Basic Trope: The Hero manages to convince a Mook, or even a whole bunch of them, to defect to the forces of good.
- Straight: The hero, Victor, is imprisoned by the forces of Emperor Evulz. However, he manages to convince the guards that Evulz is going to get rid of them as soon as they cease to be useful, and that they'll be better off fighting for the forces of good.
- Exaggerated: Victor manages to convince every mook he encounters to leave Evulz' employ, causing a mass defection.
- Downplayed: Victor doesn't manage to make guards join his side, but he plants the seeds of dissent, which result in the guards hesitating to follow an order at the critical moment.
- Justified:
- The guards are just normal people working for the bad guy, and they didn't know about the full scope of his evil agenda or the atrocities he committed. When they find out, they promptly decide to fight against him.
- Evulz treats his minions like crap, so of course they defect and join a hero who treats them like human beings.
- Inverted:
- Emperor Evulz manages to convince some members of the Redshirt Army to join his Legions of Terror, enticing them with better pay and the coolness of evil. In other words, a Face-Mook Turn.
- When Emperor Evulz is defeated, one of the lowly Mooks rises to power through various means, becoming a Boss in Mook Clothing. In other words, a Mook-Heel turn.
- Subverted:
- Victor tries to get the prison guards to defect, but they just laugh at him and beat him up for trying.
- Adam, the mook who joins Victor, is actually a Fake Defector who's still fanatically loyal to Evulz.
- Double Subverted:
- However, another guard sees that and realizes he isn't comfortable with the cruelty of his allies, which eventually makes him help Victor.
- But Adam eventually starts to sympathize with Victor for real, and winds up Becoming the Mask.
- Parodied: Victor simply cuts the guards a check.
- Zig Zagged: Victor manages to convince the two initial guards to help, but when they run across a few more, those guards don't buy Victor's speech. However, they have their own ideas regarding what'd be good for them, and Victor gets into a negotiation with the mooks... untill Doctor Evilstein's attack drones show up and open fire on the group, forcing the greedy mooks to team up with Victor to take them down.
- Averted: Victor knows the guards won't listen to him, and so just waits for his friends to rescue him.
- Enforced: The moral of the story is that Rousseau Was Right, and anyone can do good - even if they're serving an evil cause.
- Lampshaded: "Psst... look, Victor is talking to the guard. I don't think he'll need our help."
- Invoked: Victor takes lessons in the art of persuasion to be able to convince the enemy minions to help him.
- Exploited: Every so often Emperor Evulz hires an impostor to pretend to be a captured hero. The impostor makes lots of impassioned speeches to the Mooks, and anyone who seems to be listening too attentively is removed from duty.
- Defied: Evulz' minions are mind-controlled, robots, or otherwise incapable of defection.
- Discussed: "What do you think should we try if we got captured? Appeal to compassion? Bribery?" "Depends on what kind of minions are guarding us."
- Conversed: "I don't think this movie is very smart. With the kind of manpower that Emperor Evulz employs, at least some of his minions would have compunctions against doing evil for the sake of evil, and yet we never see any of them express that."
- Played For Laughs: Victor bribes the guards with a huge wedge of cheese.
- Played For Drama: Victor's friends are all dead or captured, Emperor Evulz is about to begin his world conquest, and no-one is there to stop him. So Victor does the only thing he can think of, even though it's unlikely to work - trying to convince Evulz' minions to help him out.
Back to Mook–Face Turn
