Supercop

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Meet the cop who can't be stopped.

One step up from the Cowboy Cop who enters Hot Pursuit with no regard for their own safety or anyone else's, here you have the police who actually have the equipment, the powers, or whatever else that puts them above and beyond the capabilities of the average police officer. This is common to the point where one of the Stock Superhero Day Jobs is police work, though they don't always do both at once.

Often takes the form of a Superhero who works for the police, a Cyborg, or a Humongous Mecha. A particularly Badass Normal can even qualify.

Overlaps with the Vampire Detective.

Not to be confused with the the Jackie Chan movie (whose tagline provides the page quote).

Examples of Supercop include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • Marshal Law: "I'm a hero hunter. I hunt heroes. Haven't found any yet."
  • Alan Moore's Top Ten series (and its spinoffs) is all about this trope.
  • The Savage Dragon
  • While not an actual example, Superman frequently has to remind people that he's not one of these, because since he has such a good relationship with the Metropolis PD and the citizens of Metropolis, they often treat him like one.

Film

Literature

  • The Night Watch from Discworld may fit in this trope. Living in a fantasy world, they've got trolls, dwarves, golems, zombies, vampires and werewolves in their ranks. And Carrot Ironfoundersson.
    • Of course, criminals can also belong to any of those supernatural species, which brings The Watch back into Badass Normal territory.
  • In the X Wing Series, Corran Horn discovers that his father, who was part of the Corellian Security Force all his life and got Corran into it too, was the son and the student of a Jedi Knight. Both of them did rely a bit on their Force-Sensitivity. I, Jedi also notes that Corellian Jedi, including Corran's grandfather, tended to work closely with the Corellian Security Force on the tougher cases.
  • The Aurors (and also the poor forgotten Hit Wizards) of Harry Potter may fit this trope, or at least Aurors Harry Potter and Ron Weasley do, each being a Badass Normal in a world where being a wizard is "normal". Certainly Mad-Eye Moody was a legend amongst them.

Live-Action TV

Video Games

  • ESWAT Cyber Police, a 1989 scrolling shooter arcade game. Once your character achieves chief rank he gets a cyber suit with turbothrusters and armor.
  • An underappreciated PS 1 classic is Future Cop: LAPD, where you play a heavily armed Transforming Mecha fighting all kinds of criminals. (and I mean ALL kinds)
  • City of Heroes featured Blue Steel, Memetic Badass and the only major superhero who works directly for the police force. There were also cops in Power Armour, cops with Psychic Powers and the Awakened division of alien symbiote-infused cops. There was also nothing stopping player character concepts from being cops.
    • Averted by the Paragon City police in the earliest releases of the game, which were simply ordinary civilian NPCs with "police" skins -- and who reacted like ordinary civilians to everything threatening, mostly by cowering or running away.
  • You play one in Crackdown. Morality optional.
  • Konoko from Oni. Helps that she was secretly bred to be a One Woman Army capable of handling anything the Syndicate could field.
  • A rare glitch in GTA: Vice City would sometimes render a single random Police Officer invincible, there were also rumors that he could arrest you anywhere, including magically teleporting from the ground onto your helicopter and playing the arrest animation.
  • Mortal Kombat has Kurtis Stryker. Just a regular guy but packs some ordnance to make up for it. Fights otherworldly monsters so he's going a bit above the line of duty.
  • Chun-Li of Street Fighter is an Interpol agent, always hot on the trail of M. Bison.
  • Lei Wulong of Tekken, which makes sense since he is an Expy of Jackie Chan.

Web Comics

Western Animation