They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.
A slang term for the hordes of standard-issue, disposable bad guys whom the hero
mows down with
impunity. Strong, competent, loyal... pick any two.
Also called "baddies", "
goons," "scrubs," "
drones," "
small fry," "
flunkies," "
pawns," "toadies," "grunts," "
minions," "
lackeys," "underlings," "
henchpersons," and "
Cannon Fodder". In Japanese videogame jargon, they're known as "zako" or "small fry". The actual term "mook" presumably comes from Hong Kong Cinema, and takes its name from the
mook jong, the wooden training dummy used in Wing Chun, whose only function is to get hit (and hit
hard). In Hong Kong movie circles, they're often called "three-hit men," in reference to
how many hits it takes to put them down, though the actual number of hits varies.
It's a thankless job, to be sure, especially in
Real Life, but
somebody's gotta do it. Enter the humble mook.
Mooks play an important role, as without someone to fight on a constant basis, your action movie/show/game would have a lot less action. If every bad guy your hero runs into is a
BadAss or at least is being developed solely to be killed in the next scene, then
The Dragon or the
Big Bad would not feel as unique in comparison. Thus, mooks serve as
Filler and a backdrop to the truly climactic moments of an action franchise while also ensuring that in-between things are kept lively. In
Video Games, they may also double as a ready source of
Experience Points,
gold, and recovery items for the player.
In addition to accentuating the real villains, mooks also help establish the heroes, especially their combat skills, as their lack of
Nominal Importance allows them to be beaten, mauled, shot or otherwise
disposed of in creative ways without guilt. The hero might find it in his heart to
Save the Villain, forgive him, even
accept him into his inner circle, but the guys whose only crime is not finding a better employer
will be shown no mercy (although
exceptions apply). Next to
Punch Clock Villain, but usually more faceless, this is one of the tropes most liable to
Just Following Orders, a fact that may be pointed up in order to reduce
Moral Dissonance about their disposability.
It's rarely explained just
why they're willing to fight and die for villains who want to destroy the world, or what they get in return.
Their life expectancy is on a level with that of the average mayfly, and you have to wonder
why they took the job in the first place, especially considering their master is frequently abusing them
as much if not more than the heroes. Depending on
just who/what they are fighting for, the plausibility of this can vary.
Being
Acceptable Targets by definition, sometimes mooks serve as (
Or devolve into) outright
comic relief rather than an
actual menace by being
dimwitted,
ineffective,
a genuine danger to themselves or
just plain unlucky. Despite all this, sometimes they may
get their own moments in the spotlight and become
genuine villains in their own right.
Not to be mistaken with a certain racial slur, or the tentacled aliens from the
MOTHER series (although they themselves qualify), or the purple bird-like creature from Princess Comet (although he is also a mook in this sense).
Specific variations include:
Other related tropes:
This trope is the
Evil Counterpart of the
Redshirt Army, which are Mooks on the good side. Similar to but not to be confused with their non-combat brother
Evil Minions (likewise the
Redshirt Army with the
Red Shirt). Occasionally, it turns out they were
Good All Along. If a "character" who would otherwise qualify as a Mook is disqualified because he's apparently acting on his own, you have a
Bit Part Bad Guy.
Also Compare
Meat Puppets when biological mooks are directly controlled via
Demonic Possession,
Mind Control, or similar.
In Video Games, mooks tend to be slightly more powerful, and able to at least hurt the hero, if not kill him a few times. However, 9 times out of 10, the hero has a
Healing Factor (more often objects used to heal than spontaneous healing) while the mooks stay hurt forever. Also, while the hero can restart if he/she dies, the mooks (usually) only die once per level, and when the level is restarted, they usually do the exact same thing they did before.
If they're lucky, mooks may very occasionally get
promoted to the status of a more major villain. The heroes may also be able to
persuade them over to the good side, in which case they have performed a
Mook Face Turn. Humanizing mooks is a basic technique of
Deconstruction. In some
Video Games,
certain kinds of mooks will have a special introduction when they appear for the first time.
Armies of mooks are
not always but usually
overwhelmingly male. Typically, killing or harming even
one nameless female tends to twist an audience's sympathies differently than the effect of the same to a male. As your protagonist escapes the fortress of doom, you don't want the audience worrying about the mooks being taken out or hurt.
When supposedly elite fighters in large number are less competent together than a man alone, it's
Conservation of Ninjutsu.
Note #1: With respect to media (particularly anime), a "mook" can also refer to a Japanese publication which is a hybrid of a magazine and a book.
Note #2: It's also a mostly obsolete racial slur against Italians, so use with caution.
Example subpages:
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Card Games
- Vs. System has army characters that are generally mooks given they can get killed off quickly and lack uniqueness because you can only have 1 copy of non-Army characters like Spider-Man on the field; army characters are replaceable. Some examples are S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Doom Bots, and Sentinels. Also, army characters do not have any restriction whatsoever in deck construction whereas any other card besides anything that may be restricted is set to 4 copies.
- Magic: The Gathering has creature tokens, which are creatures who aren't even worth having their own card. By default, creature tokens' names are also their creature type, and if they leave play they simply cease to exist. They rarely have abilities, and those they do have are typically keyword abilities ("Flying," versus, "Any creature able to block this creature must do so."). They are also typically created in large numbers, either via a one shot deal creating two or more, or by a repeatable effect squeezing out one each turn. Creature tokens didn't have any sort of official representation until Magic Online needed some standardized way to represent them, and then they weren't printed in paper for years afterward.
- Each Color has their own flavor of Mooks: Green has Saprolings (it was squirrels
), Black has Zombies, Red has Goblins, White has Soldiers, while Blue has whatever is assigned as Blue creatures in the settings. Green is the biggest offender when it comes to spawning endless horde of Mooks.
- Super Munchkin has the "Wimpy Thugs", "More Wimpy Thugs" and "Still more Wimpy Thugs" monsters. "3,872 Orks" from the original game might count since they are the only monster going in hordes.
- Sentinels Of The Multiverse several of the villains have decks that summon out several mooks to fight the heroes either alongside them or for them. Examples include Citizen Dawn, Grand Warlord Voss, the Dreamer, Omnitron, and La Capitan to name a few.
Music
Newspaper Comics
- The members of the croc fraternity Zeeba Zeeba Eata from Pearls Before Swine are these, with the added twist that they kill themselves rather than others killing them.
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, the main characters get to leave their Super Hero School Whateley Academy and travel into Boston for the day... only to face The Necromancer and his homicidal Quirky Miniboss Squad, along with a couple hundred mooks who are nameless and somewhat faceless. The Necromancer has lived up to his name by animating hundreds of corpses, and Phase has to fight them in the sewers underneath Boston. Only she doesn't have a flashlight.
- Clearly the writer had just played Doom 3.
- Leading to one of the funnier but more horrific sequences. Phase is worried about getting zombie gunk over her/him, and is informed s/he's probably okay. Just... "make sure to get cremated when you die."
- "Soldier A", an AMV, is a dedication to anime mooks in particular.
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