History Main / MookMobile

* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' has plenty of mook mobiles and mechas in all of its incarnations.

** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeed Gundam Wing]]'' starts off in a similar vein, though better mobile suits are introduced as the series goes on. The Leo, defenseless against the Gundams at the start of the show are defenseless against all other mobile suits at the end, although they still got used. Note that with most of these, they ''were'' state of the art and the most advanced weapons around when they were invented, but then somebody had to go and invent Gundams. The Ball and Moebius mobile armor is considered weak and expendable compared to the above mentioned Zaku and GINN, respectively.
** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans'' has the Graze, Gjallarhorn's standard mobile suit. It's not especially powerful, but its design makes it easy to mass produce and effective when deployed in [[ZergRush large numbers]].

* Early villain groups in ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' typically made use of these. Usually they'd be sent out to attack the Sentai team whenever they brought forth their HumongousMecha.
** The Black Cross Army in ''Series/HimitsuSentaiGoranger'' had one of the more unique mook mobiles in the Condolers, which were essentially hang gliders fitted with machine guns.
** Zangyack Battleships in ''Series/KaizokuSentaiGokaiger''. They're technically battleships rather than fighters, but are expendable enough that the Gokaigers can chop through them by the dozen with little effect.

** ''MookMobile/SuperSentai'' has its own page.

** ''Film/CaptainMarvel'': The Kree fighters have all the problems of prior MCU fighters, but the film also introduces what seem to be [[https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Accuser_Warship the main warships of the Kree]]. They're completely unarmed outside of eight large missiles per ship which are too fragile and slow to use as anything other than orbital bombardment weapons, and their armor is penetrable by autocannon fire (though so was the Dark Aster's in the first GOTG film, so this is hardly surprising). Their sole defense is deploying some of the aforementioned terrible fighters. At the end of the movie the titular hero literally just flies through them without slowing down.

** First off are the ''Stinger'' and ''Wasp'' Battlemechs, which are nearly identical to each other: both are 20 tons, both move at about the same speed, and they have roughly the same armament- a single medium laser and something else (usually a couple of anti-personnel weapons like machine guns or small lasers) in most configurations. Because they're at the very bottom of the mech weight category, they're also poorly armored. Thus whenever they get into a fight with pretty much any other mech they have a tendency to die. They're usually used in groups. The slightly larger ''Spider'' has a similar reputation, being noted for high manoueverability but poor armour even for its weight class and arguably even worse armament than the previous examples: Two medium lasers, which is still barely enough to inflict worthwhile damage on anything bigger than itself, and no support weaponry that could at least be useful in UrbanWarfare.

** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamTheWitchFromMercury'' has the suits produced by Burion, particularly the Demi series. The main one seen in the series is the Demi Trainer, which is meant to be a cheap, mass-produced affair retrofitted for use as a "training" suit: that is to say, it's given to military academies like the one in the series so that their students can have something to pilot. The Demi Garrison, the version fitted for actual combat, is used for security and police action, and has a pretty poor combat record in that role. One of the main characters, Chuchu, spends most of the series in a visibly outdated AceCustom of a Demi Trainer, and is shown to be ''horribly'' outmatched in battle with more militarized hardware despite being a very good pilot. That said, the Demi Barding, currently only in the prototype stage, is shown to be far more up to snuff.

* The Brocken military mechs in ''Franchise/{{Patlabor}}'', hired as security forces for various unscrupulous corporations and usually destroyed en masse by the good guys. They're really no better or worse than any of the other mechs in the setting besides the cutting-edge Ingrams the heroes use, though. It wasn't always this way: in the original manga and the first OAV, the Brocken is a nearly unstoppable top-of-the-line military machine that can take on the entire SVU with just one unit. In the TV series, however, ConservationOfNinjitsu sets in, and they're stuck playing backup dancer to ridiculous, gimmicky borderline-{{Super Robot|Genre}}s like the Phantom. To their credit, they still vastly outperform any civilian Labors and always manage to inflict impressive levels of damage on the Ingrams before finally being brought down.

* The Brocken military mechs in ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'', hired as security forces for various unscrupulous corporations and usually destroyed en masse by the good guys. They're really no better or worse than any of the other mechs in the setting besides the cutting-edge Ingrams the heroes use, though. It wasn't always this way: in the original manga and the first OAV, the Brocken was a nearly unstoppable top of the line military machine that could take on the entire SVU with just one unit. In the TV series, however, ConservationOfNinjitsu set in and they were stuck playing backup dancer to ridiculous, gimmicky borderline-{{Super Robot}}s like the Phantom. To their credit, they still vastly outperformed any civilian Labors and always managed to inflict impressive levels of damage on the Ingrams before finally being brought down.

* Subverted with ''Anime/ArmoredTrooperVotoms''. The {{Mook Mobile}}s are the only units there are. The Scopedog is the most common, and the unit of choice for the protagonist but other factions have their own mass produced AT. None are really better than the others. Even the SuperPrototype units are simply Scopedogs with increased handling and special weapons.

** ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy2014'': The Necrocraft fighters used by Ronan's forces. Equipped with a single weak plasma gun (similar to the Chitauri aircraft) and nothing else, to the point that Ronan sees it as completely viable to have them kamikaze themselves into the ground to get more use out of them (note that, even when they launch their entire mass at the ground and explode, the effects are anemic -- civilians a few meters from the impact site are unaffected, when even a bog standard 155mm artillery shell would kill everyone in that distance). They're also quite fragile, with no shields and paper armor, easily pierced by small arms and torn apart by two mining pods ramming into them. The Ravager ships and Nova Corps fighters easily plow down through them, and it's only through sheer number they have any advantage. One of them also [[MadeOfExplodium explodes]] from falling [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=d5Gz7MeSbF4&feature=emb_title two meters]]. The Nova Corps and Ravager craft themselves are also rather bad, being no faster than the Necrocraft and nearly as fragile, but at least the latter have ''some'' armor and carry a few [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter autocannons]].

** Perhaps the UrExample is the above-mentioned TIE Fighter. Supposedly one of the "symbols of the Empire", the TIE Fighter is really only seen being successful during [[Film/ANewHope the first (er, fourth?) movie]], during the famous Death Star trench run. Other than that, it exists solely to inflate Rogue Squadron's kill count. Two simple lasers, no shields, no air, and leaving the pilot completely screwed in the face of real competition, the TIE Fighter is always seen in pushover swarms -- the best you can say about it is that it's more maneuverable and faster in space than an X-Wing. The disparity was largely based on the Japanese Zero vs the American [=F4F=] and [=F6Fs=] which were less maneuverable but much better armored such that their pilot were more likely to survive repeated combat. Ironically, it's implied that it's based on the design of the Eta-2 Actis, a starfighter mostly used by Jedi and with similar characteristics (no armament aside from basic lasers, no shielding, minimal armor and sensors, high maneuverability and speed). As it turned out, the characteristics that made the TIE fighter so notoriously weak were the same ones that made the Actis successful; it being a FragileSpeedster didn't matter when its pilots were precognitive and could simply dodge everything.

** ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'': The Chitauri's only vehicles, besides the living flying snakes (which are unarmed transports), are small flying speeder craft referred to as "space chariots" by the art book. They're quite slow (around as fast as World War I era biplanes), totally unarmored, open-topped, and armed only with a single semi-automatic PlasmaCannon GrenadeLauncher on the nose. The Avengers waste them en masse. They're also MadeOfExplodium, as Hawkeye blows up a group of them just by spraying them with a GAU-17/A 7.62mm minigun. In fact, even in his lightly armed transport VTOL, Hawkeye is blasting them out of the sky with ease and only has trouble when [[BigBad Loki]] personally intervenes. Even after his VTOL gets wrecked, he proceeds to destroy several of them with [[RockBeatsLaser a bow and arrow.]]

Will usually be the opposite of a CoolShip. When one of these puts up a decent performance, it's probably because [[AcePilot someone with actual decent piloting skill]] [[MauveShirt is behind the wheel]], or perhaps the InverseNinjaLaw is in effect.

Will usually be the opposite of a CoolShip. When one these puts up a decent performance, it's probably because [[AcePilot someone with actually decent piloting skill]] [[MauveShirt is behind the wheel]], or perhaps the InverseNinjaLaw is in effect.

** ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'': The Necrocraft fighters used by Ronan's forces. Equipped with a single weak plasma gun (similar to the Chitauri aircraft) and nothing else, to the point that Ronan sees it as completely viable to have them kamikaze themselves into the ground to get more use out of them (note that, even when they launch their entire mass at the ground and explode, the effects are anemic -- civilians a few meters from the impact site are unaffected, when even a bog standard 155mm artillery shell would kill everyone in that distance). They're also quite fragile, with no shields and paper armor, easily pierced by small arms and torn apart by two mining pods ramming into them. The Ravager ships and Nova Corps fighters easily plow down through them, and it's only through sheer number they have any advantage. One of them also [[MadeOfExplodium explodes]] from falling [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=d5Gz7MeSbF4&feature=emb_title two meters]]. The Nova Corps and Ravager craft themselves are also rather bad, being no faster than the Necrocraft and nearly as fragile, but at least the latter have ''some'' armor and carry a few [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter autocannons]].

* The Space Pirate [=APCs=] in ''Videogame/{{Metroid}}'' are more durable and maneuverable than the pirates they carry, but Samus can still shoot them down on foot even without most of her suit's [[BagOfSpilling capabilities]] and the only real distinction between their weapons versus those the pirates carry themselves is a somewhat higher rate of fire. The Pirate Skiffs are ''pure'' mook mobiles, serving only to move pirates faster and having ''no'' protection.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* The ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' games have a few iconic bot's of their own, in addition to many of the anime examples listed above. Most notably the [[http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091120235207/superrobotwars/images/7/7a/Gespenst.gif Gespenst]] series. Mind you, in these games even a regular grunt unit can be pretty badass in the right hands. Watch [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWBTwDa4Wy4 here]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB4SP1sqU7g here]] as [[BadassNormal Major Kai]] demonstrates why you don't need no fancy AceCustom to kick ass. The closest to the trope is probably the DC built Lions. While actually packing a decent edge when first deployed (they all have Tesla Drives which allow atmospheric flight, something the Gespenst standard variation lacks) they are only vaguely human shaped, more like fighter jets with stumpy limbs, and have only one gun and a few missiles, with light armor leaving them much easier to destroy than the EFA Gespenst's. As a result while initially threatening in large numbers they die in droves, with only extremely skilled aces managing to keep themselves alive, let alone do damage, all of whom are very quickly given better machines to make better use of their skills. Still due to their cheap and easy production every side and rebel faction has some, and they continue to appear in every game, though any pilot worth their salt would quickly pick something better.

** The Zaku in in the original ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', the GINN in ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeed Gundam SEED]]'' and really just about any mobile suit that isn't a Gundam in the first season of ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam00 Gundam 00]]''. The name "Zaku" is also derived from the Japanese term "[[MeaningfulName Zako]]" [[note]]雑魚, literally "inferior fish"[[/note]], in which the term means "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin expendable grunts]]".
** The Federation's mass-produced mobile suit, the GM. In the same way that Zakus exist to get blown up by Gundams, [=GMs=] exist to get blown up by every other Zeon mobile weapon.
** The Federation's ''other'' mass-produced mobile suit, the Ball, doesn't even have the grace to be humanoid or even [[HumongousMecha humongous]]. It's just a sphere with two arms and a mounted gun, and performs about as well as you'd expect. The only reason it doesn't get blown up in comparable numbers is that it mostly stops appearing after the original series.

* The Grappal from ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann''. {{Mauve Shirt}}s Gimmy and Darry try their best to fight with them, but they can never live up to real Ganmen. Also a bit unusual in that they're hero Mook Mobiles. Of course, the Gunmen not operated by humans or Beastmen Generals quickly went from MonsterOfTheWeek to Mook Mobiles.