Bait and Switch Boss: Difference between revisions

== Live Action TV ==

 

** The ''[[Law and Order]]'' series have done this on several occasions, of course it's easy to see coming when they manage to try and convict a person [[Spoiled by the Format|in the first half hour]].

* In Season 4 of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Spike is watching Buffy from an balcony giving a speech about how he's back and this time he's going to kill the slayer, but is interrupted by being tazered and surrounded by the real season's villains The Initiative.

* In the final level of the ''[[Alien vs. Predator]]'' arcade [[Beat'Em Up]] by [[Capcom]], you mow down your way to a fat colonel that is getting Aliens for the Weyland-Yutani company. After you take out his last mooks he steps forward to face you... only to be impaled and torn in half by the Alien Queen, which you thought you killed three levels earlier and who isn't a [[Stationary Boss]] like she was earlier due to not being attached to her egg sac anymore. Cue hellish final boss fight.

* ''[[Borderlands]]'' has Commandant Steele yell at you for stealing artifacts the whole game, only to be replaced by [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]] when she opens the vault.

** In the Thieves' Forest, a grizzly bear attempts to attack your party, but an off-screen [[Giant Mook]], which is causing the ground to tremble with its footsteeps, freaks out the bear so much that he ''craps himself'' and retreats back into his bush. You run away from this boss in the next stage, then fight him for real in a later level.

* ''[[Castlevania]]'' has a few. In ''Harmony of Dissonance'' you enter the boss room in a later part of the game, and see a Living Armour marching towards you. Looks exactly like the one you fought about twenty levels ago, only with a [[BFS]]... Until it's destroyed in one hit by Talos, the real boss (the big armor that you ran away from at the start of the game).

* ''[[Contra]]'' series

** ''Shattered Soldier'' has Mr. Heli-Robo, a [[Transforming Mecha]] that chases the player throughout Mission 1. It eventually appears at the end of the stage, where it is promptly crushed by Slave Beast Taka the actual boss.

* ''[[Dino Crisis]] 2'' has you fighting and constantly running from a one-eyed T-Rex (who's justifiably pissed off seeing as you and your team are the ones responsible for blowing up its eye). What's worse than fighting a T-Rex, you might ask? {{spoiler|Having that T-Rex corner the player about 3/4ths of the way into the game, only to be grabbed, tossed aside, and made into lunch by an even BIGGER dinosaur: Giganotosaurus.}} The "good" news? You get to fight (and more likely run from) it about two rooms later!

* The arcade game ''Dungeon Magic'' (from 1993, but playable now via MAME) has a classic example of this. After chasing the evil wizard Venom through three scenarios, each of which ends with him escaping and leaving you to fight one of his minions, you face off with him. He summons a Demon Lord...which kills him in one blow, and then fights you.

* ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' combines this trope with [[Fluffy the Terrible]] {{spoiler|with The Fury from the Necrohol of Nabudis. When entering the boss room, a huge behemoth greets the party... but it suddenly collapses and a [[Killer Rabbit|fuzzy little purple bunny]] shows up and the real battle takes place.}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' continues the trend with [[Evil Is Sexy|Jihl]], although many agree that [[Asshole Victim|she]] [[Kick the Son of a Bitch|deserved it]] after some [[Kick the Dog|less than meritorious behavior]].

*** In the sequel, though, Zenobia appears to be fightable.

** The last enemy you face during Titan's trials is one of the Undying, which kills the behemoth Titan had intended for you to fight.