History Main / WhatMeasureisAMook

* 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 fair game for bisection.

* In ''{{Gundam 00}}'' Setsuna spares [[spoiler:[[strike:Graham]] Mr. Bushido]] after defeating him in combat, and then convinces him to not commit sepuku. 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:[[strike: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.

* Mentioned in ''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 humungous TechnicalPacifist, so this situation doesn't come up very often.

* 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 hubbie, and then they tell them to leave and never come back.

** Well, orcs are AlwaysChaoticEvil, although Tolkien was trubled by the UnfortunateImplications

** "Loyal to Caeser? Livid a noble would be killed by a commoner?" Not exactly (and the later runs contrary to Caeser's portrayal on the show). Pompey greets the man as a friend and commrade. The killer is acting on the orders of King Ptolomey and his slimy advisors, who figure Caeser's the winner and new overlord and they'll please him by slaying his enemy. Instead, Caeser is utterly repulsed that the [[ValuesDissonance Gypo]] client-king had a former consul of Rome and his ex-son-in-law murdered and mutiliated. Demonstrating how desperate they are to suck up, they turn around and hand the knifeman/{{Mook}} over to Caeser. In the end, it doesn't help them much. [[{{Cleopatra}} Ptolomey's sister has a better offer.]]
*** Also, the actual history shows Julius Ceasar's tactic of capturing his enemies, then sparing them and turning them into allies, thereby gaining the trust of their followers and showing himself to be a Great Man(tm). The overzealous rulers in Egypt robbed him of this, and his wrath was... [[BuffySpeak big and wrathy]].

** 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 potrayed in a significantly different light.

*** [[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 justificiation for this.

See WhatMeasureIsANonHuman for when this applies to characters who aren't humanlike. Compare WhatMeasureIsANonSuper and WhatMeasureIsANonUnique. Contrast ImmortalLifeIsCheap. PayEvilUntoEvil normally goes hand-in-hand with all this mookocide, often with sneers about the way mooks ''will'' go around JustFollowingOrders. This trope wouldn't exist if not for the assumption that mooks are AlwaysChaoticEvil, though as many of the examples on this page attest entirely innocent GullibleLemmings are often gunned down just as easily. See also MookHorrorShow. ADayInTheSlimelight may be a subversion.

** A strange version of this appears in ''Goldeneye 007''. 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) not expected or required. To be fair, the missions where scientists are in Soviet installations (Facility and Missile Silo come to mind), 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 AaronAllston's ''Galatea in 2-D'', 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.]]

* In AaronAllston's ''Galatea in 2-D'', 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.

There are exceptions though. One being if the mooks [[MookFaceTurn switch sides]], then they aren't subject to this because RedemptionEarnsLife; the other is if they were GoodAllAlong, and were only doing evil because they had no choice. Another small comfort to the mooks is that their bosses tend to suffer a similarly ignominious fate when they are a {{Self-Disposing Villain}}.

See WhatMeasureIsANonHuman for when this applies to characters who aren't humanlike. Compare WhatMeasureIsANonSuper and WhatMeasureIsANonUnique. Contrast ImmortalLifeIsCheap. PayEvilUntoEvil normally goes hand-in-hand with all this mookocide, often with sneers about the way mooks ''will'' go around JustFollowingOrders. This trope wouldn't exist if not for the assumption that mooks are AlwaysChaoticEvil. See also MookHorrorShow. ADayInTheSlimelight may be a subversion.

** 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.]]

[[{{Mooks}} Minions]] of the BigBad and characters [[RedShirt without names]] are not generally [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman seen as people]]. They may be living, breathing, red-blooded creatures, but the hero can gun them down without breaking a sweat and it isn't a problem.

*** They DID make the final cut. This troper has seen the film on television a dozen times.Every time, those scenes were in the movie.

** 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) not expected or required.
** A strange version of this appears in ''Goldeneye 007''. 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.
*** To be fair, the missions where scientists are in Soviet installations (Facility and Missile Silo come to mind), 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.
*** [[MoralDissonance It's perfectly OK to kill people, if they are no use to you. It's not okay to kill people who you can use.]]
**** [[TruthInTelevision Congragulations: you now know how utterly screwed up the real world can be.]] It also helps that the people of no use to you (the Red Army grunts) are the ones that shoot you on sight (thus forcing you to counter in self-defense), and you CAN indeed shoot a few soldiers (and even [[TheMole Dr. Doak]]) under any circumstances (particularly if they come after you).

** ''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. But then you get to the city guards, who are just as nameless but are trying to do nothing more than protect innocent civilians.
*** Of course, killing city guards does result in negative karma. 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.

*** THis troper made the choice to 'Stay in character' in Opposing force. Then felt HORRIBLE about it.

* Featured in ''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.