Servant

A servant is an individual who acts as an assistant to another, either by chosen vocation or by some type of mental or physical enslavement. Servants may range in type from professional assistants to ordinary butlers (who are almost always guilty of something), to indentured personnel. In a negative connotation, servants may also be referred to as lackeys, cronies or henchmen.

In the horror genre, the most infamous example of such a servant is the hunchbacked misanthrope Ygor from Frankenstein fame. Only slightly well less-known is Renfield, the insect devouring crazy-pants from Dracula. On the TV series Dark Shadows, the character of Willie Loomis served as a reluctant servant to Barnabas Collins.

On the TV comedy series Mr. Belvedere, Christopher Hewitt played Mister Lynn Aloysius Belevedere, the butler to the Owens family. Another TV butler of note is Joseph Marcell's Geoffrey - butler to the Banks family from the 1990-1996 sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

In superhero fantasy, supervillains will often employ random thugs as henchmen. Though they do receive payment for services rendered, this income is usually but a fraction of what their employer may hope to gain through whatever scheme they are involved with at the time.