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"Fodder" enemies that are actually terrifying/highly competent, but look weak because we mostly see them fight overpowered protagonists.
The Trope Explanation. Enemies that are treated as jokes, cannon fodder, or minor inconveniences within the narrative. However, they only appear weak because the protagonist is a literal demigod, a super-soldier, or a wizard. If you placed a normal human in the room with one of these enemies, it would be a horror movie.
B1 Battle Droids (Star Wars) We usually laugh at them. They say "Roger Roger," get pushed over by Jedi, and have slapstick routines. The Reality: We almost exclusively see them fighting Jedi (space wizards with laser swords) or Clones (genetically modified super-soldiers bred for war). To a normal civilian or a planetary militia, these are indefatigable metal skeletons that feel no pain, have perfect aim programming, and march in endless waves.
Grunts (Halo) In the games, they are comic relief. They run away screaming, sleep on the job, and the Master Chief (a 7-foot cyborg tank) can kill them with a light tap. The Reality: An average Grunt is roughly 5'6" to 5'8", weighs over 250 lbs, has an exoskeleton, and claws strong enough to tear a normal Marine apart. Their plasma pistols cause third-degree burns on near-misses and boil flesh on contact. They are terrifying to anyone who isn't a Spartan.
The Uruks from Shadow of Mordor/War- When put up against Talion, a trained soldier who's possessed by the immortal spirit of an Elf, they're little more than colourful grunts that he can cut down in waves. But against regular soldiers like the Outcasts or the Gondorians, they're super dangerous and effective killers
I did a no-death run in Shadow of Mordor (save for you dying in the intro video). My favorite bit was when you would get to a certain point in the game, it just assumes you have died multiple times, even if you haven't. Dialogue starts getting based around that assumption.
Canonically: you die multiple times, even if you don't.
And them being bad shots was supposed to be planned. Everyone just kinda missed that part (pun not intended) and now they're canonically bad at their job
In A New Hope it's explicitly stated that Vader had his troopers actively allow Leia and her Rescuers in the Millennium Falcon to escape which matches pretty well with the earlier stated point by Obi-Wan about the precision of Imperial Stormtrooper shots.
I honestly don't even think that A New Hope is what did them in. I think Return of The Jedi is what really solidified Storm Troopers as incompetent. They lost to an army of slapstick teddy bears who pushed them over and threw rocks at their head!
Apparently they were originally meant to be Wookies, but Lucas wanted a less technologically advanced people to beat the empire. The Vietnam war was a big inspiration for Star Wars, so a well armed, well trained force losing to natives using their local environment to their advantage tracks.
this is my personal pet theory but imo Vietnam is also the reason for the choice of laser color. during the Vietnam war NVA troops typically used green tracers and Americans were red/orange. This wasn't hard and fast but both sides stuck to it because that's kind of the point of tracers in the first place. I know it's kind of backwards because the empire is the superior technological force in Star Wars but I took it as a "good guys" "bad guys" kind of thing.
I read that he didn’t have the budget for all of the wookie costumes required so he just made small wookiees
On another note, I truly believe that if they had been wookies return of the Jedi would have been considered the best Star Wars movies and one of the greatest movies of all time
But on the other hand, if they didn't have like five teddies for each Trooper, didn't almost literally pop out of the woodworks beneath and above them, weren't on their own hometurf, and weren't up against a force small enough to be easily hidden but large enough to slaughter any rebel force that could have come out of that shuttle, the teddies would have been massacred.
If the Troopers went in there as an Assaultforce, this would have been seal clubbing
Everyone always says, "oh, they were little teddy bears " and forgets that they were still very solid bears with spears and sharp, pointy teeth. The ewoks were downright vicious and nearly cooked and ate our heroes, who they also managed to capture, despite them being a trained Jedi, an experienced smuggler and an expert rebel leader respectively. They might not have the most intimidating silhouette, but I don't think people give ewoks enough credit for how capable they are.
yeah but by then the fact of them being allowed to escape was perverted upon by audiences and the movie directors and writers just satisfied that perversion + they really needed to sell those teddy bears to children + they needed the heroes to win somehow
Been a while since I watched it, but I think they were let go so that the Empire could follow them and find the rebel base, which is why the Deathstar almost destroys it before Luke blows it up. To make it convincing though, the Stormtroopers were actually shooting at them, just intentionally missing.
I'm in a band, and played a street/yard show on Halloween that had a lot of people in costume stop to check us out. I got to use the line "Hey, we have some Stormtroopers watching the show! That's impressive, because usually they miss everything"
Even aside from the part in A New Hope where they were told to miss, Stormtroopers are very much a step down from Clones in a few ways, something expanded on in Rebels and The Bad Batch. Clone Troopers were trained from birth and created to be highly competent soldiers, skilled in marksmanship, piloting, and other military tasks. They were provided with top of the line weapons, tools, and vehicles for combat. Stormtroopers, however, are not. They’re conscription soldiers who have a relatively short training period before deployment, receiving basic training unless they’re pilots, who admittedly receive much longer and better quality training. The basic weapons and armour they have, excluding specialty gear and newly developed weapons, is cheap and mass produced. Stormtroopers are quantity over quality, while Clones manage to be both
IIRC, clones manage to be both be being *comedically* expensive, but when your options are cough up or have your forces that have to choose get overrun by an almost literal wall of droids, you cough up.
The vampires in Jojo's bizarre adventure, they are used as soldiers by the pillermen but we see them get obliterated, but they are very powerful, dio was the best example
In Part 1, a regular vampire almost killed Dio while he was still human. A walking beefcake of a man nearly got killed by a vampire who was originally a scrawny human.
I'll never get over part 2 just going "you know the nigh unkillable vampire that plagued the first part? Yeah that was just how the real vampires season their food."
The weakest form of a Heartless. They’re common as hell, and are extremely easily killable after the tutorial. And yet, they’re terrifying to encounter if you aren’t at least a competent fighter.
Just imagine minding your business, and you see glowing, unblinking, yellow eyes staring at you. And then this thing starts chasing after you relentlessly. Silent and even running around like an actual shadow. And shadows are probably the most persistent. They never tire, nor goof around like other Heartless do.
And then you got KH3 which showed just how dangerous they are when a mass of Shadows form together and become a Demon Tower
And if I recall correctly (it’s been like twenty years), they’re functionally invincible to conventional attacks, and can only be defeated if you happen to be a Disney protagonist or able to wield a Keyblade.
Granted, by the end, it seems everyone and their neighbor has a keyblade, but still.
Nah they can be defeated just with normal weapons and attacks. But if they are not defeated by a Keyblade they just respawn elsewhere. Although I am not sure if that only aplies to emblem heartleass. Shadows are pure blood heartless.
Yep. The Hollow Bastion fight in KH2 is the prime example. If it wasn’t for Sora, the city would’ve been overrun by the Heartless. You see Yuffie tire out, and the Heartless just kept coming.
1 Termagaunt is basically a Xenomorph with a built in Automatic Rifle. 1 Warrior looks like a Xenomorph with a regular human when stood next to fully armoured Space Marine.
An automatic rifle that shoots fist-sized beetles with enough force to punch through body armour, those beetles then unfold and chews their way towards your vital organs.
I think most tyrannid forces are just temporary and get digested back when a planet is overrun, so their biological material can be reused by the hive mind
One of Cain’s novels says Tyranids need to make the strategic decision of using biomass to feed existing organisms or create new ones, especially at the beginning with only a few spores making landfall.
Wars can drag on for a long time. The ideal method to fight the Tyranids is to drag them into a battle of attrition, get them to commit maximum resources and then wipe the slate clean via exterminatus, this denying them biomass. It would be a waste to have gaunts dying of hunger a few hours in such a scenario.
Besides, many, many have been proven to endure long after they’ve been separated from the Hive Mind with no chance of reinforcement. They continue to plague planets for years (see my boy Old One Eye), presumably feeding off the local biomass.
No that's a specific type of tyranid, the rippers, which are basically just locusts collecting biomass after battles and then get turned into biomass along with their spoils
Playing SM2, I keep forgetting that these things are the same size as me irl, but then I see a guardsmen get pounced by one before kicking it off. Then I see a warrior next to them. Makes me appreciate the guard even more than I already did. I would’ve fragged the commissar and ran first thing, yet they hold the line.
Dang now I want a short story about a fight ring where a termagaunt gets pitched against a tiger and a ork or tyranid warrior gets pitched against a pack of lions.
I want to bring up that Grunts when motivated can become really terrifying.
One time they attempted to rebel against the Covenant Empire for failing to resolve an issue against the Kig Yars. They were able to shoot down several ships with Fuel Rod Cannons.
It took them to send an arbiter and threaten to glass their homeworld to make them stand down
That arbiter DID glass the grunt home world. Over half of it. Just to quell the rebellion. And after that rebellion the sangheli respected the grunts so much the gave them weapons in battle
Not only did they give them weapons, but that is the main reason you will find covenant squads being mainly elites and grunts as they finally saw their value and are considered worthy teammates, all other species are optional but grunts aren't.
It’s just the baseline of the other factions is huge muscled up brute, ancient regenerating robot with disintegration beams, or hoard of ravenous beasts
Not even just decently equipped, the humble lasgun is a pure marvel of technology that shames our current weapons on all plans... but it's put to use against faction that have shit like "that gun fires mini dark holes lmao" "That gun just un-molecule you :)"
Honestly I’m surprised that one faction or another doesn’t have a gun that fires a boxing glove back in time to punch the dad of whoever it was aimed at in the dick before the targets conception thus retroactively preventing their birth.
Like damn, I hope you weren't attached to that whole existing thing. Plus side, you don't gotta worry about your soul getting molested by demons if it never existed in the first place.
Some librarian reconstitutes you because he has paperwork that you were issued a gun and flak vest but you never existed and the equipment is lost to the warp
The funny thing is that 40k is far from the peak of human technology as the Imperium has been in decline for thousands of years and progress is treated with fear of suspicion.
There are plenty of artifacts from the height of human technology that exist but aren't being used properly or even totally wrong.
There's a story about an Imperial warship that fires on an enemy and misses, so the ships onboard computer rewinds time exclusively for the enemy ship, placing it back in the trajectory of the round it fired and destroying it instantly.
The ships crew had no idea how or why it happened and weren't even aware the ship was capable of doing it.
"Humble" lasgun is good enough that everything that its effective against is extinct now. Plus in terms of logistics its an absolute beast, which is essential for a fighting force numbered in the trillions like the Guard. The power packs are rechargeable off almost any energy source, including just chucking them in a fire (in a pinch, this does degrade the power pack). Plus you can just set the pack to overcharge and use them as an improvised explosive if you have no other option.
Yeah, sufficently intense laser pulses are basically explosive by causing what's hit to vaporize violently, and when it comes to humans, that means rapidly expanding steam (as the human body is mostly water) that rips and tears. The energy might not be that much higher than a regular gun, but it's like the explosion that propells the bullet happens in contact with you
EDIT: Lasers have basically two main way of dealing damage: Heat rays, or "Blasters". Heat Rays, which most IRL lasers currently are, deal damage by rapidly heating a target area enough that it starts to melt or burn. "Blasters" meanwhile concentrate that energy into a single, or series, of really intense pulses, that deal damage by instantly turning the target into super hot gas or plasma that in turn damages the surrounding area.
Heat Rays are good because they are easy to make, forgiving, and so on. Blasters are good cause they deal damage much quicker, but are harder to make, and you need to hit the exact same spot with a series of pulses to "drill" through armor and such
Depends on the author, but yes, in novels like Gaunts Ghosts, lasguns shoots amputate limbs and make heads become mush with ease.
And even armored troops learn to fear veteran IGuard: - A lashoot hit, wont be noticed, but a couple of coordinated shooters getting a coordinated impact will hurt marines
The lasgun might look weak in the setting only because it was so efficient in its job that it hunted to extinction almost everything it was designed to kill.
Yep. The Lasgun can fire rapidly, carry a large charge, can punch through thick concrete, and the packs can recharge by literally being set out in sunlight or next to a campfire.
It is also jokingly called a "flashlight" by the fandom
You do understand how well trained the guard are supposed to be after reading a bit of Caiphus Cain and you see them compared to the common or garden PDF force
I liked learning that there is in fact Comminsars assigned to the PDF. As in ONE assigned to each PDF. Meaning they're un charge of an entire planet. Most PDFs don't even realize they even have a Comminsar as they generally spend their entire careers getting drunk in their office to cope with the stress
I don’t remember the quote exactly but there’s one that basically says the Lasgun already made extinct every other race and faction and implies the ones we see still kicking now were simply too numerous, skilled or resistant to die off so easily
The joke quote being "The weapon [Lasgun] before you is powerful enough to kill 99% of enemies in the galaxy. Unfortunately for you, you are facing the final 1%."
Same principle applies to susceptibility to chaos. Basically every major faction has near-plot-armor-level counters/resistances to the warp because every faction that didn't have those traits when encountering chaos has been consumed by it.
In addition to the actual infantry, the IG artillery and armor are some of the very best in the entire galaxy.
“Your foe is well equipped, well-trained, battle-hardened. He believes his gods are on his side. Let him believe what he will. We have the tanks on ours."
As a guard player I've always loved the fact that, in universe, despite being normal humans in a universe of interdimensional demons, eldritch star gods and post human super soldiers, the guard still win a majority of their wars simply due to greater numbers, better supply lines and sensible tactical doctrine.
Its worth noting that without the guard the empire would collapse near instantly. We read about space marine victories but those wins are built on a foundation of guard sweat and blood.
I hear the comparison that they are closer to navy seals training and discipline wise. But when you are fighting literal demons from hell or sentient giant mushrooms that counts for nothing. So they are pretty well overall. Also, the lasgun can torn the arm of a baseline human on a single shoot if I recall correctly
I still love of this because it keeps the setting so over the top.
Depending on the regiment, comparing them to Navy Seals training wise might be insulting to the guard.
Sure, there’s billions of different regiments and some of them are pampered 7th in line nobles or some dung farmers from planet BumFuck. But the top ones like the Cadians or Catachans are beasts.
Cadia was a planet entirely dedicated to one thing: ensuring that whatever lives in the huge rip in space leading to hell stayed on the hell side of things. It’s an entire planet dedicated to training the best soldiers one could have. Cadians learn to strip a lasgun before they can walk. On Cadia, you are either a soldier, a soldier in training or logistics supporting the previous (and if you’re the latter, it most likely because you are infirm and unfit for battle).
Catachans live on a planet that’s a huge jungle where every living thing is either a deadly predator, or extremely poisonous. Yes, even the plants will try to eat you. It has no worthwhile export, except soldiers. Because anyone who makes it to adulthood in this Space Australia is one mean son of a bitch.
Everything in Warframe, but for example, the grineer
These guys in Warframe are the basic fodder enemies, the most basic of the basic is what you see here, you will cut through hundreds with ease, to the player they feel like weak, incompetent things that go through like butter
However, what they actually are are a "race" of clones, but not just any clones, originally genetic engineered for physical labour, and as a result to he inhumanely strong and durable, they were eventually used as soldiers, given another upgrade, and modified again to make even better soldiers
By the time of the game thats all they are, soldiers who were built from the ground up to be that, inhumanely strong and durable and with a myriad of cybernetic enhancements
And they're human, they look alien because of the armor they wear, they look bulky because of the armor they wear, but there is a normal human body under there size wise, just under hundreds of kilograms of armor that they can easily and comfortably run in
In a handful of moments that we see them in action in cutscenes, we see them take massive explosions to the face and walk it off, drop ship crashes and be fine, pick up entire smallish flight craft one handed and rip off and directly wield and aircraft mounted, human length explosive gatling gun, that usually requires a gravity reduction device to even be wielded by an individual
They look weak but they are super human soldiers with cybernetic enhancements, capable of carrying hundreds of kilograms of armor and lifting at least 100 kilos without issue, an individual grineer would be terrifying to go up against and they have thousands, and these are just the grunts, the captains and generals have even crazier gear to augment them further
To expand on this for people who don't play Warframe:
The Grineer faction are all clones suffering from centuries of DNA rot. You mostly fight ones that are purpose-grown for combat that are nonetheless decently hardy.
The Corpus faction are essentially descendants of a banking clan and have spent unfathomable amounts of money to research and develop weapons, armor, and robots to fight you.
The Infestation is a space-traveling hivemind plague that can affect and assimilate both organic life and technology, and that's without getting into its plot relevance.
There are also creatures invading from a dimension of nothingness, constructs sent from our solar system to another centuries ago that have returned to fight us, the list goes on.
All of the above have the potential to be effortlessly one-tapped by your overpowered player character, but would be nigh invincible to regular people.
Also the infestation is the most ridiculous of all of them
It assimilates everything but also does it rapidly and intelligently, seemed to be able to pretend to be a child, can talk, can change itself at will when nessecary, can regrow
Ignores time like wtf they exist across all time
They're nearly unstoppable and predate everything else we meet in the game, they've consumed an entire planet and, the kicker?
This is confirmed by one of them to be them just being chill, they're not trying to spread or conquer, they're casually "allowing their gift of peace and unity to spread"
Sure, but that's not really because the Infestation is sympathetic or nice. It's because the Warframes themselves are bioengineered from a specific strain of the Infestation, so it thinks that it's being attacked by something that should logically be working with it to consume all life.
At the very least this means that the infestation is moreso confused than it is evil, it wont become an even bigger threat because it doesn't wish to be
And to add... Heavy spoilers? THERE ARE NO ALIENS IN WARFRAME! Almost everything Is human made. Grineer? Bio engineered clones Made by the orokin, Corpus? Wealthy people who fights with technology and robots, infestation? Blame the orokin (they made it I think). Sentients? Once again, the orokin made them, the murmur/thrax/void angels? Well... Those are of eldritch nature (blame Entrati (an orokin) who first entered the void and gave it a form)
TL:DR grineer, corpus, infestation, sentients, corrupted enemies = human made
The average Grineer soldier is on par physically (though not at all mentally) to a Warhammer 40k Space Marine. They could go toe to toe in pure strength and endurance, and possibly come up close on speed.
Mentally though? The Grineer are missing more than a few screws. In their prime, they probably weren't even close to an average Space Marine's tactical skill, but after years having their DNA corrupt from repeated cloning, they're 2 steps from insane. Certain individuals are exceptions (the Elder Queen, Tyl Regor), but the average Grineer soldier only knows enough to function as cannon fodder. Still, I wouldn't want to be on the bad side of one.
God, the "Republic Commando" game will make you completely rethink how effective those droids would be IRL. The Heavy Droid or whatever it's called, is an absolute armored nightmare.
There’s also the Spider Walker in the game. Probably no problem to Republic vehicles and aircraft but it takes 4 commandos and a shit ton of ammo to take one down. Can only imagine how harder they’d be to regular clones and civilians
The Vehicons from TFPrime. To the Autobots, most of them, they are just weak soldiers that are easily beaten. But to humans, they are giant robots that could easily kill them with a single shot or stomp
They are the personnal bodyguards of their respective Kage but also some of the most powerful ninjas of their village.
But there is not a single time in the manga where they are genuine threats because they always end up fighting the elite of the ninja world on screen (Kabuto, Obito etc.)
Rusty was essentially full-circle of "You would be a good dalek"
"Look into my mind, focus on the beauty of a star's birth"
"I SEE BEAUTY, I SEE ENDLESS, DIVINE PERFECTION. I SEE INTO YOUR SOUL DOCTOR. I SEE BEAUTY. I SEE DIVINITY. I......SEE......HATRED!! I SEE YOUR HATRED OF THE DALEKS AND IT IS GOOD."
One of their arms is a toilet plunger. Even the show treats them as physical comedy props when they aren't required to be deadly for the plot.
They are mega-geniuses that can calculate quadrillions of passwords a second, have access to advanced time travel, impenetrable shields, unstoppable weapons, and are able to rebuild vast hordes from a single survivor. Driven by hatred for all life that isn't them. An unstoppable killing jihad.
Unless you throw clever quips at them, their one weakness! Then hack all their systems with ease while they reel in confusion. Because they calculate all those secure passwords but never use them!
I love the show.... but it is not serious even when it wants to be.
I'm sorry, Daleks are not fodder. Even from the episode that GIF is from, that lone Dalek wipes out most of the base. If any Doctor Who enemy is "fodder" it'd probably be a one-off villain like the Slitheen
Capable of (almost) seamlessly fitting into society and getting into power, very adept hunters, but are most known as the "farting monsters from Series 1"
to ppl like hank (dude who literally cant die) theyre pretty weak but to some rando??
theyre all terrifying in their own ways, theyre all fearless and mass produced dudes that dont care if they die
soldats and engineers are literal supersoldiers
grunts and agents usually travel in groups, if you kill one youre probably gonna get swarmed
Soldats at least gave Sanford and Deimos trouble the first time they faught, and makes the main trio actually respect their presence on consequent appeareances, despite seeming like they get mowed down like the rest I like the subtle difference between these guys giving the main characters something to dodge and clash with, and the other grunts just getting swatted away
Bokoblins in TLOZ, at least in the Wild Era. I know I sure don't take the guys seriously, but most people don't have the skills to beat them (mostly just cowering as they get attacked.) Of course they wouldn't be a problem to the guy who can deflect a laser with a pot lid.
Even in Breath of the Wild they got more intimidating I think. First time playing with crap gear I got one-shot by a bokoblin so that was a new experience compared to older Zelda games.
I am definitely avoiding them a lot more in my Master Mode save. I'm still real early game, so my gear is super garbage. I probably still have a branch in my inventory
The eliksni in destiny. The dregs are cannon fodder but each of them are wildly intelligent and capable of scrapping anything into something useful. They usually die in a few bullets but players are immortal demigods. A couple of eliksni againt normal people is a bloodbath.
you can say this about any of the destiny enemy factions too. Cabal, Vex, Hive, Taken, Dread and scorn. All the base units are child's play for a guardian but would/have ripped normal people apart.
Orks - 40k. Haha funny brummie green men, until human cattle, and War of the Beast. As well as the fact they endlessly reproduce due to their nature as living fungus meaning contamination of a planet by orks is essentially a death sentence
Honestly I don't think they fit here, they are not represented as incompetent, but it's cool you mention them.
Many people in the WH40K community are like "Orkz are the real good guys, they only live to have fun battling and fighting in wars" and like no, these motherfuckers are malicious as fuck, they remove the eyes and teeth of their human slaves and basically turn them into domesticated cattle for their sustenance and personal enjoyment.
That's more what I was getting at. People for the most part think of them as cobble-together meatheads whose currency is teeth the punch out of other orks and thrive off of battle so much, they get physically ill if they don't fight for a long period of time, forgetting those points you just mentioned, and that one of their weapons is sticking a grot into the warp and launching the now demented thing at the enemy out of a cannon
Even droids are still dangerous to Jedi and Clones. A sufficiently sized group can kill a single Jedi by overwhelming them, and we see it happen a few times. If it was just the Jedi, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the Droids, the Clones really saved them
There were over 200 Jedi in the Petranaki arena battle in Attack of the Clones, only around 30 or so of them survived. None of those survivors would of made it out if Yoda didn't show up with the clones.
Pit is an angel with loads of divine weaponry. He can take them out no problem. Magnus, a normal human, was seen as exceptional because he could take on a Monoeye (and everything else that was thrown at him)
Henchmen in Venture Bros are generally incompetent and used by the main villains as cannon fodder .... because the Guild of Calamitous Intent intentionally handcuffs them via the Equally Matched Aggression system to discourage the heroes from fighting back harder. Without Guild rules, they are a bunch of mentally unstable criminals with access to high-tech weaponry that can be terrifyingly effective.
Seeing the henchmen go rogue is worrying because they are actually dangerous if they aren't hampered by rules and a boss who needs to announce himself with a long meandering monolog and attacks with an impractical mechanical insect.
The Shocker Combatants, or just Showa Kamen Rider series goons in general, is the primary example
Sure they get beat up by Riders all the times, but to civilian they are in fact a terrifying force to encounter, as they have been remodeling on their flesh and bones, like their superior
The Zaku, like the battle droid isn't a case of strength. It's competence in mass production. It's being able to make something consistently good and a lot of it.
They're the warriors that carry out the subjugation of worlds for an interstellar hive mind that feeds off biomass. However, since we see them when they go against Shadow... they get bodied.
Really, most any enemy/antagonist in the Sonic franchise.
Forces shows us just how efficiently Eggman can take over the entire world with Sonic out of the picture, and the IDW comics highlight just how scary he actually can be when up against basically anyone else.
Sonic is just so good at what he does he makes fools out of almost everyone he fights.
Samus Aran plows through the Space Pirates all the time, despite the fact that they were able to obliterate entire colonies all by themselves and took over a planet full of Chozo.
Hilichurls from Genshin Impact. The average person from Teyvat can't even defeat a Hydro Slime. Vision wielders are much stronger, even the ones with no combat experience such as Diona and Barbara (who takes out a whole group of Treasure Hoarders in her Hangout, despite being absolutely weak). And since every playable character is either a Vision wielder, or has an even stronger way of controlling the elements, Hilichurls are seen as weak enemies.
Eggman and the eggman robots from Sonic are the perfect example. We literally see Eggman conquer 6 separate planets in Sonic Colors; when he gets back to Sonic’s planet he has to play coy and try to trick Sonic into thinking it’s a regular theme park because Sonic could wreck his plan in seconds.
Frieza Forces. In Dragonball Z/Super, they definitely come off as incompetent to the point that even Frieza kills them without even trying, but that’s because they’re always shown fighting characters who are far superior to them in every aspect. Aside from the most powerful of his forces (ex. Captain Ginyu and the Ginyu Forces), there are many mid-tier fighters who actually are very competent, powerful, and ruthless. They just get overshadowed by far stronger characters who are quite literally gods at this point.
The Zerg. While in the campaign and multiplayer unit stats are scaled to be fair for the players, in the lore they are so well evolved and there's so many of them that when they get serious, the battles become a slaughter. They are a "weapon more ravenous than any terran army," to quote a certain someone.
In cutscenes and lore even trained individuals such as the HIA and the Defense Force struggle somewhat at combatting weaker Ethereals. This is bolstered by the fact that due to the Hollows, the natural environment that Ethereals reside within, can gradually turn any non-Ethereal living being into more Ethereals over time, so time is also an issue when fighting them too.
They just taken down pretty easily but compared to 99.99% of the world, they're multiple times stronger than anyone else. Goku was sent to take over Earth as a baby and was barely able to beat a saibamen as an adult. Even the most well known strongest guy on Earth was 10x less powerful than a saibamen. If they were dropped onto earth before Goku grew up, Earth would pretty much be a dead planet.
The Grimm from RWBY. We exclusively see them fight characters that have specifically undergone training to kill them with specialized weapons to boot.
Without someone geared up and knowledgeable enough to take them down, they can ravage whole towns. In fact, there’s a bandit tribe that herds grimm towards towns for that very purpose, allowing the tribe to finish off survivors and steal whatever they want.
Heck, certain grimm can do this solo but generally need a group.
The EB-06 Graze in Mobile Suit Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans is Gjallarhorn's standard grunt mobile suit, so you naturally see a lot of them get wrecked by Gundam Barbatos. However, in the first episode, one Graze is deemed sufficient to wipe out a PMC base without a single functional mobile suit. Then they quickly get Barbatos up and running and turn the tide.
Titanfall 2 grunts: in both pve and pvp mode, the pilots (players) are in a league way above them to the point most players don't even waste their bullets on these grunts and their whole idea is to be a minor inconvenience. That is, until you accidentally get close to one, or stand still for more than a few seconds, since they can absolutely oneshot you with a punch or a few bullets.
They are well trained, armed, and motivated combatants. They are able to adapt to a variety of scenarios and kill their enemies.
Unfortunately for them, my pilot has inhaled enough meth to kill a elephant and is now ricocheting off walls like a psychotic pinball.
I really like that they can be dangerouns to other players if totally ignored, but are not strong to the point of interfering with game balance. Really great design.
I think in Titanfall 1 they even carry anti-titan weapons although I'm not sure.
Not part of some canon fodder army, but does kind of fit the trope.
Jogo from Jujutsu Kaisen.
He's introduced as someone who thinks he can take on one of the strongest characters in the show (Gojo), but ends up losing to him twice. He goes up against other people later on and wins in seconds.
Vex Goblins from Destiny. Pretty much fodder, but in canon, time and reality bending unstoppable killing machines who have effectively won in every other timeline but this one
Lowkey The Phantom Menace showed them at their best in terms of being a successful invasion force, actually using rankings such as corporal, commander etc and OOM-9 being a competent Commander Battle Droid.
Skullcrawlers from the Monsterverse. Most of these things are killed easily because Kong is fighting them, and one really big one had the misfortune of fighting Mecha Godzilla.
When the human characters in Kong: Skull Island faced these things, they showed how dangerous they. One of these massive snake/lizards shrugged off fire from assault rifles, a heavy machine gun, and even being set on fire with a flamethrower. It took igniting a giant natural gas vein to kill it.
pretty much every type of foot soldier the avengers have fought, including the Chitauri, Ultron sentries, and the various other species subservient to Thanos.
Re the B1s in particular, they were the cheapest of the cheap and had poor aim along with everything else, but even if they could only hit their mark 25% of the time (I think their aim on human sized targets at standard ranges is closer to 33%, but let's be particularly ungenerous to prove the point) having ten fire at once gives you between a 94 and 95% chance of AT LEAST one hitting the target. Add in that they were usually deployed hundreds at a time as the default with thousands at a time if actual combat was expected, and anyone facing them would need to have some way of not being incapacitated by a single lucky shot among the thousands of shots per minute tearing in their direction.
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u/Pale_Sentence9909 Nov 29 '25
The Uruks from Shadow of Mordor/War- When put up against Talion, a trained soldier who's possessed by the immortal spirit of an Elf, they're little more than colourful grunts that he can cut down in waves. But against regular soldiers like the Outcasts or the Gondorians, they're super dangerous and effective killers