Unused Bosses

This is a sub-page of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2.

Whilst Garden Warfare 2 certainly improved on the number of bosses the player can face, as well as introducing some plant bosses for players to fight and deal with. It turns out that many more were planned than what the game came out with! Even some unexpected ones...

Plant Bosses#

Imitator#

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Imitator is an unused boss originally intended to be part of Story Mode. Its AI is unfinished and buggy. It will roam the map attacking zombies and will randomly burrow and transform into different zombie bosses; when that happens, it can turn into an imitated Zen Sensei, Disco Zombie, Gargantuar, or Baron von Bats. Once the imitated boss is vanquished, Imitator will pop back up to continue fighting. According to Jeff Shaw (the Lead Level Designer on Plants Vs Zombies: Battle For Neighborville, Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare 1 and 2, and Star Wars: Battlefront 2) on Twitter, Imitator was cut due to how quickly expensive it became while building it. In the developer debug menu, there exists debug options for the boss transition animation which refer to Imitator being a DLC boss. There also still exists some remnants in Boss Hunt's game logic for it in the final release. It has an Ops boss slot ID, named "imitator"

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The Imitator, like other unused Story Mode bosses, had unfinished setup for Boss Hunt in the launch release of the game. It would be lured by a Stick of Butter. While the video does not show it transforming, it is capable of transforming still, but sometimes does not occur due to bugs in the unfinished AI setup. Additionally, its spawn data regarding its imitations was never finished, as its spawn data set up for the zen sensei imitation calls for gargantuars characters blueprint. There was never a mini-game objective made for the hunt. After the launch release and the subsequent development of Mystery Portal Boss Hunts, all setups for story bosses were removed from the game. Its does not have audio of its own, borrowing from the Sunflower Queen, likely as a placeholder until his audio was made.

In terms of its kit, strangely it is set to have a value of 5 for its health, making it easily be killed via any source of damage. Imitator also does not have complete behavior set up in terms of imitations, only having dedicated behavior information for the imitated Baron Von Bats.

Super Chili Bean#

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Super Chili Bean is an unused story Boss Hunt version of Super Bean. All of its attacks are much stronger, and it has a 500-health Shield.

Super Chili Bean also has a unique Overbean mode. Instead of constantly firing a single eye laser, it rapidly fires two devastating eye lasers at the Zombies. These lasers are strong enough to kill any playable Zombie in less than two seconds. When it teleports, it is meant to launch a bunch of Chili Bean Bombs, but due to its AI being unfinished, this does not function correctly. Also, due to unfinished AI, its teleporting ability in general does not function correctly, and it has no spotting icon. Unlike other unused bosses, it has original voiceovers and other original audio, implying it was quite far in development. It has a boss slot ID in ops, being called "chili".

Like other unused story bosses, the Super Chili Bean had setup for the Boss Hunt mode. It, alongside the rest, was an incredibly basic setup that only supplied the core functionality of unique bait and spawning the specific boss. It would have been lured by Hot Sauce.

Beet Boxers#

The Beet Boxers are an unused Plant boss intended for Graveyard Ops. It is unknown what they would have done in terms of health or attacks, but they have various remnants left in the files in terms of text and wave setup for Graveyard Ops with having various boss wave appearances, which included a super boss wave. They also have remnants in the music configuration for Graveyard Ops, as well as audio set up for when their icon is displayed in ops, provided it uses a test sound likely as a placeholder. In the developer debug menu, similar to Imitator, their icon can be seen with "DLC" next to it. They were never developed further after launch. It has a boss slot ID named "beetboxer".

Whilst he does have usable spawn data files, it uses big stump as a placeholder.

Orange Juice Robot#

Orange Juice Robot was yet another unused Story Mode boss, intended for Boss Hunt. It has next to no data in the final build, but in the first version of the game it has more leftovers than other bosses. There are bait strings, bait (which would have been an Imbalanced Breakfast), unique wave data (which, when activated, spawns default Citrons), and boss spawn data (which, when activated, spawns a Torchwood). Although it was scrapped, it did make a appearance in the tie-in comics. It has a boss slot ID that goes by the name "orangejuice".

Zombie Bosses#

Pup and Wolf#

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Pup and Wolf, also internally known as the Renegade Imp/Renegade Mech, are yet another set of unused Story Mode bosses. Unlike other bosses, they are a special version of the Imp and Z-Mech. The Imp, known as Pup, uses a duplicated version of the Imp Blasters with messed-up sound patches that make its 1st person firing sound be heard at full volume for every other player present. Pup comes with his own cosmetics that are exclusive only for him, though his body is not properly rigged to the imp's skeleton, making it stuck in the bind pose, every other cosmetic is fine, so likely he was abandoned before they could finish setting up his rig.

Like every other playable imp, Pup has access to a mech of his own known as Wolf. Wolf is very powerful, and like Super Chili Bean, it can easily kill any playable Plant. Wolf has a stronger version of Chain Laser, a Warp, a stronger version of Missile Madness, Z-Mech's Foot Stomp, an airstrike of Stink Clouds, and multiple Gravity Grenades. Wolf has unused AI setup, some of which implies that it would have had a phase related to activating shields on Robo-Zombies that would give them armor. It would have been lured by Cyber Jerky. Interestingly despite likely being a story boss, it does have a boss slot ID in ops, named "renegade".

Pup likely was meant to have animations of his own, as his character blueprint file is separate from the other imps, and his cannot access standard impkata or mech call animations.

One interesting observation is that his primary weapon has 3 weapon upgrades associated with it. Perhaps at some point Popcap were going to consider making him into a variant before scrapping him. This is further supported by the fact that all of these cosmetics are set up for him within the playable imp's kit file, so it is entirely possible that these 2 were meant to be playable at some point in time.

Fiddles the Crab#

Fiddles the Crab is another Story Mode Boss Hunt boss that went unused. The only data it has is some text, two icons, animation/attack names, and unfinished placeholder spawn data. In the launch build, similar to other bosses, it had unfinished Boss Hunt setup that used placeholders. It would have been lured by Swim Trunks. In the debug menu, its icon can be seen with "DLC" next to it, similar to Imitator and the Beet Boxers. It has a boss slot ID that goes by the name "crab".

Story Mode Sasquatch#

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While the Sasquatch was fought occasionally in the final game via Boss Hunt events, he was originally intended to be fought in Story Mode. His bait would've originally been a Soup Can, which has both an icon and model leftover in earlier versions of the game. The boss itself is fairly similar to the Boss Hunt found in the final game, though due to AI bugs, summons healing burgers more often, and digs underground slightly more often as well. He was the only scrapped Story Mode boss to eventually appear in the final game.

Unused Mystery Portal Bosses#

Ancient Oak#

An unused Plant boss intended for Mystery Portal Boss Hunts. It is only referenced as a Bait unlockable, but it's unused string name (ID_H_CU4_HUNT_ZBAIT_ANCIENTOAK) give indication that it was meant for Mystery Portal hunts. Nothing is known about it. Given "CU4" is a part of its string ID, it likely was meant to be a part of the line up for the town hall boss hunts.

Royal Hypno-Flower#

Royal Hypno-Flower was meant to have a Mystery Portal variant, but it was never finished. She was going to be fought on the Colizeum map, and her Mystery Portal version has unused logic for spawning, though it never gets activated. There were no known gimmick changes to her hunt, as it had not progressed that far yet. Her bait would have been the Strong Coffee still, but with Enchanted and Scrumptious versions now available. She has a few unused strings all with the version code of "CU4", implying it was intended for the Trials of Gnomus update alongside the other 4 used Mystery Portal bosses.

Captain Smasher#

Captain Smasher was also meant to have a Mystery Portal variant, but it has even less data than that of the Royal Hypno-Flower. The only remnants left behind are icons for the Enchanted and Scrumptious difficulty versions of the Jolly Rogers bait. Since data exists for Royal Hypno-Flower, it can be presumed Captain Smasher was going to get the same treatment.

Miscellaneous Unused Bosses#

King’s Guard#

An unused Champion Yeti who was intended to appear in the Yeti King’s boss hunt. He has unused spawn data with a template which gave him 5000 health, though it is never activated during the hunt. It is unknown why he was scrapped, though given how notoriously difficult the yeti kings boss hunt is, lets be thankful we were spared of this champions presence.

Browncoat Endless Giant#

Along with the other 6 giants present within infinity time, there is an unused 7th giant, being of an enlarged Browncoat. Unlike the rest of the giants, the Browncoat is only finished in a basic functional form, lacking a WaveSpawnType file, and a health override in its template file. When spawned in game, he is equipped with a cone head and a screendoor, though given the nature of infinity time, these attachments are removed quickly since they use default health values. He has his own version of the zombie munch attack, which is scaled up both in range and damage to fit his larger size, along with having access to the rock throw attack, though he never seems to use it given infinity time's map scale as much larger than normal so most likely the player is not in range for him to use it.

Given the lack of set up for the browncoat endless giant, as well as it having an unstable ragdoll upon death, and sounding exactly the same as other browncoats whilst the other giants have a deeper pitch, this giant was likely used primarily for testing purposes in seeing how big the developers could make enemies within the infinity time stage.

The video has the template value set to the same as an existing endless giant purely for demonstration purposes, we don't know how much health the giant would've actually had, if it was going to have a defined health value at all.

NinjaCarrot#

Within the unused wave data related to beetboxer, is what is presumed to be the ID of a boss that never made it into development, being "ninjacarrot". The ID points to a blank slot icon. Nothing else is known about the boss in question other than this ID, either it could've been an early internal name for the beetboxer, or a boss in its own right that never made the cut.