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Fake Ultimate Mook (view source)

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A monster whose massive, terrifying appearance is offset by such a massive, terrifying ''handicap'' that it rarely presents any actual threat at all. Essentially, they're regular [[Mooks]], just [[Giant Mook|bigger]] (and slower, [[Square -Cube Law|much slower]]). Later, you may encounter fully-powered versions of the [[Fake Ultimate Mook]], or you may fight many of them at once, but a single one is of minimal threat.
 
Often caused by [[Statistically Speaking]] and/or [[Elemental Rock -Paper -Scissors]].
 
For actual bosses, see the [[Warmup Boss]] and/or [[Anticlimax Boss]].
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Contrast with [[Giant Mook]], which is proportionally stronger ''because'' of its size; and the [[Boss in Mook Clothing]]. Polar opposite of the [[Killer Rabbit]], which is an extremely cute or otherwise harmless-looking creature that will grin and hand you your ass if given the opportunity. When it comes to [[Mook|Mooks]], its opposite is [[Invincible Minor Minion]]. Compare [[Surprisingly Easy Mini Quest]] for other situations where a tough fight or problem gets resolved with surprising ease. Subtrope of [[Paper Tiger]].
 
{{examples|Examples:}}
 
== [[Action Adventure]] ==
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* ''[[Mega Man ZX (Video Game)|Mega Man ZX]]'' had a giant mechanical snake in the forest as its first boss. Complete with cutscene where it looks even ''more'' imposing.
* The giant monsters in world 4 of ''[[Super Mario Bros 3 (Video Game)|Super Mario Bros 3]]'' definitely qualify. Though they tower over the pint-sized Mario, Giant [[The Goomba|Goombas]] still die after jumping on them just once.
** Conversely, you occasionally get swarms of ''really tiny'' Goomba which are harder to stomp on [[Demonic Spiders|and do]] [[One -Hit -Point Wonder|just as much damage]]. In Super Mario Bros. 3, however, they usually hide under Brick Block which they also use as a means of offense, or else are dropped by certain types of Paragoomba, in which event they simply hinder Mario's jump.
* The fake Kraid in ''[[Super Metroid]]''. Kraid was the hardest boss in the first Metroid, in Super there is an enemy that looks just like him but isn't challenging at all. Even the proper boss in that game is a warm up boss.
** The Elite Pirates from the first ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' game were stupidly easier than the Troopers, or even the regular Pirates. Thermal Visor, lock onto the cannon on their shoulder, fire a Super Missile...splat. Usually dead before they get an attack in. Even if they survive the cannon exploding right against their neck, their only real attack at that point is a shockwave along the ground, which you basically have to have your arms fall off at that exact moment not to be able to jump over.
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* The giant Goombas in ''[[Super Smash Bros]] Brawl's'' Adventure mode. Like the small ones, they are vulnerable to the classic [[Goomba Stomp]]...but their size makes them even easier to hit. They DO have to be stomped more than once, but since they don't move a bit after being stomped, it's child play to just stay on top of them until they're damaged enough.
** Fights against a giant opponent tend to be this. Even if they can potentially hit hard, their size makes them very easy to juggle and it doesn't take much distance to send them flying or falling out of the stage boundaries. Better yet, [[Artificial Stupidity|they still have the same AI as a regular opponent]], making it easy for them to simply fall into the pit while trying to land an attack.
* This is the reason why [[EverythingsEverything's Worse With Bears|Kuma/Panda]] is often regarded as a [[Joke Character]] in ''[[Tekken]]''; it's big and has long, easy combos, but its limbs are too short to actually reach its opponent.
** Azazel in Tekken 6 seems to be very difficult to beat...until you realise he is utterly defenseless against flying kicks.
* All of the Fortress Borgs in ''[[Gotcha Force]]'' except the [[Final Boss]] can be taken down by a single [[Mons|borg]] of nearly any type with a ranged attack with just a little effort dodging.
 
== Strategy ==
* In ''[[Fire Emblem]]: [[Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones (Video Game)|The Sacred Stones]]'', the Cyclopses are really huge, but do <s>relatively small amounts of damage</s> quite a bit less damage than you'd expect... and to add insult to injury, their attacks are easily evaded. Add their low resistance or vulnerability to a [[Infinity Plus One+1 Sword|Sacred Twin]] weapon, and they go down like rocks.
** The fact that they can only use axes also means that they're easy prey for a sword user, especially a blademaster with over 30% crit. (Oh, and if you thought they had trouble hitting most of your units, just wait until you send a sword-user at them.)
*** The fact that they use axes also contributes to that whole "easily evaded attacks" thing, as axes are the strongest, but heaviest and least accurate (physical) weapons in the game. <ref>The hierarchy of power/accuracy for the physical weapons goes in order from axes to lances to bows to swords, with swords being the weakest but lightest and most accurate.</ref> Too bad for the Cyclopses that the power of axes is insufficient to compensate for their surprisingly low Strength... though they do have high Constitution, so it's not like even the bigger axes slow them down much. (But they're already plenty slow and inaccurate without being weighed down by their weapons.)
* Reapers in ''[[X-COM]]: UFO Defense''. They're large and therefore intimidating, but they can only attack in melee and can't fit through most of the doors on the level. Their HP is good enough that six or seven hits from the ([[With This Herring|infamously awful]]) basic rifle are needed to bring them down, but their size makes them a relatively easy target for your ([[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|also infamously awful]]) troops. It also roughly quadruples the damage they take from grenades and other explosive weapons thanks to a quirk of the game engine. ''X-COM'' being ''X-COM'' however, Reapers are still relatively dangerous for an example of this trope, particularly in the early game; its melee attack is a nearly guaranteed [[One -Hit Kill]] before you research actual armour, and unlike the alien ranged weapons there isn't a possibility of it missing.
* In most ''[[Star Wars]]'' games, the Star Destroyer is a classic one, but by far, Rebellion is the most egregious: An Alliance Escort Carrier armed with five squadrons of X-wings and one of Y-wings can take out nearly any Star Destroyer [[The Empire]] throws at you until he gets the TIE Defenders and ''Executor''-class Super Saxton Star Dreadbringers.
** Was actually quite a balance issue: The Imperials get far more powerful ships to start with, but they're vulnerable to much cheaper hardware that the rebels can mass produce in a hurry. Two Nebulon-B Frigates or a few squads of Y-Wings can trash a Star Destroyer, and the unshielded TIE fighters and Interceptors aren't a huge help. This was one of two things that heavily disadvantaged the Empire in a HQ victory game: if the rebels got lucky and started with a strong enough fleet, they could take Coruscant ''almost immediately'' and there was very little the Imperial player could do about it.
 
== [[First -Person Shooter]] ==
* The helicopter gunship in Level 3 of ''[[Perfect Dark]] 64'' can be taken down in just one single blast of a rocket (thankfully displayed by mooks on the office level). The ship (and rocket) belong to a multi-trillion dollar evil corporation. A robotic drone on a later level is ''[[Story Driven Invulnerability|invulnerable]]'' until you crash a taxi into it.
** Same could be said for the {{spoiler|Skedar}} after only a few quick glimpses of one a few levels earlier and a cutscene of it knocking down {{spoiler|the Carrington Institute's}} very solid steel door you finally get to fight it only to find out it's just another mook that only takes a few shots to kill.
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** This mistake was removed in every game after the first (though it was incorporated into the novel based on the first game), and now those enemies are as [[Lightning Bruiser|difficult to face]] as they should be.
* With the development of circle-strafing and mouse-aiming, even the mighty [[Doom|Cyberdemon]] has become this, at least in the original ''Doom''. Later games based on the engine (i.e. Plutonia Experiment, Doom 64) usually used level design (i.e. small rooms, tight corridor mazes) to prevent you from simply circle-strafing him to death.
** Similarly, in the original ''Doom'' the Spider Mastermind (Episode 3 endboss) was far easier to defeat than the Cyberdemon (Episode 2 endboss) not least because Episode 3 allowed the player to use the original [[BFG]]. In addition, the Cyberdemon has more hitpoints (4000 vs. the Spider Mastermind's 3000). 3000 hit points, incidentally, is ''less'' than the maximum possible damage done on a close-range BFG shot, so unlike the Cyberdemon, the Spider Mastermind can be a [[One -Hit Kill]] for a lucky space marine.
 
== [[Role Playing Game]] ==
* [[Mons|Onix]] from ''[[Pokémon]]'' can usually be fought and captured early on in the games. Though they're towering snakes made out of stone, they have low stats in everything but physical Defense (and, to a lesser extent, Speed, which is only relevant to the extent that one Pokemon is faster than another - the actual difference doesn't matter). Further hurting Onix is its Rock/Ground typing; while this type combination is beastly at offense, Onix doesn't have the power to take advantage of that. Even worse, it's absolutely ''horrible'' at special defense, granting poor Onix [[Elemental Rock -Paper -Scissors|crippling weaknesses to two common elements]]; a Grass- or Water-Type attack will usually take it down ''in one hit''. As described above, there is a stronger version who's ability matches its appearance though, [[Magikarp Power|Steelix.]]
** Brock's Onix, in particular, used to be a particularly glaring example in Red & Blue. Level 14, stats just high enough to make it a challenging fight... But a Pidgey spamming Sand attack can make all that negligible due to the fact that its only offensive moves are Tackle and Bide. In fact, a Pidgey at level 5 could conceivably solo the entire fight.
** In competitive battling, Regigigas is a notable one. As a king of a trio of Legendaries, it has a massive 160 base Attack, and average 100 in everything else... but for the first five turns it's Attack and Speed are halved, and it's very easy to destroy it in those turns alone.
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** In Fallout 3, there is a [[Random Encounter]] with a resident [[Demonic Spider]] Deathclaw in it, regardless of level. Luckily, this Deathclaw had a leg crippled beforehand, making it very, very slow, and lacking a ranged attack, easy prey. Though its important to double check the leg's condition before engaging in combat; there is a random encounter that involves a perfectly healthy deathclaw, and getting too close to one of those will get you mauled to death.
** Deathclaws in general are deadly in every other Fallout game, and every time they're mentioned they're made out to be the most dangerous thing in the Wasteland. In Fallout 3, though, a decently high-level player should have no problem with them. Fallout: New Vegas, though, remedies this.
* ''[[Fallout New Vegas]]'' has its own [[Fake Ultimate Mook]] in the ''Honest Hearts'' DLC. [[EverythingsEverything's Worse With Bears|Yao Guai]] return from ''Fallout 3'', and the locals seem to think that they're Hell on wheels. While they're competent enemies, they lack any kind of ranged attack and have merely decent damage and hit points. Already significantly weaker than the Mojave's Deathclaws, Yao Guai are ultimately rendered Fake Ultimate Mooks by the geography of ''Honest Hearts''--it takes place almost entirely in meandering canyons, meaning that shooting them from high ground makes them drop with ease.
** A tribal even comments that you probably don't have anything as bad as Yao Guai where you're from, despite Yao Guai being considerably easier to deal with than about 80% of the enemies in the Mojave--and being no match whatsoever for the armed tribals you fight for most that very DLC.
* The Antlion in ''[[Magical Starsign]]''. It takes up both DS screens, but it's weak to one of your first party members' magic and goes down quickly. It's only level 2, according to the game's Bestiary.
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* In [[Eve Online]], frigates (the smallest combat ships in the game) are often used against battleships (the largest non-capital combat ships in the game) with great efficiency. The battleships guns are unable to track and hit the small, fast frigates and end up doing no damage most of the time. Mind you - should you stop just for a few seconds, you'll be torn apart very quickly - battleships with low refire guns are often quite capable of taking an immobile frigate in a single volley. In fact, when in a gang, frigates are often used as "tacklers" - to stop the enemy from fleeing. It's not that uncommon to have a single frigate prevent a capital ship from jumping away for long enough to get reinforced by a friendly fleet. This means that your friend who just created an account can be ready for battle in just a few days - flying the "weakest" ship with great efficiency. Also, comparing the price of a frigate and battleship...
** "My ship costs less than your ammunition. My modules were all picked off of rats. I don't even think my weapons are loaded. And I'm about to ''[[Something Awful|ruin your life]]''."
* In [[Air Rivals]], a lvl 19 BCU mission requires you to beat a lvl 65 boss in an early map. This troper, who were ANI for all his gaming experience, knew how hard that boss is, and trying to do that mission on a BCU gear he went like OMGWTFBBQ, until he killed the thing with [[One -Hit -Point Wonder|ONE. FREAKING. SHOT.]] Turns out that's a dud boss, done for the mission, much weaker than the real one (although the real one spawns right after the fake one is defeated, so yeah, you can still be doomed.
* This is the reason Behemoths, huge monstrous [[The Legions of Hell|demons]], are known as the best enemies to farm in [[City of Heroes]]. A recent patch buffed them a bit though.
** If your build features a lot of knockdown or knockback inducing attacks (like [[Super Strength]] with Air Supremacy from the Flight Pool) , it's quite easy to defeat a Behemoth, or even one of the larger Wailer Lord bosses because they ''won't be able to stand up''.
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