Vigilante Man



"Well, what is a vigilante man? Tell me, what is a vigilante man? ''Has he got a gun and a club in his hand? Is that a vigilante man?"

- Woody Guthrie, "Vigilante Man"

"In certain extreme situations, the law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law."

- Frank Castle, The Punisher (2004)

The Vigilante Man is a man who brings criminals to justice by any means necessary, even if it means killing the criminals outright. Although he is breaking the law, he is presented as the good guy. If the police are after him, expect them to secretly sympathize with his goals. Occasionally, one officer is determined to catch the Vigilante Man, but you can be sure that his fellow officers aren't working very hard to help him. The "good" Vigilante Man refuses to fight the police, and if confronted, will either surrender or die before harming them. The "bad" Vigilante Man is willing to kill anyone who tries to stop him.

The people the Vigilante Man is after are always guilty - or at least, in his mind, especially if he's the villain.

Most Vigilantes will (try) not (to) hurt an Innocent Bystander; he will often go out of his way to avoid killing them, if possible. In the rare times they do, it is only to provide some Wangst as the Vigilante Man wonders if he is doing the right thing. Expect a Finger in the Mail to show up and convince the Vigilante Man that his job of catching the Ax Crazy Psychopathic Manchild and saving the child held captive makes it worth it.

The Vigilante Man's favorite method of execution is (obviously) the Vigilante Execution.

A subtrope of the Anti-Hero and Well-Intentioned Extremist. May be Neutral Good, True Neutral or Neutral Evil depending on setting. If he stops discriminating between innocents and bad guys, he might end up Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and become that which he despises.

Note that by the strict dictionary definition, many if not most Superheroes are vigilantes, but outside of those listed below, few reach the extremes which typify and thus would qualify them for this trope.

See also Serial Killer Killer. Asshole Victim can be related.

Anime and Manga

 * Light Yagami, the Villain Protagonist of Death Note. Death is the only punishment he can dish out. Early on, he states that he's going to create a world filled with only good-hearted people he approves of. He's simply going to start with the criminals...
 * Lelouch in Code Geass, in creating the terrorist group the Black Knights, is trying to overthrow Brittania's racist, Social Darwinist regime, so as to create his sister Nunnally's longed-for "beautiful world."
 * In Romeo X Juliet,  starts out disguising herself as one of these, nicknamed "The Red Tornado".
 * Tista from the Tista manga would probably constitute as a female example of this. She is an assassin who kills immoral people who the law cannot catch.
 * The Sociopathic Hero of the manga Akumetsu is one of these, although rather than just targeting criminals, he goes after anyone he considers bringing evil to Japan. Disturbingly, although the stories have a forward stating that the character should not be considered a role model, his frequent rants on what's wrong with Japanese society give an impression otherwise.
 * The Samurai Gun exist to avenge the evils of the Shogunate, though in practise this means avenging the deaths of large-breasted women.
 * Hibari Kyouya from Katekyo Hitman Reborn. He rules Nanimori with an iron fist and does whatever he pleases since people are too afraid to call him out on it, but god help you if you so much as look at his hometown the wrong way.
 * Triage X follows an entire team of medically-themed vigilantes who kill gang leaders, mob bosses, and other menaces to society.
 * Lunatic in Tiger and Bunny. As opposed to Heroes who take part in HeroTV who only seek to arrest criminals, Lunatic actually kills them. Though he tends to save this for people who REALLY deserve it.
 * becomes this in Fairy Tail, forming a small independent guild that hunts down dark guilds, something the Council doesn't allow of the guilds in it's jurisdiction, as it counts as illegal warring between guilds.
 * In Ghost in the Shell, Section 9 is frequently doing some work "off the record". But unlike most other law enforcement agencies, they don't do it for their own gain.

Comic Books

 * V from V for Vendetta. While throughout the series he's seen as more of a... vengeful terrorist, he does show some (although few) signs that he started out as one of these and simply got tired of not making progress.
 * From a certain point of view, he still is one of these. If you operate on the idea that a government is essentially a single entity with its own will and identity, then he was simply killing the most heinous criminal of them all.
 * The Punisher (Frank Castle) is a vigilante and Anti-Hero in the Marvel Universe.
 * In the movie Punisher: Warzone, the "victims are always guilty" rule was notably averted: near the beginning of the movie, he discovers that one of the people he killed was actually an undercover FBI agent with a family. He feels so guilty about it that he offers said agents widow a bag full of mafia money, as well as the chance to shoot him.
 * Rorschach of Watchmen is a Deconstruction of this trope, as well as the Anti-Hero in general. He is not presented as a good person and the police disdain him—in fact, they hate him almost as much as the criminals do.
 * Likewise Edward "The Comedian" Blake, who embodied the Heroic Sociopath variant and is arguably even more of a deconstruction than Well-Intentioned Extremist Rorschach; he was portrayed as a dangerous nutcase corrupted by the power to dispense Karmic Death, who knew damn well he'd passed any sane person's Moral Event Horizon and didn't give a damn.
 * Truth in advertising: DC Comics' Adrian Chase—a district attorney, and later judge, who hunted down and killed crooks who got off—was named simply The Vigilante.
 * Though Chase eventually became a Deconstruction of vigilante justice, and ended up committing suicide due to his guilt over the increasing violence of his methods and actions.
 * The Vigilante comics did a remarkable job of Dan Browning the American legal system, to the point where they became a regular source of material for the columns of lawyer and comic book fan Bob Ingersoll. See here for an example.
 * Also from DC and similar to the above example is federal prosecutor Kate Spencer, who became the vigilante assassin Manhunter after she got tired of criminals dodging legal justice.
 * The Crimson Avenger, who also has the honor of being (disputably) The DCU's first masked superhero.
 * The Huntress in DC Comics became a vigilante after her family was murdered by rival mafiosi.
 * Jason Todd became one of these after coming Back from the Dead, criticizing Batman for being too "soft" on criminals and wanting more than anything to kill The Joker.
 * The Paladin, who appeared in a Justice League of America story where Anansi was changing all the hero's stories, is an alternate Bruce Wayne who picked up Joe Chill's gun while he was running off, and shot him. He became a gun-toting vigilante in a cowboy hat, whose story (until Vixen interferes) ends with him and Commissioner Gordon in a Mexican Standoff.
 * Wild Dog in DC Comics is a largely unknown vigilante. He's basically per his creator Max Allan Collins in Amazing Heroes#119, a modern version of the Shadow, Zorro, the Lone Ranger, and the Green Hornet.
 * The Blue Knight in Astro City.
 * John Dusk, the protagonist of Absolution. He's a superhero in a setting where the superheroes are all legitimate law enforcement officers, which means they have to observe due process and other pesky legal restrictions. One day, he gets fed up with having his hands tied, and starts killing.
 * Eric Draven in The Crow. (Although, since he's already died and has resurrected as an unkillable zombie, he's technically a Vigilante Thing.)
 * In The Question, the Mikado was a physician who started inflicting Karmic Justice on those who caused the pain he saw every day in the ER. A man who scalded his newborn baby was boiled alive, for example.
 * Find a hero who doesn't fit this trope in Sin City.
 * John Tensen from the New Universe title Justice. In early issues, when he thinks he's a warrior from a Magical Land, he goes after criminals in general. After a Retcon reveals that he's actually a paranormal, he devotes himself to policing his brethren, punishing the ones who use their powers for evil.
 * Victor Ray from 100 Bullets kills criminals in his spare time to balance out the awful things he does on behalf of Agent Graves
 * Depending on the story, Paperinik (Donald Duck's superhero alter ego in some Italian stories) may have this as his reason to hunt down criminals: Duckburg has a serious criminality problem (seriously, how is that the Beagle Boys manage to get free in a lawful way?!), and an unstoppable sadistic superhero going to extreme lengths to humiliate and beat you up after catching you in the act or getting proof and a confession (justifying the fact his victims are always guilty: he makes sure, and those times he was wrong he found out before beating up the supposed criminal) tend to keep the problem manageable. In those stories he's also a wanted criminal due various spectacular thefts he committed at the start of his career to punish Donald's bullies (the very first being the money-filled bed Scrooge was sleeping on: the sacks of money were too easy for him), but most of the police doesn't want to arrest him due a combination him catching an insane amount of criminals and leaving them on their step and mercilessly humiliating the ones who actually try and arrest him (one memorable occasion had him fooling two cops into breaking into the bedroom of the chief of the police. Hilarity Ensued).

Fan Works

 * Douglas Sangnoir, the dimension-hopping paramilitary superhuman at the the center of the Drunkard's Walk fanfic cycle, is an officer of the law in his home timeline, not a vigilante, but he knows people who "vig", and has discussed both the occupation and taking it up himself in the various worlds he's visited.

Film

 * The Death Wish movies. Paul Kersey becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is sexually assaulted by muggers. Also an Unbuilt Trope as the film pioneered the urban vigilante concept, but it also showed how dangerous it would be.
 * Preacher in the movie Pale Rider.
 * Billy Jack is one of the strangest ones, a Liberal Vigilante Man.
 * The Boondock Saints. Especially in the courtroom climax.
 * In Magnum Force, Dirty Harry finds he is actually on the opposite side of some vigilante men. It might be considered impossible that he would object, but when the vigilante men kill a police officer, I guess even Harry figures they went too far.
 * This movie actually explains the difference between Cowboy Cop (Harry) and Vigilante Man (vigilante policemen). Dirty Harry uses excessive force when fighting criminals who forcefully resist arrest or directly endanger innocents (his iconic do I feel lucky? speech actually taunts the criminals to give him reason to use lethal force). He doesn't hunt and kill unsuspecting criminals (when Scorpio is released on a technicality Harry tries to scare him, when Ricca is acquitted on legal loophole, vigilante cops immediately kill him, his lawyer and even his driver).
 * The movie The Star Chamber is about a judge who decides to join a group of judges who are disgusted with the system and become vigilante men. After they.
 * The movie never claims the men are innocent; we know from the start they're criminals. The protagonist however comes to realise that justice means something more than arbitrarily killing criminals.
 * Jodie Foster in The Brave One plays a female vigilante, in a meditation on the paranoia and isolation the life of the Vigilante Man(or Woman) would entail, especially if they used to be a "normal" person. Interesting callback to the first Death Wish in her chosen method too.
 * Inverted in the Western movie Hang 'Em High. Clint Eastwood is the innocent victim of vigilantes who mistake him for a murderer/cattle thief (he unknowingly bought the cattle off the real killer). He then becomes a deputy to bring them to justice, and must resist pressure both situational and personal to take the law into his own hands.
 * Contract on Cherry Street (1977) has Frank Sinatra as the leader of a team of NYPD detectives who turn vigilante on The Mafia after one of them is killed.
 * Two Fathers' Justice (1985). A newly married couple are killed by drug dealers, and their fathers (reluctantly) team up to track down their killers who've fled the country.
 * The Michael Caine movie Harry Brown.
 * Jigsaw, Amanda and Hoffman in Saw are a twisted, twisted version of this.
 * Vigilantism is attacked in The Ox-Bow Incident, wherein three obviously innocent men are persecuted and ultimately murdered by a lynch mob.
 * In Pyrokinesis, the protagonist is a rare female example, killing criminals with the titular psychic power. She manages to stay a good guy despite fighting against the police, because
 * In TMNT, Raphael becomes the Nightwatcher while Leonardo is in South America. TMNT being a kids' movie, Raph doesn't kill anybody, but he doles out some major beatings to all criminals he comes across.
 * The Hobo in Hobo with a Shotgun.
 * In Murders Among Us, Hans Mertens.
 * Seemingly deconstructed in Law Abiding Citizen, with Clyde Shelton Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. On the other hand, it also seems to portray the criminal justice system as ineffectual.

Literature

 * from And Then There Were None.
 * Mack Bolan, the protagonist of The Executioner series of novels, started out as this. The series eventually had him join the government, in a black ops organization. He did have a moral dilemma breakdown during one mission in China however, when he was forced to strangle a 14 year old girl to death because she was a gun-toting fanatic. From that novel onward he's one of the more restrained members of the Stony Man Farm.
 * In The Veteran, a short story collection by British author Frederick Forsyth, defense attorney James Vansittart deliberately makes sure the killers of an elderly man are released so rogue members of the Metropolitan Police Service can strangle them to death.
 * The success of The Executioner series spawned a number of knock-off novel series all with essentially the same plot (organised crime kills the protagonist's family causing him to become a one-man army on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge). These series included:
 * The Assassin
 * The Butcher
 * The Marksman
 * The Sharpshooter
 * The nameless cabal in Already Dead doesn't kill their targets themselves. Instead (for a hefty fee), they offer to hunt down the person who committed the crime and turn him over to the victim—complete with a very large table full of things like drills, knives, hammers, and blowtorches.
 * Kyle Youngblood in the Dr Death series of novels winds up living up to his name to his friends and family as well as his enemies, as their retribution drags them into the crossfire often. The only friend he has who never dies is Rafe, the one who accompanies him personally on missions. Everyone else? They're gonna get snapped, gunned down, or exploded sooner or later. Interestingly, he prefers to use traps whenever possible as opposed to charging in guns blazing. The mercenary known only as "Big Cherry" due to his eye having been gouged out, and he refusing treatment or a covering due to the badass points it gives him, plays the trope straighter despite being a designated antagonist. He'll take out those he finds unpalatable on the way to his intended targets. Think Mad Dog, from the Time Crisis games, sans megalomania. (as well as always wanting a fair fight with his rival for example) Kyle usually kills his bosses, causing Cherry to once more swear revenge.
 * The Saint is a Gentleman Adventurer version who does his vigilante thing not because of any specific need for vengeance, but because he enjoys the challenge of defeating people who believe they are untouchable. In the earlier novels, he was much more likely to kill the villain of the piece; later stories saw this toned down, and by the time the stories were no longer being written solely by Leslie Chartris, it had virtually vanished. Every so often he would remember his 'bad old days' and choose to extract fatal vengeance someone the law could't touch. He at least once made the statement, "There is a justice outside the law..." and he was delivering it.
 * The Spider, The Shadow, and numerous literary adventurers of the pre-World War II era fit this trope. In fact, these personages adopted secret identities due to the fact that they knew that they police would arrest them for their sudden justice. Other than Doc Savage (who didn't kill his opponents except when it was completely unavoidable — he just shipped them off to be lobotomized or the equivalent) and the The Avenger, introduced in 1939, relatively few of the serial magazine protagonists of this era worked with the open approval and admiration of the police.
 * Tom Clancy dipped into this genre with Without Remorse, which probably owes some inspiration to The Punisher. Desconstructed in that the protagonist himself is a little worried by his own lack of guilt over some pretty unpleasant methods of questioning, even on an unrepentant Complete Monster.
 * The Bluejay, also known as  in The Inkworld Trilogy shows shades of this, particularly in the third book.
 * Vigilante man? Try vigilante general! Ben Raines of the Ashes series by William Johnstone. Imagine if the Punisher saved America by being the post-apocalyptic George Washington. Imagine the rest of the world is made of alternately criminal drug-running dictators or tree-hugging communist hippies. And now imagine he's just been elected president. And you still only have a tenth of the insanity of this world. Raines does such downright crazy and morally black shit sometimes that not even The Emperor would approve of (like blitzing a city of war orphans being brainwashed into child soldiers just so it won't cost him a single Red-White-And-Blue-Blooded American life, or monologuing about how children who grow up in slums can never know what the good life is to reporters, then gunning them down on live television), and that's a crapsack UNIVERSE. Essentially, he commits vast atrocities on par or above standard Crapsack World characters, both heroes and villains, simply because he is as risk-averse as a cuddly soccer mom. A cuddly soccer mom with nuclear arms, miles of artillery shells, and a fetish for napalm and fuel bombs. Small wonder anybody with any semblance of religious leaning considers him the Antichrist. (A lot of it scarily justified through 'sins of the father/brother/sister/mother' arguments, then again the author's father was a fire and brimstone kind of minister.)
 * In Ian Mc Ewan's novella 'Black Dogs' the narrator becomes a Good Vigilante Man after he sees a man in a restaurant smack his kid across the face so hard the kid's chair is knocked over backwards and cracks on the floor. The narrator challenges the man to "fight someone his own size" and then manages to break the guy's nose and knock him out with a few punches. He is called off by a waitress and stops him just before he becomes He Who Fights Monsters and kicks the guy to death. This moment provides a contrast from the Grey and Gray Morality of the rest of the book.
 * Nuklear Age presents The Civil Defender, a crazed vigilante hell-bent on eliminating all crime, no matter how small. Complete with machine gun and futuristic body armor, the Civil Defender took up being a vigilante when his sandwich was stolen, and gives out tickets written on notebook paper when he's sane enough to have his finger off the trigger of his machine gun. He has repeatedly given out tickets for littering because of the pile of other tickets he personally threw to the ground.
 * Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: This series is about Vigilante Women! They obey a Thou Shalt Not Kill code, give villains a Fate Worse Than Death, and they are usually careful to Never Hurt an Innocent. The book Free Fall had them being arrested by the police, but that's okay, because the judge, prosecuting attorney, and defense attorney are secretly on their side, as well as them being considered heroes by a lot of people! Later on, you have a group of Vigilante Men made up of Jack Emery, Harry Wong, Bert Navarro, Ted Robinson, and Joe Espinosa!
 * Jack London's The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. was a vigilante organization -- it might seem to be Murder, Inc., requesting payment for killings, but always demanded proof that the intended target was someone who'd gotten away with evil actions. When the founder and leader was persuaded that the Bureau was itself harming the advance of civilization, he ordered the Bureau's other members, all of them his friends and fellow philosophers, to hunt him down and kill him if they could.

Live Action TV

 * Dexter Morgan from Dexter sometimes sees himself as a vigilante for killing murderers, and in one episode fantasizes about being a superhero who is applauded by the public and in another, has a brief daydream where he acts as a Batman style vigilante Superhero but quickly dismisses it as ridiculous. In his darker moments, however, he admits that he's just a monster with a little more self-control.
 * The TV series The Shield is about a cop who is a Vigilante Man. Interestingly, the series constantly shows that Mackey's vigilantism is a bad thing, always for his own self-interest, and never in the interests of justice. Then, it goes on to show his Cowboy Cop side, where he bends or outright breaks the law to serve the greater good (a criminal will go free, but the young girl he kidnapped will be saved from being raped and murdered). Notably, the series never specifically casts judgment on Mackey's karma directly, leaving it to the viewer to decide whether he has overall good karma or bad.
 * It is not so simple. Mackey's vigilantism is not portrayed as inherently bad thing. The problem is that Mackey and the Strike Team are at the same time vigilantes, pragmatic policemen and crooked cops. They do not only eliminate criminals, but also steal evidence, incite turf wars that endanger innocents, deal drugs for their own monetary gain and even physically eliminate witnesses, including a.
 * Deconstructed in an episode of Michael Chiklis' series, The Commish. The episode features a vigilante who tapes his acts and sends them to the press. At first, his actions are relatively innocuous (running criminals off the road, then humiliating them), and even the cops are cheering him on. Commissioner Tony, however, thinks the guy is bad news. He's proven correct later when the police arrest a man for a brutal rape/murder, then release him after realizing he's innocent. The vigilante, wrongly believing the innocent man got Off on a Technicality, goes to the guy's home and clubs him to death. The vigilante then becomes the cops' target for the rest of the episode.
 * Mr. Chapel in Vengeance Unlimited is the rare Technical Pacifist Vigilante Man. Because sometimes making them wish they were dead is better than actually killing them.
 * Disgruntled cop Manny Lopez in the MacGyver episode "Tough Boys" decided to use his Marine skills to train a bunch of kids to become the titular Tough Boys and crack down on drug dealers after snapping from the trauma of having a crack addicted daughter that went missing without a trace leaving him with his drug-addled baby granddaughter. Predictably, the episode ends with Mac having to save the Tough Boys from being nearly killed in a shoot-out and preventing Lopez from blowing himself up along with a major drug dealer.
 * The Equalizer clearly draws on the vigilante justice issues raised by Deathwish and the Goetz trial (as seen in the Mad Magazine spoof of this TV series, where Robert McCall, Charles Bronson and Bernard Goetz argue over who should shoot a subway mugger). McCall never actually shoots anyone in cold blood however, preferring to use psychological warfare to inspire a confession (though quite a few villains conveniently pull a gun at the end so McCall can shoot them in self-defense).
 * Millennium. The Judge is a pig farmer who uses ex-convicts to inflict Karmic Death on people he believes have escaped justice, such as a landlord whose negligence caused the death of an elderly tenant and a detective whose false testimony sent an innocent man to prison. He invites Frank Black to join his cause, but when he refuses the Judge hits the police with a lawsuit to make them back off. Unfortunately for the Judge his ex-convict killer regards this as hypocrisy, hamstrings the Judge and throws him to his own pigs to be eaten alive.
 * Dark Justice, about a judge who delivers Karmic Retribution to criminals who get off on technicalities, with the aid of various helpers, usually low-level criminals working off their 'community service' sentences.
 * The protagonist of the ITV series The Fixer killed his aunt and uncle for molesting his sister. This apparently qualified him to work as a covert government hitman. In one episode he's ordered to kill his predecessor, who has turned Rogue Agent and started killing drug dealers and prostitutes.
 * In Justified, but the series leaves it ambiguous as to whether he really is or is just faking it an attempt to erect his own criminal empire. Unlike most vigilante men, he doesn't seem to prefer lethal force, and at one point kills someone innocent even by his Well-Intentioned Extremist standards. Rayland harries him the entire season, but when the chips come down, he is revealed to actually be a vigilante man after all, and at the end of the season he goes off apparently to basically become Batman.
 * Criminal Minds had three: the ones from "A Real Rain" and "Reckoner" were fairly standard, killing people who'd been acquitted of crimes or who got lesser sentences (though the one from the latter was actually a Career Killer paid to act as a vigilante) while the one from "True Night" killed off members of a brutal street gang, but was psychotic and didn't even know what he was doing. In the latter case, the BAU mentioned that because he was so severely ill, it was only a matter of time before he became a danger to ordinary people as well.
 * The priest from "Demonology" could also count, since he was killing the men believed to be responsible for the death of a fellow priest, and close friend of his.
 * In Flashpoint, there was an episode of a man going after drug dealers and ultimately the main drug lords because his brother had been killed from a drug overdose given to him by these people.
 * In Bones, Broadsky the rogue sniper fancied himself a vigilante but is really just a madman who will kill anyone who gets in way and feels no guilt for killing innocent bystanders.
 * Person of Interest. It's significant that the mysterious Mr Finch recruited a former CIA assassin to do his We Help the Helpless work rather than a private detective.
 * Russian 2009 series Меч (The Sword) presents a group of vigilantes hunting both criminals and corrupt officials who help criminals evade justice. Interestingly, the group consists predominantly of former or active civil servants (ex-detective who resigned after being proposed a bribe by his own superior, ex-cop sentenced for murder of a rapist, young traffic police officer, retired FSB agent and state prosecutor).

Music

 * The Abney Park song "Victorian Vigilante" is about one of these.
 * Woody Guthrie's "Vigilante Man" (quoted at the top of the page) is actually about how American workers would be attacked and beaten by the people of the towns they passed through during The Depression.

Tabletop Games

 * The New World of Darkness sourcebook Slasher, which is all about serial killers who rise above the cut, has an entire Undertaking dedicated to this—the Avenger. They get the ability to take on multiple foes at once without being overwhelmed, but have to actively make the effort to break from their pursuit.
 * Dark Champions contains rules for several modern-day action genres, but defaults to vigilantes taking down criminals. This shouldn't be surprising, as the original 4th edition book was inspired by Steve Long's personal PC the Harbinger of Justice, who is this trope cranked to max.

Web Comics

 * Oasis from Sluggy Freelance took on this role when she lived in Podunkton, killing pretty much the entire mafia establishment in town, as well as any miscellaneous crooks who pass through. She seems to do this largely out of boredom. However, since she had previously been an Ax Crazy assassin who'd kill anyone who came between her and Torg, this vigilante justice is actually a sign of Oasis becoming less violent.
 * In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, the titular Dr. McNinja is a doctor and a ninja. Who desperately wants to be Batman.
 * In Homestuck, Terezi is pretty obsessed with this kind of justice, which funnily enough is not too different from the actual court system in Troll society.
 * She also used to partner up with Vriska in FLARP session to kill off other players, but only the ones that really deserved to be punished. She leaves when Vriska starts murdering indiscriminately.
 * Axe Cop. The police are after him, everyone he kills is evil, and he uses lethal force against pretty much everyone "bad". Though he switches back and forth on the killing of public servants (he beheads many FBI agents to protect Uni-Baby, but is unwilling to kill the police officers trying to arrest him).
 * Midnight in Acrobat.

Web Original

 * Less Than Three Comics' Shadow attacks crooks in the street, and uses fear to scare them straight. It's worked pretty well so far.

Video Games

 * Yuri Lowell of Tales of Vesperia. He grew up in the slums of the Empire which rules most of the world with his friend Flynn Scifo and joined the Imperial Knights with him. After growing disgusted with the government's weakness and the cruelty of the nobles, he left Flynn to try and reform the Empire from within while he seeks to give the commoners the justice that the current system denies them. Later on, he joins up with the Guild Union in the hope of eliminating injustice from the world completely. He is rather Genre Savvy; knowing that his actions are unlawful and may bring him closer to what he hates, he is willing to break the law anyway if it serves the greater good.
 * There is also a sidequest involving a Vigilante Man who has less scruples than Yuri.
 * Mass Effect 2 has Archangel, who turns out to be a Cowboy Cop frustrated by being hindered by ineffectual bureaucracy. Nicknamed "Space Batman" by the players.
 * Though he's much closer to Space Punisher as he has no problem killing criminals. He's so good at it that three rival mercenary groups that hate each others guts team up to take him down. He also isn't above Cruel And Unusual Punishment, killing criminals by sabotaging the air supply of their space suits or infecting them with their own bioweapons.
 * There's also some Deconstruction later on; his loyalty mission involves hunting down a guy who set him up to dole out some vigilante justice, but if you take the paragon route and convince Archangel that letting him live is punishment enough, he comments on how Grey and Gray Morality doesn't have a lot of place for this, and that he prefers to see things as black and white because it makes things easier.
 * The Yatagarasu in Ace Attorney Investigations, a noble thief who steals information on corrupt business dealings and sends them to the media. Establishing the identity and motivations of the Yatagarasu and its target are a big part of the game's plot. Kay Faraday tries to pick up the tradition after the first Yatagarasu is put out of action. She's not very good at it.
 * The title character in the aptly named Vigilante is officially this, although the focus is more on the quest to rescue his girlfriend.
 * Frost Ace has become this in Strange Journey. It's almost like he's trying to become a Henshin Hero version of Batman.
 * The title character of Anaksha Female Assassin is a vigilante assassin who has taken it upon herself to clean up the streets of Santa Lina, one scumbag at a time.
 * To a degree, Yun and Yang from the Street Fighter series, as the twins strive to protect their beloved Hong Kong from all kinds of peril and use their martial arts to do so. Specially emphatized in Street Fighter Alpha III, where Yun chases after Fei-Long when he and Yang take rumors about him being in the drug trade at face value.

Real Life

 * Bernie Goetz was labeled the "Subway Vigilante" after he gunned down four men he claimed were mugging him. The incident sparked a national debate on vigilantism, though his actions do not fit into the classic mold of a vigilante.
 * Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald to avenge his assassination of John F. Kennedy. On live television. He himself was arrested. The various conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination have meant that Ruby, naturally, has come under a lot of scrutiny, with many theorizing that he killed Oswald not to avenge the widow Kennedy and her family but to silence him on behalf of the true perpetrators of the event.
 * Serial Killer William Inmon was a self-proclaimed vigilante. His arguments for this are unconvincing.
 * Mainstream press such as the BBC have labeled Northern Irish internet activist Jim Browning a "vigilante" for his actions against Tech Support Scammers, but Browning himself argued against being called as such, contending that while his methods of intervention are legally grey at best due to lack of legal authority to conduct network intrusions, his hacks versus scam call centres are done in a civil and professional manner. The most that Jim does as far as hacking goes is to infiltrate their networks and gather as much evidence as he can with respect to privacy and security, and intervene in a lawful manner if needed.