Thread by @Nymphomachy

One of my favorite silly video game tropes is when the big scary monsters from video games have to outdo themselves in each subsequent installment

Like, the first Fallout's big scary monster was the Super Mutant, and then the Master at the end was the ultimate scary Super Mutant

But then in Fallout 2, Super Mutants are everywhere, including friendly ones

So the last boss is a NAZI Super Mutant, wearing POWER ARMOR

Fallout 3 didn't outdo that *per se* but then the final sequence of the game is a god damn giant mecha plowing its way through a literal power-armored Nazi army and stomping all over the ruins of DC

Cool that New Vegas took a step back and was like "actually that's all silly"

In the original Resident Evil, Wesker's all like "behold my Tyrant, it's the ultimate weapon, it's the bleeding-edge of bio-organic weaponry"

And the game makes a big deal about how in the bad ending, Tyrant survives and is still out there...

...but then the sequel reveals that, six months later, the Umbrella Corporation actually has a billion more of them, such that—as revealed in RE2 and then in subsequent games—there's at least eight or nine different models of Tyrant just wandering around Raccoon City

So, uh?

and then Resident Evil 3 just takes a Tyrant, augments him with an intelligence-boosting parasite, and gives him a seemingly infinite supply of rocket launchers.

Of course, that game also basically makes Jill a master of kung fu who can dodge rockets, so.

The boss of Final Fantasy VII is basically "a Tyrant, but sufficiently evolved to have crossed the Bishonen Event Horizon".

and then Advent Children goes "okay but now there's three of them and one of them can evolve into the original one but with more god powers"

(Honestly @loudpenitent is right in his [paraphrased] observation that Final Fantasy VII and Parasite Eve should have pretty much just been the same game)

Secret of Mana had one evil world-destroying empire

Seiken Dentetsu III (its sequel) literally had three of them

Phantasy Star: the badguy is an evil spirit called Dark Phallus (I guess because it penetrates people's psyches and is a bit of a dick?)

Phantasy Star 2: Dark Phallus is dispatched early and then you gotta fight a sexy supercomputer that controls the whole star system

Phantasy Star 3: just Dark Phallus again but it'll take 3 generations of your family to fully end it, and also you're on a starship the size of Australia

Phantasy Star IV: The bishie king of the Phallus cult, then THREE Phalluses, and then you go to hyperspace to kill a vagina

Chrono Trigger: The boss is a giant world-destroying alien

Chrono Cross: The world-destroying alien basically merged with Jean Grey and also it's completely invincible unless you can find a way to gently whisper it into nonexistence

Final Fantasy X: the boss is a giant world-ravaging leviathan controlled by a repressive patriarch

Final Fantasy X-2: well, we still have the giant world-destroying superweapon our corrupt predecessors built to obliterate the former thing and it's possessed by a blitzball wraith

Star Ocean: Captain Christopher Pike and Number One of Starfleet need to journey through the past and fight monsters to stop a demon king criminal

Star Ocean 2: those guys' son needs to stop a demonic meteor controlled by anime Dark Eldar

Star Ocean 3: fuck it, it's the Matrix

Mega Man games: an evil roboticist is gonna take over the world with his goon squad

Mega Man X: oh fuck the robots got out of hand, militarized, and then slowly began a campaign to replace humanity

Mega Man Zero: Oh whoops they p much succeeded. welcome to the post-apocalypse

Mega Man Legends: oh lol what a weird-ass world we're living in, what could have possibly happened thousands of years in the past

Street Fighter: Defeat this implacable Thai warrior

Street Fighter 2: You cheated to beat that guy, and as vengeance he works for a megalomaniacal dictator made of hatred

Street Fighter 3: That guy was being monitored by the Illuminati, which is controlled by a sex angel

The Mass Effect and Metal Gear games are too easy so I won't be doing them

Five Nights at Freddy's: OH CRAP THESE ANIMATRONICS ARE NUTS

FNaF 2: Some of these animatronics are haunted, some are HELLA haunted, and the others are just robots who think ur an asshole

FNaF 3: You're covered in ghosts. Why so many ghosts. Also there's a demilich hunting you

FNaF 4: Same as FNaF 3 but now the ghosts can eat you because, as a young and impressionable child, you naturally accept that they can

FNaF SL: WELCOME TO THE TECHNODROME OF SACCHARINE ROBOT HORROR-TERRORS

FFPS: Welp, we're all sinners, so let's all descend together into Hell