Suspicious Videogame Generosity

"Well, what have we got here? A pile o' bones, and a pile o' guns. Subtle they ain't."

- Let's Play Trespasser: Level 8

In a well-paced game, health packs and ammo cartridges can feel like gifts from the Heavens. They're granted with care, and by the time you come across a little box with a red cross painted on its side, you are likely to make good use of it.

So why does an experienced gamer start sweating when he comes across a room full of medical supplies, armor, ammo and weapons? Why is he suspicious of this bounty? Because the gamer's quite Genre Savvy, and he knows what this generosity entails. In the next room, he's going to need all of this, as he's about to get his ass kicked by a horrific Eldritch Abomination with twenty thousand Hit Points and whose very existence will cause his optic nerves to shrivel and die. Have fun!

The game designers are being nice and giving you a chance to gear up and heal up before The Unpronounceable One eviscerates you and sticks your head over his mantle. Also prevents the player from having to backtrack through the dungeon to heal themselves up to full. Bonus Dungeons tend not to feature these before the Bonus Boss, as they're intended to be extra challenging. Also not necessarily limited to Boss Battles, Suspicious Videogame Generosity may occur before the Death Course or any other noticeably difficult segment. If a free, re-spawning extra life appears right after a checkpoint, chances are the next segment isn't going to be pretty.

More concisely coined by Anthony Burch as "goreshadowing."

An Acceptable Break From Reality. Compare After Boss Recovery, for when the fight's over, and Foreboding Architecture, for when you can predict based on the level design. Often overlaps with Healing Checkpoint, when a Save Point is included.

Subtrope of Blatant Item Placement

Action Adventure

 * Loved by the Zelda games
 * In various games, there are generally small chambers full to the brim of pots containing healing/revival items or even fairies located right next to boss rooms. Other than healing items, the pots might also hold something useful for defeating the boss--if you see Bombchus, you're gonna have to use 'em. Since boss rooms are marked on the map (and have huge, ominous doors), this isn't so much "suspicious" as "getting you ready for a fair fight"--however, mini-bosses aren't so marked, so if you find a fairy next to an otherwise nondescript door, get ready for a tussle.
 * The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword contains a particularly Egregious example: In the Shipyard, an area with just 2 enemies, after going through what basically amounts to a minigame, you suddenly find a Save Point in front of seemingly nondescript room. So naturally, you get suspicious. So you go through the door and surprise!
 * Later 3D Zelda games gave you a fairy just before the Boss Room. In Twilight Princess, this is the only place where you can find fairies until you've completed a Sidequest. Fortunately, the Water Temple's boss room is relatively easy to access once you've beat the dungeon.
 * The Onimusha games have a tendency to throw herbs and medicine at you just before pitting you up against a boss.
 * Castlevania
 * In the 2D games, the map is very blatant about this -- a dead end with a Save Room on one side, and... a giant glowing boss door on the other.
 * The older games did this, too: you'd usually find a pot roast along with a subweapon useful for the upcoming encounter. The most extreme example is before the final boss fight in Super Castlevania 4: if you jump off into space before ascending the steps to Dracula's room, you'll find an invisible platform that gives you two whip upgrades, 99 hearts, the cross (the best subweapon, bar none), and the two items that let you throw more than one item in a row. Considering how difficult Drac is, you'll need it.
 * Luigis Mansion will often have a powerful healing item before the boss of each chapter.
 * In Cave Story, a secret room  is available right before fighting the final bosses. They also had the healing machines and save points before some bosses.
 * Uncharted Drakes Fortune is pretty generous with ammo placement and cover to hide behind throughout the game, but uses this trope a few times:
 * In Chapter 17 (the chapter where ), you're standing in a large, empty room that is stuffed to the gills with guns and ammo...because you're really gonna need it.
 * The same thing happens in Chapter 20 in the Nazi base.
 * A minor case in the sequel: at one point you're trapped in an ice chamber and find a WWII-era Nazi pistol on a long dead corpse during a mission where the game told the player they had no combat to worry about. Ostensibly, it's to shoot out some icicles blocking your way. However, as anyone who's played the first game would know, you're about to deal with something nasty.
 * Alundra and its sequel also make very heavy use of this trope. Save point, magic recharge and health recharge all in one place? Oh boy, you better get ready for some nightmare-spawned horror from out of this world. (Quite literally too, more often than not!)
 * After killing what you assume to be the boss of the final dungeon in StarTropics 2, you're thrown into a series of rooms filled with health powerups and medicine. Directly following is a marathon fight against every single boss in the game, directly followed by the final boss, who has two forms to boot. Ow.
 * The two versions of Castlevania for the Nintendo 64 has Reynard, a teleporting merchant who is basically your best ally in the game, selling you all sorts of awesomeness to help defeat the monsters. Only problem is,.
 * Severance: Blade of Darkness does this in the final area of the game. One of the countless Dark Knights you'll be slaughtering will drop a key to the castle's armory. The armory contains the best weapons and armor for all four characters. However, all of these items can be found in earlier levels with the exception of the Barbarian who can ONLY find his ultimate weapon in the final stage.

Action Game

 * In the Ninja Gaiden remake on the Xbox, if there is a crate of infinite arrows, there is at best a situation that requires you to use them, and at worst, a boss that can only be defeated by them. Interestingly, one of the reasons this game is Nintendo Hard is that they don't leave save points or items lying around right outside the boss room. True, the path to the fight is typically fairly easy, and you'll come to know it well, but count how many times you actually expect it when a boss fight to happen on your first playthrough.
 * In Crazy Flasher 2, you enter a small room with ammo all over the ground and several boxes containing health packs... and in the next room, you enter a pitched battle with a LOT of tough enemies.
 * Prototype has this in a mission where you have to hold off waves of infected mobs for a few minutes while Alex lacks most of his powers. A rocket launcher, grenade launcher, machine gun, and assault rifle are conveniently laid in front of you once you resume control of Alex.
 * There are also a couple of missions in which you have to escort special plot-related military hardware in order to, well, advance the plot. Abandoned military vehicles, which are in tip-top operating status, are conveniently placed within reach so as to offer you a chance of less grief throughout the mission.

Adventure Game

 * The final Rite in Quest for Glory V culminates in a battle right in the villain's storeroom, and wouldn't you know it, he succeeds in lifting the seal on the Dragon of Doom before you can stop him. Played with in that everything is locked behind a row of booby-trapped doors, requiring the player to work for it.
 * "Work for it", indeed. Either you can pick the locks during the fight, which leaves you open to attack from Goons (strong, Ogre-like monsters) or you can pick them after the Dragon has been released, at which point you're on a timer to instant death, and each lock you open takes a chunk off the timer.
 * After needing to complete difficult puzzles in Trace Memory to get anywhere, one of the last rooms is full of goodies, and only two very simple puzzles. Enough to tense this player up for a Genre Shift.

First Person Shooter

 * Bioshock
 * Right before the last boss, you find a room with one of every kind of vending machine/powerup station in the game. It's almost like the city planners knew there would someday be an epic confrontation one room over.
 * At one point in the Medical Pavilion, you'll come across a room in which a you find your first shotgun. And, oh look, the game was generous enough to sprinkle some ammo around it. That was nice. So, of course, you pick up your new found weapon with enough ammo to last a frugal player a while.
 * It's also amusingly subverted when you confront
 * And in the sequel, if there's a corpse for your Little Sister to harvest from, you can bet it will have at least one handy security or environmental measure in the area to help you fend off the Splicer hordes.
 * Serious Sam plays it very straight, even with the occasional Lampshade Hanging, such as Sam expecting an immediate ambush upon reaching a dead end full of good items.
 * Made even more blatant in Serious Sam 3: BFE. Whenever the player encounters a crate of C4, it's usually a sign there will be Khnum nearby, as they only take damage from high explosives.
 * It's fairly easy to pinpoint the locations of the bosses in any Metroid Prime game by just looking on the map and finding save stations (which in some games also recharge your health) that are next to unusually large rooms. The 2D games (the ones with maps, anyway) get to the point and just label where bosses are on the map.
 * Metroid: Other M features one hell of an example in the room immediately preceding the Ridley battle. This room gives you an Energy Tank and an Accel Charge. It's the only room during the main run of the game where you can find multiple power ups, and it's a small room and both power ups are very easy to find. Not suspicious at all...
 * Not as "suspicious" (since it happens only after it's clear what you're up against), but the cutscene preceding the fight gives you access to both the Super Missiles and the Plasma Beam.
 * Halo follows this trope throughout the series.
 * Right before the final conflict in the engine room of the first game, Cortana reminds you that there's a huge, well-stocked armory station right down the hallway. What she doesn't mention is the active camouflaged Flood Warriors lurking inside.
 * Finding a rocket launcher or a fuel rod gun generally indicates an encounter with either enemy vehicles or Hunters up ahead.
 * Halo 2 has a level in which you are confronted by Wraiths on both sides. Immediately after that you have a run with: One Fuel Rod Gun, one Rocket Launcher, four Brute Shots, about twenty grenades, two super-powered Plasma Rifles, two super-powered Beam Rifles, two Shotguns, and those Carbine things... in one room. With all the damn generosity, you'd think you're taking on Death. Or a god. Or a death god. Logically, all of these should be utilized against the Wraiths in the area before it. Thanks for that, Bungie.
 * Same for Halo: Reach in some levels. Right before you encounter your first Wraiths in the second mission, you are given a Target Locator. At the beginning of the level, there's a sniper rifle that you will definitely need on Legendary. The comms array building has a rocket launcher that can be used to take out the nearby Revenant. In Tip of the Spear, otherwise a Drought Level of Doom, you get a Plasma Launcher shortly before facing a pair of Hunters and a Wraith. And so on...
 * Another Bungie example is Marathon, which will do this often with health upgrades and ammo. A new gun, lots of refills, AND a triple boost to your health? SWEET! Thanks so much, man! ...Why are the doors locked?
 * Half-Life 2
 * If you see rockets, there will be a gunship (or worse, a strider). Lampshaded in Concerned. This may be linked to the fact that you physically can't destroy the gunship if there are no rockets around: They need at least three direct hits on easy, five on normal and seven(!) on hard, and you can only carry three.
 * Similarly, if you are ever given auto-turrets to set up, it means you are about to be swarmed by Combine or antlions.
 * After you defeat the hunter-chopper, you encounter a Combine base manned by a few metrocops, but packed to the brim with grenades, ammo, and health. Of course, after this the next combat situation you encounter is Ravenholm, where ammo is scarce and zombies are everywhere.
 * There's generosity of a different kind at work there, too: between the hunter-chopper battle and Ravenholm you get the Gravity Gun. Not only is it possible to complete Ravenholm using nothing but the Gravity Gun, you get an achievement for doing so. Two achievements, if you count being able to go without sleep for the next few days.
 * Your protective suit has 100 points of armour when fully charged, and the wall chargers can give you 75 points (on easy). When you make it into the Citadel at the end of the game, the wall charger charges you up to 200 points. Uh-oh.
 * Doom 2 plays it straight.
 * In the last level, you start in a room filled with a Mega Sphere and every single weapon available in the game.
 * Doom's E2M8, too, giving you four Soul Spheres and a massive amount of every ammo type you're certain to have at that point. Not so much "generous", though, as, unless if you're really fast, you can only safely grab items from one of the four rooms they're placed in without alerting the Cyberdemon.
 * In Doom, especially custom levels, cyberdemon battles are almost always preceded by you finding a massive supply of rockets and a rocket launcher.
 * Heretic's Shadow of the Serpent Riders ends with E5M8, Field of Judgement, where you're given all the weapons (other than the Firemace), a good load of ammo, one of pretty much every item in the game and a full load of big Phoenix Rod spheres at the center of the arena. Now why would they give you this generous loadout? You're going to need it all against the eight fucking Maulotaurs that the game throws at you for the final battle.
 * Doom 3 got absurd with it.
 * Every time you spotted ammo or health just laying somewhere, you could bet that somewhere behind you a door would slide open and something horrifying would shamble out and make you waste that newly-acquired health or ammo. Often, the monsters were scripted to show up if and only if you get the goods. The best strategy for saving ammo is not picking it up.
 * The last level of the game starts you off in a room with more gear than you could possibly carry! Unfortunately, it's mostly useless, because the only enemies these things will work on in the level are Maggots and Imps, handled easily enough with either the Shotgun or Chainsaw, and which you need to kill in order to charge up the Soul Cube, the only weapon that will work against the final boss.
 * One level (unsure if in the retail game or in Ro E, or in a mod...) played with this trope; you'd find a whole lot of goodies, and of course you'd tense up and expect the very gates to hell to open once you picked up all the stuff. Instead... nothing. So you gingerly keep going on, and after you turn a corner, then eleventy million monsters come forth and attack you. Doom was never as scary as in that point.
 * Lampshaded in Serious Sam: when walking into a dead end full of health and ammo, Sam notes that he smells an ambush. Of course, most of the powerups in Serious Sam are suspiciously generous as enemies frequently teleport in when Sam gets near them -- the tiny health pills and armor shards trigger small ambushes there.
 * Whenever you see large amounts of ammo, healthpacks, armor and treasure in Will Rock, prepare for a fierce battle.
 * Medal of Honor has a rather laughable variant. If you see a mounted machine gun, you would expect a horde of enemies to come pouring out and attack when you use it. They do. But they're scripted to only come out when you use the gun... so if you walk past it, nothing.
 * Jedi Academy did this as well. There are blaster turrets set up twice on Hoth and once on Vjun. If you take control of them, the game spawns a horde of snowtroopers, an AT-ST, or 8 Hazard Troopers, depending on the turret. If you ignore them (especially likely on Vjun, given the only enemies in that area were trying to use that turret on you a second before), nothing happens.
 * Blood 2 also did this one time: the first invisibility pickup in the game is in a small room. If you go in and pick it up, a soul drudge spawns in the doorway (and promptly ignores you because of said invisibility). Leave the pickup alone and he won't spawn.
 * Most of the bosses in Wolfenstein 3D had a nearby room (usually secret, but not always) packed to the gills with health and ammo. And some of the individual levels. This caused most fun when the rooms were too packed, because the game's engine could only render so many objects at a time - and if there were too many in view, some would disappear. Including, potentially, the boss. (E4M10 and E6M9 are the best places to go to see this in action.)
 * In the original Far Cry, Jack gets access to an armory right after he defeats the supposed "final" boss, Krieger, and is heading to kill (the man who sold him out). Right after you visit this armory, you get locked into an arena with several armor-plated mutated creatures who all wield rocket and grenade launchers. Hope you stocked up.
 * Left 4 Dead:
 * Hold the Line sequences feature health, ammo, and sometimes a minigun. Justified in that the areas you hold off at are previously barricaded up by other survivors trying to hold out, or used as military extraction points, and thus were intentionally fortified and stocked with supplies at some point before you got there.
 * The miniguns are of limited use, though: they are fixed in place with limited field of view that often doesn't cover more than half the entry points, and are in highly exposed places. Usually takes the cooperation and cover of the entire team to give the minigun any tactical significance. It's often a more sound idea for the team to just back into a corner together.
 * The game does, however, manage to avert this trope for the most part. Since everything in the game (hordes, tanks, other specials, weapons, health items, explosives, even the "inbetween hordes" regular infected) is somewhat randomized and somewhat based on how well the player is doing (i.e., if you're doing good, you get less items, and have a greater chance of encountering Tanks and other Special Infected), large caches of weapons or items can just as often be indicative of a boss as they can an empty room. Even the "preset" Hold the Line hordes have extreme variability from one play to the next, making gauging the pacing of the game based on item handout all but impossible.
 * The sequel plays this trope a bit more straight for the finale in "The Parish." Instead of the usual 4 med kits and 3 tier 2 weapons, you get 8 med kits and every possible tier 2 weapon, along with (randomized) pain pills, adrenaline shots, pipe bombs, molotovs, and sometimes even more first aid--in addition to several spots along the way with pills, new guns, and so on. The survivors need this because the finale involves dashing across a half-destroyed bridge jammed by abandoned cars. And infinite zombies.
 * One of the reasons the "Cold Stream" finale is hard is because it doesn't provide generous amounts of gear before its finale, which is an even harder uphill dash. Hopefully this will be amended before the map leaves beta-testing.
 * And let's not even talk about user-made campaigns. The first time most players walk into the supply room in the finale of "Questionable Ethics," you can the thunk over VoIP of their jaws hitting their desks: they've just seen a room that has four of everything, from pills to chainsaws. Then you hear the gears start spinning in their heads: "I've just survived Malevolent Architecture and Everything Trying To Kill Me, with infected literally falling from the ceiling. So far they've been doling out items--we're lucky to get a third of the health items we need, and we've found maybe five Tier 2 weapons total. But if they're giving us this room, what the hell's in the finale...?" Then you hear them scream.
 * Quake IV plays this trope dead straight. In the final level there is a long walkway going from the elevator where you start to the chamber with the boss and it is laden with health, armour and ammo for every gun you have.
 * Towards the end of the Nexus Hub level, there is a large room with a ridiculously large amount of ammo and health pick-ups in one corner. Enough to fully replenish your health and weapons, in fact. Shortly after, you discover some more pickups, including armour. In the very next room, you have to fight not just one, but two Stream Protectors (aka giant cybernetic spider-like monsters of doom) who not only pack flamethrowers, but homing rocket launchers as well. It gets worse when, upon their defeat,.
 * One of the later stages also feature a big room with health, armour, and ammo scattered all over it. Right when you lick your lips and charge forth to loot the place, the doors lock and hard-to-kill monsters (Stream Protectors are only the first wave in this room) start spawning in waves. Lots of them.
 * Vivisector: Beast Inside was particularly cruel about this; found a large cache of health and ammo out in the middle of a clearing where you can't possibly not see the enemy coming a mile away? Expect to not only be ambushed by a bunch of Mooks teleporting in from nowhere, but also to be sealed up in the clearing by a convenient cage the moment you step near the bounty.
 * Turok 2 pushes this trope to its logical extreme: the penultimate boss is heralded by a long, narrow hallway containing a laundry-list of every weapon in the game and full ammo for each (in ascending order of power), plus the rare "more-than-maximum health" health pickup. The kicker? You literally cannot avoid these items.
 * Borderlands is usually pretty good about not doing this, but in one case it was made so obvious as to border on a lampshade. Directly before a large, perfectly circular room according to your map (in an area that has up until then been entirely cave), they give you two red chests (filled with ammo, grenades, and new weapons), and put an ammo vendor right there as well. Guess what's in the next room.
 * Alpha Prime has a room stocked full of ammunition and supplies in a mine right before the Final Boss. It's especially jarring here not only because the game had never done it before, but because you had been to an armory, and it wasn't anywhere near as well stocked (granted, much of the stuff in the armory was behind locked cabinets, though it still didn't have as much variety).
 * Modern Warfare 2, special forces, and you KNOW it's coming, the level description even TELLS you!!! You get more weapons than 4 people could carry (co-op only lets 2) and by god, you need them. The only level that isn't this generous (by generous meaning any level you can run back to the start and getting more guns), is where you have to take on 10 juggernauts, with just knives and explosives. Ask anyone who has done this on veteran, and then see how many say no to 'solo?' Or the levels where you get only 4-5 guns to choose from, your partner gets an ac-130 to cover you or a helicopter that shoots grenades like a machine gun. Only they can't cover you at some parts, e.g. in houses. Even the level with the Stryker gives you a ridiculous amount of claymores, except you will use them all and still have enemies incoming (think, 20+ with them taking out 3+ guys each). Thank god for co-op.
 * The (infamous) level Loose Ends has you storming a safehouse and, lo and behold, it has an armory filled to the brim with weapons and ammo! Just make sure you have set up your defenses and are fully loaded and ready before planting that DSM, because you'll be swarmed with wave after wave of Makarov's mooks while you defend the DSM. Nightmare difficulty will have you use up all your flashbangs and frag grenades in the first 3 minutes, and you'll have to sprint to the armory for more.
 * The entire series in general, all the way since Call of Duty the first, does this with anti-armor weapons. Found a Bazooka? Panzershreck? RPG? Good, since enemy armor (or less commonly a heavily fortified position) is BOUND to come in, if it hasn't already.
 * In Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force, right before you face the final boss there is a terminal that not only maxes out both kinds of ammunition, but raises them to 999 each, as opposed to the usual maximum of 200.
 * The final level of Descent has a large supply of Invincibility Spheres and Invisibility Cloaks. You're gonna need them for the Final Boss.
 * In the final level of the 1998 First-Person Shooter Sin, the player (who was tricked into a trap in the previous level) begins in a meat cart riding out into what looks like an empty cavern. You are then dropped into a pool of water, which leads to a massive cache of ammo, all the weapons in the game and a generous supply of health packs. Great, you say!...then you walk outside and see that the several-foot tall mutated father of the main antagonist is walking towards you with a tri-projectile rocket launcher. And the door to the supply room just closed behind you.
 * Medal of Honor: Frontline grants you a Gewehr, BAR and Bazooka, along with generous ammo, at the beginning of Clipping Their Wings. You're going to need it for the rest of the level.
 * In Deus Ex Human Revolution ammo is extremely scarce, so this trope is played straight for every boss battle, Especially for the fight against, before which you are given a bloody minigun and about 150 ammo for it.
 * Inside apartment you find a conspicuous Praxis Point on top of a corpse. Sounds legit, right?
 * The first phase of the final dungeon is full of rare weapons and ammo, but has no enemies at all. You just know something bad's on its way.

Hack And Slash

 * In No More Heroes, a health pack, toilet, and sword-energy refill are awaiting Travis before every Boss Battle. Since the boss fights are pre-arranged duels, this is arguably justified.
 * Not to mention, his informant, Sylvia, will always call him on his phone (with her voice even heard on the mic if you're playing the Wii version), telling him to get ready (like going to the bathroom, which is game's save point) for upcoming boss.

MMORP Gs

 * A variant shows up in World of Warcraft occasionally. When an ally shows up to help you in boss battles, it's usually because you're really going to need them. For example, a chunk of the Blue Dragonflight shows up to help you against Kil'jaeden. Their main use is blocking Kil'jaeden's Darkness of a Thousand Souls ability, and they can only do it three times before everyone dies.
 * In the Heroic re-release of Zul'Gurub, there are often cauldrons lying around that give their users buffs. One type makes you mostly immune to nature damage, and it's used to go through a field of poison gas and fight two enemies with deadly poison breath (although they can also remove your immunity). Another type enables you to freeze enemies and take off most of their health, and it's used in areas with enemies that are stronger than most trash. Both types and a third, which causes players to cause AOE damage to enemies near them, are used in the fight against Zanzil; if he uses gas, you have to take the cauldron that makes you immune to it, if he summons a berserker, you have to freeze it, and if he summons zombies, you have to use the AOE damage cauldron against them.
 * You do not normally see a lot of this in Runescape; however, there is one glorious exception inside the God Wars Dungeon. Namely, right before the toughest boss in the entire game (upon writing), there's a bank that allows you to restock on items. The boss beyond has a combat level of 1001. In perspective, the highest combat level you, as a player, can get is 138. It really does speak for itself.
 * In Dungeons & Dragons Online, one of the first quests (possibly a Justified Tutorial) has you investigating disturbances in Heyton's Rest, the family tomb of Lars Heyton. At the beginning, the tomb is simply infested with monstrous spiders. About a third of the way into the tomb, you encounter . Why? Because they're very useful for.

Platform Game

 * Halo Zero loves this trope. Here's a rocket launcher. Here's a Hunter or Sword Elite to use all of those rockets on. Here's a shotgun. Here's a clusterfuck.
 * Eggmanland in Sonic Unleashed has extra lives everywhere . This is because the level itself is a sprawling monstrosity of an amusement park that will kill you again and again and again until you're ready to break the controller.
 * Certain Kirby games (Super Star, Amazing Mirror, Squeak Squad) have a habit of placing three "ability trophies" in the room before a boss encounter -- though only occasionally are health powerups included. One game features a room with nothing but a sword ability trophy -- and sure enough, the very next room contains Meta Knight, ready to duel you.
 * In Super Mario Galaxy, there is almost always a Life Mushroom shortly before the boss arena, either lying around or from a nearby shop.
 * If a Life Mushroom appears near the start of a level ... Oh Crap.
 * The Kid Chameleon level "Frosty Doom" is extremely generous with extra lives, including a guaranteed one for beating the level, knowing that a certain That One Level immediately follows:.
 * Iji
 * The last three bosses are preceded by large piles of weapons and ammo (and in one case health - in the other two your health is refilled automatically). In case it merely confirms your suspicions, in  case it's not at all surprising seeing as there's a logbook from him telling you he's waiting to kill you right before you enter the goodie room, and in
 * Ironically,
 * The room before fighting Yukabacera contains enough red nano to refill you from near-dead to full health about five times over. He drops even more when you kill him.
 * There's also plenty of powerups right before the elevator that leads to a Komato ship.
 * Beware Power Up potions in the game Hocus Pocus, the Monster is just about to show up (out of thin air)
 * The level Tree Tops in Spyro the Dragon features a suspicious amount of extra lives...probably because after that area you have to engage in tons of huge leaps across death-inducing falls, all while charging through rooms full of enemies that can gang up on you and kill you easily. Hence the Scrappy Level status.
 * For the entire Ratchet and Clank series, before every Boss fight/difficult section, there'll be a weapons vendor, for you to replenish ammo (and in some games, regenerate health, for some reason). Sometimes, they'll even pop out of thin air.
 * The Bonus Dungeon in Klonoa, Balue's Tower, hands you nine extra lives right at the beginning. While not a "boss," per se, consider that fair warning for what you're getting yourself into. 9-packs of lives occur at regular intervals throughout the level as well, usually just before long sections of horrible jumping puzzles.
 * Jett Rocket is usually quite stingy with its health-restoring items... except right before bosses. Then, you'll usually get a full top-up right before you fight them.
 * If you are playing a Mega Man game and you see an extra life and/or an E-Tank without a bottomless pit or a horde of instant death spikes around, you can pretty much know for sure that you'll find an insane platforming segment right in the following screen. Or a boss that will kill you in less than 30 seconds. Or both.
 * Bleach: Soul Carnival 2 has health packs and SP items before boss fights or hard areas. Later stages also refill your BP.
 * In Yoshis Island, the midway rings are always very conveniantly placed before difficult sections or boss fights to act as a checkpoint. Some examples where this is apparent include the rings placed just before the skiing sections in the ice levels, the ring placed just before the killer drop past instant kill spikes in the Brutal Bonus Level Endless World of Yoshis, and the ones placed in every single room of the borderline Platform Hell Yoshis Island Easter Eggs level in the DS games.

Real Time Strategy

 * In the Homeworld single-player campaign, several missions, especially missions 7 and 8, feature very large amounts of resources. Coincidentally, each of those missions also features large enemy fleets which will likely do large amounts of damage to your fleet, requiring you to replace or rebuild much of it. The sequels don't have this so much, due to having much larger amounts of resources in general.
 * Any mission in a Real Time Strategy game where you start with large amounts of resources. Even (especially) if there is no enemy in the immediate vicinity, you will need those resources.
 * Relatedly, if the mission begins with only basic structures, or with you having to build your first base by hand, expect the enemies to go easy on you for a while, not rushing your base or using the time to get a head start on an unstoppably huge army. If it begins with a full base or, even worse, an army, expect to use it immediately.
 * An incredibly painful example of this occurs in one Soviet mission during Red Alert 3. You're given 100,000 credits for you and your ally to build an army - enough to build five in fact - but just as the full extent of the enemy becomes clear, those credits are "shared" with a third general who shows up . So you have one enemy to deal with, then two, then three, then four...with no credits whatsoever. Ouch.
 * Most of the later caves in Pikmin 2 have a sublevel just before the cave's boss (or at least a very difficult section) with no enemies, lots of nectar, and lots of Candypop Buds.

Roguelike

 * While not a true Boss Battle, in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, the presence of many loose items in a room usually (but not always) signals a "monster house" (a horde of enemies that teleport into the room, which you must kill or be killed).

Role Playing Game

 * Most RPGs often only provide save points right before major boss fights, so if you see one, be prepared to use it.
 * The Paper Mario games do this a lot. If you ever see a Health Block and a Save Block right next to each other in a Paper Mario game, you can bet there's a boss in the next room -- even if you're not actually supposed to fight him. Case in point: there's a Health Block and a Save Block in Tubba Blubba's bedroom. (He'll enter after you're behind (from his perspective, not yours) his bed.) However, it's still handy; what follows is a chase back down into the Gulch, which is still littered with Hyper Clefts and Hyper Goombas. (Thankfully, the literal ghost town before your destination also has a Health Block and a Save Block...)
 * In the sequel, the room before the final boss not only comes with the aforementioned Save Block and Health Block, but also 1 of each of the best healing items in the game. Both of which you probably might need.
 * Final Fantasy kinda has this, since you can use tents at save points, and there is usually a save point right before each boss. This practice started with Final Fantasy IV, however. Programming limitations kept save points from being used in the NES games, and to this day, Final Fantasy III is the only game whose remakes still don't let you save right before a boss. Screw up or find an unwinnable battle in the Dark World? Enjoy climbing the Syrcus Tower from the ground floor again!
 * The beginning of the first Temple of Doom in Final Fantasy XII. When you first enter the area, you have the option to save (in a menu prompt, not a normal Save Point) and are fully healed automatically before having to fight a flying Mini Boss that can be difficult without the proper equipment.
 * Save points in Final Fantasy games X through XII also heal and regenerate MP. It gets to the point where you start dreading the image of a save point deep within a dungeon.
 * Especially in Final Fantasy XII when you encounter ...
 * There is one part of Final Fantasy X (Bevelle) where there were at least two save points in a linear corridor were less than a minute apart. Guess what followed the second one...
 * And then we have the Omega Dungeon, who lacks the generosity. A Save Sphere at the start, have fun fighting yourself through powerful fiends, including the horrible Great Malboro who always starts with a ambush and then goes to inflict a variety of Status effects on your party.
 * Generally, Final Fantasy X gives the player several save points with not-so-large space in between. Not only the case in Bevelle, though that one is by far the worst offender. On the Thunder Plains, in one version, there's even a Save Sphere right outside the Travel Agency and one right inside it. And "right outside" and "right inside" means what it sounds like. You only need to walk 5 steps at most from you enter, until you reach the sphere. The outdoor one is right adjacent to the door, so it almost even blocks it.
 * One interesting example in Final Fantasy VII involves a point immediately after leaving Nibelheim. Traveling through an eerie passage, you get a savepoint at the very beginning of a largish room with a snakelike pathway, very innoculous, as many winding paths are common in areas throughout the game. In fact, there's a T-shaped intersection immediately after the save point. Head right, a chest and dead end. Head left, what some players consider That One Boss, Materia Keeper.
 * Anothe interesting example (in fact, a subversion) in this opus is the infamous "Yuffie savepoint". Upon defeat Yuffie (a random encounter in a forest), you will be brought to a screen with her, and taking the right choices in the dialog tree when you speak with her will make her join you. Since it's very easy to get answers wrong in the dialog tree, a savepoint is generously offered on the screen before talking to her. The subversion? Taking the save point requires you to turn your back on her, which let her assault you, steal your money and flee. Damn ninja!
 * In Final Fantasy IX, right before the first Black Waltz, there's a split path.
 * Baten Kaitos always has a save point before every boss battle... of course, since those are the only places in the game with the red save flowers (as opposed to blue), the game isn't particularly trying to hide the fact.
 * The Tales (series):
 * Tales of Vesperia has two kinds of save points: red ones, which are just normal save points, and blue ones, which restore your entire party's HP and TP. Take a wild guess as to where most of the blue ones are.
 * Tales of the Abyss did it too (first?), with yellow save points, and green save points that made a different sound effect.
 * Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World did the same, only with yellow and green save points instead of red and blue, respectively
 * Tales of Legendia was actually sort of the first (of the games released outside of Japan anyway). While save points were always the same, sometimes there'd be little circles next to them that, when checked, fully healed your party. They aren't usually as generously-placed as those in Abyss and Vesperia.
 * In Star Ocean the Last Hope, purple spheres are save points and green spheres fully restore your HP/MP. If you see a green sphere, you can bet a tough fight is waiting for you ahead.
 * Parasite Eve and its sequel does this towards the end of the game where Aya meets up with the military and they give her all the items, weapons, and ammo she can hold.
 * Shin Megami Tensei I completely averts this. You're lucky if you get so much as a warning of the boss' location, much less anything to heal with.
 * The second game is nicer in this regard. After you've defeated three of the Elders/Archangels, the fourth one shows up, heals your party, and warns that there's still one enemy left. Cue fight with (false) Yahweh. Also, in the endgame, Steven will help you teleport to shops, healing garages and fusion temples to suit your needs, although you'll be sent back to the endgame area each time.
 * Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne played with this. During the grueling Labyrinth of Amala, there are two ghosts who offer to let you rest for a diminutive fee, and invite you to A Spot of Tea.
 * An utterly sadistic version was seen in Shin Megami Tensei If, in the World of Greed. You will enter a room filled with valuable treasure, sixteen chests total.
 * Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey typically have a heal spot and a save/teleport station together before the boss fight. You'll need it.
 * Persona 3 removed Anti Poop Socking before major boss fight so that you could grind yourself strong enough to survive, mind you that was before FES.
 * Right next to the boss's door in any Shadow Hearts game, you'll find a very convenient save point.
 * A form of this shows up in Mega Man Battle Network 6, where the spot in which the pre-boss cutscene kicks in is noted by a big skull on the floor. Considering how previous games left this up to "best guess" or "chronic paranoid saving", it's pretty generous. For that matter, so is the fact that most of the chips in the game can be acquired with "*" codes, preventing the "alphabet soup" problem that plagues many players while they're working through the main story mode.
 * All storyline Bosses in Mana Khemia Alchemists of Al Revis are preceded by a save point that restores HP and SP.
 * Lufia loves this trope. Just a Save Point? Might just be a mid-point for the dungeon. Just a Health recharge? Okay, good fortune. Health and Magic recharge? Uh-oh. Health, Magic, and a Save Point? Alright, time to go fill my IP bar so this god-damned boss gets whacked a couple of times before he hurts me.
 * In ''Pokémon, guess what's in the Pokemon League Building? A combination Pokecenter and Pokemart.
 * Defused a bit in Pokémon Black and White, where there's a Mart inside every Center (not just the one in the league building).
 * At one point in Eternal Sonata, you rescue a boy, more from his mother finding out that he was missing than from the dangers of the cliffs, and are rewarded with a free stay at the inn. If you're thinking this is leading up to Inn Security, you'd be wrong; the night goes smoothly. Once you're done resting, however, go hit the Save Block near the entrance to Forte City; there's a boss battle ahead.
 * Just in case you managed to make it all the way through Fable without using a bow, there happens to be one sitting right outside the door on your way to the final showdown. Why? Because you can't hit him without it!
 * A variation on this occurs in Dungeon Siege, which has an auto-save feature. Whenever it says 'auto-saving', a big fight or a hard dungeon is coming up.
 * If the Kingdom Hearts series does this, it's at least more subtle than other games, as all save points regenerate health and magic, no matter where they are. The more obvious clue is your characters all walking around independently and talking to you.
 * The practice is spoofed in the Chain of Memories manga where, right before the fight with Marluxia, Sora and Co. come across a vending machine full of health and mana potions. And they get several for free.
 * Dragon Age: Origins often averts this, being quite unforgiving at certain points of the game, if the player didn't think to stock up enough healing poultices, but plays it straight in a couple of points, as well, like just before the final battle with the Archdemon, where you encounter a storage room full of useful items - in locked chests. Hopefully you remembered to take your rogue along.
 * Injury Kits are generally a good indicator of an ambush ahead. Except when they come one fight too late.
 * Played straight in the quest A Paragon of Her Kind, where a large supply of potions is stored just around the corner from the boss fight.
 * Dragon Age 2, on the other hand, auto saves before huge battles. When walking along a path and you see the save icon appear, you become suspicious that a dragon is about to attack you...
 * As you can save pretty much anywhere in Sands of Destruction, the game is fairly generous in providing healing points before boss battles.
 * In Dragon Quest VIII, there's a spring deep inside one dungeon that fully restores all your hit points and magic points when you step into it. Sure enough, just past the spring is.
 * Mother 3 lampshades this, to an extent, towards the end of New Pork City. As you're told every time you clear a floor that the next room up is supposedly the 100th floor with the final boss chamber, there's always a save frog before the door to keep the player on their toes.
 * In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the item store in Prox sells Mist Potions as a regular item. Prox is the last town before Mars Lighthouse, the Final Boss of which is the appropriately-named Doom Dragon. You will need those Mist Potions.
 * In the Very Definitely Final Dungeon of Golden Sun Dark Dawn,  attack which bestow 5-digit numbers of EXP and Water of Life after every battle. Surprisingly, the Final Boss is tough enough to warrant the generosity, though not as hard as the aforementioned Doom Dragon. Also, everything in the post-game Bonus Dungeon is a Boss in Mook Clothing, and the Bonus Boss itself is , so you'll want the extra levels and Water of Life for that, too.
 * All those flamethrowers you find laying around in the rachni hive in Mass Effect 3 are bound to make you nervous. Naturally, they come in very handy against the webs, pods/sacs, and various creepy enemies.
 * During the Hammer battle in the final sequence of battles, the point where you get the Mk Cain weapon, basically a tactical nuke cannon. You must immediately use it on the Harvester. Thankfully, they give you two in case you miss. Before you land it is mentioned that these heavy weapons might available.

Shoot Em Up

 * Right before the Final Boss of RayForce, the game pits your ship(s) against lots of harmless pods for you to lock on and destroy with your homing laser. All of which contain powerups. Destroying most of of them will give you enough powerups to max out both players multiple times... You're so going to need them.
 * Raystorm also does this in Extra Mode of Home Editions of the game. Just before the Stage 7 boss.

Stealth Based Game

 * In Metal Gear Solid, you are suddenly advised to save your progress by an ally that never suggested so before. What happens afterwards? You enter an scene where dying is permanent. (A.K.A. you can't press continue)

Survival Horror

 * There's a reason Silent Hill players start thinking Oh Crap when, in a town where Everything Is Trying to Kill You, it suddenly gets very "generous" with weapons, ammunition, and/or health drinks:
 * Silent Hill 2 has no fewer than nine savepoints in the room immediately before the final boss battle, arranged in a square on the wall. This is more of a really heavy hint than generosity as such (since it's not actually any more effective than a single savepoint), but still.
 * Silent Hill Origins does something similar in a Shout-Out.
 * Silent Hill Origins also features breakable weaponry, so you're always picking up new weapons that you'll hold onto for fear of needing them later. This results in Travis carrying something like twenty televisions in his vest pockets.
 * In Silent Hill Homecoming, unless you use your guns incredibly sparingly, you will be low on ammo for most of the game. In the sewer level,
 * Silent Hill 3 spawns additional ammo and health items when you're low on supplies.
 * Alan Wake does this at least a few times. Your usual pickups come from the occasional red emergency box lying around, which will have batteries for your flashlight and a little bit of ammo. So when you find multiple boxes of ammo, flares, batteries, etc. lying around an area, you know that you're about to walk into a massive assault by The Taken. It also manages to invert the trope: any section where Alan has lost his light and/or weapons will usually have few or no enemies, simply because he'll have no way to fight them.
 * At one point Alan himself comments on how suspicious it is finding flashbang grenades amongst supplies left by the power company.
 * In every The House of the Dead game, you can unlock a special bonus room full of bonus-point items and life-ups just before the Final Boss by fulfilling a hard-to-meet requirement--in the first 3 titles, this requirement is rescuing every hostage or rescuing your partner at every chance. In The House of the Dead 4, you have to one-credit the game up to that point. If you're looking to clear the entire game without any continues or going for a high score, this will really help.
 * Resident Evil 4 lets on that a major encounter is ahead when you find The Merchant (and his armory) and a typewriter in the most implausible of locations.
 * The Regenerador (the Implacable Man of mooks) initially appears indestructible, but using a heat scope with a rifle can help hit its normally invisible weakspots. The only opportunity to get the said scope requires the player to thaw a meat freezer and walk past a semi-frozen Regenerator into a cramped dead end to claim it.
 * Also done through the chapters containing the Regeneradors via means of ammo - rifle ammo not only becomes increasingly scarce, but finding any rifle ammo (which is always 3-4 bullets) becomes a sign there's a nigh-invulnerable monster that requires ~4 bullets to kill ahead.
 * In Dead Space, there are two points where you find save points: in the "safe room" where you can restock equipment and items, and right before something big is going to happen. Finding a Store or Save Point on its own isn't that bad, but finding both in the same place? You're about to have your ass firmly handed to you.
 * It gets even more ridiculous when you see an oxygen recharge station placed randomly in an area. When you see one you know eventually the air will be let out of an area.
 * On the other hand, since certain levels are reused, that means the air may be let out five minutes from now, or five chapters from now.
 * In Ghost Hunter there's a major ammunition cache in the final level. It's useless because.
 * Eternal Darkness subverts and plays it straight. Played straight in that the one time the game asks if you want to save, it's just before teleporting you to the final boss. Subverted in that several actions (such as diverting gas or opening a door) give you the choice of whether to go through with it or not, regardless of the fact that you need to do it to proceed and that
 * This is also one of the game's Sanity effects: you find mountains of ammo in a room, but before you can even collect all of it you appear in the previous room... without all the ammo you just picked up.
 * The game also does this to play on the paranoia of the player, as several times through the game when controlling Alex you find weapons and ammo in her house, which is completely safe . But as the game goes on the feeling that the next time you enter a room it's going to have zombies in it builds.
 * Cryostasis is forced into this by the game mechanics--rather than having health in the proper sense, you have body heat, which is slowly depleted by your environment and rapidly depleted by monsters. If you get to warm your hands by a fire, it means you're about to get very, very cold.
 * Rule of Rose has several cruel instances of this, when coming across hordes of mooks, no less! Needless to say, if you see a trail of candy, be very skeptical about following it unless you have a death wish.

Third Person Shooter

 * Jet Force Gemini normally has no-enemy rooms with enough Five Unit Gemini's to fully heal you just about all of the time; it also has plenty of ammunition; this is a very good thing, since most of the bosses are incredibly difficult.
 * Terminator: Salvation lets your character see the green outline of any weapons in the area, even through walls, so when you see a big pile of green, or just green in the shape of a rocket launcher, you know a whole bunch of big machines are gonna be coming at you.
 * In Freedom Fighters, Rocket Launchers will only appear when you have a helicopter or a heavily fortified encampment to deal with up ahead, and Sniper Rifles are usually placed in locations where you can expect to use every single bullet before running out of enemies.
 * In Mega Man Legends Data who refilled your special weapon, restored your health, and saved your game had a weird habit of popping up JUST before a boss fight..
 * When Mass Effect 2 gives you the opportunity to switch weapons in the middle of a level, odds are there's a big fight waiting for you 1-3 rooms away.
 * Somewhat inverted in both Mass Effect games. Generally, the medi-gels and the spare ammo (in 2) are actually in the room where the gigantic climactic battle of the level is. However, you rarely actually run out of medi-gel in the middle of a battle, so it's more for replenishing your depleted stores after the battle is done. Ammo, on the other hand, is a different matter.
 * In full effect in Mass Effect 2 on the Collector ship, where you get access to advanced weapons training about 5-10 minutes before one of the hardest battles in the game. There's also a lot of unusually high-value salvage and some research to unlock before the fighting starts, which only adds to the sense that something big is about to happen, but you can't use any of your new goodies besides the weapons training until the mission is over.
 * Not present in Mass Effect 3. The only thing that even vaguely counts is that your character is warned s/he's about to pass the Point of No Return.

Turn Based Strategy

 * Cruelly subverted in Final Fantasy Tactics. There are certain parts of the game where battles occur one after the other, and the game kindly lets you save in the intermission between each part. Unfortunately, what the game doesn't tell you is that once you've passed the first part of these multi-battle sequences you cannot leave to level up or buy items. There's one area in particular that drops two nasty boss fights on you right after a relatively easy battle. You might need to fall back to your secondary save file to raise your team up a few levels. Unless you didn't make one...
 * In Fire Emblem Blazing Sword, there is a chapter where literally all there is is shopping for weapons, staves, and healing items. It comes right before the penultimate chapter, which has a huge number of enemies, including a dangerous boss, and then the final chapter where you have to fight about ten reincarnations of previous bosses, and then the "final" boss, and then the real final boss all without saving in the middle, so if you die, you have to fight every single one of them over again.
 * In Hunted: The Demon's Forge any time you see a useable Sleg pedestal/container there will be a hugely difficult fight, often harder than the boss battles. So why not just drink it and use the power it gives?

Non-Video-Game Examples

 * Open-book/open-note exams. In principle, they sound like a breather since you don't have to memorize the material. In reality, it's often a carte blanche for the professors to make you wish you had memorized the material.
 * These more for "did you understand the material?" checks. The real world forgives you if you have to open any book, notebook, etc. What the real world doesn't forgive, is if you don't understand the material to create a quality product (and especially if that product involves human lives)