Basic Trope: The hero bursts in to fight the villain, and when they seem to be headed for a mano-a-mano Duel to the Death, the villain calls for his Evil Minions and a melee erupts...
- Straight: The hero faces down the villain and the villain summons his Mooks.
- Exaggerated: The villain summons a ludicrously vast army of minions, or else multiple large waves thereof.
- Downplayed: The villain brings along his second-in-command and fights two-on-one.
- Justified:
- The villain happens have guards around to summon because he is a warlord, mob boss, demonic overlord, etc. in the heart of his stronghold, and thus would have no reason not to call in backup in the event of a fight.
- Or the villain is insufficiently badass to stand up to the hero in a fight, and thus needs the minions' help to prevail.
- It also may simply be that the villain is a Combat Pragmatist and the hero puts Honour Before Reason.
- Inverted:
- The hero, not the villain, is the one calling in the underlings.
- As soon as the hero appears, the villain tries to sic his minions on him. The minions declare "Screw This, I'm Out of Here!" and leave the villain to fight the hero alone.
- Subverted: The villain summons his guards... and then orders them to not to intervene, just to either "Leave Him to Me!" or to ensure the hero does not try to escape.
- The 'minions' disintegrate after Evulz's death. It turns out they were manifestations of his powers and thus he was fighting "fairly" in the sense of matching their abilities one on one.
- Evulz summons his least effective minions and kills them off to demonstrate his power to the hero.
- Double Subverted: The villain summons his guards, ostensibly just as witnesses to the duel, but when he starts to lose the fight, he calls them in.
- Parodied:
- After the hero takes down the villain's personal guard, he calls upon a second squad... And then another one... And another one!... And another one... And ANOTHER one... AND ANOTHER ONE! ...And so on, and so forth until he runs out of competent fighters, and starts sending out the janitors, the cooks, the maids, and all the other members of the maintenance staff to fight!
- The villain laughs heartily, knowing that the hero won't get through this mass army of guards, and as he sees the hero standing alone in a room full of laid out guards, he laughs more... Before doing a Double Take, and eventually a Wild Take as the hero furiously marches towards him with murderous intent.
- Zig Zagged: There are underlings around for either side; sometimes they get summoned, sometimes they don't.
- Averted: The villain is facing down the hero but he is unable to call in his guards. Either because...
A) There might be a breakdown in communications, whereby the Mooks do not receive the order to join the fight and fail to realize that their overlord is in danger.
B) The guards may be blocked from entering the fight by some means.
C) The mooks have abandoned their abusive lord.
D) Harshest of all, the hero may have already massacred the villain's guards outright. - Enforced: The villain originally wouldn't have bothered to summon his guards (or didn't have any), but changes were demanded and implemented which resulted in the guards being called in either to heighten the tension of the battle or to make the hero seem that much more awesome.
- Lampshaded: Upon facing down the villain, the hero inquires as to whether the villain will be calling in his guards.
- Invoked: The villain not only calls in his guards, he does so verbally and makes the swerve mid-sentence.
- Exploited:
- The hero expects that the villain will bring in hordes of minions when they finally meet to do battle, and so he specializes in weapons and/or training that give him the advantage when he is grossly outnumbered — or else the hero concocts a plan to trap the minions when they are summoned and either neutralize them or turn them to his side of the battle.
- Double Exploited! The villain realizes that the hero will be ready for his horde of minions, and so he prepares himself by becoming an expert at one-on-one combat, and uses his Mooks merely to prevent the hero from escaping the fight.
- Triple Exploited! The hero, realizing that he has specialized in fighting against a group and realizing that the villain has probably prepared to fight him personally as well, prepares a backup plan of his own in order to turn the fight against the villain. This may include the ability to switch gears for better one-on-one combat, or else the use of heroic allies in order to gang up on the villain in the fight.
- Defied: The villain remarks that he could summon his guards if he wanted to, but chooses to fight the hero one-on-one anyways. Unless the villain is sufficiently badass, this may overlap with Genre Blindness or Suicidal Overconfidence.
- Discussed: The hero and villain banter back and forth as to whether the villain will call in his guards, and the situations that may arise in either case. May involve head games by one or both parties.
- Conversed: Multiple characters are watching a movie or show or playing a video game, and one of them calls when the villain is about to summon his Evil Minions — either through having already seen the sequence or just predicting it out of luck and genre-savviness.
- Deconstructed: The guards provide the additional advantage needed to defeat the hero through sheer numbers. And since the villain decided to bring a small army of mooks into the fight, the hero's friends decide that since he can do that, they can jump in as well.
- Reconstructed: The villain sends in the others to take down the hero's friends.
- Played For Laughs: The villain brings in his Mooks, but the fight turns into a debacle because of their comically inept attempts to bring down the hero.
- Played For Drama: The hero has enough left in himself to take down the villain. With the additional guards, though, he's not so certain he can win.
Come, you will face me in the main page. Just You and Me and My GUARDS!
