock a new plague type in ''[[VideoGame/{{PlagueInc}} Plague Inc.]]'' if you are playing on Casual Difficulty. In ''Evolved'' there is a "Pity Mode" option that allows you to do this, but its existence still suggests that you ''are'' meant to beat a plague type on at least Normal Difficulty to make progress.

* It's generally averted in the ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' franchise. Sure, you'll never get the top-ranking codenames on the end-of-game screens if you don't play on the harder difficulty levels, but that has no effect on the storyline progression. In fact, in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', there are certain special codenames that are only given based on certain achievements, which can be accomplished at any difficulty level, and in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', you have to play through the Plant level five times - once on each difficulty level (excluding the unlockable European Extreme level) - in order to [[GottaCatchEmAll collect enough dog tags]] to unlock the [[SuperNotDrowningSkills Wig A item]]. That includes the Easy and Very Easy modes.

** Barbatos, the BonusBoss of the [=PS2=] version of ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny'', if fought on the Simple difficulty, will immediately start the fight off with an upgraded version of his [[SwordBeam Genocide Braver]] called Cheap Eliminate, his quote for the attack being something that roughly translates to "You aren't qualified to fight me!". It covers the entire length of the screen in front of him, and is instant death for anyone who gets hit by it, save for those using certain invulnerability granting moves. He'll then use it immediately after ''every single attack'' he performs, but can be defeated if one can get close to him, where dodging it becomes a simple matter of dashing past him when he starts firing it and countering accordingly. The battle generally ends up becoming a solo job due to the AI being incapable of dodging the move consistently, however.

* In ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'', the door leading to BonusBoss Satan will not open if you play on Normal difficulty, as the characters are plainly ''too terrified to open it''. In Hard Mode, you can go through, ''and you'll see why everyone was so scared''.

* ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'': In the ''Octo Expansion'' DLC, there's a MercyMode that allows you to skip a station after getting a game over on it twice. However, if you do this, the Mem Cakes you receive for beating the level will be colorless, not actually show you the associated memories, and won't count towards [[spoiler:unlocking the BonusBoss.]] If you want to unlock all of the gear, you're going to have to go back and beat each station properly.

** In ''VideoGame/SonicFrontiers'', reaching the end of the game on Easy or Normal Mode (as you can switch difficulty at any time in the game up to the final boss) will skip the Bullet Hell part of the final battle with The End. it will just skip to the QTEs. To get the full experience, you have to reach/beat the Supreme Titan on the hardest difficulty.

* In the SAGE 2022 demo of ''Scratchin' Melodii'', selecting easy mode on a song shows you an icon of Melodii making a baby face at you and/or holding in their laughter, scrambles the lyrics to the songs beyond recognition, and since the only way to access easy mode is to enter quick play mode, disables the entire storyline.

** The trend is continued in ''Serious Sam 2'', pacifier and all.

* The number of laps on a race in ''VideoGame/FatalRacing'' is difficulty-dependent. Girlie mode has this below 5 laps for all of the first two cups. Two problems come from this: first, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the AI is NOT restricted by the acceleration and braking stats of the car they drive]] (which means the slowest car can pass you from 16th place on the first lap), and second, [[ThatOneLevel the 8th course of the first two cups]] is nigh-unwinnable on Girlie mode, and most of the other tracks are difficult to get decent placement on, requiring a near-perfect performance on all 8 tracks in championship mode to win. The final slap in the face? The third cup is only unlockable on Impossible or DEATH difficulties - by clearing BOTH cups before it on that difficulty!
** A similar issue occurs in ''VideoGame/{{Wipeout}} 2097/XL'' where the first track on the slowest speed setting is actually difficult in a slow ship because you only have slightly over a minute to overtake 11 opponents.

* In ''VideoGame/MarioKart7'', the top screen on the UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS shows Mario demonstrating how fast you'd expect to be going when you select a difficulty level. In 50cc mode, Mario drives really slowly.
** On top of this, the added beat to the music that plays when you have a big lead in a race doesn't play on the easy setting. However, you'll have to complete races on 50cc to unlock some kart parts and earn your star ranks.
*** {{Downplayed}} in the mod VideoGame/CTGP7: You can play at 100cc and select 50cc via the cc modifier plugin that comes with the download, but the extra beat that comes with being in first won't play if you select it from the menu.

** Smart Steering in ''VideoGame/MarioKart8 Deluxe'' disables the Ultra Mini-Turbo.

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1295151140080480700
%% Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread.

[[quoteright:240:[[VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/iwbtgemm.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:240:Above: Hard Difficulty.\\
Below: Medium Difficulty.\\
File Not Found: Easy Difficulty]]

* After you die five or six times, ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden Black'' offers you the "Ninja Dog" difficulty, which forces you to wear a girly purple ribbon and mocks you in the opening cutscene. And [[VideoGame/DeadOrAlive Ayane]] will insult you throughout the game when she helps.

Now a lot of these "mocking" endings are worth seeing at least once, and in a few cases (most notably ''Guitar Hero 2'' and ''Rocks The 80s''), you actually get rewards from the easiest difficulty you can't get any other way. However, this is cold comfort to those people who really cannot just "practice and get better", such as those with disabilities, and do not appreciate a ''game'' making fun of them for something that is entirely out of their control. Even a sizeable number of able gamers wouldn't appreciate how they have to forcefully repeat whole game content just to see the difficulty-locked content, stages, or endings. The increasing number of game developers acknowledging that there are gamers who are unable to play on harder difficulty settings along with the desire to appeal to more casual gamers has pushed such mockery into being a DiscreditedTrope.

Attempts to mitigate this trope varies from [[NintendoHard not having an easy difficulty altogether]], [[EasingIntoTheAdventure giving]] [[{{Antepiece}} various]] [[WarmUpBoss gameplay mechanics]] to ease the player before the inevitable DifficultySpike, or instead of locking story or stage, just add [[ScoringPoints score multipliers]], or [[CosmeticAward achievements]] and [[AndYourRewardIsClothes unlockable wearables]] exclusive to the completion of the harder difficulties.

* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey Nexus'' has an interesting twist on this trope where the punishment for picking the easiest difficulty, [[EasierThanEasy Picnic]], [[ThePunishmentIsTheCrime locks you to that difficulty for the rest of the game]]. This is to stop players from using Picnic to cheese through a troublesome part of the game and then turn the difficulty back up afterwads.

* [=MySQL=] specifies "[=--i-am-a-dummy=]" as a synonym for the "[=--safe-updates=]" option, which stops you if you try to run a query that would either delete or overwrite all the data in a table.

** Playing as Tails (who shares Sonic's campaign) in ''VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles'' locks you out of [[TrueFinalBoss Doomsday Zone]] by default, even if you collected all the Chaos and Super Emeralds[[note]]You can access the zone through the level select if debug mode is activated however[[/note]].

** In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosForNintendo3DSAndWiiU'', when adjusting the Intensity setting for Classic Mode, a little diorama suggests the difficulty and rewards of the setting. On Intensity 0.0-0.9 [[EasierThanEasy Effortless]] in the 3DS version, the background is a barren plain, the spirit guarding a bag of gold coins looks sad and tiny, and Mario scratches his head while looking down at it. Even the sound made by switching down to that Intensity sounds pathetic! The Wii U version has the same puny spirit and a similar wimpy sound effect on those low intensities, but the diorama shows the entrance to a cave, peaceful waterfall sounds play instead of crackling flames, and the gold hoard barely covers the bottom of the screen. As further mockery, you have to ''pay coins'' to play on this Intensity.

* In the SAGE 2022 demo of ''Scratchin' Melodii'' selecting easy mode on a song shows you an icon of Melodii making a baby face at you and/or holding in their laughter, scrambles the lyrics to the songs beyond recognition, and since the only way to access easy mode is to enter quick play mode, also disables the entire storyline.

* In ''VideoGame/Scratchin' Melodii'' 's SAGE 2022 demo, selecting easy mode on a song shows you an icon of Melodii making a baby face at you and/or holding in their laughter, scrambles the lyrics to the songs beyond recognition, and since the only way to access easy mode is to enter quick play mode, also disables the entire storyline.

* The Musou Mode ending on Easy difficulty of ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors 5'' concludes as follows: