The Minions Power

A clan of ninjas. A gang of masked muscleheads. A goblin army. A horde of mutants. A bevy of little elves. A squad of guys in red shirts. Robed cabalists. What do these have in common? For unfathomable reasons, they follow some person with seemingly fanatic loyalty. It doesn't matter if the leader is sane or crazy, cruel or kind, smart or stupid, rich or poor: They follow the leader, do the grunt work, and obey orders largely without question. The heroes - the good guys - seldom have any qualms at all with killing them en masse to get to the actual villain... and then when the big bad is down, have an ethics discussion on whether or not killing a mass murderer is the right thing to do.

How do we explain this? The minions are a manifestation of a super power.

A person so powered ends up with minions that thematically suit them: They generally just show up (they form off screen), but are sometimes deliberately made (all super powers have variety). These minions are ultimately disposable: They're chunks of power given form; if the powered person has more capacity for minions than currently exist, the power forms new ones with a variable delay until the ranks are again full.

A leader instinctively recognizes their own minions (they're a manifestation of the leader's power, it's a subconscious connection kind of like recognizing one's own toes), but doesn't have perfect control or feedback... so it is generally a simple matter for a small number of disguised people to hide within a larger group of minions, but if there's any one-on-one interaction with the leader, the jig is going to be up really fast (that subconscious feedback simply isn't there, so the infiltration team will feel wrong to the leader).

The power only has so much 'oomph' to go around... which leads to the Inverse Law of Minions (more commonly known as the Inverse Law of Ninjas, where rhe effect was first noted). A leader will commonly have a horde of quickly-replaced individually weak minons with little power invested, and a small handful of capable lieutenants with much more invested (who tske longer to replace)... but however many minions the leader has, they all draw on the same power pool, so the more minions, the weaker they are individually.