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alt title(s): Elite Mook
One of the Monarch's Black Guards telling a lesser henchman to go to his room without supper.
Has your Red Shirt Army been cut to shreds by uncaring heroes? Are the Mooks, Goons and Minions at your disposal incapable of providing more than half a second worth of challenge to the hero? Well worry no more! Because we at EvilTemp© have just the thing!
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Griffith's Apostle army in Berserk.
- The Castle of Cagliostro features ninja-like assassin mooks: masks, metal claw gauntlets and armor Jigen can't shoot through without an anti-tank gun.
- In One Piece, near the end of the "Enies Lobby" arc, Captain level Marines attacked the Straw Hats at the Bridge of Hesitation. The Straw Hats had spent the rest of the arc taking out several thousand standard Mooks, as well as fighting the government's resident assassin team, CP9 so these Elite Mooks did pretty well against the worn out Straw Hats. Still got their butts handed to them though.
- Akuma of D.Gray-Man have levels, so that every time the exorcists get strong enough to Red Shirt-ify the current strongest akuma, they can just introduce a new strongest type.
- The Espada from Bleach all tend to have a few lesser Arrancar that they keep around to serve this purpose, called their Fraccion. And frankly, the Big Bad considers all Arrancar to be this, at best.
- The red armoured Rublum forces of the Empire in Tears to Tiara. They hand the protagonists their first real defeat in episode 8, though that was due in part to Arthur's lack of strategy beyond "charge them and hope for the best". Well, they used logs too, but the Rublum soldiers just got back up after being hit by the logs.
- The giant mecha in the festival arc of Mahou Sensei Negima had their weaponry quietly upgraded to no longer fire mere stripper rays. Apart from that they were indistuinguishable from their predecessors.
Films
- 300 applied Action Movie tropes to historical events, including making the Persian 10,000 Immortals Elite Mooks.
- The Uruk-Hai in The Lord Of The Rings movies. Fell down just as easy as the regular Orcs.
- The Super Battledroids and Destroyer droids (Droidekas) in Star Wars Attack of the Clones.
- Also General Grevious' Magna Guards, non-Jedi Droids who are able to fight against Jedi in melee combat and do relatively well (i.e. live longer than about 6 or 7 seconds). The expanded universe even has them beating some of the lesser Jedi.
- Supers become downgraded to regular mooks after AOTC. The B-1s become Evil Minions.
- Believe it or not, the Stormtroopers and their ever-famous Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy are ostensibly Elite Mooks. The basic mooks are apparently those guys in the dorky hats, who we see far less of than the Stormtroopers. Odd. Ironically, ditto for the TIE fighter pilots.
- Well, at least they can kick Redshirt Army's ass. This can be enough to make them Elite... Mooks.
- There are also "Elite Elite Mooks" then, because the Royal Guard (red armor) are the Elite Mooks of Stormtroopers.
- The Force Unleashed intoduces Elite Mooks to the Royal Guards with the Shadow Guard. Elite Elite Elite Mooks?
- Dark Empire beat them there with the Imperial Sentinels (genetically-altered Royal Guards).
- For those that consider the Expanded Universe material to possesses canonical relevance, Stormtroopers have multiple levels of "elite", others including storm commandos, space troopers and environment-specific ones (Snow/Sand/Forest Troopers) along with the above-mentioned Royal Guards (within which there were also varying standards of "elite"). Just to make the "elite mookdom" more hilarious, the "true" mooks at the Imperial Army — who, except in the form of the walker crews in Episodes V and VI, don't even appear in the movies. (The West End Games Star Wars RPG using a d6 system was responsible for a lot of what is known about the Imperial Army.) And don't forget the literal "Elite Stormtroopers"... who appear to just patrol the Core Worlds.
- In fairness, though, this "treadmill of eliteness" gave a ladder for the henchmen to climb that didn't have the Emperor as its highest rung although that didn't stop a group of highly-placed officials from trying to overthrow Palpatine the year before the first Death Star's destruction, or Carnor Jax — one of the "elite-r" Royal Guards, a Sovereign Protector — from having Palpatine's clones and their template sabotaged.
- In a nod to the Real Life events of Nazi Germany (as this is The Empire), specifically Operation Valkyrie
 .
- And as we are in Elite Elite Mooks, don't forget the cyborg Dark Troopers from Dark Forces.
- Anyway, by the Time The Empire reforms Stormtrooper are now part of the normal army.
- At the end of Batman Begins, Ra's Al Ghul sends 4 serious-looking ninjas in full metal body armor to fight Batman. They do about as well as everyone else who's tried to fight Batman up to this point. In other words, they get pwned pretty much instantly.
- It makes you wonder why Ra's doesn't use more flaming ceiling beams when fighting Batman.
- Both Equilibrium and Ultraviolet feature the hero battling a group of several unique-looking Mooks armed with katanas, just before the final fight with the Big Bad. These guys are either Elite Mooks, or complete idiots, for fighting only with swords in a world where pretty much everyone is equipped with automatic weapons. In any case they don't do noticeably better against the hero than all the previous Mooks... i.e. they all get killed in about 6 or 7 seconds.
- Repo! The Genetic Opera has Rotti's shotgun-weilding henchgirls, and the faceless Repo Men.
- They're all a part of the Gene Co. payroll, but between regular Gene Co. employees and Rotti's guards or the Repo Men, you really don't want to be the latter two's target.
- When one of the new Agents manages to block one of Neo's attacks in The Matrix Reloaded, he says "Hmm, upgrades", signifying that these Agents are Elite Mooks. Although he can't take them out as easily as he could at the tail end of the previous movie (when he deflected Smith's attacks with one arm), Neo still manages to pretty much pwn them without even taking a hit.
Literature
- The Lord of the Rings has the Uruk-hai, elite Orcs.
- Similarly, the Inheritance Trilogy has the Kull, elite
Orcs Urgals.
- The Social Police in Blade of Tyshalle could nail scouts between the eyes as said scouts were peeking through window slats at them. "Say what you like about Soapy, but those bastards can shoot."
- The Wheel Of Time has the Myrddraal.
- Source material notwithstanding, the Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts novels after Necropolis had them fighting the Blood Pact, the retinue of the Chaos warlord they were fighting against, who were supposedly better than the generic heretics and zealots that came before. The Guns of Tanith also introduced Loxatl mercenaries that could take lots of lasfire.
- Seeing how most generic heretics armies are Too Dumb Too Live (tring to attack you with a knife when they have a gun) to the Blood Pact near IG level training I would say they are.
- Bonus Points for being Khrone worshipers guess they figuer out that Khrone doesn't care how you kill people as long as you kill
Live Action TV
- Supreme Daleks in Doctor Who.
- Supreme Daleks are leaders. The Elite Mooks of the Daleks are the Special Weapons Dalek for Remembrance of the Daleks, Expanded Universe not included.
- Power Rangers sometimes has a multiple tier grunt system, such as Kelzak Furies and Styxoids. Blueheads started out as Giant Mooks who led regular Mooks, but started being sent in small groups themselves on occasion.
- The Kull Warriors in Stargate SG-1 are — watch this — Anubis' Frankenstein's symbiotically enhanced super-zombie cyborg Determinators.
- One episode of SG-1 also showed that some of the Jaffa under Anubis were elite Ninja Jaffa. For some reason, they never showed up again after that episode.
- In general a System Lord's First Prime is usually THE Elite Mook. Just ask Teal'c.
- Star Trek The Next Generation plays with this concerning the Borg. The Borg start out as chump Mooks. The problem is... once you knock off a few of the chump Mooks, ALL of them basically become Elite Mooks, or at least elite enough that they can kick your ass. New foe, wash, rinse, repeat.
Tabletop Games
- Elites choices in Warhammer 40000, which are Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Imperial Space Marines are all Elite Mooks when compared to the rest of the Imperium's fighting forces. Similarly for Chaos Marines on the Chaos side, except when some of the stronger daemons are involved.
- In most places, the local police and Planetary Defence Forces are seen as less capable than common or garden Imperial Guard. Amongst the Guard, you have various elite regiments, which might be veterans or have come from a more militarised culture (such as Cadians) or who have had more extensive training (such as Storm Troopers, the best of the Guard). One step above are the Sisters of Battle, who are just as good as the best Guardsmen, but wear power armour. They have an elite corps called Celestians. Then comes Space Marine Scouts, who are basically Marine cadets. Then come regular Marines, Veterans and Terminators. Then you have the Grey Knights, who are elite psychic Space Marines, who also have more-elite Terminators. Then come the Dreadnoughts, but at this point we're arguably past the "mook" part. Nobody's quite sure where the Adeptus Custodes, the Deathwatch and the various Heavy Weapons/Jetpack teams fit in.
- Custodes are even more elite Space Marines than the Grey Knights and their Terminators more elite still, Deathwatch are Veterans with better equipment, and Assault/Devastator Marines are equivalent in skill to regular Marines but are trained for different roles.
- And we can't forget Ork Nobz, which are normal Orks ONLY BIGGER AND WITH POWER CLAWS!
- Simalarly, Special and Rare choices in Warhammer. Every army has at least one unit that is effectively one unit of normal infantry, just better trained, better equipped, less likely to run, Spikes Of Villainy for the evil races, and with a badass sounding name. Compare Chosen to normal Chaos Warriors, Stormvermin to bog-standard Clanrats, Phoenix Guard or White Lions to ordinary High Elf Spearmen... etc.
- Shadowrun has, among other things, Aztechnology's Leopard Guards, Ares Firewatch Teams, and Renraku's Red Samurai.
Video Games
- Just about every action videogame after you get to a certain level.
- The varying ranks of Pig Soldiers in Mother3.
- Just about every long-running enemy group in City of Heroes has these (the Council goes from random raw recruits to elite special forces to enhanced super-soldiers to superhuman monstrosities and robots). I'm almost certain that this is shared by other MMORPG.
- Koopatrols and the Bonus Boss Anti-Guy in Paper Mario.
- Metroid series:
- Elite Pirates in Metroid Prime.
- Ridley's "Ninja Space Pirate bodyguards" in Super Metroid.
- Fusion Metroids.
- Literal elite monsters in World of Warcraft. They have a golden border around their portrait and are much tougher than their normal counterparts. How much more depends on the setting. Outdoor elites might be killed by a single character of the same level, although it's much more difficult, while dungeon monsters are designed to be a threat for a full group or even a raid (up to 40 players).
- It's bosses (who are that on top of being elites) that are a challenge for a whole party. Regular dungeon elites go under the "might be killed by a single character of the same level" — though only one at a time, and emphasis on "might" as with all elites, so dungeons themselves are very much impossible without a party.
- With the multiple nerfs to old world content and buffs to low level characters, this is less true of many low-level dungeons, particularly for certain classes. A good player with good gear, a few levels on the monsters in the dungeon, and the right class can actually solo some low level dungeons while still within the normal level range for the dungeon. And then there are twinks...
- The obscure Macintosh Wolfenstein/Doom clone Sensory Overload had, in its later levels, elite guards who looked like Nazi officers and wielded machine guns, and cyborg soldiers who talked like Darth Vader and threw plasma balls(the same projectile as the Electrogun). The unnamed female Dragon and Final Boss was basically a slightly enhanced(faster, and with a melee attack) Palette Swap of the cyborgs, ie a type of King Mook (or queen mook, if you will).
- Combine Elites in Half-Life 2, who wear white uniforms instead of the grey and black variety found in others, and have weapons with an "alternate fire" mode which can instantly disintegrate ... um, NPCs, whether Red Shirt or Mook (in the player's hands), but which do 15 or so points of damage to the player.
- Ninja Gaiden, which places Bad Ass super-ninja Ryu Hayabusa and Fiend-Hunter Rachel in the Vigoor Empire with the task of basically killing everything around them. The game expands upon the genre staple of tough, then tougher, than tougher monsters by arranging a pattern of leadership for all enemies, human, fiend, and even mechanical.
- It's most readily apparent with humanoid enemies, where both protagonists will confront typical brown-colored normal ninjas to elite Black Spider Clan ninjas, and their respective commanders. The Vigoorian Military takes this even further, with regular MSAT security personnel to more SWAT-style versions of them, and regular Army infantrymen to elite sword-wielding Spetznaz-style commandos. There's a steady progression from regular grunts with Glocks and assault rifles to power-armored supercommandos with helicopter and tank support.
- Let's not forget the, well, Elites of Halo, the 1337357 form of which are the Gold/Zealot and the Black/Spec-Ops types, the latter of which show up in the last two levels of the game. Both have a ton of shields and armor, have more advanced agility and AI, and Blacks can use grenades unlike other elites, particularly annoying on The Maw. They are accompanied by the Spec-ops Grunts, which often carry Fuel Rod Cannons.
- Halo 2 has the even more 1337 Ultra Elites, aka silver or platinum elites, which are ubiquitous on Legendary. They have much stronger shields and more health than other Elites(eg, can take four or five sniper shots to the head), regenerate their shields much faster, often have Guns Akimbo, and can go berserk and wield instant-death Energy Swords. There are also the nasty Ultra Grunts, experts with grenades and BFGs. Spec-Ops Elites, though rarely seen as enemies in this game, are formidable foes and are now equipped with stealth camouflage(they can switch it on and off, unlike regular stealth elites).
- The Honor Guards, which are the prophets' Praetorian Guard.
- The most 1337 of Halo 3's Brutes are Brute Chieftains, who are heavily armored, can't be stuck with grenades on their armor, wield Gravity Hammers or BFGs, are equipped with temporary invincibility shields, and can also take about three fucking grenades to the face before dying (and that's if you're not killed when they go beserk when their armor comes off). Thus, they're also a major Boss In Mook Clothing. Other elite mooks include Brute Captains, who usually carry the lethal Brute Shot, and Jump-pack Brutes.
- The Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone levels have Advanced Sentinels, which have shields and more powerful blue beams.
- For the humans there's Spartan Super Soldiers, whom are basically bipedal ninja tanks, And of course ODST's whom are basically special forces space marines.
- In God Hand, there are two basic elite types: the "tall" model and the "fat" model. Both are much harder to send flying and have a lot more health.
- The upcoming RTS Tom Clancy's Endwar has them. How? The player's army, stated to be the best taken and bunched up from all the other elite forces of their root military, and The Cavalry commonly in other circumstances.
- The geth of Mass Effect start off with your regular geth soldiers, but as the game progresses, geth shock troopers start showing up, and then you start getting meaner variants, like Juggernauts, Destroyers, and the pants-browningly potent Primes.
- Pants-browningly potent? By the time this troper got to where he was facing Primes, they were done for in a few shotgun blasts. It's the Krogan Battlemasters that are the real pain in the ass.
- Seconded. The Geth Shock Troopers take the player down in one hit with one of their rockets. The Primes charge at you, and if you're playing an Adept, this is ridiculously easy to counter. Or if you have Tali with you, you can have her hack the Prime and take it down while it stands stock still.
- Metal Gear Solid 2 had the Arsenal Tengu commandos and the Hi-Tech Soldiers, MGS3 had the Ocelot unit and pyro guards, and MGS4 had the all-female Haven Troopers/F.R.O.G.S (which were more or less female Tengus) and exo-skeleton, jet-pack mercenaries only seen for one level.
- Heavy Armor troopers in Army Of Two, who are immune to most gunfire from the front - though grenades and rockets can hurt them, and a well-placed shot with a sniper rifle can knock them down, allowing one to snipe them between the legs.
- The Vanguard beastmen in the Dynamis regions of Final Fantasy XI. The Kindred demons probably also count for the Beastmen hordes as a whole, story-wise.
- Deus Ex featured MIB agents, who mostly carried auto-shotguns, could survive more than 3 times as much damage as standard Mooks, and who exploded when killed.
- The sequel Deus Ex: Invisible War had Illuminati Elite for the Illuminati faction, who looked like Mr. Freeze, carried railguns, and released clouds of poisonous gas from their corpses after dying. The opposing Templar faction countered them with Powered Armor Mooks equipped with rocket launchers.
- Mexican Army Elite Mooks appear in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, in the form of Aguila 7 Special Forces soldiers. Realistically, although they're better trained and equipped than standard infantry, they still go down after a couple assault rifle hits.
- Story-wise, some of the terrorists in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas are ex-Special Forces mercenaries, while others are simply Mexican criminals working for Irena Morales. However, in-game, there's no actual distinction between the groups, as they both use the same set of character models and uniforms, as well as the same A.I. and equipment.
- The second-to-last level in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory ended with Sam up against Shetland's personal bodyguards, about 8 elite Displace Mercenaries equipped with facemasks and thermal goggles. These are the only enemies in the entire series who can see you in the dark (some enemies in the series, i.e. the Georgian Special Forces from the final mission in Splinter Cell, wear night-vision goggles, but still couldn't see you in the dark unless you move or are very close).
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein: The stripperific female SS Paranormal Elite Guards. Later, there's the Waffen SS, Paratroopers who carry FG 42 rifles, and the heavy weapon-wielding Venom Troopers.
- Gears of War has Theron Guards, who are faster, smarter, and tougher than standard Locust Drones, and are also equipped with one-hit-kill Torque Bows.
- In F.E.A.R., Replica Elite soldiers, wearing black uniforms and white hockey masks, show up in one of the game's final levels. They can only survive slightly more bullets than standard Mooks, but several carry BFGs.
- The Replica Heavies, tall heavily-armored cyborgs who carry Penetrators, Particle Beam Guns, or other BFGs. Slow but lethal. Can be a Boss In Mook Clothing.
- Crysis actually has 2 kinds of Elite Mooks. North Korean Special Forces are simply regular Korean soldiers with better accuracy and equipment, whom you probably won't even notice unless you're looking for them (they wear dark armor, black facepaint, and have laser-sights). There are also a handful of North Korean Nanosuit soldiers, who wear the same superpowered Nanosuits that the player does. Enemy Nanosuit soldiers feature increased durability, a recharging energy "shield", regenerating health, super-powered punches and jumping ability, and a cloaking device.
- Red Faction 2 is an interesting case, as Elite Mooks are fought in the very beginning of the game(the prologue mission), and oddly disappear completely after the first few levels, where they're replaced by weaker, but more heavily armed, standard infantry. These "Sopot Elite Guards" wore metal armor and faceplates, could survive about twice as much damage as a standard Mook, and talked like Darth Vader.
- Elite Mooks make a comeback in the final mission of the game, in the form of Elite Nano Soldiers.
- The originalRed Factions Elite Guards, first seen in the Administration level, and later in Capek's lair and other high-security areas, had a different voice, spoke more aggressive catch phrases, moved and dodged faster and had much tougher armor than the standard Mooks, and frequently wielded BFGs.
- Timeshift had cybernetic Quantum Guards, who possess the same time-bending powers as the player.
- The elite shock troops in the Agency Biolab Escape mission in Syphon Filter2 who have full armor and can only be killed with grenades. The Final Boss, Chance, is a King Mook who has Made Of Diamond armor that is completely impervious to normal weapons including grenades, making him a Puzzle Boss (his Achilles Heel is the helicopter's tail rotor).
- The Big Daddies and Houdini, as well as other special kinds, Splicers from Bioshock.
- Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark often broke out the Elite Mooks during a high-alert situation, for example, in 007, once the Scripted Event alarm goes off after hacking the mainframes in Severnaya, endless waves of smart, quick, heavily armed elite guards are spawned(get the hell out of there!). Near the end of the Datadyne Extraction level in PD, Cassandra kills the lights and you have to fight her elite bodyguards in the dark, which is quite frustrating on Perfect Agent difficulty. PD also has the Datadyne Shock Troops.
- STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl has Spetznaz special forces soldiers and Military Stalkers, who have the two best non-exosuit armors in the game.
- The general trend of late game introduction of elite mooks is subverted in STALKER - the player can encounter Spetznaz in the first area of the game, in the Cordon by the Military Guard Post. Approximately two to three hours later, the PC can encounter them in Argoprom Research Facility if they hang too long around after rescuing Wolf from the military. At both times a PC will likely have a low end assault rifle/sub-machine gun and armour, leading to a quick death if the PC chooses to fight back.
- Dragon Warrior 1's final dungeon is guarded by the deadliest, most demonic variations of the Mooks you've faced: Axe Knights, Armored Knights, Blue Dragons, Red Dragons, etc. They have high defense stats, deal massive damage, and have the most devastating spells, such as Sleep(Axe Knights have both this and Stopspell, preventing you from using your own Stopspell), Healmore and Hurtmore(the Armored Knight has both Healmore and Hurtmore). If you aren't sufficiently leveled up, you can kiss your ass goodbye here. Some of these are invincible to magic. And sometimes, the only winning move is not to fight.
- The much-maligned Laser Soldiers in the final area of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES.
- The Silent Hill series feature tougher, faster, Palette Swap (or not) versions of the enemies in certain areas (or when you're sucked into the mirror version of the town/area). For example the Night Flutterers (Air Screamers, but more human-like and with their faces covered in worms), Worm Heads (upgrade of Groaner, the ubiquitous zombie dogs, but with a worm for a face), and Shadow Children(transparent version of gray children) in SH 1, "nightmare nurses" in SH 2, and "advanced Closers" in SH 3.
- The Ace Combat games have these in the form of the enemy aces, both individual and ace squadrons such as Yellow Squadron (04) or Strigon Team (6), who in a first playthrough will be flying better planes (until late game when the player can afford better) and are better pilots; in 04's "Shattered Skies" mission Yellow Squadron are Invincible Minor Minions, so multiple-target missiles are a bad idea due to the chance of inadvertently targeting one of them and wasting a missile. Subverted in the final mission which emphasizes the Mook half (since Mobius One killed off the elites who hadn't already left the unit)]], but usually in the games when you can shoot them down these guys are boss-level pilots. The Mook half partially comes from the fact that these pilots are usually never individually identified (in 04 whichever Yellow is shot down at Stonehenge is deemed to be Yellow 4, and Yellow 13's fate is sealed at Farbanti by the player having to shoot down all the Yellows there), but the Ace Combat 6 Assault Records subvert this by having individual Strigon profiles unlock after you shoot down Strigons in certain missions.
- Most enemy types in the Wizardry games start off as regular Mooks, but upgrade to Elite Mooks in higher level areas, then eventually to Superpowered Mooks. Not to be confused with the actual Mook race in the game, which are approximately high-tech psychic Wookiees.
- In the Pokemon games, after going through enough Team Rocket (Magma, Aqua, Galactic...) Grunts, you may run into an Executive, who often serves as a miniboss of sorts.
- Later in Valkyria Chronicles, the enemies become tougher and become labeled "Elite", the black-clad Imperial Guards even more so.
- There are also additional units during the main campaign called "Aces", which are named and are tougher than the standard Imperial soldier. Defeating one in combat will allow you to get a unique enemy weapon after you win the battle.
- Jagged Alliance 2 has Deidranna's Elite Guard, who have better stats and are far better equipped than her standard redshirts. Depending on your game-settings, and how much gear and experience your own team has accumulated, they can be anything from Cannon Fodder to a major threat.
- The latter half of Mega Man X 8's final level gives us mass-produced copies of Sigma.
- In the Wing Commander series, most of the games had the elite opponents either named and with personalities, flying unique ships, or both. The exceptions:
- The Drakhai, in Wing Commander II. Slightly better defensive stats for their ships, and an AI set one level above the regular opponents were the primary distinguishing characteristics, aside from their specific taunt "You cannot defeat the Drakhai" (ignoring that you regularly did just that).
- In addition to the few named opponents (other than Seether, which ones depended on when you defect, Wing Commander IV also had nameless, generic "ace" pilots.
Web Animation
- The Madness Combat series features the Agents, starting in the fourth one, where he manages to stall the protagonist... for a few extra seconds. He gets his revenge, however, later in the episode, when he's resurrected as a zombie, and manages to shoot the protagonist. In the fifth through seventh ones, however, they become as common place as regular mooks, until ANOTHER elite group takes their place as as Elite Mooks. The three appear in the sixth and are blasted, and in the seventh, they're highly commonplace, and the upcoming Flash...
- Likewise, the Bunnykill series features two ninja rabbits as Elite Mooks in the first installment (and are actually challenging), bunny 'agents' in the second (the first two are challenging, but then about ten are cut down easily in a display of Katanas Are Just Better), and the dark-grey (mercenary) and brown (techie) rabbits in the third installment (the techs provided extra challenge, the mercs not so much).
Web Original
Western Animation
- The Dai Li in Avatar the Last Airbender.
- The Monarch briefly employed Black Guards, who were much more menacing than his regular henchmen (despite the fact that the Black Guards all used to be regular henchmen...), as seen above, on The Venture Brothers.
- Cobra Commander had his Crimson Guard, who were supposed to be of significantly higher quality than Cobra's basic blue-shirt mooks, but who (at least in the 80's cartoon version) generally proved as ineffective against G.I. Joe's named character squads as the lesser mooks.
- At least one or two Crimson Guardsmen got a minor Crowning Momentof Awesome (i.e. the one who fights his way out of a top secret lab in one episode), but would usually screw it up at the last moment with a cringeworthy mistake (the aforementioned Crimson Guard accidentally dropped the chemical he was stealing, creating a giant amoeba that ate him and half the county he was in... Cobra's experiments had a funny way of unexpectedly doing whacky stuff like that.)
- The toyline also had the Crimson Guard Immortals, the elite of the Crimson Guard. Possibly a Shoutout to the Persian Immortals
- In The Spectacular Spider Man, Big Bad Tombstone has a cadre of personal bodyguards, all of whom are Scary Black Men with taser guns. The irony is that he doesn't particularly need them, considering his Super Strength. Though being a mega-philanthropist in his civilian identity, he probably has to keep up appearances.
- Regular Neosapien mooks in Exosquad were gradually reinforced with more powerful Neo Warriors and Neo Lords in the second season. Not that any of them had a real chance to harm a recurring character...
- In the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, the Foot Clan has Elite Foot Ninjas (the guys in the red robes and coolie hats). Unlike many Elite Mooks, these guys actually were demonstrably better than the standard cannon fodder Mooks, able to fight evenly against the turtles and almost killing them in their first appearance.
- During one episode of Kim Possible Dr. Drakken discovers how worthless his Mooks are so he sends Shego to steal strength enhancing rings that transforms the wearer into peak condition. They didn't become any better so they were defeated quite easily by Kim (and still proved to be much more reliable than the Elite Mooks by herself...)
- The Fourth Mask shadowkhan from Jackie Chan Adventures could be considered Elite, as they nearly had super-strength and were almost impossible to beat without the strength talisman, or similar.
Real Life
- Spetsnaz, SAS, SEALs... Generally any "Special Forces" unit is Elite compared to standard soldiers.
- Also, the military forces of most nations include non-Special Forces units that consider themselves elite when compared to conventional infantry. As a general rule, the odds of a unit being "elite" increase drastically if it includes any of the following words in its name: Marines, Airborne, Rangers, Guards, Light Infantry.
Or if it's from Ireland.
- SAS, Spetznaz... they're a little too specialized and small in number to be mooks, aren't they? Marines or Army Rangers are probably Elite Mooks, but a few more tiers up on the elite scale probably make them too exclusive to be mooks.
- Air forces and armoured corps also tend to have a small number of personnel operating the very best equipment available to them, with the majority getting lesser designs. Case in point: F-22A Raptor drivers in the USAF, compared with those still using F-16s and F-15 variants.
- Historical examples include the Praetorian Guard for the Romans, the Janissaries for the Ottoman Empire, the Immortals for the Persian Empire (overlap with Faceless Goons) and knights in all medieval feudal kingdoms.
- Perhaps a much more true example of the "Elite Mook" aspect would have to be the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard: Elite to the extent that they had better training and equipment and actually tried to fight the Americans (unlike much of the regular Iraqi army) but still Mooks because the U.S. Army still cut through them like a hot knife through butter (for all the good that did them).
- Also, in keeping with the idea of Mooks as bad guys, the Waffen SS compared to the rest of the German army.
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