History Main / BookedFullOfMooks

* ''Film/BulletTrain'': Past a particular station, all of the remaining passengers on the train except the main characters are thugs working for the White Death. Every normal passenger had already disembarked. This frees the main characters to fight out in the open without fear of looking suspicious to civilians or hurting them.

* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle'': The hotel in which Travis is sent to fight Nathan Copeland has been completely booked by members of his cult. Many of them are also just standing around in the lobbies and hallways. This leads to Travis having to fight off wave after wave of Nathan's followers before he can even reach the suite where they're supposed to duel. The reason for Nathan's approach is because Travis had recently come out of retirement, and he wanted to see if Travis is as good at battling as the legends say he is.

* ''Series/Fargo'': In season 3, Nikki meets with mysterious V.M.Varga in a public place, positive he can't do anything as "you're a pretty distinctive guy." Varga just smirks. "Am I? Look around." Nikki does...and sees that just in this lobby, there are at least six people who are dressed almost exactly the way Varga is.

* In ''Series/DarkAngel'' the protagonist goes to confront a high ranking officer who is trying to sell one of her fellow experimentees to the Chinese. They confront him in a bussling mess hall. In this case, it is clear that all the other attendees are soldiers from the same base, but all their loud conversations turn out to be a front for ambushing the heroes.

* ''{{Literature/Durarara}}'': Mikado agrees to meet Namie in a public and rather crowded street while she is trying to get her hands on Mika Harima. She pretends to go alone but mixes a couple of her men into the crowd. When she confronts Mikado he sends a group message, revealing everyone else in the crowd to be member of the Dollars and that he is the leader. The crowd becomes to thick for Namie's men to get to her.

* ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'': Following Fury's [[spoiler:apparent]] death and Rogers refusing to divulge important information to Alexander Pierce, several SHIELD agents board the elevator he's riding in. As more and more agents board, Rogers becomes suspicious and realizes that they're all preparing to ambush him. Cue PreAsskickingOneLiner and the subsequent elevator brawl...What's more, it's later revealed that all the men that had surrounded him were actually HYDRA moles who had infiltrated SHIELD.
* ''Film/CatchMeIfYouCan'': Frank makes plans to meet his new wife Brenda at Miami International Airport in order to escape his pursuers. However, when he arrives and observes the scene, he realizes most of the men hanging around the terminal are undercover police officers. Knowing Brenda has given him up, he leaves her behind to avoid being caught.

A place is full of mooks when a character orchestrates to have a public venue--such as a restaurant, town square, theater, or museum--filled with actors, agents, or acolytes who give the appearance of normal bystanders. This is often done with the intent of fooling an opponent into thinking that there's nothing amiss, when in fact they're hopelessly outnumbered. For extra dramatic effect, the orchestrator may deliberately reveal this by having all the "bystanders" react at once, cueing an OhCrap moment from the opponent.

A place is full of nooks when a character orchestrates to have a public venue--such as a restaurant, town square, theater, or museum--filled with actors, agents, or acolytes who give the appearance of normal bystanders. This is often done with the intent of fooling an opponent into thinking that there's nothing amiss, when in fact they're hopelessly outnumbered. For extra dramatic effect, the orchestrator may deliberately reveal this by having all the "bystanders" react at once, cueing an OhCrap moment from the opponent.

A place is Full of Mooks when a character orchestrates to have a public venue--such as a restaurant, town square, theater, or museum--filled with actors, agents, or acolytes who give the appearance of normal bystanders. This is often done with the intent of fooling an opponent into thinking that there's nothing amiss, when in fact they're hopelessly outnumbered. For extra dramatic effect, the orchestrator may deliberately reveal this by having all the "bystanders" react at once, cueing an OhCrap moment from the opponent.

* Set-up and ultimately subverted in ''VideoGame/EvilGenius2''. In the line of plots dealing with Atomic Olga, the Genius pays Olga's brother- a professional figure skater- to put on a performance for an audience full of minions. Nothing happens to him, but Atomic Olga still [[BigBrotherInstinct reacts with outrage towards the Genius]] simply due to what ''could've'' happened.

* ''Film/{{Sonic The Hedgehog 2|2022}}'': Sonic escapes from the avalanche in Siberia by teleporting to Rachel's wedding in Hawaii, at which point the groom, Randall, reveals himself to be an undercover GUN agent by tasering Sonic and taking him into custody. He gets help from his groomsmen, his "family," all the guests he invited, and the staff at the wedding venue, all of whom are undercover GUN agents, too. Even the priest officiating the ceremony has a taser hidden in his Bible. Poor Rachel and her family were the only ones unaware that the wedding was just a ploy to capture Sonic.

* ''Literature/{{Pale}}'': Avery and Clem have a meeting with Samaniego, leader of the Lighthouse Witch Hunters, at a restaurant. Samaniego calls Avery complacent and shows his control over the situation by moving his chair, revealing that every guest in the restaurant except for Avery and Clem are actually his fellow Witch Hunters. Avery's bracelet that tracks connections doesn't activate until the reveal, showing the folly of her overreliance on it.

* ''Series/TheDefenders|2017}}'': Danny Rand enters Midland Circle, a financial organization being used as a cover business by [[{{Ninja}} the Hand]], in order to confront their leadership; not warrior-to-warrior, but businessman-to-businessman. After crashing what ''appears'' to be a stockholder meeting, he's caught off-guard and nearly captured when it turns out the ''suits'' are all disguised ninja too.

* ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'': When Chalky is stuck in a crowded jail cell, a fellow inmate named Purvis keeps getting on his case, psyching himself up for a fight. Chalky eventually decides he's had enough, and he turns and addresses all the other inmates by name, revealing he's either employed or done favors for all of them. Purvis has just enough time to realize his mistake before they beat the hell out of him.

This is a good shorthand to demonstrate not only the orchestrator's wealth and power, but also the lengths they'll go to in order to be totally in control of the situation. They're able to hire dozens, if not hundreds of people, book out an entire venue, and dedicate them to posing as normal citizens for hours, just to remove any unexpected variables. It's also a good dose of paranoia for their opponents--if the orchestrator can completely infiltrate and control a whole area, can they ''ever'' be safe out in public?

* ''Film/CatchMeIfYouCan'': Frank makes plans to meet his new wife, Brenda, at Miami International Airport in order to escape his pursuers. However, when he arrives and observes the scene, he realizes most of the men hanging around the terminal are undercover police officers. Knowing Brenda has given him up, he leaves her behind to avoid being caught.
* ''Film/{{Contagion|2011}}'': After peddling his fake miracle "cure", Forsythia, Alan meets up with a confidant in a public park to make excuses for himself. He figures out too late that said confidant is working with the police, and that all the city workers and park visitors around him are undercover cops, who promptly arrest him for fraud.
* ''Film/JohnWickChapter2'': When John Wick is about to go on the run from TheSyndicate, he meets [[AllPowerfulBystander Winston]] at the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain in New York's Central Park. On Winston's cue, everyone in the busy public throughfare stops, turns towards them, and [[spoiler:continues on, before Winston grants John a MercyLead.]]

* In ''Film/OngBak'', after Ting takes down [[TheBogan an obnoxious and viciously aggressive Australian fighter]] in the [[FightClubbing underground fight club]], he tries to leave, only to find himself surrounded by the audience. When he tries to push through the crowd, members of the audience intentionally close ranks and pack themselves close together to prevent him from leaving. When he tries to push through another part of the circle, one of the men draws a gun on him. It turns out the much of the crowd work for the crime boss who runs the place, and the boss is angry with Ting for costing him money and disrupting the event.

* ''[[Literature/ArtemisFowl Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code]]'': At the beginning of the book, Artemis meets up with [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Jon Spiro]] in a restaurant to show off some tech that will completely destroy Spiro's business, with an offer to keep it off the market for a year in exchange for a metric tonne of gold. Artemis is confident that Spiro won't try anything in public, but then it turns out that all of the patrons ([[NeverMessWithGranny even an 80 year old lady!]]) and staff are armed thugs working for Spiro, who walks off with the tech and leaves the thugs to kill Artemis.
* ''Literature/TheContinentalOp:'' "The Big Knockover" provides a rare third-party perspective on this maneuver. In the aftermath of a massive bank robbery, the Continental Op tails the gangster Red O'Leary, suspected to be close to the ringleaders of the operation. O'Leary goes into a nightclub with his girlfriend, and the Op follows. As the club fills up with other customers at an unusually early hour, the Op notices how few women there are, how the other tables are occupied by "rat-faced men, hatched-faced men, square-jawed men"--who are all keeping an eye on O'Leary. The Op realizes that these are all the lower-rung gangsters who participated in the robbery and got screwed out of their share of the cash, and now they suspect O'Leary knows where the money is. Red O'Leary also realizes exactly what's happening--and sticks around anyway because he's headstrong and [[TooDumbToLive foolish enough to think he can take them all on]]. Sure enough, the leader of the angry gangsters, Bluepoint Vance, is the last to arrive, and when the discussion between him and O'Leary breaks down, all the others attack. The Op intervenes to get O'Leary out alive, cursing his foolishness at every step of the way.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': As Cybermen march out of St. Paul's at the start of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E12DeathInHeaven Death in Heaven]]", a crowd surrounds them and starts taking selfies with them. On cue, all these admirers draw guns, and reveal themselves as undercover UNIT operatives.

* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'': In "The Gang Broke Dee," Sweet Dee goes through a HeroicBSOD and stops responding to the rest of the Gang's usual antics. She then has a surprising turn of luck with her stand-up comedy, gradually packing houses and becoming a minor celebrity. She books a television appearance and seems to be on the top of the world...only to go onstage and discover that she's not only still in Philly, but the bar is full of people there to tell her how awful she is. It turns out that the hundreds of audience members who seemingly loved her routine were actually paid off by Frank, who, along with Charlie and Mac, engineered the entire thing. Why? [[DisproportionateRetribution Because they were sick of her whining]] and wanted to show her that her situation could be worse.
* ''Series/TedLasso'': When Ghanian multibillionaire Edwin Akufo tries to convince Sam Obisanya to leave AFC Richmond and sign on with his team, he takes Sam to an art museum to have a chat. Midway through, Edwin reveals that he rented out the whole museum for the day and everyone else there (even a man Edwin claimed was the real Creator/{{Banksy}}) is an actor.
* ''Series/TheWestWing'': In "Election Night," Josh goes to vote in the presidential election. As he's exiting his polling station, various people come up to him and happily talk about their own votes...all of which are inaccurate for various reasons (one guy voted for President Bartlett in multiple parties, one woman thinks that she only has to fill in the top box to have her vote count for that entire party, and so on). Josh gets increasingly frustrated until the final woman says she has a message from Toby Ziegler. It turns out the seemingly-ignorant passerby are actually a troupe of actors that Toby hired to prank Josh.

* Set-up and ultimately subverted in ''VideoGame/EvilGenius2''. In the line of plots dealing with Atomic Olga, the Genius pays Olga's brother- a professional figure skater- to put on a performance for a audience full of minions. Nothing happens to him, but Atomic Olga still [[BigBrotherInstinct reacts with outrage towards the Genius]] simply due to what ''could've'' happened.
* ''VideoGame/GenshinImpact'': In Diluc's Story Quest, Huffman has been tasked by Kaeya to keep an eye on Diluc as he works his night shift at the Angel's Share tavern, under the suspicion that Diluc is the mysterious Darknight Hero. Much to Diluc's dismay, he has to fight off an Abyss Order attack on Mondstadt during his shift, and asks the [[PlayerCharacter Traveler]] to distract Huffman elsewhere so he can sneak out and defeat the attack. After returning, Huffman becomes suspicious that Diluc left the tavern behind his back, so he asks the customers to testify. To his surprise, every single customer says that Diluc was at the tavern the whole time, and Huffman leaves, his only lead on the Darknight Hero having turned cold. Turns out Diluc had anticipated such a problem, and had the entire tavern booked out by his associates at the Dawn Winery in order to lie for him and create an alibi. [[spoiler:However, Kaeya himself had been secretly spying on Diluc from an out-of-sight table and applauds him for going this far to hide his identity. He ultimately chooses not to report Diluc to the Knights of Favonius, since he finds the whole ordeal amusing and [[HonorBeforeReason he has a vow to not divulge other people's secrets]]]].

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE46AlmostGotIm Almost Got 'Im]]" takes place in a BadGuyBar full of lowlifes, where the Joker, the Penguin, Killer Croc, Two-Face, and Poison Ivy get together to [[VillainsOutShopping play poker]] and tell stories about which of them has come the closest to defeating Batman. The Joker goes last and brags that he's going for a proxy revenge by killing Catwoman, who saved the Dark Knight the previous evening and has gone missing. That's when "Killer Croc" reveals that he's actually Batman in disguise, having set the whole thing up to learn Catwoman's location. The villains think they have him outmatched, until Batman snaps his fingers--at which point ''every other bar patron'' pulls out their weapons, revealing that they're all Gotham police officers helping Batman with the sting.

A place being Booked Full of Mooks is when a character orchestrates to have a public venue--such as a restaurant, town square, theater, or museum--filled with actors, agents, or acolytes who give the appearance of normal bystanders. This is often done with the intent of fooling an opponent into thinking that there's nothing amiss, when in fact they're hopelessly outnumbered. For extra dramatic effect, the orchestrator may deliberately reveal this by having all the "bystanders" react at once, cueing an OhCrap moment from the opponent.

This is a good shorthand to demonstrate not only the orchestrator's wealth and power, but also the lengths they'll go to in order to be totally in control of the situation. They're able to hire dozens, if not hundreds of people, book out an entire venue, and dedicate them to posing as normal citizens for hours, just to make sure that there are no unexpected variables that can change the outcome of a situation. It's also a good dose of ParanoiaFuel for their opponents--if the orchestrator can completely infiltrate and control a whole area, can they ''ever'' be safe out in public?

* ''Film/JohnWickChapter2'': After John Wick breaks the Continental's rules and is about to be declared ''excommunicado'', he meets [[AllPowerfulBystander Winston]] at the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain in New York's Central Park. On Winston's cue, everyone in the busy public throughfare stops, turns towards them, and [[spoiler:continues on, before Winston grants John a MercyLead.]]

* ''Film/MenInBlackII'': Agent J finds the now-retired and neuralyzed Agent K, who works as a small town postmaster. In order to convince him that the Men in Black do exist, J reveals that every other worker in K's post office is an alien in disguise.

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': In "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE46AlmostGotIm Almost Got 'Im]]", [[spoiler: Batman goes undercover as Killer Croc so he can save Catwoman, bringing the entire cop squad to pose undercover as patrons of the bar where he and villains stayed.]]

(Indices: TheSecretIndex, TheIndexIsWatchingYou, EspionageTropes, CrowdTropes, TruthAndLies, PlotTwist)