<P><B>Wild fire
<P>
<P>All thugs need the ability to spread hundreds of bullets in all directions. With their level of intelligence, you wouldn't expect them to be able to hit a dead elephant at point-blank range. (If they can shoot straight, and have passed the other tests, they are a rare find indeed.) For this reason, you need to make sure that they can hold down the trigger of a machine gun until they run out of bullets. Extra ammo isn't usually a problem, as they would either have been killed, or killed the enemy after the first salvo. Experiment with sticky tape behind the trigger, or pick thugs with arthritis in their fingers. The next thing to remember is that they will need to produce stupidly wide arcs of fire. Make them practise this random flailing on a plastic sheet smeared with butter.
<P>
<P><B>The ability to drive badly
<P>
<P>All henchmen need this skill in order to drive madly through a town square attracting the attention of police cars. Once they have crashed and exploded, the hero may be caught and slowed down by random policemen.
<P>
<P><B>The boss is always right
<P>
<P>If your henchmen ever question your insane logic, or even your apparently senseless outbursts, you should kill them straight away. That way, you'll always be able to gloat, laugh, scream or kill without ridiculous enquiries. NB: Questions detract from wide-eyed guffawing, don't let it happen!
<P>
<P><B>Appreciation
<P>
<P>Remember that your henchmen need your love and appreciation, or they will not feel valued as an employee. You can show your appreciation by not beating them every day. You can let them pull the secret lever once in a while. Exactly what effect this will have will differ depending on your super-secret base of operations. The last thing that you can do to show your appreciation of good thuggery is to promote a henchmen to the status of evil assistant. You should kill this person for failure every now and again so that your other employees get a chance to progress. The "dead man's shoes" ethos is very appropriate here.