Stealth Mook

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The average Mook in video games and other fiction is usually of the straightforward variety - you see them, they see you, fighting time, fighting time, blows are thrown. From large to small, regular mook to elite, all walks of life... most Mooks don't mince words about how they're out to mince you. But some of them are much more cloak-and-dagger about their business - their job is to ensure they remain unseen long enough to attain their objective, whether it's killing or otherwise defeating you, or else leading you away from your main objective.

These Stealth Mooks aren't always exclusively majors in hiding, and can easily overlap with other Mook types. For a Mook to qualify as one, though, the stealth must be one of their significant roles in a level or enemy party - whether or not the Mook elects to fight you varies. The sources of this Mook's stealth ability can range from being visible but hard to spot on-screen, to being completely undetectable until they attack; said abilities can be conferred by anything from magic or super-technology to Geo Effects, or simply being Genre Savvy enough (perhaps dangerously so) to use the terrain around them. Tougher Stealth Mooks may warrant special tactics and/or items to defeat. Being able to Back Stab the player characters is optional but common.

Ninja are by far the classic and most common examples of Stealth Mooks, as well as a common subtype of Mook that actively avoids your sight until you draw near.

Compare Invisible Monsters, who are naturally tough to see regardless of whether they're actively sneaky. Contrast the Stealth-Based Mission, where you're the one trying to stay unseen by mooks whose job is to find you. A protagonist with stealth abilities is usually The Sneaky Guy in a party of playable characters, and often the main playable character in a Stealth Based Game.

Examples of Stealth Mook include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Naruto manga's first and second volume deconstruct this trope: while the title character, Sasuke and Sakura want to become ninjas, they all fail to get past their examiner to steal bells from him within a time limit. He says they failed because they didn't work as a team, and as a result he was able to easily distract them. When you can't work together, you are no better than a standard Mook and easier to cut down. To prove the point, he stood out there in the open waiting for them to come, and beat them without needing stealth or even magic beyond basic illusions.

Comic Books

  • In Batman, the League of Shadows are supposed to be comprised of these. They can conduct ambushes, kidnapping and assassinations with few problems.

Film

  • Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises both feature these mooks in the form of the League of Shadows. Given their name, they are designed to infiltrate places with few people seeing them. When Bruce trains with the League, they show off their stealth during the former's Training Montage.

Literature

  • In Discworld, if you want to pass your exam in the Assassin's Guild, then you have to demonstrate the ability to be stealthy like this. And yes, per regulations you have to wear all-black. Veterinari as a young assassin was the exception that proved the rule.
    • The Assassins Guild has also long stopped taking contracts on Constable Sam Vimes, because he can see through their stealth and it would not be sporting to shoot him on the street. Instead, they send uppity students after Sam to teach them a lesson in humility.
    • Teatime in Hogfather is no Mook, but he does recruit them to help with his infiltration of the Tooth Fairy Castle. He can enter a room, kill your dog, and wait for ten minutes before you even notice.

Live-Action TV

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • The Gentleman are creepy precisely because they do not make a sound. They can glide into your room and rip out your heart long before you notice. To add to the horror, you can't even scream because they steal everyone's voices.
    • "Once More With Feeling" has Sweet's mooks demonstrating this. Several kidnap Dawn without breaking a sweat or making a sound, despite her being in the Summers house.

Podcasts

  • Welcome to Night Vale describes the Librarians as this. Go to the Nightvale library at your own risk, because you will never see them coming. Ever. And they are murderous when you enter their territory.

Video Games

First-Person Shooter

  • In the Halo games, some mook types have variants that use optical camouflage to turn invisible and surprise you.
  • In Syndicate, Specters equipped with "portable diffraction field generators" can turn invisible and sneak up on you.

Real Time Strategy

  • In Warcraft III, bandits and some other enemy types can Shadowmeld, allowing them to turn invisible at night and lie in ambush waiting for the careless to draw near.

Roguelike

  • NetHack and its variants have various monsters such as snakes, cave spiders, piercers, and trappers that can hide themselves from view, and usually wait until you are close to strike. You can reveal them by searching manually, and warning or telepathy will alert you to their presence.
    • The Samurai quest plays on the samurai-ninja contrast by including actual ninja and invisible stalkers among the more common hostile monsters that you'll encounter - the ninja themselves tend to avert this, however, with the stalkers being harder to detect in comparison.
    • In SLASH'EM and its variants, gnolls are adept at hiding to the point that warning cannot detect them - telepathy is the only way to spot a gnoll before it ambushes you, and stronger types of gnoll can generate with some powerful armor and equipment.
    • dNetHack includes the Garo from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, who use the same glyph (.) as normal floor tiles, making them difficult to spot.

Role-Playing Game

  • Pokémon video games:
    • Pokémon Gold and Silver and their Gen 4 remakes feature an unusual variant: The Fuchsia Gym Trainers all disguise themselves as their leader Janine, who has taken over now that her father has become an Elite Four member. In order to unmask the real Janine, you're expected to talk your way through the gym, which means fighting her Gym Trainers - however, Janine always waits in the same spot, making it trivial to skip them if you're so inclined.
    • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire introduces the Ninja Boy trainer class, who disguise themselves as various objects in the overworld like trees or ash piles to ambush passing trainers.
    • The cipher Peons from Pokémon Colosseum and its sequel, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, aren't always visible in the overworld like most enemy trainers. When you step into their aggro radius, these stealthy ones will jump down from the ceiling and ambush you. One even ambushes you right after you use a cramped elevator, and follows you out of said elevator despite not following you in.

Stealth Based Game

Tower Defense

  • The Bloons Tower Defense series has the Camo Bloon, which first appears in Bloons Tower Defense 4. In its initial appearance, it is around the same level as Black and White Bloons, and can only be actively targeted by a tower or monkey with camouflage detection - they can still be hit and popped by collateral damage from area-of-effect attacks. Bloons Tower Defense 5 and 6 make Camo a "trait" applicable to any non-MOAB Bloon, and Camo Bloons cannot be targeted or damaged by towers without camo detection.

Turn-Based Strategy

  • XCOM: Enemy Within has Seekers, which turn invisible when first encountered and attempt to sneak up on isolated troopers to strangle them.

Other Game Genres

  • The Luigi's Mansion series has several ghosts that fit the bill:
    • In the original Luigi's Mansion, there are two subtypes of Grabbing Ghost that are normally invisible - one can only be seen via their reflections in a mirror, and another can only be detected by their shadows on a projection screen. They only become visible when grabbing you, though you can also reveal them with your flashlight or elemental attacks from the Poltergust.
    • Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon has Sneakers, who turn invisible to scare Luigi from behind and interrupt him capturing other ghosts. Luigi's Mansion 3 has the similar Slinkers.
  • Fool Eaters from Hollow Knight are giant carnivorous plants that lie in wait for prey, hiding their open jaws among the heavy foliage of Greenpath. Once you step on them, you've got maybe a second to get the hell out of dodge before it bites you, and the only warning you get is a faint rustling sound.
  • Stalkers from Horizon Zero Dawn are deadly ambush predators, utilizing cloaking technology while hunting their prey. Even when you go into places that are identified as Stalker territory on your map, chances are you won't find them. They'll find you, likely because you triggered one of the alarm mines they've got laying around, or bumped right into one of these invisible menaces while trying to find a patch of tall grass to hide in.

Western Animation

  • The Equalists in book one of The Legend of Korra. They can infiltrate any area, from a Pro Bending stadium to Air Temple Island, and it's often too late for the benders there to put up a defense. Season one shows them taking over Republic City and establishing a fascist dictatorship. Only Korra proving that Amon is a fraud by airbending him into the ocean split up their group. A spinoff video game revealed that the remaining members needed another charismatic leader to become a threat again; without any guidance, they are nothing.
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