Middle Management Mook

He's above the cut of the average Mook, but not smart enough to be the Evil Overlord, or even the Evil Chancellor. He's not a Corrupt Corporate Executive, because he never got above Corrupt Corporate Middle Management. He's definitely corrupt, though. He's venal, petty and foolish, but is often a Punch Clock Villain who might be a candidate for a Heel Face Turn. Usually, the Big Bad considers him a convenient patsy. The biggest obstacle he presents to the heroes is telling more competent people what to do.

Examples of Middle Management Mook include:

Comic Books

• Komptin in the comic book Negation is a Middle Management Mook, but he's also the series' primary villain. Charon, his boss and Negation ruler, appears intermittently throughout the series. Komptin is seen commanding Negation soldiers and administrators, but also answers to Negation generals and lawbringers, all of whom work for Charon.
• In Villains United, we're introduced to Scandal, the member of the Secret Six who relays orders from Mockingbird. Deadshot even refers to her as "middle management". However, she doesn't fit all of the above descriptions, as she's very effective at fighting in close range, and is extremely hard to kill.
• In Sin City, during Marv's Roaring Rampage of Revenge, he starts off by killing lower-level crime bosses such as moneymen who were sending henchmen after him. He works his way up until he finds a corrupt priest, who is killed soon after. It's only then that he finds out who the Big Bad is and has to go after him. To put it in perspective, Marv was not all that impressed by the moneymen he was killing off but was very surprised at how high it went when he realized the big bad was an extremely powerful person in one of the wealthiest, most corrupt families in the nation.

Film

• The main character of District 9 starts out as this, quite literally.
• Eddie Valentine from The Rocketeer before his Mook Face Turn.

Literature

• Crispin Horsefry, and arguably the rest of the chairmen of the Grand Trunk working with Reacher Gilt, in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Going Postal.
• Chapman from Animorphs.

Live-Action TV

• Arguably, Noah Bennet in Heroes, before his Heel Face Turn. Thompson might qualify too; he doesn't seem to be part of the ringleaders either.
  • There's nothing arguable about Noah Bennet's case - Matt even lampshades it, with much hilarity since it took a lot of the first-season mystique out of ol' HRG.

MMORPGs

• One of the monsters you could fight during Crimbo 2009 was the Mob Penguin Caporegime. To quote the message when you fought him, "This penguin is kind of middle-management for the Penguin Mafia. He got promoted to his level of incompetence, and now instead of busting heads and breaking fingers, he has to make sure everyone files their paperwork and doesn't abuse their expense accounts."
  • There is also the Evil Spaghetti Cult Middle Manager, who is referred to as the most evil of the cultists.

Video Games

• Role-playing games tend to have a lot of these, usually as minor bosses. Final Fantasy VII especially comes to mind, as the corrupt corporation was one of the main foes, so several villains in the game were Middle Management Mooks, including Reeve before his Heel Face Turn.
• They go by the name of 'Executives' in Pokémon games. The regular ones are just Team (blank) Grunt' while the higher ups are 'Team (blank) 'Executive'.

Western Animation

• Blackie Gaxton of The Spectacular Spider-Man is one of these, first to the Big Man's operations and later to the Green Goblin's. Unlike some examples of this he is a very competent organizer, but his utter lack of combat skills rank him decidedly below The Dragon and even the Quirky Miniboss Squad.