Vigilante Man: Difference between revisions

[[File:Vigilante_Man_DeathWish_poster_2514.jpg|link=Death Wish (Film)|frame]]

{{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)}}

Most Vigilantes will (try) not (to) hurt an [[Innocent Bystander]]; [[Never Hurt an Innocent|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 [[Children Are Innocent|the child]] held captive makes it worth it.

* Light Yagami, the [[Villain Protagonist]] of ''[[Death Note (Manga)|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 (Anime)|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 (Anime)|Romeo X Juliet]]'', {{spoiler|Juliet}} starts out disguising herself as one of these, nicknamed "The Red Tornado".

* Tista from the ''[[Tista (Manga)|Tista]]'' manga would probably constitute as a female example of this. She is an assassin who kills immoral people who the law cannot catch.

* Lunatic in ''[[Tiger and Bunny (Anime)|Tiger and Bunny]]''. As opposed to Heroes who take part in HeroTV who only seek to arrest criminals, Lunatic actually ''[[Vigilante Execution|kills]]'' them. Though he tends to save this for [[Complete Monster|people who REALLY deserve it]].

* {{spoiler|Jellal}} becomes this in ''[[Fairy Tail (Manga)|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 [[Crapsack World|unlike most other law enforcement agencies]], they don't do it for their own gain.

* Rorschach of ''[[Watchmen (Comic Book)|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.

* Victor Ray from ''[[One Hundred Bullets]]'' kills criminals in his spare time to balance out the awful things he does on behalf of Agent Graves

* [[Depending On the Writer|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 ([[Justified Trope|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]]).

* The ''[[Death Wish (Film)|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 (Film)|Pale Rider]]''.

* 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.

* In ''[[Pyrokinesis]]'', the protagonist is a rare female example, killing criminals with the titular [[Playing With Fire|psychic power]]. She manages to stay a good guy despite fighting against the police, because {{spoiler|the chief of police is also the head of the snuff ring she's been targeting.}}

* In ''[[TMNT (Film)|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]].''

* The Bluejay, also known as {{spoiler|Mortimer Folchart}} in ''[[The Inkworld Trilogy (Literature)|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 (Tabletop Game)|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]].)

* 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 (TV)|Vengeance Unlimited]]'' is the rare [[Technical Pacifist]] [[Vigilante Man]]. Because sometimes making them [[Fate Worse Than Death|wish they were dead]] is better than actually killing them.

* ''[[Millennium (TV)|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.

* The protagonist of the ITV series ''[[The Fixer (TV)|The Fixer]]'' killed his aunt and uncle for molesting his sister. This apparently qualified him to work as a [[Judge, Jury, and Executioner|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 (TV)|Justified]]'', {{spoiler|Boyd Crowder seems very much this after he apparently gets religion,}} 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.

* In ''[[Flashpoint (TV)|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.

* The ''[[New World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|New World of Darkness]]'' sourcebook ''Slasher'', which is all about serial killers who rise above the cut, has an entire [[Splat|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.

* In ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (Webcomic)|The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', the titular Dr. McNinja is [[Captain Obvious|a doctor and a ninja.]] Who desperately wants to be Batman.

* In ''[[Homestuck (Webcomic)|Homestuck]]'', Terezi is pretty obsessed with this kind of justice, which funnily enough is not too different from the [[Kangaroo Court|actual]] [[Hanging Judge|court]] [[Amoral Attorney|system]] in [[All Trolls Are Different|Troll society.]]

* ''[[Axe Cop (Webcomic)|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).

* Yuri Lowell of ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]''. He grew up in the slums of [[The Empire|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.

* The title character in the aptly named ''[[Vigilante (Video Game)|Vigilante]]'' is officially this, although the focus is more on the quest to rescue his girlfriend.

* 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 (Video Game)|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. {{spoiler|The real culprit is Bison.}}