Disposable Bandits

"[Y]ou can kill smugglers and bandits and other outlaws all you like. Outlaws have no rights. Plenty of adventurers make a living from killing and looting outlaws."

- Arrille, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Laconic: Bandits as disposable enemies with no direct connection to the main villains.

Groups of bandits are very popular picks for the lowest power human(oid) enemies in the Sorting Algorithm of Evil in fantasy and Post Apocalyptic fiction. Their motivation is straightforward and requires little explanation, they can come from anywhere, and, while armed combatants, bandits rarely have significant combat skill and generally only have actual training if they began as military deserters (in which case their training is generally still minimal) making them some the weakest willing combatants possible. Even more importantly is that, unless they style themselves as champions of the poor, bandits have absolutely no legal or social protection and the only people who have a problem with killing bandits are other bandits, so the heroes are free to slaughter them as they wish. Games focused on space flight often use Space Pirates in this role while those focused on naval operations use the normal kind of Pirate. This is especially frequent in trader simulator type games.

If they're stupid enough to try attacking someone who winds up clearly overpowering them, they're Mugging the Monster.

Anime and Manga

 * All over the place in early and filler parts of Fist of the North Star. Virtually all of them are stupid enough to charge at the guy who just made their friends explode with a touch. They decrease in frequency as Kenshiro starts fighting the forces of the major villains instead, though the only real difference those new minions have is sometimes making their futile attack out of fear of/loyalty to their superiors rather than stupidity.

Tabletop Games

 * Very common in low level Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder modules.

Video Games

 * Fights against bandits in early levels are a stable of most Fire Emblem games.
 * Common in The Elder Scrolls. One of the first NPCs the player meets in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind even outright tells the player such criminals have no rights under Imperial law.
 * Bandit parties in Mount & Blade are generally the weakest non-civilian party on the world map and, unlike civilians, nothing negative happens if you kill them. After the early game groups of "deserters" start spawning, which are functionally identical except for being stronger fighters.