Even Mooks Have Loved Ones: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|'''Miss Teschmacher:''' [after learning that Luthor has sent a nuclear missile heading toward Hackensack] Lex, my mother lives in Hackensack.<br />

 

 

[[Mook|Mooks]], [[Evil Minions]] and even [[The Dragon]] [[Even Evil Has Loved Ones|have a family]], and can form romantic relationships and friendships just like normal people. On and [[Punch Clock Villain|off the clock]]. Their [[Bad Boss]] however, usually [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|doesn't understand]] or [[Horrible Judge of Character|seriously misjudges]] the emotional attachment present. Eventually, it results that the [[Big Bad]]'s [[Evil Plan]] calls for the indirect suffering or death of their friend/love interest/family member. Maybe the continent they live on is being targeted with their boss' orbital [[Death Ray]]. Perhaps their boss wants to kill all Xes, and the significant other happens to be an X. Or the friend just so happens to be the hero.

 

== [[Film]] ==

** In Lex's defense, this was Otis's fault. If not for his lack of arm length, Supes would have been killed and San Francisco doomed.

* ''[[The Omen|Omen]] III: The Final Conflict''. The wife of Damien Thorne's right hand man had a baby at a time that the Christ Child is scheduled to be born. When Thorne orders the death of all the babies born during that time, the aide lies about when the baby was born so he won't have to kill him.

* Played straight in ''[[Harry Potter]]:'' Voldemort ''was'' going to spare {{spoiler|Lily Evans-Potter}} when {{spoiler|Snape}} asked him to, but as soon as [[Mama Bear|she made it slightly difficult]] (he would have had to ''push her out of the way'' and all) he just decided to kill her too. As a result {{spoiler|Snape}} sacrifices everything to ensure Voldemort's downfall, and the best part is that Voldemort seems [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good|completely ignorant]] that he just gave one of his most promising lieutenants perfect reason to want him dead.

** Also used with the Malfoy family in ''Half-Blood Prince'' and ''Deathly Hallows'' - Voldemort punishes Lucius for his various screw-ups by letting Draco join the Death Eaters and putting him on what is essentially a suicide mission. Both Lucius and his wife Narcissa are obviously driven out of their minds with fear by this and Draco makes it pretty apparent by the end of the book that he is only going through with the mission to keep Voldemort from killing his parents. By the last book, it is pretty clear that none of the Malfoys want to serve Voldemort anymore and simply want to all get each other out alive. {{spoiler|This clears the way for Narcissa to actually ''lie to Voldemort's face'' about whether or not Harry is dead, ''just so that she and Lucius could find Draco again''. Keep in mind that Voldemort is a confirmed expert of Legilimency; lying to him and getting away with it is VERY difficult... [[Mama Bear|and she still did it]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|and got away with it]].}}.

* One of the stories in [[Poul Anderson]]'s [[Technic History]] series ended with Dominic Flandry successfully killing a Merseian agent who'd been stirring up rebellion on a Terran world. Then Flandry wondered if the agent had some children who couldn't understand why their father hadn't come home.

** The heroic version shows up in ''The Departure,'' when [[The Heart|Cassie]] is confronted by [[Anti-Villain|Aftran]], the sister of a Yeerk whom she had recently killed in battle.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* On ''Wonder Woman'', when a mook discovers that the villain is planning to use a laser to destroy {{spoiler|Phoenix, Arizona}}, he yells that he has family there, and tries to stop him. {{spoiler|He fails, but his action gives Wonder Woman time to save the day. And to be fair, it wasn't clear that he knew the villain was planning to do anything criminal.}}

 

** In the HeX coda [[Neverwinter Nights|modules]], {{spoiler|Poe}} betrays {{spoiler|Lester's}} doomsday plan because it would put her boyfriend at risk.

* One of the statistics that ''[[Alpha Protocol]]'' keeps track of is the number of orphans the player creates when he kills mooks, to the extent that where you are in the world affects [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|how many orphans are created]]. In China it's only one orphan per man killed, for example.

* In [[Maple Story]], the Demon Slayer character rebelled against the Dark Mage for this reason.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

{{quote| [[Punch Clock Villain|This minions clock in from 9 to 5 to provide for their wives...]]}}

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

{{quote| [[Fluffy the Terrible|"The babies!!"]]}}

 

{{reflist}}