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I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.

The life of the mook is a humble one, in which the poor cannon-fodder must look like everyone else, act like everyone else, and get their butt kicked by the hero like everyone else.

But becoming a mook is much harder than it looks. On TV (and in video games), humility is only the first step in a fighting code of mooks's honor, as complex and rigid as that of the medieval knight or the samurai. This is why most mooks fare about as well as a bunch of knights or samurai would when faced with a modern army. The principles of the code are:

Ganging up is unsporting and dishonorable. Mooks must always attack the hero one at a time; to gang up would be to destroy the principle of war.

A Mighty Man Fights Alone. Even if some common mooks disobey the rule above and attack in twos or threes occasionally, any Giant Mook present must always attack the hero one-on-one, preferably after all lesser mooks are down so that the Giant Mook can't call on them for help. A really big Giant Mook (e.g. the Cave Troll from Lord of the Rings) may attack a whole group of heroes alone, he's just that tough!

Taking cover is for cowards. A true mook must charge straight forward; victory is meaningless if it is achieved by surprise. It is acceptable to attack the hero from different directions at once, as long as each attacker reaches the hero at a different moment (thus being neither surprise nor ganging up).

Masters may overcome any terrain. As a corollary to the previous two principles, tactics must be the same in all places and times, no matter what the terrain is. A mass rush works just as well in the open field as it does in a cramped cave where only one warrior at a time can physically get to the hero.

The true warrior cares not what his enemies know. Minions must shout commands to each other where the hero can hear them, or communicate by radio when the hero can intercept. Who cares if the enemy knows all your plans? A true plan succeeds whether the enemy knows it or not.

Let the enemy know who is going to face him. Like the knights and samurai, mooks must shout out a formal challenge when the battle begins. Each group of cannon fodder has their own challenge -- it might be shouting out their names, or baring claws and roaring, or just saying "you will die!" True, the pause does let the hero sucker-punch them. But victory is hollow if the defeated foe does not know who beat them...if the foe is ever defeated, which will surely happen someday. As a result, they may sneak With Catlike Tread, but the attack is nowhere near sneaky.

Retreats are a sign of defeatism. Finally, preparing for a retreat is disgraceful. It does not matter how many of you the hero has beaten -- keep rushing. If fifteen out of sixteen orcs are down, the sixteenth orc must charge exactly like the first fifteen. Unfortunately, this principle is not as adhered to as the others -- many mooks have decided to retreat. Fortunately, they are never defeatist enough to prepare for a retreat, so they always wind up making suicide charges or panicked routs.

Strangely enough, an army of ninja -- despite being dishonorable sneaks -- will follow Mook Chivalry as if they were samurai. Due to Conservation Of Ninjitsu, a small group of ninja will behave dishonorably, and actually attack from cover, retreat, and so on, large ninja forces will be made up of Highly Visible Ninja.

See also No Sneak Attacks

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Examples:

• Pick a Hong Kong martial arts film. Any Hong Kong martial arts film.
• Similarly, pick an Arnold Schwarzenegger action film. Any one.
• The samurai and yakuza in Samurai Champloo have the same tactics -- charge! Sometimes they attack from multiple directions at once, but they never actually manage to close ranks with Mugen or Jin all at once. Mugen even tells them "Forget all that formal crap 'bout comin' at me one at a time. I'll take all you bitches on!".
• In early published adventures for Dungeons And Dragons, goblins and orcs were famous for attacking in cramped cavern passages where only one goblin could face a hero at once -- so one by one, they got killed. This has been dubbed the "Conga Line of Death."
• The bad guys in WITCH frequently ambush the Magical Girls -- and every time, they lose surprise by pausing to cackle, show their claws, shout "It's Guardians! Get them!", etc. In a rare breach of Mook Chivalry, their archers do attack all at once; fortunately for the heroines, the archers all studied at the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.
• The mooks of Power Rangers take these to extreme: they actually form a circle around the heroes and attack at rates of one to each hero present at the time (perhaps as consideration to the absent hero). Strangely enough, each mook within a series is identical, so they could really be the same group everytime.
• The ending scene of Jet Li's The One is a classic example, with mooks attacking one by one, getting knocked to the bottom of the ziggurat they're fighting on, then getting up and climbing back up without having learned a thing.
• Webcomic Subversion: In Order Of The Stick, a Death Knight orders his battalion of hobgoblins to charge to their deaths at an enemy's incredibly well defended wall so that their corpses would form an effective ramp for his horse. It worked!
• Subverted in Hyperdrive. The Shiny Red Robots of Vortis attack Sandstrom one at a time and she is easily beating them. Henderson comments about this, the robots hear it- and the crew of HMS Camden Lock get captured.
• In Kill Bill Vol. 1, when The Bride is fighting the Crazy 88. Justified, though: the build-up to the fight makes it very clear that although they outnumber her by a ridiculous degree, every single one of them (with the possible exception of Johnny Mo) is scared to "go first" and die by her blade. Those who are not currently fighting her can be seen in the background, apparently fighting each other, possibly as some sort of warm-up exercise.
  • Doesn't explain why they don't use guns though.
• Breached by the demons of Devil May Cry, who have no qualms about coordinated attacks (even the large ones), sliding offscreen while readying a ranged attack or doing so unannounced. Some specific examples: the Marionettes from the first game are known to have one paralyze Dante with a scream while another strikes, and the Arachne from the third game use the same tactic with their webbing ability. The Enigmas from the third love the retreat-and-fire tactic. In Devil May Cry 4 the Bianco Angelo and Alto Angelo enemies are not only adept at fighting in groups, but even gain new special attacks when doing so.
• Performed masterfully in Metal Gear Solid, where four invisible mooks that are on the elevator with Snake, literally close enough to reach out and touch him from the moment he steps on, must sit and wait for our hero to riddle out what's going on in an absurd fashion over the radio despite the fact that all four of them have machine guns. Conforming to the mook code even further, one of the mooks announces their presence after the hero has already figured out what's going on with a hearty, "Too late, Snake. Now you die!" Of course no, no he doesn't. This is almost a direct reference to the previous game Metal Gear 2, where four assassins announce their presense before attacking Snake in an elevator, and then only attack two at a time. How they managed to stay in business boggles the mind.
  • And used again with the mass-produced RAYs in the sequel, which only attack three at a time for no reason whatsoever.
• Parodied in the Saturday Night Live sketch "The Plucky Ninjas", where action movie ninjas (after one of their many losses at the hands of just one guy) are berated by their leader for, no matter how many time he tells them, always attacking one at a time. Their spirits lifted by his inspirational speech, they proceed to... get their asses handed to them every time anyway.
• In Naruto, the titular character regularly duplicates himself by the dozen then takes on his enemies one or two at a time. This may simply be a function of the Inverse Ninja Law, however. Of course he also has an attack that involves attack with one thousand of them at once.
• Parodied masterfully in the third Austin Powers where Nigel Powers tells Dr. Evil's henchmen:
  Look, here's how it goes: you attack me one at a time and I knock you out with one punch, okay? Go.
• Subverted in Batman Begins. The DVD commentary said that one of the hardest fight scenes to choreograph was the prison fight near the beginning because the director wanted everyone to rush Bruce at the same time, which served to show how Badass he was. Towards the end, an entire crazed mob nearly ran Batman over.
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, a Jedi named Ganner takes advantage of the Yuuzahn Vong's Mook Chivalry to stall them and buy time for Jacen. Eventually the highly honor bound Vong get fed up and try to swarm Ganner. He still holds them back.
• Averted in Fable, where multiple enemies can and will often gang up on you. However, it will be featured (intentionally) in the upcoming Fable 2, because developer Peter Molyneux says he wants the game to feel "cinematic".
• In Harpoon this troper had to deal with a bunch of A-37 Dragonfly attack aircraft that just came one after the other. Tried to drop a bomb, were declared hostile (he wasn't going to fire until he was sure) and were easy blown out of the sky by AAA. Earlier, it had been done with Su-22 "Fitter" aircraft.
  • It is not uncommon for a ship or base to be attacked by a "conga line of missiles". These are quite a bit more threatening, being harder to hit.
• Justified in A.K. Dewdney's The Planiverse, in which all battles are one-on-one...because the combatants live on a two-dimensional planet, and fighting many-on-one would require flying.
• In most Roguelike games, the most effective strategy against multiple enemies is to back up into a corridor one space wide, forcing them to fight you one at a time. Some games try to combat this by allowing enemies with ranged weapons to fire over the heads of other enemies, but that just revises the player's strategy to incorporate corners where the archers can't get a line of sight.
• The AI in many older strategy games act this way, sending units as they are created on suicidal attacks, rather than forming a solid army to attack the enemy with. This is counterattacked by the AI being a cheater, so most of them don't run out of resources this way.
• In Puzzle Quest, it's actually impossible to have a fight with more than one person, so larger encounters are usually either consecutive fights or a single fight against a slightly more powerful enemy. However, this goes both ways, your companions only provide a specific bonus against some enemies rather than fighting alongside of you, even though some of them are capable fighters on their own.
• Some minibosses in The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that are fought in pairs act like this, with the second one waiting in the background. However, the Iron Knuckles fought in the final dungeon don't follow the rule, but it's possible to lure one of them away from the other. Same applies to the similiar Darknuts in Twilight Princess, except for the Bonus Dungeon, where 3 of them wait on the final floor with no means of separating them.
  • Those three are some bad, bad mofos.
• Subverted in the Rockstar game Manhunt; the antagonist hunters, out for the protagonist's blood, will move in groups and call others over for backup upon hearing a noise or finding the corpse of a previously-slaughtered comrade. As this troper found out the hard way, the ravening whackjobs have no problem swarming and hacking you to bits with various and sundry sharp objects.
• In Gears of War, when a player or computer player is chainsawing someone, your character must patiently wait with his chainsaw revved until the animation finishes, where you can subsequently avenge your fallen ally.
• Averted by most zombies, who generally do not grasp Mook Chivalry. That's all they got going from them really, with the exception of those that happen to also be Made Of Iron.
• Partially justified in The Bourne Conspiracy. In the hand-to-hand combat segments, when you are fighting multiple mooks, when one of them tries to attack you from behind while you are preoccupied with his comrade. Bourne will hit him with a "Wait your turn" Offhand Backhand.

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