Giant Mook

For reference, you are the size of the little one.

Frank Martin: Let me guess. You're the smart one.
Giant Mook: No. I am the big one.

[Punches Frank across the room]
—Transporter 3

A minion or henchman too big, strong or well 'ard to be an ordinary mook, but not interesting enough to be The Dragon, the Big Bad, a member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad, or even a King Mook. Giant mooks usually require more effort to kill than ordinary Mooks; the hero may need to land a series of nasty martial-arts blows before they sink to their knees (they don't go flying when you hit them). Sometimes they may seem too strong for the hero to kill, but then be fortuitously (for the hero) caught up in a machine.

Giant Mooks often lead mook squads. Usually the laws of Mook Chivalry dictate that they attack alone, after their underlings have been easily dispatched.

If Giant Mooks are dragons, snakes, giants, or any other sort of scary animal or dumb big villain they will usually be the Big Bad's Pet, which the Hero first has to slay before confronting the Big Bad himself.

The actors who play Giant Mooks in big-budget films may be well-loved as wrestlers or as Gentle Giant actors in TV shows or independent films, but they don't rate above a line or two and a violent death in a major production. If a giant mook actually receives characterization, he is The Brute.

Video games, particularly Brawlers, First-Person Shooter and Third-Person Shooter games, are full of these. Many of these monsters start out as the de facto boss monster of the game's first or second episode or segment, having their strength diluted in their appearances later in the game.

In videogames, compare and contrast King Mook, a boss which only has the appearance of a Giant Mook. Compare Smash Mook, The Brute, Elite Mooks, an upgraded squad of mooks, and Boss in Mook Clothing. Contrast Fake Ultimate Mook, which looks like a Giant Mook but goes down just as easily as anyone else, and Mini-Mook.

Examples of Giant Mook include:

Actors

  • Pat "Bomber" Roach. Much-loved heavyweight wrestler and spokesman for wrestling, played Gentle Giant Bomber Busbridge in British drama series Auf Wiedersehen Pet. Some of his film roles:
  • Ron Tarr:
    • Appears in various bully, biker, minder and bouncer roles in British TV, notably in The Comic Strip.
    • Supporting character on British soap Eastenders.
    • The Big Guy of the revolutionaries in independent British film Eat the Rich.
    • Wore a skin to play a gorilla in Return of the Saint.
    • Giant French Mook wearing rather Bavarian-looking hat in the Bond film A View to a Kill (the one who lands on the conveyor belt).
    • Giant bar-room brawler Llug, who accidentally clobbers some mooks in Willow.
  • Dave Prowse, strongman and spokesman for Road safety (the Green Cross Man). Film Appearances:
    • Writer's Gentle Giant bodyguard, A Clockwork Orange.
    • Third-stringer in the Hammer Horror talent stable (the Giant Mook strongman from Vampire Circus, and the Frankenstein's Monster in Horror of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell).
    • Bit part as Hotblack Desiato's bodyguard in the TV version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
    • Finally got a Big Bad role as Darth Vader (after refusing the part of Chewbacca), but as you can't see his face through that armour (and the face you later see is someone else's), and all his lines were dubbed by James Earl Jones, his contribution to the role consists mostly of being big.
    • Considered for the part of Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me before the part went to Richard Kiel.
    • TV role as the Minotaur (with a bull's head and a loincloth) in the Doctor Who story "The Time Monster."
  • Richard Kiel
  • Andrew Bryniarski:
  • Tyler Mane:
  • Sven-Ole Thorsen:
  • Randall "Tex" Cobb
  • Robert Maillet

Anime & Manga

  • Lionel "Leo" Jenning in the Western Shojo manga Miriam, falls just short of being The Brute by not having any real afiliation with the main group of bad guys. However, he's a gigantic champion prizefighter who presents a tremendous challenge in hand-to-hand combat, and Douglas' encounter with him plays out much like any Giant Mook faceoff in a movie or video game would... until later, when he becomes The Big Guy Sixth Ranger.
  • Mr. Heart from Fist of the North Star is the giant mook in every way, right down to his size. In fact, probably half the villains from this series would qualify.
    • No, really. A lot of the bad guys are huge, and then there's Devil Rebirth, who appears to be at least twenty feet tall, and yet is considered a human.
    • And then we have Zeed, the first villain in the series, who strangely changes size in mid-scene.
  • The finale of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's first season had the huge mecha mook that appeared near the end of the Theme Music Power-Up, which required both Nanoha and Fate joining forces to take down.
  • Bleach has the Gillian, the lowest class of the menos (read: super hollows) which are basically giant hollows with even less common sense.
    • Fura is what happens when this trope gets turned Up to Eleven.
  • Docrates and Cassius, two enormous brothers from Saint Seiya, who never really attained enough status in the ranks of Sanctuary to be of any significant stature among the Saints. At least Cassius got to redeem himself in a Tear Jerking Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • Full Metal Panic!! has quite a few of these. The first comes in the form of the KGB lieutenant who was seen during Gauron's first introductory scene. A generic, huge, muscled Mook. He's even Lampshaded mockingly by Gauron to have been brought there by the colonel for the specific purpose of intimidating him (due to his big size and angry manner). And then there's Dunnigan, who is again, muscled and huge. He tends to use brute force and strength, which was also the reason for his downfall when fighting Sôsuke. This is, however, subverted with Gauron, who is one of the tallest (along with the KGB lieutenant and Dunnigan) and most muscled characters in the series. Despite initially looking like a rugged, Giant Mook that won't last very long... he turns out to be one of the longest running (and very important) antagonists in the series.
  • In One Piece, the Marines use actual Giants as mooks dubbed the "Giant Squad" of about 8 of them.
    • The two members of the Giant Squad who have actually been named are both Vice Admirals, the third highest rank in the Marines, so at least in theory they shouldn't be mooks. But since they're only seen in action against characters on an even higher level who beat them effortlessly, they come off like mooks anyway.
  • In Berserk, especially the Golden Age arc, the knight companies and mercenary bands would always have one or two fighters that stood at least nine feet tall. Guts usually makes quick work of them.


Comics

  • In Watchmen, midget crimelord Big Figure had a couple of big mooks at his disposal and used them to get at Rorschach in the middle of a prison riot. Little damn good it did him.
  • In Megalex, Ram starts out looking like one, but is actually one of the Heroes.


Films -- Live Action

  • In the movie Three Hundred, a particularly hideous Giant Mook among a troop of Elite Mooks gives Leonidas quite a thrashing before our hero manages to decapitate him.
  • "Dredger" in the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes film. Played by Robert Maillet, who also played the giant mook in the abovementioned 300.
  • "The Russian" from The Punisher is notable since he is the only Giant Mook from the comics to appear in the film.
  • The Classic James Bond film You Only Live Twice has numerous mooks and two giant mooks, the burly Japanese driver who takes Bond to Osato industries believing him to be an injured comrade, and Blofeld's huge, blonde bodyguard. Both take a lot of beating from Bond, in appropriate styles: the Japanese is defeated after much jujitsu and the use of a katana, the western guy after a western-style "big, loud punches on the jaw" type fight.
  • Near the end of the 1989 Batman movie, Batman is confronted with The Joker's large, muscular (and unnamed) bodyguard at the top of the bell tower. This Giant Mook proceeds to wipe the floor with Batman for the next minute or so, possibly coming closer to killing him than the Joker himself.
  • One appears in all three Transporter movies:
    • Downplayed in the first film: One of the villains is an enormous guy complete with Beard of Evil, but it's only mildly harder for Frank to defeat than the others.
    • The second movie has a Scary Black Man who's probably the hardest opponent Frank has to contend with.
    • Lampshaded in the third movie, as the page quote illustrates.
  • In the comics, Bane is a Genius Bruiser (he figures out Batman's secret identity, comes up with a refreshingly simple plan to beat Bats, and is generally one tough bastard). In Batman and Robin, he is basically an idiot caveman Giant Mook for Poison Ivy.
    • To be fair, Uma Thurman in green spandex would have that effect on any man.
  • One of the factions in Akira Kurosawa's classic Yojimbo has a giant mook with a big hammer named Kannuki the Giant (Namigoro Rashomon). Last Man Standing, the rather faithful remake (despite being set during Prohibition in America) starring Bruce Willis, also has a giant mook hanging around.
  • The Mask of Zorro (Banderas version) has a seven-foot Mexican soldier attack the hero. True to Mook Chivalry, all the other soldiers stand back and watch, even when Zorro picks up two cannonballs...
  • In the antique store fight in Jet Li's Kiss of the Dragon, a Scary Black Man Giant Mook is memorably introduced with his own theme song. I guess his name was Dirty Dawg or something...
  • The Protector has a giant mook as a recurring antagonist. He is introduced by grabbing the hero through a wall and throwing him across a room. He later returns as leader of the Giant Mook squad (see below) and proves himself to be quite the Determinator refusing to go down and stay down even after his allies have been defeated and all his tendons cut.
    • Later in the movie we are introduced to a group of giant mooks just as big as that one, which the hero ultimately takes down by cutting their tendons with the bones of the elephant their boss killed.
  • In Escape from New York, Snake Plissken is forced to fight a giant mook in gladiatorial-style combat.
  • As the actor entry notes, Indiana Jones inevitably runs across a hulking henchman played by Pat Roach, who proceeds to cause him no end of trouble until dispatched with some convenient environmental hazard. Sadly the requisite scene in The Last Crusade was cut and the role was filled by an Expy in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull due to Pat Roach's death in 2004.
  • In Troy, Achilles fights one named Boagrius, who is enormous. The fight lasts about three seconds. Ajax could also fill this role for the Greeks in the same movie.
  • In The Kingdom one of these has a brutal fight with Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner) and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman). He easily throws both of them across the room, and is only defeated after Janet shoots in the leg, with his own gun, repeatedly, and then stabs him twice in the groin and chest, before slamming his head into the ground and stabbing him in the head.
  • The X Men films enjoy this trope. We have Saberttoth in the first film, Juggernaut in the third, and the Blob in Wolverine: Origins. Both Sabertooth and Juggernaut seem more like dumb muscle than their comic counterparts while the Blob tends to be closer to this trope in both comics and film.


Literature

  • The cave trolls in The Lord of the Rings books and films certainly qualify.
    • Even more so the Orc Chieftain (the one that injures Frodo).
    • Not to mention the Great Goblin in The Hobbit.
    • Dragons have this role in The Silmarillion, and one of the most massive examples on this page appears in the form in the form of Ancalagon The Black, the first winged dragon, who made other dragons look tiny by comparison. To call this guy "Fucking Ginormous" was a reeeally big understatement. How big was he? He managed to crush Thangorodrim (Highest mountain in Middle Earth, about 6,000 feet taller than our very own Mount Everest) by falling on it.
  • Even Harry Potter gets in on this, oddly enough, in Half-Blood Prince. By all accounts, the action at Hogwarts at the end of the book was dominated by an anonymous, huge, blond Death Eater.
    • In Deathly Hallows, this Death Eater is given the appropriately Giant Mook-ish name of Thorfinn Rowle.
    • Also, quite literally, all the giants Voldemort got on his side.
  • In David Eddings' The Tamuli Klael brings in an entire army of these from one of the worlds he rules. They're initially all but unbeatable.
  • Animorphs: Hork-Bajir are all close to seven feet tall, but they're just regular Yeerk Mooks. In Book 45, however, we meet Grath, leader of the elite Blue Band squadron. At close to eight feet tall, Grath gives Rachel a brutal fight, taking her on one on one (something most Hork-Bajir cannot do), while coming off as no different from any other Yeerk Mook in the personality department.
  • The Bible. The Philistines had giants soldiers.


Live Action TV

  • B.A. Baracus (Mr. T) of The A-Team usually wipes the floor with any Mook fool enough to try confronting him. However, he meets a stumbling block in two (unrelated) episodes with an Asian Giant Mook (same actor each time) who can take his punches without flinching, and then proceeds to throw The Big Guy around.
  • Samurai Sentai Shinkenger turns this trope Up to Eleven with Humongous Mecha-sized Mooks.
    • This isn't really new to the series, but Shinkenger ends up doing this almost every other episode (and the footsoldiers being mecha-sized is unusual).
  • When King Mondo grew to giant size a second time in the final battle in Power Rangers Zeo, he grew several Cogs along with him.
  • Leverage: The random security guard from "The Schaherezaede Job." Standing roughly One Head Taller than the rest of Alexander Moto's security detail, he gives Eliot a surprisingly tough fight and is knocked out. He then wakes up and attacks him again, forcing Eliot and Parker to blow him up, dropping him thirty feet into a vault and knocking him unconcious. Again. The plan goes wrong, Moto rushes in, and just as you're thinking it can't get any worse, the Mook wakes up, dusts himself off, and proceeds to ready himself for a rematch. Moto got his money's worth with this guy.


Tabletop Games

  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle basically has Giant Mook as a unit type. Several armies have the option of fielding large monsters or constructs, such as Trolls, Kroxigor, Rat Ogres, Minotaurs, and the like which are extremely powerful and tough, but few in number. The (non-rat) Ogre Kingdoms are in fact an army made up almost entirely of Giant Mooks.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has squad leaders. A squad member has better stats and gear than a normal unit, but is still part of a squad as opposed to the more powerful independent characters.
    • Da Orks play this trope straight—since Orks actually grow in size and muscle mass based on their social status, the "Nobz" who lead squads/mobz are noticeably bigger than their underlings, though not as big as the Warboss in command of the army.
    • The Imperial Guard also deploys Ogryns, which are their equivalent of Ogres.
    • Chaos Space Marine armies that employ daemons, which inevitably includes some very big ones, which of course are the strongest.
    • Eldar use Wraithguard, who though perhaps not as skilled as the most elite of their Aspect Warriors are some of the toughest infantry on any army list and carry guns that open miniature portals to the Warp inside their targer.


Video Games

  • The classic video game example would be Abobo from Double Dragon. He was a recurring sub-boss in the arcade version, where there's a King Mook head-swap variant with a mohawk and beard.
  • Another popular beat-'em-up example is "Andore" and all his Palette Swap relatives (no points in guessing who he is derived from) in the Final Fight series.
  • The Large Body and Fat Bandit Heartless from Kingdom Hearts. The aptly-named Aquatanks from Atlantica also counts as ones too.
  • 358/2 Days also gives us the Bully Dog and the Snapper Dog, both larger versions of the Rabid Dog/Bad Dog.
  • Dapang, Wong's primary bodyguard from John Woo Presents: Stranglehold, who is also Wong's Dragon. Tequila encounters him early on in the game, but doesn't actually fight him until midway through the final showdown with Wong.
  • Jedi Academy has the large cyborg hazard troopers, wearing heavy armour that protects them from normal weapons and makes them able to take several hits from a lightsaber, and usually carrying Stouker concussion rifles, which is perhaps the most deadly ranged weapon in enemy hands in the game. By the time you encounter these, a simple, elegant method of dealing with them is available.
  • True to the source material, Ork Nobz in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Chaos Marines also serve as Giant Mooks to hordes of cultists and Bloodletters.
  • Hulks and Juggernauts in the Marathon series. Hunters and Cyborgs also have giant Palette Swap variations. And there's the giant gray Fighters and Troopers in the penultimate level of Infinity, which also has upgraded Giant Hunters that shoot homing bolts and it takes a lot of rockets to kill them all.
  • The Baron of Hell/Hellknight monsters in the Doom series are perhaps the foremost examples of this role.
  • The Striders of Half-Life 2 are either Giant Mooks or bosses, depending on the terrain, number, and how much rocket amo you have available. In the first game, you take out a whole horde of Striders in the latter stages, while Epsiode 1 uses a single Strider as a final boss fight. Episode 2 culminates in a Boss Battle against a whole horde of Striders. Episode 2 also introduces the Hunters, which are tripodal bluegreen mechanoids which fire explosive flechettes (it's actually possible to kill a Hunter with its own flechettes), are extremely fast and agile, and have an excess of health. They work as support for the Striders in the final sequence.
  • The Warlord in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • The Stone Gargoyle in Blood.
  • The Brute in Unreal.
  • Shamblers and Vores in Quake.
  • The Tank/Tank Commander in Quake II.
  • Another Tank in Left 4 Dead, a monstrous Infected that is essentially what the Hulk would be if he was zombified.
  • Uncharted 2 has a fairly tame, mundane example with the overweight shotgun Mooks. They are larger than others and harder to kill (you have to shoot the helmet off, then shoot the head, or just hit them with a lot of bullets after shearing off some of their armor plates), but they are still just over normal human size. The biggest problem with them is they completely ignore melee attacks.
    • Then there's the even bigger ones who carry the miniguns. They must be seven feet tall at least, are referred to as "mutants" and are really hard to kill. Headshots don't work on them, inflicting the same amount of damage as a normal bullet, and the one time you're expected to kill them in the campaign, you have access to lots and lots of explosive weapons (it still takes three rockets to take them out).
  • There are the Giant Depraved Ones in the Valley of Defilement in Demon's Souls, which have a a ton of health, run incredibly fast, can run through the swamp unhindered. and can kill you in one hit on on New Game+.
  • Hunters from Halo often serve as tag-teams of Giant Mooks, who usually attack the player separately from or with small groups of lesser Covenant troops. Unlike other Giant Mooks, Hunters are fairly common, at least in the first Halo game, but in later games—especially Halo 3—they become Boss in Mook Clothing encounters due to their rarity and the amount of power and toughness they possess.
    • The Brutes are kind of this as well. Also the Sentinel Enforcers on Sacred Icon.
  • Lenny in Shadow Hearts: Covenant, The Dragon to The Dragon Nicolai. He seems like nothing more than a brute at first, but he soon shows a softer side, and a late-game sidequest lets him Pet the Dog several times. He returns in Shadow Hearts: From The New World as main character Johnny's butler.
  • In Mega Man Star Force, you'll sometimes find "G", or giant, versions of regular enemies. The only difference between them is that they have more HP and attack power. There's a whole sort of Boss Rush very late into the game where you have to fight off giant versions of nearly every enemy variant in the game.
  • Karnov appears as the Stage 1 boss Bad Dudes and re-appears as a mook in a green-colored variant named Kusamochi Karnov (a possible reference to the Green Abobo in Double Dragon).
  • Super Smash Bros. tends to use these. Extra-large versions of the normal characters have popped up ever since the original game, and are usually strong enough that players get allies in order to keep balance together. Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode uses giant versions of non-playable enemies—they aren't particularly difficult, unless you have problems stepping on a Goomba six times rather than one.
  • In Persona 3, as the party climbs Tartarus, it will occasionally encounter special "Tower Bosses." These bosses are generally more powerful versions of the common enemy Shadows found on other floors and may even share some of the same weaknesses. However, they are often completely invulnerable to one or more types of attacks, meaning that you can sometimes waste turns trying to figure out exactly what those weaknesses are.
  • The Breath of Fire series is fond of placing giant versions of basic enemies (generally, Eye Goos) as experience pinatas. That's not to say that they are harmless, but they generally are worth every bit of trouble taking them down (that is, unless they have some glaring weakness, such as being highly vulnerable to Death spells as some of these Giants are).
  • The Politician in level 6 of Prince of Persia. And the Gatekeeper who replaces him in the remake.
  • Mr. Bubbles (or Big Daddy) from BioShock (series), a giant, armour-clad drill wielding child protector that makes whale noises.
  • In Mass Effect, the geth's Giant Mooks overlap with their Elite Mooks, in the form of the appropriately named Destroyers, Juggernauts, and terrifyingly effective Primes. There's also geth Armatures and Collossi, which count as giant walking tanks.
    • There are also Rachni Brood Warriors in one side quest, which are bigger versions of the standard Rachni.
    • In the sequel Mass Effect 3, the Reapers introduce the Banshee and Brute, the former being a reaper-fied version of Asari Ardat-Yakshi, the latter being a reaper-fied fusion of Turians and Krogans. Also new are Cerberus' Atlas combat walkers, towering mechs capable of taking more damage than any other non-boss enemy in the game.
  • The Klonoa games feature giant versions of many types of enemies. They can be inflated like normal enemies with wind bullets, but this only immobilizes them; it doesn't let Klonoa pick up and throw them. They can only be defeated by throwing other enemies into them.
  • God Hand has two giant mooks: The Sensei, a young Japanese-speaking Samurai that attacked Gene in Stage 7 and Tiger Joe, a kickboxer seemingly based on Sagat from Street Fighter fame who apppeared a few times in the latter levels.
  • Killer7 introduces the Giant Smile enemy type in its third stage. Mostly identical to the ordinary Heaven Smiles, only at least six or seven metres tall and near-completely impervious to bullets, except in its single eye.
  • Diablo II features semi-random giant mook enemies, called "Champions" and "(Super) Unique Monsters", the latter which are normal monsters given a name and special enchantments ("Extra Strong," "Fire Immune"), as well as buffed up minion mooks. Both Mooks would also have increased HP, damage, grant extra experience points and other rewards upon death.
  • Monsters in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten have the ability to fuse with another monster to supersize them, granting them increased stats, a larger range and/or radius on their attacks, and the ability to push normal sized characters out of the way while moving, among other things. They're also gigantic to begin with in some situations, though never in the player's case.
  • Arguably, Regal is one of these until he joins the party in Tales of Symphonia.
  • F.E.A.R. and its expansion packs feature 6.5-foot tall Replica Heavy Armor soldiers, who speak solely in howls and wear heavy metal plate armor that lets them absorb more than full drum mag of assault rifle fire before finally going down. They're pretty rare, though, limited to only 1 or 2 per level. The expansion packs introduce a new version of the Heavy Armor who also carries a minigun.
  • Gears of War has 11-foot tall Boomers, giant Locusts with several times as much health as a standard Drone, who are armed with "boomshot" rocket launchers that kill you in a single hit.
  • The 3 Human and 1 Skaarj factions in Unreal II the Awakening all field Heavy Power Armor soldiers that fit this trope.
  • Appears in the final levels of Medal of Honor: Airborne, of all places. As Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw puts it, "I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't an elite branch of stormtroopers who wore gas masks, wielded miniguns, and could take three sniper bullets to the forehead before they died."
  • Resident Evil 4 features several different giant mooks, including large Ganados wearing potato sacks on their heads and carrying chainsaws, large Ganados carrying miniguns, and large Ganados with bulletproof metal sheets nailed to parts of their bodies, making them invincible from the front.
    • The biggest giant mooks are these recurring bosses called El Gigantos that are the size of elephants.
  • Resident Evil 5 has its own giant mooks in the form of the "Fat Man" and "Tall Man" Majini. The high-pitched ululating from the tall one is borderline Nightmare Fuel.
  • Many of the bosses of the Donkey Kong Country games were giant versions of regular baddies—a fact pointed out in Cranky's commentary in the manual of DK64.
  • Super Mario Advance, a remake of Super Mario Bros. 2, has giant Shy Guys and Ninjis. They take a lot longer to pick up and throwing them on the ground always produces hearts.
  • Just about every single boss in Yoshi's Island is a literal giant mook. They are simply supersized and mutated mooks that show up all over the place in the boss's home zone.
  • Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions featured the Genolla, who is literally a Godzilla-sized Genome Soldier. There's also the Mecha Genolla and the Gurlugon (a giant Gurlukovich Mercenary) in Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance.
  • The Castlevania series has its share of Giant Mooks; Giant Bat the Recurring Boss, giant skeletons, Peeping Big, just to name a few.
  • The final stage of Gradius Gaiden has the third-to-last boss, Heavy Dakker/Ducker, a giant version of those walking robots that walk on the floors and ceilings of some stages.
  • Inversion: some games in the Mario franchise (starting with Super Mario Bros 3) have the Micro-Goomba, a smaller (and much more annoying) version of the usual Mascot Mook. Super Mario World has the Thwimps, which are tiny versions of Thwomps.
    • Almost all the platform games also play this straight, though. World 4 in SMB3 is almost entirely populated by giant mooks.
    • Super Mario World has the Banzai Bills. Super Mario 64 has Tiny-Huge Island, which inverted it and played it straight.
  • Plants vs. Zombies has the Gargantuar, which is a huge muscular zombie with a lot of health, and can instantly crush one of your plants in a single attack. Fortunately, he's kinda slow.
  • Any giant (insert name of your favorite Touhou character here) that shows up in the fan-made game Patch Con.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time produces one when you slaughter one too many standard enemies. It's easiest to do with Guays and Stalchilds. The bigger ones are no stronger then the normal ones however and go down just as fast. They keep getting bigger however if you keep killing the smaller Mooks.
    • Except for the Leevers. If you kill too many of them, the resulting giant Leever is blue, has much higher HP, and will repeatedly attack you rather than just charging at you once.
  • Wario Land 2 has a multitude of Giant Gooms scattered across the later levels that act as sort of mini bosses for individual levels.
  • Spyro: Year of the Dragon has the level Charmed Ridge, where the enemies are spear-bearing rhynocs with metal armour, crossbow-wielding rhynocs with no armour, and cat wizards who do a variety of things, including moving steps, throwing rocks, trying to drop a statue on Spyro, throwing magical attacks at him, and making the other two enemies bigger. Making them bigger doesn't do much though- they can be killed with the attack used to kill their smaller forms. Killing the wizard makes them smaller instantly, for the record.
    • All of Spyro games have some giant mooks are a type of enemy. Kill them using your fire breath, because your charge won't hurt them. One exception are some you encounter in the first game, which wear armor, which keeps them from being hurt by fire. Instead, because their armor is making their feet slippery, you charge them.
  • Streets of Rage bosses tend to be pretty big. Ironically, some of the smaller ones are often the most irritating. The larger typical enemies can cause grief however.
  • Sonic and Knuckles' final boss is a giant version of the one in Sonic 2. And that was already pretty big. However, it's much easier.
    • Some Sonic Heroes enemies are also pretty big and difficult to take down without a team blast or plenty of level ups for the power characters—the speed and flying types can't hurt them except to knock them over (crucial for the helmeted ones, to remove the helmet, though a speed character can do a tornado attack to remove them too).
    • A similar type appears in Sonic Rush, taking 3 hits, but aren't too annoying, and don't have helmeted versions.
    • The Werehog stages in Sonic Unleashed include enemies like the Titan and the Big Mother. They're true to their namesake and are often placed at the end of a stage.
    • When you first meet Motobugs in the original game, they roughly come up to Sonic's waist. In Sonic Colors, they're suddenly much larger than you, and led by even bigger ones.
  • The Giant Soldier in Bionic Commando. Exactly What It Says on the Tin. First appears as the boss of Area 6, then later as a normal enemy.
  • Warcraft has many giant mooks are units. Warcraft III includes many giant mooks, some of which are huge even compared to others.
  • The war elephants in |Age of Empires I could be considered this.
  • Super mutant behemoths from Fallout3 are around 20 foot tall. Thankfully they are quite rare, with only five appearing in the game.
  • Kirby 64 has numerous boss fights against giant versions of regular mooks.
  • Bug!! had the only Mini Boss in the game, a giant version of the (literal) Army Ants you were fighting throughout the level. It took only five hits to kill it, but it fired out five times the amount of grenades that the normal ones could.
  • After the first one, the Ogres in Dragon Age: Origins tend to act as giant mooks.
  • In Astro Boy Omega Factor, the first few things to see after you progress through the first stage are giant version of mooks in the first screen.
  • The first stage boss of Parodius for the MSX is a giant penguin.
    • Gokujou Parodius has the 16-Bit Block, whose hit points are shown to be 65535 (216-1).
  • The rival gangs in Saint's Row 3 employ eight-foot Brutes that attack you with heavy weapons like chainguns or flamethrowers, or simply by smashing you to bits and throwing cars at you.
  • In Golvellius, early enemies include snakes, bats, giant snakes and giant bats.
  • In Alien Hallway, the third planet has giant mooks in Mini-Mecha suits.


Web Animation

  • In the midst of the reality warping nonsense of online flash series Madness, a giant Man in Black(with his 6 foot caliber rifle) is seen in the episode "Madness Consternation". This is never explained.
    • The episode after that, TWO giant Elite Mooks face the protagonist, each wielding a giant Desert Eagle pistol, both of which are dispatched. One by multiple rifle bullets to the face, and the other by his own bullet.
  • In the realm of stick-figure combat animation, giant stick figures are popular, usually as the "boss" figure or as their most powerful underling.


Web Comics

  • The demon Bubbamonicus plays this role in the "That Which Redeems" arc of Sluggy Freelance. He's actually part of the demon aristocracy, but some of the other demons don't even know this, basically because of his lack of characterisation, which is of course a rather mooky thing.
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Dr. McNinja fights one wielding chainsaw-nunchuks.
  • Harkovast features an army of Nameless warriors, including one who is enormous. It takes out a large section of the Darsai army before Shogun shows up.


Web Original

  • In The Gamers Alliance, the Dominator is a demon colossus, a rare demon breed, which is unleashed during the siege of Vanna to break through the city's walls.
  • A real Giant Mook character in the Whateley Universe story "Boston Brawl 2". The Big Bad hires some extra muscle, including Matterhorn, a supervillain who can become a forty-foot giant. Due to the physics of this universe, Matterhorn gets his ass whupped by a 100-pound girl.
    • And in "Christmas Crisis", there's Killbot, who's 20 or 30 feet tall and regenerates from pretty much anything. Too bad for him he's fighting Tennyo.

Western Animation

  • In the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "Siege of the North", after easily defeating a group of standard-issue, hammer-wielding Fire Nation Mooks, Aang is suddenly attacked by a single, much larger soldier. With two hammers! On chains! Almost gets him, too.
  • In Code Lyoko, the Kolossus appearing in three late episodes of Season 4 is very much a GIANT mook. It destroys the virtual submarine of the heroes in just one mighty sweep of his blade-arm.
  • The legendary Sumo Ninja in The Movie of Kim Possible fits in, due to being a sumo ninja. He was still beaten as easily as any other Mook...
  • Batman the Animated Series must have had a lot of examples, one of which is the aptly-named "Rhino" thug in the entertaining episode "Read My Lips". Scarface (and his ventriloquist) isn't a credible physical threat to Batman, so the huge Rhino fills the role... and doesn't contribute much else either to the plot or the drama.
    • Rhino is actually the Ventriloquist's perennial bodyguard in the comics, so...
  • Darkwing Duck has the villainous Fiendish Organization for World Larceny (FOWL), along with a sizable group of mooks. This group has a single Giant Mook, who could always put up a good fight.


Real Life

  • Tales abound throughout military history of soldiers so big and strong they were capable of such feats as using squad support weapons as rifles. There was supposedly one fellow in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War who was said to be able to doublefist squad machineguns, though this may be an exaggeration.
    • Supposedly one such soldier named Mariolle was found in Napoleon's army, where he obeyed the order to salute by raising a small cannon to his shoulder instead of a rifle. The Emperor congratulated him and told him "cessez de faire le mariolle", an expression that survives today meaning "stop clowning around".
    • Of course, size isn't that great an advantage once gunpowder is added to the equation (and amplifies the disadvantage of being a bigger target). That gun is going to kill you all the same regardless of whether the trigger was pulled by a midget or a giant. Even without gunpowder, training and technique count for more then size regardless (though theres no denying that size can help).
  • During the early modern period Grenadiers were soldiers hand-picked for their size and strength, the idea being that a larger man can throw a grenade further (hence the name), and that his size gives him the edge in vicious bayonet combat.
    • This led some military leaders - notably King Frederick William I of Prussia - to become obsessed with tall soldiers, and to collect them from all over their territory and beyond to form Giant Mook regiments.
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.