Anticlimax Boss

"Priestess: How is this possible!? Kyran: Lady, your god was a chicken. That's not exactly boss fight material."

- Emergency Exit

The Climax Boss is the boss at a pivotal moment of the story. The Anti-Climax Boss is when that boss gets killed with about as much effort as it took to fight some of the tougher Elite Mooks. Or the first level Warmup Boss. Either way, there was a lot of buildup, and was expected to be a tense, critical, epic battle ended up being a breeze. Compare and contrast That One Boss, which sometimes causes the feeling that, at the end of the game, you have met an Anti-Climax Boss.

Note that it doesn't count if you grinded for six hours beforehand, and it probably doesn't count if you utilized the boss' unmentioned weakness to ginger ale, or used the Game Breaker Infinity+1 Sword that took three hours of Side Quests to acquire.

Sometimes this can be a case of Truth in Television or Reality Is Unrealistic, of course - especially when the enemy boss is just a leader and was never really presented as combat-capable on their own. In that case, this is also an often-deliberate subversion of Authority Equals Asskicking. However, there are still ways to make such a fight challenging, with a Flunky Boss, for instance. Also, this trope can be a Necessary Weasel in Wide Open Sandbox RPGs that encourage nonviolent solutions to problems; if there must be a Climax Boss or Final Boss to round out the game, it has to be beatable by the weakest character who can survive to reach that point.

Related Tropes:
 * Breather Boss: Sister trope. When the boss is easy, but not plot critical.
 * Zero Effort Boss: Subtrope. When the boss is incapable of actually hurting you.
 * Cutscene Boss: Subtrope. When the boss is killed off outside of the gameplay.
 * Post Final Boss: Subtrope, where the game does have a suitably challenging boss near the end, but for the very final encounter you fight an easy-to-effortless enemy to wrap up the story.
 * Hard Levels Easy Bosses: Related trope. Where the game is full of Anticlimax and Breather Bosses, especially in relation to the rest of the game.
 * Puzzle Boss: Can be like this trope. If figuring out how to beat the boss is the main challenge rather than actually beating it.
 * Paper Tiger: Likely to be one of these.

Action Adventure

 * Quite a few examples in the Tomb Raider series.
 * Natla in the original Tomb Raider.
 * This trope is parodied in the Tomb Raider custom game "Simply Purple". Roaring sounds are heard, the player is bombarded with medipacks and other supplies, ominous music plays and...the boss is a little dwarf that can't even attack Lara properly.
 * in Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, if he could even count as a boss. All you have to do is run away from him. Considering that he's, you'd think he'd be a little more challenging.
 * immediately before that "battle" also qualifies, as you can literally dodge most attacks by just ducking, and even if you do get hit it doesn't damage you that much anyway.
 * The Godfather: The Game, has examples of this justified by realism. Eventually you will come across important opponents and very skilled targets, who, although they are crack shots and occasionally wear body armor, are still human. Thus, a shot to the head can often end many a dramatic battle.
 * Plenty of examples within The Legend of Zelda series.
 * Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is another example. He's a Tennis Boss and not even a good Tennis Boss. A previous boss called Phantom Ganon, which is supposed to be weaker than the real Ganondorf, is more challenging as his magic blasts accelerate with each hit ... which Ganondorf's magic blasts don't.
 * In the final battle of The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks can easily end up as this for aggressive players. When you start actually fighting Malladus, he will almost never attack if you constantly hit him with your sword (this is actually the point of the battle, to get Malladus to face away from Zelda so she can shoot him in the back). The short "short" sequence before this is also nearly impossible to fail, as Zelda, whom you must defend from Malladus' flaming boulders while she charges her magic, will never die if she gets hit, but simply lose focus. You lose health if Zelda is hit, but the flaming boulders tend to drop recovery hearts.
 * Ganon from the infamous CD-I game Link: The Faces Of Evil. All you have to do is throw the Book of Koridai at him, and... "No! Not into the pit! It burrrrrns!!!"
 * Also in The Faces Of Evil, a single bomb in the Glutko's mouth kills it.
 * In The Wand of Gamelon, Zelda just has to throw the titular Wand at Ganon to defeat him: "The chains! NOOOO! You haven't seen the last of me!"
 * The final boss of Psychonauts is slightly anticlimactic.
 * True Crime: New York City has two ending paths. The "bad" ending ends in a simple 2-dimensional Good Old Fisticuffs fistfight against the police captain in a cramped subway car (where you simply punch him until you back him off the screen and off the train), which is rather anticlimactic compared to some of the insane Kung Fu boss fights earlier in the game (including a sword fight against a 7-foot tall Black Samurai Rap Star). Contrast that with the original True Crime: Streets of LA, where the "true" final boss, General Kim, was the best fighter in the game, and pretty much the only opponent you had to beat with strategy (mostly blocking then counterattacking) instead of simply button mashing.
 * General Kim was also the Anticlimax boss of the worst ending, a rather feeble opponent who could be taken down with repeated jumpkicks. If you played each ending in order, General Kim was surprising for two reasons; being the actual Big Bad of the final ending, and being a Climax Boss requiring more fighting skill than any other fight and a tough driving-shooting challenge.
 * Even though he's the leader of The Five, and actually knocks Mike on his ass in the cutscene where he's finally introduced, Dr. Victor Batrachian from Shadow Man is far and away the easiest boss to kill. Given as how he had depopulated an entire prison over the preceding 72 hours without even bothering to unstrap himself from the electric chair, the fact that in the event he comes after you with a baton is a little embarrassing.
 * You slug your way through Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, enter Dracula's castle with the kickass music, make your way slowly to his altar, re-assemble his body parts...then proceed to kill him with fire before he can even get out of his entrance animation. Lame.
 * Even if you don't use the Game Breaker fire weapon, he's still ridiculously easy. He goes around and around in circles, and doesn't do much else; all you have to do is stand in the corner and throw daggers.
 * While much harder, Dracula is still nothing special in Symphony of the Night. Despite having 10,000 HP and being able to hit pretty hard, it is very possible to beat him without any familiars, spells, or even items, since all that HP is shared among his three heads, making it possible to do three times the damage per hit that you'd normally do. He's still significantly harder than most of the bosses in the game though.
 * There's also his Super Castlevania IV incarnation. Most of his attacks are easy to dodge with the possible exception of the second one, however, you can actually get healed after that attack (if you attack it), and he uses it on two occasions.
 * Dracula Wraith in Harmony of Dissonance. His first form is just classic Dracula, which is really easy to dodge in this game, and his second form is a giant eyeball... thing. It's only attacks are to shoot a beam, which can be dodged by simply crouching, and to swing his arm at Juste, which can be dodged by being at the edge of the room. Sometimes he uses these two attacks at the same time, but this can also be dodged by crouching and then sliding to the end of the room.
 * The final boss of Saints Row 2. The first 3 are fairly epic in their own right, including an ATV vs Jeep fight in a mall and a sword fight on a burning ship. The pre-boss fight was hell in a handbasket, using a helicopter to fend off other helicopters while attacking several gate locks in order to get at the guy. The final boss? . Even the lead-up to it isn't that great, making it feel like the whole thing was just put in for a final mission arc.
 * in Daikatana. After a fairly intense battle with Kage, you think you're done, but wait, one last fight...that will go down in two shots, tops. After an entire game of the poor AI keeping you from doing anything, shooting this final boss will give the player more satisfaction than anything else in this game.
 * Kage Mishima's no Spring Chicken himself; despite being a melee-oriented enemy, he's very slow, making it very easy to just back away from him and unload your best heavy gun into his face. He does have a ranged attack where he sends a wave of ghosts at you, but that can also be avoided by running in circles.
 * Actually served pretty well as a demonstration of just how goddamn powerful Roxas had become.
 * The Shadowlord in Nie R is a prime example of just how much of a let-down Anticlimax Bosses can be, particularly if you are fighting him on a second, third, or fourth playthrough. Sold as a badass, protective father in a Crapsack World, the final battle consists of dodging (read: rushing through with a spear) insane waves of magic until you get close enough to strike him. After three hits, he's down and the game is over; his badassery from before not even dignified a Hand Wave.
 * Then again, this is justified as him going beyond the Despair Event Horizon and slowly but surely losing the will to live.
 * Sadler from Resident Evil 4. As the final boss in a game filled with tough, memorable boss fights, you'd think his fight would be pretty epic. Sadly, he's probably the easiest boss in the game, with an obvious weak spot, a surprisingly low amount of health, and attacks that do relatively little damage. Plus, the fight takes place in an area that contains several traps which can be used against him, making the fight even more easy.
 * And isn't your using of a red-colored rocket launcher that your partner throws to you turn him into a Cutscene Boss as well?
 * Birkin's final form in Resident Evil 2 was also this. He was just a giant blob who couldn't even hit you if you didn't stand next to him.
 * Kirie from the first Fatal Frame game is unintentionally anticlimactic. The designers went out of their way to make her very hard in some aspects - one hit from her is instantly fatal, and only a fully charged camera shot can hurt her. But to make the fight doable, she lacks most of the features that make other fights challenging: she's slow and has a low attack range. Once you get the hang of it, she's really not that challenging.
 * Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989) is this. He has very damaging attacks but he is only enemy in game who can be knocked back by attacks and his AI is also bad. So it's possible to just jump onto right side platform and spam projectiles in his general direction.
 * in Bomberman Hero. After getting 5s on every level on the first five planets to unlock the sixth planet—the toughest part of which is probably getting 5s on the boss levels—and going through two of the most insane levels in the game, you get to the last boss and...he's about as tough as Nitros, at worst.
 * Despite being one of the most powerful creatures in existence, doing battle with Kain in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver isn't very impressive in comparison to his sons. Each time you fight him, you only need to smack him three times while he stands still and shoots lightning bolts at you, and then you watch a cutscene.
 * The end of Soul Reaver 2, and the closest thing the entire game has to a boss encounter.
 * The titular Hydra of the freeware Galius-like Hydra Castle Labyrinth is a complete joke, mainly because you can safely position yourself under it's four heads and send a constant strea of axes into them. Once the heads are gone, all the Hydra can do is charge at you, and the headless body goes down in just a few hits.

Beat Em Up

 * In Urban Reign, after proceeding through most of the game solo taking on various criminals, gang members, psychopaths, martial artists, a couple of giants that the game simply describes as "monsters", and, the last boss is none other than . On the other hand, he's the only one who uses a gun and the game doesn't hesitate to make its damage realistic.
 * Subverted in the old Genesis game Two Crude Dudes. The last boss is a pint-sized scientist in a labcoat who can't do anything except run around and ineffectually thump you while you kick the bejesus out of him. Unfortunately once you've had your fun he mutates into a pretty badass Sequential Boss.
 * The final boss of the first Kunio-Kun game (Renegade being the American localization), an evil Yakuza boss named Sabu, is depressingly easy to beat. Although he's the only baddie who uses a gun and can kill with one hit, he can only shoot along one single trajectory, so all you have to do is duck right in front of him and keep wailing on him until he goes down.
 * In River City Ransom for the NES, the final boss, Slick, is quite easy compared to the second-last fight against the Dragon Twins. Even more so if you have two players.
 * In Batman: Arkham Asylum, Killer Croc is heavily built up as a massive threat, with a torn apart animal cage with skeletons in it, the patient diaries where he bites a man's hand off, and the fact that he's a Nine-Foot-Tall lizard man. To fight him, you have to slowly walk across platforms, occassionally tossing a batarang if he decides to show his face.
 * Joker. I mean, all you do is run in circles, wait for him to get bored, and beat up his mooks before pulling him down with the Batclaw and punching him in the face while he's stuck in the ground. This repeats three times. Honestly, the previous fight with the Titan henchmen and army of mooks was harder.
 * Arkham Asylum's sequel Arkham City has some of this as well the biggest one being Hugo Strange. He's built up as the Big Bad but you only see briefly at the beginning and end of the game. Once you get to the end of the game he gets stabbed by Ra's Al Ghul and then blows himself up in a failed attempt at Taking You with Me in a cutscene. Ra's "dies" (for now anyway) in the same cutscene but it's not as bad because you did actually fight him earlier in the game.
 * Dragon Ball Z Legacy of Goku 2 has this with the final battle against Cell. Since your Eleventh-Hour Superpower is ridiculously overpowered even by that trope's standards, you cannot lose against what is statistically the strongest enemy in the game. Even if you actually try to lose.
 * Well, that's what the fight was like in the series the game is based on.
 * Trio the Punch, being a So Bad It's Good game, went out of its way to have the most incomprehensible and stupid final boss ever. Witness the madness here, starting from 1:45.

Fighting Game

 * The Shainto clan in Bushido Blade 2 face an insanely difficult boss battle, but after this enemy is finally killed, the player learns that he was merely The Dragon and the true leader of the Narukagami is... an unarmed young woman kneeling in the next room. She patiently awaits her death, but the player can choose to spare her if so inclined.
 * The boss that the Narukagami clan face in Bushido Blade 2 tries to put up a fight, but one blow to his armored front stuns him, and one more blow to his unprotected back kills him. The end.
 * In the Adventure mode of Super Smash Bros. Melee, both Bowser and the optional Giga Bowser are a joke compared to many of the previous fights in the mode (Especially on the higher difficulties, where the team fights can be downright brutal). Both of them are huge targets, which makes them incredibly easy to combo, and also have an easily exploited AI. The only thing that makes them remotely difficult is that in the odd event they do decide to use one of their stronger attacks and manage to connect with it, it can send you flying even at a low percentage.
 * Sonic the Fighters: After defeating the nearly impossible Metal Sonic, you are confronted by Dr. Robotnik in his Mecha Suit, you are also put in an Infinity+1 Sword state known as Hyper Mode. Dr. Robotnik will rarely get an attack off.
 * However, this is probably to make up for the fact that the Death Egg II itself is about to go down, giving the player a very short window of time in which to defeat him.
 * Hacking has shown that Robotnik has a wide range of (almost instant kill-inducing) moves, so the decision to make the final stage a Curb Stomp Battle was probably done so as to frustrate kids less after the difficult Metal Sonic battle.
 * In X-Men vs. Street Fighter, the (pre) final boss is Apocalypse. While he looks impressive and his arm is almost as big as you are, he is quite easy to take down with most characters by simply jumping over the arm and using heavy punches repeatedly.
 * In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces, Material D, the Ruler of Darkness, is normally a decent fight, being a far more powerful Evil Twin of Hayate... except in story mode where she serves as the final boss. This is because the game hands you, who has all eighteen skills in the game, making her a fast, tanky, barrier breaking, auto-guarding, Mana saving, healing, speedy Mana and Sprint Meter recovering Purposefully Overpowered character with high damage on all ranges that could use her plentiful stocks of Super Modes with impunity since she gets them all back after every round. Needless to say, you'd have to try hard just to lose a round.
 * In BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, the final boss for Hakumen's Arcade Mode is Ragna. Not the Unlimited version, just normal Ragna. As a result, while not a pushover, Hakumen still has it easier than most. To further reinforce the anticlimax-ness, the fight before him is (non-Unlimited) Nu.
 * Shinnok in Mortal Kombat 4 definitely qualifies, seeing as you've known all along how he fights and he doesn't offer that much of a challenge like, say, Shao Kahn did in previous installments. And it's not just because you can regularly select him: Rubber Band AI just doesn't seem to work on him like it did for Shang Tsung and Quan Chi in Deadly Alliance.
 * Fighting game veterans, and even some who've never played a Mortal Kombat game before, would find Shao Kahn this across the different installments. His taunts run in a pattern, which give fighters easy hits. Goro and Shang Tsung in the first one, on the other hand...

First-Person Shooter

 * The Pfhor cyborg from Marathon is the only boss in the game. He dies with less than one load of your pistol, although his countless guards will kill you if you do something stupid. Very fast.
 * For an insane computer who though herself as a goddess, SHODAN from System Shock 2 is really a complete pushover, while the game was insanely hard (you always lacked ammunitions). Disable the shield with 3 ICE picks (bypassing the hacking minigame), shoot 2 EMP grenades. shoot 6 EMP grenades to her shield, shoot her twice. Use your assault rifle with AP cartridges: just pull the trigger, and she is downed... And you still have bullets in your magazine. Deactivate her shield, jump over the ledge, and hit her at close contact. Or, if you're the OSA type, just spam cryokinesis for 12 seconds. And you are not even hit once while doing this!
 * This video says it all, really, and covers a handful of non-FPS games, too.
 * In FEAR 2,
 * Paxton Fettel, the psychic clone-commander from the original is equally disappointing.
 * After fighting against hordes of highly trained, heavily armed mercenaries and mutant trigen monsters with rocket launchers for arms, the final opponent of the videogame Far Cry,, is an unarmored scientist with a gun that isn't very impressive at this point.
 * Although at the beginning of the last level, you confront the Big Bad,
 * While the Big Bad himself is an utter pain normally, he can also be turned into an anticlimax boss if you know his big weakness, his groin. No, really.
 * The final boss of No One Lives Forever 2 is your typical Super Soldier Giant Mook, but he has a painfully slow attack and can literally be killed in 2 or 3 seconds with the right weapon (i.e. explosive shotgun shells). All of the series' other bosses avoid this with clever programming (they have to be shot 20 times by any weapon, so you can't just headshot them with a rocket launcher and call it a day).
 * The final battle of Half-Life 2 consists of about ten seconds of throwing little glowing balls at some metal plates while gunships fire at you.
 * If you want, you can shoot little glowing balls at the gunships, and then shoot the metal plates.
 * In Halo 3, after fighting through hordes of heavily-armed aliens and bringing down not one, but TWO galaxy-threatening Big Bads, the final fight is an anticlimactic shootout against . It's anticlimactic not because he turns out to be the final enemy (players have been waiting to take him down ever since the very first game), but because he's ridiculously easily, having terrible aim with his uber beam weapon and making absolutely no attempt to dodge your slow-moving Wave Motion Gun. Also sort of sad considering that
 * Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare ends with
 * However, the way the scene is set up, it's far from anti-climactic. Rather the opposite.
 * Call of Duty: World At War sort of avoids and uses this trope at the same time by not having a final boss. The last level is just like any other mission, except that
 * At the end of The Darkness, mob boss Uncle Paulie takes refuge at the top of a lighthouse, where the light robs you of your Darkness powers and leaves you just an ordinary man... yet ultimately Paulie's still just a fat, old dude armed with a peashooter, and a single bullet to the gut brings him down.
 * The final shootout against  in Haze. You're equipped with an assault rifle (and can even bring a rocket launcher into the fight). He's got a pistol. For some reason he can survive a ridiculous amount of damage, but that doesn't really help him since he can barely hurt you. It's probably so he's able to get through most of his long, pre-scripted Motive Rant before you manage to kill him.
 * Many consider the boss of Doom's third episode, the Spider Mastermind, easier than the boss of the second episode, the Cyberdemon. The Mastermind's biggest advantage is an autotracking chaingun attack, but the arena setup lets you manuver to stop this attack relatively easily. The BFG is only available on the third episode, making it even easier.
 * Far more damning (heh) is Doom 3, in which the programmers had the right idea by making the Cyberdemon the final boss, but cocked it up by making him easier to kill than virtually any other enemy in the game. His rockets are fired rarely and are extremely easy to dodge, and he is taken down after a few hits with the game's superweapon that automatically hits after being charged up.
 * The final boss of Quake IV,, is pathetically easy—it simply rests there for you to shoot at it when its shield is down. The only challenge comes from the fact that it is sending regular enemies after you at the same time.
 * Clive Barker's Jericho has as its final boss, aka  and it is extremely powerful—it manages to . Of course, once you actually start to fight it, its lightning blasts are unable to insta-kill your characters as seen in the aforementioned cutscene, and all you need to do to defeat it is to use the supernatural powers of the remaining characters. Some consider it the easiest boss in the game.
 * Also, it takes the form of . This wouldn't be so much of an anti-climax if you haven't seen the concept art of what the final boss was originally going to look like, however.
 * The final confrontation with  in STALKER: Clear Sky. He doesn't even try to fight you, you just watch him as he runs around the superstructure of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and simply snipe him until his energy shield fails (enemy Powered Armor mooks do spawn in to kill you while you're trying to do this, though).
 * Although normally a decent fight, the Skaarj Queen at the end of Unreal can be taken down with a single shot from the beginning pistol if you've upgraded it fully and are charged up with a damage amplifier.
 * Likewise, the Sealed Evil in a Can Tosc that you fight at the end of Unreal 2 can absorb a very large amount of damage and are armed with a number of one-hit-kill attacks, including an arm that fires a black hole. However, you're armed with the exact same weapon that kills them in one hit too.
 * The final level in Unreal Tournament III is just  and plays out like any other match.
 * The final boss in TimeShift is the giant mechanical fortress you encounter at the very beginning, destroying the whole city. Instead of fighting it in a cool freeform boss battle, it's a stationary target that you just shoot at a few times from a rooftop a couple hundred feet away.
 * What's worse is that you've known from the start of the game that the villain has the same kind of timesuit as you, and even though his is a beta version, you've been facing hundreds of Superpowered Mooks with time powers reverse-engineered by the Big Bad. So naturally the player expects an epic one-on-one battle against your evil counterpart, but no, what you get is not a battle but an execution.
 * The final boss of the hastily released, shoddily built Blacksite: Area 51 has literally no AI. After his short scripted behavior runs out, he literally can't do anything except stand in one spot and shoot at you.
 * The "final boss" of the Alternate History game Iron Storm was a "rival fight" against a special forces officer who had some interesting tricks; he was equipped with multiple weapons (assault rifle + sniper rifle + machine pistol + grenades), never stopped running in circles around you, and could take several dozen bullet hits before dying. However, his head was completely unprotected and all it took was a few bullets to the face to drop him. Pretty poor compared to the game's earlier 3 bosses, who were all equipped with full body metal armor and full-auto mini-rocket launchers.
 * The Destroyer, the final boss of Borderlands is
 * Subverted in the first piece of DLC, "The Zombie Island Of Dr. Z Ned". At first you fight  and he goes down as easily as any of the standard mooks (albeit with a good weapon) and the credits roll past at lightening speed. Then.
 * Also from Borderlands is Skagzilla. You place a corpse to lure him out, a giant Skag the size of a building leaps out, does a huge epic screech
 * Bioshock 2,the final battle
 * in the first BioShock (series) counts as well. It's rather easy to beat him on Hard with the Chemical Thrower in rather short order, without even using any medkits or EVE hypos.
 * Deus Ex. The ending involves Big Bad Bob Page lobbing threats at you while he's encased in a shielded anti-chamber, as he tries to merge with Helios. He never gets close to achieving his goal - no matter which ending you take (merge with Helios, destroy the communications hub, disable the shield unit), Page goes out like a whimpering punk. The worst is Morgan Everett's ending (kill Page) - to do so, you simply run around Area 51 to deactivate some power units. Page dies miserably seconds after you deactivate the final device.
 * In Deus Ex Invisible War: JC Denton (an optional boss and the protagonist of the first game) is really weak for a Physical God.
 * Every boss fight in Deus Ex Human Revolution is one. The first one can be easily killed with two to three explosive/gaseous barrels which are all over the room and even without the strength-aug can be thrown from halfway across the room. The second one can be taken down with ease with your PEP or some EMP grenades, and if you have augmented yourself to be immune to electrical attacks the fight just becomes sad. And the third one can defeated with a single attack due to a Good Bad Bug. The fourth boss can be taken out in seconds with the laser rifle, which penetrates her shield. The fourth boss is also the easiest in terms of avoiding damage.
 * In Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, this happens to both villains. Glazer (who turns on you early in the game) gets killed by a sniper just before you reach him (after chasing him through a whole level). Kane kills Shangsi in a cutscene. The final "bosses" of the game...are a pair of dogs that chase you at the very end of the final level.
 * In Home Front, the final boss of the game is the exact same weaponry (tanks and helicopters) that you've been fighting throughout the entire game. The only difference is that you get to rearm anti-aircraft guns to take them out.
 * In Chronicles of Riddick Assault On Dark Athena you have bad guys who will do 1-2 blocks of your 5-6 blocks of health with every punch they land, mech suits, turret spiders, and big daddies {theres one level you hijack one and carry a little girl on your shoulder} The final boss is invincible! until you realise you can just walk up and pistol whip her out the elevator shaft.

Hack and Slash

 * Reiko in OneChanbara Vortex is That One Boss in Story Mode... but in Survival Mode, she's an Anticlimax Boss. She's now a one-stage battle—removing the painfully difficult second stage from Story Mode—and rather than being forced to use Aya, you can now field Anna or Saki against her, who are much more effective for this fight.

MMORPGs

 * The final form of the Naughty Sorceress in the Kingdom of Loathing is a . She will kill you unless you have   in your inventory, which turns her attacks against her in a hilarious way and ensures an instant win. Also, Ed the Undying has less HP each round. By the seventh round, it's all but impossible to take more than one turn to kill him.
 * In Toontown Online, the  battle isn't even a battle. All it is is you and your friends trying to win a case in court!
 * For the first day or so after the Vampire/Werewolf war in Adventure Quest Worlds ended, the boss of the war, a sparkly vampire by the name of Edvard, was the weakest war boss in the entire game (900 hit points and rather pathetic damage) in a Take That against Twilight. He's since been upgraded to regular war boss status with 20,000 HP.
 * Ragnaros is actually a lot easier than several other bosses fought within the same dungeon in World of Warcraft. Really, Ragnaros is just....damage-the-snot out of him. Easier said than done, but he's still quite easy considering he's the lord of all fire elementals and created a volcano just by being summoned.
 * Plenty of bosses became this over time when people begun to get used to them and could know the strategies. And in the case of Wrath, all had epic gear from raids being more accessible so they could destroy the bosses very easily.
 * Shiro Tagachi in Guild Wars: Factions is extremely easy, especially when you consider that the missions you have to complete to get to him are rather hard or annoying.
 * Shiro takes a few...
 * Even easier than Shiro is the Undead Lich in Guild Wars: Prophecies. The lich has so many weaknesses it's not funny, and even if you don't kill him correctly and are forced to fight him twice he's still a rather pathetic final boss.
 * In fact you have to fight
 * ; after the likes of Varesh, the mission is far more laid back and easy to complete.
 * In RuneScape it is not uncommon for high leveled players to do no quests, then do them when they can tackle a dragon without breaking a sweat and beat the stuffing out of huge monstrosities with little to no trouble. It ends up making all but 2 quest bosses pathetically easy.
 * Changes to leveling up prayer have made pretty much all of the bosses from earlier quests this. Some elaboration: the prayer skill has some mid level prayers which grant complete immunity to attacks, but only one style at a time. At first, prayer was tough to level, but now, it's become easier, such that Protect prayers are standard among lower mid level players. Since most monsters in older content used only one attack style, they can't even scratch a player. Special mention goes to Nezikchened and Tarn Razorlor, both of whom drain prayer to make up for only using melee. A single dose of Prayer Potion, which can be bought easily, will fix this. Nowadays, pretty much any boss, and many of the Mooks you fight on the way to them, will either ignore your prayer completely or use multiple attack styles, averting this.

Mecha Game

 * Another Century's Episode 2 has Bodolza as the last boss, who positively towers over your mech. To face him, you must hit the entry gate once to initiate a Cutscene where your squad shoots him to death. Somewhat offset by the last stage being extremely hard: three long segments with no health refills whatsoever. Plus, the cinematic is reminiscent of the final battle in Do You Remember Love? where Hikaru completely annihilates Bodolza.

Platformer

 * After a grueling four-part Sequential Boss battle against Reflux, the last enemy pitted against you in Rayman 3 is André, who can do nothing but beg for mercy until you use a special technique to remove The Corruption from him.
 * The final "boss" of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time merely creates a couple of clones of himself, which put up no more resistance than a standard enemy, and is then rendered defenseless and can be killed with a single attack.
 * Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones has an anticlimax boss as well.
 * This is very reminiscent of the original Prince of Persia: when you confront your shadow, you're prompted to fight... but any damage you deal you also receive, and if he dies, so do you. As it turns out the thing to do is simply to put away your sword—if you don't fight neither does he. This occurs BEFORE the final boss, however, so it's not really an example—although the vizier himself, while no particular weakling, is no stronger than the rest of the enemies you've fought, and is just as vulnerable to the Spartan-approved tactic of knocking him down a giant pit.
 * Except in the SNES version, where the Vizier begins the fight by casting spells at you, and once enough damage is dealt, reveals himself to be a skilled, if not annoying swordsman. No pits.
 * Also averted in the Classic remake, where Jaffar is armed with a deadly magic staff, and there's no pit either.
 * In the Prince of Persia NDS game The Fallen King, the final boss has three attack patterns, two of which were used by bosses of previous stages. Which means that, once you figure out the third, you can defeat him inside of thirty seconds.
 * The master brain in Space Station Silicon Valley, who, after much ado, is introduced as... Well, exactly what it sounds like: A brain in a jar. The main character, at that point a killer robot with Eye Beams, uses about two seconds to flash-fry him.
 * Both subverted and used in Kirby Squeak Squad. Upon defeating the penultimate boss and swiping its weapon, the game has you follow a small purple star throughout a rocky landscape, deep through outer space. At the end of the trail, the purple star goes One-Winged Angel into a much larger purple star with a pink serpentine eye (the subversion). To defeat this new boss easily, all you need to do is spam your Eleventh-Hour Superpower's attack until it dissolves. Kirby flies off on a Warp Star, cue ending sequence and roll credits.
 * If you don't even use the power they give you, you can just store Tornado, which makes Dark Nebula a joke.
 * Used in Kirby Super Star Ultra's "Revenge of the King" mode. You make your way to the arena, fighting Phan Phan and Twin Fire Lions along the way. But right before you get to the arena you're attacked by...(cue suspenseful music)...A WADDLE DEE IN A BANDANNA! All it does is try to tackle you. Plus, you can inhale him from the start of the battle just to save time.
 * This one, however, isn't supposed to be a real fight as much as it's supposed to invoke an emotional response.
 * In Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2, Boss Cass' last form is... Cass himself. Granted, cassowaries are the most dangerous birds on Earth, but you're using the game's most powerful mech. Beating the snot out of him is very satisfying.
 * Metroid:
 * In Super Metroid, Mother Brain has absurdly predictable attacks. Occasionally you can get unlucky and die when it's supposed to just drain your life down to a certain point in preparation for a cutscene, but normally it's almost impossible to lose to this boss; even if you have to fall back to charged shots it gets to its second phase pretty quick, and once  it's almost a joke.
 * The Omega Metroid in Metroid: Fusion as well. It can certainly kick your butt if you make too many mistakes, but it's still a lot easier than many of the previous bosses. It is simply a final challenge during the timed escape after the real final boss, the SA-X.
 * The final boss of Metroid: Other M may as well be the poster child for this trope. After the long, grueling, painful battle against, you battle  . What does it take to defeat it?.
 * The Final "Boss" of the arcade version of Bionic Commando is an unarmed general weaker than the generic Mook fought through the game.
 * Mega Man X 6 plays this trope straight and inverts it. First you fight Gate, who cannot be damaged by a direct attack; you have to dissipate his attacks so the shrapnel can hit him. When you fight Sigma in the next level, you start with his "Zombie Form" which can barely move. With the right powerups, you can literally shoot him to death from your starting position. Sigma's battle body can be easy depending on which character you select. Ultimate Armor X can quickly stomp everything in the stage but this, while Shadow Armor X can shred final Sigma in a minute-90 seconds, but struggles with the stage enemies.
 * Mega Man Zero 2 has . This game one-ups its predecessor in Nintendo Hard, but
 * Parodied in the intentionally crappy mini-game "Hero Klungo Saves Teh World" in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts: The boss of the mini-game is
 * The final "boss," so to speak, in Mirror's Edge (insofar as the game can have bosses). After the Climax Boss Fight against the assassin in level 7, one might be expecting the game to end on a similar note in level 9, the finale... Given the fact that boss fights don't really fit the tone of the game (the assassin fight is an argument for Unexpected Gameplay Change), it was good idea.
 * Subverted in the Super Mario World ROM hack Brutal Mario. In the level "Dedede's Sky Castle", after you fight King Dedede, Kirby wakes up, dialogue taken almost word-for-word from Yoshi's Island is said, and you're thrown into a battle remiscent of Baby Bowser's first phrase. Except it's even easier than the original battle: just knock Kirby out once, and quickly let Yoshis eat him. But then... "You fool... Now you will see Kirby's true power... This is the end!" You guessed it, it's only one third of the Sequential Boss, and you still have to do the One-Winged Angel phase of the Baby Bowser knockoff battle.
 * The original Super Mario Bros did this, making this trope as old as the NES (obviously). You can kill Bowser with fireballs if you're equipped with a Fire Flower, but all you need to do to beat him is grab the axe behind him and watch as he falls into the lava pit below.
 * Specifically, he is almost impossible to lose to if you make it to him with even a normal mushroom. Just charge in, take a hit, and get to the axe. Only Normal (small) Mario has to use any strategy at all, and even then it's usually down to one well timed jump.
 * Super Mario Bros 3's final boss is in comparison much easier than all the other bosses (except for dumb Boom Boom and the flying form is actually harder!) because he suicides himself with butt smashes.
 * Corona Mountain, the final level of Super Mario Sunshine, can bring gamers to tears, particularly the section where you have to navigate the volcano's interior on a shaky mudboat by squirting water at specific angles. However, if you can make it to Bowser, the final boss fight is a piece of cake; all you have to do is Ground Pound the platforms around his hot tub (which is very easy once you learn his pattern, which isn't overly difficult to do) and he's finished.
 * In Sonic Adventure the Chaos 6 boss battle in Big's story can be beaten in under 10 seconds.
 * Perfect Chaos himself is not very hard at all and is the final boss of the entire game.
 * In Sonic and Knuckles, near the end of Sonic's game, you finally get the chance to fight Knuckles—who's been a thorn in your side in the cutscenes since the beginning of Sonic 3—and it's trivially easy to beat him without getting hit once.
 * The final boss of Sonic the Hedgehog CD is just Eggman in his normal vehicle with four panels that flip around and whatnot, and it's a case of dodging predictable attacks and waiting for a chance to hit him, or just taking the hit and then damaging him using invincibility frames. It's not overly hard or very exciting, especially compared to the final bosses of Sonic 2 or 3&K. It's made worse by the fact that the epic race with Metal Sonic comes before the final boss.
 * The final boss of Ratchet and Clank 2 can be an example unless you're under-levelled.
 * Hell, it's actually possible to kill him without so much as setting foot in the arena. (See here)
 * The final boss fight in the third game may be a straighter example. While the first form is fairly difficult to defeat, the second and final form can be defeated by just moving around in a slightly erratic way and holding down the fire button. And there's no danger of not having good enough weapons, because the game provides weapons for you.
 * The endboss of Hero Core's Annihilation mode is ridiculously easy compared to the kind of stuff you have to put up with on Hard. Granted, you are fighting it at level 0, but you'd think it would be a slightly more difficult endboss. or one that made Hard seem easy.
 * Though not the final boss, Annihilator Iosa from Iji is surprisingly easy for someone who, in the backstory, survived a shot from a weapon that annihilated an entire planet. She can only fire horizontally, and there are platforms conveniently located above her head that allow you to dodge her weapons and fire down lasers onto her.
 * The spider in Limbo, being as it the only recurring enemy in the game, qualifies: its legs are razor-sharp, can (and will) impale you in a single strike, and it can follow you pretty much anywhere. However, the last time you encounter it, it's taken so much punishment that it only has one leg left, which attacks once and then gets stuck.
 * In Croc: legend of the Gobbos, the Secret Sentinel can be wiped out in something like 20 seconds.
 * Gnasty Gnorc from the original Spyro the Dragon. He takes two hits, and spends three quarters of the battle running away from you.
 * This trope is a plot point for Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Darth Vader was the final boss in The Empire Strikes Back and was quite challenging. In this game, Vader is fought before the Emperor and goes down very quickly. This shows how Luke has grown stronger between games when he completed his Jedi training.
 * The true final boss for Wario Land II, once you've unlocked all of the treasures and golden panels, is the Giant Spear Man, a Recurring Boss who only needs to be jumped on a few times in order to be beaten.
 * Rudy, the Final Boss of Wario Land III. While his attacks can indeed kill Wario if it hits (the only attack in the game that can do so) he has pretty bad aim and an easy-to-learn patter that lets you learn to avoid him quickly. What's more, if his fist misses, that fist is stunned for a few seconds, making it a sitting duck for a Goomba Stomp attack. Do so four times and Rudy is history.

Role Playing Games
"The Spoony One: And now, the final battle! The group has battled all over the planet, fighting demons, dragons, monsters, unholy abominations, and finally we reach the ultimate puppetmaster. The Demonic Deity that perverted the entire world in it's image. This is the ultimate evil that dominated the wills of men, leveled entire continents, brought the world to it's knees, killed millions, and commanded the destiny of all life in Spira and what is this?"
 * Any boss that is vulnerable to an Instant Death spell, or its Revive Kills Zombie counterpart.
 * The Final Fantasy series has its fair share.
 * In a very stunning moment, the Useless Useful Spell in Final Fantasy Legend actually works on the final boss! This is a bug, though; the Saw is supposed to instantly kill any enemy with defense below a certain (fairly high) value, but instead it only kills enemies with a defense above that value. Obviously, the final boss has the highest defense in the game, so. This was fixed in the WSC remake.
 * Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, the Dark King is weak to the hero's Cure. Cast Cure on the boss to break the damage limit and do over 10,000 damage. You can potentially kill him in two-three casts if your level is high enough.
 * Even more amusing: the Dark King has multiple One-Winged Angel forms. However, they all use the same HP counter—the Dark King merely changes form dependant on how damaged he is. If your Cure spell does enough damage, the Dark King will actually skip forms trying to keep up.
 * The very first boss is undead, and vulnerable to your cure spell. Chances are you'll be hoarding your casts till Fireburg, but you can spare one to take him on with right?
 * Palmer in Final Fantasy VII easily qualifies. Most players who get into the boss fight against Palmer expect him to be strong since they had fought Shinra villains (the TURKs and Rufus) previously and they were able to hold their own in a fight. However, Palmer in battle is downright pathetic. His only attack is shooting his mako gun that has a fire, ice, or lightning effect and can be nerfed with M Barrier or nullified/absorbed with certain armor or materia. His only redeeming feature is having a big chunk of HP.
 * If you prepared correctly, Final Fantasy VIII also meets this category. Doing some clever refining gives you Auto-Shell and Auto-Protect, and besides that, just having gotten some good weapons takes care of most of the challenge. Just cast Aura and go crazy with Squall and you take a fraction of the damage expected for a normal boss, endgame or not. It seems especially bad when the strategy guide insists you get all kinds of cards to refine Holy Wars, and talks in great depth about how you need to be careful since GFs can be wiped out.
 * In Final Fantasy X, the fight against  is pretty much a joke considering that his previous appearances have been That One Boss for many players. It makes it even easier if you utilize his own built-in Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors that YOU can manipulate to choose his weakness...or just summon Anima. And then there's Yu Yevon...

": I have enough power to deal with you! SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP
 * After the intensely difficult task of acquiring all of the demon's souls in the aptly named title, you take a trip to the Final Boss,
 * In the SNES game Live a Live, the final boss battles against Demon King Odio result not in his death, but merely him turning back into, though he still remains thoroughly evil. He's not entirely defenseless, but now is reduced to the same stats he had in his chapter of origin, which absolutely pale compared to the levels your heroes have reached. He's easily dispatched. The best ending requires you to spare him, which makes him summon all the bosses you fought already in a Boss Rush. However, they're only slightly more powerful when you first fought them, and they still fall before your powerful party.
 * In Gothic 2 the final boss is something like this, especially as a mage.
 * Doesn't work in expansion. And all dragons get insane regeneration and armor ensuring an appropriate boss fight.
 * The final battle against Big Bad Mankar Camoran in Oblivion's main quest is fairly anticlimactic. He's a decently leveled character, but certainly not even as tough as Jyggalag or Umaril. The only caveat is that he's reistant to magic weapons (which you'll almost certainly be wielding by default at this point) and also backed up by his two kids, who keep respawning after you kill them.
 * There is also Jyggalag the Daedric prince of Order (Shivering Isles) and Umaril the Unfeathered, a Ayleid sorcerer (Knights of the Nine). Both are far easier to defeat than they should be, but by then the player character can be very tough anyway and it seem they simply haven't kept up.
 * Monstar in Paper Mario. He only has 20 HP, low for that point in the game, and he has one attack, whick looks flashy and ultra-powerful, but ends up only doing 1 point of damage.
 * That was the point. It's not a true boss, but a bunch of star kids trying to scare Mario away from their town.
 * in Grandia II is initially very tough, having . But after the first time you beat him, the portion breaks apart and he flees, leaving  to stall you. Every single one turns out to be stronger than he is, the only dangerous spell he has is the game's ultimate explosion-damage spell, but you can see it coming a mile away and all your characters are faster than him, fast enough to knock him out of it and cost him a turn while he's charging up. He also has a meagre 32000 HP, it's possible to kill him in two to four turns without even letting him move. Lampshaded in that the characters themselves mock him for being so pathetic before delivering the final blow. His mind may have been strong enough, but he forgot he was a puny human beneath all that bluster.
 * This battle was so simple for the basic reason that was a single target, in a game where strategy is based around locking down your opponents' actions—the harder bosses in the game have you outnumbered, but you outnumber  3 to 1. Subsequently, this encounter was brutally subverted in the final boss fight from Grandia III who is ALSO a single target, but charges his skills so quickly that he's almost impossible to interrupt and is subsequently extremely tough (especially compared to ).
 * As though that weren't enough, the Grandia II final boss fight also subverts Contractual Boss Immunity—he's not immune to Spellbinding Eye's paralyzing effect, so if you use it on him it's entirely possible that you'll kill him without him ever getting a turn.
 * In Return to Krondor, the final boss, 7-foot-tall pirate leader Bear, dies pretty much automatically after you click the cursor on him to attack him (due largely to your character having been transformed into a absurdly overpowered avatar with 16 attacks per turn and a huge flaming greatsword).
 * The four dragons in Lunar: Dragon Song qualify. The plot makes you expect one hell of a fight, as do the graphics—the dragon is so big your characters are shrunk slightly to fit them on the screen. But the dragon will go into rest mode, not to awaken until the next turn ends, if you hit it hard enough... which is easy to do. Rinse, repeat. Unless you're underlevelled, the dragons are pretty much the easiest bosses in the game.
 * One exception to the rule is the Black Dragon, who will eventually take a form of a darkened version of Jian who won't be stunned like the other dragons while in this form and also inherits Jian's special ability of attacking three times at once and stacking damage. This, however, is hardly an exception because once you learn Dark Jian only attacks when your Jian attacks and mimics every other command Jian does, you can make your Jian stall by using items or cards while Dark Jian will continuously heal himself with HP Gabryel and Flora can tear through anyways.
 * Rhapthorne in Dragon Quest VIII. After Dhoulmagus put up SUCH a fight, and several other of the people Rhapthorne is either directly controlling or influencing putting up another fight (Sir Leopold, Jessica, Marcello), the only way you can't finish the battle in less than 10-15 turns is if you decide to gimp yourself or refuse to exploit tension.
 * Dragon Quest IX. Just like Rhapthorne, Corvus doesn't appear to get that much stronger when he goes into his second form. (He has less Health than a mere Climax Boss, King Godwyn...and that's not even adding the health from his first form. Heck, Godwyn even has more HP than Barbaros in his second form!) He more or less just gains a few new attacks, can inflict status ailments, etc...but once more, he doesn't really offer that much new to the game. Kind of a shame that this was intended to be the hardest game.
 * That is, until you reach the first Grotto or Legacy Bosses. Corvus was practically just put there to make sure you're ready for them.
 * Barbaros, again. Almost a case of Overrated and Underleveled.
 * Fallout has both a Big Bad and The Dragon, but it's possible to kill them both without ever meeting them.
 * In Fallout 3, the final shootout against in the . Preceded by, it's almost an execution rather than a fight, as he's , whereas by this point you're probably a killing machine wearing Powered Armor and wielding a plasma rifle, backed up by a Powered Armor-wearing Action Girl and a laser gatling-wielding Super Mutant. He'll often die with one shot to the head from most high end weapons. You're even given the option of sparing him, despite the This Is Unforgivable! tone of the dialog.
 * The main quest of Fallout 3's expansion Point Lookout culminates in a fight against an unarmed Brain In a Jar, backed up by the weakest robot-type enemies in the game. If your character has survived the swampfolk, ghoul reavers, and tribals that populate Point Lookout, you'd have to be trying to fail this.
 * Likewise, the Alien Captain in Mothership Zeta goes down in one shot. He doesn't even have an energy shield like all the other alien troops. Yeah, Fallout 3 is pretty bad about this.
 * In Planescape: Torment, the end boss is easier to fight than most of the bosses who came before him. (especially if you found enough secrets to jack your stats up much higher than they would normally be by the end of the game) The real fun, though, is in the multiple ways you can win the fight, including several ways you can convince him to give up and merge back with you.
 * Even more amusing: Remembering that Vhailor is said to gain more power when he faces great injustice, reviving him, and siccing him on the Transcendent One. Vhailor will literally gain enough power to kill a god single-handedly when faced with the level of evil the Transcendent One represents, while you laugh and laugh and laugh.
 * in Penny Arcade Adventures Episode Two.
 * Lampshaded: "SISSY BOSS FIGHT!!!"
 * The final form of Emporer Ix in Sonic Chronicles: the Dark Brotherhood, where his two previous forms did ridiculous damage if you missed even one tap or drag on the touch screen, and had defense like crazy. Of course this is mostly due to the fact that Super Sonic has been activated for the final fight, and by the end of the game you have the eye-hand coordination to pull off the simple rapid tapping patterns. In fact the boss is designed for you to beat it in one round (because he regenerates to full health after the turn), and you have more than enough chances to do him in even if you somehow screw up the first round.
 * The Forbidden in Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled is pathetically easy, easier than some enemies in the final dungeon.
 * The final battle against Belial in Lands of Lore 2. If you're good, you will finish him off with a single blow. It might very well be a glitch though, because if you're playing evil, you're in for a very tough fight, followed by another one against the Draracle.
 * One of the final areas of Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon is filled with giants who fill the entire corridor (crawling) and deliver punches that damage your whole party and may very well kill your less rugged mages in one blow. Depending on whether the RandomNumberGods like you, they may only punch once in so many turns. In contrast, the final boss is a wizard but who is also not even half the threat of a single giant.
 * This is not because of the boss (the dragon's fire breath hurts) but because of the level design. The final boss is in an area where you can sidestep all his attacks, and the giants are not.
 * Mewtwo in Pokémon Stadium. One on his side, six on yours (that can include one of him). To reach him, you need to fight some of the most blatant cheaters ever and he doesn't feel that powerful in comparison.
 * From Persona 3, the members of Strega have spent the entire game hounding your team, even . Yet when you finally get the chance to face them outside of a cutscene, they're... well, pathetic. There are random encounters that are more complicated and dangerous than them.
 * Mass Effect 2 has, at the end of the suicide mission, the . Somewhat justified in that If you just want to get it over with, using the M-920 Cain (read: portable mini-nuke launcher) takes off 2/3 of its HP. However, unless you have your Heavy Weapon Ammo research completely maxed, you can only fire it once. Not like you really need to, anyway. It's easy enough to beat without firing a nuclear bomb at it.
 * Darth Nihilus in the second Knights of the Old Republic. You spend half the game scared to death of facing him because the dude eats planets. But then, you reach him. You have back-up, he can't feed on your character because the Exile's Force connection is...peculiar, and he goes down in maybe 30 seconds.
 * There's even an option to sacrifice one of your teammates to weaken his power, which is completely pointless and makes you wonder just how underlevelled the devs seemed to think you would be at that point. Note that the Exile near the end of this game can easily destroy most other "bosses", except maybe Darth Sion and Traya. But that only serves to improve the constant feeling near the end of how awesome your character is, nothing quite like defeating Atris with a single blow. Or just use Force Crush, which cannot be defended against. Evil Is Cool indeed!
 * Diablo himself, in the first incarnation, is painfully easy to defeat. His only ranged attack is a simple blockable instant hit explosion but can be prevented by going melee, he's fairly susceptible to common magic, and has pretty low armor class. Doesn't help that there is an easy way to lure him out without waking his mooks. Excusable because.
 * The Summoner in the sequel. You fight through a reality-bending Escher twister full of demons in search of a power-mad sorcerer, who keels over in two or three hits on Normal difficulty. The weakest super-unique creature in the game, hands down. Only the non-boss uniques in the first act are squishier.
 * Monster Racers has the Legendary Racer, . After That One Duel Boss, you face someone who is not very fast, lacks an on-start Nitro Boost or other such gimmicks, has no terrain bonus and.... well, is just one racer as opposed to three. Exactly the opposite of the previous fight, making this even less climatic.
 * A variation occurs in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue/Red Rescue Team. If you get a Grass-type as a result of the personality quiz at the beginning of the game, Groudon becomes a cakewalk. See, by that point in the game, you'll be used to the bosses being a Difficulty Spike, and have prepared accordingly. Additionally, the villagers will have already told you how powerful Groudon is, and just before you reach him you'll find Alakazam, Charizard, and Tyranitar barely concious. Finally, you'll have had to go through a slew of powerful defensive Mons on your way through the dungeon. Then when you finally get to him,
 * Fable II ends in this way. After being transported to the Tattered Spire to confront Lucien, he is killed by the player (Or by Reaver, if you take too long) by simply shooting him once.
 * The Big Bad of Freedom Force is a brutal Multiversal Conqueror. He's also four feet tall and barely tougher than his henchmen. However, after you beat him, you face a tough, suitably epic fight against the Bigger Bad, a massive Expy of Galactus. But even then, Microwave can pretty much hold him down single handedly.
 * Disgaea 2. You confront the Final Boss, and he goes One-Winged Angel... and you outnumber him 10-to-one and he has no strong multiple-target abilities, or Geo Effects, or anything, unlike Disgaea 1's final boss, who is confronted along with his Elite Mooks and eliminates one of your best characters before the fight starts.
 * Abazigal from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Out of the Five-Bad Band and The Man Behind the Man that makes up the game's storyline villains, we have Illasera the Warmup Boss (who is a near-Zero Effort Boss for anyone who brought their party over from Shadows of Amn), Yaga-Shura the Puzzle Boss (who you fight alongside his huge army of not-insignificant mooks), Sendai the Sequential Boss who is also a Mook Maker, and, who teleports around a lot and uses a lot of weird special attacks (and is immune to Time Stop). Abazigal... Is a Palette Swap of the dragons you meet in Shadows of Amn with more HP. He stands still. He wing buffets you. He shields himself with outdated protective spells and has a slightly annoying lightning breath that will be lucky to kill your party mage at this point in the game. What doesn't help is that the stage's Mid Boss, Draconis, is the game's That One Boss and a lot more annoying to fight.
 * In standard BGII, the "place trap" ability of thieves can make any fight an Anticlimax Boss if they're positioned right and you have a chance to plant them before the fight. This is especially grim when fighting on the Great Tree, since you can walk past him before he becomes hostile, cover the place in the nastiest traps you have available, and then finish off the surrounding parasites, at which point there's a short conversation, he becomes hostile, and:
 * In standard BGII, the "place trap" ability of thieves can make any fight an Anticlimax Boss if they're positioned right and you have a chance to plant them before the fight. This is especially grim when fighting on the Great Tree, since you can walk past him before he becomes hostile, cover the place in the nastiest traps you have available, and then finish off the surrounding parasites, at which point there's a short conversation, he becomes hostile, and:
 * Apparently, no I don't. *dies*"


 * The boss of Tanglewood in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It's your typical Warmup Boss and it's in the beginning of the game, but it's anti climatic due to Garet and Isaac assisting you with their strength and summons, allowing you to win the fight in just a few turns.
 * In a series with Bonus Bosses being noticeably more difficult then the rest of the game, the Ogre Titans stand out as easier than the storyline bosses. You need the Infinity+1 Sword that they are weak to to fight them in the first place, they start the fight off slow to allow you to buff, and only use physical attacks (which do minimal damage thanks to the easy buffs).
 * Blados and Chalis. No One Hit KO attacks and no Djinn screws, both of which are standard for Golden Sun bosses. At worst,they can do some Mana Burn and some Standard Status Effects, which can be healed or even ignored if you aren't depending heavily on Psynergy. The second battle is even worse, as they have barely changed at all, while your group has leveled up and gained new allies, weapons, and Djinn.
 * Borderlands has an example that's an intentional parody. One sidequest chain about midway through the game has you dealing with a new Religion of Evil that the local Bandits have formed. At the end of the chain, you're tasked with finding and slaying the god of the Bandit cult. You head to the site marked on the map, find a pit, the pit suddenly starts jetting fire, and out comes...
 * One of Alpha Protocol's final bosses, is armed only with an easily dodgeable, rocket launcher with a very slow rate of fire. If you can get into the room that he is holed up in, he panics, curls up into a ball and can be defeated with a single punch. The other final boss is somewhat more challenging.
 * Wild ARMs 2 played with this a little bit, featuring a Puzzle Boss that could only be killed with an Instant Death ability.
 * In Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, the character who for story purposes is The Dragon turns out for gameplay purposes to be the final boss. It's a nice two-stage fight, which might lead some to think an even bigger one is coming up.
 * One of the criticisms of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire was that the person who meets the default Rival archetype (Brendan or May) don't even fully evolve their Pokémon and are only fought a very small number of times. This is what makes more people consider Wally as the rival, since he actually challenges you in Victory Road while Brendan or May give up. The leaders of Team Magma and Team Aqua also apply, seeing as they only use three Pokémon each; they also use all the same kinds of Pokémon that their minions use, so you're already used to battling them.
 * Fallout: New Vegas gives your character a whole lot of motivation to kill Benny, but dealing him his death is rather simple. He can go out with a whimper through Death by Sex, or dismissed to crucifixion. If you face him in combat on his own turf, his weak trophy gun makes him no tougher than the rest of his gang. He's was supposedly an expert knife-fighter from his tribal days, but can be faced in single combat in an arena with mediocre unarmed skill.
 * There's also Caesar who, should you go out of your way to assassinate him, is a pushover compared to his Praetorians and Dragon.
 * Salt-Upon Wounds in Honest Hearts is a tough opponent a boss likely to be if you choose to fight him. However, you will be fighting alongside the Burned Man himself who will curb stomp him and his mooks easily even if you did nothing.
 * Arguably,  in Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2. Possibly justified for the sake of the player, who has only just fought , which was likely a heck of a battle for most, and who has witnessed the heartbreaking scene that followed.   wasn't easy-peasy, but he definitely wasn't a difficult Final Boss. All bets are off in Challenge Mode, though.
 * Malpercio in Algorab Village in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. This is a fight against the Big Bad, the evil god you've been trying to stop the whole game, who's ravaged the home of the Children of the Earth...and he hits about as hard as the regular encounters in the area, moves once per turn, and only has one finisher.
 * Every fight as against Malpercio in that form qualifies, simply because he's so weakened. When he transforms for the final fight, it's much more satisfying.
 * Akuro in Okamiden, once you figure out how to stop That One Attack. His fire and lightning attacks can be stopped with Galestorm, which your required to get, and stopping said attacks leaves him vulnerable. If he uses his ice attack you have to back up and avoid his hands, which isn't that hard. Did the sidequest to get Fireburst? You can stop his ice attack, too. Worried about ink? The hands drop it (along with health) if they're attacked.
 * The Gaping Dragon and Dark Sun Gwyndolin are jokes compared to the other bosses in Dark Souls. In both cases the environment actually helps you. The Gaping Dragon's attacks are easy to avoid thanks to the huge boss arena and the fact that it takes a few seconds to recover after trying to charge you. Gwyndolin only uses easy to avoid ranged attacks and has no melee attacks, in an endless corridor with plenty of columns for you to hide behind. The battles are more tedious than difficult, since Gaping Dragon his high health and Gwyndolin is a Get Back Here Boss who teleports away every time you come near him.
 * Despite their collosal size both Balor and  in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (respectively mid-game boss and Final Boss) are quite easy, some mook encounters can be more difficult than those two fights.
 * Tales of Symphonia has . Not only is he the final boss of the game, but he's the Big Bad for the end of the game too. He's easily beatable by the time you finish the game, and can be beaten with relative ease with just spellcasters (yes, that icludes Colette). He has a somewhat annoying status effect-inflicting attack in his first form- Rejection- but isn't too hard.
 * In Mega Man Batttle Network 2 after a long, LOOOONG day of backtracking back and forth through the entire net, you finally come face-to-face with Gospel's Supreme Commander  Freezeman! ...Unfortunately, what could have been a climactic fight is rendered an utter joke by two simple facts: He's Aqua Element. And standing on Ice Panels. Both of these cause you to take double damage from Elec attacks, and they stack. 3 guesses as to how you take him down in a matter of seconds.

Shoot Em Ups

 * Almost every final boss in the Gradius series is the Bacterian emperor, who usually takes the form of a large brain and either fires easily-avoidable attacks or just sits there and does nothing, giving the player a chance to take him down. On the other hand, given that it's in control of the space station you just cruised through, maybe the whole level counts as the final boss.
 * A self-parody series named Parodius also has these. Parodius Da has an octopus who claims he's strong, but you can shoot his legs off or wait until they let go.
 * In its Omake level, you find
 * The ending of After Burner Climax for the arcade which involves nukes also ends rather anticlimactically even if you let the nukes go off as your Carrier's CWACs destroys the missile and takes only mild damage from the shrapnel. But the stage beforehand will make most AB players wonder how he can get past all the missiles and flak barrages.

Simulation Game

 * , the villain of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 & 2, gives you an overlong Motive Rant then tries to quick-draw his handgun on you. It migh have worked if your character didn't already have his gun pointed at his head.
 * Every single Ghost Recon game has this, with most final boss fights being a regular guy surrounded by body guards who all go down in one hit, but including anything else would be counter to the game's ultra-tactical and realistic gameplay.
 * In Rune Factory 2, your character is challenged to a duel by the father of one of the available love interests, in order to convince said father that you're "man enough" to marry his girl. Before the fight begins, a giant orc appears and interrupts the fight, threatening both you and the father. The orc is quickly found to be a pushover, as despite its girth and height, it is no stronger or more durable than its smaller, more common brethren.
 * Tom Clancy's HAWX can be said to have an anticlimatic final mission by gameplay terms. Operation Twilight was no more intense then your bog standard dogfight and your opponents fights not in state of the art fighters but older Migs. No superweapon or Ace Squadron to make the last stand against you or anything

Stealth Based Game

 * Hitman: After beating a bunch of jumped up super clones with miniguns you then have to face... a weakling scientist with a tazer.
 * Also in Hitman: Blood Money, the final showdown with Mark Parchezzi III is over in 5 seconds if you just use your scoped pistols to find his noggin and down him in one shot from a respectable distance. This is guaranteed as any player who made it this far is not just going to rush headlong into the firefight. Other ways to end the fight quickly include rigging explosives in his path, or going into first person mode to shoot him before his bomb goes off.
 * Doing one of two different means of avoiding The End in Metal Gear Solid 3 either leads to him expiring on the spot after the build up of him being the best damn Sniper ever, or just a small group of pathetically easy Ocelot soldiers. Probably the only example of someone being BOTH That One Boss and an Anticlimax Boss.
 * In Assassin's Creed I, you can finish the 3-part boss battle in about 10 seconds if you use the hidden blade to counter.
 * In Assassin's Creed II, the final boss,, despite having a Piece of Eden and a lot of health, doesn't really help him much against . After this, you fight him with just your fists, and if you choose, you can beat him by repeatedly kneeing him in the groin.To be fair, you're playing a 40-year-old who's been killing for over half his lifetime, while "The Spaniard" is a 68-year-old Fat Bastard who's spent his life politicking around.
 * In Brotherhood essentially acts like a Papal Guard using a Longsword, except that he's immune to executions and counter kill attempts. While there are periodic guard spawns an experienced player can quickly wipe them out in a single kill streak of counter kills and executions, so this final boss fight (as with "The Spaniard" in AC2) amounts to whittling down his Health—making this one of the only fights in the game where a weapon's Damage stat matters. Story-wise, Ezio was already 48 years old while  was only 31.
 * Assassin's Creed: Revelations has nearly every boss encounter be this. Leandros, the Templar captain who tries to execute Ezio in the start of the game, is assassinated in the first memory sequence without even a fight. Near the end, Manuel Palaiologos is far easier to kill than the Janissary Elite Mooks; a single counter and he's down. You fight Big Bad while both of you are falling off a mountain and it only lasts about 14–17 seconds. And to top it off . Lastly, the penultimate memory of Altaïr consists of him walking up to Abbas and.
 * In Manhunt, after you kill Piggsy - an absolutely asylum escapee insane man who wears the head of a pig as some sort of helmet/mask combination, doesn't appear on the radar, wields a chainsaw capable of killing the player in a handful of hits, jumps out of the shadows to give you heart attacks on top of heart attacks and is absolutely Arkham Asylum INSANE (I know I said that before, but it needs saying again) you finally confront the man who's forced you to become his insane snuff film project. He takes a few potshots at you with his pistol before you gut him like a fish.
 * Which has led to multiple fan theories about it just being the last set-up by the real director.
 * In the first Tenchu game, after you infiltrate a compound guarded by ninjas and defeat The Dragon, you meet the boss: a helpless evil merchant with a gun. You CAN lose to him if you have barely any health left and he shoots you, but defeating him is easy.
 * Done again in Tenchu: Fatal Shadows. After tracking down the evil ninja you're pursuing... he declines to fight. His mistress, an untrained geisha with a dagger, instead confronts you. It may be possible to lose if you stand there, have almost no health left, and let her stab you, but you can kill her with one throw.
 * Subverted in Syphon Filter 2. After anticlimactically executing Stevens in the parking garage, you confront the real Final Boss, Chance, on the rooftop.
 * The three house leaders in Shinobido, as they can be assassinated like other enemies. Subverted by the actual ninja leaders like Kabuto, Hebitonbo and the Final Boss Garaman, who can't be wrestled or one-shotted and are immune to sneak attacks.

Third Person Shooter

 * In Win Back, after several boss battles against the various themed members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad, the terrorist leader turns out to be just a regular guy with a pistol and a light armor vest, and although he has a boss-like health bar, he still goes down pretty easily.
 * The final final battle with The Dragon / The Starscream, Cecile, is even more anticlimactic, just shoot out the laser power boxes, then man the machinegun and mow him down.
 * In Gears of War 2, you fight, who was built up the be the boss, in the penultimate chapter. The real final boss is , which you fight with a Hammer of Dawn in an on-rails segment. Even on Insane, this thing is easy.
 * The Ork Warboss in Space Marine wasn't nearly as hard as any of the random Ork swarm fights earlier in the game.
 * Dead Space features, one of the main antagonists who turns up to make Issac's life difficult at various points throughout the game. He is a devout Unitologist who is trying to bring the Necromorphs back to Earth, believing them to be the next stage in human evolution. , and players are fully expecting to fight him as a boss, or at least a sub-boss..
 * A better example is the Hive Mind; it is about the size of a building, and is easily one of the more nightmarish Necromorphs, but it is very easy to beat; it's main attack is telegraphed and so slow that it can be dodged very easily. The only tricky part in the encounter is when it tries to eat Isaac, as it can be hard to aim for it's weak spots, but if you've managed to fight your way through the entire Ishimura, it should pose no real challenge.
 * Not only is its main attack slow, but it only does around half a bar of damage. And this is right after it shows the hivemind
 * In Freedom Fighters, the Soviet General Tatarin is assasinated with a single sniper shot to the head. Even if you go against the level design and instead run up to him to fight him, he turns out to be no stronger than the standard Soviet soldiers you've been mowing through the entire game, and dies with a couple bursts of assault rifle fire. He is, however, protected by a dozen or so Soviet Elite Mooks and a heavily armored, machinegun-wielding Giant Mook.
 * Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike has, a formerly tough boss on , return for a shootout on Endor. He's so easy to beat you can escape while doing so. And with the bonus missions included, the final boss is the impressive but easy to beat capital ship.
 * In SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals, Lt. Park chases a bleeding Gorman (injured via the mayhem you caused at the embassy) into a train station as he tries to escape. The final cutscene is him crying like a bitch while you decide whether to kill him or leave him to the local authorities.

Turn Based Strategy
""Why do you do this to me on our LAST STAND!?""
 * A "Hard stage, easy boss" variations occurs in X-COM: UFO Defense: You, go through two gigantic battles, enter the final room... and find the leader of the alien forces... . Sure, there's a lot of Ethereal Commanders in the room, but you could potentially win by having one Red Shirt enter the room and throw an explosive at the target, no matter how many other aliens remain.
 * Oh no, that's not the most humiliating part of it. A well-trained squad of psionically inclined troops can chain a bunch of mind-controlled aliens together and have them dispose of the boss given a lucky trajectory or gratuitous Blaster Launcher use.
 * On the first or second turn of the battle.
 * Without even seeing the boss.
 * The sequel, Terror From The Deep, has a straighter example, as the final mission is much easier, especially when compared to the rest of the game. Not only is Cthulhu incapable of hurting you, his bodyguards kinda suck too.
 * The final boss of Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is very easy for the fact that unlike any of the other final bosses in the series, he has no minions to deal with, meaning it's just a simple task of whittling down his less-then-impressive HP before he can defeat all 10 of your units.
 * In Fire Emblem: Sealed Sword, the "true ending" can only be reached, at which point the game will continue on for three more levels past the climactic battle with Zephiel. The bosses of these three bonus levels—Brunnya, Yahn, and Idoun—are all far easier to beat than Zephiel! The final two bosses, Yahn and Idoun, go down quite easily,
 * The Dragon and Big Bad of the 1st game also qualify. The first has pathetic accuracy and damage, makeing him little more then a "gate" requiring the player to obtain the starlight spell in order to damage him. The final boss can easily be defeated by putting Marth in front of him, ending you turn, and attacking. It's possible to even land a lucky critical strike and take him down in one hit!
 * Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 was a rather difficult game, considered by many to be the hardest in the series. Except that its final boss named "Beldo" (or Berdo or Beld/Berd, depending on who translated it) is a textbook Anticlimax Boss. Yes he can turn party members to stone and all and has a powerful magic tome, but practically anyone can take him out as opposed to the traditional bosses that can only be killed by one or two units, or units with legendary S-Ranked weapons. Not to mention, they don't even need to be that high-level to kill or even take out most of his health to be finished off by another weak unit.
 * The Black Knight in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. You've spent the better part of two games waiting to kill this guy, and when the battle finally comes, Ike stomps him. You can literally do nothing and you'll still win just by counterattacking; And if you equip Ike with a Hammer, you can kill him in a single attack. The hardest part of the battle is keeping him alive long enough for your other characters to get the Wishblade. This is especially disappointing when you consider how hard he was in Path of Radiance.
 * Path of Radiance had Oliver, a corrupt senator who serves as the villain for the portion of the game that takes place in Begnion. After several chapters of chasing him (one of which consists of four separate battles) you finally corner him... And while his stats aren't too bad, they aren't anything special either. To add to it, about halfway through the final battle against him, a group of four friendly units, one of whom is extremely broken at this point in the game, will show up and start decimating Oliver's remaining forces. At this point, as long as you aren't outright trying to get yourself killed, the battle is yours -Even if you refuse to aid them, Tibarn and his forces will eventually finish the chapter on their own.
 * Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones zigzags this with the final boss fight.
 * Jagged Alliance 2's Big Bad is Queen Diedrianna. She has great stats, great armor, and great weapons... but then so do the mooks by that stage of the game. And for that matter, so does your squad. And unless you've done something wrong, there's eighteen mercs in your squad by this point. Her swarm of Elite Mooks are much more of a problem than she is, especially as she doesn't join the fight until you actively shoot at her. And since she tends to stay out of the way until the end...
 * ... and she succumbs with ridiculous ease to a single mustard gas grenade.
 * After a certain event in La Pucelle Tactics, you have to replay a challenging boss fight against a demon lord and his mooks with only one character. However, said character  is suddenly level 100 (while, barring a lot of Level Grinding, the rest of your party won't be nearly at that level), gains wicked stats, and even more wicked special attacks. Oh, and he floats all the time too, so you know he's Badass. The only real challenge in this fight is  . None of the enemies' attacks will even scratch the guy. The cut-scene afterward shows   stomping on the defeated demon lord's head; the once mighty demon begging for mercy. He only stops when he finally smashes the demon's head into the ground. This Anticlimax Boss encounter acts as foreshadowing for The Reveal that.
 * Advance Wars Dual Strike: after cutscene abusers, a Scrappy Level, and a series of levels that are potentially such, you'd expect something far more threatening for a final mission than a wheezing old man on life support heading a small army along with slime that doesn't move fast at all trying to control a very open area, and a Myspace girl wannabe commanding nothing but pre-deployed units against ridiculous building capabilities.
 * The webcomic Totally Flaked had a field day with that one. Apparently it was the incompetence of the BH units to blame.


 * Warhammer 40000 Chaos Gate: When you finally meet the Chaos Lord Zymran, you'll find he's actually weaker than any of the Terminators guarding him.
 * Super Robot Wars OG Gaiden features in its second-to-last stage Dark Brain, who has the most HP of possibly any boss in the entire series, never mind that one game. He regenerates a third of it every turn and is surrounded by a battalion of bosses in mook's clothing that can severely drain your team's resources before you even start dealing with the boss fight. And then you get to the final level, and face Neo Granzon, the True Final Boss of the Super Robot Wars series. Anyone who knows the history of that particular mech was ready for an epic final battle. And then he turns out to have less than half of Dark Brain's HP, pathetic defenses, and mooks who are carbon copies of a Disc One Final Boss from two games ago. Your characters have gotten so much stronger since then that some will be literally immune to their attacks. Not exactly a battle that epic songs will be written about.
 * The Final Boss of Gorky 17/Odium. Lots of health, powerful attacks, powerful armor. ...And he's not immune to tranquilizing (which renders him unable to act at all for several turns) - and by that point in the game, you have enough equipment to easily keep him stunned for the entire battle. Oops.
 * St. Ajora/Altima goes down pathetically easily in the final battle of Final Fantasy Tactics, even if you're not using an overleveled party or Thunder God Cid. In fact, even with a moderately leveled party (matching the level of the characters you fight in the final dungeon) you can kill both of her forms with just a handful of attacks.
 * The final stages of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is unlocked only by completing the standard 300 missions of the game, including the final boss of the main plot, the challenging Li-Grim. For the bonus missions, the final boss is three pathetically easy judges who will fall quickly to your powerful party.
 * Not strictly a boss (rather, an optional encounter) but Asagi Asagiri in Makai Kingdom is rather anticlimactic. Most event battles (such as your fellow overlords) have enemies well over level 1000 with ultimate equipment, and require the wishmaker to be in the hundreds and pay a few thousand mana to unlock. Asagi's event require a level 1000 wishmaker and costs 100,000 mana, and... she's level 50. Completely alone. Without any noteworthy equipment. Zetta himself mocks her weakness and refuses to let her become a protagonist until he's pounded some actual skill into her. The rest... is history.

Wide Open Sandbox

 * The two people you must kill at the end of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories go down in a single well-aimed gunshot each, in contrast to a previous (and connected, storyline-wise) boss-like encounter which can be hard even with super powerful weapons.
 * Bully ends with a one-on-one punch-out against  on a collapsing scaffolding on the school's roof. He's no tougher than any of the standard Mooks you've been beating up throughout the game (and may even be weaker, since he barely fights back and spends most of the time trying to block your attacks), whereas you've probably acquired a massive number of brutal moves from the crazy hobo by that point in the game.
 * Makes sense when you think about it, though. After all, Jimmy had been fighting his way through Bullworth since (quite literally) the day he arrived.
 * Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto games in general subscribe to the "difficult level, easy boss" approach for the games' final missions. Typically, they involve a long, multi-stage action sequence (with no saving or checkpoints!) with vehicular chasing/combat + difficult shootouts against many enemy Mooks, which end with a one-on-one confrontation with the Big Bad who dies after a second or two of assault rifle fire.
 * Such a thing is quite common throughout the entirety of San Andreas. Some sub-bosses do carry armor but that just adds a second or two to their lives.
 * Saints Row The Third has (in one of the endings) Kia, a military commander second to Cyrus Temple, head of the elite special forces group called S.T.A.G. The fight is situated under a giant statue . Kia has taken hostage (and in the former's case, uses  as a meat shield). She has about all the health of standard S.T.A.G. infantry, and you spend the entirety of this fight picking up and throwing jarred farts at her and shooting her while she's stunned. Considering the massive waves of enemies you had to deal with beforehand, she hardly poses any threat, sans being somewhat dried up of ammo.
 * Scarface the World Is Yours. Copy past GTA comments here.
 * Granted, Mount & Blade is supposed to be a realistic game, so Authority Equals Asskicking doesn't always fly, but still, don't expect you go into a nice one-on-one duel with the enemy commander, be it a lord or even a king. They DO tend to do a little more damage to your troops than normal Mooks, but thanks to Artificial Stupidity they often get run down easily by your Redshirt Army, especially when they charging your army all alone with their troops staying back or taking the first line in a siege, only to get crushed in between the attackers and the defenders.
 * In Red Faction: Guerrilla, after a ridiculous trek up Mount Vogel with you in a missile pod tank against the entire EDF, at the summit of the mountain waits in a standard tank. By this point in the game, you have two weapons that can simply kill  inside the tank and leave the vehicle intact, and a few heavy-duty weapons, including two different rocket launchers, that can simply destroy the tank itself. Even if you didn't bring any of these weapons with you, at close range all he can attempt to do is run you over, since his howitzer can't target you and his tank has no secondary machine gun. It's virtually effortless to circle around and take  down with mining charges or even the sledgehammer.

Miscellaneous Games

 * The final mission of Airforce Delta is a dogfight against a single enemy plane not especially smarter or stronger than the dozen of plane mooks fought throught the game.
 * The final mission in Backyard Skateboarding is three tricks (one of which is an ollie). As if the rest of the game weren't already easy...
 * Nagash in Warhammer Dark Omen. The hordes of mummies you have to negate before you get to him are indeed lethal and tiresome, but the Supreme Lord of Undead himself? Not so much. Granted, he's a superb melee fighter and a capable wizard, but you have a TANK. * Crunch*, oops.
 * The final fight with the Bonnes in Mega Man Legends is against Bruno what Tron Bonne calls "Her masterpiece." Now on paper this robot seems pretty tough. It has homing missiles, bomb launchers, anti-air guns (for knocking you off buildings) and twin shield breaking laser launchers which if you got hit you'd take extra damage from the other weapons. Now it probably WOULD be a tough boss battle if that entrance that you used to reach the boss area in the first place can ALSO be used as cover to block practically all of the bosses attacks and those that aren't blocked (the homing missiles) CAN BE SHOT DOWN. Yep the Bonnes would've had a good robot if it wasn't for the environmental factor.
 * There are a number of songs in Rock Band that aren't nearly as difficult as their difficult ranking indicates, which can lead to this trope. In particular, in Rock Band 2, "The Trees" is a tier 6 on drums, and a number of songs are placed in the "Impossible" tier, even though only one or two instruments are difficult enough to warrant that rating (for instance, "Bodhisattva" is a tier 6 song overall, but only the guitar is that difficult. Drums are tough, but bass and vocals are nowhere near "Impossible" level).
 * The final Wizpig race of Diddy Kong Racing can fall under this category. The items return, the stage layout, while with way more turns and dips, do not require you to perfect every boost, and Wizpig himself is less intimidating than he is. He is actually slower than his running counterpart.
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! Stardust Accelerator. The second to last boss is a painful survival gauntlet where you have to fight 4 tournament caliber decks, in a row, no resetting lifepoints and if you lose, its game over and you have to go through a long cutscene to fight them again. These are, a zombie deck which by itself is tougher than anything the game has used before, a water deck, a lightsworn deck (an archetype of rare cards deliberately designed to be overpowered before the ban list nerfed it... this game is before that nerf. Oh and the cards are very rare so it's difficult for a player to fully assemble a lightsworn deck of thier own), and a dark armed dragon deck, modelled after a tournament winning deck. Oh and they have the computer's "luck" to help them out.... After that absoulute hell, you get to save then fight the final boss.... Jack Atlus, using a poorly built, unoptimised deck that is built for flavour. And it is a joke.
 * To clarify the above, in the gauntlet of decks you have to play, you have to face three top tier decks(Zombies, Lightsworn, and Dark Armed Return {DAD-Return}) plus one average deck (Ice Barrier/Water). You can only pass as much as 10,000 life points from one duel to the next, which is of little help since you have Lightsworns and DAD-Return, two decktypes infamous for thier ability to rapidly summon swarms of powerful monsters at once to inflict massive damage (Damage outputs of 8000 to ELEVEN THOUSAND life points in one turn are fairly common) onto the opponent in one turn, right after the other. Jack's deck, however, is poorly built with no guiding strategy behind it.
 * The final boss of Jaden's story in Tag Force 2 is... Jaden, using whatever deck you built for him. No special top deck hax, the not terribly good ai on his side and those crappy, crappy Ehero cards hes forced to use leads to an easy win.
 * The Hive Tyrant Alpha in the Dawn of War II campaign. Though powerful, in this mission the player has control of all six of their squads (whereas it is limited to four in all other missions) as well as Gabriel Angelos, and the poor thing manages to attack maybe three times before being killed. In contrast, the entirely optional Bonus Bosses, the Avatar of Khaine and Warboss Bonesmasha, are at least a magnitude more resilient, with the former in particular the single most difficult task in the game.
 * The Flash Rhythm Game DJManiax plays this for laughs: One of the unlockable songs is
 * In LEGO Racers 2, the final boss, Rocket Racer, is the easiest boss in the game. Part of this is because he doesn't cheat unlike Reigel and the Berg, and the other part is because he goes up ramps, which slow you down.
 * In Casper on 3DO, PS1 and Sega Saturn, the final boss "battle" has you being chased around a maze by Ghost!Carrigan. You go to the bottom of the maze and pick up the key while dropping coins to keep her distracted, then open the chest in the middle of the maze and wait for her to finish picking up the coins, at which point she starts coming after you again and gets sucked into the chest. You don't even have to use the coins. You can just barely outrun (outfloat?) her and she'll probably only get one hit in as you're opening the chest.

Anime and Manga

 * In the TV series of Hellsing, the final villain comes out of nowhere. While some of the craziest action takes place during the final battle, it was still short lived and not entirely tense due to the lack of buildup and plot value.
 * The Big Bad of Bleach,, is built up to be unstoppable, defeating the entire supporting cast with one blow on average. After the main character trains for three months/an hour (consisting mostly of him being stabbed) the enemy who has been hyped up throughout the entire series is defeated in three chapters with absolutely no effort on the part of Ichigo.
 * Even worse than The Espada was . After all the buildup after The Reveal about him being both the Big Bad of the arc and his talk of his strength, Ichigo proceeds to fight him for one chapter in bankai before one-shotting him.
 * In Devil and Devil, the characters arrive to prevent Satan's resurrection, only to find that
 * The second time Kotaro shows up in order to face Yaiba he's bisected by Rokuemon Ishida's attack. Justified, because Kotaro was totally unaware of his plans.
 * The Obsidian Lord in My-HiME, largely because After the Hime Star is destroyed, he gets incinerated in one attack from Kagutsuchi.
 * Hanzo from Naruto was seen as one by a large portion of the fanbase when he fought against Mifune, his perfect counter.
 * Of all the characters who got anti-climatically killed in High School DxD, it's  who gets killed in seconds by Kiba.
 * Yugi of Tenchi in Tokyo is built up to be a very dangerous Tyke Bomb that has actively screwed with Tenchi and the girls for the entire series. By the end of the series, Tenchi restores his "family", gets back his BFS and confronts Yugi...
 * in One Piece. Justified by two factors: first,  and second, he basically was a Small Name, Big Ego type without much experience.

Comic Books
"Huh. I thought he had super-powers or something. Showbiz phony."
 * In Scott Pilgrim, Lucas Lee is defeated when . Also, is beaten with a Single-Stroke Battle, but there's plenty of buildup.
 * Mr. Rictus in Wanted. At least one character told Wesley that Rictus would eat him alive if they fought, and Wesley  Add to that the mass of supervillains which Wesley takes down just prior to this and just as easily and it's a rather disappointing climax.
 * Ultimate Spider-Man: Kraven the Hunter, although it comes immediately after a genuinely intense fight. Spider-Man has just beaten Doc Ock when Kraven arrives (after promising to kill Spidey on live television) and demands they fight. Spidey would rather Kraven helped him get someone out of a trashed car, has no idea what his deal is, and eventually gets fed up and one-shots him.


 * Kraven does gain super-powers later on. And is taken down, if anything, even -swifter-.
 * Sin City does this from time to time:
 * The Yellow Bastard is pretty ineffectual in battle and the final scene is no different. He is quickly stabbed, dismembered, castrated, and beaten to death.
 * Manute is set up as the main villain in A Dame To Kill For . When it comes time for his first battle against Marv, a similar Made of Iron character, he's beaten senseless and gets an eye torn out. He does get to come back for the climax, however.
 * The Colonel, the Big Bad from Hell And Back ends up captured off-panel and we see him briefly before he gets a bullet through his head. The protagonist, meanwhile is rescuing his love interest and relegates himself to diving for cover with her in his arms while his friend blows up the attacking Black Helicopter that had caused him trouble earlier. This was all orchestrated by the main character but it serves as a little anti-climatic considering how Badass the story had been up until that point.
 * Jackie Boy in The Big Fat Kill combines this with Disc One Final Boss and Decoy Antagonist. He shows up with a few of his friends to menace Dwight's girlfriend Shelly and then leaves for Old Town. Dwight decides to follow with the firm belief that he and his friends were going to harm more women that night. This seemingly sets Jackie Boy up as the Big Bad of the story until he and his friends are slaughtered by Dark Action Girl Miho mere moments after entering Old Town. The conflict occurs when
 * Pete Blute in Jennifer Blood is built up as the smartest, toughest, and all-around deadliest of the eponymous antiheroine's uncles, so much so that she repeatedly says she's not sure if she can kill him. Issue seven begins with her already having given him a mortal wound. Of course, she then proceeds to taunt him as he lies dying by giving a major anti-villainous monologue, so readers spend the issue waiting for the other shoe to drop....

Fan Fiction

 * The last shown battle in Christian Humber Reloaded is against Chaos, the forces of Chaos, the US Army and the President. Vash takes them down about as easily as most of his enemies, killing Chaos in three moves (Wind Scar -> Backlash Wave -> Hell's Warm Welcome) and the President with Hell's Warm Welcome alone.

Film

 * At the end of Diggstown, "Honey" Roy Palmer has fought his way through nine boxers in a row, including the seemingly invincible ringer "Hammerhead" Hagan. Then it is revealed that he must now fight Menoso Torres, who is "tough as nails" and "dirty as they come." So dirty, in fact, that when Palmer's manager Gabriel Caine orders Torres to take a fall, he immediately does so. This only partially counts, however, since Hammerhead is actually treated as the final boss until Torres's surprise appearance.
 * The Fallen in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In a film pushing 3 hours, the final battle between Optimus Prime and the Fallen lasts about 45 seconds.
 * Scott Pilgrim vs. the World does this for laughs. Scott has just defeated his girlfriend's seventh and final evil ex, and it seems like all of the action is finished, until Nega-Scott shows up out of nowhere and with only the vaguest of foreshadowing. Scott and Nega-Scott get into position for an epic final battle, but the scene suddenly cuts straight to Scott and Nega-Scott leaving the building, laughing like old friends and planning to get together for brunch the following week. When pressed for details, Scott shrugs and says they have a lot in common.
 * Frog One at the very, very end of The French Connection II. This being The Seventies, when Doyle catches up with the Frenchman - after being humiliated and tortured for two long films -
 * Kill Bill is an entire movie franchise, with two movies (and the deaths of "a hell of a lot of people") building up to one fight... which is over in twelve seconds. Twelve. Seconds.
 * Equilibrium has The Dragon get sliced in 2 sword moves. The Boss however, puts up a much better fight. With Guns.
 * The Dragon in Banlieue 13: Ultimatum ticks all the boxes on the Fight Scene Buildup Checklist; Leave Him to Me, Knuckle-Cracking, Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner... and is promptly finished with a single kick to the 'nads.
 * The titular Dr. No. He gets punched. Fight over.
 * Goro from the Mortal Kombat film. He's set up as a major threat but it's hard to take him seriously after Johnny Cage easily defeats him by kicking him in the crotch and dropping him off a ledge.

Literature

 * The Dark Tower's The Crimson King. After all that build-up, that's the big confrontation with the Big Bad?!
 * The Man Behind the Man in Kitty Takes a Holiday is about to attack when Arguably leads to the book being Hijacked by Ganon,
 * Just about every Redwall Big Bad whose fight is a short Curb Stomp Battle. But the biggest one would be Slagar,.
 * Bèbelle from Malevil. For all the talk of how dangerous and frightening he is, he gets taken down with a single shot in the night.
 * from the Chronicles of Prydain is swiftly dispatched in the last book with barely any lines and little fanfare or attention afterwards. More attention is spent on the final moments of . The way he dies underscores the fact that, for all his evil and fearsome reputation, was just a man.
 * Ivar Ragnarson, Manipulative Bastard and utter sociopath is the cause of almost all the misery in Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of the Sun. Yet he's killed about three quarters of the way through, when Bern stabs him in the back mid-speech. The political ramifications of what he did, on the other hand, last far longer, and lead to the deaths of a whole lot more people, so in a way, Ivar's legacy lived on.
 * The Volturi from The Twilight Saga. After four books building them up as the ultimate unstoppable vampire force,

Live Action TV

 * After being built up for all of the final season of Smallville as the ultimate unstoppable personification of evil, Darkseid goes out with ONE HIT. His so-called "unholy trinity" (Godfrey, Desaad, Granny Goodness) also go down like bitches to
 * Doomsday from Season Eight also qualifies, though at least his encounter with Clark can legitimately be called a "fight."
 * Season 3 of The Shield had Margos Dezerian a ruthless assassin for the Armenian mob sent to wipe out the Strike Team who after being built up as a ruthless psychopathic badass is dispatched rather easily at point blank range in a hallway by Vic Mackey.

Tabletop Games

 * The Tarrasque in Dungeons & Dragons is hyped to be the biggest, baddest, toughest monster in the game, often rumoured to be the cause of why so many powerful empires are no longer around. Too bad that for its 3rd edition incarnation (and others) it moves slowly, can't fly, and has no ranged attacks. Meaning anything that does and has a decent damage output can poke it to death without harm. It has a pathetic will save that any wizard that should be encountering him can beat (barring a natural 20) and no immunities to the effects that target will (Even the ones that people avoid using because every other high level monster beside Big T is immune to them). You can have your very own pet Tarrasque for a day/level (that can easily be renewed before it expires with no effort, just command it to lower it's SR and fail the will save) via Dominate Monster. One noticeably laughable design choice is that over half its feats are some of the worst feats in the game.
 * It doesn't help that ever since it was created, gamers have had unofficial "easiest/silliest ways to defeat the Tarrasque" contests. One particularly noticeable one involves a goat with a jar of green slime tied around its neck. The Tarrasque eats the goat and the slime then destroys it from the inside.
 * In Pathfinder the new Tarrasque is even weaker than the old one. While in 3.5 it at least had the attack and damage stats to threaten those low level things that haven't figured out how to fly and use ranged attacks yet the PF version has far lower stats and all of the same tricks work, and it's higher level, meaning you get even more XP for easily defeating it.

Web Original

 * Fire Sensei in Club Penguin. After winning all of the fire suit in Card Jitsu Fire which can be very hard you have to fight the Fire Sensei to get the fire gem,you expect Sensei to be quite hard and when you fight him he suddenly starts using weak cards and he gets beaten very quickly.
 * In the Feast Master run of Banana-nana-Ninja!, Shomaru Domatsu kills himself in lieu of having to face Baninja, who had just defeated the Feast Master Champion.

Web Comics
"Artax: Get back in your box and we won't step on you."
 * Eight Bit Theater Observe (major spoilers).
 * Clevinger's abuse of this trope is a large part of why he's fairly well hated outside of his (admittedly sizable) fanbase.
 * In Persona 3 FTW, Strega are even more easily disposed than in the original game. In fact, the Protagonist beats both Takaya and Jin by pushing them off a bridge while on the way to defeat the Hanged Man shadow.
 * In Homestuck, it looks like a Melee a Trois will occur among . Before any of them can do anything,, runs over and kicks straight in the bone bulge and punts him off a cliff. Earlier,  effortlessly garroted  with a bowstring and  and is the strongest in the trio, but was easily defeated by a bone bulge kick.
 * And then it happens again when  but then   shoos away the others and then proceeds with Talking the Monster to Death.
 * In the second episode of The Fantastic Favio Bros, The Horrors of Ecstasy, the two Evil Twins who believe that Everybody Must Get Stoned try to merge together into an "unholy combination" which embodies the evil powers of ecstasy. MaCavio gets on LeTony's back, they prepare to fight, and then
 * Being attacked by an ancient and powerful halfling lich in Nodwick:

Web Original

 * In Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Special Edition, most of the endgame is much easier than it was in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The boss of Wing Fortress Zone is the same, but this time it's plot-mandated that you fight it as Super Sonic. In Death Egg Zone, Silver Sonic doesn't fight at all—he simply points out where the final boss is, then tells you to have a nice day. Said final boss (not Robotnik, but ) goes down after a single hit.

Western Animation

 * Chimera and Cassandra from the third season of Winx Club. Even if they were just minor antagonists, Chimera turned Stella into a powerless an ugly monster, and Cassandra mind controlled Stella's dad, and made him to disown Stella and appoint Chimera as princess of Solaria. When the episode in which Stela was finally going to set things straight, everybody expected a huge brawl between Stella and Chimera. Well, Chimera went down after one hit, and Cassandra surrendered without putting up a fight. There's a reason of why Season 3 is considered the worst season so far
 * Zigzag from The Thief and the Cobbler. After some fistfighting, he is defeated by having his clothes sewed.
 * Vilgax cements his Badass Decay during the finale of Alien force. With his ship crippled and flooding, and Ben in one of his new ultimate alien forms, Vilgax decides to reveal his true form...a giant squid. Yes, Vilgax, feared throughout the galaxy, conqueror of worlds Vilgax, morphs into a squid. The fight was just a anti-climatic as it sounds.
 * Tuma from Bionicle: The Legend Reborn. Even accounting for his Badass Decay compared to his portrayal in the comics/novel/online serial, his defeat was truly pathetic, considering how the characters previously reacted to him.
 * In House of Villains, a special episode of Mickey's House of Mouse, the villains (Led by Jafar) take over the eponymous nightclub. After Mickey manages to get back in the nightclub, an anticlimatic battle ensues between Mickey (In his sorcerer garb) and Jafar, basically playing baseball. Then all of a sudden, Aladdin sneaks out of the kitchen (The other friendly Disney characters were trapped) and throws Mickey the lamp, which Mickey just uses it to trap Jafar. What happens next? A long battle? No? The villains just flee. Yep, flee.