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14th May '13 12:29:00 AM Valiona

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*  Subverted, in FanFic/TheStalkingZukoSeries Aang is called out on sparing Ozai when he and the Ocean Spirit[[hottip:note:although it can be argued that the Ocean Spirit was the one in control at the time]] slaughter countless of Fire Nation soldiers in the Siege of the North.
* In ''Fanfic/PerfectionIsOverrated'', this is played with with regards to the [[spoiler:First District minions whom the Usurper-possessed Obsidian Lord and his entourage killed]]. It's pointed out in the author's note, and in one such minion's final moments that they [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes leave loved ones behind]]. However, it's also pointed out that [[spoiler:The First District]] was a secret organization, so they were also most likely willing participants, and performed immoral or illegal deeds in the course of their duties. The note concludes that the slaughtered minions are "not necessarily bad people, but they made bad decisions; whether their deaths are a fair consequence is another matter, but they came as a result of their own actions."

10th May '13 7:20:40 AM TiggersAreGreat

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10th May '13 7:20:15 AM TiggersAreGreat

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This page has gotten so big that splitting into sub-pages would make it easier to work with. Don't panic, you'll find the examples in the sub-pages listed.

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[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]
* Lampshaded in ''Anime/CodeGeass'', Lelouch has only a mild reaction when he finds out that his plan to cause a landslide has buried not only enemy soldiers but also part of a town and possibly enemy medics, but when he finds out that [[spoiler:Shirley's father was one of the individuals killed]], he becomes very upset and is reminded by C.C. that most of the people who died because of him had families.
** Then there is Rolo who just can't understand why Villeta Nu's upset (and fearful) with him for killing his own allies in the SIA. [[spoiler: Rolo also kills many unnamed enemy soldiers with no problem but not the pursuing Black Knights after their betrayal.]]
 *** [[spoiler: Though that was most likely due to him spending all his effort escaping and keeping the shield up to have time to kill the persuers, rather than caring for their lives. Afterall, if he followed this trope, Shirley would have lived]]
**** Also, the countless security guards killed for doing their jobs and the employees in various fields that Lelouch manipulated with geass, including an order to kill themselves when he was done with them. Dead men tell no tales, I suppose.
* ''ElCazadorDeLaBruja'' has gas-mask-wearing government soldiers attack the protagonists in a misguided attempt to contain a non-existent plague only to be killed off by various good and bad characters. The gas masks were a dead giveaway that they needed extra dehumanization for their murders to be even remotely justifiable as a good act.
* Subverted in ''EurekaSeven'' when Renton loses self-control and beats an enemy KLF into a bloody pulp only to see a severed human hand with a wedding ring on it. Until then, he had remained ignorant of what exactly joining a group like Gekko State entailed.
* In ''FistOfTheNorthStar'', Rei kills the last fleeing members of the Fang Clan ({{Psychopathic Manchild}}ren who had kidnapped his girlfriend Mamiya and killed her brother) after they had abandoned their boss and given up. Compare this with his [[DiedInYourArmsTonight treatment]] [[EasilyForgiven of Yuda]], a deranged DirtyCoward who killed Mamiya's parents on her birthday and forced her to be his sex slave.
* Averted in ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', probably as a part of the whole idea of all sympathetic characters being very loyal to their [[TrueCompanions friends]], in contrast to the villains. When heroic characters start rebelling against the [[ArmiesAreEvil Army]], they inflict injuries on mooks working for the State Military on several occasions, but none of them will kill (for characters who are soldiers, it is because the mooks are their former comrades-in-arms, for Ed, it's more because he's a TechnicalPacifist). Also, the idea of "mooks don't have families" is averted in a later chapter, where [[FanNickname "Greedling"]] tells members of the [[ArmiesAreEvil Army]] that if they have wives, families, etc. at home waiting for them, he's giving them a chance to run.
* Averted in ''{{Grenadier}}'' with Rushuna Tendou, who is Vash's DistaffCounterpart. She offers everyone she meets a smile and a hug and if they try with all their might to kill her, no matter who, she sticks to her ultimate strategy of "taking away the enemy's will to fight", which involves not killing them. It doesn't work, [[MarshmallowHell it being what it is]].
* One could argue that MobileSuitGundam0080WarInThePocket is a deconstruction of this. The main characters, with the exception of Al, are Zeon pilots using mass-produced Mobile Suits. And each and every one of them is taken down in seconds by the Gundam of this series, with the exception of [[spoiler: Bernie, who still dies by the Gundam's hands despite his best efforts.]] And to the pilot of the Gundam, they're just random enemies.
* Lampshaded and subverted in ''{{Gundam SEED}}'' when [[spoiler:Nicol]] is killed and the good guys are cheering over their victory. Kira then becomes angry that they are celebrating someones death only to have one of the crew point out that he has killed a lot of people up to this point and didn't care. This had never occured to Kira until now and afterwards vows to not kill a single person in battle which [[WillingSuspensionofDisbelief he takes to an insane degree]] considering some of the weapons on the Freedom Gundam. [[spoiler:This is used against him to great effect by Shinn in ''{{Gundam SEED Destiny}}''.]]
* In ''{{Gundam 00}}'' Setsuna spares [[spoiler:Graham/Mr. Bushido]] after defeating him in combat, and then convinces him to not commit seppuku. This is someone who says, "Setsuna F. Seie. Eliminating/Exterminating target" before going into combat and then proceeds to, well, do a pretty good job at exterminating his targets. This might be because [[spoiler:Graham's/Mr. Bushido]]'s monologue where he calls out Celestial Being for the deaths of his brothers-in-arms sent Setsuna on a guilt trip.
* There is a tragic example in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamAGE''. While Grodek and Flit hesitated on what to do with Yark Dore, the Diva's crew had no problem with their men slicing up UE mobile suits and throwing grenades at enemy foot soldiers. Such different treatment is exposed when, while trying to find Flit, Woolf runs into [[spoiler:a dying Vagan soldier. While learning about the soldier's identity, Woolf seems to have befriended him as the soldier gives Woolf his necklace. He dies in Woolf's arms shortly after, causing Woolf to have a HeroicBSOD when he returns to the Diva.]]
** [[spoiler:This is largely due to the fact that the ''Diva's'' crew wasn't even aware that their enemies ''were'' human; many speculated that they were alien invaders and they were in pitched battle with humanoid spacesuits, whereas Woolf was not. Yark Dole's presence is part of TheReveal that the "Unknown Enemy" was HumanAllAlong, which causes most of the cast to bluescreen.]]
* Lampshaded in the ''Anime/MazingerZ'' manga. After some Iron Cross soldiers are fatally injured breaking into Kouji's house to try and kidnap him, he states he wants to try and save them so he won't be a murderer (and he was very hesitant about killing them even if he was defending himself. And after getting forced to kill one, [[HeroicBSOD he was shaking, shell-shocked]]). A policeman who helped protect them points out that self defense isn't a crime, and that Kouji's using the "justification of a manga protagonist".
** This is also justified since...well, they aren't exactly ''alive''. They are [[spoiler:cyborgs made from corpses, reanimated with a mechanized brain, programmed to obey faithfully Hell and his CoDragons.]] EmptyShell not even begins to describe it.
* A case in and out of universe occurred in ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' recently; Sasuke is pursuing Danzo, the most recent target of his ongoing quest for revenge, into a foreign country where the Kages are meeting. On the way, he is found by the Samurai in charge of guarding the area. Before, Sasuke proved capable of defeating hundreds of mooks non-lethally, but Sasuke elects instead to just ''kill everyone that gets in his way'', slaughtering dozens of men just doing their jobs because it was quicker than not killing them. Ironically, this act is never remarked upon by other characters beyond Suigetsu noting that Sasuke is becoming more and more of a {{Hypocrite}}, and the fandom didn't consider Sasuke across the MoralEventHorizon until he [[spoiler:stabbed Karin, a character with a ''name'', several chapters later]]. To be fair, [[spoiler:Karin was one of Sasuke's few allies. Trying to kill someone who would follow you into hell is a better indicator for crossing the MoralEventHorizon than killing people he never knew nor cared for]].
* In ''OnePiece'', the one thing Luffy can't stand in a man is someone who would hurt his/her own crew. While the Straw Hats themselves have no trouble bashing through people and leaving them in severe condition, Luffy's BerserkButton is pressed when he finds someone with so little care towards their own crew.
** Captain Kuro was the first to show this attitude, when he not only threatened to kill everyone if they screwed up his three year-long plan, but unleashes the "[[FlashStep Cat Out of the Bag Attack]]." Such an ability lets him move at high speeds, but at the cost of vision, leaving him swiping and cutting away at everyone in his crew, as well as Luffy.
** Don Krieg is next. He shows a lot of care for his crew, desperately wanting food for them all after they've been left starving for so long, but if they don't follow orders, he doesn't give a crap. He orders his commander, Gin, to suffer through a poisonous gas bomb because he refused to kill someone.
** Arlong is, actually, the first to subvert this. He addresses everyone in his crew as "brothers" and becomes severely pissed when he finds many men from his crew injured from Zoro.
* Mentioned in ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'', when Aoshi Shinamori condemns Shishio after Shishio [[WeHaveReserves sends four mooks to fight Aoshi knowing they would die just so he can see how good Aoshi really is]]. Shishio's [[TheDragon Dragon]] Soujiro responds by saying that it's just as heartless to kill four men without hesitation when you know that they're just being used. Unfortunately this theme is never brought up again, but then again the main character of the series is a humongous TechnicalPacifist, so this situation doesn't come up very often.
* Commander Sazabi's troops in ''SDGundamForce'' may apply in a far less spoken version. [[MechaMooks The Zako Soldiers]], by far considered the series most innocent mooks never die on screen, and are simply cast aside. The more malicious Dark Axis troops are not as fortunate, however, and very clearly explode. Tallgeese's Pawn Leos fall into a middle ground, in that they enjoy what they do, but are as [[TheWoobie Woobie-like]] as the Zakos, and aren't said to actually die when defeated.
* Explored and subverted in ''ToAruMajutsuNoIndex'', with Mikoto's "sister": [[spoiler:a series of ''20,000'' clones of her made just to provide a challenge so that a "level 5" (absurdly powerful) ESPer can develop his powers to the theoretical godlike level 6 stage, just to see if it can be done. Touma and Mikoto are horrified at the idea of her clones being mooks made just to die, and nearly get themselves killed trying to stop the genocide, though over 10,000 have already died.]]
* Averted in ''{{Trigun}}'' by Vash the Stampede who refuses to take a human life, sometimes using his ImprobableAimingSkills to shoot other people's bullets out of the air. When he gets caught flat-footed by a couple of {{mooks}} in one episode and accidentally shoots them seriously in self-defense, he's overcome with panic for their welfare, desperately trying to bandage them up first even though he was shot as well. On the CrapsackWorld he lives, even young teens consider this behavior immature.
* In an early arc of ''ZombieLoan'' there was a woman turned into a zombie minion and subsequently re-killed. Cue the end of the arc where the main characters attend her funeral, and one of the characters saying something along the lines of "When someone dies, someone always cries for them."
* Averted especially in the Lost Children arc in ''{{Berserk}}''. Though he did show some emotional turmoil after finding out the truth about the arc's BigBad Rosine and her minions, Guts' pure hatred for them eventually overrides any conflicting emotions he had and showed no qualms about slaughtering them. What was that truth he found out about them? ''[[WouldHurtAChild They were all children]]'' ([[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman though their transformation into monsters was the reason Guts found it easier to kill them]]).
* ''ScienceNinjaTeamGatchaman'' and its translations. Played straight, subverted, played with... oddly enough, the mook that shows the picture of his family survives. [[spoiler:But he's still back in prison serving a life sentence.]]
[[/folder]]

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[[folder:Film]]
* Subverted in ''CityOfGod''. One of the guards shot dead in a montage sequence has an [[spoiler: adolescent son who witnesses his death at the hands of the heroic gang leader. The son joins the gang to take revenge and kills Ned at the end.]]
* Parodied with great relish in the deleted scenes from the first ''AustinPowers'' film. All the henchmen Austin kills have families and friends, who are shown receiving the news of their deaths. One had a wedding coming up, and the other was happily married with a kid. The scenes were major MoodWhiplash, especially given the silly ways they died, which is probably why they didn't make the final cut. (For America, that is. They were in the UK cut.)
** In Part III, Nigel is able to defeat a {{mook}} by reminding of how many anonymous henchmen he's indiscriminately killed over the years. The fact that he's [[NominalImportance not even wearing a name tag]] isn't improving his chances. The guy just decides to lie down and play dead.
* ''Film/RoadHouse'': When Patrick Swayze's character breaks into the BigBad's mansion, he beats the tar out of him, but then can't bring himself to kill him... despite having killed nearly all the villain's henchmen on the way in.
* In ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia: Prince Caspian'', the BigBad is an evil, murderous, genocidal git who orders the killing of his own men for propaganda, and is generally not a nice guy. ''Three times'' the heroes have him at their mercy and either can't bring themselves to kill him or straight up let him go. Because it's wrong to kill. All those guards and soldiers who were just following orders get slaughtered by the hundreds without hesitation.
** It should be remembered that there is a considerable difference between killing a soldier in a fight to the death, and killing an unarmed and helpless prisoner. Slaughtering Miraz's troops on the battlefield was the former. Killing Miraz when he could not fight back was the latter.
* In ''Film/OnDeadlyGround'', Steven Seagal's character brutally massacres dozens of guards on an oil rig, some of whom aren't even posing a real threat to him, ostensibly for the horrific crime of being ''accessories'' to pollution. After killing all these people, he finally gets the BigBad right where he wants him, and ''then'' decides he's not worth killing (though TheChick then takes the initiative to off the BigBad herself).
** He more or less ''kills one for smoking'' (ok smoking on an oil rig not very smart, but so isn't blowing one up)
* In ''BallisticEcksVsSever'', Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu seem to spend most of their time killing either hired security guards or actual law enforcement officers, whose sole fault is that they unknowingly work for a corrupt official. The morality portrayed is quite questionable. One may be somewhat unsettled for the entire movie after the first shoot-out, and genuinely think it's building up to something more, but it never does.
* Subverted and made into a plot point in ''Machine Girl'', where the heroine's slaughter of a squad of ninja mooks leads to a scene with their mourning families..
* Occurs in the film ''Film/{{Hitman}}'', where the eponymous assassin has no problem shooting his way through hordes of gas-masked troops, but always lets named characters go, despite that fact that they are the ones leading the investigation into him. Particularly bad as the troops are simply ordinary Russian soldiers protecting their president.
** Which is weird, since in the games this trope is inverted: 47 is supposed to ''only'' kill his target(s) and no one else. In fact, the Agency does not like it when innocents die and will send someone to kill an excessively homicidal agent if he continues the way he does.
** When necessary, he will fight his way through security goons like that, but he just canonically doesn't because part of what makes him ShroudedInMyth is that his planning and skill are such that there are barely any witnesses to his assassinations or to his existence.
* In ''Franchise/StarWars'', the Rebel Alliance destroys two Death Stars, killing all of the faceless mooks on them. The concepts of forced conscription and civilian contractors are never addressed, so there's no way to know within the film if any "innocent" people were killed. [[note]]According to the StarWarsExpandedUniverse, some [[Literature/DeathStar were.]][[/note]]Fans of the films enjoy arguing about the morality of the acts.
* Rationalized in ''Film/{{Clerks}}'', when Dante and Randall are talking about the thousands of innocent contractors that must have been blown up when the Death Star was destroyed. They are then interrupted by a man who works putting up drywall who tells them about how he was offered a substantial amount of money to work on a gangster's house. He refused, but let one of his friends know, and he took the job. Later, a rival gang pulled up to the house and murdered his friend and everyone on his team trying to whack the gangster - ''who wasn't even home''. He felt bad about his friend dying, but doesn't feel sorry for him, as he knew exactly what he was getting into, and says that the same would apply to the Death Star workers.
* ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' has a major theme of the banality of evil. All of the mooks and {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s are just regular people doing their jobs. When the heroes flee some [[PoliceBrutality dystopian police]] in HotPursuit, the police crash and the heroes cheer. Then one cop stumbles out covered in flames, flailing wildly. The heroes' smiles immediately wilt. Later, we see a pair of the cops take off their masks and gripe about their jobs like normal folks. 
* In ''KnightAndDay'', [[spoiler: Tom Cruise knows there's one evil agent who framed him, and the agency now wants him dead. So Cruise actually manages to kill about thirty completely innocent agents but ''avoid'' directly killing the villain.]]
* ''Film/JudgeDredd'' has the title character kill dozens of law-enforcement officials, despite the fact that they legitimately believe him to be a murderer (and the likelihood that he personally trained some of them).
** Subverted in that the only people Dredd kills are SJS, Internal Security troops who are on the paylist of the BigBad and had no trouble killing innocent witnesses.
* In ''Film/{{Goldeneye}}'', James Bond kills a number of Russian soldiers while he and Natalya are escaping from the archives, despite the fact that they're only shooting at him because they think he'd stolen the Tiger helicopter and killed Defense Minister Mishkin.
* While ''Merantau'' does not explicitly confirm the mooks' deaths, the protagonist uses a number of techniques that would almost unquestionably kill, notably kicking a man in the head in the middle of a running long jump such that his body is sent flipping backward and whips his skull into the corner of a steel shipping container.
** However, seeing as how said mooks were all willingly participating in human trafficking and slavery, it's somewhat difficult to feel sorry for them.
* ''Film/TheMatrix'' films, particularly the first film, has this happening in spades to the human security guards and law-enforcement officers.
** Lampshaded by Morpheus, who points out that while these are the very people that he and Neo fight for, they're also one program protocol away from [[GrandTheftMe turning into unkillable super-agents.]]
** Pointlesswasteoftime.com pointed this out in a critique of the Matrix, painting a mental picture of an aging, underpaid security guard who can barely afford his wife's arthritis medication, suddenly gunned down by a group of leather clad murderers with whom he had no quarrel.
* Averted by ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' in that none of the guardsmen are even seriously harmed when Dorothy and company break into the Wicked Witch's castle. In fact, the guardsmen are ''thankful'' when Dorothy destroys the Witch and breaks whatever hold she had on them.
** They're Winkies, and they're supposed to be enslaved, as explained in the book. (But see ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}''...)
* At the end of ''Film/BatmanReturns'', Batman pleads with Selina Kyle not to kill arch-villain Max Shreck, and to let Batman take him to the police instead. This is perfectly in keeping with Batman's typical policy against using lethal force... but not his behavior throughout the past two movies, in which he has killed or at least maimed numerous henchmen.
* The Operative in ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' is a subversion - he respects all human lives including those he takes, which is any he deems necessary for his cause, be it his own mooks or even children. The only time in the film he is ever angry is after Mal pulls a stunt that gets hundreds of Alliance mooks killed. When the Operative tells Mal that a lot of innocent people died because of what he did, he shows a similar respect for anonymous combatants, replying "you have no idea how true that is" in reference to [[spoiler:the Reavers, who were innocent people themselves before the Alliance made them what they were]].
* Subverted in ''The Assignment'' by virtue of the lead character's attitude. He is extremely upset that he has had to kill American agents, which is understandable considering he's on ''their'' side. 
* Averted in ''[[Franchise/{{Terminator}} Terminator 2: Judgement Day]]''. John Connor makes the T-800 promise not to kill anyone. As they face the police and other law enforcement officers, [[TechnicalPacifist the T-800 gives them less-fatal injuries]] e.g., KneeCapping (although John's not very happy about that), and at one point, his display shows "Casualties: 0.0".
* Ian, the BigBad of ''NationalTreasure'', is badly shaken when one of his mooks dies. When Ben tries to make him see going on will risk more lives, Ian harshly tells him none of their lives are worth more than Shaw's.
* ''Film/GIJoeTheRiseOfCobra'': Vipers and Neo Vipers are mind controlled drones. Granted the Joes don't know about this, but combined with Destro's plan for Duke who is to say he is the first unwilling recruit?
* ''Film/HornetsNest'': After stabbing, shooting and blowing up random German soldiers left and right, even shooting one who is wounded and trying to get up, [[AntiHero Turner]] makes a big deal about sparing the life of German officer [[AntiVillain Captain von Hecht]].

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[[folder: Web Original]]
* ''SonicTheHedgehog2SpecialEdition'' reveals that one of the {{powerup}}s from Oil Ocean Zone was sapient. His name was Failure Cresh, and he had a thorough backstory involving being born with a ten-ring monitor for a head, and a HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood resulting from this. When the player destroys the monitor, the video pauses for a moment of silence--but it's obvious that the player himself is completely oblivious to the fact that he just killed a person.
* The characters in ''DarwinsSoldiers'' kill a ''lot'' of terrorists, rogue guards and other assorted {{Mooks}} and no one seems to have a problem with it.
* NewYorkMagician: Part of the reason Michel [[spoiler:hurls Malsumis off a building]] is because he's pissed off about Mal's cavalier attitude towards his minions' deaths, and the mortality of humans in general, culminating in TheReasonYouSuckSpeech.
* ''Website/CollegeHumor'''s video ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV7Ha3VDbzE Stormtroopers' 9/11]]'', while arguably in bad taste, shows the fact that the Death Star's destruction was probably similar to a terrorist incident like 9/11 for the [[{{Mook}} Stormtroopers]].
** Touched upon in the Star Wars canon; the Stormtroopers were indeed mourning, but it was less "terrorist attack" and more "disastrous military operation". However, the Stormtroopers were able to channel that mourning into devastating fervor during the Yavin base ground battle and avenge their fallen brethren.
* Played for BlackComedy in the Website/{{Cracked}}.com video [[http://www.cracked.com/video_18134_the-awful-implications-first-person-shooter-games.html "The Awful Implications of First-Person Shooter Games"]]. Typical video game protagonist shoots a guard and escapes. As the guard lies dying, he complains about how much being a video game mook sucks.

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[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/AllQuietOnTheWesternFront'' is all about this trope. In one scene, Paul attacks a French soldier, whom he previously sees as nothing more than a {{Mook}}, but after realizing that the soldier has friends, a job, and [[IHaveAFamily a family]], [[MyGodWHatHaveIDone Paul is profoundly disturbed]].
* Taken up to eleven in Michael Crichton's final novel ''PirateLatitudes''. The "heroes" slaughter hundreds of people, among them a ''nineteen-year-old kid''. It's not even acknowledged that the mooks these people slaughter are actually on the side of the law and it's the protagonists who are menacing the populace. The BigBad of the novel is essentially evil incarnate, because he'd have to be, in order to be worse than the heroes. This novel was published posthumously, and it wasn't actually complete.
* In ''[[Literature/InheritanceCycle Eldest]]'' Eragon does some angsting after killing rabbits to eat them and resolves not to eat meat anymore because it involves killing living things. (Let's not start on the FridgeLogic of a young man raised as a medieval peasant being squeamish about dead animals.) This does not prevent him from later in the book massacring enemy {{Mook}}s in a borderline AxCrazy manner, even after the opening to ''Eragon'' establishes that most of these mooks just got picked up by the draft, and some may even be from his home town.
** It gets far worse in ''Brisingr''. When Eragon is undercover in the Empire with Arya, they get into a fight with a group of soldiers, they kill them all with no weapons. One almost escapes, and as Eragon catches up with him, starts begging for his life, repeating (truthfully) that he was dragged against his will into the war, that his parents will miss him, that he has yet to get married and live a life, and so on. Eragon rationalizes him as a threat, and breaks his neck with his bare hands. WhatTheHellHero? To be fair, you can argue [[InternetBackdraft (and people have. Extensively.)]] about whether any of the other options available to Eragon (memory-wiping, invisibility, knocking the man out and leaving too quickly for an alarm he raises to make a difference, or trying to recruit him to LaResistance and sending him elsewhere) are really viable here. But the real point is that Paolini ''doesn't''. No indication is given that avowed vegetarians Eragon and Aya think twice before slaughtering effectively defenseless punchclock villains, even when they're surrendering.
** That scene lampshades this trope. Arya and Eragon disscussed beforehand how many servants are charmed to serve and follow the empire, and releasing them would just force them to tell the truth back to the empire.
** The trope is later played with when they attack a major city. Eragon knows that many of the troops are not charmed and compelled to follow TheEmpire, so he offers them a chance to surrender beforehand, as many fear fighting a Dragon rider. Many of them do, and he asks his allies to treat them well, as they willing fully surrendered. The ones that don't proceed to fight and are killed by Eragon.
** Subverted with Eragon's cousin [[BadassNormal Roran]] who, by contrast, is uncomfortably aware of the humanity of the soldiers he kills and often has to [[DirtyBusiness remind himself]] [[IDidWhatIHadToDo where his priorities are.]] Eventually, Roran goes into the kill or be killed mindset of the war.
** Played With again when the battle commences at the end of Brisingr. The enemy Mooks are poisoned, and killed without mercy. Eragon goes into a frenzy of slicing through enemies in the war. When all the action is over and the enemy retreats, a weakened and physically drained Eragon wanders around the battlefield, healing Soldiers of minor to fatal wounds, and not caring about their alliance.
* Averted quite bluntly in ''Discworld/MonstrousRegiment''. [[SweetPollyOliver Polly and the rest of her squad]] are sneaking into an enemy fortification, and hear some guards coming up, and her inner monologue goes:
-->Yes, a good swipe at head height would kill...\\
''...some mother's son, some sister's brother, some lad who'd followed the drum for a shilling and his first new suit. If only she'd been trained, if only she'd had a few weeks stabbing straw men until she could believe that all men were made of straw...''
** It's also the original basis of the City Watch characters: ''Discworld/GuardsGuards!'' is dedicated to the {{mook}}s:
-->Whatever their name is, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, [[MookChivalry attack the hero one at a time]], and be slaughtered. No-one ever asks them if they wanted to.
* The Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse novel ''Literature/DeathStar'' features the personal lives of many mooks. For example, one of the guys seen at the fire control station of the laser is there, as is the Stormtrooper who leads the chase against Han. Due to an influx of guilt and a bit of Force sensitivity, many mooks form an escape plan just to get out of the damned place.
** This even leads to a combination RedemptionEqualsDeath and CrowningMomentOfAwesome: When the Death Star gunner, suffering from textbook BeingEvilSucks, gets the order to fire on Yavin IV and wipe out the Rebel leadership, he stalls, praying for the rebels to come kill him. They did.
* The ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' 'Gatekeeper' novel trilogy. The BigBad has dozens of human mooks on his side. Many of them are smart enough to figure out they're getting a raw deal from a guy who wants to turn Earth into a charnel pit. The authors delve into the minds of many mooks, making some sympathetic. Then the mooks tend to explode.
* Both averted and played straight in ''TheLordOfTheRings''. In the averted case, when Sam sees Faramir's rangers attacking a band of Southrons in service to Mordor, he wonders of a dead [[FantasticRacism Southron soldier]] "whether he was really evil at heart, and what lies or threats had driven him on this march so long from his home, and whether he would have rather stayed there in peace." On the other hand, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman Orcs are slaughtered wholesale and without a moment's hesitation]] by everybody.
** Well, orcs are AlwaysChaoticEvil, although Tolkien was troubled by the UnfortunateImplications.
** There's also the fact that orcs are never shown even ''trying'' to surrender- if they're losing, they always either run or fight to the death. This rather limits one's options in dealing with them.
* Inverted in ''TheDresdenFiles'', especially near the end of ''Small Favor''. Harry is more than willing to do absolutely everything in his power to kill [[spoiler:[[BigBad Nicodemus]], even slowly throttle him to death over several minutes]], but he steadfastly refuses to kill the mooks that chase him down afterward.
* In ''[[{{Mistborn}} The Well of Ascension]]'' by Brandon Sanderson, Vin is perfectly happy to attack an enemy keep, killing dozens of soldiers at least. However, when she reaches the lord and his son -- the only two named characters in the building -- she refuses to harm them and leaves instead.
** This is actually a subversion - it wasn't the sight of the lord and his son, but the realization that the lord was crippled, the son was harmless, and though [[BigBadWannabe the lord had made himself look very dangerous, he wasn't a serious threat]] that did it - because this makes Vin realize that she just ''killed a building of people for no reason''. She promptly goes off, sick to her stomach, and hides until her friends find her.
** Played straight with [[RebelLeader Kelsier]] from the same series. He considers working for the nobility, even if you're just a PunchClockVillain, to be a death sentence. However, Kelsier is generally presented as bordering on being a WellIntentionedExtremist (albeit not outright villainous).
* Jenna in the ''Literature/GreatAltaSaga'' is prone to these moments, but she usually feels guilty (read: can barely keep going) afterword. It makes sense given that she has been raised in a culture that has no real taboo against violence, but she remains a seventeen-year-old girl.
* In Creator/AaronAllston's ''Literature/GalateaIn2D'', the hero [[ColdBloodedTorture tortures]] one of the villain's mooks to try to get information from another. He slackens off without getting everything he wanted, realizing that she didn't know anything and that he was invoking this trope. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone That thought horrifies him]] -- [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman just because they were]] [[ArtInitiatesLife two paintings who came to life]], and whom the villain had sent to kill him didn't mean torturing them was all right. [[spoiler:At the climax, the trope is reversed: they kill the villains and tell the mooks that as long as they stay out of their way, the heroes won't bother them.]]
* Surprisingly (given the nature of the series they spawned) often averted in the ''Literature/JamesBond'' novels. Bond almost never kills without considering the consequence, even in ''Literature/DrNo'' he actually has to tell himself that the two nameless security guards he is about kill were almost certainly murderers themselves. Also, the start of ''Literature/{{Goldfinger}}'' shows Bond in depression after assassinating a mexican drug lord.
* In ''HisDarkMaterials'', this is a function of the daemons: if the daemon is a rare animal, it would be a crime to kill the owner. If the daemon is a guard dog or a wolf, go ahead it's a war, any kill in the other camp is good!
* [[BigBad Visser Three]] from ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' certainly seems to feel this way, as [[YouHaveFailedMe he executes his fellow Yeerks]] so often he's probably killed more than the entire Andalite military. Largely [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in the rest of the series, however--as the series goes on the Animorphs [[GreyAndGrayMorality become more and more aware]] that the Yeerks they're killing are as real people as they are, and [[AntiVillain that they have a good reason for wanting to play]] {{Puppeteer Parasite}}s to humanity. And that doesn't even count their hosts, who have no control over the situation at all.
** It's also played straight. Even after the Animorphs start to think of the Hork Bajir and Taxxons as people they are still far less likely to look for nonlethal resolutions than they are when dealing with Human Controllers, although is't somewhat understandalbe, since a human is much easier to incapacitate non-lethaly than a huge blade-covered lizard or an (also huge) ravenous centipede.
*** Which is itself brought up as a plot point when Visser One figures out that the Animorphs are human because of this. It's probably safe to say that this trope was {{deconstructed}}.
* In one of MichaelMoorcock's {{Elric}} stories, not known for their kind treatment of, well, anyone, up to and including the human race, there is a subversion where, after a humble sailor and a central character have been killed, Elric carves a memorial to the latter, and the story then comments on how there are no memorials made for the former (I think this was in ''The Jade Man's Eyes'').
* Nnedi Okorafor's ''Who Fears Death.'' The heroine refuses to kill the villain when she has him at her mercy, despite the fact that he has been leading a genocide for some time now and plans to continue to do so (she claims to oppose killing when faced with this choice). She shows no remorse when she kills and/or blinds large numbers of random nameless people, though.
* Averted in ''PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians''. Percy kills countless monsters, (and it's not exactly killing because the monsters can reform) but when a demigod apart of Kronos' army is fighting he will do whatever he can not to kill the demigod. Although he doesn't appear to mind killing enemy human mercenaries.
* R.A. Salvatore's ''Demon Wars'' Saga largely follows this trope with regards to goblins, giants, and powries (''evil'' dwarves), with one interesting exception: [[spoiler:in ''Transcendance'', the heroine Brynn and her elvish escort come across a band of goblins deep in the wilderness, away from any human settlement. The Elf almost casually slaughters the goblin group, but Brynn objects, claiming that the goblins have done no wrong and do not deserve to be murdered. The Elf's response is rather disturbing (he holds Goblins collectively responsible for atrocities committed by their race in the past), and the whole thing ends up never getting mentioned again in the series.]]
* Inverted to the extreme in Ken Follett's ''Lie Down With Lions'', where Jane refuses to kill the Russian soldiers who are at that very moment trying to capture her and Ellis and bring them back for execution, and who are at war with the very Afghans who's she's been trying to help for the past few years, because the soldiers "all have mothers." She has considerably less consideration than that for the actual Big Bad.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'', at least with regards to certain types of mooks. In one novel, during a scene from the perspective of an Imperial officer, he muses that since the Emperor's death, stormtroopers are even less willing to retreat, becoming almost fatalistic in their outlook. Said perspective also includes musing that stormtroopers aren't really people--even the Empire believes that, apparently. Meanwhile, it's averted with the more run of the mill mooks. In the Wraith Squadron novels, they try hard to avoid casualties, since they're fighting more for hearts and minds than control, as the New Republic has already conquered Coruscant. One sequence a gunner jump from his ground-based gunnery tower a second before a Wraith fighter hits it, and he muses that at least he won't have to worry about the outcome of the battle in another fifteen hundred meters. One thousand. Five hundred...
* Averted, ''sometimes,'' in ''TheTomorrowSeries.'' Ellie often reflects that many of the enemy soldiers she shoots, blows up, or runs over with big vehicles are young people not that different from her and her friends...[[spoiler: but by the end of the series, the protagonists are so hardened that they ambush and kill enemy patrols just for something to do.]]
* ''Literature/{{Redshirts}}'' explores this, as the mooks are the main characters.
* Strongly defied in the ''Series/BabylonFive'' novel ''To Dream in the City of Sorrows'', where [[MessianicArchetype Sinclair]], the newly appointed head of the Rangers addresse his new subordinated with a speach wherein he stresses that the goal of Rangers is protection of life, ''all life'', even that of their enemies, [[ScaryDogmaticAliens the Shadows]], so those who'd joined the Rangers looking for revenge against them, might better leave right then, for they would not find what they are looking for.
* Literature/ShadowChildren: The sixth book has a group of [[LawEnforcementInc Population Police officers]] killed, and their survivor shanghai Matthias into an escape. Instead of kidnapping him, the officer, Teddy, thinks he's saving the boy, and even explains why the Population Police were a good idea in the first place. Teddy goes onto to take him to HQ, and introduces him to the other agents, who're all quite friendly and easy going. Matthias is torn, as the police agents who've hunted him for his entire life, are just like regular people doing what they think is right. Teddy later dies handling Poison ID cards, and a memorial is set up for him.

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[[folder: Live Action TV ]]
* In ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'', Caroline sees no problem in trading a hybrid's life for Elena's, even though he had broken Klaus' sire-bond and only wanted to get away from Klaus.
* In ''WalkerTexasRanger'', the title character will slaughter any mostly harmless Mook on the way to the horrifyingly evil BigBad, but when he gets there, he usually spares the villain and preaches a BrokenAesop.
* Inverted on ''TheWire''. Several mooks die throughout the series as the cops try to take down the gang lords. Most of them get a great deal of characterization and their deaths visibly haunt the cops throughout.
* Occurred at least once in ''Series/KnightRider'' where a young child was playing with a beach ball in the garden of the kidnapper, and the mook in question was entertaining her. There was no real communication - just a few minutes of play and him passing the ball back to her, but given that this guy had been ''quite ready to seriously hurt someone'' in the other room and was portrayed as a bit of a Silent BadAss... yeah.
* Lampshaded in ''RobinOfSherwood'' where there is an argument between Robin and Will Scarlet after they have captured a Guy of Gisbourne leading group of homicidal Flemish mercenaries. Will Scarlet wants to kill them but Robin says that that would make them no better than the Guy of Gisbourne. Will replies 'Well what makes you think we '''are''' any better? What about all the men-at-arms we've killed?'
* Pointed out in ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' when Danko is talking with Nathan about how his plans have been ruined thanks to Nathan's interference. Nathan retorts that people could have died, and Danko counters that people ''had'' died, if one considered Danko's Mooks to be people.
** And then Danko causes heads to bang walls everywhere when he inexplicably feeds one of his men to Sylar to allow the latter to use the man's identity as cover.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is almost bipolar with this trope (along with WhatMeasureIsANonHuman), not helped at all by the Doctor's personality varying wildly DependingOnTheWriter or [[TheNthDoctor the actor]]. The most obvious example is his repeated attempts to save the Master, despite easily (if reluctantly) killing anywhere from several dozen to several ''million'' nameless enemies in numerous other episodes.
** Somewhat better-justified these days, since The Master is literally the only other surviving member of his race...
** Also FoeYay. They ''did'' used to be friends, after all, and both the Doctor and the Master appear to remember those days fondly.
* In ''Series/TheAvengers'', Steed and Mrs. Peel typically kill half a dozen or more mooks and henchmen without breaking a sweat (or a nail). They're quite indiscriminate, though: the BigBad usually gets killed just as unceremoniously.
* Averted in ''Series/BurnNotice'': Michael wants to keep the body count as low as possible.
* The main character of ''HumanTarget'', Christopher Chance, seems to have no problem mowing down security guards in one episode where he breaks into a large corporation. Although the company was [[spoiler: selling weapons to terrorist organizations]], such dealings would probably be beyond the knowledge of normal security personnel.
** This actually happens throughout the series. Christopher Chance regularly mows down Mooks, and kills the Head Mook. The episodes actual BigBad however, is usually arrested.
* Played straight, {{Lampshaded}}, and then Justified on ''{{Rome}}''. When Pompey flees to Egypt, he is captured and executed by a soldier loyal to Caesar. Caesar, who has no qualms killing Pompey's men, is livid that a nobleman would be killed by a commoner and ultimately executes the soldier and desecrates his body.
** Historically this was generally what happened, although Ceasar's reasons for anger were less about who killed him, but that his usual process was to spare his military rivals and thereby gain popularity for his mercy. He was not a man driven by revenge but by what would get him the most control over a situation and cause the least disruption to the safe progress of his burgeoning empire (nee republic). The execution of Pompey gained him nothing militarily or politically, and he took out his disapproval on the over-zealous Egyptian authorities afterwards.
** Plus, it served Caesar's interests. He wanted to overthrow Egypt's leadership. What better excuse than righteous indignation about how terribly a Roman consul was treated? His enemy Pompey is eliminated, he gets credit for having ''intended'' to pardon him, and a dangerous province's leaders are replaced with a new set loyal to Caesar. Perfect. 
* In Season 5 of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', Buffy kills several members of the [[ChurchMilitant Knights of Byzantium]] in the process of protecting her sister. But she can't bring herself to kill Glory, the hellgod who wants to sacrifice her sister, and eventually [[spoiler:[[PoisonousFriend Giles]] has to do it for her.]]
** Not... quite. It wasn't that she couldn't kill Glory, it's that she couldn't kill [[spoiler:''Ben'', whose body Glory was using and who Buffy would have to kill as well. Buffy wouldn't kill an innocent person, even if it meant leaving an immensely dangerous enemy alive... but Giles would]].
--> "She's a hero, you see. She's not like us."
--> "Us?"
* Pointed out in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' when Lily found out [[Franchise/StarWars Stormtroopers]] were not robots.
--> '''Lily:''' So when they blew up the Death Star, those were ''people'' on that thing?
* Critics of the failed 2011 pilot for Franchise/WonderWoman have called out the lead character for this. [[spoiler: After beating up (and by on-screen evidence killing in a couple of cases) several super-powered mooks, Wonder Woman proceeds to successfully deflect a standard-human guard's bullets easily before throwing a pipe through his neck, killing him. Moments later, she encounters the BigBad and does little more than knock her out.]]
* Mostly averted in the BBC ''Series/RobinHood'' series, where Robin, tired of war, deliberately avoids killing anyone, including {{Mook}}s (and the Sheriff is GenreSavvy enough to notice, so he doesn't take Robin's threats seriously). He breaks the rule several times, such as when he slaughters dozens of the Sheriff's men when he thinks that Marian is dead, or killing a few Arab assassins trying to kill King Richard.
* Subverted in the series 4 finale of {{Series/Merlin}}. Merlin kills the five guards but leaves Agravaine alive for some reason. And then they talk, and it quickly becomes clear (although not to [[GenreBlind Agravaine]]) that Merlin intends to kill him too, and that his survival was just a fluke. Okay, he waits until Agravaine pulls a knife to actually do it, but he also waited for the FacelessGoons to rush him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]
* Subverted frequently in ''VideoGame/NoOneLivesForever''. The player can listen to conversations between mooks which are often fairly long and go into a wide variety of subjects, including, quite often, their personal lives. The player almost always has no choice but to kill them during or after the conversation. How are those German guys going to start a band now?
* ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden 3''. The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYjO2Hs1zRU&feature=player_embedded teaser trailer]] indicates that this will be a major theme in the game.
* In ''{{Uncharted}} 2'', Drake has the [[BigBad Lazarevic]] at his mercy finally, and he tries to tell Drake that "We're NotSoDifferent, you and I". This immediately makes him unable to pull the trigger on him, despite having no problems killing hundreds of human enemies throughout the game.
** Or, he saw an opportunity for the guy to experience some poetic justice and be torn apart by the Guardians. Besides, Drake was using an M4, which is just a pea-shooter on someone who drank from the Tree of Life.
*** It also acts as something of a subtle ShutUpHannibal to Lazarevic, whose entire world view is based upon being TheUnfettered.
** There's another, slightly strange instance of this early in ''{{Uncharted}} 2''; in the early museum break-in level, there's a scene where Harry offers Nate a pair of pistols. Nate is horrified by the prospect of shooting at the innocent guards until Harry reassures him that they're just non-lethal tranquillizers. Shortly after this scene though, there's an in-game sequence where Nate, hanging from a ledge, tosses an unsuspecting guard off the roof and hundreds of feet down the cliff below. Harry makes a quip about the guard's demise, and the two proceed as though nothing had happened.
*** If you look closely enough you will see that the guard lands in water and swims away.
*** Shown in PennyArcade's [[TearJerker comic]] [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/19/ Ambiguitas]].
** Penny Arcade also dealt with the seemingly suicidal Uncharted henchmen in [[http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/04 Working Conditions]].
* Commented on in ''GhostTrick''. One of Sissel's powers is saving the lives of others by changing their fates. However, he defeats hitmen Jeego and Tengo by dropping heavy objects on them, crushing them apparently to death (we even see Jeego's body comedically flattened against a rolling wrecking ball). Sissel muses whether, if he killed Tengo, he'd then have to go back and save ''his'' life. [[spoiler: He doesn't. In fact they're not mentioned again, even in the epilogue.]]
* Partially subverted in the ending of the first ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'', where a paper airplane is shown flying over past stages full of the bodies of mooks you slaughtered. Towards the end, you see a grave with a crying woman standing before it.
** Or, if you finish the game with two players, you could see them relaxing and having a time doing stuff other than being, you know, evil.
** It's exacerbated if you [[AllThereInTheManual know the backstory]]. The whole war is a result of [[BigBad General Morden's]] RoaringRampageOfRevenge after his son was killed in an attack that the hideously corrupt military higher-ups knew about. His soldiers followed him out of loyalty.
* Used disturbingly in ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}} I''. The main character Shion is shown conspicuously caring about artificially-created humans called Realians, even helping maintain them and arguing on their behalf. Later on, however, she has no compunctions about mowing down hundreds of them in random battles, right before confronting the bad guy and calling him out for, wait for it, abusing the Realians. Made even worse by the character Momo, who is a realian herself but who will gladly take part in the above-mentioned random battles.
** In all fairness, almost every enemy from the game is either an automated robot, a Gnosis (monster things), or a Gnosis-infectee; we know from the game that once infected, it's impossible to resist, and ''everyone'' who touches a Gnosis winds up infected (unless they have PlotArmor) and become Gnosis themselves. And, since all the soldiers, etc., in the game are in all likelihood Realians, we ''do'' know that they are highly susceptible to Gnosis contamination. The few enemies you fight who ''don't'' fall into one of those three categories are sentient, fully self-aware, and actively trying to kill you (or at least, most of the party/the universe).
** This trope is mentioned at one point in Xenogears by a random [=NPC=] in Kislev, which is for a portion of the game portrayed as the EvilEmpire to Aveh's [[TheKingdom Kingdom]]:
-->'''Unnamed Kislev soldier:''' Even nameless soldiers have lives to live. Remember that...
* Played with in ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss''. Most of the party has no qualms with cutting down a dozen mooks who get in their way (even the 13 year old girl), but TheHero Luke goes into a brief HeroicBSOD after he first kills an enemy soldier. Afterwards, it's mentioned that whenever he kills someone, visions of their death haunts his dreams, and he has a unique victory dialogue against human enemies.
* ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemJugdral Fire Emblem: Thracia 776]]'' averts this by giving the option to spare {{Mook}}s and bosses. Though the game is already NintendoHard enough and doing this only makes it more difficult (except it allows you to steal their stuff- so it's give or take, because the path to many of the GameBreaker items is by sparing them).
** ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' touches on it in a few other areas, for example one chapter in the 9th game has you fighting rebels fighting against an underground slave ring, in this chapter you are awarded for killing as few as possible, in another, a villager mentioned you killed her son in the last battle. In the 10th game, the perspective is flipped to that of the enemy side from the 9th game, and it is portrayed in a significantly different light.
* In ''TheMarkOfKri'', murdered bandits will crawl, squrim, or even cry on the ground for a little while after being killed, unless [[TheChunkySalsaRule Chunky Salsa'd]]. It's not fun to watch.
* In the final mission of ''SyphonFilter 2'', Gabe Logan and [[spoiler:Jason Chance]] have a CirclingMonologue in which [[spoiler:Chance]] calls Logan out on killing hundreds of agents over the course of the game who were just trying to do their job.
** Though in balance to this, the ''Syphon Filter'' series had several missions where you were forced to avoid killing certain enemies, even assisting them in battles despite the fact that if they saw you, they would shoot you on sight. ''Syphon Filter 2'' especially loved doing this with escaping the airfield guarded by military police, the Moscow club and streets with Russian police, and avoiding as well as assisting the NYPD in the streets of New York.
** And in one particular example, there was [[spoiler:Teresa]]'s flashback mission in ''Syphon Filter 3'' of her time in the ATF dealing with a Survivalist compound, where [[spoiler:at first you work for the ATF, but soon switch over to the Survivalists when you realise the ATF's more devious intentions of a Waco-style cover up]].
* ''VideoGame/PerfectDark'', being a FPS, has tons of mooks to mow down. No moral problems on shooting the folks intending to ventilate the President or your personal friends. But many levels take place in regular old buildings, where it is fairly obvious that the guards were just hired hands. Relatedly, the same production team made ''Goldeneye 64'', with all original levels full of guards on patrol in public places (such as the streets or a junkyard) being mowed down for the crime of being ordered to stop the intruder.
* ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997''. It's perfectly fine to shoot soldiers, who have no say in what they're doing and are really just being paid to defend whatever complex. Even the ones who are just standing in a bathroom stall taking a whiz. But kill a scientist, who is ''actively involved'' in creating weapons of mass destruction, and you fail the mission. You CAN knock them out and disarm them with your fists, but with the exception of a single named villain (who has a key card you need that stops working if she dies) and 1 objective that requires you KO someone (so they can be interrogated) not expected or required. To be fair, the missions where scientists are in Soviet installations (like Facility and Missile Silo), and the USSR's scientists were more or less forced at gunpoint to work on whatever project the Kremlin decided they should work on, it may be justifiable. That, and the fact that the West has interests in getting them to defect rather than killing them, which also justifies this.
* In the original ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'', the mooks consist of raiders who KickTheDog for laughs, ghouls who have all the sentience of a rabid cheetah, and ordinary men and women who were forcibly mutated and brainwashed by the Master. And you kill all three indiscriminately. Appropriately enough, after you kill one Super Mutant, you can find his girlfriend in another room, sobbing inconsolably and cursing your name (in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'', many of the surviving Super Mutants have settled down following the Master's death and aren't quite so hostile).
** This being ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', you can kill everyone you see ''or'' never kill anyone (unless the plot calls for it).
*** And in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 1}}'', you can avoid killing anyone, even setting off an Evac alarm when you blow up an enemy base.
** Plus, the Super Mutant-ization process typically reduces them to a beast-like state, and many or all of them have been brainwashed by [[PathOfInspiration The Children]] prior to being dipped.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has plenty of raiders, soldiers, and guards that constantly respawn for you to kill and are indistinguishable from one another. In the case of raiders, the majority are torturers, murderers, and rapists, so it's hard to feel any regret for decapitating them with a chainsaw and placing their head on a pedestal for all to see. This still does occur near the end of the main campaign, when the player faces off against TheDragon and has the option of sparing him. Sparing him is treated as a moral and noble action by others you speak to, despite the fact that you've slaughtered several dozen of his soldiers to get to that point. To be fair, said Dragon was painted in-game to be a WellIntentionedExtremist with some KickTheDog moments to compensate, and a comparatively sane goal. The main reason you are fighting him is because he happens to be loyal to The Enclave.
*** On the other hand, have this option taken, you can spare two Mooks along with TheDragon. Otherwise, they are doomed.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' plays this trope straight at the conclusion of its ''Honest Hearts'' expansion. [[spoiler:If you choose to destroy the White Legs, you'll find Joshua Graham holding their leader at gunpoint, and you have the option to tell Joshua to let him go or kill him, with either choice affecting your karma and the ending. That said, not only did you mow down dozens of mooks to get to this point, but Joshua executes two kneeling-in-surrender White Legs himself.]]
*** In this case, it's less about saving the villain as it is [[spoiler:saving Graham from his own rage. Salt-Upon-Wounds is stated to be [[CruelMercy doomed either way]].]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'' completely averts this trope. How and which identical mooks you kill actually affects how the enemy sees you (though they do still all mostly attack on sight after the third level).
** According to the logs, this may be because they still don't know who you're fighting for.
** In fact, there is one specific faceless mook early in the game who has an effect on the plot near the end--whether or not you kill her determines whether in sector nine Iji will [[spoiler:have a crisis of faith as she finds the log of a close friend of hers]] or find a log stating how [[spoiler:the two of them found a safe place to flee to and will become two of the only three Tasen who are capable of surviving the end of the game]]. There will be no evidence at all that this mook was different from the others until you've reached sector nine (or more likely, read some of the earlier logs ''after'' reaching sector nine on a previous playthrough), and you have to infer which one she was. The mook in question is all by herself and little threat and can be easily killed or easily run past [[spoiler:(and thanks to the truce won't attack you at all if you've followed the pacifist path up to that point)]], so it's probably a fair bet that most first-time players will kill her for her nano if they're playing a killer and spare her if they're playing a pacifist.
** Iji actually apologizes after her first few kills.
* Averted in [[MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha Fate's]] story mode in ''MagicalBattleArena''. When everyone else fought their [[MirrorMatch illusionary copies]] on the fifth stage, they felt uncomfortable about it because they were beating themselves up. Fate, on the other hand, felt really bad about it because they were still technically alive even though their lives were fake and temporary, [[spoiler:which struck a little [[ArtificialHuman too close to home for her]]]].
* In ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'', there's no sympathy at all for the thousands of Pfhor you kill through the games (only one has been explicitly referred to, and that was as "that pile of chitin and fluids cooling on the floor behind you"). In the ''Marathon'' 3rd party scenario ''Rubicon'', however, the player comes across [[http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9402/37191514.png this]] terminal after killing a whole lot of Enforcers. (The kind of mook seen in the picture.)
** In one of the early missions of ''Marathon 2: Durandal'', you encounter a Sph't compiler at a terminal, who quickly notices you and is summarily dispatched. What was he programming? A message for you, apologizing for his incapacity to resist the compulsion to kill you, and forgiving your for your inevitable response. He encourages you to make haste and fight hard, for the sake his fellow Sph't, yet to be freed.
** ''Infinity'' turns the ButThouMust nature of the series and this trope on its head, at some points pitting you as [[RightHandVersusLeftHand a pawn in an internecine Pfhor power struggle]] cutting down Enforcers and Troopers alongside Fighters and Hunters, at other points as a slaver ruthlessly mopping up uncooperative humans.
* {{Lampshaded}} and statistically measured in ''SecondSight''. Each mission gives you a "morality" score, which starts at 100% and drops each time you kill someone (but not when you trick one mook into killing another one). The player has the option of sneaking past some mooks, and most can be knocked out with tranquilizers. Oddly enough, fisticuffs are lethal.
* The first ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' has several instances where the question of killing mooks is mentioned. The most memorable instance, however, is in Paris where JC encounters a couple in a café. The couple are discussing the recruitment of their son to Majestic 12. When JC enters the conversation and makes his intents for Majestic 12 clear, the mother begs JC to keep an eye on for their son even though "those gas masks make them indistinguishable from each other". The whole game can be considered an example of this as well as it is possible to finish the whole game without killing a single mook.
** Additionally, [[spoiler:JC eventually defects, and the masked mooks he (optionally) slaughtered in the game's early stages become his allies. While some of them are to some degree humanized, the rest become, essentially, {{Red Shirt}}s.]]
** ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' actually does an astonishingly good job of letting you choose whether this trope is in effect. Aside from a straight PacifistRun, from the very start the game offers a variety of non-lethal ways to take out mooks, and [[spoiler:up until you leave for the resistance]] your efforts to either cheerfully indulge in or stringently avoid wanton mook killing are noted by the game and commented on by other agents, for better or worse.
** You get bonus experience in ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'' if you avoid killing anyone save for bosses. You get even more points if you're never seen.
** All three games feature hackable computers, complete with email messages to and from random, even otherwise unidentified characters that do much to humanize them - revealing bits of their personal lives, for example, or even that they have the same ethical concerns about their bosses as the player does.
*** One email series in particular in ''[[VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution Human Revolution's]]'' "The Missing Link" DLC reveals that (1) the bad guys have a chaplain, and (2) said chaplain has been getting more and more visits from rank-and-file troopers upset and questioning the morality of what they've seen and done. 
* In ''{{Tenchu}}'', the player can often [[EnemyChatter hear the mooks utter some lines]] while hiding in the Shadows. That includes lines as "The doctor said I should stay away from dangerous business for a while" (said by a ''{{ninja}}'' of all people) and "I need to cut down on my drinking, or my wife will be mad at me again". Though that might not be intentional. You could feel sorry for mooks getting murdered seconds after saying "[[TemptingFate I'm sure tonight will be completely uneventful]]".
* ''ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume'' plays with this - the protagonist (and by extension, his comrades) are actively encouraged to kill every foe they face, and brutally beat every trace of life from them while they're at it. The protagonist acknowledges what he's doing is morally questionable at best, but considers himself too far gone to care. Depending on the path the player takes, this can come back to seriously bite him in the backside.
* The personal emails that you sometimes find, alongside useful passcodes, security information etc, in dead or unconscious guards' computers in ''SplinterCell'' can be a bit of a guilt trip. In the first mission of ''Chaos Theory'', one of the guards you can grapple and interrogate instead tells you how he knew something like this would happen ever since his family was killed by Americans, and how he's prepared to die so he can meet them again. And he doesn't even have a name. It's a little disturbing, actually; even Sam is creeped out. Averted in ''Conviction'' though.
* ''SinAndPunishment'' has the Armed Volunteers, a military group devoted to defending against the monstrous Ruffians. Unfortunately, they're also creating martial law in Japan, so Achi's group labels them as their enemies. Once one of the main characters becomes [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever a giant Ruffian]], they mobilize, and the other main character's next mission is wiping out their entire military, a military that most of them joined specifically to protect humanity. If that wasn't enough, Achi laughs at their pathetic deaths, providing an early clue that there is something wrong with her.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' follows this trope in order to FollowThePlottedLine. CJ is told by some corrupt cops that if he leaves town, they'll pin the murder of another cop on him. Thing is, during the game you can murder cops and civilians by the dozens with your comeuppance being...respawning at the police station or hospital less 10% of your money.
** Tenpenny and later Toreno stonewalls any attempts to put CJ away for good. And besides, it's knocking out a few fellow officers off the ladder.
* ''NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle'' deconstructs this hard when it's revealed the whole plot is a revenge scheme against Travis for [[spoiler:killing the Final Boss's father and brothers in a number of side missions where they appeared as mooks only discernible by their lack of hair.]]
* In ''{{Half-Life}}'', both {{Mook}} and OneManArmy are [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructed]]; sneaky players can listen in on the [[ArmiesAreEvil Army]] as they have weird self-hating conversations about [[CavalryBetrayal slaughtering hundreds of scientists who expected them to RESCUE them]] - and later their rage at the player, who they believe was the mastermind behind the invasion and have been slaughtering their comrades wholesale. On the other hand, one of the Marines laments having none of the scientists fight back.
** There's also the ''Opposing Force'' expansion pack for the original game, where you play as a HECU marine. While said Marine is comatose for most of the original game and wakes up just as the military begins pulling out, your allies are all trying to work together to pull out.
* ''MaxPayne2'' plays with this; it is possible to overhear two mooks having a conversation about the theme park you're all in. One will even spoil the other, and the latter will get pissed at him. After that, they just stand there until you kill them or they see you. It's also possible to come across one mook playing a piano beautifully while the other watches. The two are part of a squad sent to kill everyone in the building, and the second they see you, both try to kill you.
** The EnemyChatter in the original game paints the mooks as actual people with lives and families -- who just so happen to all be remorseless bastards.
* Textbook use of this in ''TheForceUnleashed''. Using the dark side to kill hundreds, maybe thousands of stormtroopers fighting for their lives? Awesome! Trying to strike down Vader or Palpatine in anger? Bad apprentice! ''Bad!''
** The {{novelization}} does have the apprentice's pilot/love interest tell him that one of the TIE pilots he casually slaughtered was an old friend of hers, and killing's not so easy when you know who's under the helmet. But as soon as he apologizes she tells him that it's okay, she hadn't talked to that friend in years, and it never comes up again. Well, sort of. At one point the apprentice looks at Vader's plan to get all the rebel leaders in one place, which involved sacrificing thousands of loyal Imperials, and thinks that those lives mean nothing to Vader and the Emperor. Even though those loyal Imperials meant nothing to the apprentice either, and he killed a good percent of them anyway.
** [[JustifiedTrope Vader said no witnesses.]] And seeing as how every single ONE of them will attack with the aim of killing you first, self-defense is hardly unjustified. To say nothing of the fact that the stormtroopers are genuinely on Vader's side, whereas to Starkiller they were either obstacles he was obliged to neutralize on orders of his master or genuine enemies, and that Vader and Palpy are quite capable of manipulating attacks on them to turn the tables (and the near-certainty that Palpy is playing possum) means that there is some justification for this.
** With that said Vader himself is actually a known subversion of this trope. While he knows that his troops are expendable and can be replaced, he acknowledges the fact that they are actual people underneath their helmets. Hence why his Stormtroopers are so loyal to him, he is always fighting on the front lines with them, and he never orders them to do something he himself would not.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' subverts this with two mooks, one each for the Alliance and the Horde. When you kill the Alliance one, you find a letter on her corpse. Turns out she was forced to fight for the bad guys, was sabotaging them from the inside where she could, and she loved her daddy. Much the same applies to the Horde one, except the letter is addressed to his sister.
* ''ManaKhemia2FallOfAlchemy'' has Punis. They're capable of human language, thoughts, etc, and are friendly, gentle creatures; if you're playing Raze's path, you even get a party-member, a cute little girl, who was ''raised'' by Punis. Except Puniballs (not what you think... probably) are an ingredient in synthesizing, and how do you get those Puniballs? Why, killing Punis in random encounters! Including adorable Baby Puni, who have little pacifiers and everything. I might want to add that Punis look like blue Flan-type monsters, only with a happy little smiley face.
* If you've seen the capabilities of ''Milo and Kate'' with the new Project Natal technology, you won't be surprised to see this kind of thing happen in future games. The game demo has shown that AI can be programmed to be almost indistinguishable from a normal human, which could lead to some very poignant moments in a game: Talking to another randomly spawned ally in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' and hearing him give his views on the war or talk about his family, and then watching as a rogue grenade promptly takes him out. Or an enemy begging for his life after watching his squad get slaughtered and allowing you to talk to him just like you would a real man pleading to be spared. The humanizing aspects that modern AI technology is demonstrating could be enough to make you question senseless killing of the mooks.
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: ModernWarfare 2'' reminds one of this near the end. [[spoiler:The BigBad is then revealed to be a rogue general who has orchestrated the events of the game as one giant BatmanGambit, and now the two main characters shoot up his private guard in a mission to take him out for sheer revenge. While the game implies that these mooks are an elite paramilitary unit handpicked by the general and not really US soldiers at this point, there's no question that most if not all signed up believing they would be doing the right thing and probably aren't even aware of their boss's behind the scenes actions. On the other hand, Shepherd's troops saw him shoot Roach and Ghost, then threw their bodies into a ditch then doused them with gasoline.]] Although the Player is encouraged as [[spoiler:Mactavish]] to treat them such a way when [[spoiler:Sheperd bombs a base with many soldiers STILL INSIDE.]] And a variation of this occurs within the [[spoiler:Airport]] scene, as most people treat the [[spoiler:civilians]] as faceless, even though being encouraged to feel for them (and all the other people they have to kill). Some are [[spoiler:dragging the bodies of their [=FRIENDS=] less than 20m in front of you.]]
* This is probably one of the biggest complaints of new-to-MMORPG ''Franchise/StarTrek'' fans about ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline''. Since about 98% of the enemies in the game are members of other sentient species, and there are (at the moment) no alternatives to destroying them en masse, first-time RPG players often complain on the forums in a shocked state about the number of Klingons they just vaporized. The fact that several missions involve being tricked or manipulated into slaying innocents doesn't help in most cases.
** The trickery runs you into WhatTheHellHero territory when you slaughter a base of Romulans on the orders of [[spoiler:an admiral who turns out to be a member of Species 8472.]] And any even mildly GenreSavvy player should have realized that by now.
* In a web flash game series ''{{Mardek}}'', Emela asks this very same thing. She questions the morality of killing henchmen, remarking on how they have lives, and possibly families of their own, that she and her crew are tearing apart. She even exclaims "A killer killer is still a killer" (if you kill a killer, you're a killer as well), confusing the main lead. Her fellow teammates tells her to put it out of her mind, since as soldiers, this is part of the job.
** Judging by one of said teammates' comments, that little speech got to him, too. Also, the speech was brought on by a semi-accidental UnfriendlyFire ShootTheDog moment when [[SaveTheVillain Saving The Villain]].
** However, it's also explicitly stated a few times that most of the monsters in the series are made of "Miasma" which randomly forms into monsters to attack you, and have no mind or soul. It goes on to say that this solves a whole lot of tricky ethical questions.
* Although it doesn't come up in gameplay, in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'', Snake's practically self-hating codec conversations reveal that he does take this trope to heart, although it is infused with some IDidWhatIHadToDo.
** In terms of actual gameplay, this trope is reversed. If careful, it is possible to avoid killing or even being seen by any of the mooks in the entire game. Not so for the bosses, who must be killed because it's necessary for the story to progress.
** In the non-{{Canon}} ''VideoGame/MetalGearGhostBabel'', Pyro Bison [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything actually cites the player's current Mook body count on that save file]] as proof of Snake's murderous tendencies in a WhatTheHellHero monologue. Does create some ValuesDissonance given that the PsychoForHire boss also describes how glorious [[KillItWithFire burning someone to death with a flamethrower is]].
** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' features a good aversion when you face [[spoiler:The Sorrow - who is backed up by ''everybody you've previously killed in the game''. The more you've killed, the more bodies you have to slog through.]]
*** Before that, you can befriend the guard in the Groznyj Grad cells by throwing the food he gives you back out to him. He then shows you a photo of his family and tells you a little about his history. Unfortunately, Snake gets on bad terms with him after proposing the guard let him out.
** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'' actively encourages the player at every turn to avoid killing enemies. Paz will plead for you to spare the lives of the men gunning for you over the radio (and balk when you do kill them), and every single human soldier in the game can be [[DefeatMeansFriendship defeated, brought back to your base and added to your army]].
** In 2, each soldier has their own dogtags, having their name and info on it,and every different member has a unique one. Raiden become angsty after your fist kill as well, feeling bad about it. You will even get called out on killing too many SEAGULLS.
** Kill enough mooks in 4, and Snake will have a flash back to when Liquid accused him of enjoying the killing in the first game, and will throw up.
** ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'' takes thorough look at this. Raiden establishes early on that he believes the PMC cyborgs he fights against made their choice to oppose him, and didn't deserve mercy for throwing in with the types of people his enemies were. [[spoiler: Later, he's forced to face the fact that underneath their emotional inhibitors, many of the RedShirt enemies he's been cutting down had no real choice at all, being manipulated by the same system he was trying to protect people from in the first place. Raiden is deeply disturbed by this. [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Jack]]... [[SociopathicHero isn't]].]]
* Featured in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'' when bounty hunting. Bounties brought in alive give bigger cash and honor awards - but the bounty's gang of mooks are worth jack squat alive or dead. Which was often TruthInTelevision.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', the protagonists storm an underwater reactor under the city of Junon. They have to take the elevator to get there --and it's presently occupied by a girl, and two random Shinra mooks who are desperately trying to work up the courage to speak with her and ask her out. When they discover Cloud, though, they're bound by duty to try and stop him, and a [[CurbStompBattle brief battle ensues]]. The girl is horrified and laments the soldiers' death; Cloud and company don't even flinch. Similarly, another squad of Shinra soldiers tries to stop the invasion and scream "For Junon!" as they rush Cloud, and meet the same fate as their compatriots. The fact that Cloud ''himself'' was a faceless, nameless grunt a few years ago doesn't seem to bother him at all.
* In ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'', one of the storylines revolves around one of Eggman's robot Mooks, E-102 Gamma. It plays around with this trope a few times, and ends with one of the [[TearJerker most poignant moments in the series]].
** The Sonic series is actually generally an aversion. Robotnik's MechaMooks (in most games) are actually Sonic's animal friends that have been brainwashed and put in a robot body, and by destroying their robotic shell the player is actually freeing them. Granted Gamma's story adds a rather tragic sense of ambiguity into this concept.
* In ''MegaManZero'', Zero stops short of killing the Guardians when you first fight them, with no explanation offered. Granted, you find out later that they're {{Hero Antagonist}}s, but their subordinates, who are similarly just doing their job, are all fair game for bisection.
** The Guardians also apply this as What Measure is a RedShirt. In the second game, Harpuia chooses to spare Zero when Zero is at his mercy, even though he spent the previous game [[DeadlyEuphemism retiring]] Resistance soldiers left and right. Later on, they also let Zero leave with Elpizo after slaughtering his entire army.
* The first two ''{{Thief}}'' games make a point of averting this. On the hardest difficulty you must never kill. Even at easy difficulty there are some major guilt trips awaiting the kill-crazy thief. Ironically the most effective of these is a spider. His name is Longdaddy, he is avoidable and the owner of the garden he lurks in is overjoyed at the work he puts in keeping his garden free from pests.
* {{Lampshaded}} in ''UniverseAtWar'': the Novus faction has the Ohm Robos, dirt-cheap MechaMooks who have a self-destruct attack. Their info card states that they ''know'' they're completely expendable... and they have no problem with the logic.
* One of the missions in an expansion for ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer: [[CommandAndConquerRedAlert Red Alert]]'' gives you a Russian {{cyborg}} SuperSoldier who easily slaughters his way though infantry, tanks, even a battleship and the Allies' MemeticBadass commando Tanya. The {{cutscene}} afterwards shows Tanya's grave...among hundreds of others.
* In ''HeavyRain'', one of the protagonists are given the choice of getting a crime boss you just interrogated his heart medication or leave him to die. Unless you're a really bad guy, you'll probably save him. On the way out you step over dozens of his guards, whom you killed on your way in. You might say they were shooting at you, but that's not an unusual reaction when someone drives a car into the house you're paid to protect.
** This might qualify as FridgeBrilliance [[spoiler: as it turns out that the character in question is the main killer of the game and is searching for a father willing to go to lengths to protect his son unlike his father over his late brother. And covering up events protecting his son is exactly what the villain in the scenario was doing.]]
* Variation in ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'': You get bonuses for killing [[EliteMooks the Aces]], who actually do have names, but the game treats them like miniature boss fights and they have no lines. Then Selvaria's DLC came out and let you play as the Empire. The player character's face is never seen. This comes with a bit of a gut punch when you realize that [[spoiler:you're playing as Oswald The Iron, one of the Aces that you probably gunned down with glee.]]
** In one cutscene Welkin and Alicia come upon a wounded enemy soldier and tend to his wounds. He dies the next morning, but the enemy general who finds them decides to allow them to return to their unit rather than having his men shot them, as a sign of gratitude, even if their compassion had been in vain.
*** The ''Gallian'' military doesn't get that much compassion. Squad 7 is built on VideoGameCaringPotential and the enemies have the above scene to remind us how they're human too, but the complete annihilation of most of the army proper doesn't have ''any'' attention paid to it except how tragic it was for ''the person who caused it'', and how without the army, it's up to Squad 7 to save the day. AMillionIsAStatistic, indeed.
* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'''s turrets shouldn't invoke this, as they're just mass-produced robotic gun turrets. But their [[CuteMachines cute]] characterisation, saying things like "I don't hate you" when you knock them down made more sensitive players feel guilty, and that was before they start saying "I'm different."
** Also, in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' they are said to feel very real pain, according to [[spoiler:Wheatley]].
--->"All simulated, of course, but real enough to them, I suppose."
* ''SengokuBasara'' plays this trope to the hilt. The various warlords you play as playable characters fight each other for practically no reason and are on quite cordial terms even as they're busy smacking the crap out of each other -- the hundreds of people [=KOed=] every battle are never even mentioned. In one case in ''Samurai Heroes'', Ieyasu consents to an alliance with the Hojo clan after the clan's messenger -- the ninja Kotaro Fuuma -- has butchered his way through Ieyasu's guards and doesn't seem to give it a second thought.
* In MMORPG ''{{Runescape}}'', this is parodied when in a quest cutscene an NPC guard openly acknowledges that the guards are killed all the time with no one complaining. His partner is horrified, at least until someone comes and kills both of them.
** This is also lampshaded in the Vengeance! saga, to an extremely depressing effect. In the saga, you start off as following a party of adventurers that is working to fight through a dungeon. After fighting through the first room, the focus shifts, and you take control of one of the warriors they failed to finish off. This warrior is very pissed off because you killed her brother. [[spoiler:She then proceeds to kill every adventurer in the party one by one.]]
* Zig zagged in VideoGame/SuperRobotWars: original generation. your battalion cuts through what amounts to an intermediate army of mooks without mention, then there's one that's portrayed as sympathetic, but he joins your battalion and you go back to killing an army of mooks without a second thought.
* ''VideoGame/NieR'': You ''will'' hate yourself when you learn what the [[LivingShadow Shades]] are.
* Like its predecessor (er, [[{{Prequel}} technical successor]]), ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'' gives the player many, ''many'' options besides murder. Adam's monologue at the end of the game is either [[HumansAreBastards pessimistic]], [[HumansAreFlawed neutral]], or [[HumansAreGood optimistic]], based on what kind of body count he [[TriggerHappy did]] or [[PacifistRun didn't]] rack up. On top of that, in every building Adam enters, he can hack the computers to read personal e-mail exchanges; a few have people talking about [[PunchClockVillain getting together for drinks]] later, another with an employee [[NotWhatISignedOnFor expressing doubt in their cause]], and at least one mentions [[EvenMooksHaveLovedOnes talking to his kids]] on the phone. In fact, the player can even invert this trope: It is entirely possible to get through the entire game [[PacifistRun without killing]] a single {{mook}}, but the [[BossBattle bosses]] -- who actually ''are'' evil -- must be killed.
* Invoked on the ''[[YouBastard player's]]'' part in ''{{Pikmin}}''. Over the course of the game, you'll send wave after wave of Pikmin to their inevitable doom, and when they're gone you'll just pull up more without thinking about it. The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3syya-w9xgw&feature=related theme song]], however, is a tearjerking, melancholy ballad from the Pikmin's point of view in which they're resigned to their fate.
-->''We'll work together, fight, and be eaten,''
-->''But we won't ask you to love us.''
** Olimar, the main character of the game, shows shades of remorse as well. In his closing day remarks, he mentions how he feels bad about the fate that ultimately follows when Pikmin are left at the end of the day outside of the pod (they'll get eaten), and expresses outright guilt when all of his Pikmin followers have been destroyed, lamenting on how his absolute carelessness got his followers killed.
* ''GuildWars Beyond: Winds of Change' - Having spent the better part of a decade at war, your character is increasingly bitter about the thousands he has killed and the pain it has caused to their loved ones and companions. One guard even muses he has spent so long treating a gang as a faceless enemy he never believed any would be there save to act as villains.
** Seen earlier but not expanded on during the ''Nightfall'' Pogahn Passage mission. While disguised as a Kournan, it was possible to overhear the enemy talking about how Varesh was a visionary who planned to bring prosperity to all the nations. Most telling was one who talked about how his poor family had been promised fertile land in Istan for their role in the war.
* ''Borderlands2'' parodies this mercilessly when you escort Claptrap to his ship and kill some mooks on the way - 
--> '''Claptrap''': My God, what have you done? These were people...with lives and families - I'm totally kidding. '''Screw''' those guys!
* ''SpecOpsTheLine'' features this multiple times when your squad can overhear some random conversations between enemy soldiers they go off break and start patrolling again. Typically, they're sympathetic and even a little charming, and you're going to shoot them dead anyway because you're playing a shooter game. This is also invoked (to the point of parody) by The Radioman when your squad starts killing the last few soldiers guarding his compound:
--> '''The Radioman''': (''soldier dies'') [[{{Retirony}} He was just three days away from retirement!]] (''soldier dies'') Well, there goes our fantasy football league. (''soldier dies'') He had...um...a dog? I didn't really know him that well. (''soldier dies'') Okay, you can have that one. That guy was an asshole.
* ''{{Dishonored}}'' averts this handily - not only are the guards humanized through idle conversations and letters, but there's actually a valid reason to avoid wholesale murder - the fewer city guards you kill, the less the city falls into chaos from the plague that turns people into ghouls (as the guards keep them in check.) Not even the main antagonists of the game have to be killed (though leaving them alive often involves setting them up for a FateWorseThanDeath.) Should you finish the game without killing a single soul, you'll be rewarded the "Clean Hands" achievement.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* Invoked in ''{{Concerned}}'' Detailing the [[http://hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-17 life]] [[http://hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-18 and]] [[http://hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-20 death]] of a random Overwatch Soldier. [[spoiler:Only to be subverted one issue [[http://hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-05-22 later.]]]]
* In ''ElfQuest'': [[http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics/SAS/DisplaySAS.html The Searcher and the Sword]], Shuna (who's been living with the elves for about two years) goes and gets married to a human man, who starts off with just bad vibes but quickly [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope jumps off the slippery slope]] and becomes a full-fledged wife-beater. After he beats her the first (and only) time, she fights off typical "maybe my love could change him" reasoning, beans him one last time, and flees. Her erstwhile husband and three or four human fighters pursue her. For the showdown? One of the Mooks makes ready to shoot the elves point-blank while they're in a hole; Strongbow [[http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics/SAS/DisplaySAS.html?page=87 responds in kind]]. That's one down, deader than dead. The elves quickly subdue the rest, Shuna duels her hubby, and then they tell them to leave and never come back.
* In ''AntiheroForHire'', mooks are taken down with little to no guilt by [[AntiHero Dechs]]. [[KnightTemplar Crossroad]] has a bad habit of killing everyone, to an extreme even he doesn't agree with (for her part, she considers Dechs a "[[WideEyedIdealist rampant idealist]]").
** However, the reason Dech dislikes killing major villains isn't morality, it's pragmatism. He gets paid for thwarting villains. If he takes them in alive, they can potentially escape from the CardboardPrison, at which point he can get paid for thwarting them ''again''.
* Parson from ''{{Erfworld}}'' has little HeroicBSOD when he realises that he killed around a small nation worth of soldiers. While others think "they were just units" Parson considers them real people.
* Subverted in ''TheLastDaysOfFoxhound'', where The Sorrow chews out Liquid over his past mook killing. Liquid's excuse of "they're just mooks" doesn't fly with him.
* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': Both on the official [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/info/cast/cast09.php cast page]] and on '''this very wiki''', Zola's Minions are called "A bunch of guys in funny hats who appear to be along to carry the equipment and get killed". Although in this case, the CannonFodder is fed to the sadistic and insane trap-filled [[GeniusLoci castle]], rather than the hero(in)es.
** Master Payne [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20050803 points out]] that even when dealing with faceless mindlessly aggressive monsters there can be ugly problems.
* ''{{Goblins}}'' is actually an attempt to explore the other side of this trope... by starting off in a goblin battle camp, with a handful of goblins, guarding a chest, and what happens when an adventuring party stumbles upon them. The surviving goblins become adventurers, and attempt to change their lives... making the 'adventuring parties' and the nearby towns into mooks.
** Well, not quite. The heroes still try to avoid killing anyone other than the (justifiably) AlwaysChaoticEvil Elite Guards.
* Subverted and inverted in ''{{Terinu}}'', as the main cast shoot down attacking Galapados warriors with no remorse, even blasting a breeding facility without a qualm to cover their escape. An act that is immediately inverted when the Galapados leader ''contradicts the Big Bad's orders'' to go after them, in order to save the dying Galapados clones.
* Lampshaded very effectively in [[http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2009/02/26/boll/index.html this]] ''Tom the Dancing Bug''.
-->ARG! My hopes and dreams!
* Parodied in [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/19/ this]] ''PennyArcade'' strip. A mook is not so happy with his boss' escapades and is thinking about switching sides and--oops.
* [[spoiler: Bowser]] sings about the tragic plight of the minion in ''Webcomic/BrawlInTheFamily'' [[http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/2009/11/20/200-ode-to-minions/ strip 200]].
--> These minions clock in from 9 to 5// to provide for their wives// not knowing' it'd be the last day// of their liiiives!
** An earlier strip [[http://brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/2009/03/17/148-stomp1/ with multiple endings]] also featured this trope.
** This comic, "[[http://www.dorkly.com/comic/2727/the-price-of-koopa-heroism The Price Of Koopa Heroism]]" also addresses the same theme.
* In one of the ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' based ''Dark Legacy'' webcomics strip, a gnome is killing kobolds and gatheirng their ears for a quest. Upon killing a kobold, the gnome check the kobold's wallet, and see a picture of his wife and kid. The gnome seems heartwernched to learn that he just killed a family man... but then he kills the wife and the kid for their ears.
* [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick.'' It was the [[KnightTemplar Sapphire Guard's]] disregard for goblins that led to [[DragonWithAnAgenda Redcloak's]] [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans mission]]; he later suffers a VillainousBSOD of his own when he realizes he's treated [[FantasticRacism his own hobgoblin mooks]] [[NotSoDifferent the exact same way]]. This is continually played with.
** [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0472.html Discussed, Deconstructed, Exploited, Invoked, and Defied here.]] [[PlayingWithATrope Dang.]] Two heroic mooks make a {{Heroic Sacrifice}} to let the {{Dangerously Genre Savvy}} Elan escape in {{You Shall Not Pass}} style. Elan stops before leaving to explain the trope to them in some detail. One of the mooks is fatally injured in the ensuing battle, and tells the other his given name - at which point he is suddenly healthy and no longer in danger of death. Both proceed to flee, vowing to save revealing their family name "for an emergency".
** [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0784.html In this strip,]] Elan celebrates when the Allosaurus eats the {{Mooks}} instead of two JerkAss bounty hunters. "Hooray! The people whose names I know are saved!"
* [[http://xkcd.com/873/ Parodied]] in ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}''.
* ''Walkbot Comics'' [[http://www.walkbot.net/?webcomic_post=last-forever view]] on the issue:
-->'''Walkbot''': Hey, Dino, can robots last ''forever''?
-->'''Dino''': Maybe, but most of the time, [[JustAMachine a robot's sole purpose]] is to be ''killed'', just like ''[[ExpendableClone clones]]'' and ''[[ConservationOfNinjutsu ninjas]]''.
* In ''{{Sonichu}}'', especially during the final two issues, the characters are more than happy to mow down hundreds of Jerkops and Decepticlones. However, during the ninth issue, it's revealed that the Jerkops were actually ''brainwashed people''. But, for Chris, Sonichu and the like, that's okay, because they were in his way of Chris' great Love Quest.
* MushroomGo shows the measure of a mook in a flashback. [[spoiler:Too bad the mook in question is Captain Martello's father.]]
* Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja: Plays with it, and plays it for laughs. The Doc has no trouble killing guards and mooks. In one comic, there's a guard happily strolling around thinking of his family, when he gets his neck snapped, and the Doctor misunderstands what he was talking about it.
** When the Doc kills a bunch of Ninja mooks, the mother of one of them calls [[WhatTheHellHero him out on it]]... at the funeral for The Doc's mentor who the ninja mooks had ruthlessly gunned down. Despite this he still has nightmares about killing all those people.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* Inverted with great style in ''SamuraiJack'''s 50th episode, "Tale of X9". X9 is a retired assassin droid who, thanks to an experimental emotion chip, has [[PetTheDog fallen in love with a puppy]]. Aku kidnaps the puppy and forces X9 to go after one last mark -- Jack. The episode is completely from X9's point-of-view, with Jack only making an appearance right at the end. You know X9 is doomed, but you root for him none-the-less. This has got to be the only time you feel sorry Jack won a battle. It is arguably one of the saddest, best episodes of the entire series.
** Averted mostly by Jack himself. He never attacks anyone unless they attack him first or do something evil, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman be they human, robot, alien, etc.]]
*** And while he does slaughter Aku's minions without remorse, he's at least consistent in that he'd gladly kill Aku himself, should he get a chance.
**** It does help that the majority of Aku's minions are robots.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'', the trope is most obvious with the Forever Knights. Because they wear [[FacelessGoons face-concealing armour]], it's okay for them to be left in a CollapsingLair or caught in a nuclear explosion. This is only the most obvious instance.
* Lampshaded, parodied, and subverted with almost sadistic glee in any scene in ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' involving Brock Sampson and the Monarch's minions.
** A big subplot in the season four premiere involved one of the minions trying to find some way to bring his friend back to life, first by trying to get him cloned by Dr. Venture, and then tried to get the Necromancer to use magic. [[spoiler:Dr. Venture refuses the payment (a comic book), because he deems it worthless (it wasn't, but by the end of the episode, it was). And it turns out the Necromancer can't actually do necromancy. Despite trying to raise the eponymous brothers in season 2's premiere and admitting he's done "hundreds" of them. David Blaine and Evel Knievel for example. As was Ronald Reagan until he bounced a check.]]
** Although with Orpheus, that may have to do with [[spoiler:those bodies were whole, whereas Henchman 24 was blown to several pieces from a blast of plastic explosives.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/AeonFlux'' played with and subverted this trope time and time again. After the very first short, which showed Aeon mowing down endless armies of mooks, the second short focused on the aftermath, sympathetically showing the deaths of two of her victims and also (briefly) showing a mop-and-bucket mook whose job was to clean up the lakes of blood left behind. A later short ("War") pushes the trope even further, showing a Heroic Hero slaughtering endless mooks until one mook proves to be an even more Heroic Hero. The new hero kills the last hero and the plot quickly switches sides. This pattern repeats itself ''four times''.
* Involuntarily inverted in the first two seasons of ''{{WesternAnimation/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|2003}}'' (2003): thanks to standards and practices, defeated mooks were invariably shown as being merely knocked out, despite the fact that the turtles theoretically had no problem killing in self defense and tried several times to kill the Shredder. (And by "tried", we mean "decapitated him".)
* In ''WesternAnimation/ReBoot'', Matrix slaughters countless viral {{Mooks}} and numerous viruses, but [[spoiler:after a huge battle, he spares Megabyte, despite his torturing Phong, oppressing the people of Mainframe, infecting many of the survivors, and turning Mainframe into a hell hole. At the very least, Megabyte comes back to bite them in the ass because Matrix didn't just put a bullet in Megabyte's face.]]
** In Matrix's defense, [[spoiler: Megabyte ''did'' give Enzo a kickass guitar for his birthday.]]
** All the mooks were Bi-Nomes, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman which invokes another trope.]]
*** Averted in the episode ''Game Over'', after blowing away a huge chunk of Megabyte's forces who were clumped up into a kill zone, Dot dejectedly says "Well done, people." before walking off to cry. She goes on to celebrate with her staff, but she's pretty much just putting on a face.
* ''WesternAnimation/StrokerAndHoop''. Hoop fires at ninjas in order to save Stroker and his son. Instead of scaring them away (his secret usual M.O.) he nails one in the brain. Hoop goes into a wild emotional breakdown and essentially takes over the ninja's life. Stroker doesn't see what the big deal was (he intentionally shoots people all the time) and the ninja's boss kills his own minions (despite saying how stupid it would be to do so).
* For all that [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Avatar Aang]] struggled with the morality of killing Ozai, he never gave much thought to the soldiers he [[BlowYouAway blasted]] off the mountaintop in ''The Northern Air Temple'' or all the engineers and technicians drowned in slurry in ''The Drill''.
** The difference is that with Ozai, it wasn't in the heat of battle, it was explicitly stated the only way to stop Ozai is to kill him. That made it, at least to Aang, a premeditated act instead of a split second choice in the middle of a battle..
** The difference in morality between killing soldiers invading a mountaintop temple and killing a guy who took a break from [[KillItWithFire burning every living thing in the Earth Nation to death]] so he can personally kill *you* is a very subtle one.
* Megatron's Decepticons in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' are--save for a few lieutenants--seemingly nameless, faceless Vehicons (unlike most characters on the show, they have Cylon-like unemotive faces). The Autobots kill them by the dozen in each episode, and Starscream once demonstrates a Doomsday Device on a hapless Vehicon. But...later on we see them talking, interacting, and some even expressing doubts about the current leadership, demonstrating that they are living thinking beings. Yet, average, about 10 of them die in every episode at the hands of our "heroes", often in very brutal ways (disemboweling, decapitation) which is allowed to be shown on a kid's show because, a) it's Hasbro's own network and b) "Hey, they are robots". And all this often by the very same Optimus Prime who offers Starscream to actually join the Autobots, and for a long time, does not want to kill the Megatron who essentially destroyed Cybertron and turned it into a desolate world crawling with cyber-zombies--because they used to be buddies...
* Utterly averted in the 2011 ''[[WesternAnimation/{{Thundercats 2011}} Thundercats]]'' show. The lizards, while being ancient enemies of the thundercats, are revealed in the first episode already to have a very good and valid reason for attacking Thundera - the cats have occupied the most fertile lands in the desert and are denying other races the food and water needed for survival. Despite the lizards remaining the main antagonists throughout the first 13 episodes, many lizards have been depicted as individuals, despite most of them remaining nameless. The best example are the two lizard prisoners whome Lion-O saves from a lynching mob in the first episode--at the end of the second episode, the same lizard repays his kindness by helping him escape from prison.
** Panthro is very much an equal opportunity guy in his handling of the trope--his own arch-enemy gets the same treatment as any nameless mook. Whenever he encounters Grune, he doesn't even want to talk to the guy who used to be his friend before his betrayal--he just wants to kill him, same as any other enemy. (And, he is not afraid to make any sacrifices to get the job done).
* Used lightly in ''WesternAnimation/TheDreamstone'', in that while the heroes never actually kill Zordrak's Urpney mooks, they are somewhat apathetic to them being essentially [[MinionWithAnFInEvil unwilling slaves]] who get [[YouHaveFailedMe horribly executed in dozens for dissapointing Zordrak]], and sometimes have little against using greyer methods such as HeelFaceBrainwashing to do away with them. In the pilot Rufus and Amberley actually use [[TakenForGranite petrified Urpneys]] as human shields against the Frazznats. Their treatment of Sgt Blob's team in comparison usually involves more harmless punishments such as intimidation or {{Humiliation Conga}}s, though even this can actually lead to them looking like the more vindictive side, given [[TheDragAlong Frizz and Nug]] tend to [[JustFollowingOrders find antagonising Noops to be tedious and scary]] rather than ''fun''. It is worth noting that in just about every other circumstance, the Land Of Dreams is little short of a SugarBowl.
* ''WesternAnimation/TronUprising'': Averts this. Beck, the protagonist, has a no-killing policy, sparing guards, or stunning them. In the first episode, him not killing a guard gets that guard to help him out at the end. In the Scars two-parter, Tron witnesses where the guards come from, regular programs being brainwashed, and later, a different guard saves his life and fakes his death.
** Other characters, like Rilo, Cutler and even Tron himself, have killed when put in a life or death situation.
* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode "The Boring Identity". When the CIA raid a Doug & Busters after receiving intel that the real Osama bin Laden had been working there as a manager, they brutally kill the innocent workers who are just doing their jobs, but they take Osama alive.
** In another episode, Stan is tricked into robbing a museum by his father, and a scene in which he viciously beats an elderly security guard has excerpts of a conversation between the guard and his family (who want him to retire) playing over it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]
* [[http://www.maniacworld.com/taming-a-nazi-sniper-with-a-trumpet.html This]]
[[/folder]]

2nd May '13 4:42:03 AM LordCrayak

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2nd May '13 4:03:15 AM F-Lambda

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* In ''{{Tenchu}}'', the player can often [[EnemyChatter hear the mooks utter some lines]] while hiding in the Shadows. That includes lines as "The doctor said I should stay away from dangerous business for a while" (said by a ''{{ninja}}'' of all people) and "I need to cut down on my drinking, or my wife will be mad at me again". Though that might not be intentional. You could feel sorry for mooks getting murdered seconds after saying "I'm sure tonight will be completely uneventful".
* ''ValkyrieProfileCovenantofthePlume'' plays with this - the protagonist (and by extension, his comrades) are actively encouraged to kill every foe they face, and brutally beat every trace of life from them while they're at it. The protagonist acknowledges what he's doing is morally questionable at best, but considers himself too far gone to care. Depending on the path the player takes, this can come back to seriously bite him in the backside.
* The personal emails that you sometimes find, alongside useful passcodes, security information etc, in dead or unconscious guards' computers in ''SplinterCell'' can be a bit of a guilt trip.
** In the first mission of Chaos Theory; one of the guards you can grapple and interrogate instead tells you how he knew something like this would happen ever since his family was killed by Americans, and how he's prepared to die so he can meet them again. And he doesn't even have a name. It's a little disturbing, actually; even Sam is creeped out. Averted in ''Conviction'' though.

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* In ''{{Tenchu}}'', the player can often [[EnemyChatter hear the mooks utter some lines]] while hiding in the Shadows. That includes lines as "The doctor said I should stay away from dangerous business for a while" (said by a ''{{ninja}}'' of all people) and "I need to cut down on my drinking, or my wife will be mad at me again". Though that might not be intentional. You could feel sorry for mooks getting murdered seconds after saying "[[TemptingFate I'm sure tonight will be completely uneventful]]".
* ''ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume'' plays with this - the protagonist (and by extension, his comrades) are actively encouraged to kill every foe they face, and brutally beat every trace of life from them while they're at it. The protagonist acknowledges what he's doing is morally questionable at best, but considers himself too far gone to care. Depending on the path the player takes, this can come back to seriously bite him in the backside.
* The personal emails that you sometimes find, alongside useful passcodes, security information etc, in dead or unconscious guards' computers in ''SplinterCell'' can be a bit of a guilt trip. In the first mission of ''Chaos Theory'', one of the guards you can grapple and interrogate instead tells you how he knew something like this would happen ever since his family was killed by Americans, and how he's prepared to die so he can meet them again. And he doesn't even have a name. It's a little disturbing, actually; even Sam is creeped out. Averted in ''Conviction'' though.

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27th Apr '13 7:09:10 AM Vir

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* Used lightly in ''TheDreamstone'', in that while the heroes never actually kill Zordrak's Urpney mooks, they are somewhat apathetic to them being essentially [[MinionWithAnFInEvil unwilling slaves]] who get [[YouHaveFailedMe horribly executed in dozens for dissapointing Zordrak]], and sometimes have little against using greyer methods such as HeelFaceBrainwashing to do away with them. In the pilot Rufus and Amberley actually use [[TakenForGranite petrified Urpneys]] as human shields against the Frazznats. Their treatment of Sgt Blob's team in comparison usually involves more harmless punishments such as intimidation or {{Humiliation Conga}}s, though even this can actually lead to them looking like the more vindictive side, given [[TheDragAlong Frizz and Nug]] tend to [[JustFollowingOrders find antagonising Noops to be tedious and scary]] rather than ''fun''. It is worth noting that in just about every other circumstance, the Land Of Dreams is little short of a SugarBowl.
* TronUprising: Averts this. Beck, the protagonist, has a no-killing policy, sparing guards, or stunning them. In the first episode, him not killing a guard gets that guard to help him out at the end. In the Scars two-parter, Tron witnesses where the guards come from, regular programs being brainwashed, and later, a different guard saves his life and fakes his death.

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* Used lightly in ''WesternAnimation/TheDreamstone'', in that while the heroes never actually kill Zordrak's Urpney mooks, they are somewhat apathetic to them being essentially [[MinionWithAnFInEvil unwilling slaves]] who get [[YouHaveFailedMe horribly executed in dozens for dissapointing Zordrak]], and sometimes have little against using greyer methods such as HeelFaceBrainwashing to do away with them. In the pilot Rufus and Amberley actually use [[TakenForGranite petrified Urpneys]] as human shields against the Frazznats. Their treatment of Sgt Blob's team in comparison usually involves more harmless punishments such as intimidation or {{Humiliation Conga}}s, though even this can actually lead to them looking like the more vindictive side, given [[TheDragAlong Frizz and Nug]] tend to [[JustFollowingOrders find antagonising Noops to be tedious and scary]] rather than ''fun''. It is worth noting that in just about every other circumstance, the Land Of Dreams is little short of a SugarBowl.
* ''WesternAnimation/TronUprising'': Averts this. Beck, the protagonist, has a no-killing policy, sparing guards, or stunning them. In the first episode, him not killing a guard gets that guard to help him out at the end. In the Scars two-parter, Tron witnesses where the guards come from, regular programs being brainwashed, and later, a different guard saves his life and fakes his death.

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24th Apr '13 3:09:14 PM Kooshmeister

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