The Watcher

""I observe and record. I do not interfere.""

- Uatu, Fantastic Four #13 ...and many times after

A recurring character whose role is to give some advice to the hero and then disappear. Often, The Watcher has some rules which restrict them from taking action, although they will regularly ignore this Obstructive Code of Conduct.

Not to be confused with the Mysterious Watcher -- who observes the characters from afar for their own purposes -- though the two can certainly overlap.

Also not to be confused with the person on the other side of the TV screen/Fourth Wall. Or Evil Overlooker which is a box art phenomenon.

Also see The Obi Wan and the Mysterious Informant. Frequently an All Powerful Bystander. Alway a Fantastic Anthropologist. Compare The Omniscient Council of Vagueness.

Anime and Manga

 * Bookman and Lavi in D Gray Man are supposed to be unbiased recorders of "the secret history. Supposed to be...
 * from Haruhi Suzumiya is a Time Traveler who's assigned to watch over Haruhi to unlock the mystery about why it's now impossible to time-travel beyonds a certain day.
 * Meta Knight acts as the Mentor for Kirby in the anime adaptation, and tends to act this way rather a lot of the time, often serving as Mr. Exposition. Although he and his henchmen do take the odd opportunity to display how Badass they are on a regular basis, Meta Knight seems happy to leave the problem solving to Fumu and the ass kicking to Kirby.
 * In Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, Bernkastel takes this role for the first two games, but once Beatrice indicates that she knows where Bern's loyalties lie, she takes a much more active role. It may or may not be the same Bernkastel as in Umineko, but.
 * In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Kyubey is the living embodiment of this trope. Despite being a Manipulative Bastard, his actions only indirectly influence the storyline, and he really cannot break the rules which are assigned to him (grant a wish to an up-and-coming Magical Girl, no matter how weird it is). Of course, this does not stop him from giving out Wham Line after Wham Line in almost every episode.

Comic Books

 * Uatu the Watcher, a Marvel Comics character (introduced in Fantastic Four #13) who lives on the moon, watches everything in every comic, and occasionally pontificates to the readership about it. He always loudly proclaimed "Yes, it is I the Watcher, who is always watching, but must not interfere", roughly every other sentence as if people were going to forget it. Notably, in spite of this expression, he almost always ended up interfering anyway. A hilarious example of him actually not interfering comes when the Red Hulk, who punched Uatu while on his Villain Sue trip, appears about to die. Uatu shows up and tells him "Sadly I am forbidden to intervene" and stands there so he can watch him get sucked into a black hole. This character is the Trope Namer.
 * From the The DCU, The Phantom Stranger, is a little more proactive than most Watchers (in fact, he is, as he points out in the JLA/Avengers crossover, a sometimes member of the league), but still fits the bill. Destiny of the Endless is perhaps The DCU's purest example, although there are others as well.
 * The Spectre in Kingdom Come acts like this. His job is to witness the coming (possible) apocalypse, not to interfere with it (only to punish the wicked should anyone be left after said apocalypse). Pastor Norman McKay who accompanies him fulfills the same role (having been chosen by The Spectre to accompany him in his observations). Norman however refuses inaction; telling The Spectre that this would be as evil as those who brought the whole situation to happen, and steps in to stop Superman's Unstoppable Rage.

Film

 * Raiden in the first Mortal Kombat film is a watcher; he gives advice to the heroes, but the other Elder Gods will not allow him to directly interfere. In the second movie, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, he gives up his godhood so he can take a more direct hand.
 * Deep Throat in All the Presidents Men, as in Real Life.

Literature

 * In CJ Cherryh's Cyteen and Regenesis, this role is played by the first Ariane Emory to the second Ariane Emory by way of the messages she left in Base One.
 * In Teresa Edgerton's Celydonn books, Dame Ceinwen often plays this role - she considers it part of the responsibility of having great power that she must not interfere too much.
 * In the Discworld novels, both Death and Lu-Tze of the History Monks are constrained by rules that prevent them interfering with history, although both bend these rules considerably in certain circumstances.
 * And both at least have something to do in the world. While their meddling was sometimes provoked by actions of Auditors. They are truly supposed to do nothing at all but observe and register.
 * Astinus of the Dragonlance novels is The Watcher of Krynn. Rumoured to be the god Gilean (the God of the Book, of course) in human form, he's the only man on the planet who, according to Raistlin's time vision, is not dying. He spends all of his time recording the events of the world in (generally) unbroken sittings. This is even to the extent that he'll be writing things like On this morning, Caramon entered my office-- before turning to the visitor. He has also unintentionally interfered in events -- mostly through Time Travel, when a protagonist obtained and brought back to the present one of his books from the future. On that day there was only one recording in his book: On this day of Overwatch Rising, Caramon of Solace brought me a volume of Astinus's Chronicles. A book that I will never write.
 * Warrior Cats: StarClan take this attitude toward the living characters, believing that interfering directly with the physical world would make the living cats their "playthings". This hasn't stopped them from occasionally making their will very clear, such as when
 * Actually, . It's more likely that StarClan wasn't responsible because they've never done anything that drastic before.
 * Animorphs: The Ellimist claims to be this at first. Later, it is revealled that he and his evil counterpart tie each other's cosmic hands.

Live Action TV

 * Future Hiro took on this role in Heroes when he told Peter to "save the cheerleader," and again when he told his past self how to stop the bomb.
 * The Watchers from Highlander are prototypical, being members of an organization who observed the conflict between immortals but were sworn to remain apart from it. And just like Uatu they're really really bad at that second part.
 * Parodied heavily with the "Observers" of MST3K.
 * The Ancients in Stargate. And if we say they don't interfere, we mean it. The number of times Ancients interfered in the plot can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and every time, the individual who did so was genuinely punished by the rest.
 * The X Files also has several people in Watcher-like roles (often emissaries of the Powers That Be, or those within the Powers That Be but secretly working against them, e.g., Deep Throat, Mr. X).
 * The Watchers of Ghost Whisperer, who annoy Melinda with their inability to give straight answers.
 * Medium: Allison's dead father-in-law fits the trope. He also annoys Allison by not giving straight answers and inflating the danger of what will happen just to be on the safe side or teach a lesson.
 * Fringe: The Observer and his organization are a group of bald men with advanced technology and almost no emotions (or taste buds) who observe major events in history, but seem to be showing up more and more frequently in the present day (Once an Episode, to be exact). Their purpose is unknown; they may be time travelers, immortals, or interdimensional police. They do sometimes interfere by communicating with the main characters in order to, but they justify it as righting previous errors.
 * The Time Lords in Doctor Who. Again, while they were officially supposed to never interfere, a lot of them were really bad at it. Notably, their doctrine of noninterference was largely self-imposed; they made that decision in the first place because they're almost all horribly corrupt, and the doctrine is basically there to keep them from screwing up and/or conquering everything else.
 * On Buffy, Angel shows up in the early episodes only to offer Buffy cryptic messages about upcoming threats. Despite his title Giles acts more like a true mentor than an actual Watcher.

Video Games

 * In Deus Ex, this role is played by different characters throughout the game.
 * Initially, The Watcher is Alex Jacobson, the computer guy at UNATCO; he drops out after the La Guardia mission.
 * Daedalus takes over the role at the beginning of the Majestic-12 sequence.
 * The G-Man from the Half Life series. Although he might also be considered the Sufficiently Advanced Alien as well. Then again, as time goes on, it appears that he's becoming less and less of a Watcher, especially
 * Gaspar from Chrono Trigger.
 * from The World Ends With You, whose purpose it is to actually watch over the Game as a whole.
 * The mysterious narrator/ in Knights in The Nightmare is one. He implies that the entire world.
 * Teo and Lippti from Radiant Historia, though they are allowed to give the hero advice from time to time.
 * Philemon from the first two Persona games is mostly this, limiting his direct actions to giving the heroes the power to summon avatars of their inner psyche and . In the next two games in the series, he simply lets his servant Igor do all the work.
 * Many simulation games have the player as this, to some extent. Some simply have the player input variables at the start and leave you to simply watch whatever you put into motion.

Webcomic

 * Concerned referred to this behavior as a "G-Peep."
 * Homestuck has Doc Scratch. The audience does eventually learn that he has an agenda of his own, but he brings about this agenda by contacting a few people and giving them advice to nudge them in the right direction.

Web Original

 * Gubaru from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes often watches the progress of the Dimensional Guardians via his base tucked away in a pocket dimension, occasionally contacting them via their Guardian Bands to offer advice.
 * Virgil in Lonely Girl 15. He's not the only "watcher" in the series, but he's the only example of "The Watcher".

Western Animation

 * The Venture Brothers:
 * Parodied: The Galactic Inquisitor insists he's only there to observe but his presence is so loud and burdensome he just keeps getting in the way. Unique in that he didn't try to intentionally interfere (though his presence was certainly obtrusive enough to count as interference) and everyone else just tried to ignore him.
 * Subverted in that
 * Danny Phantom characters: The Observants who follow Uatu's example and watch, but never act; and Clockwork who watches and acts when he feels the need to.

Real Life

 * Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein portrayed Deep Throat this way in their book All the President's Men, and the movie follows suit. Understandable, as Nixon was known to fire anyone who he even thought was against him; indeed, Woodward and Bernstein were so certain their contact would be killed they made it clear they would not reveal his identity until after he died. (Although Deep Throat, AKA W. Mark Felt, beat them to it.)