Line #27 Mooks/Literature


1	* As with other tropes, Creator/TerryPratchett not only subverts, but smashes, immolates, and urinates on ''this'' trope with ''Literature/GuardsGuards'' and, indeed, any book that stars the Ankh Morpork City Watch. People who have read these novels often have a hard time, thereafter, accepting city guards as nothing more than a mild threat to the hero. Even Nobby and Fred, ineffective coppers in every sense of the word, manage to be more competent officers than your standard fantasy watchman. The whole matter could be because standard fantasy officers are nameless, sometimes faceless, and effectively rankless since they're going to die anyway, while the average Ankh Morpork copper usually even has a personality, much to the envy of his friends on other worlds.
2	** This may be due primarily to Pratchett's compulsive character-deepening. Originally, ''Literature/GuardsGuards'' was going to be about Carrot and told from Carrot's perspective, but Pratchett found that Vimes had way more character to him than he expected, so he wrote it from Vimes' point of view. Every character he introduces into the watch ends up with a rather definable personality, even those who seem like cheap jokes based on TheWarOnStraw. Constable Visit-The-Unbeliever-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets ends up with a fairly rounded personality even by the end of his introduction.
3	** ''Literature/GuardsGuards'' has a side-example in the genuine Mooks of the Palace Guard, who are terrified at the prospect of facing a single, unarmed, smiling foe: after all, that is statistically the most dangerous kind of enemy.
4	** In ''Literature/TheLastHero'', the Silver Horde realized with horror that when Carrot showed up on the scene, alone, to arrest them, they themselves had become the mooks.
5	** In ''Literature/SmallGods'', Urn, a junior philosopher, speculates that it'd make things easier to think of people as "gooks" during warfare.
6	* In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', the presence of hired, disposable minions is not only common, it is regularly [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by the FirstPersonSmartass that is Harry Dresden.
7	* Heavily subverted in ''Literature/TheBrightestShadow''. Characters that appear to be nameless soldiers in one character's POV are recognizable to the reader as decent people with full lives, but only met via a different character's POV.
8	* "Mercenary Song", a poem by Hungarian author Gyorgy Faludi, tells the everyday lives of mooks from their perspective. It involves the titular mercenaries proudly bragging about every single atrocity they committed, including breaking into people's houses, eating all their food, raping their wives, selling their daughter, and clubbing them to death if they don't say 'thank you', killing their own parents, cutting down all the trees, poisoning all the wells, [[ForTheEvulz just because they enjoy it]], and specifically stating that they serve whoever pays them the most, quite possibly making them even more evil than their employer. The poem ends with them growing old and senile, living as beggars for the rest of their lives, barely surviving and only [[EsotericHappyEnding thanks to the mercy and goodwill of the very same people they loved to abuse so much]].
9	* Literature/TheDraka's janissary troops are treated like expendable CannonFodder in military situations ranging from direct frontal assault to anti-partisan duty, as that is their purpose within the Domination's [[WeHaveReserves military hierarchy]]. The Draka's enemies usually only view the death of [[SuperSoldier Citizens]] as [[WhatMeasureIsAMook meaningful]].
10	** Subverted in that, unlike other examples of the trope, [[SurprisinglyEliteCannonFodder the Janissaries are actually pretty well-trained]] and can themselves pose a real threat to the heroes.
11	* ''Literature/TheGreatBrain:'' In ''Me and My Little Brain,'' Cal Roberts has half-a-dozen other outlaws in his gang, but only one of them is named or has any dialogue. They all [[spoiler:get KilledOffscreen in various separate incidents, leaving Cal - who is indifferent to their deaths - to carry on alone.]]
12	* The Godswords are this in the first ''Literature/{{Shadowleague}}'' book, before their collective HeelFaceTurn. It makes one wonder why more mooks don't switch sides.
13	* In Creator/JRRTolkien's [[Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium works]], the creatures called "Goblins" in ''Literature/TheHobbit'' and "Orcs" in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' are clearly mooks. Tolkien wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea - in his writings, Evil is generally an active choice to abandon goodness, not some kind of innate or cultural quality - but the genre he was writing in required villains to have vast armies.
14	* In the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series, a handful of Voldemort's Death Eaters are significant villains in their own right, but most are mooks with names, albeit usually just a sinister-sounding last name with no mentioned first name. In the [[Film/HarryPotter movie version]] of ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Deathly Hallows]]'', actor Peter Mullan took Yaxley, one of the background generic Death Eaters in the books, and gave him a bit of character, playing him as sort of a classy gangster type.
15	%% * The Erasers in the ''Literature/MaximumRide'' series
16	* Penelope's suitors in ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' are Bronze Age mooks.
17	* The King's Wolves in ''Literature/{{Harald}}''. They're officially 'Royal Messengers', they're actually secret police, and they're not working for [[UnwittingPawn King James]] any more.
18	* Subverted with the Urgals in ''Literature/InheritanceCycle''. Originally, they were portrayed as nothing more than [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman inhuman]] AlwaysChaoticEvil orc-like creatures...until it's revealed that they were brainwashed by magic into doing Durza the Shade's bidding. In the second book, the race does a HeelFaceTurn, and in the third, their race is [[GrowingTheBeard given some cultural development]] beyond "standard generic fantasy orc ripoffs."
19	* The Young Army in ''Literature/SeptimusHeap''.
20	* Most of the Malwan army in Literature/BelisariusSeries. After reading awhile you wonder just how this army is supposed to TakeOverTheWorld or even threaten to take over India. Especially when you consider that the ''Roman'' army is on the other side.
21	* The Corsairs of ''{{Literature/Parellity}}''.
22	* In ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'', the Wicked Witch of the West had ''three'' armies of Mooks that she sent out to deal with the heroes when she first realized they were in her domain, and the heroes dealt with them rather easily. The first was a pack of savage wolves, which the Tin Woodsman was able to slay with his axe. The second was a flock of attack crows; the Scarecrow was able to lure them to him, then grab each and break their necks. (Maybe he was better at his job than he initially had thought.) The third group was a swarm of killer bees which the heroes defeated with a rather clever idea: The Tin Woodsman took the Scarecrow's straw, and used it to cover Dorothy and the Lion, hiding them, and when the swarm descended, the Woodsman was the only one they saw. But when they attacked ''him'', they broke their stingers against his metal body and were killed. After this, the Witch sent her Winkie slaves to deal with them, who may have counted as a fourth group, but they really weren't fighters; the Lion simply scared them away with a loud roar. This forced the Witch to use the third - and last - use of a magical hat that let her command the Winged Monkeys, who might count as [[EliteMook Elite Mooks]]; they did ''not'' fail, but fortunately, the heroes survived and eventually escaped.
23	* In ''Literature/{{Frostbite}}'', Isaiah the Strigoi employed human Mooks to capture his Moroi and dhampir enemies, and keep watch over them. They mostly used guns and regular equipment to keep control of their captives.
24	%%* ''Literature/TheCloakSociety'': The Cloak Society has Unibands, who have no powers.
25	* ''Literature/TheGirlFromTheMiraclesDistrict'': The villain of the second book has a seemingly endless supply of mercenaries, vast majority of whom are little more than an annoyance to Nikita, Robin and their allies.
26	* ''Literature/{{Sandokan}}'' has various, depending on the novel. Bonus point for the Thuggee cultists in ''The Mystery of the Black Jungle'' and ''The Two Tigers'' for being the origin of the word 'thug' and actually be called thugs by the author.
27	* ''Literature/XanaduStoryverse'': In "Mermaids of Xanadu", {{superhuman traffick\|ing}}ers use a number of Tolkienian orcs as minions and disposable thugs, who are aggressive and vicious but fairly ineffective in fights against determined opponents.

Context Mooks / Literature