Inspector Javert

File:Lesmis-javert 4844.jpg

Monsieur l'Inspecteur

Inspector Javert: Once a thief, forever a thief! What you want you always steal! You would trade your life for mine? (...) If you let me go, beware, You'll still answer to Javert! Jean Valjean: You are wrong, and always have been wrong. I'm a man, no worse than any man. —Les Misérables, the musical, as Valjean saves Javert's life.

Inspector Javert is the well-intentioned law enforcement officer (or detective, or Bounty Hunter) who honestly (if sometimes wrongly) believes that the hero is a bad guy and doggedly pursues him in a Stern Chase, seeking to get him.

He does not realize that the hero is either Wrongly Accused, or has already redeemed himself for crimes done long ago. Inspector Javert may be the reason the hero has to keep moving among Adventure Towns. Often the only way to slow him down is to defeat other violent criminals, then leave them for the Inspector to arrest and process before he can resume the chase.

At some point, however, the officer and accused have to team up to fight a common enemy, or the movie or series ends with them discovering that their entire campaign to bring the hero to justice was in vain, or he is innocent and find evidence to prove it or they decide to just let them go with a "five minute head start", or something to that effect.

Named for the archetypal character in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables, and the subsequent musical. Lt. Gerard in The Fugitive was inspired by Javert, down to the French surname.

A Sub-Trope of Hero Antagonist. Very likely to be Lawful Neutral, but can also be outright Lawful Stupid.

Compare and Contrast Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist; the hero is a Villain Protagonist or Anti-Hero and that Inspector chases a real criminal. May be portrayed as a Butt Monkey and/or Worthy Opponent by the protagonist. See also Inspector Lestrade, where the inspector is The Rival to a detective protagonist.

Examples of Inspector Javert include:

Anime and Manga

• Detective Heinrich Runge in Monster takes this to the point that he knowingly destroys pretty much his entire life. Though his family eventually forgives him.
• Officer Natsuko in Re Cutey Honey.
• Detective Angelica Burns, Coyote Ragtime Show.
• Ayaka Steiger in Kurau Phantom Memory, before doing a Heel Face Turn.
• Police Inspector Saehara in D.N.Angel, with a bit of a variation. Dark really is a thief, he's just got a good reason for it.
• Inspector Wizer of Slayers Revolution, whose insistence that Lina is responsible for all the evils of the world is quickly becoming a Running Gag.
  • Subverted. Inspector Wizer was pretending to be a personification of this troupe, when it's revealed he just acts this way to manipulate people into doing what he wants. His act even manages to fool Xellos!
• Suzaku from Code Geass.
  • Ohgi, amongst other Black Knights, may as well fall under this after they turn on Lelouch, and start in pursuit of him until Lelouch disappears into the Sword of Akasha. Blame that on Schneizel.
• Smoker from One Piece.
  • It's also pretty much confirmed that Vice-Admiral Garp was this to Gold Roger. He still agreed to raise Roger's son, at the other's request.
• Quent from Wolf's Rain is a variation -- he isn't a lawman, but he does believe the wolves (or, rather, wolves in general) are responsible for the death of his family, and he obsessively hunts them at every turn.
  • Well, he was a sheriff before he lost his family and lost himself in hunting wolves (and finding the bottom of lots of bottles.)
• Ooishi from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. However, subverted in some chapters, when he is actually right.
  • The DS versions also feature Tomoe Minai. Like Ooishi, she turns out to be right.
• Leon from Pet Shop of Horrors could be said to subvert this. He starts out in the story as a police officer who is convinced that D is some sort of mafia criminal or drug dealer, but doesn't do a very good job of chasing him other than saying that he's keeping an eye on him. Before long he's going to D every time an animal is involved in a suspicious death, and the fact that they're almost best friends forever near the end of the story fizzes out the trope a bit.
  • Well he does try to arrest D quite a few times. The fact that his boss considers him a nut coupled with the fact that D's various crimes are so fantastic that the police wouldn't believe them anyway gets in the way.
    • Plus the fact that half the city's power structure are D's clients anyway, including the Mayor.
• Claymore: Priscilla burns for the blood of Teresa for "killing humans". Never mind that the humans were ravaging a village at the time, doing so much damage that Teresa wondered if killing the youma in said village was a good idea, since the bandits stayed away while the youma was there.
• Ushio fits this so well for Yusei in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, his prisoner number might as well have been 24601. He eventually lightens up later on.
• Toshio Wakagi in Codename: Sailor V.
• In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Cowboy Funk", Cowboy Andy mistakes both Spike and Jet on seperate occasions of being the Teddy Bomber... even with the real Teddy Bomber standing right next to them both times.
• Pretty much every other detective that goes after Lupin the Third aside from Inspector Zenigata.
• Percy from Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats, especially when at some point he directly tries to kill Bean Bandit.

Comicbooks

• Detective Harvey Bullock of Batman and Batman: The Animated Series (to a lesser extent in the latter).
  • Batman himself can sometimes fall into this.
• Tintin: Thomson and Thompson in several of the books, though they're more of a parody of the trope.
• When it comes to hunting down the Hulk, General Ross slides between this General Ripper and Knight Templar.
  • Of course He Who Fights Monsters comes into play literally as in his pursuit of destroying the Hulk he himself becomes the Red Hulk.
• Judge Dredd: Old Stone Face can go here. Oh how he can go here.
• Eric Finch from V for Vendetta, to the point that he goes to where V was created and takes LSD in an effort to get into V's mindset. Subverted slightly in that, 1. he is one of most decent people in the book, and 2. V isn't as much "heroic" as he is a "psychotic anarchist".
• Ms. Tree has Captain Miller, who is constantly trying to put the eponymous heroine behind bars for her vigilante activities.
• A non-cop example, and arguably the most prominent comic-book example; J. Jonah Jameson, former editor of the Daily Bugle and current mayor of New York, and perpetual thorn in the side of Spider-Man. Depending on who's writing him, he's depicted as total Jerkass, or as a semi-honorable businessman. When Peter was framed for murder during The Clone Saga, Jameson paid for Peter's legal defense. When Bastion threatened his life if he refused to print an editorial condemning mutants, Jameson (a civil-rights advocate) refused to give in to threats. Jameson is a skinflint, a tight-wad and on occasion a Bad Boss, but is also often portrayed as a man with a strong sense of honor and fair play. And no matter how much good Spider-Man does for the city of New York, Jameson will still make it his mission to bring Spider-Man down.
  • A lot of it comes down to his differing views of Peter Parker and Spider-Man.
• Subverted with the final Garth Ennis arc of The Punisher MAX, where a cabal of corrupt American generals (planning to go corporate) sic Delta Force on Frank Castle, both to bring him in (the generals intending to kill him) and to recover a video tape of him interrogating their agent (who'd identified them). It turns out that the unit commander Colonel George Howe genuinely believes that the Punisher is a criminal who must be brought in... but, since he was rescued from captivity during the Vietnam War by Frank Castle's special operations team, he felt obligated to preserve Frank Castle's life -- wanting to put him on trial, not put him down. (Eventually the generals' liaison with the Colonel believes that that's why he was so receptive to the orders.) After Frank Castle tells him about the tape and one of the generals inadvertently exposes his motivation, Howe views the tape and decides to release Castle so that he can kill the generals... but since the tape would so damage the credibility of the military, he flat-out tells Castle that he won't reveal the generals' crimes.

Fan Fiction

• Serenity: In the The Horseshoe Nails series by Dyce, the Operative actually takes the name Javert. The second Operative appears to take the name Marius, although this is only mentioned in passing. 'Marius has been shot, which is keeping with the literature but should not be encouraged.'

Film

• While Inspector Uhl in the film The Illusionist is tireless in his pursuit, he is a likeable guy and more of an Obstructive Bureaucrat than an actual villain.
• Anatoly Sidorov from Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.
• The Operative in Serenity is a case where a government assassin fits the character type. He's after River in order to protect the Alliance's secrets, and doesn't ask what those secrets are because he believes wholeheartedly in the Alliance's vision of a "world without sin." He only stops when his idealistic vision of the Alliance is shattered with the knowledge of River's secret.
• Detective Spooner in the film I Robot is a subversion, as he is the main character. In his determination to apprehend Sonny for murder, he stumbles across something even more sinister... And it turns out he's right.
• Hobbs in Fast Five is characterized this way until he decides to help Dom because his team was killed and he wants revenge. After an Enemy Mine for a day or two, he gives Dom a mercy lead.

Hobbs: Give me those documents. *throws them aside* All I care about is that Toretto is a name on a list!

• The Fugitive: Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard. Emphasized by the dialogue between him and Kimble in the sewer:

Kimble: I didn't kill my wife! Gerard: I don't care.

• • The chase through the sewer is itself a blatant reference to Les Misérables, which has a similar scene towards the end of the book.
  • He gets another taste of Javert-hood in the sequel, U.S. Marshals.
• The main bad guy in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay could be seen as a parody/deconstruction of this trope, showing just how irrational, prejudiced and wilfuly ignorant a law enforcement official would need to be to believe the protagonists really are terrorists.

"It's obvious these kids are innocent, but you're too dumb to realise it"

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Commodore Norrington is midway between this and Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist; he has every reason to go after Jack Sparrow, but he doesn't have all the facts about Will Turner. He's also most definitely a good guy in the first film.
• Impresario Tetti-Tatti in "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met" segment of Make Mine Music. And he mistakenly believes Willie the Whale has swallowed opera singers by (mis)interpreting the Bible story of Jonah and the whale.
• Billy Dee Williams in Abel Fererra's Fear City.
• Dark City: Inspector Frank Bumstead hotly pursues protagonist John Murdoch for a series of murders that John is innocent of. The reality-twisting alien Strangers have created the murders but were interrupted before they could create the murderer! John is eventually arrested, but Frank's open mind has been picking up on the real story: when John demonstrates world-view shattering abilities to manipulate reality himself Frank is ready to be recruited to fight the real villains. And then he gets hurled into space.
• Red: Agent William Cooper. He's a CIA agent tasked to hunt down the main characters and doesn't question the motive behind the mission because he's just simply doing his job. Once he discovers the real truth behind the kidnapping of the Vice President and the conspiracy behind it, he not only lets the main characters go, but shoots his boss dead and then "handles" the fallout of the whole affair.
• Henry Burke in Race to Witch Mountain, a Men in Black-type government operative, whose job is to hunt down and capture the two aliens running around - he doesn't care if the aliens appear to be human teenagers.
• Inspector John Acheson, in 2010's The Tourist. He wants to continue pursuing clever thief Alexander Pearce, even after Pearce leaves a check to cover the 'seven hundred and forty four million' he owed in back taxes. But Acheson's superior overrides him, pointing out that all Pearce did was steal from a gangster.
• Although not law enforcement, Principal Rooney from Ferris Buellers Day Off is scarily obsessive about catching Bueller to the point of landing him in this trope.
• Gustave the Station Inspector in Hugo.
• Sheriff Cooley in O Brother, Where Art Thou? starts off chasing the main characters legitimately--they are, after all, escaped convicts--but displays all the self-righteous personality associated with the trope, and his true colors come through when he persists in trying to capture and hang the Soggy Bottom Boys after they have publicly earned the Governor's pardon (and he knows it).
• Timekeeper Leon in In Time: the sad part is, in a way he ends up triggering off the entire catastrophe his job is designed to avoid, simply because he cannot or will not accept that a wealthy man with a century-plus on him could voluntarily relinquish that time to someone else. Had he been less zealous, one suspects that Will Salas would eventually have married into the Weis family (the film makes clear the attraction between him and Sylvia), and been in a perfect position to accomplish from within what he risked a lot to accomplish from without.

Literature

• Mr. Fix, Around the World in Eighty Days
• Inspector Russell Flint in Tom Sharpe's novel Wilt. He's even worse in The Movie based on the book.
• Bezu Fache in The Da Vinci Code.
• Paula Myo from the Pandora's Star series by Peter F. Hamilton is genetically engineered to be an Inspector Javert, to the point where she turns in her parents, who kidnapped her at birth for their crimes. When circumstances force her to decide between arresting the Well-Intentioned Extremist and saving the human race from extinction, she suffers a near-fatal nervous breakdown.
  • Technically a direct homage to Les Misérables, since Javert DOES suffer a nervous breakdown (and commits suicide), when Valjean's compassion forces him to confront the reality that morality and law are not the same thing.
• Inspector Glebski from The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is a rare example of the main character playing Javert. He has some pretty good reasons, but eventually his actions are directly responsible for the Downer Ending.
• Harry Potter: The ministry tracking down Sirius Black. And the dementors, who turn out to really don't care whether the tracked one is guilty -- if they have the opportunity to kill, they will.
  • Unfortunately, they don't usually kill.
• Morgan, from The Dresden Files. He starts out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist and almost malicious about it, but after seven books or so his opinion of Harry gets upgraded to "reckless and unpredictable but probably not evil". He's at least suspicious until the book he dies in, but he eventually becomes willing to listen to Harry and give him a chance.
  • Murphy occasionally acts as this, as well, though only in the first book-- after Harry fully explains The Masquerade to her in Summer Knight (rather than giving her minimum information as cases demanded), she's much more cooperative.
• And the original deserves a mention, too. In his face, the narrator describes seeing "what could be called all the evil of good."
• John Mandrake, from the Bartimaeus trilogy, is a fairly high-ranking government official charged with wiping out the Resistance. He genuinely believes the Government to be in the right, and continues hunting down the final member of the Resistance until the government collapses and demons attack London.
• Inquisitor Thaddeus in the Warhammer 40000 novel Bleeding Chalice.
• The Furies in the first Percy Jackson and The Olympians book
• Jan Bublanski in The Girl Who Played with Fire.
• Sherlock Holmes and his brother, Mycroft, in the Enola Holmes series. In this case, they are simply doing what they thought was right trying to find their naive 14 year old runaway sister and force into Finishing School before something terrible happens to her. However, by the end of the series over that year of hunting her, Sherlock slowly realizes that Enola has grown into a capable young woman and a brilliant professional detective in her own right. As such, his determination to capture Enola fades until he helps her prove herself to Mycroft who soon respects her liberty.
• Vimes technically should be this (Carcer claims to be a Valjean type) in Night Watch, but since the whole thing subverts/inverts/parodies the hell out of Les Mis plus he needs to play his own mentor, it doesn't come through so obviously.
  • Carcer is also a Serial Killer and Complete Monster that really needs to be tried, found guilty and executed to stop his troublesome habit of killing people for his own pleasure; as one of his co-conspirators points out, he's the kind of man who joins the military solely for the pillaging.
  • If anything, Vimes is an inversion of this trope. Really, the best way to explain it is that the original Javert sees justice as punishment of the guilty, while Vimes- flawed man that he may be- wholly believes it's protection of the innocent.
• Chauvelin of The Scarlet Pimpernel -- hmmm... must be a French thing.
• In the Gaunt's Ghosts novel Blood Pact Inquisitor Rime seems too eager to see Gaunt guilty of being a Chaos agent. When it turns out that Rime is really a Chaos officer, things suddenly make so much sense.

Live-Action TV

• Lieutenant Gerard, The Fugitive
• Jack McGee, The Incredible Hulk
• Detective Crumb, Early Edition
• Danny Concannon, The West Wing
  • Although he doesn't actually believe the White House is crooked -- he's just making sure it doesn't get crooked.
• At least in the first season of Angel, there was a detective named Kate who pursues Angel and his team somewhat relentlessly. Although sometimes she's an ally, eventually she turns into nothing but the Inspector Javert of the show, after her father is killed by vampires and she blames Angel. Later, Holtz takes up the role, though it's a bit more ambiguous as the crimes he seeks justice (or, increasingly, vengeance) for are ones Angel has undeniably committed.
• Colonel Lynch, Colonel Decker, and General Fulbright on The A-Team.
  • General Fulbright doubles as a General Ripper.
• The cops and prosecutors from Perry Mason. This is a slight variant in that they believe the hero's clients to be guilty, rather than the hero himself.
• In an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a renegade Star Fleet officer acknowledges Captain Sisko's pursuit of him as well-intentioned, while he considers himself a Jean Valjean character. Sisko's reaction is to "become Javert", and act like a villain, manipulating his quarry into surrendering in an act of self-sacrifice. He does this by releasing a chemical weapon on a human-inhabited world.
• 24 does this. All the time. The latest one has been Special Agent in Charge of D.C. Branch, Larry Moss, who believes Jack Bauer has gone off the far end with the death of Bill Buchanan, and is off on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against everyone who has wronged him.
• All forms of law enforcement in Supernatural are after the brothers for the various crimes they have committed and been framed for over the course of their demon hunting careers. At one point when they realise that the FBI has an entire division working on their case they just sit, stare at each other and realise just how royally screwed they are if anyone catches them.
  • The Inspector Javert in this case is Agent Henricksen, who eventually comes around to the Winchesters' innocence in "Jus in Bello," before being killed by the Big Bad.
• The marshal pursuing Kate on Lost He finally caught her, but then died in the plane crash.
• This from Prison Break's creator and head writer: When the second season of Prison Break was pitched to the network as something akin to The Fugitive, executives asked the writers to include a "Tommy Lee Jones" antagonist to hunt down the protagonists. This led to the character of FBI Agent Mahone, who spent the first seven episodes portrayed as an intense, intelligent but well-intentioned FBI manhunter. Then he started murdering the fugitives, on the orders of the evil Company who threatened to kill his wife and son if he didn't comply. It got worse from there. Mahone's intelligence and ability to rival Michael turned him into an Ensemble Darkhorse. In the following seasons, Mahone's crimes committed while in pursuit of the protagonists ruined his role as Inspector Javert and made him part of the criminal team, and therefore one of the "good" guys.
• Lt. Jon Kavanaugh of The Shield fits, though his target, Vic Mackey, isn't innocent to say the least despite being the protagonist.
• Almost every season of Charmed had an SFPD detective out to expose the Halliwells, due to the proliferation of incidents that they seemed to be on the periphery of. Whether eventual ally, lover or near-caricature (Season 8's Sheridan actually best fits the Javert description) one and all tend to suffer for getting between the Halliwells and those targeting them.
• Detective Dorn from Deadly Games was following the Charmed path, but the series was Cut Short before his investigation got very far.
• Doubly subverted by Detective Tritter of House MD: he's really out for personal revenge against House, but House really is guilty of abusing prescription drugs.
  • Tritter's entire basis for squeezing the hospital and House was that he was a suspected drug dealer, which is laughable considering how obsessive House is about about hoarding his Vicodin.
• Francis in the television version of Logan's Run swings between this and Smug Snake
• Bilar Crais from Farscape is a combo if this and It's Personal, spending pretty much all of Season 1 being the Big Bad, trying to bring to justice/get revenge on John for accidentally causing the death of Crais' brother.
• John Doggett on The X-Files starts out as this.
• Numerous characters from the Law and Order universe go through this from time to time, but the most egregious examples have been Jack McCoy and Elliot Stabler, both of whom have done things during cases that should have gotten them fired or even locked up.
• Doctor Who: The Judoon seem to be a whole race of Inspector Javerts. Ruthless, efficent, logical, and not really caring about the morality of the crime or sentence. That said, they will follow the laws of the planet they are on, such as following the speed limit in a car chase and handing out a promise to return/repay the car's owner for the trouble. Justice must be served.

Theater

• In the broadway remake of Les Mis, the literal Inspector Javert is a flanderized version of himself. He comes across as completely obsessed with catching Valjean and Valjean alone, as opposed to being the well-intentioned extremist he is in the novel. It's mainly due to the necessary distillation of the 1900+ pages that was the original work.

Video Games

• The cops and prosecutors from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney are similar to the ones in Perry Mason... well, except for Manfred von Karma in the first game, who knows damn well who the real killers are, being one of them himself.
  • Franziska doesn't care if the defendant is guilty or innocent, as long as she wins the trial.
  • Edgeworth in particular is like this toward the end of the first game's second case (when Phoenix is the defendant). Not too long afterward, this trope gets subverted at the end of the third case when Edgeworth is convinced that Phoenix's client is innocent and joins Phoenix in going after one of the witnesses.
  • Shi-Long Lang, and his relentless hunt to convict criminals and his dislike for Edgeworth because he's a prosecutor, despite him reforming. Amusingly his wolf-like design inverts Javert's description as 'a Dog among Wolves.'
• Carla and Tyler from Fahrenheit (2005 video game).
  • Subverted in that they are absolutely correct in their suspicions of Lucas; just the Ancient Conspiracy is far more important than the murder he committed.
• Heavy Rain, Spiritual Successor of Fahrenheit, has Lt. Blake thinking that Ethan Mars, the Red Herring suspect, is the Origami Killer. He's wrong.
• Goyoda Heiji/Bob Copper in Mega Man Star Force. He has a valid reason to believe Mega Man is bad in the anime, as he at one point cuts open a truck full of radio viruses slated (presumably) for cleaning or deletion while trying to escape a particularly nasty enemy.
  • Though the man is hilariously incompetent at this, despite being very competent at everything else regarding his job, and very, very persistent. Geo seems to be incredibly good at this Clark Kenting thing.
• Leblanc, Adecor, and Boccos from Tales of Vesperia. They never quit chasing Yuri. Even when you fight Adecor and Boccos in the Coliseum, they're still trying to arrest him.
  • Flynn plays the part for a bit with Yuri, too.
• To some extent Vhailor from Planescape: Torment qualifies for this role. Although the nature of the story makes it go a rather unusual route.
  • To such a great extent that it gave him superhuman powers. He was conscious of it, and so was The Nameless One, whose Genre Savvy Practical Incarnation decided to bottle him up, not just to put a halt to his relentless pursuit, but for later use.
• Maiev Shadowsong in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.
  • Technically, a subversion. After all, the man she's hunting - Illidan Stormrage - had already slaughtered entire Elven villages and burned them to the ground.
  • She becomes this if the player accepts the Family-Unfriendly Aesop that said rampage can be forgiven if Illidan saves his love interest, although said interest loves his brother more. Remember kids, it's okay to commute a life sentence/execution to exile if the offender is family and does what he would have done anyway!
    • He was also going to save the world by killing the Lich King, but maybe that's not important enough.
      • 'Save the world' by blowing it up. Killing the Lich King in the way he'd planned would've split the continents all over again.
      • It's quite likely Illidan didn't know that would be the result his actions, he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist with a bad habit of not thinking his plans through, believing it will work out because he's the one doing it.
• Deputy Chief Jim Bravura in the original Max Payne. He returns in the sequel as Da Chief with the eponymous protagonist serving under him.
• The police in Jet Set Radio, to an extent; the main characters are fighting for free expression, but since they do so via graffiti...
• Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Sonic The Hedgehog 3: Knuckles in his original appearance.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog: The G.U.N Commander, who wanted Shadow captured, dead or alive.
  • Sonic 2006: Subverted with Silver, thinking Sonic was the Iblis Trigger. He's actually right, but not in the way he predicted.
• Final Fantasy IX: As The Captain of Alexandria's 'Knights of Pluto', Steiner is naturally distrustful of Zidane's intentions with Princess Garnet. Zidane's a decent guy, though, if a bit of a Chivalrous Pervert.
• Agent Nightengale from Alan Wake has convinced himself that the eponymous hero is responsible for his own wife's dissappearance, and is utterly bullheaded towards any attempts, by Alan or otherwise, to dissuade him of this.
• Carmelita Fox from Sly Cooper believes Sly is nothing but a low-life criminal and will try to gun him down whenever she sees him. Sly's actually more of an Anti-Hero who steals from other criminals for his own purpose, but he's a whole lot better than the baddies in the series.
• In the Templar path of Dragon Age II, Knight Commander Meredith believes that Hawke somehow masterminded the entire Mage-Templar conflict and that he/she is a greater threat to Kirkwall than the rogue Circle that Hawke just helped her to Annul. At the beginning of the Final Battle she prays to the Maker to give her the strength to defeat the great evil she imagines Hawke to be. She has a moment of doubt when she realizes she's losing, but it passes quickly.

Webcomics

• Miko Miyazaki from Order of the Stick at first, until she pretty much goes off the deep-end thinking she is the 12 gods' vessel.
• Agent Rammer from Sluggy Freelance relentlessly tries to capture Dr. Schlock and Aylee, who are, admittedly, often on the murky side of the moral spectrum.
• Klaus Wulfenbach from Girl Genius. He's chasing down Agatha when she hasn't done anything yet...but he has very good reason to not want an "untried Heterodyne heir" running amok through Europe. He also believes her to be The Other, given that the last time he met Agatha she was possessed by The Other. In the current arc, he'd be willing to ignore his grievous injuries and knock down Castle Heterodyne to get at her...if his own son wasn't in there too.
• Captain Jhalm from Digger believes that Digger is dangerous and repeatedly tries to capture her.
  • To be fair, he tells Digger that he had almost learned to trust her...and then she led an angry hyena warrior right to him, and he lost an eye in the battle. Granted, Digger did not set Jhalm up on purpose, but she walked away rather than help him, and later made friends with the hyena.
• Emile Severin from Sire. He rescues Susan and Anna, only to slug Susan for her own brutality, then takes them to his boss. It's apparent that he couldn't care less about them, so long as each gets what they deserve. It doesn't hurt that He's related to the actual Javert, either.

Western Animation

• One episode of Thomas the Tank Engine had Thomas run afoul of a particularly over zealous constable who makes a big deal out of Thomas travelling down a tramway without cowcatchers and side plates, to which Thomas remarks that he doesn't catch cows. The constable marks Thomas as a regular law breaker, despite the fact that his predecessor whom Thomas was good friends with had no problem with Thomas using that road. Supplementary materials written by the Reverend Awdry explain that the offending officer enforced small laws that none of his peers really cared about.
• Agent James Bennet in The Zeta Project genuinely believes that Zeta has been turned against them and is a threat. Despite the number of times he has saved people, the comments of his own team, not to mention the time Zeta saved his own son.
  • This may have changed when he overheard the chip in Zeta's head was an conscious chip, and is indeed not with the terrorists. However the show was canceled before anything could be shown.
• Swat Kats: Commander Feral, continually running them down to the media for the property damaged caused by actually stopping the threats to the public. At least partially because he and the Enforcers are unable to.
• Truant Officer Langley Turk from Fillmore.
• Flint in G.I. Joe: Renegades.
• WALL-E: The Microbe Obliterator (M-O) takes great pride in his work. Whatever contaminants enter his domain are throughly purged with the efficiency only a robot can have. He sees WALL•E as a cancer upon the great Axiom, as the trash-compacting robot unintentionally leaves filth and pestilence in his wake. M-O knows not and cares not for why WALL•E has come to the Axiom. He only knows that WALL•E must be cleansed. Nothing will distract him from his goal. Not distance, not danger, not even the rules that he has lived by his entire life. The road is long, for he must purge the filth that serves as his trail to the heretic. But when he finds WALL•E, he will be at his weakest. He will be at his mercy. And he will be cleansed. And then they'll become BFF.
• Power Ranger Expies the S-Force from Megas XLR come to Earth to fight Coop because they think he's a bad guy. So does their regular arch-nemesis, who wants to team up with him. Coop's attempts to prove that he is a good guy don't work out very well.
• Leela is like this towards Fry when they first meet on Futurama.
• The Van Helsing parody Ludwig Von Goosewing in Count Duckula, who is fundamentally incapable of grasping that his quarry is a harmless Vegetarian Vampire.
• Captain Gantu and Agent Pleakely act as this in Lilo and Stitch.
• In Big Hero 6, Chief Cruz acts like this towards the heroes seeing them as vigilantes interfering with law enforcement. Crux goes far to endorse his daughter's journalism in order to unmask the heroes.
• In Tales of Arcadia has a few examples of this:
  • Trollhunters, Louis Scott acts like this towards Toby Domzalski, one of the heroes. Though its mostly because the boy is dating his daughter but the Overprotective Dad abuses his police authority to try and scare the kid.
  • 3Below, Colonel Kubritz head of Area 49-B, a top-secret alien-hunting facility fanatically hunts the alien heroes despite the lack of evidence that they are a danger to a planet. Xenophobic to the extreme she was unwilling or perhaps incapable of seeing reason on the possible good in aliens. Though her xenophobia was not enough to make a deal with an alien tyrant to acquire more power in the name of protecting the planet. It was only until she acquired her payment and saw what she wrought did she attempt to do her job.
• Lieutenant Frump from The Real Ghostbusters, makes no secret that he despises the Ghostbusters, seeing them as frauds and wishes them to be placed in prison. Though he is still a reasonable cop as during a case involving the Headless Horsemen he believed the Ghostbusters were guilty as they appeared at several locations where the ghost haunted. After seeing them defeat the ghost terrorizing the streets accepted that they were innocent of a crime.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 has Dirk Savage the Mutant Hunter. Hired by the a wealthy billionaire of New York, he hunts and captures many of New York City's mutants, believed that all mutants were evil, including the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Little does he know that the man who hired him was a mutant himself and used Dirk to create his mutant army.