This Troper was playing a session of ''{{Exalted}}'' last night. Our team of Solars had a long-ass battle with a pair of hundred-plus-experience Infernals in an ancient, buried, and desecrated temple to the Unconquered Sun. When we finally finish off the second one, the cavern through which we entered, which had been inhabited by a thousand or so blood apes who were mining, collapsed in on itself. Given, the chapel itself didn't collapse (though it rained ink, for some reason), but we had to blast our way out through the ceiling in order to get out of there later.

Parodied in an RPG parody I'm writing, where the first boss is called Central Column, and naturally, defeating it causes this trope.

Justified in this troper's run through of ''The Sunless Citadel.'' The DM altered the adventure slightly, so that as players, we felt obliged to destroy the Gulthias Tree, to prevent its spread of corruption, yet the tree itself was all that was holding up the remaining structure of the ruined citadel. It was literally load bearing, yet not technically a boss.