History Main / MookMaker

%%This page's examples section is sorted alphabetically. It would be lovely if you'd maintain this, thanks.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}'' series:
** Robot generators, also known as 'matcens' (short for 'materialization centers'), strange glowing purple textures where robots are assembled from stray particles in seconds. What's worse is that in all of the games, they are indestructible, so you have to either avoid triggering them, or wait for them to run out of fuel (except on insane difficulty, where they never run out).
** Various bosses also have the ability to create new robots during combat, although at least you can kill them to make them stop.

* ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'' has a few enemies that will spawn ([[ActionBomb usually explosive]]) mooks. A number of bosses will also do this, which is more helpful than it might seem because characters regain charges for their healing potions by killing enemies.
* ''VideoGame/TorchlightII'' features similar spawners. Some structure-based spawners are simply part of the map and spawn only a few enemies while others are the kind that constantly spawn rewardless enemies until destroyed. Some enemies can spawn mooks of their own but the most dangerous has to go to Vile Gnashers and similar mooks that use corpses to create more of them, ''[[MookMedic including their own corpses]]''. If your crowd control isn't up to scratch then it can get out of hand ''fast''.

* In the original ''VideoGame/{{Defender}}'' arcade game, there were Pods, which when destroyed released many Swarmers - specks.

* With the macrovirus from ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', the unconscious hosts are Mook Makers for the monsters that transmit the virus.

** "Storm of Magic" gives everyone bar the Dwarfs access to the "Seven Secret Sigils of Summoning" spell, which lets you summon a non-monster unit from any list with a points value determined by the number of Arcane Fulcrums you hold - if you have the majority you can call on a massive 300pt unit, which is enough to drop 100 Night Goblins with spears and shields directly in front of a fulcrum, ten Ogres in a position to threaten an enemy flank next turn, or a Chaos Hellcannon to drop exploding souls on an opponent's head from a very long way away.

** ''F.3.A.R.'' has [[BossInMookClothing Phase Casters]], which are enemy commanders equipped with shields, [[FrickinLaserBeams Arc Lasers]] that can set you on fire, and... oh yeah, they can open warp portals on walls that summon enemy soldiers to their position. And they will keep doing this every time you kill a group of soldiers (of course, they have to stand completely still for about five seconds to do it, allowing you to empty plenty of ammo into them).

** The series has openings in the floor and ceiling which regularly spawn flying enemies. This is actually nice since they usually die in one hit and drop health recovery items.
** The ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'' has the War Wasp hives, [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment which produce War Wasps]].
** The second boss of ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'', the Hive Mecha, is one of these. It's simply a machine that spits out war wasps.

** In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} II'', the Pain Elementals, flying Cacodemon-like gasbag monsters that spit out flying skulls called Lost Souls, and could do so forever until you killed them, at which point they released three more Lost Souls upon death just to spite you. They had a deliberate limitation implemented to stop them from flooding the map with Lost Souls and slowing everything down to a crawl (we are talking about a game from 1994 being played on even older machines, after all). The universal map limit is 21 Lost Souls, a number which is achievable on any stock map that includes Pain Elementals. Some [=PWADs=] actually go so far as to take advantage of this feature, booby-trapping special items with crushers that kill out-of-area Lost Souls, allowing the present Pain Elementals to start ruining your day.

** Lakitus in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' and all ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros'' games, throw Spiny Eggs which turn into Spinies. In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld2YoshisIsland'', it has other sources of goons which are mostly there to replenish your egg reserves, especially while fighting bosses that need to be hit with eggs.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' has Magikoopas that turn ordinary yellow blocks into Koopas. Bowser throws Magikoopas during the final battle.

** The ''VideoGame/YoshisIsland'' series has Shy Guys coming out of pipes, as Goombas are rare and Shy Guys are the most common mook. You can enter in some of those pipes too.

** ''VideoGame/LufiaTheLegendReturns'' is even worse. Monsters with an ability to call reinforcement will a lot tougher and longer to fight than usual monsters, and bosses with such skill are easily categorized in ThatOneBoss.
* Geth starships in ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' sometimes spawn geth until they are damaged enough to fly away. Yes, fly away. Geth pilots are apparently more intelligent than your average video game airman, and don't want their fancy starship getting destroyed.

* Lord Zivilyn, an extremely difficult optional boss in ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'', has a move where he summons a Zivilyn Bane. These enemies are hard enough to fight on their own, let alone multiple ones PLUS their leader. As far as I know, there isn't a limit to how many he can summon.

* ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' has a few of these. They can easily lead to a DiscOneNuke, since by the time you run into one, you have a character who acts like a living flamethrower with infinite ammo. Positioning him under the Mook Maker and taping down the button will lead to endless enemies killed (and thus endless [[CharacterLevel experience points]]).
** Kamek was demoted from a [[KillItWithFire fire-throwing mook]] to a mook maker in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy2''.
*** This is a standard skill of Magikoopa's though. Appearing in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'', ''VideoGame/YoshisIsland'', and ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii''. Although it was turning a block into a mook, so it's not infinite.
** Way before that, and probably inspiring these, ''VideoGame/YoshisIsland'' had several pipes that spawn enemies...but only if Yoshi doesn't carry around 6 eggs already. Yes, the purpose of those pipes is essentially to provide ammo.
** The first two ''Paper Mario'''s have different kinds of Fuzzies that could do this. Easy experience and with the Zap Tap Badge, you're undamaged as well!
** In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'', during the BossBattle with Mack, a few Shysters help him, and he quickly summons a new team of them if you defeat them all. (In other words, to beat him, don't waste time with the Mooks and concentrate on him. Or even better, kill all of them except one, ''then'' concentrate on him.)

** Killing the bats doesn't turn the lights on. The electrical cables have Noise-shaped...things...on them which your partner must attack while surrounded by GoddamnedBats. They have such low health, however, that they're hard to notice and can just get destroyed accidentally.

** Though to be fair, the Grand Mother can only summon a finite number of Mothers (four, I believe), two at a time. So it's not a true recursive example, just a headache.

* ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}'' has these, in the form of purple-veined walls or corridor sections (Mat-Cens, short for "materialization centers") that will construct hostile robots to get in your way. Thankfully, all of them stop after generating up to three waves of two to six robots (depending on the difficulty level). Also, the final boss from the first game, and several bosses in the second, warp in mooks indefinitely. The second game's Mat-Cens can reactivate indefinitely on Insane.
** Some enemies produce smaller enemies when killed, for example the Sidearm splits into the GoddamnedBats that are Sidearm Modules.
** And one level in Descent II has a Thief Bot Maker! As if defeating ONE Thief bot was an epic quest, now you get to lose all your powerups NINE TIMES in one level!

* The giant seahorse in some of the levels of the first ''VideoGame/EccoTheDolphin'' game. He [[MrSeahorse keeps spitting baby seahorses out of his pouch at you]].

* The ''VideoGame/Descent'' series has robot generators, also known as 'matcens' (short for 'materialization centers'), strange glowing purple textures where robots are assembled from stray particles in seconds. What's worse is that in all of the games, they are indestructible, so you have to either avoid triggering them, or wait for them to run out of fuel (except on insane difficulty, where they never run out).

** Queen Atomia has two sets of machines for turning humans into her near robotic slaves. There is one for her "Neutron Slaves" and one for her "Proton Slaves" and both work disturbingly quickly to permanently alter people mentally and physically.

* The [=PS2=] game ''VideoGame/{{Shinobi}}'' has many bosses that are mook-makers. In this instance, it winds up being beneficial to the player, as killing minor enemies powers up the player's weapon, making it possible to damage the bosses much more severely so long as they can connect a blow before the effect wears off. Some bosses can be killed at a single blow in this way.

** ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends'' featured the Gai-Nee Tooren, a reaverbot truck that marched around the arena and spat out enemies to fight. The sequel introduced the [[DemonicSpider much-reviled Amistral]], which spawned a never-ending stream of homing explosive mooks.

* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}''

* ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible''

* In ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken,'' Cobra has one of these to clone countless Mooks, though without constant maintenance some of the clones come out wrong ("Fail Nobra!").

* Blood Hawk nests in ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' will continue to spawn Blood Hawks (or whichever variety you may encounter) until you destroy the nest.

* ''VideoGame/{{Killer 7}}'' included a number of hatchers that would send an endless number of enemies at the player, until it was destroyed. This required using one of the character's special moves to achieve. Smaller hatchers would appear as enemies throughout the level, and posed less of a threat, since they required less fire power.

** In ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} II'', the Pain Elementals, flying Cacodemon-like gasbag monsters that spit out flying skulls called Lost Souls, and could do so forever until you killed them, at which point they released three more Lost Souls upon death just to spite you. They had a deliberate limitation implemented to stop them from flooding the map with Lost Souls and slowing everything down to a crawl (we are talking about a game from 1994 being played on even older machines, after all). The universal map limit is 21 Lost Souls, a number which is achievable on pretty much any stock map that includes Pain Elementals. Some [=PWADs=] actually go so far as to take advantage of this feature, booby-trapping special items with crushers that kill out-of-area Lost Souls, allowing the present Pain Elementals to start ruining your day.

* ''VideoGame/{{Drakensang}}'': There are several instances in the games where players have to face waves upon waves of opponents that keep on respawning until an objective is met:

* The Loaded Dice in ''VideoGame/EarthBound''. Easily the game's worst random encounter, since a) calling for help is all it does, b) some of the help in that part of the game is REALLY powerful, and c) Ness is alone, barring some help from the easily-felled Flying Men.
** The {{Magm|aMan}}en in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'' is another example, being capable of spawning [[FragileSpeedster Pyreflies]] from his cranial crater.
* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'''s expansion, ''Tribunal'', contains one in [[spoiler: Sotha Sil's Clockwork City]] which continually produces fabricants. Interestingly, you'll need to activate a series of valves on the machine itself in order to escape ''through'' it.

** Of course, Necromancers also show up in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', where classes with strong area damage spells (such as mages) are the best way to deal with them.
*** In fact, if you see a game with a Necromancer class in it they're practically a guaranteed Mook Maker anyway.
** ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' also features other enemies that qualify. Some enemies can create portals from which more enemies will come through unless they're killed (and often these enemies are as strong or stronger than the ones doing the summoning), and some keep spawning weak enemies (the Necromancers fall to the later group). In addition, many bosses can summon mooks to help them.
*** For example, [[DemonicSpiders that stupid larva spewer]] in [[ThatOneLevel Maraudon]]...

* ''VideoGame/BanjoTooie'' has vents in Grunty Industries which continuously dispense nigh-indestructible security robots... as long as the [[InsecurityCamera nearby security camera]] is active. While a Grenade Egg will put the cameras out, they do, eventually, respawn. Sigh.
** Also, the ''floor'' in the central cavern of CloudCuckooland continuously spawns paper-cutout mooks. There's nothing you can do about this, but at least they all die in one hit.

* Puppet Ganon in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' periodically generates Keese and Morths that can be killed for refills.

* A common puzzle in the ''VideoGame/LEGOStarWars'' games is a Mook Maker that must be shut off by a droid, which means walking through enemies as a non-combat character and remaining stationary to use a console. Luckily, enemies ignore droids, so it's not as difficult as it sounds.
** ''Most'' enemies ignore droids; Jawas & Ugnaughts exclusively target droids with their stunners.

* ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' doesn't have too many of these, but the Remnants in the second game have a variant ability: they can puppet corpses in the surrounding area and have them fight you. You can gun the corpses down, but there's not much preventing the Remnant from just picking them back up, except killing it (or [[LudicrousGibs Gibbing]] the corpses with shotguns).

** The beach areas of ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' will constantly produce antlions if you walk on the sand. In ''Episode One'', the same antlions constantly climb out of burrows, which you can block by shoving cars on top. Some areas also constantly spawn headcrabs out of dark dead ends or air vents.

* Some of ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'''s later levels have "unholy altars" that constantly spawn high-level enemies until they are "defiled" (destroyed).
** Quake's FinalBoss, Shub-Niggurath, was also of this kind, continually spawning enemies with her pod but not contributing in any other way to the battle. The only way you could kill her was to enter the portal at the end of the stage when the pod went into her body in order to {{Telefrag}} her.

** ''VideoGame/CityOfVillains'' lets you play as one, in the form of the Mastermind archetype. It also has a dimensional portal that spawns heroes when attacked.

* ''VideoGame/RuneScape'''s Dungeoneering skills has Flesh-Spoiler Haasghenahk, which explodes into a gory mess when killed for the first time... kind of. The Stalker (a beholder minus the stalks, with the eyes mounted in the surface) leaves its main eye on a spine-like bone pillar after its death as the second stage of the boss, and the other eyes turn into "Flesh-Spoiler Spawns", the mooks needed to play this trope. If moment-of-death, one-time mook production counts for the trope, that is....

* In Creator/TimSchafer's ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'', one of Raz's instructors has him practice his Marksmanship power by setting him up with a Censor dispenser with variable speed settings. The [[ButThouMust only way to progress in the game]] is to, ''of course'', [[ExplosiveOverclocking turn the dial up far too high]].

* ''VideoGame/SpyroYearOfTheDragon'' periodically features metal boxes which act as literal ninja dispensers. As well as one that ''said'' ninja but ''did not actually produce any ninja'' you could see.
** The third boss, Scorch, was a prime example of this trope. He would even summon ''a previous boss'' after he TurnsRed!

** Lakitus in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'', and ''VideoGame/YoshisIsland'' throw Spiny Eggs which turn into Spinies. The last one even has other sources of goons which are mostly there to replenish your egg reserves, especially while fighting bosses that need to be hit with eggs.
** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'' has jars, some of which spawn Shy Guys. The rest spawn Bob-ombs, particularly one that's covered with a block and a bunch in the final world--coinciding with a destructible floor.
** A few pipes in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' and ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros'' have Goombas coming out of them.
** The Yoshi Series combines the above 2 and has Shy Guys coming out of pipes as Goombas are rare and Shy Guys are the most common mook.
** ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiSuperstarSaga Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga]]'' has Lakipeas, the [=BeanBean=] Kingdom's version of Lakitus, which, [[SarcasmMode oddly enough]], throw around the [=BeanBean=] version of Spiny Eggs.
** ''Super Mario World'' also has Magikoopas that turn ordinary yellow blocks into Koopas, and Bowser himself seems to carry an infinite supply of Mechakoopas on his Koopa Clown Car. Good thing too... you couldn't beat him without them.
** Some pipes throughout the series are also Mook Makers.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand'' gives us Baddie Boxes, green boxes with yellow borders and Bowser's face imprinted on them. They endlessly generate [[TheGoomba Goombas]] in normal levels and [[InvincibleMinorMinion Dry Bones]] in castle levels.

* Roach queens in ''VideoGame/DeadlyRoomsOfDeath''.
** Tar mothers expand every blob of tar in the room every 30 turns. However, tar can only remain stable if it's at least two tiles wide. Tar that tries to expand into a one-tile passage creates a tar baby instead. With suitable MalevolentArchitecture, a single tar mother can create a number of Mooks that's only limited by the size of the room. ''Every 30 turns.''