Mascot Mook

Slime sodas draw near!
Command?

Most Mooks exist solely to die en masse at the hero's hands. Some become emblematic of the series in the process.

The Mascot Mook combines the ubiquitous nature of a Mook with the iconic appeal of a Mascot, and despite lacking Nominal Importance these guys have become spotlight stealers among the game's bestiary.

Perhaps there's something memorable about their design or behavior. Maybe they are one the more basic and common enemies so their presence becomes a part of the series' setting. Maybe they are so cute or goofy that the player can't help but smile every time one of them pops up — despite how often they will suddenly pop up or how many of them the player will slaughter throughout the game. Or perhaps it's that they're the most consistently-appearing characters, with each installment otherwise using a completely new cast.

Whatever the case, these Mooks have somehow become just as vital to the series as a whole as your core party members are to the narrative of each separate installment. Fans silently expect these guys to appear somewhere in each and every installment (often in multiple versions), simply because they always have, and no new game would be fit for release without their appearance.

Notably, there is something of a duality regarding these enemies' natures in their games of origin. They're very frequently The Goomba, very weak and very common, and gain their popularity through a dual effect of being a very commonly seen and interacted-with part of the game while also weak enough that players don't see them as serious villains. Most of the exceptions are instead powerful Elite Mooks, much rarer and more dangerous, and made distinctive through a combination of rarity value, elaborate designs, unique and attention-grabbing abilities and/or memorably challenging fights.

While this trope is most prevalent in video games, it is by no means exclusive to them. Stormtroopers, Zakus, Daleks, and Minions are some iconic non-video game examples.

Often a Series Mascot. Sometimes the popularity of the Mascot Mook can result in spin-off titles (and other products) dedicated entirely to them; see Breakout Mook Character. Alternatively, sometimes a single instance of the Mascot Mook species will join the main cast as a Token Heroic Orc. See Recurring Element for non-monster examples.

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Examples:

Video Game Examples

Action Adventure

• Horizon Zero Dawn has the almighty Thunderjaw, which are essentially robotic T-Rexes (without tiny arms) and are far and away one of the hardest enemy encounters in the game. They're also front and center for every promotional material of the game alongside Aloy herself.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Octoroks are the most common enemies in the series, featuring in every single game with the sole exception of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, appearing early and often in each installment, and appearing in a fair amount of official art as Link's default low-level foes.
  • The -blin family of enemies, especially the Moblins and Bokoblins, have established themselves as the default and most common troops of any given game's villainous forces, and have gotten their own share of merchandise. Bokoblins even got an amiibo for Breath of the Wild.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • The base game also uses the mechanical Guardians in this role. These feature heavily in its promotional material — a chase and battle between one of them and Link served as the game's reveal trailer — are used as a central piece of the game's post-apocalyptic Magitek motif, and are the one enemy besides the Bokoblins to get an amiibo.
    • The Lynels, the game's most complex and challenging enemies outside of the bosses, became this after launch and in particular served as central parts of the advertising for the DLC pack The Master Trials, which prominently features Link facing a powerful Gold Lynel as advertisement for itself◊.
• Metal Gear Solid: The Arctic Warfare soldiers in the original game. While the game has other types of enemy soldiers, the arctic variants are the only ones that appear in the VR missions and are used to represent the original MGS in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus. Even Genola, a giant genome soldier who appears in the VR missions added in Metal Gear Solid: Integral and Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, is dressed in arctic warfare gear.
• Metroid:
  • The titular Metroids, given that the franchise was named after them. Unlike most examples of this trope, even the weakest of them are powerful Elite Mooks that are usually met towards the end of most entries in the series. So until Samus gains enough power to defeat them, her most common enemies will be the Space Pirates instead.
  • Metroid Dread: The E.M.M.I. (more specifically, E.M.M.I.-02SM, the white variant) has a starring role in most media associated with the game. Plus, it even has its own amiibo, much akin to the Metroid from Metroid: Samus Returns.
• Overlord: Your Ugly Cute Minions, who even get their own DS spin-off.
• Star Fox Adventures: The Sharpclaw Tribe is the most common source of enemies you'll find in the game, as they're the dinosaurs who are directly under the command of General Scales. The bigger ones have a pale skin and use a shield to deflect many of Fox's attacks with the Staff. Near the end of the game, all Sharpclaws turn against Scales once they discover that his increased power wasn't from himself, but from Andross.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: A Varian has a full artwork and is featured on the game cover despite being the second weakest mook in the game.

Action RPG

• Mega Man Legends featured Tron Bonne and her army of Servbots, little smiley-faced Lego men who obey her every instruction (although not always to the letter). They behave like children (Tron even refers to them as her kids), generally getting into trouble and making mischief, and when Mega Man faces them on the field of battle (usually piloting the Bonne Family's latest generation of mayhem-making machine), the little guys themselves can't actually be destroyed. Although you can kick them for health, if you're feeling mean. Whenever Tron appears in a crossover game her Servbots are guaranteed to be somewhere nearby.
  • Legends also contains the Zakobon, easily the most recognisable reaverbot; a smiley, one eyed, waddling, bomb throwing Mecha Mook.
• The Kittens from Tail Concerto and Poulets from SkyGunner are practically Expies of Servbots, all legions of childlike, invincible minions who pilot the villains' battle machines. Of course, Kittens are the only ones who aren't robots, and you are tasked with actually removing them from the battlefield...which involves shooting them with a bubble gun and teleporting them back to the police station.
• Shadow Heartless, the single weakest enemies of the Kingdom Hearts series. It helps that they're adorable. There's also the Soldier, the second-weakest Heartless and most well-known example of the Emblem Heartless with several variations to go with it. With the release of Dream Drop Distance, the Meow Wow Spirit has become a second mascot, representing Dream Eaters at large.
• Rabites from the World of Mana series: Small, legless creatures with rabbit-like ears, a cottonpuff tail, and at their higher levels especially, one mean bite. Some entries in the series even allow you to have a Rabite as your own sidekick.
• Rune Factory has the Woolies, adorable bipedal sheep. Since the series a spin-off of Harvest Moon with monster battles and exploration added, the woolies can actually be tamed and used as a source of wool.
• Dark Souls has the Black Knights◊, who dominate official artwork and promotional material.
• Monster Hunter has one monster grace the cover of each game, usually referred to as the "Flagship" Monster of that game.
  • Rathalos for the original Monster Hunter, the first Freedom, and the international release of World (which it shares with Anjanath), as well as Azure Rathalos for Monster Hunter G and the Western release of 3 Ultimate. Rathalos and Rathian also serve as this for the series in general, having appeared in every game in the series and being subject to tons of merchandise (alongside the Yian Kut-Ku). This was cemented by the Rathalos' appearances in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (alongside Tigrex), Final Fantasy XIV and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as a guest boss. There's also the Felynes and Melynxes, who have become popular enough that they make more non-mook appearances than mook appearances, though they're definitely still mooks.
  • Starting from the second generation, each game has had a unique monster serving as its flagship, with some regional differences in between: Kushala Daora for Monster Hunter 2 (dos) (making it the first Elder Dragon to grace a game cover), Tigrex for Monster Hunter Freedom 2, Nargacuga for Freedom Unite, Lagiacrus for Monster Hunter 3 (Tri), Zinogre for Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, Brachydios for the Japanese version of 3 Ultimate, Gore Magala for Monster Hunter 4 and the American release of 4 Ultimate (it also represents the Monster Hunter franchise as a whole in Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite), Seregios for the Japanese and European release of 4 Ultimate, up to four monsters for Monster Hunter Generations (referred to collectively as the Fated Four: Astalos, Gammoth, Mizutsune and Glavenus), other two for Generations Ultimate (Valstrax and Bloodbath Diablos, though only the former appears in the cover), Nergigante for Monster Hunter: World, Velkhana for World: Iceborne, Magnamalo for Monster Hunter: Rise, and Malzeno for Rise: Sunbreak. And the Monster Hunter Frontier games have even more with the overall flagship being Espinas.
• In Grim Dawn, the Aetherial Gazer and the Ch'thonian Devourer are the game's mascots. Crate Entertainment sold plushies of those two little critters.

Action Shooter

• The Rebel Grunts from Metal Slug are one of the most remembered parts of the game. A lot of the humor comes from their funny and casual actions. They've got to be playable in their own mode in the Xbox version of Metal Slug 3. Equally, or perhaps Even more famous are the Mars People.
• Enter the Gungeon has the Bullet-Kin, walking bullets who bear different firearms to stop you from getting though the Gungeon. They have multiple variants (including Shotgun-Kin and Sniper Shells) and one is even playable.

Beat 'em Up

• Final Fight has the Andoré family. The biggest, heaviest hitting, No Celebs Were Harmediest recurring enemy that's in all the Final Fight games, Street Fighter III, and Ultra Street Fighter IV.
• Jitsu Squad have green Emaki ninja soldiers - The Goomba in-game - which is so memorable, they're the avatar of Tanuki Studio's Twitter page! Said mooks even have plushies based on them.

Eastern RPG

• Dragon Quest:
  • Slimes, which subvert prior RPG depictions of the Blob Monster by being teardrop-shaped and having large goofy smiles on their faces. The regular blue slimes are the first enemies encountered in the games and one of the weakest; however, they come in a plethora of variations including the nigh-indestructible Metal Slime and the gigantic King Slime. They are probably one of the most well-recognized RPG monsters in gaming history, spawning tons of merchandise (in Japan, at least).
  • There's even a DS title starring one: Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime.
  • The Dragon Quest VI remake also retooled monster recruiting, limiting it to a handful of specific slimes (and one dragon).
  • In the Dragon Quest Monsters games, there is a whole (elemental) family just for all the different types of slimes in the series.
  • Second to the Slimes are the Platypunks, who show up in the Fortune Street games as playable characters.
  • In Dragon Quest, Wyverns/Chimerae and Drakees/Drackys, give the Slimes a run for their money in recognizability.
• Final Fantasy has no shortage of these.
  • The classic titles feature Tonberry, a little green-skinned hooded guy, Cactuar, a running cactus, and Malboro, a giant stinky plant (though all three qualify as Elite Mooks); Final Fantasy XI features its own take on Goblins, and the little Mandragora people. All of these have been immortalized in plushie form.
  • Moreover, it seems that they attempt to add a new one with each iteration. Final Fantasy introduced Goblins. Malboros came into play in Final Fantasy II, with Chocobos expanding into battles in later titles. Final Fantasy III saw the first appearance of Moogles. In Final Fantasy IV there was the debut of the Zus. Final Fantasy V brought Tonberries and Magic Pots to the world. Final Fantasy VI was where Cactuars made their introduction.
  • Bombs, who even made a cameo appearance in Kingdom Hearts II.
• The Poo Snake from Blue Dragon was an intentional attempt to create one of these, because of the Cliché Storm theme. It worked - you can recruit one named Poopie in the sequel. They're basically Slimes, with all their Underground Monkeys.
• And the Punis, the Slimes-by-another-name of the Atelier Series.
• Shin Megami Tensei has Jack Frost, who is the spirit of winter as a cute snowman dressed up like a clown. He has a bunch of related "Frost" type characters in each game to go along with him, such as his Distaff Counterpart Strawberry Frost and Evil Twin Black Frost. There's also superboss King Frost.
  • To a lesser extent is Cerberus, who is usually the player's first summonable demon in every game. Because the novel the series was based on had Cerberus as the main character's most dependable demon ally. Though this Cerberus is actually a white lion with a dragon tail instead of a hellhound (Cerberus is often depicted with 3 heads modernly, the number is inconsistent in the myths).
  • Also to a lesser extent is the Pixie, being probably as close to a Cute Monster Girl that you can get from MegaTen.
  • Mara is also a pretty famous recurring demon, by virtue of being a giant Gag Penis.
  • Alice also applies, though she's less of a mascot mook and more of a mascot monster.
• The radish-like Kopins from the Luminous Arc series.
• The Phantasy Star games had Rappies (known as Chirpers, Warblers and Squawkers in Phantasy Star III). They're become especially prominent in Phantasy Star Online 2, where they've gained a Super-Deformed appearance, and have numerous weapons and costumes featuring them.
• Mother: The Starmen, who serve as the main foot soldiers for Giygas in EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound, are as emblematic for the series in merchandise as the friendly Mr. Saturns from both EarthBound and Mother 3. The US box art for EarthBound even depicts a Final Starman, though the encounter depicted there does not exactly occur in the game itself.
• Pikachu from Pokémon is a classic example. A rare mon who only appeared in one to two areas each in the entire original game, it quickly became an Ensemble Dark Horse, and Nintendo noticed. Interestingly, the developers originally intended for Clefairy and Poliwhirl to hold this role which can be seen to some extent with some of the promotional material from the first generation.
• Dogoos (slimes with dog-like features) are the most readily-recognizable enemy in the Neptunia series.
• Hit-Point Studio, a company that makes short RPGS for smartphones and home consoles, has the Pancho. This mushroom enemy appears in most if not all of their games, usually as the first enemy you fight.
• The TAMADRA from Puzzle & Dragons. Interestingly, they are somewhat decent in the early game, due to having a solid 100 in all stats, but they're meant to be used as material to unlock a card's Awoken Skills.

First-Person Shooter

• The brain-devouring, body-possessing Headcrabs from the Half-Life series have been merchandised as plushies and even hats. (Someone in the game itself even keeps a Headcrab as a pet.)
• Duke Nukem has the pig cops, who, since their appearance in Duke Nukem 3D, have proven to be the most popular enemies; since that game, they've appeared in many spin-offs of the main series.
• The Boomer in the Left 4 Dead franchise has gotten popular enough to have Valve's store sell a plushie of the said bloated special infected, complete with sounds it makes in the game if you press the boils on its belly. Plushies of the other special infected are in the works.
• Descent had two of these, owing to their at-the-time unique designs: The Class One Drone◊ and the Medium Lifter◊. A recolored Medium Lifter was on the Box Art for ''Descent 2''◊ (although the Medium Lifter was replaced by the similar-looking Diamond Claw◊ for Descent 2), and the Class One Drones were in a few places in Descent 3.
• The Big Daddies for the first two BioShock games, especially the Bouncer. The Little Sisters, too, even if they're not Mooks.
• Doom has the Cacodemon, thanks to its somewhat goofy round design and relative ineffectiveness as an attacker, is widely considered to be cute by the community, enough for Hissy to become the mascot of both the Doomworld forums and the wiki.
• Psychos from the Borderlands series. They're on the cover of the games for a reason. The second game even features a heroic Psycho as a playable character.
• Painheads from illWill (2023) are tiny, waddling, imp-like critters who tends to appear in most of the game's promotional materials and cover art. The game's trailer on Steam notably has a Painhead dragging the Unreal logo along... moments before it's blasted to bits by a shotgun firing offscreen.
• The Helghast soldier from Killzone. In fact in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale the one representing Killzone is their Colonel Badass leader, Colonel Mael Radec.
• Pencil Whipped has the Dooby Dummies, the mook that appears in most of the game's promotional materials.
• The Chimera Hybrid is this for Resistance.
• Imperial Stormtroopers are among many contenders to the title of The Star Wars Mascot, but in the Dark Forces Saga, they appear and the other guys (Yoda, Darth Vader, R2D2 etc) don't. So this makes the Stormtroopers de facto mascot mooks of the series.
• The Headless Kamikazes for Serious Sam. They were even the focus of the first trailer for Serious Sam 3.
• The Panzerhund from Wolfenstein: The New Order. By the virtue of being both unique and menacing, it is featured heavily in trailers, promotional artwork, the game's booth on E3◊, and as a collector's edition bonus. And it's also now also available as papercraft!

MMORPG

• The Murlocs from World of Warcraft. They got their own song, and are sold as plushie toys. Most famous critter in the game, mostly due to the sound it makes when it attacks. Players can even get baby murlocs as pets and they are often part of the annual Blizzcon events. They're also heavily featured in their card game spinoff, Hearthstone, and are their own tribe of minions.
• Fallens and Goatmen are the better-known enemies of the Diablo franchise, appearing in all 3 games.
• The Porings, Ragnarok Online's expies of the Dragon Quest Slime.
• MapleStory has the Orange Mushroom, but a number of other cute monsters, such as Slimes and Pigs, are prominent in the game.
• Elsword has Phorus, walking critters that can talk with William (early game boss and appearing upon getting dud items) being the most famous of them. Events in the game often have costumed ones to defeat for their quests. And we have their ancestors the Ancient Phorus which are quadruped firebreathers, now available in mount form.
  • More recently, with a side of Ensemble Dark Horse, is the Icy Hedgehog◊ mob, who took the community by storm when it was released as a pet. Particularly its baby form, with its very simplistic face and design. It became such a fan-favorite that when an Elsword-themed popup café was opened in Korea, a portion of the merchandise had nothing to do with the actual main cast. Instead, it featured baby Icy Hedgehogs.
• La Tale has the Prirings and their palette swaps, the original of which is the first monster you fight. They were so popular that they were later made available as a pet. The shaggies are also popular, with some players actually trying to make real world replicas of their item drop - the shaggy doll.
• Fly FF has the aibatts, cute flying eye creatures.
• Wizard101 has Gobblers which are Extreme Omnivores and featured in many of the cartoon depictions. There is even a gobbler Piñata in game.
• Anarchy Online has the leets: small, fuzzy creatures about the size of a shoe that speak exclusively in Leet Lingo.
• The Rascal Rabbits in Seal Online are white bunnies with a bloody cleaver, a Slasher Smile, and visible buttocks. Although it is a literal Killer Rabbit, only the gladiator variant is really dangerous. There are also other potential mascot mooks like piyas and beanies but not as prominent as the Rascal Rabbits.
• Though numerous creatures in the Kingdom of Loathing are revered by various members of the community, including bugbears, ninja snowmen, and the vicious gnauga, only the sabre-toothed lime, a low-level monster found only in the Daily Dungeon and generally regarded as the "base" level of combat familiar, can truly be considered the game's mascot mook.
• The Namazu beastmen (a race of short and chubby catfish) in Final Fantasy XIV have become very popular when they were introduced in the Stormblood expansion. The Namazu became so popular that they appear in the background of the developer's blog and were also used in the image for the returners campaign (a week-long event that entices inactive players to play the game again for free up to 96 hours). The Namazu are also in plushie form and are extremely popular among fans collecting merchandise.

Maze Game

• Dig Dug has the Pooka, a red round balloon thing wearing goggles. Reportedly, a lot of merchandise was made off of this mook, plus you can unlock one as a playable multiplayer character in Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness, and one was even factored into the storyline of the first Pac-Man World as one of the rescuable friends. They even make appearances as enemies in Super Smash Bros. in the Namco-developed 4th title.
• The ghosts from Pac-Man.

Platform Game

• Super Mario has gained many of these over the years; Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Bob-Ombs, Lakitus, Chain Chomps, Piranha Plants, Boos, and Shy Guys being some notable examples.
• Metall (or Mettool, or however you spell it) from Mega Man. Sniper Joes, although they're mainly locked into the Classic series. In exchange, not a single one of those games doesn't feature some variant of them, and the first ZX game even features a Metall-themed theme park. Metalls are a popular recurring enemy in Mega Man Battle Network, but the anime turned the Pop-Up virus into a Breakout Mook Character of sorts; the heroes reprogram one of the Pop-Ups into an ally named Rush, whose special ability basically involves popping into the real world to lend help, and he gets a fair bit of focus for what is otherwise a somewhat-known, mildly annoying enemy in the original games.
• The trouble-making, gold obsessed, Koma Pigs from Tomba!
• The Pipo Monkeys from the Ape Escape games. In fact, your objective is to capture them.
• The Biankies of Viewtiful Joe, who are based on the Putties of Power Rangers and an homage to sentai mooks in general.
• The Dopefish from Commander Keen is iconic enough to be the subject of many Easter Eggs from a wide variety of other games.
• The Hoodmongers from Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. It should be noted that there is nothing cute, adorable, or "wuvable" about them; they're basically potato sacks with large hats and shotguns. They're the Heartless of fairy-like creatures that have been Mind Raped, so there's a certain element of pity. They're also comically stupid, even more so than the Space Pirates. And eventually you get the ability to repair their damaged minds and restore them to what they once were.
• Waddle Dees from the Kirby series: little clumsy red creatures that somewhat resemble Kirby, aside from their lack of a mouth. They are the weakest enemy in most of the games, more likely to serve as ammo for Kirby to spit at other enemies than a genuine threat; however, they can also be found wielding a variety of weapons, or piloting vehicles of various types. In some games "specific" Waddle Dees even appear as allies. To a lesser extent, the enemies that give Kirby Copy Abilities are in essence living power-ups and some grow to become heavily associated with their copy abilities. The Helper system in Kirby Super Star allowed Kirby to sacrifice a copy ability to summon some of these as playable characters.
• Moos from the Klonoa series are big round creatures known for their cat smile and spacey expression (they sort of resemble a cross between a cat, a rabbit). They like to mill around aimlessly, waiting for Klonoa to use them as either a springboard or a missile. Their inherent harmlessness coupled with their adorable appearance easily makes Moos one of the most recognizable creatures in the franchise.
• The Mafia goons from A Hat in Time. Mafia become face of game, maybe take over job for little hat girl. Maybe Mafia dress up as small mustache girl as well. Sell game as "A Mafia in Mafia." Everybody play! Maybe more profitable than fish...
• The Kremlings in the Donkey Kong Country series, as they're led by the reptilian antagonist King K. Rool. Since they're absent in Returns and Tropical Freeze, the role is filled in them by the Tikis and the Snowmads (specifically the Tucks) respectively.

Puzzle Game

• The DROD roaches are quite adorable, even if they are mowed down by the tens of thousands. They are also among the most notable elements in DROD, and the inexplicable cuteness of roaches is pointed out at every turn. Seeps are even cuter. This would be because they have a tendency to show up in extremely difficult puzzles.
• The bullet-spewing turrets of Portal have their own life-sized plushies.

Real Time Strategy

• Dungeon Keeper has the Imps, in a fashion. They're prominent enough on the videogame material, but the one that stands more is the Horned Reaper who adorns the cover art box of the first game, where he's an Elite Mook. And the second'' where he's become an Ascended Extra of sorts and has become the ipso facto right hand man to the Keeper. You'll not find anyone who doesn't think of the Horned Reaper when they hear "Dungeon Keeper".
• Pikmin: Red Bulborbs, one of the enemy types encountered earliest and most frequently in the games, are used in promotional material nearly as often as the Pikmin themselves, featuring on game covers, in merchandise, and in crossover cameos in other games.

Shoot 'em Up

• Kiki Kai Kai has the Puka Pukas, which are cute, sock-puppet like ghosts which wear hitaikakushi on their heads.
• Touhou Project also had a visually identical enemy to the above in the Bakebake, but around the later games, fairies began to take their place, to the point that the former vanished entierly. Without them, the games would be grueling exercises of Boss Rushes. There are two spin-offs whose main character is/are fairy/ies: the manga Eastern and Little Nature Deity featuring three mischievous fairy, and the Gaiden Game Fairy Wars, starring a well-known ice fairy fighting the aforementioned mischief makers; indeed, fairies are just as likely to be allies as they are to be foes.
  • Kedamas (balls of fluff with cartoonish expressions) are sometimes used but have caught on with fan artists almost as much as the fairies.
• Xevious has the Bacura, spinning gray Invincible Minor Minion square panels. They didn't achieve Mascot status and were actually unnamed until their cameo appearances in Namco's Tales Series, where they actually appeared in various different roles, and even with Underground Monkey variants. They eventually also appeared in Ace Combat and even the 3DS entry into the Super Smash Bros. series as enemies in Smash Run, as it was co-developed by Namco.
• Mad Sisters' Week Off!!!: Parodied with the Slimo, whose collection description mentions various pieces of Slimo-themed merchandise, such as migs, t-shirts, and coasters with all their variants.

Survival Horror

• Pyramid Head and the nurses from Silent Hill are easily the most recognized monsters from the series. The latter have managed to appear in almost every game to date.
• Resident Evil:
  • The Zombies in the very first game, Resident Evil. In particular, the very first one, with its memorable introduction.
  • The Lickers of the second game, Resident Evil 2. Those went on to become Breakout Mook Characters.
  • Dr. Salvador in Resident Evil 4, being featured in some promotional artwork.

Simulation Game

• Animal Crossing doesn't really have "mooks" per se, but the adorable, blank-faced, wiggling Gyroids are as iconic of the series as the cute little characters themselves. City Folk even introduces a Gyroid character named Lloid who runs the Auction House, for no other reason than Gyroids are adorable. Not bad for a little clay fire hydrant.
• Monster Rancher actually has six mascot monsters—although they vary in prominence, they are the six species most associated with the franchise (probably due to their prominence in the anime). "Officially," the series' mascot is eyeball-monster Suezo, but pudgy penguin-like monster Mocchi is often used more prominently in the games' art and advertising. Tiger the blue wolf is also used prominently in the advertising, and Hare is especially popular in Japan. Finally, there are rock-monster Golem and Cute Monster Girl Pixie rounding off the list of series mascots.
• Conway's Game of Life has the glider, an extremely common spaceship. Its evolution, which is simple enough to easily demonstrate to a newcomer while complex enough to illustrate the concept of emergent behavior, has made it a symbol of not just the Game of Life, but the field of cellular automata as a whole. It is also sometimes used as a "hacker emblem".

Third-Person Shooter

• Warframe has the Grineer Lancers, bulky Space Marine-esque soldiers and the first enemies fought in the game. The MOA unit line, bipedal robots best described as 'energy guns on bird legs', are this for the Corpus enemy faction instead.

Tower Defense

• The titular zombies in Plants vs. Zombies. They are even more used in marketing than the plants.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Prinnies from the Disgaea series are condemned souls forced to work off their afterlife sentence in the hopes of being reincarnated as something not a Prinny in their next life. They also happen to be adorable little patchwork penguins who are good with knives, explode when thrown and are contractually obligated to use "dood!" in every line they say. Of course, this being Disgaea we're talking about, the fact that they're Mooks puts them squarely under the player's command. They do show up as enemies, but not nearly as often as some other monster types, and when they do, it's generally in the tutorial levels or joke levels that expect the player to take full advantage of their volatile nature.
  • Prinnies are beloved enough to star in their own nigh-Platform Hell PSP game (much to the consternation of the heroine of a cancelled game who's stuck doing cameos), appropriately called Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?. You get a thousand lives at the start.
• The Mooscues from Eternal Eyes. In addition to being one of the first allies you get in the game, and one of the earliest you fight, they also feature in the game's loading screens and have a prominent role in the intro.

Western RPG

• Frogzards in AdventureQuest and Sneevils in DragonFable.
  • A dev-made, non-canon magazine suggests that they evolved from each other.
• Fyoras in Geneforge are this, Monster Allies, and the commonest of Com Mons all rolled into one. Physically, they're fire-spitting bipedal lizards—mentally, they're dogs, and in one ending of game 2 the main character is shown passing time in prison by teaching one to roll over for treats.
• The Elder Scrolls series has Mud Crabs, an aggressive, roughly tortoise-sized crab species found in many varieties throughout Tamriel. They're little more than Goombas, going down easily to even low-level characters. Still, they've become quite famous. Morrowind has a sentient one who is also, inexplicably, the wealthiest merchant in the vanilla game. Oblivion's NPCs discuss them as part of their Artificial Atmospheric Actions, spawning a slew of memes. Further, you'd be easily forgiven for thinking they're fictional, but you'd be wrong. (The Oblivion variety even looks somewhat like the real thing.)
• Dungeons of Dredmor has the Diggles, weird little drill-nosed creatures that look like a cross between a mole and a penguin. The Expansion Pack Sequel even features a skill tree that turns you into a Were-Diggle.
• The Fallout series has Radroaches from among the weaker early-game mooks, and Super Mutants and Deathclaws from among the stronger late-game mooks.
• The White Mouse from Mousehunt, which is usually featured in merchandise. It's also the easiest (and the most "normal") enemy in the game, where almost everything else is a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot Mouse.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Minecraft:
  • The game became heavily identified with the explosive Creeper monsters in the game, most likely due to their notoriety as a common enemy that is a nonetheless dreaded encounter for any player, infamous for their ability to ruin player creations. The Creeper's distinctive face got added inside the "A" in the game's title logo, and the Creeper has become one of the most recognizable images from the game through memes and merchandising.
  • To a somewhat lesser degree, the Zombie and Enderman enemies are also very iconic — the Zombie being one of the most commonly encountered and basic enemies in the game, and the Enderman one of the most distinctive and, for beginning players, most anxiety-inducing to deal with. Endermen serve as the ultimate antagonistic force in Minecraft Dungeons, and both feature commonly in real-life merchandise and were chosen to represent the game as alternative skins for Steve? in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• Subnautica: While not exactly mooks, since they don't attack you, if there is a creature symbolizing the game as a whole it's the omnipresent, adorable and delicious Peeper, a big-eyed fish found in most biomes that players adore and joke about often.

Non-Video Game Examples

Anime and Manga

• Zakus are almost as iconic as the Gundam itself, with or without the red paint, antenna and 3x boost to everything. And if you fuse them with Servbots, you get the Zakos from SD Gundam Force.
  • The Acguy, a ridiculously obscure Zeon mobile suit, is similarly adored in many places, often accompanying the Zaku. This has led to the custom variants, the Bearguy and its successor Bearguy III, appearing in both Gunpla fighting series.
  • Every Gundam series has its own Zaku Expy that possesses similarities to the original including a single eye, using kinetic weapons instead of beam weapons, and being the antagonist faction's lowest-level Mobile Suit. However, much like the Gundams themselves, having all of these traits isn't a requirement to be a Zaku-based MS^note In fact, in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny the Zaku stand-in (which is outright called a ZAKU) wields beam weapons and is fielded by ZAFT, who are the good guys...at least at the start of the show.
• Although Mazinger Z basically used a Monster of the Week formula, two of Mazinger's first opponents: Garada K7, a skull-faced Mechanical Beast with two detachable scythes on its head; and Doublas M2, a beast with two serpentine laser-shooting heads, are among the most iconic, and show up in just about every adaptation and Super Robot Wars game (even if no other Mechanical Beasts appear).
• In Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Turtle King was the first opponent the Five-Man Band faced. In all adaptations and remakes have been done since, Turtle King always shows up, and usually he is the first Mechanical Monster than The Dragon sends.
• Symphogear: The Noise are the series' regular monsters that keep coming again every season. They generally appear in hordes and are easily fodder to the heroines, but deadly to anyone else who doesn't have a Relic. They often appear in various forms of merchandise and they tend to appear as mascots in OVAs.
• The Tower of Druaga has the ropers, possibly chosen because they don't really look at all marketable.

Comic Books

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has two of them, the Foot Soldiers and Mousers. In the Mirage comics, the Foot Clan's signature grunt ninjas were semi-recurring foes for the Turtles that went on to achieve greater prominence in just about every other continuity. Similarly, the Mousers initially appeared in a single issue of the comics, and their memorable mini-killer robot design made them popular enough to be their creator Baxter Stockman's go-to Mecha-Mook for every series he did an appearance for afterwards.

Films — Animation

• Despicable Me: The Minions. They even have their own Facebook Page, (which sounds redundant after a million Facebook memes) and appear in more marketing than any of the lead characters. They even got their own movie. They've become the face of Illumination Entertainment in general, appearing in the Vanity Plate.

Films — Live-Action

• Star Wars: Stormtroopers exist only to be mowed down and demonstrate that yes, it is possible to be incapable of hitting the broad side of a barn, but where would Star Wars be without them? They even managed to put them into the prequel trilogy, in the form of the Clone Troopers. And then there's the Death Troopers, the Elite Mooks capable of scoring numerous kills while being a menacing Mascot Mook.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who has the Daleks, the most toyetic heartless, genocidal, world-destroying engines of destruction you'll ever meet.
• The Ultra Series usually has several mascot kaiju for each major entry, often overlapping with Breakout Villain. This has become less common as the series recycle monsters more frequently though, resulting in more Mascot Mooks appearing over fresh new creatures.
• The Kamen Rider franchise has the Shocker Soldiers, the grunts from the original series, who returned in Kamen Rider Decade to lead up to the big teamup movie, and then there was their use in the Kamen Rider OOO teamup net movies... their wacky 'Yee!' noises and hand movements made them good for comedy fodder, to the point that by now it's awkward to watch them in an actual Shocker-related movie. They're basically Kamen Rider's Pikachu by now, and here they are with knives. Attacking people. People we like. You don't see that every day anymore!

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons has numerous examples. When D&D 3.5 was partially open-sourced, some monsters such as the beholder and mind flayer were even set aside as "Product Identity."
• The Pathfinder RPG's crazy, singing, pyromaniac Goblins have become this since the first adventure path.
• Exalted has the Blood Apes, the go-to demon summon for breaking skulls.
• The Gamma World retroclone Mutant Future has the spidergoats.
• The basic Space Marine of Warhammer 40,000.
• The UrbanMech of BattleTech. Short, slow, not all that strong, and absurdly popular to the point of being the second or third most identifiable 'Mech in the game, just behind the Atlas and the Timber Wolf. Current MechWarrior license holder Pirahna Games noticed this and responded by dedicating an entire update to it.

Webcomics

• Bogey from Kid Radd was just one of a billion such Bogies in the game, and was likely a Captain Ersatz of Goombas and/or Metools.
• The Imps from Homestuck. Even though their appearances have been few and far between in the past year, their reactions and expressions in general were more than enough to win the hearts of the readers.

Web Animation

• RWBY: of the Creatures of Grimm, Beowolves seem to be by far the most common and instantly-recognizable; they are the first Grimm seen both in the series proper and Chibi (not Grimm Eclipse, but close) and tend to be very front-and-center in the merchandizing.
• Mystery Skulls Animated: Lewis's simple purple ghost minions the deadbeats are easily recognizable and popular as plushies.

Western Animation

• The Battle Droids in Star Wars: The Clone Wars come off almost as expies of Prinnies, down to their pessimistic outlook and general disposability.

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