Kingpin in His Gym

"I gotta work out so I can kill the world!"

— Harry Russo, Schizophreniac: The Whore Mangler

Some Almighty Overlords like to do more than lounge around on nice chairs in their fortresses. They'll go for a bit of self-improvement instead. Some may get a Training Montage or two, while others may pursue a Dangerous Forbidden Technique or Forgotten Superweapon in parallel with The Hero. Regardless of how they choose to better themselves, showing a villain building his prowess can be a menacing taste of what's to come when the heroes finally reach his doorstep. Like our good old friend, however, they don't pose any direct physical threat to the good guys at the moment.

One of the ways to show that a villain's Rank Scales with Asskicking. However, if the training sessions are shown to be a walk in the park, one wonders how they will make the villain any stronger. That said, anyone with a fitness regimen will tell you that gaining muscle is a lot harder than maintaining muscle, which might be the intention of this trope. If the villain is a Miss or Mr. Fanservice this may also be Workout Fanservice. Shopping is another popular hobby of villains.

Compare Mob-Boss Suit Fitting. Contrast with Slouch of Villainy and Orcus on His Throne. In a way, the inverse of Villain Forgot to Level Grind.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Baki the Grappler: Hanayama is essentially this. He is the head of the most powerful yakuza gang, yet he doesn't believe in using weapons, and relies more on his brute strength and martial arts training to eliminate any threat that stands in his way.
• Death Note: Teru Mikami, Light's right-hand man, visits the gym religiously. Given that his method of killing just involves writing down names, this is purely for his own benefit, and has nothing to do with fighting. Then again, considering how animated he is about writing down names, he possibly does it to avoid pulling something.
• Dragon Ball: General Silver is shown working out at least once in order to beat Goku. It doesn't work.
• Fatal Fury: Geese Howard hadn't been the Big Bad since the first OVA, but in the third, Billy Kane finds him training in the woods. After receiving the report on the heroes' activities, Geese busts out a Raging Storm that obliterates some of the surrounding vegetation.
• Hayate × Blade also shows Ensuu doing crunches hanging off the top half of a bunk bed and jogging in the school gym on two separate occasions before facing off with the protagonists' team.
• Naruto: While not exactly a villain, the Raikage is introduced lifting huge dumbbells in his gym. Oddly enough, he's the only leader of any group that's been seen training at all so far, despite the setting being a World of Badass supernatural ninjas.
• Rurouni Kenshin: The Big Bad Makoto Shishio has a scene where he is practicing his swordsmanship during the Kyoto Arc.
• Shaman King: Tao Ren is shown pumping iron in the lead-up to his first official tournament fight with Yoh, who doesn't exactly share his obsessive work ethic. Since Ren is a ball of issues and, uncommon for a shonen series, Unstoppable Rage does not help, Yoh's mellower approach works in his favour.
• Transformers: Cybertron: One episode combines this with Danger Room Cold Open by opening with Starscream kicking ass on a bunch of Autobots... which dissipate into holograms.

Comic Books

• Marvel Universe:
  • Issue 350 of Captain America shows the recently-resurrected Red Skull practicing his hand-to-hand skills by slaughtering several of the Taskmaster's trained cronies... all of whom are dressed as Captain America. Later stories expand upon this: the Red Skull never tells his would-be appointments that he is going to fight them to the death, just for the added lulz of watching them panic when they realize that the Skull intends to kill them.
  • Iron Man: The Mandarin once beat six top martial artists during a training exercise.
  • Spider-Man:
    • While his flunkies were making life a nightmare for Spider-Man, the Kingpin was shown performing some outrageous physical feats like bending steel bars and breaking large objects in preparation for his personal disassembling of Spidey. He is therefore the Trope Namer. A running joke with Kingpin is that he'll pay goons (more often than not, having martial arts training) to attack him for practice. If they lose badly to Kingpin, he'll fire them — but if they put up an actual fight, then Kingpin murders them for making him look bad. He also tends to kill one of his practice partners in every match, so that the survivors will fight harder next time.
    • However, Fisk has learned the hard way that no matter how much he works out or how much he hones his fighting skills, the only reason he's ever held his own against Spider-Man is because Spidey restrains himself so much. Get Spider-Man seriously pissed off, as he once foolishly did, and the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that Spider-Man inflicted on him was epic to behold. The fight ended with Fisk practically crippled and fully aware that Spider-Man could kill him any time he wanted. It'll be a cold day in Hell before Fisk ever does anything that stupid again.
    • Eddie Brock's first appearance established him as a gym bunny, who channeled his rage against Spider-Man (prior to actually becoming Venom) via working out. He continues to do so, since the symbiote increases his strength geometrically. The stronger he can get, the stronger the symbiote can make him.
• Superman: Subverted by Lex Luthor. Shortly after coming back as his own evil clone (don't ask), he is shown training in martial arts in his gym. After his trainer hands him his ass in front of witnesses, he later tracks her down and murders her in cold blood. Inverted in his last days as President, when he is using Venom (a kind of super-steroid most notoriously utilized by Bane) to muscle up.
• In the X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics, Ysanne Isard is once shown training against◊ Mrlssti laser phantoms◊ while she works on her plots to control the Empire. Notably, Isard never actually fights people herself, preferring schemes and Manchurian Agents. Apparently she believes the old adage about healthy body, healthy mind.
• Just before he is forcibly transformed into Spawn's Evil Counterpart Anti-Spawn, Jason Wynn is seen sparring with two soldiers dressed as ninjas. They don't last long.

Fan Works

• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: A heroic version. Knowing that becoming stronger (even if she's holding back a lot) and the muscles she's developing because of her powers triggering will look suspicious otherwise, Asuka starts to spend a lot of time on NERV's gym, doing weights. Shinji starts to exercise alongside her for the company, and the results draw Asuka's eye during some downtime.
• The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World: A variation. Andro takes Paul and John to his private gym, where he urges them to use the equipment. Paul refuses because he's afraid of breaking the stuff, which is when he finds out that Andro is also super-strong. Agreeing to a strength test, Paul finds himself helplessly flattened out under a weight he can't budge, which Andro casually lifts off him—one-handed, which sends Paul into paroxysms of jealousy. Among other things, he realizes that Andro put him in this position to show him just how much stronger than Paul he is.
  • Ironically, Paul can make himself far stronger, but he doesn't dare because of Power Incontinence, which just adds to his jealousy.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: In the Twenty Gyarados Bill Gaiden sidestory, the title character was seen training along with his Magikarp as he tried to evolve them to Gyarados, to become physically stronger himself.
• The Horsewomen Of Las Vegas has a few scenes with crime boss Charlotte Flair working out with trainer Steve Blackman, who is as much of a badass in the story as he is in real life.

Films — Live-Action

• Avatar: Col. Quaritch is shown lifting weights, and he comments that he needs to keep his muscles in top condition in Pandora's low gravity.
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story occasionally cuts to scenes of the villain of the piece practicing advanced martial arts, using electrodes on his nipples to stave off temptation, and otherwise forcing himself to remain fit. At the end of the film, when he loses his gym and his fancy exercise tools with it, he becomes morbidly obese in depression.
• Dragon Tiger Gate: The Big Bad is introduced and almost exclusively shown in his personal training area... including the climactic battle.
• Fist of Legend: In this Jet Li film, the Big Bad General Fujita gets a scene showing him training by hammering nails into boards with his bare palms, smashing slabs of rock, and letting a team of students break thick wooden rods over his body, to establish his overwhelming power and resilience in combat.
  • A similar montage appears in Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury, the film that Fist of Legend is based on, showing the Russian Petrov bending metal bars and hammering nails into a board with his bare hands.
• Gladiator: Commodus practices his swordsmanship against multiple opponents, showing that wealth and power have not made him soft.
• The Cynthia Rothrock movie Honor and Glory shows the villain putting himself through an intense workout scene, allowing the audience to see that he won't be a pushover during the final fight.
• James Bond: A few villains are fond of this:
  • Largo practices his aim with clay shooting in between stages of SPECTRE's plan to detonate stolen nuclear weapons in Thunderball.
  • Scaramanga, The Man with the Golden Gun, has a warped relationship with his diminutive manservant Nick-Nack; in the event of his death, Nick-Nack inherits everything... in return for Nick-Nack actually trying to kill him by hiring the best assassins in the world for Scaramanga to pit his skills against.
  • Max Zorin spars with his Dragon May Day in A View to a Kill.
  • Colonel Moon in Die Another Day, whom we meet taking his Tae Kwon Do frustrations out on a punching bag containing his anger therapist — that'll teach him to lecture Moon. Big Bad Gustav Graves also has some fun at a fencing club. We later find that they're the same person.
• Kick-Ass: Frank D'Amico is shown training in the gym to show he's a step above his mooks, later on even using his skills against a hapless superhero cosplayer. His son is shown clumsily messing around with some weapons.
• Kickboxer: In the first film, Kurt walks in on Tong Po preparing for his upcoming fight with his pro kickboxing older brother, and sees him almost knock down a giant pillar in the arena with his knee strikes. He begs his older brother to pull out of the fight after seeing how freakishly strong Tong Po was, but his brother doesn't listen and ends up getting killed in the ring.
• Played for Laughs in The Muppets (2011), where the Corrupt Corporate Executive Big Bad is shown practicing fencing with Bobo in his office, but Bobo is visibly letting him win and barely even moving his foil.
• Rocky Balboa's major opponents got their own Training Montages, which often told viewers something about their character: Clubber Lang's dungeon-like basement emphasized his monstrosity while Ivan Drago's almost clinical routines (and his steroid use) showed his lack of "heart". Rocky's most famous Rival Apollo subverted it; his "Training" for his first fight with Rocky was spent arranging promotional materials for the fight, showing how he didn't take the upcoming match seriously and wrote it off as a given that he'd win.
• Once Upon A Time In China 2: When Wong Fei-Hung meets General Nar-Lan Yuen-Shu (Donnie Yen) for the first time, he's busy working out his martial arts form before surprising Wong with a sparring match, establishing that he's Wong's equal, and not schlubby Armchair Military cum bureaucrat like the rest.
• Robin and Marian establishes the Sheriff as a credible threat by having him practice swordsmanship against three men at once. When he and Robin do fight... well, they're Robert Shaw and Sean Connery.
• The Scorpion King: Memnon. Mathayus sees him ordering an underling to fire an arrow at his chest, while Memnon is getting ready to block it with his sword, a skill he's known for. At the end, he utterly fails to block Mathayus's arrow.
• Snakes on a Plane: Crime boss Eddie Kim is shown practicing karate while ordering the title plan. Could have been a Chekhov's Gun for an eventual Kung Fu faceoff with Samuel L. Jackson, but nope.
• Swashbuckler: Big Bad Lord Durant is shown in his salle practicing against three sparring partners when Major Folly arrives to deliver more bad news. Having already wounded two his partners, Durant kills the third as an expression of his displeasure.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990): There is a deleted scene which shows Shredder engaged in a traditional training exercise as a form of punishment for the foot clan who had gotten captured earlier in the movie.
• The Three Musketeers (2011) shows Richlieu sparring in his off-hours. With three opponents, no less.
• Transporter 2: The main villain practices Kendo against multiple opponents in his introductory scene.
• Timeline: When the time travelers are first brought before Lord Oliver de Vannes, he is practicing his swordsmanship skills with a mook using wooden swords. He then has the Mook take out a real sword during a thrust and kill one of the time travelers, simply because he's French.

Literature

• Dune: Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen participates in gladiatorial matches, trading traditional means of rigging the fights with his own, to make it look like he's in danger and earn prestige. This almost backfires when the slave in question nearly kills him. Feyd, impressed with and knowing how to play to the crowd, doesn't do the traditional mutilation of the body, instead allowing him to be buried intact, as a sign of respect.
• The Fifth Elephant: The Ax-Crazy werewolf Wolfgang is introduced doing one-handed push-ups, followed by one-handed handstands. Oh, and he does this stark naked. While both his parents are in the room. Well, they're already naked around each other in wolf shape...
• The Grimnoir Chronicles: Madi has one scene where he spars against his rank and file subordinates - starting with five-on-one odds and working his way up from there. He honestly congratulates the one man who actually manages to hit him.
• Inheritance Cycle: Galbatorix qualifies. For one, he actually rules the Empire he's in charge of. He also breaks into the minds of the Eldunari he has under his power to make him even more powerful. Third, he searches for the true name of the Ancient Language of magic, which would give him power over all spellcasters and over magic itself. He succeeds on all three accounts.
• The Princess Bride: Prince Humperdinck with his Zoo of Death. In fact, we first see him wrestling an ape.
• Redwall: One villainess is a decent swordsbeast, as we see her Training Montage consisting of slaves throwing vegetables at her to be sliced midair. Unfortunately, like most Redwall villains she turns out to be hopelessly inept when her opponent is armed and angry.
• Shadows of the Empire: Prince Xizor inverts this. He has an "exercise chair," which stimulates his muscles while he lounges around in his fortress, giving him exercise without him having to lift a finger. He has constant problems with the chair's voice-chip pronouncing his name, though. Darth Vader is also seen training against lightsaber-wielding battle-droids, which helps to characterize his frustration with his inability to fight an opponent with the power of the Force.
• Stephanie Plum: Benito Ramirez actually does train in a gym, being a boxer. He uses it to great effect to terrorize women.
• X-Wing Series: Ysanne Isard talks to an Enemy Mine while using a weight machine with no sign of strain. Notably, Isard never actually fights people herself, preferring schemes and Manchurian Agents. Apparently she believes the old adage about healthy body, healthy mind.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow: We see Ra's Al Ghul sword-sparring with a group of League members; like the Trope Namer was wont to do, he kills the last man standing after knocking out the others.
• Black Lightning (2018): Tobias Whale is shown having a sparring match against an underground fighter and expressing disappointment to his henchman at how easily he wins. Said henchman then moves to shoot the fighter when he gets up for another round, only for Tobias to stop him, express admiration for the man's spirit, and beat him up a second time.
• The Boys (2019): Queen Maeve is shown easily defeating a number of burly men in her gym whom she's sparring with.
• Daredevil (2015):
  • In season 2, when Frank Castle is first brought before Wilson Fisk in the prison, Fisk is bench-pressing weights.
  • In season 3, Fisk pays Jasper Evans to shank him while he's bench-pressing weights in the rec room, to make it look like Fisk is being targeted for snitching.
• Doctor Who: Played for laughs when the Delgado Master, locked up in a sea fortress, exercises on a rowing machine. It doesn't seem to be working, though—the Doctor remarks that the Master has put on weight!
• Game of Thrones: The Mountain makes his Season 4 debut sparring against practically unarmed convicts with his massive broadsword.
• Iron Fist (2017): Harold Meachum is frequently shown going to town on his punching bag or sparring with a physical trainer, to help establish that he's a physical threat in addition to a white-collar criminal.
• Legends of Tomorrow: Near the end of season 1, when we see Cassandra Savage for the second time, she's sparring with a group of soldiers and easily bests them before berating them for their sloppy performance, pointing out that her father won't tolerate this from his finest.
• The Lone Ranger: The episode "The Wrong Man" shows Jess Latham, a wealthy man trying to cover up his son's murder by lynching an innocent man, is shown lifting weights when his lynch mob assembles. He later surrenders to the Lone Ranger, allows himself to be disarmed, and decks the Ranger so hard he flies across the room.
• Poldark: The young Morally Bankrupt Banker George Warleggan is a Nouveau Riche who has molded himself into the epitome of cultured gentility. Although George has a bit of a Slobs Versus Snobs dynamic with his Arch-Enemy, Ross Poldark, who comes from the gentry but is a man of the people, the expectation of George being a Sissy Villain is subverted, as George regularly trains with a professional boxer, often while plotting against Ross. It's implied that George does this so he can win against Ross in physical combat in the same way he aims to win against him through economic chicanery. Indeed, in one episode where the two drop social pretenses and get into a bare-knuckle fight, George is evenly matched with the brawny Ross thanks to a combination of all of his training and simply from fighting really, really dirty.
• Smallville: Badass Normal Dark Action Girl Tess Mercer is often seen in her mansion practicing her fighting skills, such as Aikido or Kickboxing.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand: Crassus has a scene in which he spars against a retired gladiator, but he knows that his teacher will always hold back, so he offers the gladiator his freedom if he manages to kill Crassus. Crassus shows that he's Surpassed the Teacher by killing him with his Finishing Move: a Bare-Handed Blade Block.
• Stargate Atlantis: When we are first introduced to him, Commander Kolya of the Genii is having a sparring session with some of his military subordinates.
• The Wild Wild West recurring villain Dr. Loveless is sparring with his minions when West first meets him. As a dwarf he's not a physical match, but he seems to specialize in a martial art involving his walking stick and makes short work of them.
• The Wire: In Season One, Avon Barksdale and Russell "Stringer" Bell were shown working in the gym and on the basketball court while planning gangland operations.

Professional Wrestling

• Being a big muscle fighting thing with lots of time in between match ups, this is pretty common in pro wrestling. Though some cases have to be disqualified on a technicality.
• Any rudos who participate in CMLL's body building contests can be counted. Rush was supposed to be a tecnico but became infamous enough for his participation in them to become a rudo in all but name.
• Parodied in the case of the The Midnight Express, whom Jim Cornette would try to put together fearsome training packages for that often inspired the opposite reaction.
• After the Ultimate Warrior won the WWF title at WrestleMania 6, Bobby Heenan hosted segments showing one of his wrestlers, Rick Rude, in training. Rude had defeated Warrior a year earlier for the WWF Intercontinental title and had plans on defeating him again.
• In a less conventional example, Mark Henry could often be seen not in gyms, but out and about performing random acts of strength, which sometimes fall into "If it's easy, is it really helping him" category...sometimes, dude did lift a hummer.
  • Long before Mark Henry, former Olympic weightlifter and wrestler Ken Patera would often do random acts of strength, including driving nails with his bare hands.
• Around his eleventh world title reign or so, WWE held a sweepstakes with the winner earning a chance to workout with the evil Triple H. Be with Kingpin in his gym!
• Bobby Lashley takes this a bit more literally than some examples, as there is a good chance he really does own the gyms he works out in his promotional videos. Subverted sometimes though, as one of his gyms is haunted by Boogeyman.
• The Spot trainer Black Rose showed off some her regimen when announcing her return to Puerto Rico for the World Wrestling League's Insurrection show, following a run through U Know Pro in Florida. Downplayed as despite being presented as heel the fans at the Puerto Rican show cheered her almost as much as her opponent, Ivelisse Vélez.
• One WWF television segment followed the immortal wrestling announcer "Mean Gene" Okerlund going to a gym to interview "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff to get their thoughts on their upcoming tag team main event match against WWF Champion Hulk Hogan and Mr. T at the inaugural WrestleMania pay per view. Orndorff was in the midst of curling impressive amounts of weight, and Piper, who was merely observing at the time (along with bodyguard "Cowboy" Bob Orton) saw fit to insult and berate Okerlund for disturbing their preparation. At the end of it, the heels advance menacingly towards Gene and ultimately throw him out of the gym and into the streets. A passerby comes to Gene's aid only to be viciously beaten by Piper's cohorts.

Theater

• In William Shakespeare's Cymbeline Cloten is proud of his prowess with the sword. What he fails to take into account is, his sparring partners know he is 1) the Prince and 2) borderline Ax-Crazy and will have them killed if he loses a match. Naturally, once he's up against a real opponent he's quickly killed.

Video Games

• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number: The Son is seen training with a punching bag at one point, showing that he's no slouch when it comes to violence.
• Yakuza 3: Mine is introduced this way to foreshadow the fact that despite seeming to only be a businessman who relies on his intelligence, he's also quite competent in a fight.

Webcomics

• Errant Story: Anita, either Big Bad or Dragon (you can argue it either way), is introduced getting a workout to hone her already awesome combat skills.
• The Order of the Stick: Though not shown on-panel, dialogue states that the villain, Xykon, spent the duration of Roy's absence researching new spells and crafting magic items, the Evil Sorcerer's equivalent of working out. The nature of reality there renders him incapable of doing this for longer than 8 hours per day, and, as a lich, he doesn't sleep, either. As such, he generally spends the rest of his day messing around in a bid to alleviate his boredom, which is what the reader usually sees whenever Xykon is present. And by "messing about", we mean "coming up with inventive and horrific ways to kill prisoners, and making book on how long they last in the acid tank with the mutated sharks."

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Both Prince Zuko and Princess Azula each spend one of their respective first appearances practicing their firebending. Zuko demands to learn the advanced techniques even though Iroh insists he hasn't mastered the basics yet. Azula, on the other hand, does the advanced bits flawlessly — but completely freaks out foreshadowing her ultimate Villainous Breakdown when one hair falls out of place.
• Batman: The Animated Series: In "Bane", mobster Rupert Thorne is in his private gym, punching a bag while a henchman — named Jake — holds it for him and urges him on. Thorne is clearly getting a little tired, but then Jake says, "Come on, boss! No wonder the Batman is runnin' rings around ya!" Thorne snarls and punches Jake in the face, knocking him out. Then he grabs a towel from another thug, mentioning before he leaves, "Oh, and when Jake here gets up, tell him he's fired." Moments later, Bane arrives, and when Thorne threatens to withhold payment after a recent job was nearly bungled, Bane responds by punching the bag so hard it flies off its fixtures.
• Gargoyles: David Xanatos enjoys sparring in a dojo. Xanatos being Xanatos, he subverts the usual use of this trope, showing how badass he is by losing to his Battle Butler and then commenting on how surprised he was that Owen has improved.
  Owen: Would you rather I pretend to lose?
  Xanatos: I'd fire you if you did.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In one episode, Lord Tirek, by far the most pragmatic and level-headed of the group of villains, is spending his downtime pumping iron until Cozy Glow shows up to annoy him.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): One of the most memorably hilarious moments is from the episode "Telephonies", when the girls get a call from the Mayor (actually the Gangrene Gang making a prank call) to go and foil one of HIM's schemes. They break into his home... and find HIM doing aerobics.
  HIM: This figure doesn't come easy, you know. I took a little time off to get into shape.
• The Simpsons: Parodied where Mr. Burns makes Smithers work out on his behalf.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: In the episode "Probable Cause," we see Tombstone hitting a punching bag so hard it breaks. Fitting, since this adaptation promotes him to the Kingpin's usual role. (They couldn't use the trope namer himself due to rights issues.)
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series: The episode "Tablet of Time" shows Wilson Fisk (the Kingpin) in his private gym with three muscular gentlemen restraining him while the news is talking about the Tablet of Time on a background television. When he learned the possible price of the artifact, he gains enough enthusiasm to effortlessly throw off all three of them.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars: Count Dooku, a.k.a. Darth Tyranus, was shown sparring with General Grievous. Most other master vs. apprentice fights in the Star Wars universe tend to be cases of attempted Klingon Promotion although they could be considered training for the apprentices. (Grievous is not technically Dooku's apprentice, as he is not a Sith, or even a Force-user for that matter. The fact that he is one of the few beings that is formidable in lightsaber combat without being Force-sensitive is something that makes him truly unique as a villain.) There's also some foreshadowing here, as Dooku is advising Grevious on how to cover for his weaknesses — which include lightsaber combat — by exploiting his cybernetics as an instrument of intimidation and terror, using his elite robot bodyguard force to harass opponents beforehand, and to immediately run from any fight against a Jedi in which he doesn't already have a definite psychological advantage.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Through Imperial Eyes", when Agent Kallus and Lieutenant Lyste are admitted into Grand Admiral Thrawn's office, they see him sparring with assassin droids in a side room.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In "Solar Power", while it's not really "in a gym", Lex Luthor is seen practicing archery — for bonus points, he does this while on the phone with Lois Lane and asking her "Do you really think I would jeopardize the safety of this planet just to settle my personal grudge against Superman?" And then hitting a bullseye with a shit-eating smirk.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): This happens three times. The first occurs with the Shredder, who gets a training scene in the episode "Darkness at the Edge of Town". The second occurs with Karai, whose very first scene is of her training. The third time occurs in a supplementary short of dubious canonity, also featuring Karai, which shows her apparently killing the four turtles... until its revealed that they're actually advanced training robots.

---