Vigilante Man: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''Well, what is a vigilante man?
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{{quote|''In certain extreme situations, [[Police Are Useless|the law is inadequate]]. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law.''|'''Frank Castle''', ''[[The Punisher (film)|The Punisher]]'' (2004)}}
The
The people the Vigilante Man is after are always guilty - or at least, in his mind, especially if he's the villain.
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* [[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 (comics)|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
** 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
** 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 Browned|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 [http://www.worldfamouscomics.com/law/back19990810.shtml here] for an example.
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* ''[[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, [[Motive Decay|I guess even Harry figures they went too far]].
** This movie actually explains the difference between [[Cowboy Cop]] (Harry) and
* 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 {{spoiler|make a mistake and send a hitman after someone who didn't commit the crime, the hero decides that becoming a vigilante man was a mistake. But rather than show us that vigilante justice is wrong, they have the "innocent" man decide to kill the judge for stumbling across his illegal drug operation}}.
** 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.
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== Literature ==
* {{spoiler|Justice Wargrave}} from ''[[And Then There Were None]]''. {{spoiler|Although he lacks the charisma and [[Badass
* 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 [[Heroic BSOD|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 onwards he's one of the more restrained members of the Stony Man Farm.
* The Veteran: James Vansittart deliberately makes sure the killers are released so rogue members of the Metropolitan Police Service can strangle them to death. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Veteran\], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Veteran_(short_story_collection)\]
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** ''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
* 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 [[Even Evil Has Standards|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.
* [[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
* [[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 [[Cold-Blooded Torture|pretty]] [[Nightmare Fuel|unpleasant]] methods of questioning, even on an unrepentant [[Complete Monster]].
* The Bluejay, also known as {{spoiler|Mortimer Folchart}} in ''[[The Inkworld Trilogy]]'' shows shades of this, particularly in the third book.
* Vigilante man? Try vigilante GENERAL!!! [http://tcrane.tripod.com/johnstn.html Ben Raines of the Ashes series] by [http://www.williamjohnstone.net/Ashes.html 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. [[What the Hell, Hero?|Raines does such downright crazy and morally black shit]] sometimes that not even [[Warhammer 40000|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, [[Apocalypse Now|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, [[Knight Templar|then again the author's father]] was a [[Black and White Morality|fire and brimstone kind of minister]].)
* In Ian [[Mc Ewan]]'s novella 'Black Dogs' the narrator becomes a Good
* ''[[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 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!
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** 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 [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|vigilantes]], [[Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right|pragmatic policemen]] and [[Dirty Cop|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 [[Leave No Witnesses|physically eliminate witnesses]], including a {{spoiler|a fellow policeman, in the first episode, no less}}.
* Desconstructed in an episode of Michael Chiklis' previous 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 [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|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]]
* 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).
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== Tabletop Games ==
* The ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' sourcebook ''Slasher'', which is all about serial killers who rise above the cut, has an entire [[Splat|Undertaking]] dedicated to
* ''[[Champions|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.
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* 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 [[Aristocrats Are Evil|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 Alliance|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 [[He Who Fights Monsters|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
* ''[[Mass Effect]] 2'' has Archangel, who turns out to be a [[Cowboy Cop]] frustrated by being hindered by ineffectual bureaucracy. Nicknamed "Space [[Batman]]" [[Fan Nickname|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.
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