Basic Trope: A villain runs out of mooks.
- Straight: Evulz starts with an army of thousands of people, but by the end, he has only a dozen men left.
- Exaggerated: Evulz had an army spanning several galaxies, but now he has a single subordinate left, and it is not The Dragon or anyone else high ranking, it is The Goomba.
- Downplayed:
- A single, but very valuable mook is killed off, disrupting Evulz's plot.
- Evulz starts with twelve subordinates but is left with four at the end.
- Justified: Emperor Evulz is a Bad Boss who treats his mooks as expendable, leading many to desert or die from his risky tactics.
- Inverted: Evulz has a mook surplus and has to deal with equipment shortages and the high cost of paying them, but cannot risk firing them, otherwise they will rampage and loot his lands.
- Subverted: Evulz clones the dead mooks, restoring the army.
- Double Subverted: The clones die before they could fight due to Clone Degeneration.
- Parodied: The one mook left is an unnamed janitor, who is played up as a dramatic Pre-Final Boss.
- Zig-Zagged: The number of mooks changes depending on the episode.
- Averted: The number of mooks stays constant.
- Enforced: The extras playing the mooks have left the show.
- Lampshaded: "Not so strong now without your army?"
- Invoked: The heroes destroy Evulz's Mecha-Mook factories.
- Exploited: Evulz's Army being depleted allows his National Guard to get more power and dominate the Decadent Court.
- Defied: Evulz is A Father to His Men, never treating his mooks as expendable.
- Discussed: "No army is unlimited, after all."
- Conversed: "I see the writers are showing the consequences of Evulz's bad treatment of mooks."
- Implied: A Million Mook March scene is reused several times, but it is shorter every time it plays, with the Grand Finale not having it at all.
Back to Mook Depletion.
