A class of Stock Character that allows a Big Bad to operate on a large scale. Evil cousins to the Red Shirt and yet "Technical Pacifist" brothers to normal Mooks.
Evil Minions are the non-combat version of Mooks. They tend to the villain's science labs, clean up the corpses from the shark pools (or become shark fodder), give The Dragon stress relief via being choked or other dog kickery, and generally run around like headless chickens when the hero pushes the Big Red Button.
Usually drawn (if animated) or dressed (if live action) alike in overalls, Space Clothes, or other utilitarian "science" or "engineer" garb depending on their job. This is so the audience can easily pick them out as nameless and expendable. On the bright side they're rarely completely faceless like other Security Guard Mooks, affording them at least some protection from heroic rampages, though they're still "evil" Innocent Bystanders to the heroes' wrath. If they have lines, expect them to complain about work conditions, desperate need for better insurance, their pay and their bosses' idea of "incentives".
Types of evil minions include:
Also see:
- Adorable Evil Minions: The villain's underlings are cute. May also be Mooks depending on threat level.
- Black Shirt: Someone on the hero's side secretly wants the villain to win so he can join his side.
- Elite Mooks: It's very common (not to mention logical) for Big Bads to leave their empire's operations to the best soldiers around, leaving the regular, expendable ones solely for combat purposes.
- Enigmatic Minion: A servant with a mysterious agenda.
- Faceless Goons: The henchmen all have their faces obscured by their helmets.
- Half-Hearted Henchman
- Ignorant Minion: Flunkeys who are too dumb, stupid, unintelligent. naïve or otherwise unaware that they are evil.
- Les Collaborateurs
- Mad Scientist: Chances are good that at least one of the villain's underlings is an insane, evil scientist using their research and technology to advance their boss's goals.
- The Igor: The mad scientist's short, deformed assistant.
- Middle-Management Mook: Not quite part of the minion elite, but also above the servile imbeciles at the bottom of the Mook hierarchy.
- Minion with an F in Evil: The worst guys you can have around, and we're not talking in a good way.
- Overzealous Underling: Minions acting on their own initiative screws up the bad guy's plans.
- Perky Female Minion: Every Big Bad out there seems to have that one girl servant that's oddly lively considering the side she's in.
- Personal Mook: Mooks that take care of the Big Bad's everyday routine.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: An evil assistant that's loyal to whoever is at the top.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Those minions only work for a paycheck, so don't expect much competency or enthusiasm from their part.
- The Renfield: The loyal human servant of a vampire.
- Vampire Vannabe: Someone helps out the vampires in hopes that the vampires will repay them by making them one of their own.
- Sycophantic Servant: Minions who are all too eager to throw their dignity away just to please their boss.
- Underling with an F in PR: Minions who have trouble with the whole "working in secret" thing.
- Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: The minions are nowhere as serious as their boss.
- Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: When the evil minions are actually more physically powerful than their boss.
Examples:
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Comic Strips
- What's New? with Phil and Dixie shows us the basics of minioning
, doubling as a test drive for Krosp.
Fan Works
- Ted/Vulcan's tribe of Diamond Dogs, doubling as his mooks in The Rise of Darth Vulcan.
- Shadows over Meridian: Some of the Ninja Khan, instead of fighting, serve as record keepers to the Shadow Realm's ruler and are distinguished from their brethren by their red robes. The authors explain that they're basically linked to Kage more directly; they have access to her memories while she meditates and write things down for her.
Films — Animation
- In Despicable Me, the minions were originally creatures created by Gru to serve as personal henchmen but were later retconned in their own spinoff film into immortal beings predating humanity who serve villainous individuals throughout history (the film justifies them not serving Hitler by them self-exiling themselves to Antarctica after getting Napoleon killed and emerging during the Nixon administration).
Films — Live-Action
- One of the more classic examples are the white helmeted technicians alongside the Imperial Stormtroopers of the Star Wars movies, as well as the Trade Federation droid bridge crews from the prequel series.
- The bad guy scientist in Resident Evil: Extinction gleefully leaves two fawning lab assistants to be killed by his enhanced zombie when it goes on a rampage. True, one was dead meat, but the other he could have saved.
- Many classic James Bond villains have bunches of these guys to man the Supervillain Lair and control the orbital death rays or ICBM-hijacking equipment or what have you.
Literature
- The novel Death Star which is all about the evil and not-so-evil minions on the titular space station.
- Dave Barry Slept Here has "a group of high-level Nixon administration aides, all of them named Klaus," who in their testimony before the Watergate committee "projected all the warmth and personal integrity of eels."
- Minioning is the worst job available in the world of Cannon Fodder. Minions tend to get beaten or killed in droves, especially if they work for the overlord Black Jack. Alec's minions are so loyal to him because he doesn't send them off to their doom.
- In Spells, Swords, & Stealth, minions of all sorts have their own god in the form of Grumble, a kobold minion himself who achieved divinity and chose to watch out for his fellow minions. The protagonist Thistle the gnome is a devout follower and, later, paladin of Grumble who spent a good deal of his past as a minion or henchman to some ne'er do well or another.
Live-Action TV
- It was common for a Nebulous Evil Organization in an early Toku show to have a class of minions who serve as scientists and technicians. Ofthen times they would look the same as the regular Mooks except they would wear white labcoats to distinguish themselves.
- Gilina on Farscape was an Evil Minion to the Peacekeepers, serving as a technician in her debut episode "Peace Keeper Tech Girl". Her romantic feelings for John got her upgraded to Mauve Shirt, and later she did a Mook–Face Turn out of that love.
- Kamen Rider: The Shocker Scientists, who wore white versions of the regular combatant uniforms and were in charge of performing the remodeling surgery to create kaijin. Most of Shocker's derivatives also had a similar class of minions to handle Monster of the Week creation and other scientific endeavors.
- Super Sentai
- Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan: There appears to be a class of Machinemen who serve as scientists for Black Magma and are indicated by the white labcoats they wear.
- The white-coated silent attendants on Top Gear (UK) who deliver the gold challenge envelopes, assist with the challenges, and (ostensibly) work for the (also ostensibly) evil "producers."
Professional Wrestling
- Randy Hales was a wrestler, but when he joined The Nation of Domination in USWA as "Randy X" he did no in ring work for the group, serving strictly as a manager.
- The Undertaker employs dozens of druids whose job is to do whatever he wants in the most ominous manner possible, but that thing never happens to be "wrestle". To a lesser extent, Paul Bearer was a wrestler once, but his ability to be one had long passed by the time he began managing the Undertaker.
- Raisha Saeed had Fatina Al' Hassam in PWR. She distracted the referee and stuff, but had no wrestling ability to speak of.
- Traci Brooks, usually is a wrestler and had in fact wrestled in TNA, but when TNA brought her back for a role in its by then famous knockout division, it was simply to serve as non wrestling minion to Gail Kim and Madison Rayne. Karen Jarrett already was technically serving as that, but on paper she was their boss rather than the other way around.
- The Boys who serve Dalton Castle technically became this in Ring of Honor when "The Last Real Man" Silas Young "won" their services from Castle and had them follow around The Beer City Bruiser. Young wanted The Boys to aid him and Bruiser in matches, but they proved too physically frail for wrestling matches. Dalton Castle himself ironically whipped The Boys into wrestling shape himself when he successfully won the right to their service back from Young.
Tabletop Games
- The Staff merit in Vampire: The Requiem allows your character to have certain kinds of employees, such as gardeners, lawyers, chauffeurs and etc.
Video Games
- The game Evil Genius has an entire tree of combat Mooks and non-combat Evil Minions, all descended from the basic Worker. They're distinct from "Henchmen" who are more powerful, named, controllable by the player and have to be hired. The game is interesting in that it gives each Minion a name and mini biography, has loyalty traits, and can be killed on a whim by the evil genius to inspire fear and loyalty in nearby minions. While the low ranking ones are eminently expendable, ones higher up on the job tree can get to be as or more valuable than Henchmen if a raid reduces their numbers.
- The Imps in Dungeon Keeper, who excavate and expand your dungeons as well as the Trolls, who are your mechanics who build traps and such.
- The Minions in Overlord are a literal example of this, though they're all your combat Mooks save for the NPC ones like Gnarl or Quaver.
- Giblet, the Forgemaster, or the women you kidnap from Spree maybe be examples.
- TimeShift has various Krone engineers that you come across, working on computers or fixing things. When they see you, they immediately reach for the nearest weapon.
Web Animation
- ATP Engineers in Madness Combat are genetically-modified A.A.H.W. agents who handle management and technical matters for the organization. They technically do fight, but aren't shown to be any more strong than your typical Agent.
Web Comics
- In Sluggy Freelance, when Aylee (actually her clone) started her own web design business in league with Hereti Corp, there were a number of regular web designers working there. These minions served a twofold purpose: 1) keep the legitimate stream of revenue flowing, and 2) be a handy source of human snacks for Aylee.
- Later on, Hereti Corp blurred the line between Mook and Minion when they opened their own chain of pizza places, but still staffed the restaurants with their black ops mercenaries (or at least gave the staff the same all-black uniforms).
- Henchman for Hire seems to play this in a comedic way in addition to playing various other super villain and minion tropes
- Vampire Girl: Saul and Paul are these to the Vampiress, and she even makes the comparison that if vampirekind were like a bee colony, and she the queen, they would be her most loyal soldiers.
Web Original
- Whateley Universe:
- When Dr. Diabolik has his forces attack Cincinnati, his minions are operating his hidden dropship and performing 'command and control' for him. In violation of stock Evil Minion protocols, some of them make helpful suggestions, and he treats them well.
- Subverted. At the Super Hero School Whateley Academy, there is a clique of rich kids who happen to also be mutants. At one meeting, a number of them get into a discussion of the problems with hiring minions and maintaining an effective corps of dangerous minions. They all think of this as if they were hiring middle managers or highly competitive salesmen or grouchy programmers. Of course, the school handbook has an entire section on rules to follow if you hire other students as your minions...
- The Syndicate has both hiring boards and standard employment contracts for supervillains looking to hire talent. The villains-only website Sin d'Rome Mercenarium also has job board, both for hiring minions and for finding patrons for your own villainous career (mostly Corrupt Corporate Executive and Corrupt Politician types, though really it could be anyone - possibly even a Super Team looking for a fixed fight to build their rep).
- Part and parcel of the above is a minions' union, ATHUG (the acronym hasn't been explained yet). It has also been mentioned that there are Bad Guy Bars specifically for minions, mostly catering to Mooks looking to get drunk and rowdy.
Web Videos
- One episode of Trope Talk talks about this exact trope, right down to even being titled “Evil Minions”.
- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has the Henchmans' Union, populated by lesser villains who seem to work either on their own or for the supervillains.
Western Animation
- The villains in Batman's and Superman's animated series were constantly hiring minions, usually ones that reflected that villain's particular motif.
- It became something of a plot point that the Joker had trouble finding Minions both because Batman kept kicking his ass, and also because he's a Bad Boss.
- Also turns up in the comics, and sometimes gets parodied / lampshaded with the mooks talking about times they were working for other villains.
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has the Grubs, who serve as technicians and mechanics for the Zurg Empire and are the Evil Counterparts to the Little Green Men of Star Command.
- Parodied in the show WordGirl. Doctor Two-Brains (who has the brain of a super-intelligent lab rat stuck on his head) has two (dumb as dirt) minions. (They normally start out conversations with saying "Hey, Boss?" and Two-Brains responding "Yes, minions?") They normally wear jump-suits with a rat logo on them, but in one episode when they complained about their outfits, Two-Brains decided to put them in mascot outfits made to look like mice.
- One of them, the taller of the two, never speaks, the other speaks, and wears a hat (forgot it's name) Under that had is a ridiculous, seventies-ish style haircut he is proud of. Dr. Twobrains turned it into CREAM CHEESE!! Just to show them how his raygun works!
- Muttley is this to Dick Dastardly. Klunk and Zilly would be added to the minion list a year later.
- Jonny Quest. As a Diabolical Mastermind Dr. Zin has many of these useful tools. In "The Fraudulent Volcano" some of them run his Elaborate Underground Base inside a volcano.
- Clutcher, the minion to Baron Otto Matic on Tom Slick, is more of a butt monkey than being evil. Not the sharpest wrench in the tool box and he's also a suck-up to the "almighty Baron."
- Stiletto Mafioso is this to Baron Silas Greenback on Danger Mouse. And to an extent, Grovel the robot to the alien Quark.
