Mook Debut Cutscene

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In some action games, there are many different kinds of Mooks and you're often too absorbed into the action to notice you meet a certain type for the first time. So if the developers really want to make sure you notice them and don't forget them, what should they do? Well, make a special presentation for each one of them! Or at least a good part of them.

Thus, the unsuspecting player will often run in a seemingly desert area and be interrupted by a cutscene. Cue a mook appearing stylishly from nowhere and maybe doing some threatening moves before the fight begins. The sequence is usually wordless but may feature a warcry of some sort. Naturally Elite Mooks tend to have a debut scene more often than minor mooks.

Will often overlap with Boss Subtitles, but not always.

Compare Degraded Boss, where an enemy is a boss at first but reappears as a regular enemy later.

Please do not include bosses in the examples. This trope is for regular enemies appearing for the first time.

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Examples of Mook Debut Cutscene include:

Video Game Examples

Action Adventure

• Alice: Madness Returns does this.
• Okami has those, except for a few late mooks (mostly variants of previouly encountered ones).
• In Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, the first time you encounter a new enemy type in Story mode the camera cuts to the enemy in question and displays their name with a brief, slightly witty description attached. E.g, "Drow Spearman: Watch out for the pointy end."
• In the Star Wars Dark Forces Saga game Jedi Outcast, when you first encounter a Reborn (artificially-empowered Force users; far more Badass than most Imperial Mooks, though nothing compared to those who properly learned Jedi and Sith techniques) you get a brief cutscene of his arrival.

First-Person Shooter

• Doom 3 has this happen. When a new Mook shows up, a cutscene will kick in to let you know.
• Metroid Prime uses cut-scenes to introduce bosses, mid-bosses, and major enemies such as space pirates, baby sheegoths, beam troopers, and the metroids themselves. The only time you'll see any text is if you use the scan visor.

Hack and Slash

• Bayonetta does it. Curiously, Gracious & Glorious don't have one even though they are the Elite Mooks of the game; probably because they are an upgraded version of Grace & Glory and are not met in Easy mode.
• Done in every game of the Devil May Cry series, for every single enemy.
• Done in God of War, though the cutscenes aren't always without dialogue, like the first one introducing the minotaurs (which involves two soldiers trying to outrun the monsters).
• Gauntlet (1985 video game)! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewTjygaoCMc
• Dantes Inferno has enemies (usually the various "sin demons") introduced by cutscenes.
• In the fourth Onimusha game, whenever a new type of Genma appear you'll see a brief cutscene introducing said creature. In some cases, it will be followed by a written text about how to deal with it.

Platform Game

• In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, levels with a Super Ability will introduce the appropriate mooks this way (with the exception of Super Bonkers, who is a miniboss).
• The SpongeBob SquarePants game Battle for Bikini Bottom contained brief cutscenes of most robots when you first encounter them, as well as them showcasing their fighting techniques against harmless NPCs or other targets.

Real Time Strategy

• Dawn of War also does it for your own units in some cases (in the first two games, which had linear missions).

Role-Playing Game

• Happens in the Mass Effect series- the first time you meet geth, husks (both on Eden Prime) and Collectors are all during cutscenes.
• In Warcraft 3, several enemies are introduced in this way (of the "What the hell is that?" "Kill it first, we'll study it later" variety). Sometimes your own units are introduced by showing how they work (Crypt Fiends show up on the first level where the enemy has flying units, their intro shows them webbing the flyers to the ground).

Survival Horror

• The game Parasite Eve has several cutscenes introducing new monsters, such as the first rat you fight; immediately before you're shown the gruesome transformation the rat undergoes, but subsequent encounters just have the rat showing up without any fanfare.
• Damn near every Resident Evil game has at least one:
  • Zombies and Hunters are both introduced with a FMV cutscene when first encountered in the original.
  • Following a creepy "Did I just see that?" glimpse of one outside a window, the first Licker you run into in Resident Evil 2 also gets its own FMV.
  • Part 3 uses mostly in-game cutscenes to do this, such as your first encounter with the Brain Suckers and the return of the Hunters, who make their reappearance by decapitating a shambling zombie.
  • Code: Veronica gives Zombies a gruesome FMV debut where they start crawling out of shallow graves and grabbing at Claire. Your first Bandersnatch gets both this and a Coup De Grace cutscene, and reappears as a Degraded Boss later.
  • Resident Evil 4 and 5 usually introduce minor enemies simply by having the camera zero in on one just before it goes on the attack. Your first Ganado and Majini are given their own cutscenes with dialogue and everything (both types of enemies are capable of speech).
• Used in Cold Fear with basically every enemy, except maybe for the one-armed Exobrutes.

Non-video game examples

• In the first Lord of the Rings movie, the scenes introducing the Uruk-hai orcs are mostly without dialogue.