Hopeless Boss Fight: Difference between revisions

[[File:ff2-firion-and-friends-are-dead 2662.jpg|link=Final Fantasy II|frame|...and the game hasn't even started yet.]]

 

 

Sometimes [[Failure Is the Only Option|the plot demands that you fail]]. The storyline requires the defeat of the main characters in order to make a point or explain a key event, regardless of whether or not the ''player'' would allow their party to fall in battle. There are two ways to accomplish this: One is the [[Cutscene Boss]], where the player has no control over the battle's outcome at all—and the other is the '''Hopeless Boss Fight'''.

These bosses tend to make their appearance near the beginning of the game, before the characters have had a chance to earn [[Experience Points]] or [[Level Up]], or otherwise become more powerful than their predefined starting levels—this makes narrative sense as well, because this is when the characters would be least likely to survive an encounter with them anyway. [[Tropes Are Tools|Done well]], this defeat will strike fear into the heart of the player, having learned firsthand just how powerful this boss really is; done poorly, it feels like [[Fake Longevity|a cheap trick designed to advance the plot]], [[Suspension of Disbelief]] be damned.

 

 

Ideally, the game should make it somewhat obvious to the casual gamer the fight is probably intended to be hopeless, lest you waste your serious healing items and abilities. This is another reason why these tend to appear at the beginning of the game, as you haven't even ''acquired'' any serious healing items or abilities yet.

Sometimes, the apparently invincible boss ''can'' technically be defeated, if you have [[Guide Dang It|a precisely tuned tactical setup]], access to a [[Disc One Nuke]], the advantage of a [[New Game+]] or endless hours of [[Level Grinding]] behind you. In this special case, defeating the boss may net you a cool reward of [[Experience Points]] or rare items.

 

* The boss will simply reveal that he is [[I Am Not Left-Handed|Not Left Handed]] and summon his [[Cutscene Power to the Max]] to knock your party senseless, if your party members didn't already [[Cutscene Incompetence|collapse from their own exhaustion]].

* Someone or something else pulls a [[Diabolus Ex Machina]] and finishes you off.

A specific subtrope of [[Fission Mailed]], and related to [[Controllable Helplessness]] in that you're directly taking part in a situation that will only end one way. If the boss ''must'' be defeated in battle to avoid a [[Game Over]], but invokes a [[Story Overwrite]] ''after'' the battle to defeat you, it's [[Heads I Win, Tails You Lose]].

 

 

 

* In ''[[Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia]]'', at the final battle with Dracula, once you've whittled his HP down to 0, if you're not fast enough to quickly equip the {{spoiler|Dominus Union}} he unleashes an unbeatable move that's supposed to instantly kill you (it does 9946 damage, though if you use the Volaticus Glyph, you can fly in the corner of the screen to dodge it, though the frame of Dracula and the explosion stays unmoving and never ends).

** In ''[[Portrait of Ruin]]'', you can't kill the Behemoth during the initial chase, you can only run, even if you are on [[New Game+]] and could beat the actual boss fight in under half a minute by [[Game Breaker|Dart spam]].

* Oddjob from ''James Bond 007'' for the Gameboy could not be beat without a special item, ensuring Bond gets dumped in the desert where he can't possibly survive.

* ''[[Brave Fencer Musashi]]'' has the fight with the super-vambees in the church. They can't be killed by damage, and if they grab you it's [[One-Hit Kill|instant death]]. Fortunately, if you hold out long enough, [[Weakened by the Light|the sunlight kills them]]. There's also a few instances where there's some invincible thing chasing you and all you can do is run - the stone head in the prologue chapter comes to mind, as does one of the forms of the [[Final Boss]].

* In ''[[Pokemon Rumble Blast]]'', {{spoiler|at the end of World 2, you get a Team Battle with one of these. Lampshaded with a Help Sign stating that "things might not always go your way, but sometimes is a good thing." Hurts your pride if you don't read the sign, but is considered a Critical Hit after winning the Charge Battle to reach this zone.}}

 

* ''Blood Omen: [[Legacy of Kain]]'' includes an early battle with Malek. He cannot be killed, forcing Kain to leave and seek help, first from the oracle (Moebius) and then Vorador, who defeats Malek himself.

** In fact, the very first battle is against respawning bandits. If you kill them all, more will come along, and eventually kill you in order to progress the story.

* The [[Newgrounds]] flash game ''Mobile Weapon'' contains an example of this. At some point in the game, you fight Fleet Commander Ariel Highwater in her mecha, Serra Superion. The mecha has ridiculous health and power and will maim your party within a few hits. However, you don't lose the game: you merely need to repair your own mechas after the battle. You'll never hear from her again.

* This happens twice in ''Breakdown'', both with [[The Dragon]], Solus. The first time isn't much of a fight, since he slams you against a wall before you can really do much. The second time is more of a fight, but the second he gets more strength, the fight's basically over. {{spoiler|However, you get to fight him again after some [[Time Travel]], and after he remarks that you were supposed to die quick, you beat him because you're now as powerful as he is.}}

* If you play the Zeon campaign in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]: [[Gundam vs. Series|Federation vs. Zeon]]'', nearly every encounter with Amuro and his Gundam is this. You're not even able to consistently damage him until the final mission, where you drop into his own final battle with Char.

 

 

* ''[[Grim Fandango]]'' loves this Trope. Both fights against Domino Hurley and Hector LeMans will go on forever until you [[Take a Third Option]].

* ''[[Escape from Monkey Island]]'' ends with a Boss Battle that could go on indefinitely, as the players regenerate their hitpoints faster than the other can take them away. Naturally, there's a trick to winning this one.

 

 

* In the DS ''[[Dinosaur King]]'' game, one of these is fought against Seth-he counters every move you can make regardless of what you do. A variation occurs in that it occurs ''after'' a normal boss fight with him.

* Somewhat unusually for a ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' game, ''Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories'' has one of these, the first time you encounter Heishin. If you do manage to beat him, he simply challenges you again. (And again, and again, and again, if need be...)

 

 

* In the arcade version of the [[Fighting Game]] ''[[Rival Schools]]'', you start off fighting students from other schools, attempting to uncover the mystery behind a rash of student disappearances. But in the third round, Raizo, the principal of Justice High School, shows up with a brainwashed person (his partner for the 2-man special attacks) to fight you. True to the trope, Raizo is very powerful and extremely resistant to damage at this point, but with enough skill, you can manage to chip off enough damage from him and fend him off until time runs out. If you lose as the plot demands, you continue to fight other students and unravel more of the story. If you are playing as the two Justice High teachers and lose, you still continue to fight students... ''as a brainwashed agent for Raizo'', complete with color-changed outfits, until the plot has your adversaries fight you to snap you out of it. On the other hand, if you do beat Raizo here, you skip directly to the end of the game, with another fight against him (depowered to beatable levels, of course). {{spoiler|Either way, once you defeat him you then fight [[The Man Behind the Man]], an [[Ax Crazy]], sword-wielding Justice High student named Hyo.}}

** Slightly different with the Gedo High in which Akira fights with her teammates instead (probably vice versa if the player is controlling Edge or Gan...I don't remember). However, the said opposing teammates still take less damage than usual. They are quite beatable though if you actually take the time and are careful enough not to get hit too much.

 

 

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' has a well-executed instance of this, where you are confronted by a small army who demand your surrender, led by Gunther Hermann (a main character). You ''have'' the option of resisting (even if this is obviously foolish), but Gunther is invincible in this fight, so there's no way to avoid getting captured even if you manage to outfight everyone else (which is pretty hard to do, so you will likely not even notice Gunther's invincibility). You get to fight Gunther later, when he's quite mortal.

** It is quite possible to be starkly confronted with Gunther's invincible nature by taking advantage of his ridiculously stupid AI; lure Gunther into the train station and make an escape through the tunnels. Destroy the small army of UNATCO troops and bots awaiting you, and then find out (to many tropers' eternal frustration) that even though you can hear the evac chopper waiting for you, you can't get to it; you're forced to battle Hermann.

* In ''[[Battlefield 3]]'' during the second and final mission as {{spoiler|Miller, you have to hold out for an evac helicopter to come save you and comrades from your disabled tank with it's 50. cal machinegun for 15 minutes. Its impossible.}}

* In ''[[Far Cry]] 2'', you start the game trying to flee a town while a civil war is going on all around you. You can't successfully escape the town, because even if you avoid getting killed by gunfire, you collapse from malaria before you can get far. Once you're out of commission, one of the factions picks up your semi-conscious body and drags you to safety to get you to work for them. Which makes very little sense, considering that you may have just shot a lot of them... and then either lost, or collapsed from your {{spoiler|terminally}} serious case of malaria.

 

* Anubis from ''[[Zone of the Enders]]'' is unbeatable, a rare example of the final boss being such. While you can just wait for the end of the game to happen, if you are fast with the controls you can avoid any damage from him whatsoever, at least on easy. The only damage taken is that in a cutscene about halfway through the battle. He returns in the sequel and is unbeatable ''again'' the first time you fight him. It isn't until the very end of the game that you actually can win, and it is ''satisfying''.

 

 

* In ''[[EverQuest]]'' Kerafyrm the Sleeper in the Scars of Velious expansion. He had insane HP and attack power for the time on top of the death touch ability. He was not intended to be defeated, instead utterly destroying your raid party and the inhabitants of Skyshrine, then disappearing from the game until he resurfaced as the killable Big Bad in Secrets of Faydwer.

* ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' has Absolute Virtue. When it was first released, it was supposedly killable ([[Blatant Lies|"the Development Team killed it with 18 people"]]), but anytime players have managed to kill it Square has nerfed the method that they used within weeks. Worse yet, their released information on ''how'' they killed it required violating their own TOS. For a long time, it remained this; however, Absolute Virtue is now defeated on a regular basis by many linkshells.

** Another megaboss, Pandemonium Warden, also fit this category; in fact a story of a linkshell fighting it for several hours and finally submitting to fatigue and [[Bladder of Steel|other personal needs]] became newsworthy when the boss was first unleashed.

* {{spoiler|Don Crimbo in the 2009 Crimbo Quest}} of ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]''.

* ''[[Mabinogi Fantasy Life]]'': In G13 (Hamlet), you are instructed to fight the Grim Reaper, who is trying to kill Shakespeare. However, this is impossible due to the Grim Reaper's high immunity.

 

 

* The first boss in the ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'' series is (supposedly) undefeatable until X's ethereal form appears, gives you a new Z-Saber, and disappears. This is actually untrue. He takes one point of damage with each Buster hit ([[Lampshade Hanging|even though Ciel says, "You can't damage this thing (the Golem) with a buster..."]]), so you could beat him with the Buster. It would just take forever because he gets mercy invincibility after every hit. The saber is programmed to do a [[One Hit KO]].

** There's also the first fight with Vile and his ride armor in ''[[Mega Man X]]'', where he beats the player senseless. Then [[Badass|Zero]] comes and blasts its arm off with a single charged shot.

* In ''[[Tomb Raider]]: Legend'', the [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere|"unknown entity"]] is invincible when first encountered in a flashback, and if it touches you, it's [[Game Over]]. Easy to accidentally run the wrong way, too.

* ''[[Metroid]]'' series:

* The skeleton on the bridge in ''[[Prince of Persia]] 2''. Eventually the bridge collapses, taking the skeleton with it, and you have to grab onto the ledge to survive, but you lose your sword, and have to make do with a broken sword for several levels.

** Later in the game, an invincible flaming sword attacks you. The only winning move is not to play.

* ''[[You Have to Burn The Rope]]'' more or less subverts this trope. Your normal attacks can't harm the Grinning Colossus enough to even remotely get his healthbar down, but on the other hand {{spoiler|once you burn the rope, you give that Colossus a one-hit kill.}}

 

* The fist fight with the Great Devil in ''[[Adventures of Lolo]] 3'', 3/4 of the way through the game, is unwinnable. There's nothing really to indicate that you can't beat him, the only hint being that the manual says there are 3 sections of the game, while this fight takes place in the 2nd section. Not so bad, since there are no items for you to waste, but has the potential to be a nasty surprise if you thought it was the final boss, only to discover that there are still 25 more levels before that. Not to mention that his only attack is firing very easy-to-dodge projectiles, which means you could keep up the fight a long time without realizing it was useless.

 

 

* The second Bavakh Brother in ''Immortal Defense'', who ends up {{spoiler|destroying all life on your homeworld}}. It turns out it ''is'' possible to beat him, if you're crazy good and crazy lucky, but even if you do the game continues as though you hadn't.

* ''[[Warcraft]] III'' involves enemy heroes with Divine armor, which can only be destroyed by units with Chaos damage. Because no ordinary units in those scenarios have Chaos damage, the bosses are invincible. Examples include Mal'Ganis, Cenarius and Tichondrius. The player must seek a power-up to gain the Chaos damage required to kill the boss and win the scenario.

** Similarly, one of the early missions in the Human campaign has you having to defend a small town against endless waves of undead. Given the small amount of resources, upgrades and units that you can use to set up a decent defense, you can never actually destroy the two undead bases that keep sending their spawns at you. By the end of the mission, not even a perfectly positioned series of towers and soldiers can stop the undead from overwhelming you. [[It Gets Worse]], because there's a side-quest in which you have to prevent a THIRD undead army from being spawned.

* In ''[[Pikmin]] 2'', the Water Wraith combines this with ''[[Nightmare Fuel]]''. The game's ''[[Ninja Butterfly]]'' even tells you "Run Away! Run Away very Fast!" Any attacks against it result on the Pikmin being killed until the last sublevel of the dungeon when you recruit the purple Pikmin and can make him tangible.

** Happens later on while trying to sneak past a massive army of level 50-100 orc units. You're supposed to go around them. Sneaky players can lure them off one at a time and defeat them using the paladins you have with you to heal. The dark elves which try to nuke you with meteor spells are, however, invulnerable, and your only recourse is to dash past them. This leads to the incredibly frustrating situation where you've beaten around five units of ridiculously high level orcs and swarms upon swarms of weaker enemies if you went to wipe out every last enemy on the map, only to get blown into oblivion by some [[Stripperiffic]] [[Fantastic Slurs|"vellie"]] mages. [[Gosh Dang It to Heck]]! Again, you get [[Game Breaker|gamebreaking]] amounts of experience and gold for this. Just as well, as [[That One Boss|the hardest battle in the game]] is just around the corner.

** Similarly, in Ellen's campaign there's a mission in which you're supposed to just run past several armies of ecclesian knights and paladins. While you can attempt to take them on one by one, you're constantly being chased and spammed by the spells of the paladins, so fighting is not quite a viable option.

 

 

* The First time you fight Purge the Great in ''[[Space Channel 5]] Part 2'', Ulala is only able to dodge deadly lightning attacks. After giving you some truly [[Nintendo Hard]] commands, {{spoiler|Purge goes and kills Ulala.}}

* ''[[Gitaroo Man]]'' contains two examples. On the way to Planet Gitaroo, your ship is ambushed by a giant robot shark, and all you can do is dodge until you unlock a [[Humongous Mecha]] to fight back with. Then, the [[Big Bad]] kidnaps your dog (who helps you transform) and the player has to dodge attacks from the [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|Sanbone Trio]] until they accidentally free him for you.

 

 

* The ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' series has a few:

** In the first game, both times you fight Bowser. The first time, at the beginning of the game, is to show off that he has the Star Rod. The second time, as the final boss, he's a Hopeless Boss Fight until after a long cutscene [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower|grants you the ability you need to be able to damage him again]].

** Sometime in the second disc, you'll face another of the Ten Wise Men, Marsilio, who is, like Berle, invincible. This fight is like the second encounter with Shin, where you must let him kill you entire team to proceed.

** Finally, in the optional Cave of Trials, you'll encounter a monster called the Weirdbeast on the fifth level. This monster is a Hopeless Boss Fight at first, unable to be killed by your team. To proceed with the dungeon, you must run from the fight, and explore the rest of the floor until you find a weapon called the Weird Slayer. True to it's name, the Weird Slayer will destroy the Weirdbeast in a single blow (as well as any other creature with the word Weird in it's name). The first Weird Beast fight is ''technically'' not hopeless, but the Weird Beast only every takes 1 damage from an attack and has over 800,000 HP. You can kill it with the "Medusa Shield" and "Bubbly Potion" and such are all legitimate since they were used the way they were meant to be used. Either way, they are still fairly difficult to pull off.

* The first ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' features a fight with Leon early on in Traverse Town where you're supposed to get knocked out. It's in theory possible to defeat him, but only through extensive [[Level Grinding]]. In Expert mode, the challenge of the fight is just landing a good solid hit on him once before he knocks you out.

** Leon isn't actually too terribly hard to fight, even if the player hasn't level grinded. This editor beat Leon the first time ever playing the game. The trick is to time attacks properly and run away the rest of the time. True to form, however, Sora gets incredibly exhausted from the fight and passes out, while Leon seems none the worse for wear (despite his defeat quote of "No way...I can't lose!"). This really isn't worth it, however, as the only reward is some extra XP that can be easily gained later, and an Elixir from Leon later. Still, the satisfaction of Leon admitting that a ''kid'' with ''no battle experience'' beat him is hilarious.

* The very first battle against Roger Bacon in ''[[Shadow Hearts]]''. It is possible for Yuri to deal damage to him, but after three turns, Bacon stops holding back and casts a spell that [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|does more than enough damage to kill Yuri several times over]].

** And very soon thereafter, you have the first encounter with [[The Grim Reaper|Fox Face]]. And all subsequent encounters, really: Fox Face is unstoppable, and you have to run away from him. {{spoiler|Even when you do finally manage to defeat Fox Face, he's replaced with the four masks of malice, who are likewise unstoppable until a certain point.}}

** While the first 'unbeatable' bosses are impossible to defeat, the rest of them can be beaten as long as you're not a one-man party, have a lot of revive items, and most of all, the ability to unleash finest arts (equipping a punching glove on a character with the Sword medium equipped, thus activating finest arts whenever he uses 'Sonic Vision'). Luck helps, too. Furthermore, you do gain a lot of experience points from the victory. Some examples of these fights are the first Golem the human characters fight or the first battle with the Ice Queen. However, the following cutscenes remain unchanged.

* A variation occurs in ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' on the first two occasions where you fight Selvaria. In the first case she's utterly indestructible, but if you just ignore her (and take loads of cover from her gatling laser) you can still complete the objective, and in the second she appears a long way from the main objective but spends her time casually blowing up your tanks and causing instant mission failure.

* ''[[Demon's Souls]]'' partially-averts this with a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gssC68oS6kg seemingly] [[Curb Stomp Battle|unbeatable]] ''tutorial'' level boss, followed by a much later boss that kills you instantly.

* In [[Hyperdimension Neptunia]], the first boss fight with White Heart, Black Heart, and Green Heart cannot be beaten for two reasons. Not only are you fighting 3 very high level opponents who blast you each once with their best specials, but Purple Heart is controlled by the AI in this fight, guaranteeing you lose.

* In ''Winged Warrior III'', the player is not supposed to be able to defeat the Nova Knight during the first encounter. It's possible to beat him after a lot of grinding at the training center, in which case the game will act up.

* [[Radiant Historia]] has one very early one. Forced to head northward, Stocke, Marco and Raynie face an impossible battle. Raynie and Marco die, and Stocke is badly hurt. {{spoiler|This is what activates the White Chronicle, though, and introduces the main gameplay mechanic.}}

** The 2nd game has Gilbert and 4 other enhanced Jaeger Corps fighters. The battle takes place on board the Glorious, Ouroboros airship. Estelle has as a limited window of opportunity in winning the battle. Speed and good preparation are what wins this battle.

* Every game in the ''[[Violated Hero]]'' series has a major villain, often the [[Big Bad]], attack the hero long before he's capable of putting up a fight. After their inevitable victory, the boss decides that the hero isn't worth killing or taking with them.

 

* ''[[Ikaruga]]'', the [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Radiant Silvergun]]'', has a hopeless boss fight with the Stone-Like at the end, just like it's predecessor, where you can't shoot and have to dodge many patterns of bullets for a certain amount of time. At the end, the Ikaruga releases a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] self-destruct attack. A [[Bittersweet Ending]], but our hero is allowed to [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence]], and [[The End of the World as We Know It]] is averted, unlike in ''RS'' (a [[Downer Ending]]).

* Rare [[Shoot'Em Up]] example in ''Chronos Twins DX''. In the very first mission of the game, while you can be 'hurt' by regular enemies, nothing will kill you until you reach the boss, who [[Timey-Wimey Ball|exists across two timezones at once]]. He kills you dead by attacking from the past. The story then shifts forward several years to your character's younger brother trying again, this time with a modified time machine that lets him simultaneously be in the past and the present.

 

 

* From ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]] III'':

** In the climactic mission, the plot called for you to lose your wingmen in battle with an enemy ace and make the final attack alone: however, this was achieved by having the ace magically [[Respawning Enemies]] for so long as any wingmen not lost prior to that point were present. This lead to a surreal battle in which you might shoot him down a dozen times in a row, using up all of your missiles and countermeasures, and have no way of knowing what [[Guide Dang It|obscure action]] would cause things to proceed.

 

 

* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'' Raiden goes up against 'Lady Luck' Fortune. Any shot fired at her misses, and any grenade thrown near her is a dud. Your only hope is to dodge her shots until events elsewhere force her to leave.

** In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'', when you encounter "The Sorrow" any sort of offense is useless since you can't hurt him or his spirits. {{spoiler|The only way out is by death.}}

 

 

* ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'' and ''[[Silent Hill 4]]'' both feature unbeatable bosses. ''Silent Hill 2'' has the ever-popular Pyramid Head, and after running away from him down a long, narrow, winding hall, blindly shooting at him, you run into an elevator to escape. Not everyone does though, and he manages to {{spoiler|kill Maria. But only sort of. Eh}}. ''In Silent Hill 4'', Walter Sullivan chases you for the entire second half of the game. He cannot be killed, but he can be slowed. He and PH do, however, eventually become beatable.

** The two actual "fights" against Pyramid Head (in the apartment building and near the end of the game) definitely qualify. The only way to end these fights is to either die or wait until he decides to end it after a certain amount of time ( {{spoiler|the first time by leaving the room, the second time by both Pyramid Heads impaling themselves on their own spears}}). However, while you can't actually "win" the fights, shooting him ''does'' shorten the amount of time it takes Pyramid Head to end the fight.

** The same game also features a sequence where the player must run from Sae Kurosawa, another extremely powerful one-hit kill ghost. In this case, though, she's invincible because the player has lost the Camera, and with it their only means of defending themselves against ghosts. Curiously, when she's encountered as the [[True Final Boss]], she's no longer able to one-hit kill you.

** The Fatal Frame series makes a tradition out of this: Kirie Himuro from the first game is also invincible and a one-hit kill until the final boss fight. The third game has Reika Kuze, who does not have one-hit kill powers, but is invincible until (you guessed it) the final boss fight.

 

* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' has two of these, both of them involving Llednar. He's invincible and strong. You have to stall for several turns before the plot takes over. He does become beatable towards the game's end.

** The challenge of the missions is lessened considerably if one equips the Damage to MP skill, since the one-on-one format means your character will always have MP to take the attack. It is likely the primary reason the skill was changed in the sequel to allow overflow damage to hit HP.

 

 

* At the end of ''[[Transformers]] G1 Awakening'', the player is made to think that [[Climax Boss|Shockwave]] must be defeated by Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. However, both Autobots are significantly weaker, even working together, and there are no power plants on this level that would allow them to level up. However, after Prime goes down, [[The Cavalry]] shows up in the form of [[Hulk Speak|Grimlock]], who proceeds to [[Curb Stomp Battle]] Shockwave.

* In ''[[Bahamut Lagoon]]'' you have to fight against {{spoiler|Sauzer/Zauzer in Chapter 5}}, but don't waste any items or energy, this guy has infinite HP, so you can't kill him.

 

* ''[[Shenmue]]'' has a character named Chai who is supposed to beat you; when you lose you're unconscious for several days, but the game isn't over. Beating him is nearly impossible, but can be done.

** ''[[Shenmue 2]]'' has one hopeless boss fight where Ryo fights Dou Niu and his henchmen in a plaza until the screen blacks out and shows a cutscene of Dou Niu beating Ryo.

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto]] [[Grand Theft Auto II|2]]'' featured a mission that required you to "die" while attempting to break into an enemy gang's stronghold. Your employer then picks you up at the hospital and sends you back to the fort with a better plan and better equipment.

** The original [[Grand Theft Auto]] featured a mission where you're asked to board a train as part of a plot to prove that your boss is the one true god. It's then revealed that the train is rigged with explosives. If you stay on it, after you die your boss apologises, saying that he was high on smack and is impressed you made it... Assuming that wasn't your last life. Worth getting off the train and failing just for the quote: "Only the righteous shall be saved! You! You are a shithead and bound for hell!"

 

 

 

* ''[[Homestuck]]'': There are a number of these, almost always going against the heroes:

** Dave's first sword battle with his Bro was a doomed endeavour from the start, with Bro flash-stepping fast enough to use a PUPPET to fight Dave, and win easily.

*** A surprising aversion occurs when Vriska goes off to fight him in the doomed timeline. Everything before that point implied that she would lose just as badly as everyone to face Jack before her, but due to her god-tier power of incredible control over luck, she rolls 8 8s on her dice, gaining a huge power boost, before actually putting up a decent fight against Jack. Whilst the outcome of the battle is uncertain (and wouldn't matter anyway due to it being in a doomed timeline), it's implied that Vriska might just have won.

 

* One of the ways the Aztecs conducted [[Human Sacrifice|sacrifices]] to [[Aztec Mythology|the god Tezcatlipoca]] involved taking a captured enemy warrior, tying him in place, giving him a fake weapon (a stick covered in feathers, usually, since the typical weapon was a stick edged with obsidian blades), and forcing him to fight several fully-armed [[Badass Army|Jaguar Warriors]].

 

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[[Category:Boss Battle]]