The premise behind the henchman character is fascinating: rather than create a complete cast of bad guys, films, TV shows, comic books and the like use one instantly recognizable costume to create entire armies. This lets protags branch out, and instead of direct duels they can perform acrobatic feats, taking out entire platoons with one kick.

Not only that, but after putting in sufficient hours and sustaining enough casulties, memorable henchmen develop a following of their own (like Star Wars’s Stormtroopers, at right). Such is the case with many of the groups chronicled in Cracked’s listicle of 6 Useless Evil Henchmen, though they seem to miss the deeper truth, namely that the whole point of henchmen is to be useless. Check out two additional henchmen forces left out of Cracked’s listicle after the jump.

The Foot from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Though the films made a great deal of the inner-city gang analogy provided by this henchmen force, for the most part The Foot were a completely disposable and indistinguishable mass of foot soldiers (hence their name).

Agent Smith from the Matrix Sequels

This one is interesting, because the villain from the first Matrix film – due to some poorly explained viral malfunction – became a henchman in the trilogy’s latter installments.