Slave Mooks

Meet Sectoids. Weak, disposable, own nothing in their life besides pistols and Mind Control collars.

Remata'Klan: He does not have to earn my loyalty, Captain. He has had it from the moment I was conceived. I am a Jem'Hadar. He is a Vorta. It is the order of things.
Capt. Sisko: Do you really want to give up your life for the "order of things"?
Remata'Klan: It's not my life to give up, Captain — and it never was.

— Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Mooks who have been enslaved, and sometimes considered Meat Puppets. If they aren't brainwashed and are forced by fear while retaining their minds they normally rebel, if only in small numbers (due to fear). Normally played to tug at those tug-proof heartstrings and show how vile the Big Bad was for forcing on innocents such a choice. Nine times out of ten, the brainwashed version won't rebel, and any supporting characters are depressed by their sad and miserable existence. These mooks are normally controlled by the Big Bad or are part of a Hive Mind, and rarely do things willingly. Slaves enthralled by More than Mind Control are less likely to rebel, even against a perniciously Bad Boss, and may even Hannibal Lecture other characters about their suitability for slavery. If they aren't used depressingly, expect them to be comic relief. Some individuals may be quite evil on their own but are still conscripted under threats of death or worse and don't serve willingly. They can be pushovers or bosses, but they share the fact that they have about as much free will as a zombie. On rare occasions they will be a boss, but rarely The Dragon and never the Big Bad.

Subtrope of Forced into Evil, and often overlaps with Trapped in Villainy. If it's an entire species that has been enslaved for the purpose of serving as Mooks, see Slave Race.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass: Most of Emperor Lelouch's forces were enslaved via his Geass.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: The Boosted Men were kept under control by drugs, classified as equipment, and considered even more expendable than the rest of the Earth Alliance Forces. The Extended in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny are conditioned to be emotionally dependent on their commander Neo^note Who turned out to himself be a brainwashed and only thought he was a willing member of the villains' group. and will die without regular treatment that only the Earth Forces can provide.
• In One Piece, the New Fishman Pirates' force (around 100,000 Mooks) contains around 30,000 enslaved humans. After Luffy takes out 50,000 mooks through one use of Conqueror's Haki and their chains are broken by Nico Robin, they rebel against the remaining fishman mooks.
• In Pokémon Adventures, we're not exactly sure what is up with Team Galactic's Mooks, as for some reason do they not only look exactly the same, they have their own weird language and seem to move as one entity. They don't seem to be anything more than mindless dolls.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • Batman:
    • Poison Ivy often uses spores to create a mind-controlled army of mooks. During the Hush storyline, she even uses kryptonite-infused spores to turn Superman into a slave mook. In The Long Halloween, she makes Bruce Wayne a slave mook.
    • Professor Pyg has his lobotomized, zombie-like dollotrons. Resembling ugly life-sized ragdolls, the dollotrons were once people that Pyg kidnapped and subjected to terrible operations and brainwashing that transformed them into the mad professor's unique concept of a perfect specimen. It is stated the procedure is irreversible and the victims will never be able to return to normalcy again.
  • New Gods: Parademons are this to Darkseid. They dare not disobey him, and will gladly pursue death in by the hands of their enemies.
• In Superman storyline "Brainiac Rebirth", Brainiac plunders three planets and uses threats and mind-control to force their surviving inhabitants to fight for him.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Queen Atomia's slave "subjects" are all individuals she's put through her Proton or Neutron slave machines which permanently alters them into near identical robotic drones subserviant to her will with a certain set of powers for each. As she nearly does the same to Diana and the Holliday Girls presumably all of her slaves were once humans before being hit with her Shrink Ray and forced into the machine.
• The Magnificent Ms. Marvel: The Beast Legions are bred in laboratories and directed remotely by an advanced computer — once the control ship is taken down, they panic, scatter, and flee.
• Paperinik New Adventures: The Evronians provide a few examples:
  • First and most common are the Coolflames: a Horde of Alien Locusts, the Evronians don't stop at sacking all resources of a planet and destroying everything they don't have a use for, but they'll also drain all emotions from most inhabitants with a process that turns them into mindless slaves, usually used for (very) unskilled manual labor but occasionally as support for their troops and as human shields.
  • Being a rather unusual Evronian, General Trauma has an army composed entirely by more classical slave mooks, raised among the few Evronian subjects that had not been turned into Coolflames, as he was planning a coup and couldn't trust Evronian troops. It backfires on him hard, as he treated his troops extremely badly and they dump him in the middle of the coup, preferring to throw themselves to Evron's almost nonexistent mercy rather than continue work for him.
  • Occasionally the Evronians don't kill or turn into Coolflames the criminals among their subjects or even themselves, but put them in a prison planetoid that the inmates nicknamed "the Well", because, as they say, "there's no chance to escape but you could be drawn out". The inmates that are drawn out are this trope, sent to deal with some mission that Evron for some reason can't complete with their usual means. Trauma first appeared this way, as Paperinik was proving an annoyance and could become a symbol of resistance against their invasion and, having experience with this kind of things, the Evronians decided a Hero Killer was the right kind of response and selected Trauma to kill him one-on-one.
• Spirou & Fantasio: The Mad Scientist Zorglub has an army of brainwashed "Zorgmen" to do his bidding.

Fan Works

• A Cloudy Path: The Teeth conscript the people living in their territory into acting as part of the army against Aeon's shelter, mostly as Human Shields.
• Equestria Divided:
  • House Moon and Star uses enslaved non-unicorns as expendable soldiers, which are often forced into battle with poor weapons and minimal training to act as meat shields and cannon fodder.
  • The Everfree Wraiths are supposed to be completely loyal to Fluttershy, but some like Screwloose and Big Mac were botched.
• Fractured Infinity: While some are genuine loyalists, most of Dark Bo’s mooks are the entire population of Earth, brainwashed by the belts they’ve been made to wear.
• A Growing Affection has Shozokus, ninjas who swear (some willingly, others not so much) a number of oaths that will kill them if the oaths are violated. Among them, keep the fact that you are a Shozoku secret, obey the Big Bad's orders, obey his Dragons' orders unless they contradict his orders, and don't use ninjutsu on civilians unless specifically ordered.
• The Return: Alexia's minions, since they're her Mind Raped and brainwashed daughter Succubae.
• Vigil: As in canon, the various aliens serving the Ethereals are manufactured slaves. Included among them are quarians, who were turned into the Codices, humans, who were turned into the Corrupted, and the Cabal, who according to the author were turned into Mutons.

Films — Animation

• In Rankin-Bass's The Return of the King, the orcs aren't serving Sauron because they're Always Chaotic Evil, they're doing so because they're being forced to by the Dark Lord's slave drivers. The orcs fight because they're being made to, not because they want to. This suggests that only the higher-ranking orc officers are truly malicious and evil, whereas the rank and file are brutalized slaves. In a way, this does help expand on J.R.R. Tolkien's moral dilema to inherently evil races.
  A crack on the back says we're gonna fight,
  We're gonna fight all day and night and more,
  For we are the slaves of the Dark Lord's war!

Films — Live-Action

• 300: Xerxes' army is mostly comprised of slaves.
• Avengers: Infinity War: The six-limbed Outriders serve as Cannon Fodder for Thanos' army when they attack Wakanda. They're genetically designed to feel nothing beyond rage and a desire to obey, explaining why they willingly hurl themselves by the hundreds into an energy shield that burns them alive. They're also strong and fast enough to overwhelm the Hulkbuster in sufficient numbers.
• Star Wars:
  • The Republic's clone army in the prequels. The clones designed to be completely loyal, more intelligent meat-droids who obey orders without question. Nonetheless, they're still quite human, forming family bonds and enjoying their lot in life while serving with their Jedi generals. When Order 66 comes out, virtually all of them obeyed-due a biochip implanted into them while they were still fetuses that took away their free will long enough to kill the Jedi. The troopers who disobeyed the order had for whatever reason the chip removed beforehand.
  • In a parallel, the droid army of the Separatist Alliance is arguably this as well as droids in Star Wars appear to be sentient but must follow their programming.
  • The stormtroopers of the First Order are kidnapped from their families and brainwashed from a very young age to fight and die for the Supreme Leader. They're regularly reconditioned to ensure they don't develop free will.
• Underworld (2003): The original werewolf was a nearly unstoppable monster, whose victims transformed permanently like himself. The medieval-era vampires captured a bunch of them, forced them to breed, and produced a sort of "pure blood" werewolf, the very first Lycan, capable of changing back and forth from human-form to monster-form and retaining his intelligence and sanity when doing so. They used him to infect more humans, who they utilized as this trope until they rebelled and began the centuries-long war between their races.

Literature

• Animorphs: Yeerks are sapient parasites that take over a host's body, and their forces are consequently made up numerous species of aliens enslaved by the creatures wrapped around their brains.
• Caliphate: The Janissaries are young non-Muslim boys taken from their families and brought up in Islam to serve as the Caliphate's armed forces, much like the Real Life version that served the Ottoman Empire.
• Chronicles of the Emerged World: The fammin. Their names are words in the language of magic, allowing the Tyrant's agents to magically control them and to force them to execute any order given them. The fammin are so used to having no choice in anything they do that they have no concept of personal choice or even of liking or disliking doing something — they are ordered to do something and they do it; this is simply how things are. In the climax of the first trilogy, when the Tyrant's magical hold is broken, they are so used to having an external will constantly directing them that its absence leaves them utterly lost — they cannot even defend themselves without someone ordering them to, and are cut down by the hundreds when the enemy army falls upon them.
• Codex Alera has the Immortals, slaves wearing “Discipline Collars” that give pleasure when obeying orders and pain when disobeying. They've worn those collars their entire lives, making them utterly loyal to their master and more animal than man.
• The Damned Trilogy: The "allied species" (don't kid yourself) of the telepathic Amplitur have been so heavily brainwashed that they happily throw themselves into battle in order to promote the Amplitur's "purpose", and will never refuse an order... sorry, never refuse a "polite request" (again, don't kid yourself) from an Amplitur. Ever. It never occurs to them to even consider refusing any such orders... sorry again, "polite requests".
• In The Dinosaur Lords, Raguel brainwashes people, turning them into technically-living zombies, getting himself an army that's pretty much unable to resist him unless the brainwashing is fresh enough to be broken through.
• The Draka: Draka janissaries are slave troops used in attrition situations, such as anti-partisan work or trench assaults. They tend to join and fight freely for perks like the right to pillage, and for the limited social mobility it offers individual janissaries within the brutal Drakan hierarchy.
• Inheritance Cycle: Most of Galbatorix's soldiers and vassals don't serve him willingly, Murtagh included. He'll either coerce them into swearing loyalty to him in the Ancient Language, or make them by learning their true name. We're also told villagers are regularly conscripted, with any who resist being killed.
• The Lord of the Rings: Most of Sauron's mooks are enslaved, coerced or otherwise forced into his service — "he had few servants, but many slaves". In fact, Mordor's formidable natural and man-made barriers are there at least as much to keep Sauron's minions in as they are to keep his enemies out. Even the Nazgûl themselves only serve because their Rings of Power turned them into little more than extensions of the Dark Lord's will.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • Memories of Ice: The Tenescowri are a particularly horrifying example. The cannon fodder of the Pannion Domin, they aren't permitted any supplies from their superiors, restricting them solely to what they can loot from the enemy. As such, they're lightly armed but driven to the point of madness by near starvation and will charge headlong at the enemy against all odds in the hope of slaking their hunger by any means necessary. Though not very effective by most standards, they have the weight of numbers on their side and their presence on a battlefield is horrifying enough to do a real number on the enemy's morale (and their own morale is virtually unbreakable on account of how they have to literally engage the enemy constantly or die a slow, horrible death). It's telling about how hellish the Pannion Seer's rule is that people actually volunteer for the Tenescowri to escape what the Domin does to its civilian subjects.
  • The K'Chain Che'Malle, the Verse's resident, supposedly extinct Lizard Folk, once tried to resurrect a previously truly extinct sister race known as the K'Chain Nah'ruk, or Short-Tails, in order to make of them a Slave Race that would serve them. Unforunately for the Che'Malle, the Nah'ruk turned out to be too independently-minded for that and rose in rebellion, setting in motion the downward spiral towards the extinction of both races. By the time of the main series, however, upon encountering the Nah'ruk in Dust of Dreams Gesler notes that they have been bred down so thoroughly in the millennia since that they've become the walking dead and lost their ability at independent thought. The Nah'ruk now are truly little more than slave mooks doing the bidding of the Forkrul Assail.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The Republic Commando Series takes a much less flattering perspective on the clone army than Star Wars: The Clone Wars later did: it's explicitly pointed out multiple times that breeding millions of intelligent beings for no purpose other than war is a form of slavery, no matter how well any given Jedi regards their clones or vice versa (the protagonist clones at one point ridicule Commander Cody for liking Obi-wan Kenobi). Clones who are judged "defective" or who desert the army are hunted down and executed (the "Null ARCs" are a group of "defective" clones whom Mandalorian trainer Kal Skirata stopped the Kaminoans from euthanizing as children), and Order 66 partly attributes the clones' willingness to fire on the Jedi to revenge for their enslavement.
  • Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor: Lord Shadowspawn's Pawns are human Force-sensitives who have been effectively lobotomized and implanted with telepathic receptors that allow him to control and speak through them remotely. Then it turns out that Shadowspawn (or rather, Shadow's Pawn), is a Pawn himself. The real mastermind is the frail but powerful Cronal.
  • New Jedi Order brings us the Chazrach, reptilian slave soldiers of the Yuuzhan Vong. They're an almost tragic case in that they started out as conquered subjects of the Vong, and over the centuries, underwent progressive genetic "shaping" that eventually rendered them little more than mindless automatons, with no greater instinct beyond fighting for their masters. As Jedi Master Lar Le'ung puts it, "They have no free will, so do not try to reason with them". It later turns out that Supreme Overlord Shimmra, the supposed Big Bad of the story, is in fact something similar to his Force-sensitive evil Jester Onimi, though this is through Mind Control rather than genetic manipulation. That said, it is implied that the real Shimmra was actually every bit as evil and bloodthirsty as he appeared to be, so his Karmic Death is well deserved.
• In The Stormlight Archive, the bridgemen are essentially slave soldiers whose task is (on paper) to carry siege bridges over the rough terrain of the Shattered Plains. They are technically not slaves and considered soldiers, but are drawn from the ranks of criminals, actual slaves, the extremely poor, and soldiers who have committed serious offenses. In reality, the bridgemen are Cannon Fodder whose main job is to serve as a distraction for enemy archers, who shoot at the unarmored men instead of more valuable armored and trained soldiers. Its an incredibly dangerous job, so much so that the bridgemen are left completely hopeless about surviving and many commit suicide.
• Unseen Academicals: The events of the long-ago war against the Evil Empire has led the people of Ankh-Morpork and surrounds to view orcs as Always Chaotic Evil, but they forget about the men with whips behind them.
• Warhammer: In the third book of The Sundering, after a particularly grueling battle against the Witch King's forces, Alith Anar informs King Caledor that the army he defeated wasn't made up of Druchii, but of Asur conscripts from one of the kingdoms the Druchii have already conquered, stating that those soldiers would rather die fighting against Caledor than face Malekith's wrath visited upon them and their families.
• In The Witchlands, most Cleaved are completely devoid of free will and are under Esme's total control.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Winkies and the Winged Monkeys only follow the Witch because she uses her magic to control them.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5:
  • The Centauri may raise regiments of soldiers among their slaves (only those of Centauri race, as they understand perfectly the dangers of raising slave regiments among their subject races), but only if things are so bad that not even drafting their civilian population isn't enough.
  • Subverted with the Vendura Kado: a genetically engineered Centauri sub-race with increased intellect that is kept into slavery and often serve in the military, they're considered a cultural treasure and treated almost as well as any free Centauri who holds their same job, position and skill.
• Blake's 7:
  • Mutoids are a cybernetically-modified Amazon Brigade. Their memories have been wiped so they have no purpose outside service to the Federation.
  • Deconstructed in "Traitor". The Terran Federation has conquered a Proud Warrior Race thanks to a drug that blocks the production of adrenaline. They sent some of these brainwashed soldiers to attack a unit of the last remaining resistance. However as they lack any form of anxiety or aggression, they placidly walk into an ambush and are massacred.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Both the Brainwashed and the normal variety show up. Some are mooks of weekly villains, like the giant worm demon thing in "Bad Eggs" which mind-controls people, and some are the season's Big Bad. Spike becomes one of the brainwashed types in Season 7 due to the First. Some of the mooks are only so because of the Big Bad being a very Bad Boss.
• Doctor Who: After the Daleks invade Earth, the Robo-Men are created by them as police and enforcers. They wear cybernetic helmets which cannot be removed without killing them.
• Falling Skies: Near the end of Season 1 , it's revealed that the apparent Big Bads, the Skitters, are actually a race of Slave Mooks controlled by the Overlords.
• Game of Thrones: The Unsullied were a slave army, eunuchs trained from birth to be soldiers willing to give their lives without a second thought. They are freed by Daenerys.
• Kamen Rider: The Shocker combatants are implied to be this, due to Shocker's tendency to kidnap, alter, and brainwash people into serving them.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: the Orcs are the former enslaved Elves of Beleriand, and they continued to be enslaved by Morgoth for many centuries. Sometime after the defeat of Morgoth, Sauron was killed by Adar because he couldn't stand anymore seeing his beloved children being enslaved and experimented on by Sauron on his quest to "heal" Middle-earth.
• Space: Above and Beyond: In the Back Story, the InVitros were artificially grown in tanks so the US government could have disposable soldiers available in just a few months with all the skills of a special forces operative. However as they felt no connection to a family or country, they lacked the incentive to risk their lives on the field of battle and so many deserted or just refused to fight.
• Stargate SG-1: The armies of the Goa'uld are made up exclusively of slave mooks of one sort or another. By far the most common variety is the Jaffa, though a Goa'uld near defeat will sometimes use humans instead.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • The Jem'Hadar. Interestingly, it's shown that the Jem'Hadar fully worship the founders, and rebelling against them is rare. However, they tend to distrust their Vorta overseers and rebelling against them is not as rare. Most Jem'Hadar remain loyal to the Vorta however, because it is the order of things.
  • The Borg also fit this to some extent, in the brainwashed/Hive Mind sense. They really step into it by the time of Star Trek: Voyager, and in "Unimatrix Zero" there's a "Borg Resistance", as it were, that initially operates in an unconscious shared dream world.

Music

• Invoked Trope in the French national anthem:
  What do they want this horde of slaves
  Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
  ...
  Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
  Bear or hold back your blows!
  Spare these sorry victims,
  Arming against us with regrets.
  • Unfortunately, it's not in the first verse, so nobody remembers it anymore.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Mind flayers, as naturally born psionics, practice slave labor on humanoid races and love modifying their slaves with various implants to make them more obedient, better at combat or to use them as beacons to channel their psionic powers, and they don't hesitate to send them on the front line when needed.
  • Mystara: The Iron Ring, a network of slavers, reduces some of its victims to a state of berserk insanity, then uses them as expendable human guard-dogs.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: Grand Warlord Voss has a army full of them. His evil plan is to go to other planets, conquer them using his slave mook army, then add that planet's citizens to said slave mook army, then go to an other planet and do the whole process again. Each mook's card has, as its Flavor Text, a brief description of what they used to be before Voss's scientists mucked about with them. Except for the mooks based on the same species as hero Tempest — that flavor text is Tempest, in a rage, vowing to avenge what Voss has done.
• Warhammer:
  • The Skaven use slaves of their own species as expendable troops. So expendable that they have a special rule allowing the player to shoot at them in melee in the hope that the shots will kill their enemies. Skavenslaves elicit little of the sympathy often associated with this trope, however, as the Skaven are so prone to screwing each other over that the slaves would willingly enslave their masters at the drop of a hat, and are just as scheming and nasty as any other Skaven.
  • The Chaos Dwarfs can field multiple units from the Orcs and Goblins list as slaves. The biggest and surliest of the Orcs, Black Orcs, were created when the Chaos Dwarfs tried to develop a more durable and intelligent Orc slave; it did not work out well for them.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Chaos Armies tend to field vast amounts of cultists in the expectation that they'll die and thus attract the attention of the gods on their leaders. Also soak up enemy munitions and set off traps, but that's a secondary objective at best.
  • The Imperial Guard's Commander Chenkov has only one strategy: "throw more men at it". Minefield? March regiment across it until every mine is cleared. Fortress? Send regiment to scale the walls. His special ability brings in a fresh squad of conscripts every turn. And unlike every armchair general, he does this from the frontline, executing cowards and enemies alike.
  • The Jopall Indentured Squadrons are indebted to their world's government from the moment they're born (as is everyone born on Jopall). Military service is one of the fastest (not to mention riskiest) ways to earn their freedom. Ironically, Jopallian regiments have extremely high survival and performance rates by Imperial Guard standards. Everyone else are regular conscripts, professionals, fanatical volunteers or some form of Ax-Crazy or Blood Knight. Jopallians want to survive and get paid by kills made, so they like to go slow and methodical.

Video Games

• Age of War: The Desert Orcs are the only faction that doesn't have catapults. Instead, they use slaves brainwashed into carrying an explosive barrel to the enemy fortress.
• Assault on Dark Athena: Ghost Drones are human prisoners who are captured by Athena Company, cut open, and have cybernetic implants shoved into their organs and brain, the goal being to create an army of mindless combat drones to sell off to the highest bidder. They're not particularly tough (their guns are a bit weaker than a basic assault rifle, and it only takes a couple assault rifle bullets to drop them), but since their weapon is attached to their arm you can't steal it from them after you kill them.) In the last level, they Turned Against Their Masters thanks to some hacking of the ship's computer by Riddick's kid sidekick.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum: The Titan Monsters may be this, but Poison Ivy's minions are this for sure, as they are mind controlled.
• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified had the Sectoid aliens, which were enslaved by the Outsider race to act as pure cannon fodder, with mind control collars used to ensure their obedience. They are always only armed with pistols and are the only unit with less health than your soldiers.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: In Yuri's Revenge, Yuri's Resource Gathering is handled by the slave miner, a mobile ore refinery which travels to ore fields and has slaves come out and shovel ore into it. When the refinery is destroyed, the miners will defect to your side, but seeing as how they're emaciated, shirtless, and armed only with shovels, they're roughly on par with the Technician unit from the early Command & Conquer games (unless they somehow reach Elite...). Also, any enemy unit that Yuri's faction mind controls will revert back to the original owner once the mind controller is destroyed, with the exception of the Psychic Dominator and the units it nabs.
• Destiny: The Cabal Psions are a species conquered by the Cabal and enslaved to use their psychic powers in combat and work the Cabal's machinery. Lore in the second game reveals that some Psions actually support the enslavement of their race because it gives them a purpose and they can gain prestige by excelling in their positions that they couldn't if they were free. This becomes important in the expansion The Witch Queen: when Empress Caiatl took charge of the Cabal and declared all Psions freed, some Psions who’d earned high rank in the old order saw this as a blow to their prestige and deserted.
• Doom has its zombies, slaves to Hell. Exactly how intelligent they are varies from game to game- Doom and its first two sequels (Doom II and Doom 64) feature slow-moving, inaccurately-firing zombies that seem to be nothing more than animated and armed corpses, but Doom³ features zombies capable of tactical maneuvers and radio communication. Doom (2016) splits it between mindless scientist zombies and soldiers that are capable of advanced movement skills, charging their plasma guns, and which are explicitly stated to retain some cognizance. All of them seem to be quite willing to slaughter humans and eat their flesh, though.
• Drakengard: Quite a few enemy soldiers are kidnapped, press-ganged unfortunates. This includes the children.
• Dungeon Crawl: Roaming boss Pikel is a kobold slaver that is always accompanied by a group of human slaves. Killing Pikel causes the slaves to immediately become friendly to the player.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Several races have used the goblins in this fashion. The Tsaesci, an Akaviri race of supposed "snake vampires", are known to keep goblins as a slave race. The goblins are used for labor, food, and as Cannon Fodder in battle. The Altmer have also been known to train and keep goblins as labor and for use in battle at different points in history.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Falmer have been shown to practice slavery. These "Falmer Servants" wear rags and are much weaker than most other hostile sentient characters, as well as compared to the Falmer that they accompany.
• Empire at War has these as an option for the Zann Consortium faction, once they've corrupted cetain planets.
• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance: The Snowmarker enemies, clusters of aliens resembling white ghosts, usually seen flying around Moon Bases. They were a weak race that was conquered by Mensouma and forced to fight for Dark Force's cause. They seek to escape from Dark Force's army.
• Fallout: New Vegas: Caesar's Legion is an entire slave army/nation, owned entirely by the autocrat, Caesar. All legionaries are either born into the Legion or were enslaved and forced into the Legion when it assimilated tribes found throughout the Mojave Wasteland. However, legionaries are for the most part Brainwashed and Crazy and want to fight for the glory of Caesar. Below them are the actual slaves — mostly women — which are generally not found in combat, instead being worked to death in Legion camps or working for its complacent traders.
• Final Fantasy XIII: The l'Cie are only motivated to fulfill their Focus (orders from the boss) by the threat of becoming a Cie'th, a zombie-like monster. On other hand, their reward is to be turned into a crystal statue.
• Fire Emblem: The plays a part in most games. At least one unit per game is working for the bad guys against his will, but talking to him with a certain character will convince him to join your side. A more general example is in Path of Radiance. The Big Bad Ashnard and his Mad Scientist Izuka use Super Serum to warp and control Laguz. Though these Feral Laguz are supposedly mindless, they never attack Daein soldiers. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance also features a Slave Boss, in the form of Bertram. The Brainwashed and Crazy Beorc is somehow one of the Four Riders despite having practically zero inteligence (though he does make up for it in strength).
• Half-Life:
  • Half-Life 2: Every Combine enemy except the Advisors (probably) — including some of the vehicles. The humanoid ones are explicitly the brainwashed type, while the vehicles may be brainwashed, a hive mind, or no longer possessing the biological ability to think.
  • Headcrab zombies are controlled by the parasites latched onto their heads. The most disturbing moments are when you can hear muffled screams for help and prayers to God from the human.
  • Vortigaunts, known as "alien slaves" in the first game. Winning the first game frees them, allowing them to join the good guys in the second. The Fan Remake Black Mesa displays this well in Xen, showing a Vortigaunt slave camp and having the Vortigaunts either help Gordon or just not do a single thing to stop him from wrecking the Nihilanth's factory, only becoming hostile when literally mind-controlled by an Alien Controller.
• Halo:
  • Of the Covenant, the Grunts are the most obviously enslaved species. They're at the very bottom of the Covenant Hierarchy, even below the hired mercenaries. They're used for all the menial tasks and militarily are are used en masse due to their apparent large population and high reproductive rate. Killing a Grunt isn't even a crime among the Covenant races. By the end of the Halo 2, a full-scale civil war has ensued between the Elites and Brutes of the Covenant, with Grunts caught on both sides. That said, Halo 5: Guardians implies that Grunts have achieved a slightly higher status in post-Covenant factions, likely because they have more recourse to defect if they're too unhappy; it's even hinted in the background lore that some have broken away and formed their own independent factions. Heck, there are audio logs and books that show that some Grunts managed to rise and become squad leaders to entire Elite units.
  • Engineers are Actual Pacifist biological supercomputers. So what does the Covenant do? Wire them up with bombs and force them to help the war effort. In Halo 3: ODST, you get an achievement for either not killing any Engineers of your own free will as the Rookie, or by killing all of them (a freed engineer, Vergil is actually the MacGuffin of the game). In Halo: Reach, their servitude is not explored, and you just shoot them. That said, there's some Happiness in Slavery involved, since Engineers will happily fix, maintain, and even improve the technology of virtually anyone who comes across them; it just so happens that the Covenant found a lot of them first.
• Knights of the Old Republic has, on one level, insane Selkath who serve this function. They're brainwashed by a massive firaxan shark.
• Marathon had the Pfhor, heading a slaver empire whose thralls include Restraining Bolted S'pht cyborgs, captured AIs, the Drinniol... and you.
• In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, one of the standard enemy encounters is a Chain Chomp infected by a Sworm with Fawful's face. The Mario Bros. can only fight this enemy normally, but, if the Sworm is sticking out of the Chomp's head, Bowser can remove it by inhaling, thus releasing the Chomp from its control and allowing it to run away.
• Mass Effect has the Husks, slave mooks created using Reaper technology. They impale the corpses of their humans on 'dragon's teeth', which gradually turn them into mecha-zombies. The second game adds more variants, and the third introduces husks made from other species.
  • In fact, anyone at all that has had extended contact with the Reapers will eventually become indoctrinated by them; this process was the first step in creating the Collectors from Mass Effect 2, who started out as indoctrinated Protheans before being reduced to mindless, sexless, nigh-identical slave mooks by millenia of experimentation.
  • A non-Reaper-related example would be the colonists at Feros under the Thorian's mind control.
  • In Mass Effect 3, Cerberus's mooks are primarily kidnapped human refugees stuffed full with cybernetics. Not surprisingly, they're also all indoctrinated by the Reapers.
  • While the "heretic" geth serve the Reapers willingly, the "true" geth have to be forcibly controlled by Reaper code.
• Metroid Prime: The Space Pirate militia is made up of criminals and captured slaves; disobedient militia is what the Space Pirates' rations are made of.
• Might and Magic:
  • Heroes of Might and Magic: The Dungeons of III and V have this: in III, it's the naturally blind Troglodytes, who are implied to hardly ever be allowed to lead, though a large proportion of their Heroes are in fact Troglodytes, including Shakti, one of the best heroes in the game on short maps. In V, the Minotaurs are downgraded to a more clear example of this (in III they were Elite Mooks).
  • Might and Magic VI, which takes place on the same world as Heroes I to III, reveals that at least some minotaurs were created to be slave mooks by a Dungeon-associated figure,^note he doesn't turn up in Heroes III, but was a hero for the Warlock town, the predecessor to the Dungeon, in I and II and one of III's warlock heroes is described as his student in their bio the warlock Agar. They were a complete failure for the purpose — certainly powerful enough to complete his goals, but also much too stong-willed and stubborn to be controlled, and by the time the game starts they are all in business for themselves.
• Minion Masters has the Slitherbound, the slave army of the Slither Lords.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Dr. Eggman's Badniks are Mecha-Mooks powered by tiny animals trapped inside them.
• The SpongeBob Movie Game has the enemies seen in the hillbilly, junkyard, and Planktopolis levels. Faithful to the movie, they are fish who are mind-controlled by Plankton via the bucket helmets on their heads.
• Star Control:
  • Star Control II reveals that any race the Ur-Quan defeat have to choose between permanently being trapped on their home planet as fallow slaves, or becoming this trope as war slaves.
  • Star Control: Origins has Drenkend, who have been genetically modified to be incapable of not obeying Scryve orders. They still feel bad about the amount of killing they have do, as well as how many of them die, but they can't refuse orders. Including an order to proud of their position as official cannon fodder for the empire. Which they obey, even if they don't like it.
• StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void: All of the troops working for Amon are under some level of mind control. The vast majority are zerg, most of whom are at an animal level of intelligence anyway. It's shown in a vision of the Bad Future that he would kill off all his troops once he was done with them, bar the Hybrid, which he created to be incapable of disobeying him.
• String Tyrant: All of the enemies are brainwashed to be totally subservient to Pygmalie. At least they seem happy about it
• Stronghold Crusader games has torch carrying slaves that are hired at the Mercenary Outpost. They are the weakest and cheapest unit of the whole game, and mainly used for setting buildings on fire.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: In The Subspace Emissary, the R.O.B. enemies fought in several levels are revealed to have once been a peaceful civilization, but to have been enslaved by Ganondorf on Tabuu's account and forced to serve as soldiers in their bid to conquer the world.
• System Shock 2: Most of the hybrids. Some of them even have enough of a mind left to shout things like "I'm sorry!" and "Kill me!" at you.
• In Tyranny, this is the starting point for anyone who is 'offered redemption' in the Scarlet Chorus; they're given a weapon (if they're lucky) and pointed at the enemy as the first wave of attack. Those who survive their first battle get the chance to loot something better off a fallen enemy (or ally) and join the second wave for their next battle.
• Unreal:
  • The Krall are slaves of the Skaarj in the original Unreal. The Skaarj use them as enforcers for the Nali, another species enslaved by the former. Come Unreal Tournament III, the Krall are enslaved by the Necris.
  • The Izarians in Unreal II: The Awakening are the new slaves of the Skaarj, used for similar purposes as the Krall. Their weapons (the Shock Lance) have a limiter placed on them.
• Witch Hunter Izana: Most of your enemies are afflicted by Verand's curse, which means they will follow her commands no matter what. Can of course happen to the player if they are transformed in battle.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Slave Pens and Steamvaults have enslaved Broken commanded by Naga slavemasters. Killing the slavemasters frees the slaves, causing them to stop attacking the players, thank them, and run away.
  • All of the mad Witch Doctor Zalazane's henchmen are actually Darkspear trolls that have been enslaved by his magic. According to the site most of the Darkspear's population is under Zalazane's sway. It is not yet revealed whether it is possible to reverse this.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown: All but one of the alien species you fight are slave mooks. Some are genetically modified to the point where they too stupid to function without their masters' oversight. Their masters' MO is to invade planets in the hopes of accelerating that species' technological and genetic development. Those who fail to become psychic super-soldiers in response are overrun, and forcibly devolved into mooks for the next invasion/experiment. Whether humanity passes this test is up to the player.

Webcomics

• Commander Kitty: The Tagged are abducted spacers that were spliced together and fitted with a Mind-Control Device. Zenith can apparently control them with just a snap of her fingers.
• Drowtales: After the Time Skip, the Sharen clan tries to maintain their rule by enslaving as much of the population as they can get away with, focusing on those unable to pay tribute. Most of the slaves are sent elsewhere to a Penal Colony, but the stronger ones are conscripted to fight the rebel clans.

Web Original

• Tales From My D&D Campaign: The Kua-Toa rely heavily on various slave races to serve as foot soldiers in their Enemy Civil War. Not as much used in battles with the land nations, due to the fact that the Kua are one of only two truly amphibious races in this setting (and the other one was all but wiped out). All other aquatic races die if they go more than a few hours out of water, unless someone uses magic to keep them alive. The heroes do once or twice encounter Kua slave forces, and generally spare them when they can.

Western Animation

• Ben 10: Alien Force: The DNAliens are transformed humans used by the Highbreed as standard Mooks, and treated them with disdain.
• Huntik: Secrets & Seekers: Near the end of Season 1, it's revealed that most of the Organization's agents were brainwashed into joining by the Professor, who used the power of the Legendary Titan Araknos to take control of their minds.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 1", in one of the alternate timelines King Sombra has enslaved the ponies from the Crystal Empire and turned them into soldiers in a bid to conquer all of Equestria. It's strongly implied that the helmets they wear are keeping them mind-controlled.
• In Winx Club, Valtor's minions are made up of brainwashed mermaids and witches.

Real Life

• Anyone subjected to conscription may or may not feel themselves to be Slave Mooks, especially if pressed into service on pain of prison.
• The most famous examples in Islam are the Caliphate's ghilman (who murdered four Caliphs in a row), Egypt's Mamelukes (Kypchaks who took over the government), and the Turkish Janissaries (they began as slaves first, drawn from Christian children demanded as tithes; also Tykebombs, then). They weren't mooks, though, their employers certainly wouldn't have put with their disloyalty if they weren't good at what they did. Over time the corps opened to free men given its elite status and was eventually entirely made up of them by the end.
  • Later Ottoman Sultans had gotten fed up by their disloyalty and the fact that they were becoming technologically obsolete. The disbandment of Janissaries took five Sultans because they would revolt and kill the Sultans opposing them.
  • The Mamelukes were really more of a warrior caste than this trope, though. Them taking over Mameluke Egypt was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to it also. Baybars, the most significant of the Mameluke sultans, is regarded as a hero throughout the Muslim world not only for his piety and good governance, but also essentially for saving the Muslim world at the time from the Mongols, who had pretty much steamrolled Baghdad, which was the heart of the Islamic world before its fall transferred that role to Cairo.
• Child Soldiers.
• In Dorian Greece, the Athenians used public Scythian slaves as police officers. This was done because the fact that they belonged to the city and not to any individual made them free of the complicated political and family affiliations that would have made free citizens ineffective in the web of complex allegiances that made up Athens' domestic politics.
• Crash Course: World History describes this as a "strategy that has been attempted over and over and has worked exactly zero times. ...Unless you're the Mongols."
  • To expand upon this, the Mongol Empire was amazingly successful at integrating conquered peoples into their army structure, supplementing the core of Mongol horse with everything from Chinese and Korean engineers and infantry blocks to Turkic, Persian, and Eastern European horse and infantry. The manner in which they did this was usually by conquering a foreign government and then letting their new vassals raise their own regiments, which were then integrated into the Mongol army structure as auxiliary troops. This left the 'slave mooks' with very little insight into central Mongol government and command, and very little ability to rebel as long as their governments were under Mongol control, but on the flip side meant that when their own governments rebelled, the troops usually went with them.
• Galley slaves, used mainly by the Ottomans. In the Battle of Lepanto, they were at a big disadvantage when put up against the free Venetian oarsmen.
• Sailors pressed into service by press gangs.
• The Spanish Conquistadores had the Indian auxiliaries. Some were captured natives employed as guides, translators, porters as well as reconnaissance units and shock troops to bolster their ranks. However, the vast majority of them were willingly working with the Spanish and still sworn to their own states, like the Tlaxcala. They played an integral role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire as well as the military operations in South America.
• In a vague sense, domesticated animals, especially pack animals, but their IQs usually ain't high enough to even care, and they benefit from human partnership.
• Ancient Sparta had a vast underclass of slaves known as "helots", who worked the farmland owned by the small population of actual Spartans. During wartime, the helots were forced to accompany their masters into battle as a light infantry force. According to Herodotus, at the battle of Plataea, the helot soldiers outnumbered the Spartans 7 to 1.

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