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Mecha-Mooks
Not squishy anywhere.
"If you are looking for an unstoppable army of killing machines unhampered by such weaknesses as mercy and compassion, robot warriors are for you."
— Neil Zawacki,
In many American cartoon series, the extraordinary violence is blunted by having the
(or ) be, in fact, robots. This allows the protagonists to , in a manner .
In many of these shows, a common sequence has the heroes fighting the mooks , until one of them hits one a little too hard,
it to be a robot. At which point, things ,
, as the heroes .
Mecha-Mooks are . In extreme cases the heroes will demolish them with their fists. Mecha-Mooks go to the , since it would be awkward if the heroes had their brainstems
. Expect them to be programmed to march in eerie unison using
(and in a pinch ).
Two governing rules of Mecha-Mooks seem to be:
1) Upon being defeated, . Usually into a fireball, leaving nothing behind but a few patches of burning earth. This will usually happen no matter how they were defeated, even if it was something like
their power source.
2) Said explosions never produce shrapnel. A hero can be five feet from a Mecha Mook, blow him up, and somehow not be cut to pieces by the flying shards of metal.
is particularly guilty of this, with mooks constantly exploding in Jack's face.
This often is a form of
when the series is based on an earlier source which was more realistically violent, but showing that would invoke the ire of . When you've got an action-based children's show where , expect Mecha-Mooks to pick up the slack. After all, they're . Should they not explode, then at the least you will see . On a related note, if they should be
or reprogrammed their
will have a .
, has a second, more
series' will usually have at least one class of
that basically acts as
for the bad guy's army. This mech is usually simply constructed, probably with a basic ranged weapon ( or
or two, a close-combat weapon, and may have the option of carrying a , depending on how much tougher the hero's armor is. These will act just like regular Mooks or Mecha-Mooks, depending on how much the writers want you to empathize with the enemy. There's usually a very good chance that the Hero's Rival will at least start out by riding in an
version of this mecha.
usually serve a similar role on the heroes' side, and said grunt will often be the only thing they can reasonably threaten.
If one wants something a bit more up the ladder in terms of "kill-tasticness" and "", look at . If you want the guy building the mooks, that's the . Contrast with , the vegetative alternative.
&&&&open/close all folders&
&&&&Anime & Manga&
Black Shadow uses them in the
Anime. You
in the anime based F-zero climax.
Field protected Gadget Drones in . There are four types of them. The Type I Gadgets are the
among the , the Type II Gadgets are the , the Type III Gadgets are the , and the
also had her own small army of Mecha-Mooks protecting the Garden of Time in .
has the Tanaka-sans and the
and all the other robots that made up 's Martian Robot Army in the Mahora Festival .
The Jovians employ millions of the suckers in , ranging from drone scouts to automated , to the point where . There are several reasons for this, including some justified
and how the
works, but mostly it allows the ship's mostly civilian crew to
indiscriminately,
and allow for drama when actual human enemies appear.
Pretty frequent the
universe. Most of the
were , but several of them were
such like the Gamia sisters, Erika, Lorelei or the Robot posed like Kouji.
was subverted: When Kouji killed the Gamia, they were so human-looking he felt sickened and disturbed. And he felt sad when some of they died. Also, they were or were not
depending on the robot E Kouji robot did, though.
makes this a major plot point with the introduction of Mobile Dolls, mecha controlled by an AI program rather than a human pilot. Its introduction widens the pre-existing ideological fissure within OZ, between
who hate them for dehumanizing war, and , which results in an outright civil war between the supporters of Treize (who is the former) and Duke Dermail (the latter).
A subversion of this trope are the Pacifistas in
as they are cyborgs modified to be human weapons by the evil World Government, and they are anything but as it took the Straw Hats everything they had to beat just one of them pre-timeskip.
There's also
Z's Shiro Kumas in , who seem to be .
The Grimoire units from the
The multitude of (live) enemy troopers who would get mowed down in most episodes of
in some of its various US incarnations (e.g., Battle of the Planets).
was infamous for, as an American adaption of anime, having enemy soldiers who were killed described as "robots".
A subversion is featured in . The creepy white -wielding Shapes appear to be Mecha-Mooks, but are in fact humans who have (voluntarily or otherwise) undergone full-body Texhnolyzation. Their heads, concealed beneath , as well as the rest of their organs, stuffed in a green cone in their chest, are all that remains of their original bodies.
The Bugmechs from the
The American release of the Vehicle Team
had just about every enemy unit, and most friendly units, as robots. The number of "robot attack ships" and "android stormtroopeers" was staggering. This was done to follow the "nobody can die in cartoons" standard against animated violence on TV at the time.
In , the obots were designed to clean up trash and other menial purposes (although the trash itself is used for darker purposes in Dr. Faker's ). However, when the heroes launch their attack on Heartland Tower before the
of season one, Mr. Heartland manages to use them as an army of disposable soldiers, much like any other example of this Trope. (Note that at least one obot, Obomi, is at least partially sentient, becoming Yuma's friend and
in one episode.)
Numerous small Zoids, such as the Molga, Godos, Zabat, Scissor Storm and Laser Storm. The most infamous, however, would have to be the Rev Raptor. While the aforementioned Zoids were depicted as being reasonably formidable in their introductory episodes, the Rev Raptor is completely pathetic right from its introduction and is *never* given an opportunity to shine, except for in one episode where Van pilots one... and uses it to destroy other Rev Raptors before getting quickly shot down himself.
Subverted and ultimately ignored in Zoids Genesis. The Digald empire uses legions of mass-produced Zoids piloted by robots. However,
it is revealed that the robots are powered by human souls. Unfortuntely, this revelation is never explored and appears to be completely forgotten within a few episodes, used only as a cheap plot device for a Heel Face Turn for the rival.
Rev Raptors get so ripped to shreds in
that they're mostly relegated to .
: Out of the
army's entire supply of , the Promaxis -a centaur-like robot armed with a spear, a shield and a - is the most common one.
&&&&Card Games&
The Myr from the Mirrodin block. They're essentially a
of Mecha-Mooks with a
community.
There's also the terrifying Phyrexians, who are
who want to assimilate everyone.
: The aptly-named Meklord Army monsters from Extreme Victory are these for the Meklords, with the Meklord Emperors being, obviously, .
In , Andromedans are mentioned to use robots for boarding actions.
&&&&Comic Books&
Through the law of , The OMACs from Countdown To
pretty quickly
Doctor Doom's Doombots — both the
Doombots, and the more straightforward purple-and-gray Mecha-Mook Doombots. Oddly, the two designs rarely appear together in a story.
Electric Warrior has a
Mecha-Mook as the main character.
Codified in an issue of , when Mimic reflects that superheroes really, really love fighting robots for the sheer pleasure of unfettered destruction.
In , Baron has several, including one he changes into a
in Toymaker's dream sequence in issue 3. In issue 5, the Toymaker combines this trope with
to storm Baron's compound.
One of Lex Luthor's plans to take over the United States relied upon him unleashing a horde of GI Robots that were technically property of the US army. Since
was apparently dealing with Brainiac that week,
ended up taking out all except one — that Bats had reprogrammed with the Geneva Convention. Really.
uses incredibly tough mecha mooks called Sentries
In , the Shock Troopers are intelligent and evil robots.
The robotic aliens who hunt the title character in .
has both Robotnik's Badnik, Troopers and Metallixs.
A major plot point in
from about 2007 onwards is the introduction of robot soldiers by both sides in the war. It began with the Allies deploying Hammersteins in Wales, which were so effective that the Volgans had to develop their own robots, the depraved Blackbloods, to compensate. These robots invert the normal rules of mecha-mooks by being much stronger and tougher than human soldiers, what with being made of metal and all.
villain Armada is a
who likes to build little flying robots to attack enemies with. The interesting thing is that he cares about their welfare, and will
when they inevitably start getting destroyed. Because they can't talk and look like little toys, it's never clear to the reader whether they actually are sentient or if they're
and Armada is .
is one of the few good guys to keep a contingent of Mecha-Mooks, the Superman Robots in the Fortress of Solitude. In the Silver Age, he mainly used them as
to preserve his secret identity, and occasionally to pinch hit for him when he'd been incapacitated by Kryptonite or some such. A
on the bunch of them in , but they were reintroduced in the
and occasionally appear in the present day.
Spoofed in , where Timmy Turbo realizes that "We can be as violent as we like with these teachers, because they're just robots!"
aren't really made for combat, but he's used them to help defend the Baxter Building upon occasion.
Featured in the two stories involving
in . He, other mercenaries from his world and the factions they're usually involved with use them exclusively because, in Neopard's own words, "Who's stupid enough to make war in person?"
&&&&Fan Works&
The mechanical soldiers (that are controlled by an AI mainframe) that were being built by the
fanfic The Council Era qualify, as well as , as their programming is comparable to a veteran soldier in terms of skill.
The Trashtors from .
in Hottie 4: Even Better Sequel.
&&&&Films — Animation&
: the mooks look exactly human, but once they're defeated, Zeleony . Inside the mooks are full of springs and gears, as if they were clockwork-powered.
Subverted in the feature-length anime
— what appear at first to be combat robots deployed by the O'Hara Foundation turn out, to the horror of the Foundation's 13-year-old heiress, to be men in .
Lord Business's minions in .
&&&&Films — Live-Action&
: Manufactured by Armadyne, these security bots take care of neutralizing any and all threats that arrive down on Earth and in Elysium. Max holds a grudge against these security robots, especially since they end up breaking his left arm when he was resisting their attempts to find out what was in the bag he was carrying.
The Golden Army in . Clockwork Mecha-Mooks that put themselves back together upon being destroyed.
would have become this, once the initial prototype hit mass production. Scolex imagines using them as "shock- hitmen," but Kramer chimes in with "international rescue workers and teachers." Amazingly, the idea's darker side is touched upon: these troops "never get tired, never get hungry, and ."
: The problems so averted are threefold: 1. no longer a squishy thing in the middle of the machine, which Hammer's suit design proved it had a
2. the recovered space can be used for more processing 3. there is no cognitive dissonance when our heroes blow them up. Oh, and 4: they make it easy for Vanko to betray Hammer, since he's the one programming them.
Hammer: What, "drone better?" Why is "drone better"? Why is "drone better"? Vanko:
: The Sentinels, squid-like robots that come in the millions.
who is in the middle of negotiating a deal to privatize the Earth government. However, as a backup, in case the talks don't go his way, he has a
create an army of killer robots, each of which is capable of easily killing dozens of people and come out without a scratch. Its
are capable of vaporizing a person, and it can fire them exremely quickly. When someone throws a grenade at it, the robot catches it, rapidly spins around, and tosses it back. They appear in an embrionic state and grow in waves, with each wave double the previous one. The titular truckers are hired to transport the container filled with these things to Earth. They end up sending the rig into an uncontrolled re-entry, destroying all robots.
blew up acres of battle droids. The kid-friendliness goes away a little when you reflect they still scream as they die. The use of battle droids seems to revolve entirely around the fact that the prequels featured Jedi action scenes. Such scenes involved plenty of decapitation, bisection, and outright mutilation of said battle droids using lightsabers, all of which would have been unacceptable in theaters had the victims been living sentient beings instead.
Before their predecessors the clones were shown, it was popular to speculate that the Imperial Stormtroopers in the original trilogy were Mecha-Mooks, in spite of the fact that Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were capable of dressing up as them. Talk about .
The droids vary highly by model. The basic B1 units (the "roger-roger" droids) are the most harmless and safe to kill, and
portray them as outright comic relief. The B2 and B3 (the super battle droids, from the page picture) are somewhat more dangerous, qualifying as . And the most advanced models like the Droideka and the MagnaGuard, qualify as .
movies depict a future where the world has been taken over by Mecha Mook armies. Subverted in that these robots are incredibly tough and not the least bit fragile.
The Synthetics in the
remake. The movie is somewhat original in that they're used more as bulletproof Elite Mooks rather than guilt-free disposable cannon fodder (although they are used for a couple of the more "gory" kill scenes to get the PG-13 rating).
has the EM-208 humanoid robot soldiers, the ED-209 walking weapon platform and the XT-908 flying assault drone.
features mechanical soldiers courtesy of the titular villain that the heroes , tearing off limbs, cracking skulls, smashing them to pieces?
has the Swarm of androids that
has at his disposal. In fact, his only organic minions are
&&&&Literature&
An unusual example of this trope occurs in A. Lee Martinez's The Automatic Detective. Near the climax of the novel, the protagonist destroys a brigade of robots... but he is himself a robot, and those he destroys are physically identical to him except for the paint jobs. He doesn't
In , the Overtakers' mooks are all Audio-Animatronics from
rides brought to life. "It's a small world" is a lot less cute when the dolls are trying to kill you.
who would never hit a fellow sentient with anything worse than a stun dart... but against robots he gleefully .
In the first page of the story that started it all, he drops something heavy on the head of a police robot. The robot isn't actually hurt by this, since as it points out its brain is in its torso. Slippery Jim replies that he knew this, but that he also knows its radio was in its head, which is now incapacitated ... allowing him a few more precious seconds in which to escape.
novel , a town is being threatened by very nasty opponents who steal children and obliterate any who resist. After listening to the one survivor of a direct encounter with them, Roland deduces this trope applies to the opponents. He also deduces how to defeat them but engages in deliberate misdirection so
doesn't know.
In , Doctor Omicron keeps at least a handful of bots around for general utility. He treats them as completely expendable.
Doctor Omicron: "That's why I like that model of bot, cheap, durable, and eminently replaceable with a machine shop and a junkyard"
series, robots are commonplace so it's quite frequent for villains to employ mechanical minions.
&&&&Live-Action TV&
. The Cylons were originally meant to be aliens in body armor, and were rewritten as robots to appease the censors. The remake calls them Centurions, and actually, they die at the same rate as fellow "skinjobs" a.k.a. the humanoid models. A similar fate seems to be with Raiders, until it is shown, through Starbuck, that they are biological beings. Regarding Centurions, it turns out that they have a personality and some degree of authority once they are freed from restrictive modules. In the end, the Rebels let them go off and find their own destiny, despite worries that they'll come back and try to destroy humanity. They think not, as they will most likely remember being freed and left to their own devices, rather than fighting their way out of slavery and still living with a plausible threat.
The Robot Santas from the episode "The Runaway Bride" were robots under the control of the Queen of the Racnoss. They also appeared in "The Christmas Invasion", although there they were working by themselves.
Also, while the Doctor might pay lip-service to
over killing those poor defenseless rampaging armies of death that are Cybermen and Daleks, imagine the difference if organic beings were killed off in similar numbers.
For the record, he does regret killing even Daleks in some episodes, especially when said Dalek may be the last of its kind. This is in spite of them being
by design. The Cybermen, while organic underneath, have had their emotions and feeling removed because of the constant horrific and intense pain their existence entails. It could literally be seen as putting them out of their misery.
The Second Doctor fought
and their army of Mecha-Mooks, the Quarks. The spiky-faced little dudes seem to have made an impression: when the Time Lords put him , the Doctor mentions the Quarks alongside the Daleks and Cybermen in his list of cosmic evils who need to be fought.
Sutekh's robot mummies in "The Pyramids of Mars."
The Sheriff of Nottingham's robot knights in "Robot of Sherwood".
It's debatable whether or not Autons fall into this category. Made of a plastic-like substance, they're sort of alive, but they're part of the Nestene
and each individual Auton appears to be expendable.
About half of the time, the
are robots, including the Cogs (though the Putties of
were actually golems). Robot or not, however, Power Rangers' mooks are almost never shown to be killed, instead teleporting away once they have been incapacitated.
changes this, however, with a nearly unprecedented level of mook destruction, and at least one of the two sets of mooks are indeed alive. Quite a few Rinshi in
got reduced to purple dust, too.
goes back to having more durable grunts. The same courtesy is seldom extended to the .
In a bit of a retcon, Divatox's mooks in the
movie were quite clearly humanoids in fish-styled armor (we even see several of them with their faceplates off), but for the series, they've been downgraded to a non-humanoid fishlike race. The "tron" in "Piranhatron" suggests they're Mecha-Mooks, but they make squishy sounds when hit.
The majority of Mooks in
tend to be either Mecha-Mooks or else mystical beings, rarely humans, except in cases where they disguise as humans such as the
Recent series of
and subsequently
have featured plenty of mook destruction. This is most likely due to the availability of cheap CG explosions.
&&&&Pinball&
Justin Hammer's armored "Hammeroid" drones in 's , who come in four varieties (land, sea, air, and assault) and must be defeated multiple times throughout the game.
&&&&Professional Wrestling&
and Robo Hayashi in .
&&&&Tabletop Games&
setting of
has an interesting variation with the Warforged. They were made to be this, but ended up developing sapience and now have to deal with integrating into a post-war society.
These are the main troops of the genocidal human civilization Wreathe in , all modeled after Pre-Cambrian creatures. In a subversion, these are usually more powerful than lower level characters.
Unmanned combat drones are everywhere in . From spy-cameras disguised as pigeons to robot tanks.
The Necrons aren't really so much , as they are
torrent of an ancient
, marching at you like
metallic death. Though Devourer reveals that they do play it straight, since some Necrons are actually artificial intelligence programmed with the memories of truly dead Necrontyr.
Played straight with Tau Gun Drones, though they are only used in a supporting role to the living Tau Fire Caste soldiers.
Imperial Servitors are this to any Techpriest. Their biological components are more or less used to support their technological ones, rather the other way around for conventional cyborgs.
These existed, very briefly, during the Word of Blake Jihad in . The
was mass produced by the Word of Blake to try and resist Allied Coalition units as they began to attack the Blakists on Earth itself. Being small and not particularly well armored, Revenants were ultimately mass produced cannon fodder rather than a genuine obstacle to the Allies.
The Vahki robots in . Greg Farshtey, writer of the storyline, has professed a dislike of Vahki. It's extremely common for Vahki to be destroyed in downright cruel and unusual ways, particularly during the '05 arc.
&&&&Video Games&
The main enemy faction of , the Time Breakers, have mass produced versions of Android #8 and Android 19: Android 8000 and Android 19000. The Red Pants Army meanwhile has hostile copies of Android 16.
German versions of computer and arcade games, notably in , where all soldiers are replaced by robots, the Probotector () series, Space Invasion (), , or fighting games, where blood is recoloured green or black. This is because of censorship in Germany (UCK board) disallowing displaying .
In the German version of , the "real world" GLA soldiers were replaced with cyborg clones that bleed green. Referenced in , which has The Germans (a mercenary group of recurring characters) use "Cyborg Robots with Green Blood" as their disposable muscle.
The same was done with most (probably all) earlier
games, with soldiers being cyborgs with black "blood" (supposed to be oil) and also cyborg guard dogs... even in the booklets the pictures of these units were crossed with a bar noting "top secret" so you couldn't see the faces... in the GAME itself tho those faces were still used as the build icons, so one must wonder what that was all about.
Sumeragi Group, the antagonists of , mainly use various robots as their mooks.
: The MTs in any of the games are this with few exceptions, especially if they're the armless "chickenwalker" variety.
The Loader robots make up most of Handsome Jack's forces in . Hyperion does have combat-oriented human forces, however those are generally .
: The mooks in the Fielder's Challenge are robots.
: Nuts & Bolts. Without
aid to raise her army of monsters,
resorted to create her own band of
with the Gruntbots. Thanksfully, those crud-looking mechanical mischief makers are more a nuisance than a real threat to the bear and bird duo.
: With the sole exception of Faye, you never fight a s opponents are all
or . With the exception of the bosses (excluding the Tsar Runner), all of them explode shortly after being 'killed'.
has Automatons, Mosquitoes, and Motorized Patriots.
: When your party is in the future, they will encounter a very large number of these, particularly in the optional sidequest Geno Dome. Interestingly, despite destroying large numbers of , you acquire a party member which is a .
: The game
regarding human enemies, but the robots used by various factions all explode spectacularly when defeated. The exception is the Clockwork, who usually just slump over, but that's because they're not really robots, but metallic constructs animated by a powerful telekinetic . Even some of the cyborg enemies explode upon defeat, most notably the Arachnos Tarantulas.
: The schtick of the Supremacy faction — while their human troops are highly augmented with cybernetics, they also field armies of CNDR and CARVR drones. They can easily outproduce either of the other affinities in terms of raw numbers, and most of their troops can be upgraded with bonuses based on having allied units nearby.
use an army of tentacled
and small man-sized octopus robots to take over the Lingshan Islands. They all explode upon death (with
notable exception), but it has more to do with preventing humans from acquiring alien technologies than with dealing damage.
The hordes of enemies you face in the
series consist of mining robots gone renegade.
: The Alpha Droids, who act as servants and guards for the Alpha Gang in the anime (often carrying out orders which lead to their own destruction), and as
enemies in the DS game.
: The games feature, as the primary enemy, tons of . , of course, changes this to use various grunt suits (and some variants) from , , , and .
Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. All robots are enemies, and all enemies are robots.
In , the New Vegas Strip is policed by Mr. House's heavily armed Securitron robots. In the ending where you side with him, as well as the "" ending, the Securitrons are upgraded to outfit them with gatling lasers and rocket launchers and they proceed to conquer the Mojave Wasteland with almost effortless ease.
as enemies:
piloted entirely by computers rather than pilots. They are far less effective than human-pilots as they are less intelligent, can't use pilot skills, and can be immobilized by
: Forerunner installations are most commonly guarded by robotic S even the basic "Aggressor" variant is armed with a laser capable of cutting through steel. However, they have mostly been replaced from
onward by the Forerunner Prometheans, robotic units originally created to fight the Flood, with the strongest type being the Knights, which are heavily armed bipedal robots that can teleport anywhere at will. What makes the Knights unique is that most of them are prehistoric humans who were forcibly converted into machines.
: Has a great deal of robot enemies in the fourth level. They aren't too different from the regular type, but it helps emphasize the level's mechanical theme (as opposed to Western, wasteland, or circus, the themes of the preceding levels). The boss of the level is a mecha , Dr. Ion.
is about a robot uprising, so all its enemies are various robots.
: Pits the protagonist against Mecha-Santa, his robot Elves, and toys.
part got a nice Lampshade Hanging, where Mr. Incredible spots the first robot enemies in the tutorial stage and quips, "I guess that means we don't have to play nice!"
The mooks in
are mechanized ninjas that bleed green goop, to which Ninja is free to spill and let it soak his blade. The game certainly might have gotten an
if they were human.
Half, if not more, of the mooks in
are mecha-mooks.
: "Cyborgs," which were in the scary faceless humanoid monster gig before slenderman was cool. Instead of feet, they have treads, and Bungie refers to them as "Tank Guys." Some of them are weak, others are some of the strongest enemies in the game. All of them self-destruct upon death. According to , they used to be human space colonists.
The humans have some of these of their on their colony ship. They are notable for being possibly the first AI controlled allies in any game. They float above the ground and also explode upon death (Bungie has a thing for that) and are armed with machine pistols. Some of them have grenade launchers, but the ones with grenade launchers go rampant and attack anything in sight, alien or human. Similarly, in the sequels, there are "Hummers," alien-made robots that are used for recon and often . When they sight you, they make a very irritating electronic noise before attacking, hence the name. Some of them are taken over by a human-made AI and help you, and are conveniently much stronger, but they only appear twice in the whole trilogy.
This is not for the normal reasons, though, as the games also feature the BOBs, which are human colonists "Born On Board". They're technically on your side, but they can be killed either by enemy or friendly fire (in fact, since they tend to get in your way, it can be hard to avoid it). Later on, there are "Android BOBs" that look almost like the regular ones, but are trying to kill you (they'll run up to you yelling something like "Frog blast the vent core!" and explode).
: The Geth are an entire race of these throughout the series.
adds a series of cheap, mass-produced robotic security troops (called "Mechs" in-universe, natch), that are roughly on-par with a B1 Battle Droid in terms of intelligence and accuracy, though the Battle Droids never had robotic dogs and giant missile-firing robots backing them up. Unlike the geth, mechs do not use true AI and so don't think for themselves and lack any self-preservation. They're also are surprisingly resilient - blowing off a limb only slows them down, and they have a taser-like device on their non-gun arm. Even if you take off its legs it'll still crawl towards you with the intent to self-destruct in your face. Usually encountered in hordes.
Geth themselves subvert the trope's
aspect. They have a smooth organic appearance, bleed some sort of white blood-equivalent, give off odd electronic squeals when shot, and don't explode upon death. This doesn't stop the heroes from mowing them down by the score without batting an eyelid, however. The sequel reveals that the Geth are nearly immortal, as they simply upload back into their mainframes when the humanoid frames are disabled. Destroying these mainframes can kill millions of them with a few bullets, however. Their "death screams" are actually them transmitting themselves to a new mainframe.
: The Sniper Joes are the closest to this trope, but all the enemies are robots (as are the protagonist and bosses).
made a distinction between Reploids, which possess human-like intelligence, and mechaniloids, which don't.
: The Scarabs, and the raven-like UAVs accompanying Raging Raven.
: The evil-looking Machines. Also inverted as the good guys units are also mecha mooks of sorts, except cute-looking.
The Armada in
consists entirely of these. They were designed as soldiers to win Valencia the Polarian War. While they were very successful, they then took over Valencia and have set sights on claiming the whole spiral.
The robots of
come in three different variants—hovering drones, bipedal walkers, and quadrupedal walkers.
invariably features hordes of robots. While there are usually organic opponents in there as well, they will be vastly outnumbered by robots. In , most of your organic opponents are turned into robots by , simply to show how severe a threat Dr. Nefarious is.
In , all the enemies are robots of one kind or another.
features the Zin's Murderbots. Naturally, they fall squarely into
territory as they have a lot of health and carry either miniguns or proximity mines that can easily whittle down your health, and their torsos can continue to attack you after their legs are destroyed .
gives Gillian a large variety of Metal Creatures to do battle with.
2: The Floaters, Spawners, Rollers, Rhino Cybertoys, Rocket Turrets, Fatso Fighter Planes, Seagull Bombers, and Giant Cyborg Spiders which are usually mixed in with the various other enemy types, primarily zombies, aliens, and bio-machines.
: Outside of the occasional fight with Dr. Eggman and a few other choice characters, robot mooks are pretty much Sonic's only enemies.
series: There are quite a few examples, but the Mecha Koopa enemies from
onwards are the most obvious examples. Some other examples include the entire population of The Factory/Smithy Factory in , Wizzerds in
2 and Mechawfuls in .
series: Subverted and used, as times goes on, it shifts from fighting human pilots (which most of the time will get a chance to escape) to battling AI versions of robots due to the bad guys sharing AI technology since manpower gets smaller with the huge killcount our men racks up in the battlefield. In the OVA, the ATX and SRX had discovered the shocking revelation of the Bartool's
and had concerns about killing more innocent captured civilians but during the final push later on, they were unmanned with no human core inside which allowed a more liberal course of destruction.
The series has several iconic mook mechs of it's own, most notably the ◊ series. Mind you, in these games even a regular grunt unit can be pretty
in the right hands. Watch
demonstrates why you don't need no fancy
to kick ass.
Brawl: Nn entire army of Robotic Operating Buddies in Subspace Emissary, only they're anything but friendly — arm swipes, missiles, and laser fire are the norm for them. They do have a measure of AI not seen in most Mecha-Mooks, as they are at least capable
this is demonstrated when the Ancient Minister, the alpha R.O.B., looks down with regret before seeing two more disappear into the detonation of a Subspace Bomb. Nevertheless, the only one who doesn't submit to Ganondorf's — and subsequently Tabuu's — reprogramming is the alpha himself, who becomes playable after the former villain sees it fit to have him punished for questioning authority.
: The Mann versus Machine update added a cooperative game mode where the mercenary soldiers face off against hordes of incoming mechanical counterparts of themselves, and depending on server setting, ranging from your usual punchable-weak-toy-soldiers to outright Nightmare fuel.
In , NPC soldiers come in two forms: Grunts and Spectres. Spectres are this.
: Disney's extraordinarily "kid-friendly"
solely features an ever-replenishing army of robots as your enemies — whom you destroy with jokes.
: Many games have you fighting numerous generic or nameless enemy chassis (the Armada game, called simply "Transformers" in the states, coined them as "Decepti-clones"). Different from the TV shows in that every character shown was given a name.
: Earth Assault: The Novus are a heroic example, a race of Mechanical
working with the
against the .
: One of the first signs you aren't in Kansas anymore with the last two games is when your sword-and-sorcery party runs into their first Savant robot armed with a laser lance. Fully fledged battle droids also make an appearance towards the very end of VII.
The player in the
games utilizes almost not despite the end-game having the player fielding flotillas of
as their , there is only one meatbag in control of it all, as each ship uses its own Autopilot AI. However, traders and marines for
operations are exceptions to this.
averts this, where every player-owned ship has a minimum of at least a pilot or captain.
In , the B!Sec police are robotic holograms programmed to play BAM.
&&&&Web Comics&
storyline "Death Volley," Doc is very pleased when he discovers the palace guards are robots, so he can go completely berserkers on them without compunction. Then he learns that one of the guards is actually
his disguised ex-girlfriend, Hortense.
Employed by the
In , when Riboflavin escapes from his prison ship, he destroys a robot guard. He expresses disappointment that the guard was not sentient, and therefore could not feel pain. Riboflavin is not a nice man.
Inverted in
where the Dig-bots who get bloodlessly massacred are the good guys, and the very human Hereti-Corp agents doing the massacreing are the baddies.
In , battle
are often the fighting force of a
on a warpath.
's two mainstays are his
and the iconic . He has a myriad of other ground forces (usually co-opted from other sparks he defeated), but the giant toy soldier-esque clanks are the backbone of his armies.
&&&&Web Original&
Parodied in , where the ninja says that
Doctor Infanto of the
is a hyper-intelligent mutant toddler who commits crimes using remote-controlled
(among other high-tech devices).
example: in "Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy" and "Ayla and the Birthday Brawl", Team Kimba are going through a Team Tactics course. Their first 'pop quiz' is against robots and mechanical weapons. Their big 'invading the supervillain lair' simulation includes an armada of Mecha-Mooks. In neither of these are there tons of exploding robots, except where Tennyo and Fey unleash their powers.
&&&&Western Animation&
Averted very subtly in . The Crown Agents look and sound like robots. However, they take bribes, argue, go rogue, scream and throw up their hands when their plane crashes into a tower, etc. More damning is that the Ranger
Doc Hartford never used his powers against them, though he could subvert most any technology with ease. "Lord of the Sands" topped it by having Zach admit "As far as we know, Crown Agents are some kind of robot..."
: Degaton's robotic army in "The Golden Age of Justice!"
Doc Terror had several varieties of mecha-mooks to pit against the titular heroes.
XANA's various monsters can count as the virtual version of Mecha-Mooks. They do appears robot-like the two times some are materialized in the real world.
Then in season 4, the
is busy constructing a whole army of robots to conquer the Earth.
Although most of the villains in are human, "The Last Laugh" features a robotic henchman to , called Captain Clown. In an interview, the producers admitted this was done specifically so that Batman wouldn't have to hold back in the fight.
Another instance, with better in-universe justification, occurs in the second part of "Heart of Steel."
In a really twisted take on this trope, Scarface is nothing but a ventriloquist puppet ( a very, very primitive definition of the word "Mecha"). Inverted in the sense that while Batman at first has no idea what the hell is going on, Scarface is soon revealed to be the
of his particular gang , with the flesh-and-blood
he has working under him are mooks. As with Captain Clown, the creators soon discovered they loved having a villain who wasn't flesh-and-blood, solely so they could give him increasing gruesome, over-the-top deaths.
. Hornets. Interestingly enough, the
protagonist is the target of more violence than any villain,
In , the "robot" protagonists are actually
living beings despite their mechanical appearance. However, the villains used nonsentient, inorganic
called Zods which the heroes could destroy without any ethical quibbles.
Referenced in , a series famous for averting
(at least in the earlier seasons, before
came in full force). In the first season episode "Bearskin Thug", villain Steelbeak's trained bear turns out to be a robot. Upon learning this, Darkwing says "Then I can take off the kid gloves!"
In , the majority of
forces are composed of a seemingly inexhaustable supply of ro-butts.
The regular Mecha-Mooks, the Martian Centurions, are something of a subversion in any case, being
In an episode, due to
Cadet is transformed into a gruff, testosterone-fueled, hulking
and viciously blows up two enemy fighter ships.
Dodgers: Uh..., those were just robot-piloted ships, right? Cadet: Yeah, "robots". (laughs maniacally)
Both the 1970s
and the 1980s
armies of Mecha-Mooks. Interestingly, in the Filmation series, good guy
would get killed all the time (usually a very tidy and bloodless disintegrator shot, or else an exploding manned vehicle). Presumably because killing people is, after all, what makes the villains villains. The good guys got to fight Mecha-Mooks.
, when there are B.A.T.s or S.N.A.K.E.s involved, the Sky B.A.T.s in
as well as the Zaps and Skyrenes in . All five kinds of Mecha-Mooks are the only bad guys that the Joes seem to be able to hit
Not that they did them any good since B.A.T.s just keep coming and only anti-tank weapons can take them down. Or in case of the B.A.T. Mark I, a
(which on the action figure's
is noted as the back, but inexplicably in the Sunbow cartoon, was the large window in the middle of their chest). Or Sgt. Slaughter's fists, which proved to be the most effective anti-B.A.T. weapon ever seen.
Flint even used the incompetence of these androids to mock Cobra Commander in one episode, asking the villain if he had programmed them himself.
The show has perhaps the most famous TV mecha-mook, Dr. Zin's robot spy. It's a spider-like robot that can take an incredible amount of punishment, as the Quest family learns when it makes its escape from a military base. They throw small arms, flamethrowers and tanks at it, and nothing makes it more than momentarily pause.
A whole army of them appeared in the
episode "The Robot Spies".
Modern audiences may remember this as the Walking Eye from . Walking Eye!
Though in general the original
as long as it wasn't too graphic, like the two frogmen crushed by the leaping motorboat in the title sequence.
In : , Kim and Ron fought against an invasion of Diablos, mini-robots distributed by Drakken as free toys inside Bueno Nacho's Kids Meals, programmed to grow into giant mecha-robots when triggered by a radio signal.
In the French animated series , wind-powered
are used as police troops by the inhabitants of the Planet of Wind.
Deuce's robot army in .
The mass-produced Lin Kuei Cybers featured in
were basically this. Unlike Cyrax, Sektor and Smoke, they were entirely mechanical, which allowed the normally violent Earthrealm Warriors to go to town with them.
In , Doofenshmirtz-2 has an army of these, based off of Norm. Doofenshmirtz too used to have one... But .
An early episode of has the boys construct their own horde of robot clones of themselves to increase productivity, in a rare non-violent use of this trope.
They fulfill this trope better in the movie, where they're used to fight the previously mentioned Normbots.
In , when Matrix and Turbo are confronted by some infected Guardians, Matrix asks if their drones "have personality chips". As soon as they heard a No, both of them shot the robots, destroying them easily.
: nearly any opponent Jack ever actually harms will turn out to be one of Aku's evil robot minions. Regardless of what they looked like before, as soon as they get sliced in half, there will be sparks and an explosion.
Subverted: although Jack only ever cut the Mecha-Mooks (or ) with his sword, they always seemed to be , either outside or internally ("veins" and "bones" in the interior of a roach-robot Jack cut in two, for instance). This allowed the show to get away with the
trope and other extreme scenes of carnage, because . Really.
Additionally subverted in one episode in which an episode is told through the perspective of a mecha-mook, and his very real, very human emotions are made painfully apparent to the viewer. (Apparently, the scientist who built him gave him emotions because
Then he fights Jack and gets cut up like any other robotic malcontent.
Also averted at least once. Jack strikes several people with his sword in the episode where the bounty hunters team up to beat him (and one gets blown up), and they're not revealed to be robots afterwards... But when fighting organic opponents the fights are noticeably .
This is parodied in the
episode "Samurai Quack".
*Dodgers jumps at a stranger with his sword raised* Stranger:: Stop! Not a robot! NOT A ROBOT!!! * Dodgers pauses* Dodgers: You are lucky I didn't cut you to ribbons. Stranger:
The army of German robots sent to attack Cassidy Williams in the
episode "The Midnight Zone".
The robot ninjas who serve as the 's cannon fodder in .
In some episodes, the Horde Troopers appeared completely sentient, and were defeated non-lethally by the heroes. In other episodes, they didn't get any dialogue, and could be smashed to pieces without any compunction.
The Brigadiers from .
Dr. Robotnik's Swat Bots from .
An episode of
has the good guys reprogramming a trio of battle droids to aid them in infiltrating a Separatist prison. These droids seemed to
than ordinary battle droids by sheer virtue of being on the good side. However once the situation got dicey, these droids were promptly ordered to sacrifice themselves to buy time for their organic masters to escape.
An early instance is the 1941
"Mechanical Monsters", which climaxes with Supes whaling on some big ass robots. This may be the .
The original
cartoon turned the
Foot Ninja into a robotic army with unlimited numbers. In the Turtles' first battle with the Foot, they were evenly matched with the robot ninjas until one of them was . Then began the dismemberment.
Michaelangelo: Robots? LET'S ROCK!
has a surprisingly wide variety of Mooks, but some fall into this category.
Slade's robots from the first two seasons are clearly there just to get blown up (though they serve the dual purpose of allowing him to
his enemies remotely from the comfort of his own home).
Brother Blood in the third season uses human soldiers at first, but then switches over to
Mecha-Mooks based on Cyborg, which are quite tough, especially when there's a lot of them.
In season four, the mooks are , which while not technically robots blow up just as nicely and painlessly.
The fifth season features
using a pretty even mix of mechanical and human Mooks.
The Trope is Zigzagged in an episode where Mad Mod invades the city with an army of robots modeled after the Coldstream Guards. At first, these robots are incredibly tough, and the Titans ar however, as the episode progresses, they seem to get less efficient for some reason, until the end, where the heroes are able to junk them with as much ease as any other example of this Trope. (Of course, this is Mad Mod we're talking about...)
Very nearly done in , too. In fact it would have been, had they been robots instead of living ink.
would often slice an enemy in half or lop off a limb, see the sparks and yell "Ookla! Ariel! They are ma chiiiiiiiines!" Note that lopping first is Thundarr's favored tactic, but he knows it would make a difference to Ariel — who arguably packs more firepower than he does, if she doesn't hold herself back.
A variation on this is in , where every
this allowed it to do things like, say,
main characters in
to . This didn't keep the scenes where it happens from being quite disturbing to younger viewers who idolized the fallen,
being the best examples.
In episodes that aired before the movie, an important distinction was sometimes made between sentient and nonsentient robots. Several episodes involve the characters encountering armies of identical, literally faceless robots (as opposed to the individualized sentient Transformers) usually described as "drones" or some such, which were mindless and could be blasted to bits with moral impunity. The episode "Sea Change" even went so far as to establish that Transformers have souls like human beings, while the Mecha-Mooks they were fighting in that particular episode did not. The Vehicon drones of
are the closest to a traditional army of Mecha-Mooks.
In the case of the aforementioned Vehicons, the common Mecha-Mooks are simply Spark-less drones often under the control of the
Vehicon generals. Naturally, this makes the Vehicon drones the most
mooks in Transformers history.
also has Vehicons, but they are intelligent enough to talk to one another and are just as disposeable as their predecessors. Bulkhead even disembowels one of them (to protect Miko). And tells Miko to look away before he does it (to protect Miko in a different way). She doesn't, but that says more about Miko than it does about the Vehicons.
There's also the Terrorcons from the five-part pilot, robot zombies whose on purpose in unlife was to get gloriously dismembered by Optimus Prime and Ratchet.
In , Hagen has a guard made up of these in his castle. They're fairly tough, but go down when Bloom destroys their control unit.
The Jackbots in
are this. Egregious use of
was deemed necessary anyway.
animated series as often as not had the title heroes battling the robotic Sentinels and all manner of mechanical foes, rather than organic bad guys. Indeed, only two characters (good, bad, or background) are directly shown to die at any point in the series, and both eventually come .
Ming's Ice Robots in . Only their leader, Garax, has a distinct personality and, while the Defenders have no qualms about destroying rank-and-file Ice Robots, it seems he is a different story. Indeed, towards the end of The Gravity of Ming, Flash has Garax at his mercy, but declines to shoot him, saying:
No, I'm not like you.
A number of bad guys from
have mechanical minions, from Lord Dominator's
to the clunky automaton soldiers of elderly super-villain Mandrake the Malfeasant.
&&&&Real Life&
are an example of this that are widely used today. Unlike most fictional Mecha-Mooks, they are actually frighteningly effective.
Boston Dynamics has developed numerous bipedal and quadrupedal robots for the US military, including
Alternative Title(s):
Mecha Mook
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MechaMooks}