Giant Mook - Television Tropes & Idioms

Pat "Bomber" Roach. Much-loved heavyweight wrestler and spokesman for wrestling, played Gentle Giant Bomber Busbridge in British drama series Auf Wiedersehen Pet. Film roles:
- Bouncer in white tights, A Clockwork Orange.
- Leader of Celtic mooks, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
- General Kael (chief mook/The Dragon), Willow.
- Giant mook killed by James Bond's urine and some glassware, Never Say Never Again.
- He was the only actor besides Harrison Ford to appear in all the original three Indiana Jones films:
  - Giant Sherpa who fights Indy and Giant Nazi Mook killed by propeller, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  - Giant Thuggee Mook crushed by the roller in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
  - Giant Gestapo Mook seen running after the zeppelin, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (his fight scene was cut).
  - Sadly, Pat Roach passed away before getting the chance to menace Indy one last time in Crystal Skull.
- Big Pat also got to be the wizard(!) Thoth-Amon in Conan the Destroyer.
  - In this incarnation he plays his own Dragon/Giant Mook, the Man-ape. The sight of Pat Roach in a really bad trick-or-treat mask lifting Arnold Schwarzenegger onto his shoulders and trying to pull his arms off is an awesomely awful moment.
Ron Tarr:
- Appears in various bully, biker, minder and bouncer roles in British TV, notably in The Comic Strip.
- Supporting character on British soap Eastenders.
- The Big Guy of the revolutionaries in independent British film Eat the Rich.
- Wore a skin to play a gorilla in Return of the Saint.
- Giant French Mook wearing rather Bavarian-looking hat in the Bond film A View to a Kill (the one who lands on the conveyor belt).
- Giant bar-room brawler Llug, who accidentally clobbers some mooks in Willow.
Dave Prowse, strongman and spokesman for Road safety (the Green Cross Man). Film Appearances:
- Writer's Gentle Giant bodyguard, A Clockwork Orange.
- Third-stringer in the Hammer Horror talent stable (the Giant Mook strongman from Vampire Circus, and the Frankensteins Monster in Horror of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell).
- Bit part as Hotblack Desiato's bodyguard in the TV version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
- Finally got a Big Bad role as Darth Vader (after refusing the part of Chewbacca), but as you can't see his face through that armour (and the face you later see is someone else's), and all his lines were dubbed by James Earl Jones, his contribution to the role consists mostly of being big.
- Considered for the part of Jaws in James Bond before the part went to Richard Kiel.
- TV role as the Minotaur (with a bull's head and a loincloth) in the Doctor Who story "The Time Monster."
Richard Kiel, who is probably most famous for menacing James Bond as Giant Mook Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker (although Jaws, being a chief henchman verged on The Dragon territory). He also played a caveman in the B Movie Eeeegah! in addition to a Serbian warlord in Force 10 from Navarone and a giant henchman in "Silver Streak".

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Lionel "Leo" Jenning in the Western Shojo manga Miriam, falls just short of being The Brute by not having any real afiliation with the main group of bad guys. However, he's a gigantic champion prizefighter who presents a tremendous challenge in hand-to-hand combat, and Douglas' encounter with him plays out much like any Giant Mook faceoff in a movie or video game would... until later, when he becomes The Big Guy Sixth Ranger.
Mr. Heart from Fist of the North Star is the giant mook in every way, right down to his size. In fact, probably half the villains from this series would qualify.
- No, really. A lot of the bad guys are huge, and then there's Devil Rebirth, who appears to be at least twenty feet tall, and yet is considered a human.
- And then we have Zeed, the first villain in the series, who strangely changes size in mid-scene.
The finale of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's first season had the huge mecha mook that appeared near the end of the Theme Music Power Up, which required both Nanoha and Fate joining forces to take down.
Bleach has the Gillian, the lowest class of the menos (read: super hollows) which are basically giant hollows with even less common sense.
- Superchunky is what happens when this trope gets turned Up To Eleven.
Docrates and Cassius, two enormous brothers from Saint Seiya, who never really attained enough status in the ranks of Sanctuary to be of any significant stature among the Saints. At least Cassius got to redeem himself in a Tear Jerking Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
Full Metal Panic has quite a few of these. The first comes in the form of the KGB lieutenant who was seen during Gauron's first introductory scene. A generic, huge, muscled Mook. He's even lampshaded mockingly by Gauron to have been brought there by the colonel for the specific purpose of intimidating him (due to his big size and angry manner). And then there's Dunnigan, who is again, muscled and huge. He tends to use brute force and strength, which was also the reason for his downfall when fighting Sousuke. This is, however, subverted with Gauron, who is one of the tallest (along with the KGB lieutenant and Dunnigan) and most muscled characters in the series. Despite initially looking like a rugged, Giant Mook that won't last very long... he turns out to be one of the longest running (and very important) antagonists in the series.

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In Watchmen, midget crimelord Big Figure had a couple of big mooks at his disposal and used them to get at Rorschach in the middle of a prison riot. Little damn good it did him.

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In the movie 300, a particularly hideous Giant Mook gives Leonidas quite a thrashing before our hero manages to decapitate him.
"The Russian" from The Punisher is notable since he was the only Giant Mook from the comics to appear in the film.
The Classic James Bond film You Only Live Twice has numerous mooks and two giant mooks, the burly Japanese driver who takes Bond to Osato industries believing him to be an injured comrade, and Blofeld's huge, blonde bodyguard. Both take a lot of beating from Bond, in appropriate styles: the Japanese is defeated after much jujitsu and the use of a katana, the western guy after a western-style "big, loud punches on the jaw" type fight.
Near the end of the 1989 Batman movie, Batman is confronted with Joker's large, muscular (and, as far as this troper can remember, unnamed) bodyguard at the top of the bell tower. This Giant Mook proceeds to wipe the floor with Batman for the next minute or so, possibly coming closer to killing him than the Joker himself.
- His name might have been Lawrence. This is the guy who carried the boombox, right?
  - No no, Lawrence was the one who tried to jump at Batman and crashed straight through the floor. The one that troper was referring to looked like a bigger, grumpier version of Ray Charles.
In the comics, Bane was a Genius Bruiser (he figured out Batman's secret identity, came up with a refreshingly simple plan to beat Bats, and is generally one tough bastard). In Batman and Robin, he was basically an idiot caveman Giant Mook for Poison Ivy.
One of the yakuza factions in Akira Kurosawa's classic Yojimbo had a giant mook with a big hammer named Kannuki the Giant (Namigoro Rashomon). Last Man Standing, the rather faithful remake (despite being set during Prohibition in America) starring Bruce Willis, also had a giant mook hanging around.
The Mark of Zorro (Banderas version) has a seven-foot Mexican soldier attack the hero. True to mook chivalry, all the other soldiers stand back and watch, even when Zorro picks up two cannonballs...
In the antique store fight in Jet Li's Kiss of the Dragon, a Scary Black Man Giant Mook is memorably introduced with his own theme song''. I guess his name was Dirty Dawg or something...
Dalip Singh Rana (better known as the WWE's Great Khali) in The Movie version of Get Smart, who mostly serves as Siegfried's muscle and takes tons of unnecessary insult from his boss. Later on he and Max become friends, leading him to tip him off about KAOS' plot and eventually punching Siegfried out of a car for threatening to kill his wife.
The Protector has a giant mook as a recurring antagonist. He is introduced by grabbing the hero through a wall and throwing him across a room, he sadly suffered from Conservation of Ninjutsu.
In ''Escape from New York, Snake Plissken is forced to fight a giant mook in gladiatorial-style combat.

Close Films

The cave trolls in The Lord of the Rings books and films certainly qualify.
- Even more so the Orc Chieftain (the one that injures Frodo).
  - Dragons have this role in The Silmarillion, and one of the most massive examples on this page appears in the form in the form of Ancalagon The Black, the first winged dragon, who made other dragons look tiny by comparison. To call this guy "Fucking Ginormous" was a reeeally big Understatement. How big was he? He managed to crush Thangorodrim (Highest mountain in Middle Earth, about 6000 feet taller than our very own Mount Everest) by falling on it.
Ser Gregor Clegane, the "Mountain that Rides" in A Song of Ice and Fire. He is somewhat in an anomalous position between a major villain and a mook, being one of the most feared fighters in Westeros but having little power as a vassal of Tywin Lannister. He is also one of the few true Complete Monsters in the series.
Even Harry Potter gets in on this, oddly enough, in Half-Blood Prince. By all accounts, the action at Hogwarts at the end of the book was dominated by an anonymous, huge, blond Death Eater.

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B.A. Baracus (Mr. T) of The A Team usually whips the floor with any Mook fool enough to try attacking him. However, he meets a stumbling block in two (unrelated) episodes with an Asian Giant Mook (same actor each time) who can take his punches without flinching, and then proceeds to throw The Big Guy around.
Samurai Sentai Shinkenger turns this trope Up To Eleven with Humongous Mecha-sized Mooks.

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Warhammer basically has Giant Mook as a unit type. Several armies have the option of fielding large monsters or constructs, such as Trolls, Kroxigor, Rat Ogres, Minotaurs, and the like which are extremely powerful and tough, but few in number. The (non-rat) Ogre Kingdoms are in fact an army made up almost entirely of Giant Mooks.
Warhammer 40000 has squad leaders. A squad member has better stats and gear than a normal unit, but is still part of a squad as opposed to the more powerful independent characters.
- Da Orks play this trope straight — since Orks actually grow in size and muscle mass based on their social status, the "Nobz" who lead squads/mobz are noticeably bigger than their underlings, though not as big as the Warboss in command of the army.
- The Imperial Guard also deploys Ogryns, which are their equivalent of Ogres.

Close Tabletop Games

Video games, particularly Brawlers and Third Person Shooter games, are full of these. Many of these monsters start out as the de facto boss monster of the game's first or second episode or segment, having their strength diluted in their appearances later in the game.
- The classic video game example would be Abobo from Double Dragon. In an unbelievably unexpected turn, he became the Big Bad in Rage of the Dragons.
- Another popular beat-'em-up example is "Andore" and all his Palette Swap relatives (no points in guessing who he is derived from) in the Final Fight series.
- The Large Body and Fat Bandit Heartless from Kingdom Hearts. The aptly-named Aquatanks from Atlantica also counts as ones too.
  - 358/2 Days also gives us the Bully Dog, and the Snapper Dog, both larger versions of the Rabid Dog/Bad Dog.
- Dapang, Wong's primary bodyguard from John Woo Presents: Stranglehold, who is also Wong's Dragon.
- Jedi Academy has the large cyborg hazard troopers, wearing heavy armour that protects them from normal weapons and makes them able to take several hits from a lightsaber, and usually carrying Stouker concussion rifles, which is perhaps the most deadly ranged weapon in enemy hands in the game.
These are especially common in First Person Shooters.
- The Baron of Hell/Hellknight monsters in the Doom series are perhaps the foremost examples of this role.
  - Mancubuses, Revenants, and Archviles.
- The Striders of Half Life 2 are either Giant Mooks or bosses, depending on the terrain, number, and how much rocket amo you have available. In the first game, you take out a whole horde of Striders in the latter stages, while Epsiode 1 uses a single Strider as a final boss fight. Episode 2 culminates in a Boss Battle against a whole horde of Striders.
  - Episode 2 also introduces the Hunters, which are tripodal bluegreen mechanoids which fire explosive fletchettes (it's actually possible to kill a Hunter with its own fletchettes), are extremely fast and agile, and have an excess of health. They work as support for the Striders in the final sequence.
- The Warlord in Duke Nukem 3D.
- The Stone Gargoyle in Blood.
- The Brute in Unreal.
- Shamblers and Vores in Quake.
- The Tank/Tank Commander in Quake II.
  - Also the Supertank and Hornet, which first appear as boss-type encounters. And the Gladiator.
- Another Tank in Left 4 Dead, a monstrous Infected that is essentially what the Hulk would be if he was zombified.
Hunters from Halo often serve as tag-teams of Giant Mooks, who usually attack the player separately from or with small groups of lesser Covenant troops. Unlike other Giant Mooks, Hunters are fairly common, at least in the first Halo game, but in later games — especially Halo 3 — they become Boss In Mook Clothing encounters due to their rarity and the amount of power and toughness they possess.
- The Brute Chieftains and Flood Tank Forms in 3 are kind of this as well. Also the Sentinel Enforcers on Sacred Icon.
Lenny in Shadow Hearts: Covenant, The Dragon to The Dragon Nicolai. He seems like nothing more than a brute at first, but he soon shows a softer side, and a late-game sidequest lets him Pet The Dog several times. He returns in Shadow Hearts: From The New World as main character Johnny's butler.
In Mega Man Star Force, you'll sometimes find "G", or giant, versions of regular enemies. The only difference between them is that they have more HP and attack power. There's a whole sort of boss rush very late into the game where you have to fight off giant versions of nearly every enemy variant in the game.
Karnov in Bad Dudes Vs Dragon Ninja appears as boss of level one, then (coloured green, for some reason) giant mook on the train.
Super Smash Bros tends to use these. Extra-large versions of the normal characters have popped up ever since the original game, and are usually strong enough that players get allies in order to keep balance together. Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode uses giant versions of non-playable enemies — they aren't particularly difficult, unless you have problems stepping on a Goomba six times rather than one.
In Persona 3, as the party climbs Tartarus, it will occasionally encounter special "Tower Bosses." These bosses are generally more powerful versions of the common enemy Shadows found on other floors and may even share some of the same weaknesses. However, they are often completely invulnerable to one or more types of attacks, meaning that you can sometimes waste turns trying to figure out exactly what those weaknesses are.
The Breath Of Fire series is fond of placing giant versions of basic enemies (generally, Eye Goos) as experience pinatas. That's not to say that they are harmless, but they generally are worth every bit of trouble taking them down (that is, unless they have some glaring weakness, such as being highly vulnerable to Death spells as some of these Giants are).
The Politician in level 6 of Prince Of Persia.
Mr. Bubbles (or Big Daddy) from Bioshock, a giant, armour-clad drill wielding child protector that makes whale noises.
In Mass Effect, the geth's Giant Mooks overlap with their Elite Mooks, in the form of the appropriately named Destroyers, Juggernauts, and terrifyingly effective Primes. There's also geth Armatures and Collossi, which count as giant walking tanks.
The Klonoa games feature giant versions of many types of enemies. They can be inflated like normal enemies with wind bullets, but this only immobilizes them; it doesn't let Klonoa pick up and throw them. They can only be defeated by throwing other enemies into them.
God Hand has two giant mooks: The Sensei, a young Japanese-speaking Samurai that attacked Gene in Stage 7 and Tiger Joe, a kickboxer seemingly based on Sagat from Street Fighter fame who apppeared a few times in the latter levels.
killer7 introduces the Giant Smile enemy type in its third stage. Mostly identical to the ordinary Heaven Smiles, only at least six or seven metres tall and near-completely impervious to bullets, except in its single eye.
Diablo II features semi-random giant mook enemies, called "Chamions" and "(Super) Unique Monsters", the latter which are normal monsters given a name and special enchantments ("Extra Strong," "Fire Immune"), as well as buffed up minion mooks. Both Mooks would also have increased HP, damage, grant extra experience points and other rewards upon death.
Arguably, Regal is one of these until he joins the party in Tales Of Symphonia.
F.E.A.R. and its expansion packs feature 6.5-foot tall Replica Heavy Armor soldiers, who speak solely in howls and wear heavy metal plate armor that lets them absorb more than full drum mag of assault rifle fire before finally going down. They're pretty rare, though, limited to only 1 or 2 per level. The expansion packs introduce a new version of the Heavy Armor who also carries a minigun.
Gears of War has 11-foot tall Boomers, giant Locusts with several times as much health as a standard Drone, who are armed with "boomshot" rocket launchers that kill you in a single hit.
The 3 Human and 1 Skaarj factions in Unreal 2 all field Heavy Power Armor soldiers that fit this trope.
Appears in the final levels of Medal of Honor: Airborne, of all places. As Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw puts it, "I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't an elite branch of stormtroopers who wore gas masks, wielded miniguns, and could take three sniper bullets to the forehead before they died."
Resident Evil 4 features several different Giant Mooks, including large Ganados wearing potato sacks on their heads and carrying chainsaws, large Ganados carrying miniguns, and large Ganados with bulletproof metal sheets nailed to parts of their bodies, making them invincible from the front.
Resident Evil 5 has its own giant mooks in the form of the "Fat Man" and "Tall Man" Majini. The high-pitched ululating from the tall one is borderline Nightmare Fuel.
Many of the bosses of the Donkey Kong Country games were giant versions of regular baddies—a fact pointed out in Cranky's commentary in the manual of DK64.
Super Mario Advance a remake of Super Mario Bros 2, had giant Shy Guys and Ninjis. They took a lot longer to pick up and throwing them on the ground always produced hearts.
Just about every single boss in Yoshi's Island was a literal giant mook. They were simply supersized and mutated mooks that show up all over the place in the boss's home zone.
Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions featured a couple of missions where you fight Genolla, a Godzilla-sized Genome Soldier. There's also Mecha Genolla and the Gurlugon in Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance.
The Castlevania series has its share of Giant Mooks; Giant Bat the Recurring Boss, giant skeletons, Peeping Big, just to name a few.
The final stage of Gradius Gaiden has the third-to-last boss, Heavy Dakker/Ducker, a giant version of those walking robots that walk on the floors and ceilings of some stages.
Inversion: some games in the Mario franchise (starting with Super Mario Brothers 3) have the Micro-Goomba, a smaller (and much more annoying) version of the usual Mascot Mook.
- Super Mario World has the Thwimps, which are tiny versions of Thwomps.
The third Super Mario Bros game had giant fish, giant cannons, giant Hammer Brothers, and World 4, where everything is gigantic. Pretty much every game afterward had this trope as well.
Plants Vs Zombies has the Gargantuar, which is a huge muscular zombie with a lot of health, and can instantly crush one of your plants in a single attack. Fortunately, he's kinda slow.
Hulks and Juggernauts in the Marathon series. Hunters and Cyborgs also have giant Palette Swap variations.
Any giant (insert name of your favorite Touhou character here) that shows up in the fan-made game Patch Con.
{{The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time}} produces one when you slaughter one too many standard enemies.
Wario Land 2 has a multitude of Giant Gooms scattered across the later levels that act as sort of mini bosses for individual levels.
Super Mario 64, anyone? For one level- Big and Tiny land, if this troper's memory serves- normal wee Goombas are replaced, in the Big version of the level, with Giant Goombas. They take three jumps, three punches or one good ground-pound to kill, and reward Mario with a blue coin.
Spyro: Year Of The Dragon has the level Charmed Ridge, where the enemies are spear-bearing rhynocs with metal armour, crossbow-wielding rhynocs with no armour, and cat wizards who do a variety of things, including moving steps, throwing rocks, trying to drop a statue on Spyro, throwing magical attacks at him, and making the other two enemies bigger. Making them bigger doesn't do much though- they can be killed with the attack used to kill their smaller forms. Killing the wizard makes them smaller instantly, for the record.

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In the midst of the reality warping nonsense of online flash series Madness, a giant MIB (with his 6 foot caliber rifle) is seen in the episode "Madness Consternation". This is never explained.
- The episode after that, TWO giant Elite Mooks face the protagonist, each wielding a giant Desert Eagle pistol, both of which are dispatched. One by multiple rifle bullets to the face, and the other by his own bullet.
In the realm of stick-figure combat animation, giant stick figures are popular, usually as the "boss" figure or as their most powerful underling.

Close Web Animation

The demon Bubbamonicus plays this role in the "That Which Redeems" arc of Sluggy Freelance.
Dr McNinja fights one- weilding CHAINSAW-NUCHUNKAS.

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A real Giant Mook character in the Whateley Universe story "Boston Brawl 2". The Big Bad hires some extra muscle, including Matterhorn, a supervillain who can become a forty-foot giant. Due to the physics of this universe, Matterhorn gets his ass whupped by a 100-pound girl.

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In the Avatar the Last Airbender episode "Siege of the North", after easily defeating a group of standard-issue, hammer-wielding Fire Nation mooks, Aang is suddenly attacked by a single, much larger soldier. With two hammers! On chains! Almost gets him, too.
This could apply to most Decepticons in Transformers Animated, since bar Blackarachnia they're all at least as big as the largest Autobot. Lugnut seems to be the most likely candidate for the part, as he's even larger than Megatron in terms of bulk.
In Code Lyoko, the Kolossus appearing in three late episodes of Season 4 is very much a GIANT mook. It destroys the virtual submarine of the heroes in just one mighty sweep of his blade-arm.
The legendary Sumo Ninja in The Movie of Kim Possible fits in, due to being a sumo ninja. He was still beaten as easily as any other Mook...
Batman The Animated Series must have had a lot of examples, one of which is the aptly-named "Rhino" thug in the entertaining episode "Read My Lips". Scarface (and his ventriloquist) isn't a credible physical threat to Batman, so the huge Rhino fills the role... and doesn't contribute much else either to the plot or the drama.
- Rhino is actually the Ventriloquist's perennial bodyguard in the comics, so...
Darkwing Duck had the villainous Fiendish Organization for World Larceny (FOWL), along with a sizable group of mooks. This group had a single Giant Mook, who could always put up a good fight.

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