Follow TV Tropes

Following

Mecha-Mooks

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Battle_Droids_2_6155.jpg
Not squishy anywhere.
"If you are looking for an unstoppable army of killing machines unhampered by such weaknesses as mercy and compassion, robot warriors are for you."
Neil Zawacki, How to Be a Villain

In many American cartoon series, the extraordinary violence is blunted by having the nameless bad guys (or Mooks) be, in fact, robots. This allows the protagonists to dismember, mutilate, and otherwise mess-up armies of faceless goons, in a manner unacceptable if said bad guys were squishy and red on the inside.

In many of these shows, a common sequence has the heroes fighting the humanoid-looking mooks as normal, until one of them hits one a little too hard, revealing it to be a robot. At which point, things start to get really, really messy, as the heroes decide they don't have to hold back anymore.

Mecha-Mooks are surprisingly fragile. In extreme cases the heroes will demolish them with their fists. Mecha-Mooks go to the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, since it would be awkward if the heroes had their brainstems targeted perfectly by Mooks running a predictive kinetic model much faster than real time. Expect them to be programmed to march in eerie unison using Marionette Motion (and in a pinch provide back-up for dance numbers).

Two governing rules of Mecha-Mooks seem to be:

1) Upon being defeated, they will explode. Usually into a fireball, leaving nothing behind but a few patches of burning earth. This will usually happen no matter how they were defeated, even if it was something like turning off their power source.

2) Said explosions never produce shrapnel. A hero can be five feet from a Mecha Mook, blow him up, and somehow not be cut to pieces by the flying shards of metal. Samurai Jack is particularly guilty of this, with mooks constantly exploding in Jack's face.

This often is a form of Pragmatic Adaptation when the series is based on an earlier source which was more realistically violent, but showing that would invoke the ire of Media Watchdogs. When you've got an action-based children's show where Nobody Can Die, expect Mecha-Mooks to pick up the slack. After all, they're Just Machines. Should they not explode, then at the least you will see Eye Lights Out. On a related note, if they should be hacked or reprogrammed their Glowing Eyes of Doom will have a Convenient Color Change. Additionally, it can be cheaper to stage than using human extras.

For obvious reasons, Mecha-Mooks are usually very far down the Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence. If they do show signs of self-awareness, destroying them becomes much more ethically problematic.

If one wants something a bit more up the ladder in terms of "kill-tasticness" and "non-suckitude", look at Mechanical Monster. If you want the guy building the mooks, that's the Robot Master. Contrast with Plant Mooks, the vegetative alternative.

A subtrope of Robot Soldier and, obviously, Mooks.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The majority of the DES mechs from AKB0048 are unmanned, with only the leader-type mechs being pilot-operated (the leader versions possess a distinct head, which is orange, and is made slightly larger to accommodate a pilot).
  • In AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline, Bunyip Boomerang and Nyuren alligned AMAIM's are all controlled autonomously, via from their respective headquarters, this includes Ghost, an unaligned AMAIM. Zig-Zagged with the Brady Hounds, as while they have cockpits for pilots to operate, they can optionally be remote-operated.
  • The Brave of Gold Goldran: An odd one : The "Custom Gear" robots deployed by Serious Walzac are basically Zakus. The purpose-specific Walter-use variations thereof hew closer to GM-style customizations, and overall are gradually supplanted with Mobile Armor-style robots that stand more of a chance against the Legendra Yuushas.
  • This is how Cells at Work! and spinoffs depict medicines. Steroids are a Killer Robot that blasts the area with a Wave-Motion Gun, Penicillin is a Kill Sat, immunosupressants are mechanical teddy bears that forcibly Cooldown Hug immune cells, antifungal medicines are radiation blasters that pop out of the wall on Combat Tentacles, one type of antibiotic is a kaiju-sized grashopper robot and another one looks like an AT-ST.
  • Digimon Adventure: The Dark Masters are often show fielding two types of hulking robotic Digimon, Guardromon and Mechanorimon, when invading other areas of the Digital World. The Dark Master Machinedramon also makes use of numerous Mechanorimon when sweeping his territory to catch the heroes, alongside Tankmon Cyborgs.
  • F-Zero: GP Legend: Black Shadow uses them in the anime. You can actually race as them in the anime-based F-Zero Climax.
  • Gundam
    • Inverted in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, where the heroes pad out the Argama's mobile suit fleet with a Redshirt Army of around 5-10 automated Nemo, whereas the antagonists' suits are always manned. They're consistently shown as worse than almost any human pilot, but used anyway because the Argama is perpetually short-staffed. Whether they're operated remotely by the ship's crew or by artificial intelligence is unspecified, and the technology is silently forgotten in every other part of the Universal Century continuity.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing makes this a major plot point with the introduction of Mobile Dolls, mecha controlled by an AI program rather than a human pilot. Tested on the Taurus and used on the Virgo I and Virgo II, they are much more efficient in combat and can deal with enemies faster. Their introduction widens the pre-existing ideological fissure within OZ between noble-minded soldiers who hate them for dehumanizing war and heartless war profiteers who love them for being good business, which results in an outright civil war between the supporters of Treize Kushrinada (who is the former) and Duke Dermail (the latter).
    • In After War Gundam X, one of the uses of the Flash System were mentally controlling G-Bits. The more popular version of these G-Bits are the GX-Bits, which are outfitted similarly to the Gundam X itself. Attack Drones are common in the franchise, but this is first cases of remote-controlling entire mobile suits.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans introduces these in the second season in the form of Plumas, insectoid-looking robots that can swarm and overwhelm enemies and settlements that act as extensions of the autonomous Killer Robots known as Mobile Armors, including Hashmael.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, with its focus on many different types of Attack Drones, revisits the concept of G-Bits as "Gundvolva". Sophie and Norea spring a squad of them from the ground when they decide to turn a practice battle lethal, but Aerial shows that another suit with a higher Permet Score can take them over. Later episodes introduce another kind of automonous mobile suit known as a Gundnode used to defend the superweapon Quiet Zero. They can take things up a notch compared to the Gundvolvas by utilizing an optional mobile armor shell to wield up to six beam sabers at once or deploy up to four GUND-bits on top of channelling Aerial's data storm field to forcefully seize control of any ship or mobile suit within Quiet Zero's airspace.
  • Macross Frontier: The VF-171s are this most of the time. They make up the bulk of the NUNS fighter forces and are consistently outmatched by the Vajra. In comparison, the heroes' VF-25s have no trouble cutting through hordes of Vajra.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS:
  • The Jovians employ millions of the suckers in Martian Successor Nadesico, ranging from drone scouts to automated Wave Motion Guns, to the point where we don't see a live Jovian until halfway through the series. There are several reasons for this, including some justified Offscreen Villain Darkmatter and how the Teleportation Phlebotinum works, but mostly it allows the ship's mostly civilian crew to blow stuff up indiscriminately, and allow for drama when actual human enemies appear.
  • Mazinger Z: This is pretty frequent. Most of the Mooks are Cyborgs, but several of them are Ridiculously Human Robots such like the Gamia sisters, Erika, Lorelei or the robot posed like Kouji. Just a Machine is subverted: when Kouji kills the Gamia, they're so human-looking that he feels sickened and disturbed, and he feels sad when some of they die. Also, they are or are not Made of Explodium, depending on the robot. Erika does not explode; the robot Kouji does, though.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi has the Tanaka-sans and the Spider-mechs and all the other robots that made up Chao Lingshen's Martian Robot Army in the Mahora Festival Story Arc.
  • One Piece: The Pacifistas are a subversion, as they are cyborgs modified to be human weapons by the evil World Government, and they are anything but as it took the Straw Hats everything they had to beat just one of them pre-timeskip. There's also Z's Shiro Kumas in One Piece Film: Z, who seem to be basically white-colored Pacifistas.
  • Panzer World Galient: Out of the Marder army's entire supply of Panzers, the Promaxis — a centaur-like robot armed with a spear, a shield and a Chest Blaster — is the most common one.
  • RideBack: The Grimoire units from the anime.
  • Robotech: The Invid have the Inorganics, ugly animal-like combat robots they use to supplement their depleted numbers. They are only used by the Regent's faction, as the Regess was able to replenish her forces thanks to the resources available once she conquered Earth and the Robotech Expeditionary Force being too busy fighting the Regent and an internal civil war to come back and finish her off.
  • Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: The multitude of (live) enemy troopers who get mowed down in most episodes are recast as Ridiculously Human Robots in some of its various US incarnations (e.g., Battle of the Planets).
  • Texhnolyze: In a subversion, the creepy white Death Ray-wielding Shapes appear to be Mecha-Mooks, but are in fact humans who have (voluntarily or otherwise) undergone full-body Texhnolyzation. Their heads, concealed beneath monocular faceplates, as well as the rest of their organs, stuffed in a green cone in their chest, are all that remains of their original bodies.
  • Uchuu Senkan Yamato: Star Blazers was infamous for, as an American adaption of anime, having enemy soldiers who were killed described as "robots".
  • Voltron: The American release of the Vehicle Team has just about every enemy unit, and most friendly units, as robots. The number of "robot attack ships" and "android stormtroopeers" was staggering. This was done to follow the "nobody can die in cartoons" standard against animated violence on TV at the time.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, the obots were designed to clean up trash and other menial purposes (although the trash itself is used for darker purposes in Dr. Faker's Evil Plan). However, when the heroes launch their attack on Heartland Tower before the Final Battle of season one, Mr. Heartland manages to use them as an army of disposable soldiers, much like any other example of this Trope. (Note that at least one obot, Obomi, is at least partially sentient, becoming Yuma's friend and Robot Buddy in one episode.)
  • Zoids:
    • Numerous small Zoids, such as the Molga, Godos, Zabat, Scissor Storm and Laser Storm. The most infamous, however, would have to be the Rev Raptor. While the aforementioned Zoids were depicted as being reasonably formidable in their introductory episodes, the Rev Raptor is completely pathetic right from its introduction and is *never* given an opportunity to shine, except for in one episode where Van pilots one... and uses it to destroy other Rev Raptors before getting quickly shot down himself.
    • Subverted and ultimately ignored in Zoids Genesis. The Digald empire uses legions of mass-produced Zoids piloted by robots. However, it is revealed that the robots are powered by human souls. Unfortuntely, this revelation is never explored and appears to be completely forgotten within a few episodes, used only as a cheap plot device for a Heel Face Turn for the rival.
    • Rev Raptors get so ripped to shreds in Zoids: New Century that they're mostly relegated to Stock Footage.

    Comic Books 
  • Birthright: Mastema's golem army, created specifically for the heroes to be able to fight an army in a world where they only have three enemies. The golems are nonsentient and pretty easy to kill individually.
  • Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics): The Kree Empire uses incredibly tough mecha mooks called Sentries (no relation).
  • Electric Warrior: The series has a refomed Mecha-Mook as the main character.
  • Exiles: Codified in one issue when Mimic reflects that superheroes really, really love fighting robots for the sheer pleasure of unfettered destruction.
  • Fall Out Toy Works: Baron has several, including one he changes into a Mechanical Monster in Toymaker's dream sequence in issue 3. In issue 5, the Toymaker combines this trope with Cute Machines to storm Baron's compound.
  • Fantastic Four:
    • Reed Richards's cute little lab assistant H.E.R.B.I.E. robots aren't really made for combat, but he's used them to help defend the Baxter Building upon occasion.
    • Doctor Doom's Doombots — both the Robot Me Doombots and the more straightforward purple-and-gray Mecha-Mook Doombots. Oddly, the two designs rarely appear together in a story.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): Introduced in the comics several months before their TV debut (see the Western Animation entry below), the Cobra B.A.T.s (Battle Android Troopers) that appeared were a bit more resilient than their cartoon counterparts. The B.A.T.s' simple yet robust design, while not cheap, was considered a bargain when factoring in the human costs of battle. A human Viper can be knocked out of commission with a single (even if non-fatal) wound, but a B.A.T. can withstand hundreds of bullets, have half its body shot off, and still keep going, crawling if need be.
  • Gotham City Garage: Lex Luthor's robot enforcers called "Gardeners" execute whoever gets out of line.
  • Infinite Crisis: Through the law of Conservation of Ninjutsu, The OMACs from Countdown To Infinite Crisis fell from Killer Robot to Mecha-Mooks pretty quickly.
  • Iron Man: Tony Stark often uses old armors like this. When his body was possessed by Ultron and transformed into a robot version of the Wasp, the Avengers had to face an army of Mecha Mook Iron Man units.
  • Megalex: The Shock Troopers are intelligent and evil robots.
  • Omega the Unknown: The robotic aliens who hunt the title character.
  • Paperinik New Adventures: Featured in the two stories involving colonel Neopard. He, other mercenaries from his world and the factions they're usually involved with use them exclusively because, in Neopard's own words, "Who's stupid enough to make war in person?" He got the answer to his question when the Evronians conquered a Grilkian base without firing a shot by draining all the energy, including the droids'.
  • Savage: A major plot point from about 2007 onwards is the introduction of robot soldiers by both sides in the war. It began with the Allies deploying Hammersteins in Wales, which were so effective that the Volgans had to develop their own robots, the depraved Blackbloods, to compensate. These robots invert the normal rules of mecha-mooks by being much stronger and tougher than human soldiers, what with being made of metal and all.
  • Spider-Man: The minor villain Armada is a Robot Master who likes to build little flying robots to attack enemies with. The interesting thing is that he cares about their welfare, and will freak out when they inevitably start getting destroyed. Because they can't talk and look like little toys, it's never clear to the reader whether they actually are sentient or if they're Just Machines and Armada is crazy for worrying about them..
  • Superman: Superman and Supergirl are some of the few good guys to keep a contingent of Mecha-Mooks, the Superman and Supergirl Robots in the Fortress of Solitude. In the Silver Age, they were mainly used as decoys to preserve their secret identities, and occasionally to pinch hit for one of them when they'd been incapacitated by Kryptonite or some such. A bridge got dropped on the bunch of them in the Bronze Age, but they were reintroduced in the modern era and occasionally appear in the present day.
    • One of Lex Luthor's plans to take over the United States relied upon him unleashing a horde of GI Robots that were technically property of the US army. Since Superman was apparently dealing with Brainiac that week, Batman ended up taking out all except one — that Bats had reprogrammed with the Geneva Convention. Really.
  • Tom Strong: Spoofed, where Timmy Turbo realizes that "We can be as violent as we like with these teachers, because they're just robots!"
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Subverted with Queen Atomia's Nutrons. At first they appear to be android mooks, given that every visible part of them is metal and they act like robots with no will of their own, but they turn out to be victims she has reforged into minions and Diana finds that they still have just enough grey matter left to be susceptible to a Jedi Mind Trick.
    • Sensation Comics: Byrna disguises herself in her Powered Armor among her many identical robotic minions.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): While most of Widow Sazia's goons are muscle bound cyborgs her private home's external defenses consist of a vertiable army of andriods, which Artemis tears through on her way to try to confront the mob boss.
    • Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: In "Not Included" Diana and Barda fight through and tear apart a bunch of gorilla guard robots.
  • X-Men: The pre-eminent comics example would probably be the mutant-hunting Humongous Mecha Sentinels. Given the wide variety of models that exist, they're all over the place on this trope, sometimes being casually shredded, other times being proper terrors that fit well into Mechanical Monster territory.

    Fan Works 
  • The mechanical soldiers (that are controlled by an AI mainframe) that were being built by the Villain Protagonist in the Mass Effect fanfic The Council Era qualify, as well as Elite Mooks, as their programming is comparable to a veteran soldier in terms of skill.
  • The Trashtors from Hottie 3: The Best Fan Fic in the World.
  • In Vigilante Tendency, the Tomaso Family becomes well-known throughout the Underworld for their robot army (built by Spanner).
  • The robotic bats, Crawlers, and Thumpers (respectively, giant robot spiders and flying mallet-handed robots, named thusly by Paul) from the cliff dwelling in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. The flying robot guards at the Border Crossroads Inn probably also count.
  • Kirigakure in Son of the Sannin uses Chakra Golems as shock troops, robot-like automatons powered by chakra and fuinjutsu originally designed by the Uzumaki Clan. After the Civil War ends, Naruto asks that they and the plans for building them be returned to the few remaining members of the Uzumaki clan living in Konoha as a reward for aiding the rebels.
  • Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends:
    • In addition to GIR and Minimoose for Zim, and MiMi for Tak, Lex uses a large number of DIR (Disposable Information Retrieval) units to do his dirty work.
    • Aldrich Coathanger's entire employee base appears to be composed of Ridiculously Human Robots.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron features mechanical soldiers courtesy of the titular villain that the heroes go about massacring in ways that would be very much unbefitting the PG-13 rating were they flesh-and-blood, tearing off limbs, cracking skulls, smashing them to pieces...
  • The Dark Crystal: The Garthim, mechanical crab-like constructs built by the Skeksis.
  • Elysium: Manufactured by Armadyne, these security bots take care of neutralizing any and all threats that arrive down on Earth and in Elysium. Max holds a grudge against these security robots, especially since they end up breaking his left arm when he was resisting their attempts to find out what was in the bag he was carrying.
  • The Golden Army in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Clockwork Mecha-Mooks that put themselves back together upon being destroyed.
  • RoboGadget from Inspector Gadget (1999) would have become this, once the initial prototype hit mass production. Scolex imagines using them as "shock-troops; kamikaze pilots; hitmen," but Kramer chimes in with "international rescue workers and teachers." Amazingly, the idea's darker side is touched upon: these troops "never get tired, never get hungry, and never say no."
  • Iron Man 2: The problems so averted are threefold: 1. no longer a squishy thing in the middle of the machine, which Hammer's suit design proved it had a problem working with; 2. the recovered space can be used for more processing power and more ammo; 3. there is no cognitive dissonance when our heroes blow them up. Oh, and 4: they make it easy for Vanko to betray Hammer, since he's the one programming them.
    Vanko: Dhrone bettuh.
    Hammer: What, "drone better?" Why is "drone better"? Why is "drone better"?
    Vanko: Peppol mek problum. Trhust meh. Dhrone bettuh.
  • The Matrix: The Sentinels are squid-like robots that come in the millions, and the only thing that can destroy them is an EMP.
  • RoboCop (2014) has the EM-208 humanoid robot soldiers, the ED-209 walking weapon platform and the XT-908 flying assault drone.
  • The Big Bad in Space Truckers is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who is in the middle of negotiating a deal to privatize the Earth government. However, as a backup, in case the talks don't go his way, he has a Mad Scientist create an army of killer robots, each of which is capable of easily killing dozens of people and come out without a scratch. Its Eye Beams are capable of vaporizing a person, and it can fire them exremely quickly. When someone throws a grenade at it, the robot catches it, rapidly spins around, and tosses it back. They appear in an embrionic state and grow in waves, with each wave double the previous one. The titular truckers are hired to transport the container filled with these things to Earth. They end up sending the rig into an uncontrolled re-entry, destroying all robots.
  • Star Trek Beyond has the Swarm of androids that Krall has at his disposal. In fact, his only organic minions are Manas and Kalara.
  • Star Wars:
    • Both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones blew up acres of battle droids. The kid-friendliness goes away a little when you reflect they still scream as they die.
      • The use of battle droids seems to revolve entirely around the fact that the prequels feature Jedi action scenes. Such scenes involve plenty of decapitations, bisections, and outright mutilation of said battle droids using lightsabers, all of which would have been unacceptable in theaters had the victims been living sentient beings instead.
      • The droids vary highly by model. The basic B1 units (the "roger-roger" droids) are the most harmless and safe to kill, existing only to be cut down by the hundreds, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars portrays them as outright comic relief. The B2 and B3 (the super battle droids, from the page picture) are somewhat more dangerous, qualifying as Doom Troops. The most advanced models like the Droideka and the MagnaGuards qualify as Mechanical Monster Elite Mooks.
    • Before their predecessors the clones were shown, it was popular to speculate that the Imperial Stormtroopers in the original trilogy were Mecha-Mooks, in spite of the fact that Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were capable of dressing up as them. Talk about Faceless Goons.
  • The Terminator movies depict a future where the world has been taken over by Mecha Mook armies. Subverted in that these robots are incredibly tough and not the least bit fragile.
  • The Synthetics in Total Recall (2012). The movie is somewhat original in that they're used more as bulletproof Elite Mooks rather than guilt-free disposable cannon fodder (although they are used for a couple of the more "gory" kill scenes to get the PG-13 rating).
  • Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial: Belial has two types of Humongous Mecha examples — the drill-armed Legionoids and the Evil Knockoff Darclopses — to help him conquer planets by sending them off in dropships the size of small moons. Of course, for Zero and his friends, they're purely cannon fodder.

    Literature 
  • An unusual example of this trope occurs in A. Lee Martinez's The Automatic Detective. Near the climax of the novel, the protagonist destroys a brigade of robots... but he is himself a robot, and those he destroys are physically identical to him except for the paint jobs. He doesn't care, though.
  • In The Kingdom Keepers, the Overtakers' mooks are all Audio-Animatronics from Disney World rides brought to life. "It's a small world" is a lot less cute when the dolls are trying to kill you.
  • In The Murderbot Diaries, Murderbot's opponents are usually nameless SecUnit robots which it refers to by number (e.g.: "Hostile One"). This somehow manages to make them more individual and less mookish.
  • The Stainless Steel Rat:
    • The title character is an Actual Pacifist who would never hit a fellow sentient with anything worse than a stun dart... but against robots he gleefully unleashes the dakka.
    • In the first page of the story that started it all, he drops something heavy on the head of a police robot. The robot isn't actually hurt by this, since as it points out its brain is in its torso. Slippery Jim replies that he knew this, but that he also knows its radio was in its head, which is now incapacitated ... allowing him a few more precious seconds in which to escape.
  • In ATL: Stories from the Retrofuture, robots are extremely commonplace, and just dumb enough that anyone with enough know-how can reprogram them to become mindless killing machines. Morgan doesn't seem to have too much trouble fighting any of them, but when they attack together, they're as threatening as a zombie horde.
  • In The Dark Tower novel Wolves of the Calla, a town is being threatened by very nasty opponents who steal children and obliterate any who resist. After listening to the one survivor of a direct encounter with them, Roland deduces this trope applies to the opponents. He also deduces how to defeat them but engages in deliberate misdirection so The Mole doesn't know.
  • In Shadowboy, Doctor Omicron keeps at least a handful of bots around for general utility. He treats them as completely expendable.
    Doctor Omicron: "That's why I like that model of bot, cheap, durable, and eminently replaceable with a machine shop and a junkyard"
  • Iron Man: Steel Terror: Ultron's clone army.
  • In the Zachary Nixon Johnson series, robots are commonplace so it's quite frequent for villains to employ mechanical minions.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: General Hale, the Big Bad of the back half of Season 5, makes use of black-clad mech soldiers with gas mask-like face designs.
  • Two episodes of The Avengers (1960s) feature Cybernauts, large bipedal robots used as dumb muscle.
  • Battlestar Galactica:
    • In Battlestar Galactica (1978), the Cylons were originally meant to be aliens in body armor, and were rewritten as robots to appease the censors.
    • Battlestar Galactica (2003) calls them Centurions, and actually, they die at the same rate as fellow "skinjobs" a.k.a. the humanoid models. A similar fate seems to be with Raiders, until it is shown, through Starbuck, that they are biological beings. Regarding Centurions, it turns out that they have a personality and some degree of authority once they are freed from restrictive modules. In the end, the Rebels let them go off and find their own destiny, despite worries that they'll come back and try to destroy humanity. They think not, as they will most likely remember being freed and left to their own devices, rather than fighting their way out of slavery and still living with a plausible threat.
  • Chouseishin Series:
  • Doctor Who:
    • Also, while the Doctor might pay lip-service to Wangst over killing those poor defenseless rampaging armies of death that are Cybermen and Daleks, imagine the difference if organic beings were killed off in similar numbers... despite the fact that, under the armor, they are organic beings. For the record, he does regret killing even Daleks in some episodes, especially when said Dalek may be the last of its kind. This is in spite of them being Always Chaotic Evil by design. The Cybermen, while organic underneath, have had their emotions and feeling removed because of the constant horrific and intense pain their existence entails, so it could literally be seen as putting them out of their misery.
    • The Second Doctor fought the Dominators and their army of Mecha-Mooks, the Quarks. The spiky-faced little dudes seem to have made an impression: when the Time Lords put him on trial, the Doctor mentions the Quarks alongside the Daleks and Cybermen in his list of cosmic evils who need to be fought.
    • Sutekh's robot mummies in "Pyramids of Mars".
    • The Robot Santas from the episode "The Runaway Bride" are robots under the control of the Queen of the Racnoss. They also appear in "The Christmas Invasion", although there they're working by themselves.
    • The Sheriff of Nottingham's robot knights in "Robot of Sherwood".
  • Jikuu Senshi Spielban: Kinclons are fully robotic soldiers manufactured to fight for the Waller Empire. Doesn't stop them from being able to get high, however.
  • Season 2 of The Mandalorian reveals that Moff Gideon has a squad of Dark Troopers at his disposal. Unlike most combat droids in the greater Star Wars franchise, they are presented as extremely deadly; one of them is able to go up against the titular character, himself a One-Man Army, and nearly kill him in a one-on-one fight, with him only winning by luck. Of course, even a squad of them is no match for Luke Skywalker.
  • Super Sentai and its adaptation Power Rangers have several of these. Examples are the Barlo Soldiers (Cogs) from Chouriki Sentai Ohranger (Power Rangers Zeo), the Zenitto (Cyclobots) from Mirai Sentai Timeranger (Power Rangers Time Force) and the Ugatz (Grinders) from Engine Sentai Goonger (Power Rangers RPM). Special mention goes to:
    • The Machinemen in Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan are the first, followed immediately after by the Spotmen in Dai Sentai Goggle Five, although you wouldn't know they're robots just by looking at either of them given the full-body spandex suits they wear over their mechanical parts.
    • Jimmers in Choujuu Sentai Liveman are notable for subverting one of the tropes associated with Mecha-Mooks. Despite how cheap they look, they can take quite a bit of damage. Even if their limbs are separated from their body they'll keep attacking all on their own.
    • The Piranhatrons from Power Rangers Turbo and the Quantrons from Power Rangers in Space are two sets of robotic mooks specifically created for the Power Rangers franchise and have no direct Sentai counterparts. In a bit of a retcon, the Piranhatrons appearing in the Turbo movie were quite clearly humanoids in fish-styled armor (we even see several of them with their faceplates off), but for the series, they've been downgraded to a non-humanoid fishlike race. The "tron" in "Piranhatron" suggests they're Mecha-Mooks, but they make squishy sounds when hit.
    • The mooks from Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger. This makes them easy for Agent Abrella to mass-produce and sell to Alienizers. There are three types of them, each more powerful than the other. The Anaroids are the typical disposable mooks, the Batsuroids are their slightly stronger commanders and the Igaroids are just as strong as the average Monster of the Week and able to talk. Adapted in Power Rangers S.P.D. as the Krybots, Blue-head Krybots and Orange-head Krybots, with the main difference being that the Blue-heads are also able to talk.
    • Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters combines this trope with Giant Mook. MegaZord Alpha, one of the mecha occasionally deployed by the villains, has the ability to release BugZords, which are essentially its mooks.
  • Madan Senki Ryukendo has a strange example in the form of the Mecha-Tsukaima, which is a mechanical version of the series' regular Mooks, the Tsukaima and is used by the mechanical villain Baron Bloody. What makes the Mecha-Tsukaima strange, is that only one of them is seen onscreen during fights and its fighting prowess is more like a Monster of the Week than a simple Mook. The reason why it's listed here, is because it looks just the same as a normal Mook, but with mechanical parts attached to it.
  • Tomica Hero Rescue Force has the Axtos, which are the robotic foot soldiers belonging to Neo-Terra, which is an evil organization led by robots who want to reset the earth to a state before humanity ruled the planet. Their way of doing this, is to cause several disasters, in hopes of destabilizing society. With the heroes being hypermodern rescue workers, the villains send out the Axtos to interfere with their rescue missions.
  • The Twilight Zone (1985): In "To See the Invisible Man", floating security bots monitor Mitchell Chaplin and other invisible people to ensure that no one violates Citizen's Law 24824 and interacts with them.
  • Ultra Series examples are generally Humongous Mecha as well due to the way the shows work.
    • The Imperisers of Ultraman Mebius are the scouts and footsoldiers of Empera, but as Mebius and GUYS find out the hard way, they're an extreme case of Boss in Mook Clothing.
    • The Glokers from the final Ultraman Cosmos movie are sent by Delaxion alongside Ultraman Justice to act as enforcers by preventing Earthlings from resisting as Delaxion prepares to use Giga Endra to destroy life on Earth.
    • In Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle NEO, King Joe Black, the Big Bad in the first series is demoted to this as the Pedans, impressed with the original's success, mass-produce King Joe Blacks to destroy all the Reionyxes in the universe. While still fairly formidable, Rei and his monsters have an easier time destroying them than they did with the original.
  • War of the Worlds (2019): The killer robots whom the aliens send to kill all surviving humans.

    Pinballs 
  • Justin Hammer's armored "Hammeroid" drones in Stern Pinball's Iron Man, who come in four varieties (land, sea, air, and assault) and must be defeated multiple times throughout the game.

    Professional Wrestling 

    Tabletop Games 
  • These existed, very briefly, during the Word of Blake Jihad in BattleTech. The Revenant was mass produced by the Word of Blake to try and resist Allied Coalition units as they began to attack the Blakists on Earth itself. Being small and not particularly well armored, Revenants were ultimately mass produced cannon fodder rather than a genuine obstacle to the Allies.
  • Eberron has an interesting variation with the Warforged. They were made to be this, but ended up developing sapience and now have to deal with integrating into a post-war society.
  • Magic: The Gathering:
    • The Myr from the Mirrodin block. They're essentially a swarm of Mecha-Mooks with a Hive Mind community.
    • There's also the terrifying Phyrexians, who are zombie cyborgs who want to assimilate everyone.
    • Then there are Servos (mass-produced clockwork creatures) and Thopters (winged flying machines, ranging from hummingbird-size to passenger capable), primarily of the plane of Kaladesh. With the right deck, you can create a small platoon of them to overrun your opponents through sheer numbers.
  • Unmanned combat drones are everywhere in Shadowrun. From spy-cameras disguised as pigeons to robot tanks.
  • In Star Fleet Battles, Andromedans are mentioned to use robots for boarding actions.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The Necrons aren't really so much mooks, as they are unstoppable torrent of an ancient undead robot determinators, marching at you like unflinching metallic death. Though Devourer reveals that they do play it straight, since some Necrons are actually artificial intelligence programmed with the memories of truly dead Necrontyr.
    • Played straight with Tau Gun Drones, though they are only used in a supporting role to the living Tau Fire Caste soldiers.
    • Imperial Servitors are this to any Techpriest. Their biological components are more or less used to support their technological ones, rather the other way around for conventional cyborgs.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: The aptly named Meklord Army monsters from Extreme Victory are these for the Meklords, with the Meklord Emperors being, obviously, Emperor Mooks.

    Toys 
  • The Vahki robots in BIONICLE. Greg Farshtey, writer of the storyline, has professed a dislike of Vahki. It's extremely common for Vahki to be destroyed in downright cruel and unusual ways, particularly during the '05 arc.

    Video Games 
  • Agent Armstrong throws robotic mooks from the Syndicate in later levels, mostly in their weapons factory. These are among the stronger Elite Mook type enemies (due to, well, being made of metal) with one of the last levels having Armstrong destroying the molding shells used by the Syndicate to manufacture these enemies. And at the factory's exit, there's a King Mook boss waiting for Armstrong — a twenty-feet tall giant robot called the "Syndicate's Ultimate Weapon".
  • AMID EVIL has a Magitek variation in the form of denizens of the Forges, many different magic-enhanced machines that keep the Forges functional even after their owner's apparent death. Some notes even mention that they have converted organic life into the fuel to fulfill their directive.
  • Apocalypse, for a third-person shooter filled with literally dozens of enemy types, contains precisely one variety of robotic mooks, them being the robotic security in the war factory stage. They resemble the classic ED-209 Chicken Walker types, albeit smaller in size, but attacks in far larger numbers. One room even have tubes that drops spare robots after you destroyed most of them.
  • Android Hunter A: All the enemies in the game are robots.
  • Armored Core: The MTs in any of the games are this with few exceptions, especially if they're the armless "chickenwalker" variety.
  • The Azure Striker Gunvolt Series, being a successor to Mega Man Zero, has no shortage of these — ranging from Drone-shaped to humanoid, being the most common enemies fought next to the flesh-and-blood mooks.
  • Backyard Baseball: The mooks in the Fielder's Challenge are robots.
  • Baldur's Gate III has the Steel Watchers, towering magitek Demonic Spiders that turned the titular city into a Police State. A good-aligned playthrough requires you to destroy the factory making and controlling them in order to avoid a Hopeless Boss Fight with the tyrant who created them.
  • Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts: Without Klungo's aid to raise her army of monsters, Gruntilda resorts to create her own band of Mecha-Mooks with the Gruntbots. However, those crud-looking mechanical mischief makers are more a nuisance than a real threat to the bear and bird duo.
  • Beyond Sunset have all it's enemies being machines. The red ones falls closer to Robot Soldier, being clad in military gear and trained in using firearms.
  • Binary Domain: With the sole exception of Faye, you never fight a single human opponent; opponents are all Mecha-Mooks or Mechanical Monsters. With the exception of the bosses (excluding the Tsar Runner), all of them explode shortly after being 'killed'.
  • BioShock Infinite has Automatons, Mosquitoes, and Motorized Patriots.
  • Blade Master, being set in Medieval times, has steampunk robots as enemies among the ranks of chaos. Who will set themselves alight while trying to run into you.
  • The Loader robots make up most of Handsome Jack's forces in Borderlands 2. Hyperion does have combat-oriented human forces, however those are generally Elite Mooks.
  • Bot Gaiden: Given the nature of the game, it should be a given that all the enemies in the game are robots.
  • Bravely Default:
    • The first game has Automatons, powerful mechanical soldiers created to serve the Eternian army whose arsenals include a devastating Rocket Punch, a self-repair system, and can increase their offensive power at the cost of their defense. A stronger variant known as the Spriggans can be found in the final dungeon, which are capable of boosting their speed and evasion. Both of them return in Bravely Second as recurring enemies, with the Spriggan's bio retconning it into being an upgraded version of the Automaton that was sealed away underground after it proved too powerful for the Eternian army to control. There is also a new stronger variant called the Spartans that can be encountered in the final dungeon, which apparently were originally designed to act as "caretakers" for the Celestial Realm's inhabitants (although even their creator is unsure why he needed to give them such great battle capabilities in spite of this).
    • Second also introduces the Iron Men, a series of egg/frog-shaped mechanical soldiers in service of the Glanz Empire who possess a variety of offensive and supportive abilities. The first generation despite being deemed outdated models surprisingly remains the strongest to the point that they exist as part of the Empire's Praetorian Guard, while the designs of the third and fourth generations are said to have played big roles in the creations of the Superdreadnought Bael and the Vucub Caquix. Turns out their creator was a former Eternian engineer who had been working on them during the events of the first game before the duchy was defeated, then later started making them for the Empire after the Kaiser was impressed enough by them to want them as a significant bulk of his army.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops III has the "General Purpose Infantry Unit", bipedal combat robots nicknamed "grunts" that are fairly easy to kill, but still take more punishment than a flesh-and-blood human soldier and can do some serious damage close up with their bare hands — the first mission ends with one breaking one of the protagonist's legs and ripping off both arms.
  • Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare also features robotic mooks that play this trope more strictly. Some are worker drones not originally intended for combat at all, while some are security or combat units that are much more capable but still rely on numbers rather than quality. The Settlement Defense Front pads its ranks out with robotic soldiers to overwhelm the size of all Earth-based fighting forces.
  • Chrono Trigger: When your party is in the future, they will encounter a very large number of these, particularly in the optional sidequest Geno Dome. Interestingly, despite destroying large numbers of Mecha-Mooks, you acquire a party member which is a Ridiculously Human Robot.
  • City of Heroes: The game generally uses the ambiguous term "defeated" regarding human enemies, but the robots used by various factions all explode spectacularly when defeated. The exception is the Clockwork, who usually just slump over, but that's because they're not really robots, but metallic constructs animated by a powerful telekinetic Brain in a Jar. Even some of the cyborg enemies explode upon defeat, most notably the Arachnos Tarantulas.
  • Civilization: Beyond Earth: The schtick of the Supremacy faction — while their human troops are highly augmented with cybernetics, they also field armies of CNDR and CARVR drones. They can easily outproduce either of the other affinities in terms of raw numbers, and most of their troops can be upgraded with bonuses based on having allied units nearby.
  • Claws of Furry: You start encountering robots as enemies in the mansion levels. Some are one-wheeled robots who shoot lasers, and others are Attack Drones that drop bombs on you.
  • Clockwork Aquario: Most of Dr. Hangyo's Mooks are wind-up sea creatures. They can be stunned by jumping on them or attacking them.
  • Command & Conquer: In most games when localized to Germany, soldiers become cyborgs with black "blood" (supposed to be oil) and also cyborg guard dogs... even in the booklets the pictures of these units were crossed with a bar noting "top secret" so you couldn't see the faces; in the game itself, those faces were still used as the build icons. This is all due to censorship. In the German version of Command & Conquer: Generals, the "real world" GLA soldiers were replaced with cyborg clones that bleed green.
  • Crysis: The Ceph use an army of tentacled exosuits and small man-sized octopus robots to take over the Lingshan Islands. They all explode upon death (with one notable exception), but it has more to do with preventing humans from acquiring alien technologies than with dealing damage.
  • Of the numerous varieties of enemies you fight in Demon Skin, there's precisely one mechanical version, steam-powered robots who moves at you in a jerky manner while hitting with their fists.
  • The hordes of enemies you face in the Descent series consist of mining robots gone renegade.
  • Dinosaur King: The Alpha Droids, who act as servants and guards for the Alpha Gang in the anime (often carrying out orders which lead to their own destruction), and as Random Encounter enemies in the DS game.
  • The main enemy faction of Dragon Ball Online, the Time Breakers, have mass produced versions of Android #8 and Android 19: Android 8000 and Android 19000. The Red Pants Army meanwhile has hostile copies of Android 16.
  • Dragon Quest features a variety of machine monsters such as Mecha-Mynahs, Stainless Scrappers, Metal Dragons, and others like AU-1000s and Jurassic Llyolds. One example is the Hunter Mech introduced from Dragon Quest II, quadrapedal robots armed with a Sinister Scimitar and a crossbow Arm Cannon that primarily hunt Metal Slimes (such that their Flavor Text states that where they appear, Metal Slimes and thier variants like Liquid Metal Slimes and Metal Meledies can likely be found as well), but are not opposed to turning their weapons upon the player. Stronger variants include the iconic Killing Machine, its rareified counterpart Type G0, and A 3 G 15note .
  • Dynasty Warriors: The games feature, as the primary enemy, tons of mooks. Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, of course, changes this to use various grunt suits (and some variants) from Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam, Gundam ZZ, and Char's Counterattack.
  • In The Elder Scrolls, seen most prominently in Morrowind and Skyrim, the extinct Dwemer were a race of Robot Masters. Known to them as "animunculi", they created these ranging from miniature Spider Centurion workers to human-sized Sphere Centurion soldiers (who roll around as metal balls before unfolding into blade and/or crossbow armed humanoid robots) to massive Steam Centurion golems. Given that the Dwemer were known to tinker with the "earthbones" (essentially the laws of nature and physics in the ES universe), their creations were built to last a long time, with many still up and running in their old ruins even thousands of years after their disappearance. Plenty of intrepid scholars have attempted to gain control over these Dwemer creations in that time, but usually discover rather quickly that AI Is A Crap Shoot as the creations have the tendency to go berserk when activated outside of Dwemer ruins.
  • Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. All robots are enemies, and all enemies are robots.
  • Etrian Odyssey:
    • Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard: Befitting its Eternal Engine setting, the Heavenly Keep features robotic enemies and FOE, with the latter having to be avoided unless the player's character party is very prepared to face them. These include the Sky Metal Knight (which attacks with Laser Blades), the Silver Sentinel, and the Silver Gunman.
    • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: The Echoing Library is guarded by two kinds of FOE: A dog-like automaton that lies inert and seemingly inanimate in certain spots, and an active humanoid robot that patrols the corridors. When the player's character party is seen by the latter, it will emit a loud siren from its klaxon to wake up the robotic dog so it begins to chase you. Dodging these enemies is vital for survival to make it to the end.
  • EXTRAPOWER: A commonly occuring enemy throughout the series, led by Undata. They range from smaller, swarming Clay Kids to the massive Stone Macks and powerful Plasma Bosses.
  • Mooks in the lategame of Fairune invariably turn towards mechanical variants of earlygame mooks before branching out into truly unique creations. Of note is that the final boss of the first three worlds in 2 is Cubes — block-shaped mechanical drones — of increasing model number.
  • Fallout:
    • In Fallout: New Vegas, the New Vegas Strip is policed by Mr. House's heavily armed Securitron robots. In the ending where you side with him, as well as the "Wild Card" ending, the Securitrons are upgraded to outfit them with gatling lasers and rocket launchers and they proceed to conquer the Mojave Wasteland with almost effortless ease.
    • In Fallout 4, the Institute utilizes Synth soldiers (mainly Gen 1 synths, which resemble Terminator endoskeletons, and Gen 2 synths, which look more like walking mannequins). In the DLC campaign Automatron, the Mechanist unleashes an army of homemade robots to bring peace to the Commonwealth, chiefly by killing everyone. This is due to the AI of the Mechanist's Robobrains taking the order to "help the people" to its logical extreme. The DLC also introduces a Raider group known as the Rust Devils, which create robots of their own to terrorize the Commonwealth. With the Robot Workbench, players can also build mecha-mooks of their own, mixing and matching parts from other robots to make their own mechanized murder machines.
  • First Encounter Assault Recon: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
  • Friction have robotic enemies in various levels, from spider-like robots scrambling on walls to turrets on legs which activates itself when you're near. Most of your enemies are still flesh and blood human however, unless you're playing the Home Release console which have a Bowdlerized mode that turn human enemies into robots, leading to zero blood or gorn when you blast their bodies into sizeable chunks.
  • The PlayStation remake of Front Mission features AIs as enemies: Wanzers piloted entirely by computers rather than pilots. They are far less effective than human-pilots as they are less intelligent, can't use pilot skills, and can be immobilized by honest-to-God killing the lights.
  • The G-Bots of Funked Unplugged have plenty of robots of various shapes and sizes to serve as enemies for Ampy to face.
  • Gaia Crusaders, a game set After the End, have a stage inside a robot factory who's still active and creating robots, all of them which activates once you're in the area. Said level is filled with robotic foes, from gynoid that crawls at you on all fours to humanoid robots with a Chest Blaster they sic on you.
  • Galaxy Angel: Played straight in every single one of the games, where the antagonist's army is composed mostly of unmanned ships with only a very few organic beings around, thanks to having an almost unlimited source to create more to replace the ones destroyed by the heroes. Probably done in order to keep the line between good and evil clear.
  • Galaxy Angel II: In the first game of the trilogy, this is actually a major plot point: when Forte is blackmailed into leading a coup d'etat on planet Seldar (due to the royal family and Milfeulle being taken hostage by the true perpetrators), she insists on using unmanned ships in order to minimize the casualties as much as possible, leaving the Seldar Navy almost intact by the time the alliance with Magiic and EDEN is formed.
  • Genshin Impact:
    • Among the recurring enemies are the Ruin Machines, a series of war machines from a lost civilization that will indiscriminately attack anything in sight. They can be stunned for a time by shooting their glowing cores.
    • Sumeru introduces the Primal Constructs, ancient machines built during the era of the Scarlet King to protect the remaining ruins. Their moves include firing lasers, erecting barriers, and turning invisible, but can be stunned by interfering with their recovery states using elemental attacks.
    • Fontaine introduces the Clockwork Meka, a series of mechanical constructs that attack with a variety of moves and elemental powers. They can be temporarily stunned for a time by interfering with their Arkhe systems, although some will resort to different means of attack to compensate.
  • The Girl and the Robot: The entirety of the opponents faced inside the castle are humanoid robots, either clad in armor or are completely bare. The golden robotic knight is needed to engage them as the girl lacks the ability to defend herself.
  • God Hand: Has a great deal of robot enemies in the fourth level. They aren't too different from the regular type, but it helps emphasize the level's mechanical theme (as opposed to Western, wasteland, or circus, the themes of the preceding levels). The boss of the level is a mecha Giant Mook, Dr. Ion.
  • Halo: Forerunner installations are most commonly guarded by robotic Sentinels; even the basic "Aggressor" variant is armed with a laser capable of cutting through steel. However, they have mostly been replaced from Halo 4 onward by the Forerunner Prometheans, robotic units originally created to fight the Flood, with the strongest type being the Knights, which are heavily armed bipedal robots that can teleport anywhere at will. What makes the Knights unique is that most of them are prehistoric humans who were forcibly converted into machines.
  • German versions of computer and arcade games, notably in Half-Life, where all soldiers are replaced by robots, the Probotector (Contra) series, Space Invasion (Commando), Carmageddon, or fighting games, where blood is recoloured green or black. This is because of censorship in Germany (UCK board) disallowing displaying human deaths.
  • Hard Reset is about a robot uprising, so all its enemies are various robots.
  • Hidden Dragon: Legend, a game set in the Tang Dynasty, features steampunk robots called "puppets" in-game as mooks used by the Trigram organization. The first ones encountered are the bat-like Flying Puppets who can loose arrows from a distance (with a flamethrower-equipped variant encountered later on) and in the mountain lab you'll fight humanoid mechs. According to supplementary materials and an in-game cutscene, it turns out these "puppets" were human prisoners forcefully converted into machines by the Trigram's leader, Dark Raven.
  • Hyper Princess Pitch: Pits the protagonist against Mecha-Santa, his robot Elves, and toys.
  • The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer: The What Measure Is a Non-Human? part got a nice Lampshade Hanging, where Mr. Incredible spots the first robot enemies in the tutorial stage and quips, "I guess that means we don't have to play nice!"
  • The mooks in I-Ninja are mechanized ninjas that bleed green goop, to which Ninja is free to spill and let it soak his blade. The game certainly might have gotten a Mature Rating if they were human.
  • Half, if not more, of the mooks in Justice League Heroes: The Flash are mecha-mooks.
  • The Legend of Zelda. Mechanical enemies are rare in the series, due to the high-fantasy setting, but they exist:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Lanayru Mining Facility and Sandship, as well as parts of Sky Keep and the overworld area Lanayru Gorge, have highly-advanced machines that attack Link upon sight: Beamos (which appeared in prior games as a standard laser-shooting statue, but is portrayed here as a futuristic laser turret), Armos (another classic Zelda enemy that is portrayed here as a bulky robotic statue), and Sentrobe (a flying drone that shoots missiles and releases flying spheres called Sentrobe Bombs that self-destruct over time if they're left unchecked).
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The Guardians are Magitek robots built by the Sheikah to combat Calamity Ganon. Unfortunately, Ganon's Malice causes them to turn on Hyrule and wreck it, as well as mortally injure Link to the point where he has to rest at the Shrine of Resurrection for a 100 years while Zelda keeps Ganon contained at Hyrule Castle until Link has recovered. Guardians come in different makes and models, from the dimmunitive close-combatant Guardian Scouts to the standard hexapdeal laser-blasting Guardian Stalkers, up to the flying Guardian Skywatchers.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The spiritual successor to the previous game's Guardians, Link regularly faces off against hostile Zonai Constructs, hovering robotic enemies that blare like alarms when they see Link before heading over to fight him.
    • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity: Guardians are present in the game due to being a prequel to Breath of the Wild. They may still rely on their lasers, but have melee attacks such as spinning their legs and slamming down on the ground. Skywatchers, meanwhile fire energy volleys and also charge at the player, while Guardian Scouts fight the same way as Guardian Scouts II and III. In addition, elemental and Malice varanits make their debut.
  • Loopmancer sees you infiltrating Tompson Technologies for the penultimate mission, and battling the robotic security all the way to reach it's boss.
  • Mad Age & This Guy: The Player Character faces many robots in the game, all of which will approach him if he's close enough, and will kill him with one touch.
  • Marathon:
    • "Cyborgs," which were in the scary faceless humanoid monster gig before slenderman was cool. Instead of feet, they have treads, and Bungie refers to them as "Tank Guys." Some of them are weak, others are some of the strongest enemies in the game. All of them self-destruct upon death. According to Word of God, they used to be human space colonists.
    • The humans have some of these of their on their colony ship. They are notable for being possibly the first AI controlled allies in any game. They float above the ground and also explode upon death (Bungie has a thing for that) and are armed with machine pistols. Some of them have grenade launchers, but the ones with grenade launchers go rampant and attack anything in sight, alien or human. Similarly, in the sequels, there are "Hummers," alien-made robots that are used for recon and often respawn indefinitely. When they sight you, they make a very irritating electronic noise before attacking, hence the name. Some of them are taken over by a human-made AI and help you, and are conveniently much stronger, but they only appear twice in the whole trilogy. This is not for the normal reasons, though, as the games also feature the BOBs, which are human colonists "Born On Board". They're technically on your side, but they can be killed either by enemy or friendly fire (in fact, since they tend to get in your way, it can be hard to avoid it). Later on, there are "Android BOBs" that look almost like the regular ones, but are trying to kill you (they'll run up to you yelling something like "Frog blast the vent core!" and explode).
  • Mass Effect: The Geth are an entire race of these throughout the series. Mass Effect 2 adds a series of cheap, mass-produced robotic security troops (called "Mechs" in-universe, natch), that are roughly on-par with a B1 Battle Droid in terms of intelligence and accuracy, though the Battle Droids never had robotic dogs and giant missile-firing robots backing them up. Unlike the geth, mechs do not use true AI and so don't think for themselves and lack any self-preservation. They're also are surprisingly resilient — blowing off a limb only slows them down, and they have a taser-like device on their non-gun arm. Even if you take off its legs it'll still crawl towards you with the intent to self-destruct in your face. Usually encountered in hordes. Geth themselves subvert the trope's What Measure Is a Non-Human? aspect. They have a smooth organic appearance, bleed some sort of white blood-equivalent, give off odd electronic squeals when shot, and don't explode upon death. This doesn't stop the heroes from mowing them down by the score without batting an eyelid, however. The sequel reveals that the Geth are nearly immortal, as they simply upload back into their mainframes when the humanoid frames are disabled. Destroying these mainframes can kill millions of them with a few bullets, however. Their "death screams" are actually them transmitting themselves to a new mainframe.
  • Mega Man (Classic): The Sniper Joes are the closest to this trope, but all the enemies are robots (as are the protagonist and bosses). Mega Man X made a distinction between Reploids, which possess human-like intelligence, and Mechaniloids, which don't.
  • METAGAL, like its inspiration, has its share of robotic enemies.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: The Scarabs, and the raven-like UAVs accompanying Raging Raven.
  • Metallic Child: As it's a Sci-Fi video game set aboard a Space Station, expect to fight a lot of robots.
  • Metroid:
    • Metroid II: Return of Samus has Wallfires, Autoads, Automs, Autracks, TPO, Shirk and Bunzoo. Shirk in particular act like smaller, slower, weaker, stupider versions of Alpha Metroids. Subverted with Yumees, who are said to be purely biological despite looking metallic drones and flying with flames erupting form their feet.
    • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes has the mechanoids in Sanctuary Fortress that were originally built by the Luminoth to defeat the Ing, but ended up turning against their own creators due to the influence of Dark Aether. Quads and Rezbits are the most common mooks.
    • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has the Tinbots and Steambots. They were originally benign robots at the service of the Chozo, but then they succumbed to the corruption by Phazon and are now hostile robots.
    • Metroid Dread has the E.M.M.I., seven killer robots that were made by the Galatic Federation to investigate the X Parasites' resurgence on ZDR, but were reprogrammed by Raven Beak to try and take Samus's Metroid DNA. There are also Chozo automatons just like in Metroid II, though these guys fight Samus on Raven Beak's orders and are the only members of his army unaffected by the released X Parasites from Elun. Likewise, the game also features Robot Chozo Soliders, which are the substitutes for the Chozo Soliders themselves, due to them being infected by X Parasites via one of their scouts returning from SR 388 to try and find Metroids, also explaining said resurgence after the events of Metroid Fusion.
  • Miitopia: Many mechanized versions of regular enemies (like the Goblins or the Pengies) appear in the Nimbus region, which houses several Eternal Engine sublevels.
  • Mini Robot Wars: The evil-looking Machines. Also inverted, as the good guys' units are also mecha mooks of sorts, except cute-looking.
  • Monsters, Inc.: Scream Team: All enemies in the game are robots, presumably because it would be too unsafe to train with real human kids and toys.
  • Moon Raider: Some of the enemies, and at least one boss, in the game are robots.
  • Since the domain of the angelic god of Cooperation in Nexus Clash includes both political and literal machines, his Lightspeaker angels summon Clock Punk holy war robots called Judgemasters. They're generally benevolent but can be very dangerous on the occasions when Lightspeakers succumb to Black-and-White Insanity.
  • The Sentinels in No Man's Sky come in five different variants — hovering drones, quadrupedal robots, massive bipedal walkers, automated fighter craft, and gargantuan battleships.
  • Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas: The night after the Player Character finds his father's sword and shield, someone drops a couple of robots on the island that start attacking the hermit the next day.
  • Paprium have Fembots as a recurring enemy type.
  • Perish have steampunk-type robots in Hephaestus' temple, resembling armored Greek warriors, that you fight in one stage.
  • The only enemy in The Persistence that isn't a defective clone is the attack drone. It's a floating robot that remains stationary and widdles your health down with a barrage of bullets.
  • Shadow Okumura's Corporobos from Persona 5. Appearing in the Space Station of Greed, they represent how the CEO of Okumura Foods see the employees of his company: disposable machines devoid of emotions whose only duty is to serve as the foundation upon his fast food empire is built. Unlikely most examples of this trope, they elicit sympathy from the protagonists who sees them as over-worked, brainwashed grunts who are ordered to go against impossible odds while working themselves to an early grave.
  • The Armada in Pirate101 consists entirely of these. They were designed as soldiers to win Valencia the Polarian War. While they were very successful, they then took over Valencia and have set sights on claiming the whole spiral.
  • Pizza Vs. Skeletons: One of the enemy types you can encounter late in the game is wind-up robots that breathe fire.
  • Portal has nothing BUT these. Being set in a science factility, run by an evil artificial intelligence. Turrets, Sentry Turrets, Rocket Turrets, even an Animal King Turret!
  • Ratchet & Clank invariably features hordes of robots. While there are usually organic opponents in there as well, they will be vastly outnumbered by robots. In Up Your Arsenal, most of your organic opponents are turned into robots by the Biobliterator, simply to show how severe a threat Dr. Nefarious is.
  • RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore: The enemies in the game are robots known as "mecha-monsters", which will attack Remi on sight.
  • In Robo Army, all the enemies are robots of one kind or another.
  • All of the enemies in Rocket Power: Beach Bandits are robots, even the final boss is.
  • Saints Row IV features the Zin's Murderbots. Naturally, they fall squarely into Demonic Spider territory as they have a lot of health and carry either miniguns or proximity mines that can easily whittle down your health, and their torsos can continue to attack you after their legs are destroyed Terminator-style.
  • SD Snatcher gives Gillian a large variety of Metal Creatures to do battle with.
  • Serious Sam 2: The Floaters, Spawners, Rollers, Rhino Cybertoys, Rocket Turrets, Fatso Fighter Planes, Seagull Bombers, and Giant Cyborg Spiders which are usually mixed in with the various other enemy types, primarily zombies, aliens, and bio-machines.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: Outside of the occasional fight with Dr. Eggman and a few other choice characters, robot mooks are Sonic's only enemies.
  • Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge: It wouldn't be an X-Men game without Sentinels, and they're the bosses of Cyclops's levels. The Final Boss also spawns seven Arcade robots for Spider-Man to finish off.
  • In most SpongeBob SquarePants video games, the common enemies are robots created by Plankton himself. These mechanical fiends often share Plankton's likeness to indicate them as his creations.
  • Spyro: A Hero's Tail: Near the end, Red has all of his Gnorc soldiers converted into robots for his new and improved army.
  • All the onscreen enemies in Spyborgs are robotic in nature, and comes in a variety of sizes. They're serving an evil Robot Master you must defeat at the end of the game.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario Bros. introduces the Bullet Bill, which are black sentient bullets shot from tall cannons called Bill Blasters, and travel in a straight line. Over the series' history, several variants have been introduced, such as Bull's-Eye Bills capable of homing at Mario and Luigi (Super Mario Bros. 3), Bullet Biffs that move forward with a rocket in their backs (Super Mario Land), very large bullets called Banzai Bill and the aquatic Torpedo Ted unleashed from a square-shaped cannon (Super Mario World), cat-based specimens that pursue Mario and his friends (Super Mario 3D World), and a gigantic version called King Bill which is capable of destroying everything on their way (New Super Mario Bros. Wii), among others.
    • Super Mario Bros. 2 introduces two mechanical enemies: Bob-ombs (round, sentient bombs that explode after a few seconds) and Autobombs (cart-like vehicles that can shoot fireballs whenever Shy Guys ride them); in subsequent games, Bob-ombs no longer have arms but do have a windup key in their backs (though some Bob-Ombs with arms can be seen in Paper Mario 64). Robirdo, who appears in the Advance version, is large enough to be a Mechanical Monster and the boss of World 3.
    • Super Mario World marks the debut of Mechakoopas, which are robotic versions of Koopa Troopas. In most cases they just walk around, but in some games they breathe fire; their sturdy design prevents Mario and Luigi from defeating them with a simple stomp (they'll simply be stunned for a short while). In Super Mario Maker 2, two new subspecies of Mechakoopas are introduced: Blasta Mechakoopa (which shoot homing missiles) and Zappa Mechakoopa (which shoot electric beams).
    • Super Mario Odyssey features the Sherm, a tank enemy that shoots explosives at Mario. They can be captured with the help of Cappy (and doing so is necessary to defeat Mechawiggler).
    • The RPG games feature many mechanical enemies, such as the entire population of the Factory/Smithy Factory in Super Mario RPG, Wizzerds in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Mechawfuls in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, the last of which were revealed to be the true cause of Beanbean Castle Town's first destruction as shown in Minion Quest.
  • Project: Horned Owl is an arcade shooter whose enemies consists entirely of robots, ranging from child-sized critters that stood to the player's knees to humanoid-sized robot soldiers to Spider Tank-esque machines and Mechanical Monster bosses.
  • Super Panda Adventures has plenty of robot enemies. A lot of them are shown in various kinds of costumes.
  • Super Robot Wars series: Subverted and used, as times goes on, it shifts from fighting human pilots (which most of the time will get a chance to escape) to battling AI versions of robots due to the bad guys sharing AI technology since manpower gets smaller with the huge killcount our men racks up in the battlefield. In the OVA, the ATX and SRX had discovered the shocking revelation of the Bartool's ODE system and had concerns about killing more innocent captured civilians but during the final push later on, they were unmanned with no human core inside which allowed a more liberal course of destruction. The series has several iconic mook mechs of its own, most notably the Gespenst series. Mind you, in these games even a regular grunt unit can be pretty badass in the right hands. Watch here and here as Major Kai demonstrates why you don't need no fancy Ace Custom to kick ass.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: An entire army of Robotic Operating Buddies in Subspace Emissary, only they're anything but friendly — arm swipes, missiles, and laser fire are the norm for them. They do have a measure of AI not seen in most Mecha-Mooks, as they are at least capable of expressing sorrow; this is demonstrated when the Ancient Minister, the alpha R.O.B., looks down with regret before seeing two more disappear into the detonation of a Subspace Bomb. Nevertheless, the only one who doesn't submit to Ganondorf's — and subsequently Tabuu's — reprogramming is the alpha himself, who becomes playable after the former villain sees it fit to have him punished for questioning authority.
  • Target Acquired (2016): Cammy has left a perennial army of robots in her wake of busting out of jail.
  • Team Fortress 2: The Mann versus Machine update added a cooperative game mode where the mercenary soldiers face off against hordes of incoming mechanical counterparts of themselves, and depending on server setting, ranging from your usual punchable-weak-toy-soldiers to outright Nightmare fuel.
  • In Titanfall, NPC soldiers come in two forms: Grunts and Spectres. Spectres are this.
  • Toontown Online: Disney's extraordinarily "kid-friendly" MMORPG solely features an ever-replenishing army of fun-hating robots called Cogs as your enemies—whom you destroy with jokes.
  • Transformers: Many games have you fighting numerous generic or nameless enemy chassis (the Armada game, called simply "Transformers" in the states, coined them as "Decepti-clones"). Different from the TV shows in that every character shown was given a name.
  • Trash Quest: The enemies the Player Character faces in the game are robots. They're the Space Station Delivrance's security system sent to get rid of you because they see you as a potential threat to the station's safety.
  • Trophy 2021: All the enemies in the game are the robotic population of Gearus 9, who've been reprogrammed into Dr. Quine's robot army.
  • T He robot factory stage in Unending Dusk naturally contain legions of robot mooks for you to destroy. They alternate between attacking with Power Pincers or an extending Laser Blade. Prior to the game's events though, you did manage to capture and reprogram one of the robots into becoming an Assist Character on your side.
  • Universe at War: Earth Assault: The Novus are a heroic example, a race of Mechanical Laser Guided Tykebombs working with the Masari against the Hierarchy.
  • The Corpus in Warframe have a huge robo-fetish, deploying vast armies of robots and always developing newer, more deadly models. Their crews are generally one third human and two third robotic "security proxies", mainly the Moa bipedal turrets and Osprey flying support drones. Heavier models include the Bursa, a 'roided-up Moa with crowd control and anti-Tenno abilities, the Hyena, a specialized robot that hunts in packs and the Raptors, which are essentially flying artillery platforms. The heaviest models are the Jackal, a nearly-indestructible tank-like behemoth and the Razorback, which increases the Jackal's defenses and is ultimately only vulnerable to Forced Friendly Fire from its supporting Bursas. A special mention goes to Alad V's Zanuka robots, which are specialized Tenno hunters built from the scavenged pieces of captured Warframes. They are as agile as Hyenas and much more durable, employ their own nullification abilities and have the arsenal of the Jackal. Alad V usually deploys them to hunt down and capture particularly troublesome Tenno Warframes for disassembly.
  • The reactivated W.O.P.R from WarGames Defcon 1 uses mechanized drones as their foot soldiers, which attacks in large numbers flanking their walkers and machines.
  • Wizardry: One of the first signs you aren't in Kansas anymore with the last two games is when your sword-and-sorcery party runs into their first Savant robot armed with a laser lance. Fully fledged battle droids also make an appearance towards the very end of VII.
  • In Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries, the streets of the city are patrolled by wind-up guards.
  • Wrack has Arcturan Invader fleets with robots in their ranks, including a few bosses. After the first battle, you find out the robot isn't of Arcturan origin but from Earth — a human scientist, Exo, who despises humanity, have decided to side with the invaders and help their conquest by supplying his robot army for them.
  • The player in the X games utilizes almost nothing but mecha mooks; despite the endgame having the player fielding flotillas of mile long ships as their Player Mooks, there is only one meatbag in control of it all, as each ship uses its own Autopilot AI. However, traders and marines for Boarding Party operations are exceptions to this. X: Rebirth averts this, as every player-owned ship has a minimum of at least a pilot or captain.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has the Mechon, though they are certainly not fragile, they take only Scratch Damage from conventional weapons, and half damage from magic attacks. Their only weakness is the Monado, which prompted Egil to make Faced Mechon, which have Homs turned into Mechon to resist the Monado due to their blood.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles X has a big family of hostile mechanoids, all created by the Ganglion race. Examples include the Fal-swos (flying drones shaped like manta rays), Oc-servs (hovering machines shaped like squids), Xe-doms (large sentries with a Skell-like metallic carapace), and Xerns (gigantic, hovering aircraft carriers shaped like cranes; they're large enough to be Boss in Mook Clothing enemies, and one of them is indeed entrusted the role of Superboss in the postgame).
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has the Artifices, machines that were made by the Trinity Processor to protect the Conduit from the Saviorite Rebels. Examples include the Gargoyles, Malos' rank and file Minions for destroying Alrest both 500 years ago and the present day, and the Artifice Colossuses, which are the only one of their kind fought as normal enemies, since Gargoyles are The Unfought in Xenoblade 2 itself.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has Levnises, machines that serve Keves and Agnus, with the Kevesi Levnises looking like Mechon, while the Agnaian Levnises look like Artifices. In addition, Origin has the Droids enemy line which serve Moebius in defending Z from Ouroboros.
  • In Xenonauts, Androns will start appearing on missions around the end of the second month. These combat robots are immune to stun and morale effects and are resistant to starting gunpowder-based firearms, but explosives still work, and they don't take cover either. If you have developed lasers by this point then your troopers shouldn't have any trouble. In the autopsy report, the Xenonauts' head scientist is puzzled as to why the alien invaders developed combat machines that are bipedal and humanoid, pointing out the limitations and flaws of such a design, but finally chalks it up to arrogance or stupidity on the aliens' part and suggests humanity take advantage of their mistake.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! BAM, the B!Sec police are robotic holograms programmed to play BAM.
  • All your enemies in The Swindle are robots, starting with mechanical English bobbies and getting weirder and deadlier from there.
  • In Zone of the Enders, a majority of the enemies that aren't boss frames are unmanned mecha which allows the protagonist to rack up a huge destruction count without killing too many human pilots.

    Webcomics 
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: In the "Death Volley" storyline, Doc is very pleased when he discovers the palace guards are robots, so he can go completely berserkers on them without compunction. Then he learns that one of the guards is actually his disguised ex-girlfriend, Hortense.
  • A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe: The clockwork halberdiers and clockwork knight that Snuffy and the Everyman face, which sprung from the light bulb-like fruits of a tree that grew from one of the mysterious geometric solids.
  • El Goonish Shive: Grace runs into a power plant full of these during a playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas, which turns out to be particularly hard for her because she's attempting a pacifist run.
    Tedd: It's a murder bot! It doesn't dream of electric sheep!
    Grace: Moot point! I don't have any weapons!
  • Homestuck: On post-Scratch Earth, the Condesce replaces the Alternian drones with bright red robotic versions.
  • The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: When Riboflavin escapes from his prison ship, he destroys a robot guard. He expresses disappointment that the guard was not sentient, and therefore could not feel pain. Riboflavin is not a nice man.
  • Sluggy Freelance: Inverted when the Dig-bots who get bloodlessly massacred are the good guys, and the very human Hereti-Corp agents doing the massacring are the baddies.
  • Girl Genius: Battle clanks are often the fighting force of a Spark on a warpath. Baron Klaus Wulfenbach's two mainstays are his Air-warship fleet and the iconic Wulfenbach Battle Clank. He has a myriad of other ground forces (usually co-opted from other sparks he defeated), but the giant toy soldier-esque clanks are the backbone of his armies.

    Web Original 
  • Parodied in Ask a Ninja, where the ninja says that robots are no fun to kill.
  • DSBT InsaniT: ???'s Guardromon Mooks.
    • REX is Stephanie's robot dinosaur minion.
  • Whateley Universe example: in "Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy" and "Ayla and the Birthday Brawl", Team Kimba are going through a Team Tactics course. Their first 'pop quiz' is against robots and mechanical weapons. Their big 'invading the supervillain lair' simulation includes an armada of Mecha-Mooks. In neither of these are there tons of exploding robots, except where Tennyo and Fey unleash their powers.
  • These are the main troops of the genocidal human civilization Wreathe in Mortasheen, all modeled after Pre-Cambrian creatures. In a subversion, these are usually more powerful than lower-level characters.
  • RWBY: Atlesian Knights are commonly used by the military of Atlas, especially when overwhelming numbers are required. The original model is first seen in the Black Trailer, trying to protect a train from Blake and Adam who are trying to steal the train's cargo. Despite being surrounded, the pair have no trouble defeating them. In Volume 2, General Ironwood introduces an upgraded model. However, even the upgrade is shown to be weaker in combat than the superhuman Huntsmen and Huntresses, including trainees. This is because only living things have Aura, which grants powerful attack and defense abilities; soulless automatons are never going to be able to equal someone with even a small amount of training. Ironwood's primary use for them is to fight the Grimm in the hope that humans won't have to keep dying to keep the Grimm at bay. By the time the heroes reach the Kingdom of Atlas and see the state Mantle is in, the Atlesian Knights are shown patrolling the streets of Mantle and end up easily being overwhelmed by the Grimm that enter the city. Later when General James Ironwood and the rest of the military turn against the heroes, the Atlesian Knights are among the most common enemy of the military that they face.
  • In C0DA, the survivors on the moon Masser are assisted by "mechanical servitors", machine servants which float about "leaving trails of blue-white mathematical symbols". They're weak enough to be destroyed by simple blades and spears.

    Western Animation 
  • Subverted very subtly in Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. The Crown Agents look and sound like robots. However, they take bribes, argue, go rogue, scream and throw up their hands when their plane crashes into a tower, etc. More damning is that the Ranger Technopath Doc Hartford never used his powers against them, though he could subvert most any technology with ease. "Lord of the Sands" topped it by having Zach admit "As far as we know, Crown Agents are some kind of robot..."
  • King Andrias gains these later in Amphibia, though some are powerful enough to tread into Mechanical Monster territory.
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Degaton's robotic army in "The Golden Age of Justice!"
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • Although most of the villains in are human, "The Last Laugh" features a robotic henchman to the Joker called Captain Clown. In an interview, the producers admitted this was done specifically so that Batman wouldn't have to hold back in the fight.
    • Another instance, with better in-universe justification, occurs in the second part of "Heart of Steel".
    • In a really twisted take on this trope, Scarface is nothing but a ventriloquist puppet (wires and wood; a very, very primitive definition of the word "Mecha"). Inverted in the sense that while Batman at first has no idea what the hell is going on, Scarface is soon revealed to be the Big Bad of his particular gang (It's complicated), with the flesh-and-blood Dumb Muscle he has working under him are mooks. As with Captain Clown, the creators soon discovered they loved having a villain who wasn't flesh-and-blood, solely so they could give him increasing gruesome, over-the-top deaths.
  • The Bots Master: 3As (Auto-Activated Androbots) are employed as all-purpose minions by the evil RM corp. They are explicitly non-sentient, inhuman-looking, and speak with flat computerized voices, so they're destroyed without a second thought by ZZ and his team of heroic sentient robots, the BOYZZ Brigade.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Hornets. Interestingly enough, the Robot Buddy protagonist is the target of more violence than any villain, since he's capable of being rebuilt from ridiculous amounts of damage.
  • Carmen Sandiego: During Season 4, Dr. Bellum spends several episodes working towards creating an army of "Robo Robbers" to serve as V.I.L.E. operatives free of the human error she believes is responsible for all the group's failures. Only one is made fully functional before Carmen blows up the rest, but it proves itself more than capable of coming out on top of fights with Carmen until she drops it off the Himalayas to destroy it.
  • In Centurions, Cyborg Mad Scientist Doc Terror had several varieties of mecha-mooks to pit against the titular heroes.
  • In Challenge of the GoBots, the "robot" protagonists are actually cyborgs, living beings despite their mechanical appearance. However, the villains used nonsentient, inorganic Humongous Mecha called Zods which the heroes could destroy without any ethical quibbles.
  • Code Lyoko:
    • XANA's various monsters can count as the virtual version of Mecha-Mooks. They do appears robot-like the two times some are materialized in the real world.
    • Then in season 4, the Big Bad is busy constructing a whole army of robots to conquer the Earth.
  • Referenced in Darkwing Duck, a series famous for averting Never Say "Die" (at least in the earlier seasons, before Executive Meddling came in full force). In the first season episode "Bearskin Thug", villain Steelbeak's trained bear turns out to be a robot. Upon learning this, Darkwing says "Then I can take off the kid gloves!"
  • In The Day My Butt Went Psycho!, the majority of the Great White Butt's forces are composed of a seemingly inexhaustable supply of ro-butts.
  • Ming's Ice Robots in Defenders of the Earth. Only their leader, Garax, has a distinct personality and, while the Defenders have no qualms about destroying rank-and-file Ice Robots, it seems he is a different story. Indeed, towards the end of The Gravity of Ming, Flash has Garax at his mercy, but declines to shoot him, saying:
    No, I'm not like you.
  • Duck Dodgers:
    Dodgers: Uh..., those were just robot-piloted ships, right?
    Cadet: Yeah, "robots". (laughs maniacally)
  • Both the 1970s Filmation animated Flash Gordon and the 1980s Defenders of the Earth gave Ming the Merciless armies of Mecha-Mooks. Interestingly, in the Filmation series, good guy Red Shirts would get killed all the time (usually a very tidy and bloodless disintegrator shot, or else an exploding manned vehicle). Presumably because killing people is, after all, what makes the villains villains. The good guys got to fight Mecha-Mooks.
  • G.I. Joe, when there are B.A.T.s or S.N.A.K.E.s involved, the Sky B.A.T.s in G.I. Joe: Sigma 6 as well as the Zaps and Skyrenes in G.I. Joe Extreme. All five kinds of Mecha-Mooks are the only bad guys that the Joes seem to be able to hit on the first try. Not that they did them any good since B.A.T.s just keep coming and only anti-tank weapons can take them down. Or in case of the B.A.T. Mark I, a rifle-shot to the weak spot (which on the action figure's filecard is noted as the back, but inexplicably in the Sunbow cartoon, was the large window in the middle of their chest). Or Sgt. Slaughter's fists, which proved to be the most effective anti-B.A.T. weapon ever seen. Flint even used the incompetence of these androids to mock Cobra Commander in one episode, asking the villain if he had programmed them himself.
  • Jonny Quest:
    • The show has perhaps the most famous TV mecha-mook, Dr. Zin's robot spy. It's a spider-like robot that can take an incredible amount of punishment, as the Quest family learns when it makes its escape from a military base. They throw small arms, flamethrowers and tanks at it, and nothing makes it more than momentarily pause.
    • A whole army of them appeared in the Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures episode "The Robot Spies".
  • Kaeloo: In the second season finale, Kaeloo, Stumpy and Mr. Cat come across an army of robots while trying to rescue Quack Quack from Olaf's clutches.
  • In Kim Possible: So The Drama, Kim and Ron fought against an invasion of Diablos, mini-robots distributed by Drakken as free toys inside Bueno Nacho's Kids Meals, programmed to grow into giant mecha-robots when triggered by a radio signal.
  • In the French animated series The Little Prince (2010), wind-powered clockwork mooks are used as police troops by the inhabitants of the Planet of Wind.
  • Deuce's robot army in Loonatics Unleashed.
  • The mass-produced Lin Kuei Cybers featured in Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm were basically this. Unlike Cyrax, Sektor and Smoke, they were entirely mechanical, which allowed the normally violent Earthrealm Warriors to go to town with them.
  • Lord Boxman from OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes runs a factory that builds these, that he sells to other super villains. His own Quirky Miniboss Squad of robots are regularly destroyed, either by the heroes or by Boxman himself when they fail.
  • Phineas and Ferb: An early episode has the boys construct their own horde of robot clones of themselves to increase productivity, in a rare non-violent use of this trope. They fulfill this trope better in the movie, where they're used to fight the previously mentioned Normbots.
  • In ReBoot, when Matrix and Turbo are confronted by some infected Guardians, Matrix asks if their drones "have personality chips". As soon as they heard a No, both of them shot the robots, destroying them easily.
  • Samurai Jack: nearly any opponent Jack ever actually harms will turn out to be one of Aku's evil robot minions. Regardless of what they looked like before, as soon as they get sliced in half, there will be sparks and an explosion.
    • Subverted: although Jack only ever cut the Mecha-Mooks (or Demonic Invaders) with his sword, they always seemed to be Ridiculously Human Robots, either outside or internally ("veins" and "bones" in the interior of a roach-robot Jack cut in two, for instance). This allowed the show to get away with the High-Pressure Blood trope and other extreme scenes of carnage, because it was just oil. Really.
    • Additionally subverted in one episode in which an episode is told through the perspective of a mecha-mook, and his very real, very human emotions are made painfully apparent to the viewer. (Apparently, the scientist who built him gave him emotions because "he was kind of funny that way". Then he fights Jack and gets cut up like any other robotic malcontent.
    • Also averted at least once. Jack strikes several people with his sword in the episode where the bounty hunters team up to beat him (and one gets blown up), and they're not revealed to be robots afterwards... But when fighting organic opponents the fights are noticeably bloodless.
    • This is parodied in the Duck Dodgers episode "Samurai Quack".
      (Dodgers jumps at a stranger with his sword raised)
      Dodgers: Robot! Robot!! ROBOT!!!
      Stranger:: Stop! Not a robot! NOT A ROBOT!!!
      (Dodgers pauses)
      Dodgers: You're lucky I didn't cut you to ribbons.
      Stranger: Not with a Y-7 rating, you won't.
  • The army of German robots sent to attack Cassidy Williams in the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episode "The Midnight Zone".
  • The robot ninjas who serve as the Big Bad's cannon fodder in Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword.
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power was inconsistent about this. In some episodes, the Horde Troopers appeared completely sentient, and were defeated non-lethally by the heroes. In other episodes, they didn't get any dialogue, and could be smashed to pieces without any compunction. Averted in the reboot, in which all the Horde Troopers are explicitly organic, but played straight by them being accompanied by secondary robotic drones on occasion. Later played straight by Horde Prime's robotic army in the last season.
  • The Brigadiers from Skyland.
  • In StarCom: The U.S. Space Force, robotic drones make up the bulk of Shadow Force's soldiers.
  • An episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars has the good guys reprogramming a trio of battle droids to aid them in infiltrating a Separatist prison. These droids seemed to live much longer than ordinary battle droids by sheer virtue of being on the good side. However once the situation got dicey, these droids were promptly ordered to sacrifice themselves to buy time for their organic masters to escape.
  • An early instance is the 1941 Superman cartoon short "The Mechanical Monsters", which climaxes with Supes whaling on some big ass robots. This may be the Ur-Example.
  • Despite their obviously human hands, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) turns the original comic's Foot Ninja into robots with unlimited numbers. In the Turtles' first battle with the Foot, they're evenly matched with the robot ninjas until one of them is sliced open. Then begins the dismemberment.
    Michaelangelo: Robots? LET'S ROCK!
  • Justified and reconstructed in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Shredder starts out with extremely dangerous human minions... who gradually get arrested, quit after growing tired of getting their butts kicked, or end up too badly injured to fight. As humans with years of combat training aren't exactly easy to come by, this begins to seriously hinder Shredder, as he's left with only rookie troops who are no match for the Turtles. He solves this dilemma by stealing Krang tech and making mechanical Foot Soldiers, who are consistent in their threat level and more importantly far easier to replace when the Turtles take them out.
  • Teen Titans (2003) has a surprisingly wide variety of Mooks, but some fall into this category.
    • Slade's robots from the first two seasons are clearly there just to get blown up (though they serve the dual purpose of allowing him to Break Them by Talking remotely from the comfort of his own home).
    • Brother Blood in the third season uses human soldiers at first, but then switches over to Elite Mecha-Mooks based on Cyborg, which are quite tough, especially when there's a lot of them.
    • In season four, the mooks are demons, which while not technically robots blow up just as nicely and painlessly.
    • The fifth season features the Brain using a pretty even mix of mechanical and human Mooks.
    • The Trope is Zigzagged in an episode where Mad Mod invades the city with an army of robots modeled after the Coldstream Guards. At first, these robots are incredibly tough, and the Titans are almost overwhelmed; however, as the episode progresses, they seem to get less efficient for some reason, until the end, where the heroes are able to junk them with as much ease as any other example of this Trope. (Of course, this is Mad Mod we're talking about...)
    • Very nearly done in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo, too. In fact it would have been, had they been robots instead of living ink.
  • Thundarr the Barbarian would often slice an enemy in half or lop off a limb, see the sparks and yell "Ookla! Ariel! They are ma chiiiiiiiines!" Note that lopping first is Thundarr's favored tactic, but he knows it would make a difference to Ariel — who packs more firepower than he does, if she doesn't hold herself back.
  • A variation on this is in Transformers, where every character is a robot; this allowed it to do things like, say, kill off main characters in The Movie to make place for new ones. This didn't keep the scenes where it happens from being quite disturbing to younger viewers who idolized the fallen, original Prime and Dinobot being the best examples.
    • In episodes that aired before the movie, an important distinction was sometimes made between sentient and nonsentient robots. Several episodes involve the characters encountering armies of identical, literally faceless robots (as opposed to the individualized sentient Transformers) usually described as "drones" or some such, which were mindless and could be blasted to bits with moral impunity. The episode "Sea Change" even went so far as to establish that Transformers have souls like human beings, while the Mecha-Mooks they were fighting in that particular episode did not. The Vehicon drones of Beast Machines are the closest to a traditional army of Mecha-Mooks.
    • In the case of the aforementioned Vehicons, the common Mecha-Mooks are simply Spark-less drones often under the control of the larger Vehicon generals. Naturally, this makes the Vehicon drones the most blown-up, dropped, disemembered or crushed mooks in Transformers history.
    • Specific examples include the Centurion droids and maintenance drones from the G1 episode "the Key to Vector Sigma". The former were Nigh-Invulnerable Attack Drone types programmed to protect Vector Sigma while the latter were meant as laborers lacking any battle capability.
    • Transformers: Prime also has Vehicons, but they are intelligent enough to talk to one another and are just as disposeable as their predecessors. Bulkhead even disembowels one of them (to protect Miko). And tells Miko to look away before he does it (to protect Miko in a different way). She doesn't, but that says more about Miko than it does about the Vehicons. Its probable intention was to lampshade Transformers' (ab)use (of) this trope. From Bulkhead's point of view, ripping out the innards of something that is very much alive is already horrible. Doing so in front of a child is downright barbaric, hence the warning. From Miko's point of view, one machine just tore apart another machine like they always do in Saturday Morning Cartoons... but in real life, which is cool. Also helps to set some subtle context that the same attitude is held in reverse by the Transformers. It's easy to kill something when it's Starfish Aliens.
    • There's also the Terrorcons from the five-part pilot, robot zombies whose on purpose in unlife was to get gloriously dismembered by Optimus Prime and Ratchet.
  • A number of bad guys from Wander over Yonder have mechanical minions, from Lord Dominator's magma-powered robots to the clunky automaton soldiers of elderly super-villain Mandrake the Malfeasant.
  • In Winx Club, Hagen has a guard made up of these in his castle. They're fairly tough, but go down when Bloom destroys their control unit.
  • The Jackbots in Xiaolin Showdown are this. Egregious use of The Hit Flash was deemed necessary anyway.
  • X-Men: The Animated Series as often as not had the title heroes battling the robotic Sentinels and all manner of mechanical foes, rather than organic bad guys. Indeed, only two characters (good, bad, or background) are directly shown to die at any point in the series, and both eventually come Back from the Dead.

    Real Life 
  • Aerial combat drones are an example of this that are widely used today. Unlike most fictional Mecha-Mooks, they are actually frighteningly effective.
    • They are also, well, drones, as in there are humans controlling them. They can fly and land themselves autonomously (though this intended to be an emergency feature), but cannot fight without a pair of humans controlling them. It greatly simplified their programming and helps to avoid some otherwise messy incidents.
  • Boston Dynamics has developed numerous bipedal and quadrupedal robots for the US military, including BigDog and Atlas.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Alternative Title(s): Mecha Mook

Top

Hammer Drones

The Hammer Drones are military drones built by Vanko to help Hammer compete with Stark. However, they are lower quality than Stark's Iron Man suit, as shown when he and Rhodey take them out by the dozen.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (7 votes)

Example of:

Main / MechaMooks

Media sources:

Report