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Mecha-Mooks: Difference between revisions
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1) Upon being defeated, [[Made of Explodium|they will explode]]. Always. 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 [[Cut the Juice|turning off]] 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. ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' is particularly guilty of this, with mooks constantly exploding in Jack's face.
This often is a form of [[Pragmatic Adaptation]] when the series is based on an earlier source which was more realistically violent, but showing that would invoke the ire of [[Media Watchdogs]]. When you've got an action-based children's show where [[Nobody Can Die]], expect Mecha-Mooks to pick up the slack. After all, they're [[Just a Machine|Just Machines]]. Should they ''not'' explode, then at the least you will see [[Eye Lights Out]]. On a related note, if they should be [[Hacking Minigame|hacked]] or reprogrammed their [[Glowing Eyes of Doom]] will have a [[Convenient Color Change]].
[[Anime]], has a second, more [[Humongous Mecha|literal]] type: [[Real Robot]] series' will usually have at least one class of [[Mecha]] that basically acts as [[Redshirt Army|the "Grunt" unit]] for the bad guy's army. This mech is usually simply constructed, probably with a basic ranged weapon ([[Gatling Good|machinegun]] or [[Frickin' Laser Beams|energy weapon]] or two, a close-combat weapon, and may have the option of carrying a [[BFG|bigger gun]], 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 [[Ace Custom]] version of this mecha.
If one wants something a bit more up the ladder in terms of "kill-tasticness" and "[[Elite Mook|non-suckitude]]", look at [[Mechanical Monster]]. If you want the guy ''building'' the mooks, that's the [[Robot Master]].
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* Spoofed in ''[[Tom Strong]]'', where Timmy Turbo realizes that "We can be as violent as we like with these teachers, because they're just ''robots''!"
* 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 [[Superman]] was apparently dealing with Brainiac that week, [[Batman]] ended up taking out all except one -- that Bats had reprogrammed with the Geneva Convention. Really.
* Codified in an issue of ''[[Exiles]]'', when Mimic reflects that superheroes really, really love fighting robots for the sheer pleasure of unfettered destruction.
* The robotic aliens who hunt the title character in ''[[Omega the Unknown]].
* [[Doctor Doom]]'s Doombots--both the [[Robot Me]] Doombots, and the more straightforward purple-and-gray Mecha-Mook Doombots. Oddly, the two designs rarely appear together in a story.
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== Films -- Live-Action ==
* Both ''[[Star Wars]]: The Phantom Menace'' and ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]'' blew up ''acres'' of battle droids, though they didn't hesitate to "kill" the good-guy troopers either. Of course, they were [[Cloning Blues|clones]], and thus almost as safe to kill.
** 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 [[Faceless Goons]].
* The Golden Army in ''[[Hellboy II]]''. Clockwork Mecha-Mooks that put themselves back together upon being destroyed.
* ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]] 2'':
{{quote|'''Vanko:''' [[Memetic Mutation|Dhrone bettuh.]]<br />
'''Hammer:''' What, why '''"drone better"'''? Ivan, I got an order for '''suits''', not '''drones!'''<br />
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** Oh, and 4: {{spoiler|they make it easy for Vanko to betray Hammer, since he's the one programming them.}}
* The [[Terminator]] 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 Matrix]]'' the Sentinels, squid like robots that come in the millions.
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* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''
** 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.
** The Necrons aren't really so much [[Mooks]], as they are [[The Juggernaut|unstoppable]] torrent of an ancient [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|undead robot]] [[Determinator|determinators]], marching at you like [[Made of Iron|unflinching]] metallic death.
* Unmanned combat drones are ''everywhere'' in ''[[Shadowrun]]''. From spy-cameras disguised as pigeons to robot tanks.
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== Video Games ==
* German versions of computer games, notably in ''[[Half-Life]]'', where all soldiers are replaced by robots, The [[Contra|Probotector]] series, ''Carmageddon'', or fighting games, where blood is recoloured green or black. This is because of censorship in Germany (''UCK'' board) disallowing displaying [[Never Say "Die"|human deaths]].
** In the German version of ''[[Command
*** Most (probably all) earlier Versions of ''C&C'' did the same, 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.
* The Novus in ''[[Universe At War]]: Earth Assault'' are a heroic example, a race of Mecha-Mooks [[Laser Guided Tykebomb|Laser Guided Tykebombs]] working with the [[Ancient Astronauts]] Masari against the [[Planet Looters]] Hierarchy.
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* ''[[God Hand]]'' 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 [[Giant Mook]], Dr. Ion.
* Disney's extraordinarily "kid-friendly" [[MMORPG]] ''[[Toontown Online]]'' solely features an ever-replenishing army of robots as your enemies -- whom you destroy with ''jokes''.
* ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl'' has an 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 of expressing sorrow; {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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.}}
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' has the Geth, an entire race of these. The sequel adds a series of cheap, mass-produced robotic security troops (called "Mechs" in-universe, natch), that are roughly on-par with an Imperial Stormtrooper in terms of intelligence and accuracy, though Imperial Stormtroopers never had robotic dogs and giant missile-firing robots backing them up. Unlike the Geth the Mechs do not use true AI, and may even be more in-line with the trope's definition as they do not think for themselves, are surprisingly resilient - blowing off a limb only slows them down, doesn't stop them (they actually 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.
** The Geth themselves seem to be a slight subversion of the trope. They have a smooth organic appearance, bleed some sort of white blood-equivalent, give off odd electronic death-squeels 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 thousands of them with a few bullets, however. Their "death-screams" are actually them transmitting themselves to a new mainframe. Also, all the geth the heroes kill have already crossed the [[Moral Event Horizon]] in spectacular fashion.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' [[Never Say "Die"|generally uses the ambiguous term "defeated"]] 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 {{spoiler|they're not really robots, but metallic constructs animated by a powerful telekinetic [[Brain In a Jar]]}}. Even some of the cyborg enemies explode upon defeat, most notably the Arachnos Tarantulas.
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** An early episode of ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' has the boys construct their own horde of robot clones of themselves to increase productivity, in a rare non-violent use of this trope. {{spoiler|They fulfill this trope better in the movie, where they're used to fight the previously mentioned Normbots.}}
* An early instance is the 1941 [[Superman Theatrical Cartoons|Superman cartoon short]] "Mechanical Monsters", which climaxes with Supes whaling on some big ass robots. This may be the [[Ur Example]].
* ''[[Jonny Quest]]'' had 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 ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures|Jonny Quest the Real Adventures]]'' episode "The Robot Spies".
** Modern audiences may remember this as the Walking Eye from ''[[The Venture Brothers]]''. Walking Eye!
** Though in general the original ''[[Jonny Quest]]'' series [[Moral Dissonance|didn't have many problems killing off human Mooks]] as long as it wasn't ''too'' graphic, like the two frogmen crushed by the leaping motorboat in the title sequence.
* The original ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ]]'' cartoon turned the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage|original comic's]] 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 sliced open. Then began the dismemberment.
* Heavily subverted by ''[[Samurai Jack]]'': although he only ever cut the Mecha-Mooks (or [[Demonic Invaders]]) with his sword, they always seemed to be [[Ridiculously-Human Robots]], 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 [[High-Pressure Blood]] trope and other extreme scenes of carnage, because [[Symbolic Blood|it was just oil]]. ''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. Then he fights Jack and gets cut up like any other robotic malcontent.
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* A variation on this is in ''[[Transformers]]'', where ''every'' character is a robot; this allowed it to do things like, say, [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Death kill off] main characters in [[The Movie]] to [[Merchandise-Driven|make place for new ones]]. This didn't keep the scenes where it happens from being quite disturbing to younger viewers who idolized the fallen, [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|original Prime]] and [[Heroic Sacrifice|Dinobot]] 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 ''[[Beast Machines]]'' are the closes 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 [[King Mook|larger]] Vehicon generals. Naturally, this makes the Vehicon drones the most [[Cannon Fodder|blown-up, dropped, disemembered or crushed]] mooks in Transformers history.
** ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' 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).
*** 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.
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* In ''[[Kim Possible]] : [[The Movie|So The Drama]]'', 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 ''[[Centurions]]'', [[Cyborg]] [[Mad Scientist]] Doc Terror had several varieties of mecha-mooks to pit against the titular heroes.
* Dr. Robotnik's Swat Bots from ''[[Sonic Sat AM|Sonic the Hedgehog]]''.
* ''[[Batman: The Brave And The Bold]]'': Degaton's robotic army in "The Golden Age of Justice!"
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