History Main / DefectiveDetective

[[TVGenius The genius]] ones are nerds with trouble getting along with people or worse, have social or personality disorders. The hard-working ones are [[MarriedToTheJob workaholics]] who [[WhenYouComingHomeDad let their family relationships slide]] because they're never home. The overworked and nervous ones dabble in drugs and court substance addictions (or [[VampireDetectiveSeries blood]]). The FilmNoir detective and his descendants have terrible luck with women, who either end up [[CartwrightCurse dead]], broken or distant; if he has a wife he may be cheating on her. And gods help him and his friends if some of the bad guys or associates that they helped put in the clink come back to haunt him. And his personal finances are probably gone thanks to being TheGamblingAddict.

* DI Chandler from ''Series/{{Whitechapel}}'' has OCD. Normally it manifests itself in a need to have everything neat and orderly (to the point where he makes sure clean clothes and soap are near at hand), but the stress of the job can have Chandler going into a full-blown breakdown. He's been shown stuck in his office going through a counting compulsion, repeatedly turning the lights on and off in a sequence as his panic increases because he knows he has to stop and leave but he compulsion prevents him from doing so.

* Michael Jericho of "Jericho of Scotland Yard" embodies this trope: His father was a DirtyCop who was shot in front of him, and Jericho spends his entire career simultaneously trying to show his dead father up and make his dead father proud of him. He has no life outside his work, the only girl he ever loved married someone else while he and his partner Clive Harvey were off fighting in WWII, and his call-girl sometime-girlfriend winds up being basically kidnapped by the man who brought down Jericho's father. This leads him to be driven, harsh, and in so much pain it's difficult to watch at times.
* The title character of the obscure Canadian comedy show ''Butch Patterson: Private Dick'' is this PlayedForLaughs. Butch is a chronic alcoholic who prematurely ejaculates, continually wets his pants, often wakes up in alleys or the woods either with his pants down or dressed in drag after his drinking binges, suffers from kleptomania, has a disturbing tendency to try on lingerie, is banned for life from the local petting zoo, says that prison isn't so bad once you get used to the sodomy, been forced to whore himself out to other men when he's flat broke, is addicted to hardcore pornography, can only get prostitutes to sleep with him, and blackmails everyone from his landlord to alcohol deliverymen.

* ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'': The titular detectives are all incapable of doing anything responsibly and [[MrViceGuy have personal issues that make them do morally questionable things]], with even the protagonist himself being unable to accept his own role as a detective. Despite being titled "master", they're seemingly only considered such because of their possession of [[MagicByAnyOtherName Forensice Fortes]] than actually being competent regarding their job.

* ''Literature/HerculePoirot'': Poirot suffers from a minor case of OCD; the books go into more detail regarding his love of neatness than [[Series/{{Poirot}} the television series]] -- the first novel actually has him finding a vital clue as a result of rearranging the decorations on a mantelpiece.

* Detective Kate Beckett on ''Series/{{Castle}}'' plays with the trope; she's clearly got issues surrounding the murder of her mother, but has apparently managed to more or less put it behind her at the beginning of the series... until Castle unwittingly digs it all up again, leading to her eventually falling back 'down the rabbit hole' into her obsession with solving it over the course of the series. Season 4 further piles on [[spoiler:by giving her psychological trauma following being shot in the chest in the Season 3 finale, leading to a complete PTSD breakdown in one episode.]] This aside this, even in the early episodes it's pretty clear that her mother's murder has left her more or less a [[TheCynic cynical]] workaholic with little capacity to enjoy life outside of her job until Castle shows up.