Final Bosses in FF Games

[Dat Matt]

Likely spoilers for most FF games.

Shauna and Myself were in a discussion about FF games and the final bosses of the games. we ended up talking about the final bosses of some of the games, and wondered why many of them came out of nowhere. I'll use two examples.

Necron from FF9 basically came out of nowhere. Kuja was built up as the antagonist of the game, and he is the penultimate boss. He takes a sidestep to necron whom to my recollection is not mentioned once in the game (and I've had at least 3 playthroughs).

Another example would be Orphan. in FF13, you are fighting Barthandalus throughout the game, but he again takes a sidestep to orphan, who to my understanding appeared out of nowhere. This may have been throgh not reading the mountain of datalogs. This is not the case for various others like Sephiroth or Ultimecia.

Why in some instances do the antagonist take a backseat to a completely unknown final boss?

[TheDesertedOne]

Another example would be Orphan. in FF13, you are fighting Barthandalus throughout the game, but he again takes a sidestep to Orphan, who to my understanding appeared out of nowhere.

Orphan was not completely out of nowhere. In one of his pre-battle speeches (either Chapter 9 or Chapter 11), Barthandelus drops Orphan's name and a couple other bits of info.

So even if Orphan is unexpected, he wasn't completely and totally out of nowhere.

[Karifean]

I never really felt like Necron was out of place. It seemed appropriate to fight the embodiment of Eternal Darkness.

[Mercen-X]

Could you imagine if they had made you fight some ultimate Jenova after Safer Sephiroth... again?

My deal is that these bosses should instead be the ultimate optional boss. After defeating the big bad, this guy shows up so you FEEL that you HAVE to beat him or the game over is approaching. But then if you lose, there is no game over, you still see the ending scenes and credits. But beating this optional boss could alter the ending you see.