For Great Justice

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"The never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way."

A stock reason given in the opening/narration of a show. This is why the good guys in some shows (particularly Anime, Kaiju, and Toku) fight against evil. It's for justice, righteousness, or some other term that seems like a good reason to launch all your fighters or Humongous Mecha and beat the stuffings out of rubber suit monsters. Justice especially seems to apply to anything in relation to these series.

This seems like Concepts Are Cheap, but these shows can have fully developed plots. This is just mainly applied to the trailers, narration, and theme songs. Then again, most of the audience is here to watch giant monsters and robots fight, so why worry about deep motives?

Compare For Science!, Captain Geographic, Captain Patriotic, Captain Space, Defender of Earth!, For Happiness.

The Evil Counterpart is For the Evulz.

Do NOT confuse with Justice Will Prevail, a more complicated topic to say the least.

Examples of For Great Justice include:


Anime and Manga

America: Should we not fight in the name of justice?
America: Let the hammer of righteousness strike deep into the heart of evil!

Comic Books

  • The first quote is the modified form of the radio intro which was used on the first television series. It might have been the Trope Maker.
    • Superman is actually a subversion of this though. He's mainly concerned with For Happiness, spending most of his time doing random acts of kindness like stopping floods, chasing off supervillains, and plucking kittens out of trees. He doesn't much care what supervillains do as long as they're not hurting anyone (or being Lex Luthor). Writers have him bandy the term "justice" around a lot, but crimefighters like Batman and The Flash are a lot more focused on criminal justice than Superman is.
  • In PS238, an elementary school for the children of superheroes (and villains), some of the superkids have gotten an odd habit:

Kid #1:"To the cafeteria!"
Rest of the class: "FOR JUSTICE!"

  • The much criticized Justice League: Cry For Justice has a lot of the characters saying that they "Want Justice!" despite the fact that they are really just out for revenge.
  • While the X-men have a somewhat more original concept, and had some of the first antivillains in American comics, the promos for the cartoons would talk about using mutant powers "for the benefit of mankind."
  • Judge Dredd. While he can often come across as an uncompromising jerk, people too often forget that the Judge really does embody the Lawful half of Lawful Neutral, and his primary motivation in doing so, is his conviction that his society will not survive without it.


Film

  • In Star Wars, Obi-Wan described the Jedi as "the guardians of peace and justice". Of course, he was talking to a young-for-his-age twenty-ish rube with stars in his eyes.
  • In the opening scene of The Godfather, we see a very affected Amerigo Bonasera explain how, for justice, he must go to Don Corleone.


Literature

“Consider the guilty person who comes under your jurisdiction as a poor wretch, subject to the frailty of our depraved nature, and insofar as you can, without doing harm to the prosecution, show yourself to be pious and clement, because, although the attributes of God are equal, mercy flourishes and is more resplendent than justice."


Live Action TV

  • Angel. "We live as though the world is as it should be, in order to show it what it can be." Angel initially thinks that he does what he does, in order to gain redemption and avoid going to Hell; but he eventually realizes that he helps people simply because doing the right thing is an inherent part of his identity.
  • Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was motivated by what he described as an inborn need for justice. Law was a secondary thing. He used to theorize that a need for justice may have been an inborn trait of his unknown species... too bad it turned out not to be the case.
    • Their natural tendency is only to enforce order and obedience. While Odo justifies the need for both with Justice (no pun intended), the rest of the species is only interested in domination (ostensibly to protect themselves from ever being victims again). Odo's experience working as chief of security under the Cardassians, witnessing the atrocities and the oppression of the innocent Bajorans, is implied to have taught him the value of Justice over pure order. He still takes the Lawful part of Lawful Good very seriously though (so long as the Law in question is itself "Good", like when he allowed several Cardassian dissidents to escape because their crimes did not warrant the death penalty they would have received otherwise).
      • During the Cardassian regime he seems to have concentrated on what the Irish used to call ODCs (ordinary decent criminals, i.e. apolitical scumbags that everyone agrees are best dealt with however much they fight each other). When he met Kira on a rebel operation gone bad, Odo let her go as that was not what he was interested in.
  • "Janperson fights for justice!"


Professional Wrestling

I am a real American
Fight for the rights of every man
I am a real American
Fight for what's right
Fight for your life!


Tabletop Games


Video Games

  • Named for one of the lines in Zero Wing (the reason to "Launch every ZIG"), which also fits this trope.
  • "For Great Justice" is actually the motto of the Steel Samurai in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
    • Which is a Shout-Out, given how the series loves those.
    • Then we have Apollo Justice, as in "Justice is literally his last name", and his Catch Phrase is "Here comes Justice!"
  • The end of Mega Man 1.

FIGHT MEGA MAN! FOR EVERLASTING PEACE!

Webcomics

Web Original

  • Linkara's review of Justice League: Cry For Justice issues 3 and 4 has him beginning the review with the inevitable joke of, "So, let's review issues 3 and 4 of Justice League: Cry For Justice. For Great Justice."


Real Life