Talk:Henchman

message: Had a go at 'tidying it up'  Kevinb 20:09, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Good job!  I'd say the cleanup tag isn't needed anymore. --pie4all88 23:40, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

message: True or false: the gender-neutral equivalent of this masculine term is known by some registered Wikipedian. 66.245.116.184 20:14, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  True or false?? 

message: I added the tag because, as I explain in the edit summary, the relationships numbered 1 and 3 appear to be the same to me, but they cast different people as henchmen.  I'm not sure how #1 describes a henchman if this is not what's happening.  Is the "senior ally" described in #1 the henchman to someone who is not particularly villainous?  If so, I don't think they're really a henchman in that sense.  In #3, is Scaramanga really a henchman simply because he is available for hire?  I don't know all the answers, but it seems to me that rewrites need to occur. I'm not sure that the tag I chose is the correct one, and the article still clearly needs a decent bit of work, but this section in particular strikes me as confusing and unclear. Croctotheface 08:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  The Henchman as supervillains section seems, to me, to be Original Research.  It also tells us little about henchman, and seems to confuse henchman with "anyone who works for a villain."   The very idea of a henchman as a supervillain contradicts the articles first statement that henchmen are "expendable adherents of the main villain, always ready to do the master's bidding, to kill or be killed, kidnap, or threaten, as needed"  I vote the entire "Henchman as Supervillain" section be deleted.  Sir Isaac Lime 08:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added contradict tag 

message: There are thirty-six entries in this table. That strikes me as vastly too many, and more suitable to a List of henchmen type article if anything. Personally I'd be inclined to remove the table altogether and just write a paragraph giving a couple of the most famous examples (eg Oddjob). As it is, it seems to have become an "insert your favourite henchmen here!!!" section. 86.136.252.214 (talk) 14:41, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too many "Modern Examples"? 

message: Moff Tarkin is not Vader's henchman.  When Vader is force choking the guy with the lack of faith, Tarkin calls him off and Vader listens.  No villain takes orders from his henchman.  Then, Moff Tarkin sends Vader to interrogate Leia to find out where the rebel base is, which he fails at so Tarkin himself has to step in.  He gets the information and he makes the decision to blow up Alderaan.  In the original Star Wars, Vader is the henchman, not the other way around.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.180.0.147 (talk) 21:38, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moff Tarkin 

message: Vito Corleone is not a villain, he and Michael are the Heroes of The Godfather, therefore if any character should be listed from The Godfather, it should be Sonny.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.252.191.167 (talk) 21:00, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vito Corleone 

message: Shouldn't there be a redirect or something for "Evil henchman"? I suspect that most people are most familiar with henchmen that are evil. "Heros" have "sidekicks" instead, for some reason...I suspect an subconscious anti-aristocracy/wealth-holder message there..."henchmen" used to belong to powerful, wealthy people, and no good hero can come off as an oppressor of the poor. Now that I think of it, why DOESN'T the article address this phenomena? It clearly states that "henchmen" belong to the villain, as opposed to the hero's "sidekick", but there doesn't appear to be anything in the article suggesting how this came to be. 
   "The word became obsolete for grooms in English from the middle of the 17th century, but was retained in Scots as "personal attendant of a Highland chief". It was revived in English by way of the novelist Sir Walter Scott, who took the word and its derivation, according to the New English Dictionary, from Edward Burt's Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, together with its erroneous derivation from haunch. The word is, in this sense, synonymous with gillie, the faithful personal follower of a Highland chieftain, the man who stands at his master's haunch, ready for any emergency.
The modern sense of "obedient or unscrupulous follower" is first recorded 1839, probably based on a misunderstanding of the word as used by Scott, and is often used to describe an out-and-out adherent or partisan, ready to do anything."
It doesn't seem clear to me how Scott equating a henchman with a "gillie" turned it into a negative phrase. Gillies sound like very useful people. It seems to be saying that Scott somehow incorrectly derived the word, and something about the way he used the phrase in one of his works caused other people to misinterpret it as a "person who is ready to do anything"? By those words alone, I don't see why that is inherently negative...isn't a "Sidekick" an "out and out partisan"? "Ready to do anything" isn't always a bad thing either. Anyway, a little more detail would be nice, since it's hard to get more than a very fuzzy idea of how a "henchman" went from being a noble assistant to royalty to being an unscrupulous lackey for evil villians, exclusively.
But I digress. Original point is that most people consider ALL "henchmen" to be "bad guys", and "henchman" to basically be an abbreviation of "evil henchmen". But when you search for "evil henchman", all you get is a number of articles that CONTAIN the phrase (although "Henchman" appears down at the very bottom of the page when you search for "evil henchman" instead of "evil henchmen"). Sure, some people might have the wherewithal to consider searching for just "henchman", but should they HAVE to? I think that a redirect would be appropriate. But I have no idea how to create one myself. Just thought I'd put that out there. Wikipedia ought to be accessible for everyone; perhaps people lacking in intellect need its services (such as they may be) MORE than the intelligent person..45Colt 09:04, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Evil henchman" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This article is very obviously missing something. It doesn't mention anything about companions of villains in fictional universe, such as Bowser's Koopa Kid and Joker's henchmen. Henchman is the villain version of sidekick and there talks about that and has plenty of examples. PlanetStar 06:22, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing henchmen in fiction