You can't shoot a kid, huh, fucker?Hob when RoboCop can’t bring himself to shoot him
Hob Mills[1] was a very intelligent and powerful member of the Nuke Cult. Despite only being at the young age of 13, Hob was a ruthless and violent hoodlum, adept at both hand-to-hand fighting skills, sabotaging methods, and all firearms, from pistols to heavy weapons. As well as his formidable combat expertise, Hob was also an excellent businessman, able to manage and control a sizeable group of people many times his age, and an intelligent thinker.
Biography
Nothing is known of Hob's life prior to being involved with the Nuke Cult. He was a close follower of the cult's leader, Cain, as he often accompanied Cain and his lover, Angie. One such occasion was at a Nuke manufacturing plant, where Hob encountered RoboCop.[2]
Realizing that the cyborg could not _target children, he mocked him for it before shooting him in the head with his Desert Eagle magnum gun. The blow gave RoboCop a mild concussion, causing his memories to be momentarily scrambled, effectively stunning him. Smirking at the malfunctioning cyborg, Hob makes his escape and rejoins with Cain.[2]
Hob also dealt Nuke to various customers, including Officer Duffy, who would exchange information about police movements in exchange for money and Nuke.[2]
Later, Hob was present at the old sludge plant that the cult used as a base of operations. RoboCop unsuccessfully raided the facility and Hob participated in dismembering the cyborg.[2]
After Officer Duffy was found to have tipped off RoboCop to the sludge plant, Hob was forced by Cain to watch Duffy get eviscerated alive.[2]
After Cain died following a larger raid on the sludge plant, Hob took over the cult, and arranged a meeting with the mayor of Detroit, Marvin Kuzak, saying that he would loan him 50 million dollars to pay the city's debt to OCP. This offer was on the condition that he legalize Nuke, taking control of the crime in the city. The mayor took the deal seriously only when threatened at gunpoint by Hob's men, and decided to accept when shown an armored truck filled with money and gold. Shortly after RoboCop 2 busted in and swiftly killed everyone who did not manage to escape, Hob witnessed the cyborg interact with Angie, who realized that it was Cain. This revelation shocked Hob who watched in disbelief, only for his disbelief to turn to horror as the cyborg then brutally killed Angie by shattering her vertebrae. Hob soon made a break for the armored truck, but was caught in Cain's floodlights. An instant before he was to be executed, he was saved by the remnants of his bodyguards and fled into the rear of the truck, but Cain then killed the surviving men before a single shot from his superior weaponry penetrated the armor and critically wounded him.[2]
Hob lay in the vehicle for some time until he was found by RoboCop. Before he succumbed to his wounds, he told RoboCop that the massacre at the plant was Cain's doing.[2]
Personality
Whilst he was a ruthless, violent, perhaps even evil ne'er-do-well, positively egging his comrades on as they dismember RoboCop, he still possessed distant elements of humanity, as demonstrated when bumbling Officer Duffy is eviscerated alive by Cain. Hob could not bring himself to look, but was eventually forced to do so by his mentor.
Arsenal
He carried a folding UC-M21 submachine-gun, painted blue to make people think it was a child's lunchbox, and a .44 calibre Desert Eagle. On one occasion he used a Browning M2 Aircraft machine gun against RoboCop.
Behind the scenes
Hob was portrayed in RoboCop 2 by Gabriel Damon. He is one of the few characters from Frank Miller's original screenplay to be depicted in the final film.
The lunch-box gun that Hob uses was not created for the film. It is an actual firearm called the DEB M21, originally designed by Utah Connor as the UC-9 and renamed following Connor's collaboration with David E. Boatman to produce the weapon on a larger scale. Utah Connor designed the weapon as a concealable submachine gun that can be folded into a small, nondescript box, which can be fitted with even more mundane-looking accessories to make it look even less like a firearm. The blue exterior and antenna gives the gun the appearance of a personal radio, in order to fool unsuspecting cops who don't realize that Hob is a young drug lord.
The character Hob was widely condemned by critics. Roger Ebert wrote, "Cain's sidekicks include a violent, foul-mouthed young boy (Gabriel Damon), who looks to be about 12 years old but kills people without remorse, swears like Eddie Murphy, and eventually takes over the drug business. I hesitate to suggest the vicious little tyke has been shoehorned into this R-rated movie so that the kiddies will have someone to identify with when they see it on video, but stranger things have happened."
Trivia
- Hob swears the most out of every character in this sequel.
- While his relationship to Cain is unknown, according to the 94th issue of the Magazine, Fangoria, Tom Noonan, Cain's actor, believed Hob was his surrogate son.