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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.
Now, now, boys. No pushing, no shoving —single file is the polite way to attack the hero.
Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. Oh, put the guns down. Is this the first day on the job or something? Look, this is how it goes, you attack me, one at a time, and I knock you out with a single punch. Okay? Go.
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! And if The Dragon or the Big Bad joins the fight, any remaining mooks must simply stand by and watch. Forming a circle around the fight is encouraged.
- 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 (Not that any true mook would ever get involved in a mass rush, see above).
- 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 Ninjutsu, 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. If it suddenly comes into play with a pack of enemies who previously were winning because they attacked together, see also Lowered Monster Difficulty.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- 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 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.
- Subverted with Killer Bee much later, when Sasuke and his teammates attack him simultaneously. Not that it helps them.
- Lampshaded in the Vagabond manga's two-volume fight between Miyamoto Musashi and the Yoshioka school, where he intends to get this trope ("instead of seventy against one, it should be one against one, seventy times"), while the leadership of the Yoshioka try to avert it (Ueda Ryohei, Fujiie, and Nanpo Yoichibe all having lines specifically encouraging mobbing). As a whole though the Yoshioka are not able to follow through due to a mix of Musashi's sheer skill (he usually manages to avoid getting mobbed by mentally "flowing" between enemies), physical advantage (his strength and physical toughness protecting him from being incapacitated by the few hits that manage to sneak through), and their own mentality being too used to this.
- Both played straight and subverted in End of Evangelion. The mass-produced EVA units seem to mostly just stand around while Unit 02 goes ripping through them. However, when it runs out of batteries and they all recover from their injuries, then they decide to decend on it like vultures and stab the remains.
- Averted in Berserk, where mooks usually attack Guts in groups of four or five at a time. For all the good it does them.
- Played straight in that they always, always use direct melee attack instead of anything that could attack him while out of range of his BFS.
Comic Books
- In IdentityCrisis, the heroes suffer from Mook Chivalry while fighting Deathstroke. They all attack him one at a time. Even then, it took a huge amount of Handwaveing to justify him lasting as long as he did against the group of heroes he was up against.
Film
Literature
- 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 up until he's just shot with a giant cannon.
- 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.
- Lampshaded by the dedication to the Discworld novel Guards! Guards!.
Live Action TV
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Mocked in this
 clip of Darth Vader vs. Japanese policemen.
Real Life
- As far as "attacking one at a time", this is actually much less ridiculous than it sounds. There are only so many assailants who can gang up on one man before they begin getting in each others' way or even accidentally hitting one other. With a little training, a single unarmed man can learn the tricks and techniques to handling multiple unarmed attackers quite effectively, though rule number one in that kind of situation is still going to be "get out of there ASAP" if possible. The real danger when facing multiple attackers is that they can "rotate out" and remain fresh, while the single defender becomes quickly exhausted and is subsequently overwhelmed.
- A good historical example for why the "attack one at a time" part of this trope is at least somewhat realistic involves a story told about the men who assassinated Julius Caesar- according to some accounts, they crowded around him so tightly that they began accidentally stabbing one another.
- Arguably seen in history as the events of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Sixth battles of Thermopylae, if only because the narrow pass limited the number of troops that could physically attack at any given time. You could apply overcoming terrain (see said mountain pass and the First and Fourth battles) and no-defeatist-retreats to the area; First Thermopylae arguably defined that trope in its entirety while Fourth Thermopylae showed why you don't retreat. Sometimes Mook Chivalry has its historical backgrounds...
- The unnamed Viking at Stamford Bridge tried something similar. He managed to mow down forty soldiers before they got him, because they had to fight one at a time. Bravo to the last few men he killed. They probably had to climb over their buddies to get to him.
- A legend tells of the Saxons getting rid of him in a particularly unpleasant way. A particularly wily Saxon grabbed a barrel, floated underneath the berserker, took a pike and... well, you can guess.
- Speaking of Bridges: Horatius at the Bridge. "In yon strait path, a thousand may well be stopped by three; / Now, who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?"
- The Society for Creative Anachronism refers to this as "Conan syndrome", and for good reason.
Tabletop Games
- 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."
Video Games
- The 21st-century Ace Combat games (04, 5, Zero, X, and 6) seem to avert this; this troper has been chased by an entire five-plane group at once in 04.
- Hasn't everyone? ;)
- Perhaps AC 6 is a better example. It's not uncommon to have to dodge three or four missiles for every plane you down. Then there's the Pasternak fight...
- "Engage as a formation. No single-ship attacks." That's Yellow 13's one-finger salute to this trope, and even that doesn't save him in the end.
- 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.
- Although in Devil May Cry 4 the mooks won't attack as aggressively if they're off screen, which this troper feels is a bit of a cop out solution to the ever present but partially solved bad camera problem. Devil May Cry enemies may have been weak in comparison to the player character, but they sure as hell didn't hold back no matter the situation.
- 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 presence 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.
- Looked to this troper like there was only room in the fighting area for three of them at once, which does by itself avert the one-on-one aspect of the trope.
- Averted in Fable, where multiple enemies can and will often gang up on you. However, it will be featured (intentionally) in 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.
- 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.
- Guess what? If you go through the bonus dungeon a second time, there's four.
- And the fourth one hides beneath the platform you jump in from, nonetheless! How's that for no ambushes?
- Well it makes sense with the Stalfos minibosses since they are undead knights and if this weren't the case it'd be very difficult to deal with them.
- 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.
- Partially justified in the game of 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.
- Completely averted by The Mana Series (Seiken Densetsu III in particular) where, every chance they get, mooks will gang up on you, jump out from the shadows, and wade in with both barrels blazing.
- God Hand's Mooks follow this... but only at Level 1 of its Dynamic Difficulty curve. At Level 2 or higher, they can and will attack you even if they're not on-camera. At the highest difficulty level, Level DIE, they will gleefully attack you from the other side of the fighting arena without warning.
- Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja and its sequel spit on this trope. Actually, most old-school-styled Roguelikes do. If you don't head off to a tunnel or there are none available, expect three or more enemies on you at once, all attacking you at once.
- In Assassins Creed this trope is taken to the extreme except for not running away. when in a swordfight with enemies, they will literally circle around you and attack one at a time, also waiting between 5 and 10 seconds before each attack, thus allowing for easily timed counters. Something to point out, while they do shout their orders to each other, they will, fortunately for them, shout them in different languages.
- They may, however, flee in terror if you've slaughtered the rest of their group.
- This troper begs to differ. Sometimes 2 templar-level enemies may stab you back and forth like a pinball.
- In the game Luminous Arc 2, even when the enemies outnumber you, they seem to perfer to rush you in waves - some of the mooks (and almost always the boss untis) in the back will not even advance to attack you until either you've killed a number of mook units, or if you step in their attack range. This allows you to simply stay where you are and pick off the enemy with ease.
- Throughly ignored in Ninja Gaiden/Ninja Gaiden Black/Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Ninja Gaiden (Sigma) II, as the enemies have no qualms in leaping at you when you are comboing one of their teammates. An exceptional example are the Black Spider Ninjas, who always come in packs, carry an infinite supply of explosive shurikens each, and are happy to throw said explosive shurikens into your back, from off-camera, while you are attacking another ninja and cannot block.
- Somewhat averted in Final Fantasy XII, here the combat system works not on the usual RPG 'random encounter' system but with all enemies physically present in the area with your heroes. Because of this the enemies will often team up or ambush your heroes.
- Averted slightly in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, in which if any of your party goes near a group of mooks, they'll all go and attack you. Even if you retreat, all the mooks will follow, continually attacking until either (a) everyone within their range is dead, (b) they're dead, or (c) you manage to escape. Oh, and often if you stray into the range of some other mooks, they'll join the battle too. Due to the fact that your Espers have the occasional fault of going after an enemy if they've just defeated one and there are none near them, this happens a bit more than you would think.
- Gothic 3. Oh God, Gothic 3. The most blatant, shameless example of this trope this Troper has ever seen. Much of the gameplay involves liberating cities from whichever faction (orcs or humans) you side against. While you likely have a few AI allies, you'll do much of the fighting on your own. Cue the Nameless Hero being surrounded by twenty orcs... who form a neat circle and keep their distance while engaging him one at a time. Could also be considered a Subverted Trope, however, considering that falling for this tends to lead to you being peppered with arrows and quickly killed.
- In Jade Empire, the mooks try to gang up on you... but the AI is really, really bad at it, so you might as well be fighting only one enemy at a time.
- Much like in Assassins Creed, this is intentional, not a case of bad AI. Mooks will surround you in threatening ways, but they'll hold back and delay their attacks so you're almost never fighting more than one mook at a time. This is most noticeable when the enemies who have long range attacks are obviously holding back when you're in melee. Combat in Jade Empire is practically a homage to Hong Kong action movies, so this is fitting (if a little less spectacular than it could have been).
- In Quest For Glory 1 and 2 you encounter this. In QFG 1, if you wander into the goblin camp, first one will attack you, the next time you wander in, 2 will attack you, and so on, and so on. They all stand in line maces at the ready until the goblin currently fighting you dies. The brigands at the end of the game also do this if you rush front the gate rather than sneaking in. In QFG 2, you encounter Jackalmen and bandits in the desert as random encounters, in groups of 2-5 which also fight in this style.
- Averted in Streets Of Rage games. Not only will enemies attack you en-masse, some basically live to sneakily attack you while you are engaged elsewhere. (Watch out for signals... sneaky bastards.) The only point of mook chivalry adhered to is the "do not retreat" adage. Even during boss fights, smaller enemies will continue to join in the fun from the sides. (This gets particularly jarring when you take down three enemies in one attack only to have their fourth buddy hit you with some incredibly cheap attack while you're recovering.)
- Also averted in Golden Axe games in much the same way. Just try fighting the final boss while getting nailed in the back by skeletons.
- The Swordplay Showdown mode of Wii Sports Resort keeps this in effect. Although it's possible for you to hit multiple opposing Miis at once with a single swing of your sword, you stay locked on to one of them at a time, and whichever one you're locked onto is the only one that attacks you. However, the boss Mii(s) at the end of each level comes in with a few more mooks, rather than appearing alone.
- Batman Arkham Asylum averts this in a pleasingly intelligent manner. While Mooks are very happy to gang up on you and pile in as a crowd, at the start of a fight they'll hang back and try their hardest not to be the first into the fray. Once their buddy jumps in, THEN they start on you.
- Sometimes a goon will try to suckerpunch you while you're occupied with another goon as well.
- The enemies in Star Fox Adventures do the traditional "circle the hero, then attack one at a time" deal.
- Dynasty Warriors 6 has an interesting subversion. Occasionally, when attacking an officer, a duel will initiate where the cannon fodder will circle around the combatants. The subversion occurs in that enemy mooks will attempt to knock you back into the dueling ring should you try to escape through them (and can cause quite a bit of damage in the process).
- While enemies generally do attack in groups in World Of Warcraft, they attack in much smaller groups than they should do. At times this can be explained by them all having No Peripheral Vision and terrible eyesight so they fail to notice you slaughtering all their comrades. But on others they definitely know you're there, and are just not attacking to be sporting. At least one instance has the boss greet you when you enter the room,clearly demonstrating that everyone knows you're there. Then you kill your way through the room one group at a time while he waits patiently for you to finish, recover all your health and Mana, and attack him.
- City Of Heroes averts this, as mooks, Elite Mooks, and Giant Mooks will happily surround you or shoot from afar. Tankers and Brutes get the Taunt ability that deals no damage but reduces enemy range to force them into melee. The Invincibility power makes you harder to hit when you get surrounded, possibly emulating the Real Life problem of too many attackers interfering with each other.
- Other powers convince enemies to stay in melee range where your variety of front-liner can mow them down.
- Averted in The Godfather. Want to punch out an enemy mobster? Well, better hope he has no allies around, for they'll join in either by helping to punch you or by shooting you from afar.
Webcomics
- In the world of Irritability, not only do monsters never retreat thanks to monster honor, but it's culturally insensitive to even ask them to no matter how doomed they are.
- 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!
Western Animation
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