About

The term Boss Fight or Boss Battle refers to a common meme trope where a character or object is compared to the final boss in a video game, implying that it would be nearly impossible to beat the boss in a hypothetical conflict. It has been used to suggest a fight between the viewer of the meme and the subject of a cursed image, as well as a battle between two or more things within an image itself. A fight with a "final boss" is often perceived as unbeatable in the meme trope.

Origin

While "boss fight" as a term has been used in gaming communities for decades, it did not become a prevalent phrase online until the early 2000s. On April 10th, 2004, "boss fight" was added to Urban Dictionary^[1] by user Brian Johnson. The definition (seen below) received 135 likes in roughly 17 years, becoming the top definition for the term on the site.

At the end of a level in a video game you typically fight a much larger enemy with much more health, called a boss. Typically these bosses are defeated by figuring out their pattern of attack.

In memes, the term's exact first use is unknown, but it likely coincided with the rise of its use in the mid-2000s elsewhere online. While the exact date of this meme’s origin is unknown due to the original site going defunct, this reupload from October 6th, 2009, on Flickr is an early example of a Demotivational Poster meme implying a boss battle (seen below). In it, a spider invading someone’s home is compared to a final boss with a mana bar. This particular meme circulated the internet for over a decade after this reupload.

Spread

The meme trope began to take off in the early 2010s. For example, this early boss fight meme (seen below) from Memedroid^[2] user bex-ter was uploaded on May 22nd, 2012, where it received 532 votes in nine years.

The trope continued to increase in popularity throughout the next decade. One of the most prominent examples is this /r/memes post (seen below) from August 17th, 2020, by Redditor u/SkullGamingTR.^[3] It received over 45,800 upvotes and 212 comments in six months.

/r/Bossfight Subreddit

Reddit’s /r/Bossfight was created on August 3rd, 2017. It has over 1 million members as of August 2021 and posts images of potential rivals that could be perceived as the final boss of a video game. The top post of all time is an image (seen below) entitled "The Beatle, Lord of All Music." It was uploaded on November 21st, 2020, by u/A_TREE57^[4] and received over 80,100 upvotes in six months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References