![]() Higher-ranking Chess Pieces are allowed to wear distinctive earrings and custom masks, at which point this turns into Mask Power. In MÄR, Pawns, the lowest-ranking members of the Chess Pieces, all wear identical masks.In The Love and Creed of Sae Maki, Sae has the Kigurumi Army, a force of henchmen and bodyguards who wear large mascot costumes to conceal their identities.Soon after, the two sides start working together against their greater enemy, The Guild. The Disith soldiers in Last Exile are always seen wearing face masks.right up to the point where the heroes encounter them in a sympathetic moment ( the escape shuttle carrying a lot of civilians fails at launch).They are shown as jerks on one occasion, threatening Kirihara, and tend to get unceremoniously killed by Contractors. In Darker than Black, the minions of PANDORA dress like riot police, with face-obscuring helmets.He also uses them for We Have Reserves tactics. Later on, when Lelouch becomes The Emperor, he brainwashes an entire army into being his slaves, and has them all wear masks. In Code Geass, many of the low-rank Britannian foot soldiers wear complete face-concealing masks, with one of the main characters actually starting out as one.All the others are called Calaveras, they are creations produced by Rubodons ability. Technically speaking, they're not really arrancar: The Exequias consists solely of the captain, Rubodon. It consists of a large number of so-called Arrancar with identical masks, swords, and clothing. The Big Bad from Bleach has a force called the Exequias (meaning funeral rites).Both the expendability and incompetence of the faceless goons are subverted in Black Lagoon, where Balalaika's Russian ex-military mercenaries are easily the deadliest force on the show, and the murder of two of them leads to a city-wide manhunt.Reversed in the third volume of Appleseed, where the ESWAT team operates in suits of Powered Armor that are nearly identical (only helmet markings and such tell them apart), making them Faceless Heroes for a while.Not to be confused with Faceless Masses, Faceless Eye, or The Blank. Should one of them lose their mask, they'll become a Uniformity Exception. It's not completely unknown for the good guys' Red Shirt Army to get this treatment, but nowhere near as common. This may be why heroes never have trouble hitting the Faceless Goons, yet the Faceless Goons can't hit the hero not wearing a mask. ![]() Covering a person's face, subconsciously suppressing our recognition of them as human, makes killing them a lot easier on our willpower. Looking a man in the eye and then killing him is a very hard thing to do. This can, however, backfire pretty badly. What's interesting to note is that in Real Life the Faceless Goons do have upsides if someone is behind a mask or hood or even mirrored sunglasses they often no longer feel responsible for their own actions and obey commands (especially very cruel ones) more readily than if they were just in plain clothes. Not very bright, the criminals frequently try to fight the hero, even though the hero has super powers and/or special training. They are not given backgrounds or individual personalities beyond those of petty thugs and are typically found robbing banks, mugging defenseless citizens, and committing other crimes that the hero must stop. This can also serve as a justification for why the Big Bad has so many identical soldiers running around.Ī variant of this trope often occurs in superhero comics, with the various common criminals the hero can fight as a way to bring some action into the story. If even hurting them seems a bit extreme, you'll get Mecha-Mooks instead who are beaten till they show broken gears and sparks. Plus, it makes it more convenient for the hero should he ever need to hide amongst their ranks. It's also helpful in animation because you only need to design one character (or render one model in the case of video games or CGI) and one action figure, and the fact some fans will want to make an "army" out of multiple goon toys. There's also the fact that it's easier on the budget, as the director can keep reusing the same ten extras without the audience catching on quickly. Not showing any pesky emotions to undercut their menace also adds quite a bit to the creepiness factor. It's much easier to accept characters as evil (and by extension, feel no tug of sympathy as wave after wave of them gets wiped out by the heroes) if you are able to forget that there's actually a human being behind each mask. Most obviously, the faceless goon does not display emotion hence, he does not display humanity. The reasons for this trope are largely matters of convenience. You'll never see any faceless goon Pet the Dog, but they'll have no problem kicking them by the basketload.
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