Mook Maker



A device or enemy whose main purpose is to constantly spit out enemies for the player to fight. Some bosses have this ability, to add to the challenge, to make the player want to hurl the controller at the TV screen, or to give the player something to use to hit or get to the boss villain's weak point.

Sometimes the Mook Maker can be destroyed; other times your only real tactic is to dodge them and move on. Or, depending on the game, the enemies can be farmed for goodies, XP, or Infinite 1-Ups.

If the Mook Maker is, in fact, a boss, expect to see it fairly late in the game, with the implication that the boss is the one who has produced all the Mooks in the game.

Real Time Strategy games feature Mook Maker buildings very often.

See also Clown Car Grave, and Explosive Breeder. Compare to Enemy Summoner, which is like Mook Maker but with the ability to fight on their own too, or Spawn Broodling when mook-making is a form of attack.

Action Adventure

 * Puppet Ganon in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker periodically generates Keese and Morths that can be killed for refills.
 * In Luigi's Mansion, one of the ghosts, Vincent Van Gore, is painting all the ghosts in the mansion and then bringing them to life. After you defeat him (it being near the end too), you'll face very few ghosts apart from Goddamned Bats.
 * The Magic of Scheherazade features a box-like Mook Maker that functions as sort of a clown car, generating endless amounts of beetle things until you destroy it.
 * Beyond Good and Evil has on-demand Mook Makers in some areas, which dispense robotic enemies whenever you push a button. They're there because certain kinds of barriers can only be destroyed by smacking enemies into them, and the game provides a source of said baddies in case you clobber all the ones in the room the old-fashioned way.

Action Game

 * The PlayStation 2 game Shinobi has many bosses that are mook-makers. In this instance, it winds up being beneficial to the player, as killing minor enemies powers up the player's weapon, making it possible to damage the bosses much more severely so long as they can connect a blow before the effect wears off. Some bosses can be killed at a single blow in this way.
 * Killer7 included a number of hatchers that would send an endless number of enemies at the player, until it was destroyed. This required using one of the character's special moves to achieve. Smaller hatchers would appear as enemies throughout the level, and posed less of a threat, since they required less fire power.
 * In the bombing mission in Star Wars: Star Fighter, there was a landing pad in the area along with droid launchers. Unless these were destroyed (the landing pad was an objective) countless enemies would continue to bombard the player, with no head cap.
 * The Simpsons Game has different looking mook makers depending on the level.
 * The Hell Greed in Devil May Cry 3 acts like this, spawning enemies of three varieties (Hell Prides, Lusts, and Sloths). Interesting side effect: the spot where they spawn Sloths (the ones with most Hit Points) has more combo videos than all other places combined.
 * A common puzzle in the Lego Adaptation Game Star Wars games is a Mook Maker that must be shut off by a droid, which means walking through enemies as a non-combat character and remaining stationary to use a console. Luckily, enemies ignore droids, so it's not as difficult as it sounds.
 * Most enemies ignore droids; Jawas & Ugnaughts exclusively target droids with their stunners.
 * Mendel Palace has two varieties: There are hidden glowing panels that will respawn (up to six) enemies if they're not closed quickly enough, and there are the blue "artist" dolls, which create their own.
 * Dgeneration has holes in the floor which you step on to close.
 * The plot of one SpongeBob SquarePants game is that Plankton forgot to set his Mook Maker to "Obey Plankton".

Fighting Games

 * There are a few of these in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Subspace Emissary. The more annoying ones spawn enemies that can multiply themselves.

First-Person Shooter

 * Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 had a building that you couldn't enter but eternally spat out Stormtroopers at you.
 * The beach areas of Half-Life 2 will constantly produce antlions if you walk on the sand. In Episode One, the same antlions constantly climb out of burrows, which you can block by shoving cars on top. Some areas also constantly spawn headcrabs out of dark dead ends or air vents.
 * One of the more deadly (and popular) monsters from the Doom series were Archviles, who not only threw massively damaging jets of flame at you, but also could resurrect all the dead creatures in its vicinity, as many times as it liked.
 * Doom 3 changed this up somewhat because the bodies of demons always disintegrate upon death, meaning that the Archvile could no longer resurrect its defeated fellow demons. Instead, it summons another demon as soon as it appears and then summons additional demons at random intervals while you're busy fighting the first one. It can even summon things stronger than itself, even up to the level of Hellknights, though stronger demons take longer to summon and the Archvile itself is left defenseless while it is performing the summoning ritual. If an Archvile decides to summon a Hellknight as its first minion, a good player can actually kill it before it completes the summoning ritual and never have to face any summoned demons. Some Archviles will get smart about that and summon something weaker first, like an Imp, to keep you busy while it summons a Hellknight.
 * And another Doom example, the Pain Elementals, flying Cacodemon-like gasbag monsters that spit out flying skulls called Lost Souls, and could do so forever until you killed them, at which point they released three more Lost Souls upon death just to spite you.
 * The Pain Elementals also had a deliberate limitation implemented to stop them from flooding the map with Lost Souls and slowing everything down to a crawl (we are talking about a game from 1994 being played on machines even older, after all). The universal map limit is 21 Lost Souls, a number which is achievable on pretty much any stock map that includes Pain Elementals. Some PWADs actually go so far as to take advantage of this feature, booby-trapping special items with crushers that kill out-of-area Lost Souls, allowing the present Pain Elementals to start ruining your day.
 * A third example is the final boss of Doom II, (The Icon of Sin) which spat out cubes that turned into demons upon landing (and would kill you even in god mode if you happened be where a cube landed). To defeat it, you launch rockets into its exposed brain hit John Romero with Splash Damage.
 * Similarly, Heretic and Hexen, two games that used the Doom ("id Tech 1") engine, had boss characters (D'sparil and Korax) who would summon lots of lesser enemies in addition to not dying and making you die a lot.
 * Star Wars: Republic Commando has an interesting version of this: droid dispensers. They are round-shaped containers that are dropped by ships and proceed to endlessly deploy battle droids until destroyed. The dispensers themselves are of small size, however, and should realistically only have enough space for two or three droids. It is never explained how they can hold so many more. The game also has more standard spawners, such as shafts, holes in the ground and such. Other times it isn't clear where the enemies are spawning, as they just climb over a wall over which you can't see. Aside from the dispensers, the Mook Makers are often limited, and stop spawning when the player and his squad have killed enough mooks. In a few areas, however, they'll keep spawning until a console has been hacked, or some other action taken.
 * The PC game Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold has plus-sign shaped "outlets" that spawn energy aliens that are weak individually, but often are seen in groups near their outlets. They shoot projectiles at you.
 * In Half-Life one of the bosses is the Gonarch, the "mother" of all headcrabs and will spew out infant headcrabs until it explodes dying.
 * There's a specific Flood enemy in Halo that acts as a live grenade. If you shoot it or get too close to it, it explodes and releases several lesser forms of Flood.
 * And in the second and third games, the infection forms can resurrect corpses, and possess your allies as well. On top of that, there are the canisters(and pustules in heavily-infested levels) that produce infection forms when broken.
 * Flood combat forms are often repeatedly(not indefinitely) generated from ventilation ducts or other points of emergence in the walls, such as in The Library. One section of The Oracle involves a giant elevator with two smaller shafts that groups of Combat Forms will jump out of in random numbers, in addition to Infection Form-harboring canisters. On top of that, the elevator rotates to screw up your aim. If a large-enough group spawns at a time, you can be overwhelmed and screwed over big time, especially with their ability to insta-kill you with their melee attacks, and the ability for Infection Forms to resurrect corpses, hence this area is quite a Luck-Based Mission.
 * There's also those weird holes in the walls that spit out Sentinels.
 * These were used extensively in The Conduit in the form of hanging eggsacs and portals which constantly spit out enemies until they were destroyed.
 * In the last area of Deus Ex, three Universal Constructors create karkians, greasels and spider bots until and unless the player shuts the blast doors.
 * Some of Quake's later levels have "unholy altars" that constantly spawn high-level enemies until they are "defiled" (destroyed).
 * Strife inverts this. You can acquire teleporter beacons that spawn in Front troops to help you. While they aren't of much use, generally a brief distraction or some post-casualty ammo, they don't set off alarms like you do and can thin out guards without calling in enemy reinforcements.
 * FEAR doesn't have too many of these, but the Remnants in the second game have a variant ability: they can puppet corpses in the surrounding area and have them fight you. You can gun the corpses down, but there's not much preventing the Remnant from just picking them back up, except killing it (or Gibbing the corpses with shotguns).
 * F.3.A.R. has Phase Casters, which are enemy commanders equipped with shields, Arc Lasers that can set you on fire, and... oh yeah, they can open warp portals on walls that summon enemy soldiers to their position. And they will keep doing this every time you kill a group of soldiers (of course, they have to stand completely still for about five seconds to do it, allowing you to empty plenty of ammo into them).
 * The alarms in some of the Medal of Honor games generate Respawning Enemies while activated.
 * Red Faction 2's sniper boss, Quill, has the irritating ability to spawn an endless number of troops while you fight her. Unsurprisingly, a war of attrition is an almost guaranteed death, so players have no choice but to kill Quill as quickly as possible.

Hack and Slash

 * Enemy generators are the signature trait of the Gauntlet series, though unlike in many other games they can be destroyed. Most of the games with more detailed graphics depict them as a tunnel opening of some sort, which gives the disturbing impression of the entire level sitting on top of an incomprehensibly enormous complex of mook lairs.
 * Blood Hawk nests in Diablo II will continue to spawn Blood Hawks (or whichever variety you may encounter) until you destroy the nest.
 * The Demon Huts and the Mummy Sarcophagus' in later levels.
 * The most Egregious example is Coldworm the Burrower, an Act 2 boss that spawns Sand Maggots until it's killed (and he takes quite some damage). The bad part comes here: Sand Maggots are themselves an example of Enemy Summoner, so you can be really surrounded if you aren't prepared.
 * Worst of all, those mooks give you no XP or treasure.

Maze Game

 * Tutankham had enemies spawning in droves from alcoves in the dungeon walls.

MMORPGs

 * Several City of Heroes missions against the Council have machines, suspiciously resembling chrome steel coffins, that produce vampyri on a regular schedule. Some missions against the Circle of Thorns have demon-spawning portals in them as well.
 * City of Villains has these as well as a dimensional portal that spawns heroes when attacked.
 * City of Villains also lets you play as a Mook Maker, in the form of the Mastermind archetype.
 * Guild Wars has necromancers who can summon minions, similar to other games. In addition, the Nightfall campaign's torment demons can use a skill that summons another creature of the same type as the original summoner.
 * RuneScape's Dungeoneering skills has Flesh-Spoiler Haasghenahk, which explodes into a gory mess when killed for the first time... kind of. The Stalker (a beholder minus the stalks, with the eyes mounted in the surface) leaves its main eye on a spine-like bone pillar after its death as the second stage of the boss, and the other eyes turn into "Flesh-Spoiler Spawns", the mooks needed to play this trope. If moment-of-death, one-time mook production counts for the trope, that is....
 * There is also the Necrolord, a necromancer shielded by a barrier made of what appear to be skeletal hands, who frequently summons one hard-hitting, unpassable skeleton per player in the room, which have to be defeated or left to despawn (by all players teleporting out of the room).
 * Plain old necromancers, supposedly the subordinates of the Necrolord, are also attackable enemies, capable of casting spells that remove the stealth protection many players use in Dungeoneering, casting powerful magic attacks... and summoning high level skeletons and zombies to waste players time. Most players choose to kill the necromancers and leave the room until the summons fade away on their own, so they can tell which of the inevitable zombies and skeletons are real (and therefore likely to drop stuff, including the important food that non-suicide parties need) and which are fake (which don't).
 * Crossfire RPG has a class of monsters - "generator", that periodically spawns a certain monster if there's free space. Most of these are inert objects with lots of hit points. E.g. the tutorial level got Ant generator (anthill).

Platform Game

 * Pictured: A Metool dispenser from the Mega Man series.
 * Some games contain enemies spitting out cannon fodder mostly for you to collect energy and ammunition.
 * The Metroid series has openings in the floor and ceiling which regularly spawn flying enemies. This is actually nice since they usually die in one hit and drop health recovery items.
 * Lampshaded in this comic.
 * The Metroid Prime series has the War Wasp hives, which produce War Wasps.
 * The second boss of Metroid Prime, the Hive Mecha, is one of these. It's simply a machine that spits out war wasps.
 * Spyro the Dragon: Year of the Dragon periodically features metal boxes which act as literal ninja dispensers. As well as one that said ninja but did not actually produce any ninja.
 * The third boss, Scorch, was a prime example of this trope. He would even summon a previous boss after he Turns Red!
 * In Tim Schafer's Psychonauts, one of Raz's instructors has him practice his Marksmanship power by setting him up with a Censor dispenser with variable speed settings. The only way to progress in the game is to, of course, turn the dial up far too high.
 * The Mega-Censor in the second phase also qualifies. If you're too far away for him to stamp, he'll roll balls of goo at you, which explode into regular censors regardless of whether the ball hits you or not.
 * In the Meat Circus level, that meat grinder that spews out deformed...rabbit...zombie-ish...things that try to attack Lil' Ollie counts too, right?
 * In Ratchet and Clank Going Commando, the Protopet is an insidious example. If there's only one left, it faces up at the sky, opens its mouth, and spawns about a dozen more of itself. The Protopet's tribble-like reproductive habits are the driver for the game's plot.
 * Sonic 3 and Knuckles had Launch Base Zone, in which passing in-between a pair of motion detectors will spawn those diving mooks.
 * Lakitus in Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, and Yoshi's Island throw Spiny Eggs which turn into Spinies. The last one even has other sources of goons which are mostly there to replenish your egg reserves, especially while fighting bosses that need to be hit with eggs.
 * Super Mario Bros. 2 has jars, some of which spawn Shyguys.
 * The rest spawn Bob-ombs, particularly one that's covered with a block and a bunch in the final world—coinciding with a destructible floor.
 * A few pipes in Super Mario Bros 3 have Goombas coming out of them.
 * The Yoshi Series combines the above 2 and has Shy Guys coming out of pipes as Goombas are rare and Shy Guys are the most common mook.
 * Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has Lakipeas, the BeanBean Kingdom's version of Lakitus, which, oddly enough, throw around the BeanBean version of Spiny Eggs.
 * Super Mario World also has Magikoopas that turn ordinary yellow blocks into Koopas, and Bowser himself seems to carry an infinite supply of Mechakoopas on his Koopa Klown Kar. Good thing too...you couldn't beat him without them.
 * Some pipes throughout the series are also Mook Makers.
 * The Bullet Bill Cannons can also be treated as these, as they will fire Bullet Bills infinitely as long as they're on-screen.
 * Super Mario 3D Land gives us Baddie Boxes, green boxes with yellow borders and Bowser's face imprinted on them. They endlessly generate Goombas in normal levels and Dry Bones in castle levels.
 * In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, the sand gates are used by the sand guards (as long as they are alive) to teleport in new enemies.
 * The time-bending game Braid contains cannons that produce Goomba mooks, which are often necessary to complete puzzles, and makes a very unique use of them: In the last world, time is perpetually running backwards for everything but the player, and one level consists of mooks that float up from the bottom of the screen, un-die when they reach a pit of spikes, and jump back into the Mook Maker. The puzzle's solution involves
 * Wario Land 4 has Hoggus, exclusive to the Doodle Woods level, and invincible. Hoggus is a ghostly pig who draws pictures of mutant pigs to hinder (or help, in some cases) you.
 * Banjo-Tooie has vents in Grunty Industries which continuously dispense nigh-indestructible security robots... as long as the nearby security camera is active. While a Grenade Egg will put the cameras out, they do, eventually, respawn. Sigh.
 * Also, the floor in the central cavern of Cloudcuckooland continuously spawns easily-defeated mooks. There's nothing you can do about this, but at least they all die in one hit.
 * Donkey Kong Country has an enemy known as a "Dumb Drum" whose sole purpose is to spit out an endless wave of mooks.
 * Its second sequel DKC3 also features several levels where parts of the stage will spawn an infinite number of enemies.
 * Wild 9 had enemy spawners ever few feet. This was because of the game mechanic of grabbing enemies and using their bodies to pass certain environmental hazards. Or just killing them in inventive ways.
 * Single-screen platformer Tumblepop had one of these in almost every level, cauldron- or jug-shaped things (always tuned with the level setting) that released a new enemy every few seconds.

Real Time Strategy

 * Warcraft 3 has Necromancers, which can summon 2 Skeletons from a nearby corpse. Combined with a Graveyard, Meat Wagon, or a progressing battle to provide corpses, and perhaps an Obsidian Statue to provide extra mana, they can summon a veritable army in a very short time. However, Priests, Spirit Walkers, Wisps and Destroyers can easily counter this threat with their area-dispel abilities, which deal enough damage to summoned enemies to instantly kill the skeletons.
 * There's also several hero units that summon smaller buddies, including the Firelord's Lava Spawns, which replicate themselves after a certain number of attacks, and the Goblin Tinker's summonable factory, which churns out mini-robot goblins. There's the Beast Master which can summon, a bear, a quilboar, and falcon to fight for it, it can also call a stamped of exploding thunder lizards which explode upon contact with and enemy unit.
 * Of course, Necromancers also show up in World of Warcraft, where classes with strong area damage spells (such as mages) are the best way to deal with them.
 * In fact, if you see a game with a Necromancer class in it they're practically a guaranteed Mook Maker anyway.
 * World of Warcraft also features other Mook Maker enemies. Some enemies can create portals from which more enemies will come through unless they're killed (and often these enemies are as strong or stronger than the ones doing the summoning), and some keep spawning weak enemies (the Necromancers fall to the later group). In addition, many bosses can summon mooks to help them.
 * For example, that stupid larva spewer in Maraudon...
 * The Incubators in Darwinia work this way for you: your Engineer units collect the souls of Darwinians on the battlefield and bring them to the Incubators, which resurrect them. Spawning Incubators fit this trope even better: they turn out Darwinians (whether they're good or evil depends on which type is operating it) until the population reaches a certain level, without needing the input.
 * Pikmin 2 has the Empress Bulborb, which keeps spawning Bulburb Grubs, very weak enemies that are nonetheless very annoying as they eat up you'r Pikmin very quickly if you're not careful.
 * Sins of a Solar Empire has carrier cruisers and capital ships, which produce squadrons of strikecraft. While the cruiser types field a limited number of squadrons and use antimatter to build their strikecraft, capital ship carriers can continually produce strikecraft, gain more squads with each level, and have various fleet support abilities: the Advent Halcyon can spam ridiculous numbers of drone strikecraft and boost the firepower of its fleet, the Vasari Skirantra can temporarily scramble additional bombers and replicate friendly cruisers, and repair its fleet, and the TEC Sova can make its strikecraft tougher, build them faster, and also build missile platforms for a bit of extra punch.
 * Taken to extremes in Brutal Legend with the Tainted Coil. There are four units that are summoned by the stage: First is the Battlenun, which make the weaker mooks (Soul Kissers and Punishing Parties). Second is the Warfather, who makes the mid-level mooks (Skullrakers, Screamwagons, and Pain Lifters), as well as Superior Battlenuns, which make superior versions of their mooks. Then you have the Overblessers, capable of making the Elite Mooks: Hate Cages and Heart Cutters, on top of making Superior Warfathers (with superior mid-mooks), who in turn can make Divine Battlenuns, complete with superpowered minor mooks. The last stage summon is not another Mook Maker, but rather a big, uncontrollable Smash Mook
 * The original StarCraft features two different Mook Making units. The Zerg Queen can launch an egg that will kill any ground unit that is at least partly biological, then hatches two short-lived Broodlings that munch on anything in sight. Meanwhile Protoss Carriers contain a factory that stocks the ship with up to eight Interceptors.
 * In 2 the Brood lord attacks by throwing Broodlings at the target, then there's the Infestor which can spawn numerous Infested Terrans at a fast rate.
 * Age Of Empires 3 features certain campaign Hero Units who can summon troops as if they were a walking building. Major Cooper can summon Hussers, Billy Holme can summon outlaws and Colonel Edwardson can train Sepoys. The Japanese are the only civilization who can do this in regular skirmish games, their Daimyo can summon basic Mooks, while Shoguns can summon artillery! All of the above must remain stationary while producing units though.

Roguelike

 * The Quylthulgs in Angband are pulsing mounds of flesh with no attacks that don't involve summoning monsters.
 * Many of the bosses in Nethack can mass-summon random enemies, whenever they feel like. Oh, and the difficulty of said enemies scales with your level. In other words, if you are a godless killing machine, the foe will summon a horde of godless killing machines to counter you. Often, the only hope of survival is to teleport away.
 * The worst of these can even summon other boss monsters, potentially including other Mook Makers or even the most powerful monster in the game, (who actually never appears for any other reason). Best to hope the Random Number God is smiling on you...
 * Oh and, things can be generated with a scroll or wand of create monster. Cursed scrolls of create monster summon 13-17 monsters.
 * Dungeon Crawl is a roguelike game with especially dangerous summons. Many of later game enemies can summon demons, which aren't only way stronger than summoner (they disappear after some time though) but also summon other demons themselves. Best example of this is Greater Mummy, which has "Summon Undead" spell. This spell sometimes generates Liches, who have "Summon Greater Demon" spell - this spell in turn may create Shadow Fiend. One of the spells in Shadow Fiend's repository is "Summon Common Demons" which may summon Ynoxinuls and Nequoxecs. Those demons summon Ufetubi and Imps respectively. That's chain of 4 mook makers and 1 mook monster at the end. The only way to stop it is killing those at the top - starting from mummy, who has pretty severe death curse...
 * This isn't so bad for spellcasters, who can use Abjuration. Abjuration is a low-level summoning spell that drastically shortens the remaining lifetime of any hostile summoned creatures in line of sight of the caster. Casting it twice is usually enough to immediately dismiss any and all hostile summoned creatures you see. The top-level summoners may of course immediately summon more enemies, but it really takes the bite out of summoning chains.

Role-Playing Game

 * Super Paper Mario has a few of these. They can easily lead to a Disc One Nuke, since by the time you run into one, you have a character who acts like a living flamethrower with infinite ammo. Positioning him under the Mook Maker and taping down the button will lead to endless enemies killed (and thus endless experience points).
 * Kamek was demoted from a fire-throwing mook to a mook maker in Super Mario Galaxy 2.
 * This is a standard skill of Magikoopa's though. Appearing in Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Although it was turning a block into a mook, so it's not infinite.
 * Way before that, and probably inspiring these, Yoshi's Island had several pipes that spawn enemies...but only if Yoshi doesn't carry around 6 eggs already. Yes, the purpose of those pipes is essentially to provide ammo.
 * The first two Paper Mario's have different kinds of Fuzzies that could do this. Easy experience and with the Zap Tap Badge, you're undamaged as well!
 * The last obstacle before the final battle in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is a locked room with six monster-spawning machines that must be disabled before the door will open.
 * Spiderweb Software's PC game series Geneforge involves this trope as one of the major points of the setting and the game mechanics. The player character, his organization, and the enemy organization are all Minion Masters called Shapers Also, you frequently encounter beasties called 'spawners', which just sit there and make creations every few turns until you destroy them. The Shapers consider spawners an abomination: Creations that can Shape are bad enough, but on top of that the spawners are mindless!
 * Spiderweb's earlier Exile/Avernum 3: Ruined World revolves around destroying a number of enormous magical Mook Making facilities before they destroy the world.
 * Later Avernums include undisguised Expys of Geneforge's spawners.
 * The Loaded Dice in EarthBound. Easily the game's worst random encounter, since a) calling for help is all it does, b) some of the help in that part of the game is REALLY powerful, and c) Ness is alone, barring some help from the easily-felled Flying Men.
 * The Magmen in Mother 3 is another example, being capable of spawning Pyreflies from his cranial crater.
 * The SNES game Soul Blazer (which was the game before the excellent Illusion of Gaia) has objects which spawn monsters until they are destroyed. This bears striking similarity to Gauntlet.
 * Lufia 2 Rise of the Sinistrals has a bunch of monsters which only real annoying power is constantly summoning weaker monsters up to the point were even weak ones get fatal enemies.
 * Lufia 3 is even worse. Monsters with an ability to call rainforcement will a lot tougher and longer to fight than usual monsters, and bosses with such skill are easily categorized in That One Boss.
 * D&D has its own share. Icewind Dale 2 contains a slime enemy which is horribly annoying since it generates a hell lot of identical copies, which themselves are also hard to kill due to high resistance. (Not a perfectly straight example, as the first few are just the initial one splitting.)
 * Whereas Pit Fiends in Baldur's Gate II were originally fairly straightforward enemies, the popular Tactics mod changes their stats to those used in the tabletop game books, giving the ability to gate in other Pit Fiends. Meaning that, unless you kill the first one or two quickly, you could easily have an army of enraged demons on your hands in no time.
 * Geth starships in Mass Effect sometimes spawn geth until they are damaged enough to fly away. (yes, fly away. Geth pilots are apparently more intelligent than your average video game airman, and don't want their fancy starship getting destroyed.)
 * The Thorian on Feros will spit out one Asari clone after another until it itself is killed.
 * In the first game these are finite, though, unlike many mook makers—the Geth dropships will eventually run out of troopers and leave, and the Thorian produces a new Asari clone only when you destroy a node. In Mass Effect 2 there do seem to be some infinite mook spawns, notably the Geth infantry when fighting the Colossus on Haestrom.
 * Throughout the Mana series, a lot of enemies can spawn smaller Mooks.
 * Lord Zivilyn, an extremely difficult optional boss in Skies of Arcadia, has a move where he summons a Zivilyn Bane. These enemies are hard enough to fight on their own, let alone multiple ones PLUS their leader. As far as I know, there isn't a limit to how many he can summon.
 * During the later missions of Valkyria Chronicles, Imperial reinforcements will requested each turn until the camps are occupied by your own forces.
 * In Morrowind's expansion, Tribunal contains one in its final dungeon. Interesting example, as you have to run through it to get to the next area.
 * The Igglanova bosses in Phantasy Star IV who spit out Xanafalgues. Also the Guilgenovas in the Bio Plant who spit out Gicefalgues.
 * In Devil Survivor, malfunctioning COMPs lying on the ground spawn more demons every few turns or so until you shut them off or complete your mission.
 * The World Ends With You has a giant bat. To defeat it, you have to kill the Goddamned Bats it keeps creating, which will turn the lights on for some reason, knocking it out so you can attack it. After a while, more bats will be created, though.
 * Killing the bats doesn't turn the lights on. The electrical cables have Noise-shaped...things...on them which your partner must attack while surrounded by Goddamned Bats. They have such low health, however, that they're hard to notice and can just get destroyed accidentally.
 * Many creatures in Dragon Quest are capable of doing this. The That One Boss of Dragon Quest VII, Hellcloud, combines this with Standard Status Effects.
 * Dragon Age: Origins has the Darkspawn Broodmothers.
 * During the second Mako reactor mission early on in Final Fantasy VII. After jumping out of the train, you can walk south in the tunnel and reach a Shinra guard station. Two guards will attack you and set off an alarm which, if you choose to stick around, will endlessly spawn wave after wave of guards, with a dialogue box with the option to leave the area in between. Somewhat useful if you wish to grind up some levels before you tackle the mission proper.
 * Final Fantasy XIII - Boxed Phalanxes.....oh the Boxed Phalanxes
 * To clarify, they're not only Mook Makers, they're also Mook Empowerers. Leave them long enough, and they'll put so many buffs on their Mooks they almost reach Boss in Mook Clothing territory.

Shoot'Em Up

 * The doujinsoft game Sispri Gauntlet takes this a step further, with mechanical Mook Maker makers, many of which are heavily armed, mobile, and self-repairing. Some of them can produce more than a dozen Mook Makers simultaneously, and there seems to be no limit on how many can exist at the same time.
 * Star Fox Assault features Aparoid hatchers and transfer devices that spawn enemies until they're destroyed.
 * Geometry Wars has double red discs which generate swarms of other enemy types.
 * In the original Defender arcade game, there were Pods, which when destroyed released many Swarmers - specks.
 * The portals on either side of the screen in Crystal Quest and Crystal Crazy.
 * The Spawner and Mother in Hero Core. The boss "Grand Mother" produces Mothers, making it a Mook Maker Maker.
 * Though to be fair, the Grand Mother can only summon a finite number of Mothers (four, I believe), two at a time. So it's not a true recursive example, just a headache.
 * The Gradius series has those hatches that periodically spit out waves of enemy ships, also used by some bosses. In III's Moai stage, large indestructible Moais drop off normal Moais, most of the Moai bosses spit out mini-Moais, and in Gaiden, even the regular Moais do it.

Simulation Game

 * Descent has these, in the form of purple-veined walls or corridor sections (Mat-Cens, short for "materialization centers") that will construct hostile robots to get in your way. Thankfully, all of them stop after generating up to three waves of two to six robots (depending on the difficulty level). Also, the final boss from the first game, and several bosses in the second, warp in mooks indefinitely. The second game's Mat-Cens can reactivate indefinitely on Insane.
 * Some enemies produce smaller enemies when killed, for example the Sidearm splits into the Goddamned Bats that are Sidearm Modules.
 * And one level in Descent II has a Thief Bot Maker! As if defeating ONE Thief bot was an epic quest, now you get to lose all your powerups NINE TIMES in one level!
 * Often, these are set up as Teleporting Keycard Squad-style traps.
 * The monsters in Harvest Moon: Rune Factory are summoned by machines that the character must destroy to reach the boss of the cave.
 * A few GUILT in the Trauma Center series embodies this trope. Take Savato, the final boss of the first game. Not only is it itself a Mook Maker, either slicing open the heart or creating webs to make some, the things it spawns are their own Mook Makers, and the Mooks created from that can go back a stage, into ten of those little bastards. The first are merely annoyances, either just running around or barely noticeable vital drain. The second limits your health by merely existing, and there's the thing about bursting into twice the amount that was required to make the damn thing in the first place (and no, the five that made the thing did not combine). All this while you're fighting the boss, which just loves cutting the heart up and generally making your life a living hell. There's also Triti, which, if you don't do things just right, make more of themselves to cover the organ it's trying to petrify (yes, petrify).
 * Actually the GUILT Bodies Savato produces aren't that hard, you just have to zap them as soon as they are released, you can leave 1-4 when doing the web segment of Savato, and when your knife is used up, use the spare time to zap the remaining GUILT bodies, if the GUILT bodies do merge, kill the Blue Savato immediately, but if it is during the web portion, after the last web, any remaining GUILT Bodies will retreat into Savato. What you really have to be concerned about is the lacerations Savato makes.
 * The true final stage of Ace Combat 2 has bases that keep launching F-15Ss to attack Scarface One, and to make things worse the bases can't be destroyed. In Ace Combat X Skies of Deception you have to sink the occasional carrier that will launch F-35s indefinitely, but they can be sunk at least.
 * In the Star Wars: X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, anything bigger than a Corvette is usually one of these. They'd regularly be able to spew fighters well past the 'standard' capacity, such as a Nebulan B Frigate, which can carry one twelve-ship squadron, throwing out an entire wing of 72.
 * Drone frigates in the Xtended Terran Conflict mod for X3 Terran Conflict produce wings of advanced Attack Drones on the fly, and will launch all of them when they come under attack. Damaged drones will land to repair, and replacements are put into production as soon as there are loses.

Survival Horror

 * All three types of Guardians from Eternal Darkness carry this as one of their tactics: The Greater Guardians in Ehn'gha do it at random, the Black Guardian does it in the second phase of its boss battle, and Lesser Guardians (Reapers) have it as their only offensive maneuver. Once the player gets the Summon spell, he/she can become a Mook Maker when necessary.

Third-Person Shooter

 * In Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, several structures produce enemies, ranging from concrete bunkers to full-fledged buildings. Of course, in keeping with the game's "destroy everything" mantra, all of these can be blown up (though heavier buildings may require a bunker buster while most others simply require a couple of blocks of C4).
 * The emergence holes in Gears of War.

Turn-Based Strategy

 * The Dark Portals in La Pucelle Tactics periodically spit out more monsters if you don't purify (destroy) them beforehand. They also generated Geo Effects, so two tropes for the price of one!
 * Any Geo Panels with the Clone effect in the Disgaea series can function as these, spawning an exact copy of a randomly chosen unit who's on the panels at the end of each turn.
 * The Dark Sun in the Dark World maps in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories sometimes has the "Summon reinforcements" effect, which summons enemy units of the same class and level as existing ones on the map.
 * Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice and Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten have enemy base panels from which a certain number of additional units will emerge as turns pass.
 * Shadow Demons in Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic has Harvester unit that generates a larva each time it devours someone.
 * Factories from Advance Wars 2, enemy-controlled buildings that, like bases, ports and airports, can create units. Unlike these structures, they spawn units for free and the units can move on the same day that they are built. Unsurprisingly, factory missions are some of the toughest missions, and are the "boss" levels at the end of each nation.
 * In most Fire Emblem games, the enemy (and occasionally NPC allies) are able to summon extra troops, and sometimes they can keep doing this indefinitely, resulting in endless waves until you complete the map's objectives. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance gives you a character, Tanith, who is able to do this for your side, though she loses this ability in the sequel.

Wide Open Sandbox

 * Minecraft features dungeons which contain 0-2 chests, as well as an enemy spawner. It will continuously pump out a specific mob until the player reaches the spawner and either lights up the room or destroys the spawner.
 * In Grand Theft Auto III, the "Kingdom Come" mission has vans generating endless waves of SPANKED-up suicide bombers. The only way to stop them is to destroy the vans with a rocket launcher.
 * Prototype has Hives and Military Bases. Hives generally spawn Hunters, up to four and maintains that number while the player is within the vicinity. Military Bases generate a couple extra squad of soldiers if an alert is raised within vicinity, and will continue to do so if the alert is still active and there is a lack of surviving military personnel. Destroying said structures will effectively erase the presence and circular area influence of the respective enemy type for a few minutes.
 * Bases also maintain the number of patrolling vehicles near it, especially the helicopters once they're available. You can keep taking out the single helicopter circling the base perimeter carefully without alert, and a new one will just spawn.
 * One odd thing about destroying the structure of either enemy type is that, if you linger long enough after its destruction, the circular area influence will be restored with its corresponding effects, but the structure is still destroyed and unable to make mooks. You must move away far enough to allow for structural respawn and consequently available for temporary elimination again.

Anime and Manga

 * from Claymore. Par for the course for Claymore.
 * Rubodon, from Bleach can spawn an infinite number of skeleton-like mooks.
 * Noah from Soul Eater. While not creating the mooks himself, he's a collectionist who store all his collections within the Book of Eibon, so, when it comes to fight, he uses the book to summon a vast number of powerful creatures he had captured over the time.

Comic Books

 * Master Mold, from X-Men, a walking Sentinel factory. Add this to its A.I. Is a Crapshoot tendencies, and you've got a problem on your hands.
 * In the comic book Gearhead, Evil Ted has the Lovecraftian Superpower of being able to sprout an apparently unlimited number of zombies from his flesh.

Live-Action TV

 * Power Rangers, Rita has a magic kiln which Finster uses to make putties as well as the Monster of the Week for her.
 * Kamen Rider Diend's main power is the ability to create copies of other Kamen Riders, which then do what he tells them to. Normally these summons are solo, but his most-used card creates three Riotroopers, more in line with this trope.
 * Later, a Monster of the Week steals the Diendriver, and with it, summons a Fangire and Undead to fight the Samurai Sentai Shinkenger.
 * With the macrovirus from Star Trek: Voyager, the unconscious hosts are Mook Makers for the monsters that transmit the virus.

Tabletop Games

 * Before video games made Mook Makers a staple, OD&D had the grey philosopher: an undead cleric whose morbid philosophical musings materialized as vicious little ghost-like critters called malices.
 * The "summon monster trap" in Tippyverse campaigns is a machine useful for making training dummies.
 * In more recent D&D there is the Great Old Master, a Neogi that has grown old, injected with special venom and then Adult Neogi lay eggs in it. Until it dies from the children eating there way out it can act as a Mook Maker.
 * The Sliver Queen card in Magic: The Gathering cranks out babby as well as being extremely powerful in a fight. It's also shockingly simple to make an infinite combo where she can create creatures for ever or until you get bored.
 * There are dozens of MTG examples. They can create critters when others are created, for a fee (this last one with Eldritch Abomination bonus), whenever the controller drops a land, by tapping or a dozen other techniques.
 * In Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Undead can do something similar- Tomb Kings (Ancient Egyptian mummy/skeleton armies) have Liche Priests who can replenish units (back to their starting strength, so not too bad). Vampire Counts, however, have no limit on the number of fresh troops they can summon... Chaos Daemons also have a fairly similar trick, but theirs involves having a wizard turn enemies into more Daemons. Some of which are essentially walking plague-sores.
 * Some of the Tyranid critters in Warhammer 40,000, such as the Tervigon and the Parasite of Mortex, have the ability to spit out smaller creatures.
 * The Skaven have an incredibly powerful spell called the Dreaded Thirteenth Spell that converts a sizable chunk of enemies into Clanrats, their standard Core choice. Despite its 25+ casting difficulty, with good rolls you can cast this spell as many times as you like, which means your amount of mooks is only limited by the number of enemy mooks.

Web Comics

 * Dr. Wily's Instant Robot Maker from Bob and George. During the Mega Man 5 parody storyline, Bob reprograms the machine to make Robot Masters, then sends the resulting massive army of Robot Masters to attack Dr. Light's lab.
 * El Goonish Shive has spell "Murder Shroud", which creates a small storm cloud continuously summoning crows… that try to fly into the target and explode on impact. Adrian Raven used it only once so far (with title: "If You Make a Cloud of Crows, You Just Might be Goth").

Web Original

 * Cracked Photoplasty advertises it in Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.

Western Animation

 * Marvin the Martian and his instant-martian capsules (just add water!).
 * In Robot Chicken, Cobra has one of these to clone countless Mooks, though some come out wrong.