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1[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Golgo13_TVTropes.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:250: [[OnTheNextEpisodeOfCatchPhrase ''Do not stand behind him if you value your life...'']] ]]
3
4->''"10% talent...20% effort...30% cowardice...the remaining 40% is... probably luck."''
5-->-- '''Golgo 13/Duke Togo''', "Rockford's Ambition - Flaw in the Strategy" [[note]]Story #218[[/note]]
6
7''Golgo 13'' (ゴルゴ13, or Gorugo Sātīn) is a long-running {{Thriller}} manga, created by Takao Saito and featured in the {{seinen}} magazine ''Big Comic''. It stars the eponymous main character, a hitman, as he travels around the world taking supposedly impossible jobs and somehow (through careful planning) accomplishing them. Although many of the stories featuring Golgo 13 revolve around the current [[TheCaper assignment]], the sheer volume of installments have led to an increasing number of stories that mainly focus on his current clients or victims, with Golgo making only a token appearance (one story focused on the effect of just the threat of his presence, with Golgo never appearing in the actual story).
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9Several other stories have had him [[HistoricalInJoke making brushes with history]]: Duke Togo spent time in prison with Nelson Mandela; he was partially responsible for Princess Diana's death while assassinating a fictional counterpart of Prince Dodi Al-Fayed; he knows what happened to Raoul Wallenberg; and he even shot the ballots that would have won UsefulNotes/AlGore the 2000 U.S. Presidential elections. Needless to say not only has Golgo 13 been around but has been portrayed as being a major player in some major events.
10
11Fifty of the manga stories were adapted by Creator/TheAnswerStudio and broadcast on Creator/TVTokyo. The series ran from April 11, 2008 to March 27, 2009. The stories are almost entirely direct adaptations from the original stories with some modifications namely that they were [[SettingUpdate updated for modern times]] and shortened to fit a near half-hour format.
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13Saito mentioned in interviews that he has made draft plans on how to end the manga should it be necessary, either by him or by the editors. The manga went into its first hiatus as the longest running manga without a single interruption in May 2020, at 52 years, due to [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic the COVID-19 pandemic.]] It came back with the first chapter published on July 2020. [[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2021-07-05/golgo-13-manga-breaks-guinness-world-record-for-most-volumes/.174827 Regardless, it now holds the record for most manga volumes in history with a whopping 201 and counting as of July 2021.]]
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15Sadly, Saito passed away on September 24, 2021. With his story seemingly planned to have an ending that would be ready to publish, it would fortunately [[PosthumousCollaboration still continue with his assistants at the helm, according to his last will]].
16
17----
18!!Do not stand behind these Tropes, if you value your life:
19* ThirteenIsUnlucky: Well, unlucky for his targets.
20* TwoDVisualsThreeDEffects: The TV series uses this for automobiles in motion, "Alphonse Louis Steinbeck III" in particular is a good example.
21* AffablyEvil: Golgo is a man of (oftentimes violent) action, not words, but when he has to talk to people who aren't trying to kill or cheat him, he's rather civil and well-spoken.
22** According to the Viz release, he once "paid" a kid butterfly collector for helping him out with a rare butterfly. In the same volume, it's mentioned that he had donated to various good causes (probably as a cover for himself though).
23** He has teamed up with his clients to complete the job on separate occasions. The fact that he's willing enough to let them tag along (and most of the time, they aren't exactly TheLoad) if needed is actually pretty nice of him.
24** There have been times he accepted a lower-than-usual payment for a job from many a desperate client. (Keep in mind, his typical asking fee is $3,000,000.)
25** The weaponsmiths and contacts he employ are typically paid handsomely for their services. As a result, they are more than happy to provide tech support for him.
26* AGodAmI:
27** "Eye of God" has Dr. Belmeyer, with his impressive deductive talents and access to a highly advanced spy satellite, can see and understand nearly anything on Earth and makes actual comparisons between himself and God. He believes that if he can blackmail Golgo 13 into killing anyone he pleases, he'd be unstoppable. But can he see why Golgo shouldn't be treated like a pawn? [[EyeScream Not]][[MoeGreeneSpecial]][[LaserGuidedKarma for long...]]
28** An A.I. codenamed "Jesus" also gets this in "15-34" when it earns sentience. Its reaction? Hijack the U.S. defense network and attempt to cause World War III via mass nuke launch.
29* AceCustom: Golgo's various [=M16=]s throughout the years. In the older stories, his rifles had different carrying handles (or lost them all together) and could easily be broken apart, more so than the standard M16. The last [=M16=]A1 he used in "The Masterpiece Assault Rifle" was even mentioned to have a special "super barrel" that gave it longer range, explaining how it was able to used for slightly longer hits than its advertised maximum effective distance.
30* AllAmazonsWantHercules: The female assassins being the Amazons.
31* AllThereInTheManual:
32** Carl Gustav Horn, the editor for Viz Signature's US release of Golgo 13 manga went absolutely apeshit with detail. The appendix of all 13 volumes contains everything you'd want to know about the man himself, right down to statistical analysis of his sex habits. His favorite soap? Brown Windsor. How does he like his steaks? Medium rare. Boxers or briefs? Briefs, preferably white ones. His favorite lighter? Dunhills. His favorite cigars? Turkish medium blends.
33** It's also worth noting that Viz Media was only licensed to produce 13 volumes worth of stories as they chose not to take on the herculean task of translating the enormous number of stories into English. As a result they did their utmost to ensure readers know everything of relevance there was to know about Golgo 13 and you can pretty much consider yourself an expert on the Golgo 13 universe after reading all the appendixes in all 13 volumes.
34** The some stories were novelized at around the same time the anime came out, and they reveal interesting aspects about the side characters as well. For example, Spartacus, from "The Brute's Banquet" is revealed to be a veteran of the Sierra Leone Civil War, and of all things [[HitmanWithAHeart frequently donates his fees to help rebuild the country.]] Another rival, AX-3 from "Shadow of Death" has his background revealed: his real name is Hans Jurgens, and he's an ex-agent of UsefulNotes/TheStasi who killed 19 Germans before being transferred to [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre the KGB]] and later escaping Germany after the reunification.
35* AllWomenAreLustful: Stories typically tend to find women displaying this trope, especially where Golgo 13 is concerned. However, there have been some subversions of this.
36* AmnesiacHero: In "The Lost Assignment," Duke Togo has a loss of memory after a bomb explosion and is aided by the requisite beautiful female bystander. Being TheDeterminator, even without knowing he's a ProfessionalKiller at first, Togo gathers enough information and fragments of memory to make it to the kill zone he's selected, but the question remains: who was he meant to kill among the people assembled in the kill zone? [[spoiler:Togo fires his gun in the air several times, and the hail of bullets from several armed bodyguards somehow restore his memories. Then he's faced with killing the woman who helped him, as he must LeaveNoWitnesses. One last shot from his target's enforcer takes care of that, however.]]
37* AnimalAssassin: One story involved the villain using a ''giant aneater'' to kill people by covering them in formic acid to attract it and having it suck all their blood out.
38* AntiHero: Golgo 13; see NominalHero below. Earlier versions of him, though, have shades of UnscrupulousHero.
39* ArtShift
40* AscendedExtra:
41** A rare, cross-media example of this is the black hitman Spartacus who intially fought against Golgo in the story "The Brutes' Banquet" in the original manga. He later appears as a boss in the first NES game as well as in the TV series adaptation of original story. This gives Spartacus the distinction of being one of the only Golgo 13 characters to appear in both the manga and the media stemming from it.
42** Recurring gunsmith character Dave [=McCartney=] is a more traditional example: not only is he a semi-regular in the anime, he's also the star of the manga's first spinoff series, entitled ''Gunsmith Dave.''
43** Fanette, a young French schoolgirl is discovered to somehow possesses Golgo's genes, and appears twice in the main manga. She also got her own spinoff, ''Shojo Fanette''.
44* AssassinsAreAlwaysBetrayed: While not all of Golgo's clients have tried to betray him, a fair number have. This is the one thing guaranteed to infuriate Duke Togo, and he will do anything in his power to kill a traitorous client.
45* AwesomenessByAnalysis: Golgo does outstanding investigative work and research for every hit he makes, and measures every little detail to make sure he strikes at the exact right time. He studies his victim's habits, patterns, henchmen, and any other factor that might contribute to or hinder the assassination attempt. Even more interesting is when he investigates rival assassins, whom he sometimes has to work against. He also has myriad contacts, like investigators, weaponsmiths, etc. to provide him with all the information and equipment needed for the job. If any fictional character can give Franchise/{{Batman}} a run for his money in the CrazyPrepared department, it's Golgo 13.
46** In the fifth episode of the anime, he goes against a rival Polish sniper, Nikolai Ledelovitch. Golgo studies his technique so intensely, he actually finds a strategy to beat him based on the fact that Ledolovitch would compensate shots by moving the rifle ''a third of an inch''. The video analyst that was viewing the video couldn't even tell the movement was made. The extra intel makes all the difference as he nails both the target ''and '' Ledelovitch.
47** In the fourth episode, he startles [[TheMafia a Mafia don's]] bodyguard into drawing his gun so he could measure his draw speed. He then tricks the bodyguard into taking away Golgo's client, and when he's pulling her out of the car, he makes his move. Since the bodyguard was pulling the client out of the car with his dominant hand, he had a few microseconds of advantage at the draw.
48** And in the anime episode "Dead Angle", a young sniper called Katz Double uses this trope to work out what are supposedly the only two positions Golgo can snipe from. Duke however comes from one place the sniper insisted he wouldn't be, killing Katz as well as his target.
49** "Eye of God", included in the Viz release had a UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} satellite photo analyst attempting to turn Duke into his own BoxedCrook with the help of a top-secret stealth spy satellite; he arranged for it to be overhead both when he met with Golgo and when Duke made the contracted hit. Because the first assassination date was overcast, the analyst rescheduled for the next window. After the new time came, the analyst looked at the photo of where Golgo was supposed to shoot from -- and figured out that Duke was just standing there, ''[[IKnowYoureWatchingMe looking at the camera]]''. Just from the three times and places he was supposed to appear, Duke managed to figure out the orbit of the satellite. (See MoeGreeneSpecial below for what happened next.)
50** A few other characters get some moments of ridiculous insight. In "Murderous Crosspoints", a man who trains in the same gym as Golgo -- though he doesn't quite work out the latter is the world's greatest sniper -- still figures he can be hired as a trigger man after noticing Golgo's regime is intended for arms that are expected to hold and fire guns regularly.
51* BadassInANiceSuit: Golgo often dresses in a snazzy suit, and he's the most dangerous man on the planet.
52* BarbieDollAnatomy: Most of the [[GirlOfTheWeek Girls Of The Week]] in the series give us plenty of topless scenes, completely uncensored, but their downstairs stay Barbie.
53* BatmanGambit:
54** In "On Large Mouth Lake" Golgo is hired by the CIA to kill a DoubleAgent in a snowy area of Canada. He captures a henchwoman working for the agent, and [[UndressingTheUnconscious leaves her stripped naked in a cabin]] so that she can't escape without freezing to death. Before leaving, he tasks a local girl with watching the prisoner, and pays her with an expensive red coat. The henchwoman [[MuggedForDisguise quickly knocks the girl unconscious and steals her clothing in order to escape]], and heads off to find her boss. While the two of them are fleeing, the woman realizes too late that Golgo planned ''all of this'', and that the red coat was meant to make her stand out as a target against the white backdrop of the terrain. [[spoiler: Before she can warn her boss, Golgo kills both of them with a single shot.]]
55** In one assignment, Golgo is to take out a spy who'd seemingly engaged in a sham marriage in order to provide a cover for himself. Golgo, having learned that the couple had spent ten days in one of the greatest honeymoon destinations in the world, insists on monitoring the guy's wife, even as his clients receive information that the spy had been seen in another country. Sure enough, after a few days, the man sneaks into the city in order to see his supposedly fake wife once more, and Golgo snipes him.
56* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe:
57** In "Power to the People", a flashback is shown wherein Golgo is told of a way to escape Robben Island Prison by a younger Nelson Mandela. During story, Golgo goes uncharacteristically above and beyond during the assignment, not only wiping out the organized group of pro-apartheid Boers Mandela paid him for, but also eliminating an official who was working with them to destabilize the government and pull a coup.
58** Variation; in one story, Golgo meets up with Mandy Washington, a journalist who once tried to uncover his identity. Golgo is ''extremely'' touchy about the subject of his origins, but Mandy backed off after a third party killed his friend and scared him straight into halting his investigation into Golgo's past. As such, Golgo does not end up killing him.
59** In "Arms of the Angel, Arms of the Devil", Golgo hires a brilliant surgeon, Dr. Nick Cutter to heal his right hand. However, when Golgo discovers that his target is Cutter's adopted father, he uses his uninjured left hand, freeing Cutter of any potential guilt in the killing. Golgo does however use the right hand to assassinate his client, who had betrayed him.
60* BeneathNotice: One way Golgo infiltrates or does reconnaissance is to disguise himself as some sort of menial worker and pass right under his opponents' noses.
61* BerserkButton:
62** Golgo is a professional, thus he expects his clients to conduct their business as such. Do ''not'' betray him and do ''not'' stand behind him. It's dangerous for your health.
63** Rival hitman Ixion's was being called a "deformity".
64** ''Do not'' say no to the Rockfords. They have many means of finding where your assets are and freezing them.
65* BeyondTheImpossible: "The Glass Fortress" features a man that cannot be sniped, because he lives on an isolated, artificial island almost completely covered in bulletproof glass, and the man himself lives in a bulletproof house and never comes out. Togo scouts the location from a helicopter, but leaves, prompting the man to gloat that he's invincible, for even the great Golgo 13 can't get to him. [[spoiler: Golgo returns in the helicopter, sets up his rifle, and shoots THE POOL WAVES in such a way that the bullet is deflected into the target's head.]] To say that this would require inhuman precision in timing is an understatement.
66** Another time, the police capture Golgo, with his sniper rifle, but have to let him go because no jury on earth would believe the shot he took was actually possible. Among the difficulties: over 2km away, swirling crosswinds, a shot into the side of a moving car, visible only for a moment because of a narrow passage between two skyscrapers in the way, with the sun glinting off the windows of both the car and the skyscrapers.
67* BiggerIsBetterInBed: We don't actually see it directly, but we've definitely seen some ladies' reaction shots which would indicate such.
68* BigOlEyebrows: Duke Togo's bushy, angular eyebrows are one of his trademarks.
69* BitterAlmonds: In one episode, Golgo retaliates against an employer that betrayed him by inserting an almond-scented spray into the building's ventilation system. Fearing cyanide gas, the employer fled his secure office to an area with fresh air... that Golgo had a clear line of fire to.
70* BittersweetEnding: Golgo almost always 'wins' by killing his target, but in the process he sometimes kills or worsens the lives of sympathetic bystanders.
71** One notable case of this is in the story 'The Dark-Skinned Sniper' in which Golgo 13 darkens his skin and infiltrates a Black Panther group so that, when the group is arrested and taken to the police station, Golgo can sneak away and kill his target (who was hiding in the chief's office). Golgo kills both his target and the villainous police chief, but he abandons the Black Panthers to rot in jail, including the one that he seduced and slept with. It's implied Golgo knew the group would get arrested but didn't warn them so that he would be in position to pull off the mission.
72** 'The Midnight Sun Waits For Love' (a manga chapter which was adapted into the anime) shows an innocent woman who is grateful to Golgo for having restored her will to live by having sex with her. She winds up following him to a job, and when she sees him shoot someone, he kills her too as part of his 'leave no witnesses' philosophy.
73** There are also situations where his targets themselves are good people. He kills them as mercilessly as he kills everyone else. He's even killed children when the mission called for it.
74* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Golgo might as well have no morality at all, as all that matters to him is his job and he'll stoically take out any target, regardless of sex, age, alignment, or anything else. While off the job though, he tends to live life as neutral as possible.
75* BolivianArmyEnding:
76** The first known example of this is in "Insect - The Last Spy". After rooting out the person responsible for trying to kill him, Golgo stages an elaborate, ''Film/MissionImpossible''-style ruse with the aid of his banker to ferret out his target - by roping in a village and pretending World War II is still ongoing. When "Insect" finally reveals herself, the last we see is Golgo at the controls of the plane, just as his banker rings the town bells to signal that the job has been completed.
77** Golgo's "clients" in "Trap of the Emperor" turn out to be a father-son duo working for Leonard Dawson, who set up the contract to lure Golgo to the oil tycoon's New York office building. When Golgo escapes, the two receive the news - and the last panel has the father remember Golgo reminding them that he doesn't tolerate betrayal...
78** During "The Orbital Hit" a general who was working with Golgo under duress (and makes racist statements about him to boot) secretly sabotages the maneuvering unit on Golgo's space suit so that after the completed the mission, he'd be lost in space. Golgo figures a way out, and the capsule that he was meant to come back in is empty when the American forces find it. Believing the assassin dead, the general tenders his resignation and is driven home...but then his car passes Golgo alive and well. Although the horrified general isn't dead by the end of the story, well...
79* BoomHeadshot: Golgo 13 pretty much 'always' prefers to take out both his targets and opposition in this way.
80* BriefcaseFullOfMoney: Golgo is often paid with one of these. He shoots one in "Lucky The Swindler".
81* BrokenWinLossStreak: Despite his legend as an "unbeatable" hitman, Golgo has indeed failed twice. The first happened in "Accidental", as he never followed up on the hit after he found out who sabotaged the job. The other happened in "Rockford's Ambition - Flaw in the Strategy" where his kill was stolen by a rival sniper working for the Rockford family. Very nearly averted in "Telepath", as he indeed tried to quit the job was convinced to stay on for longer.
82* TheCasanova: Explored to an extent in Golgo 13. The title character tends to have sex before a job and does have good luck at getting women to join him in bed. However, he just as often hires prostitutes, and due to his notorious blank expression not changing, a number of readers have theorized he doesn't actually enjoy it.
83* CatchPhrase:
84** "I'll take the job."
85** "Tell me your story."
86** His typical DramaticEllipsis.
87* CatScare: Even the normally unshakable Golgo 13 has a moment when a cat jumps onto the balcony just as he's making a sniper shot. His ReflexiveResponse is to whirl to face the intruder, chambering another round as he does so...thus ejecting the cartridge case he's just fired off the balcony [[OhCrap where it's picked up by a police patrolman on the street below]]. For a brief moment, [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness Golgo actually forms an expression]]!
88* CelebrityImpersonator: Sometimes aspiring criminals use his name or alter their appearance in order to use Golgo's reputation for their own ends. [[TooDumbToLive That is to say, the reputation he earned by being the deadliest assassin in the world]]. Mmyyeah...
89* CharacterizationMarchesOn: The first few stories had Golgo more expressive and sloppy. These gradually faded, with annotations explaining these as being Golgo maturing into his job.
90* CheatersNeverProsper: Hiring Duke Togo to sabotage or slay a target is the only "fair" cheat you can possibly do in this series. He's often hired to clean up after his clients' screw-ups or finds himself having to retaliate when they try to betray him.
91* TheChessmaster:
92** Unsurprisingly, Golgo himself shows some tendencies of these when he plans his hits. If he's against say, a rival sniper, overwhelming security, or if the target is out in the open, chances are, he ''never'' goes for the first place everyone expects to, usually going for the least likely spot. However, he generally does these when he needs to, if nobody's watching him, he'll go take the simple route instead.
93** Golgo's target, Nuols, in the two-part story consisting of "Checkmate" and "Stalemate" is a good example. A wealthy man and an expert at chess, he decides to play an elaborate game with the hitman [[spoiler: all while he is SecretlyDying of an illness that will kill him in six months.]]
94** Defied in one story wherein a person who played war games as a hobby hired Golgo and betrayed him by warning the target and expecting Golgo to be killed or captured after killing him. It's mentioned that he'd gotten so used to manipulating game pieces (which do as you plan for them to do) that he'd erroneously thought they were the same thing as the people they were supposed to represent.
95* CoitusUninterruptus: Golgo 13 has occasionally had informants walk in on him while in the middle of intimate sessions with women. He doesn't at all act surprised as his expression doesn't change one bit.
96** On one occasion, police officers arrested him while he was having sex. When he stood up, he didn't... how shall we put this... "lay down". One cop was surprised, the other disgusted.
97** Another incident has him disguised as a black man. Whilst having a make-out session with the story's love interest, cops in the employ of the target swoop in and arrest everyone in the compound he's in.
98* ColdSniper: Might as well be the Trope Image.
99* ComicBookTime: By all rights he ought to be in his early 70s at the least, but that damn expressionless face doesn't seem much more wrinkly than it's ever been. Then again, maybe he's been spending his fees on plastic surgery. Or maybe he's a JustForFun/TimeLord.
100* CompetencePorn: The reason for Togo's success isn't just because of his reflexes. Many of his hits show the slow and methodical process of him researching and preparing for his shot, which makes the payoff all the sweeter when his various targets and rivals, who were so assured of their strategies, realize they've been outplayed.
101* ConsummateProfessional: He was, for a time, the page picture for a reason. You hire him, he does the job. No exceptions. His client died before he could fulfill the contract? ''He does the job. No exceptions.'' His target is a child, so it'll reveal he's actually a HitmanWithAHeart, right? '''[[WouldHurtAChild He does the job. No exceptions.]]'''
102* ContractOnTheHitman: Although Duke Togo is strictly a freelance agent, he's frequently been double-crossed by his employers. This never ends well for them, since it's the closest thing to a BerserkButton that he has. And seriously, why do they even bother? The guy's so much of a ConsummateProfessional that, as long as you pay him and don't betray him, he'll ''never'' come after you (unless someone else hires him to do so later) or reveal your secrets to anyone.
103** On some occasions these contracts are made by non-employers. "The Masterpiece Assault Rifle" for instance involves an arms dealer named Kaizer who hires two mercenary brothers to kill Golgo 13. This is to prove the superiority of the two technologically advanced rifles he's given to them, which he believes will render Togo's preferred M16 firearm obsolete. Doing this, he believes, will result in military forces across the world flocking to buy them.
104* ConvictionByCounterfactualClue: Not exactly conviction and not exactly counterfactual, but pretty much every time anyone hears the name "Duke Togo" they immediately identify it as Japanese. While Togo ''is'' a Japanese last name, the idea that people wouldn't initially mistake it for Italian or Greek or something is ridiculous.
105* CoolCar: Duke likes to drive fast rides, mostly non-Japanese cars such as Mustangs.
106* ContinuityNod: Despite the generally episodic nature of the series as a whole, there are infrequent winks and nods to Golgo's past jobs on occasion. This is more significant in the early days.
107* CowardlyLion: Duke describes cowardice as, ironically enough, part of the reason why he's so successful as it makes him a lot more alert and pragmatic.
108* CowboyCop: Agent Daches in the story "An Offering to God" can be considered this and Golgo uses this character trope as part of a BatmanGambit. During the story, Daches, who is determined to arrest Golgo, orders FBI agents to steal some items from Golgo's car to cover for an illegal search. Duke reports the stolen items which includes a plastic gun capable of shooting a single bullet which he used in an earlier assassination. The FBI can't say he's lying without admitting to the break-in, thus incriminating Daches for ordering the search.
109* DatedHistory: Martin Bormann appears as the leader of a Nazi revial group in the 1980s. At the time, there was still speculation that he'd managed to survive the fall of Berlin, but his skeleton was found in 1972 near a Berlin bridge and confirmed to be him in 1998.
110* DeclarativeFinger: If someone's holding a finger up in this series, they're almost always giving exposition, almost always to Duke Togo.
111* DefeatingTheUndefeatable:
112** Golgo has built his entire reputation on doing hits that most would deem impossible.
113** That being said, despite this and his reliability, he has been beaten on several occasions. The first was by weapons sabotage, the second was having his kill outright stolen by a rival.
114* DeadpanSnarker: Earlier installments tended to have Golgo make wisecracks this way. For instance, in the 1975 story "The Orbital Hit", when he's accused of eavesdropping on a meeting in the Oval Office of the U.S. White House during TheSeventies:
115-->'''Golgo:''' Well, this is Washington... It happens all the time.\
116'''Everyone else in the room:''' ''[[BorrowedCatchphrase ...]]''
117* DescriptionPorn: The manga is well-noted for this, especially when clients have to provide information about their targets to Golgo 13.
118** The TV series is no exception either. However, description-laden conversations are noticeably shortened from their original manga versions given the half-hour time format episodes are in.
119* {{Determinator}}: Golgo is capable of being this, but he'd much rather thoroughly prepare to ensure the success of his jobs and he's perfectly fine with taking special measures if the limitations of his body aren't up to snuff.
120* DistressedDude: Golgo 13 commonly finds himself in this position though he usually has little trouble getting himself out.
121* DramaticEllipsis: Duke is a master of this.
122* TheDreaded: To the point that there was one story focusing on how the threat of his presence affected people, even though Golgo himself never appeared at all (not in the sense that he was there but kept "offscreen", he was literally not there at all).
123* DullSurprise: Golgo's famous lack of expression. Lampshaded in the story "[[PsychicPowers Telepath]]":
124-->'''KGB official:''' ''I would like to have seen his expression when he missed... I bet it was the first expression he ever had!''
125* DyeingForYourArt: In-universe, it was enforced in one adventure, when the people he was working for treated him harshly and whipped him in order to pass him off as a common prisoner without warning him first. He's a bit annoyed but quite calm about it afterward, possibly because they sent a lady to his hotel room as compensation.
126* EvilCripple: "The Glass Fortress" features a character representing this trope. He is the owner of a high class rehab center located on an island entirely encased in bulletproof glass and only reachable by boat or helicopter. He's in a wheelchair, but spends all his time inside one of the glass buildings, the angle of which makes it impossible to shoot him... or it would be, for anyone who isn't Golgo 13.
127* ExactWords: Golgo will do the job he's hired for, no more, no less. He won't shoot at anyone or anything not directly mentioned in the contract unless he believes that doing so is necessary to complete the contract or to get away after doing so.
128** A good example of this is in "Sharp Shoot on the G String" where Thomas Simpson, a violinist, hires him to snipe a string on a violin played by his rival, Sergei Kerensky, during a major performance in the hopes of ruining it. Golgo does this, but said rival calmly re-tunes his instrument and continues the performance with the remaining strings. Golgo's reaction? He leaves. Simpson only hired him to shoot the string and he shot the string. That it didn't have the ultimate effect his client hoped for wasn't his problem.
129** Golgo also sometimes combines this with FalseReassurance. In 'A Fierce Southern Current' he promises a guy that he won't shoot him, and he doesn't. Instead he shoots the guy's oven so it explodes and kills the guy.
130** He can be subject to this, as well. When the Freemasons attempt to hire him to rescue an abducted John Paul II, Golgo turns it down because he doesn't do retrievals. His client then reframes the job as "Find the men who kidnapped the Pope and kill them, then find the men holding the Pope and kill ''them''." Golgo takes the job.
131* ExpensiveGlassOfCrap: In "Wine of Renown", a wine maker who had been in the habit of selling lesser vintages in bottles labelled as being from notable years to customers who he deemed as unworthy of drinking France's finest wines. If the customer found out, he would weasel out of it by claiming that if the allegedly fine wine tasted the same as the lesser wine, it just meant that the customer didn't have the palate to tell the difference. Then one customer decided to test the vintner's trustworthiness by having his ostensibly first rate purchase be opened and tasted by world-renowned sommeliers in public. Knowing that this would result in his scam being exposed and the reputation of his winery being ruined for all time, the vintner hires Golgo to destroy the bottle before anyone can drink from it.
132* {{Expy}}:
133** Golgo is by all appearances, a darker version of James Bond.
134** Saito probably referenced this again in the story "The Cheerful Sniper" when he pits Golgo against a freewheeling playboy assassin who likes a good drink and like Golgo, ReallyGetsAround (but in contrast, is more open about it).
135** ''Rockford's Ambition - Flaw in the Strategy'' sees the Rockfords consult a dead ringer for UsefulNotes/HenryKissinger... except his surname is Breziner.
136* EyeScream: After Dr. Belmeyer uses his spy satellite to try blackmailing Golgo 13 into serving him, the assassin gives his little eyes (and his brain and the back of his skull) a lesson about being careful what they see. (He also plugs the general the doctor was working with through the eye first so he'll know what's coming to him).
137* Fiction500: At 3 million a job and countless jobs, Golgo makes a ''lot'' of money. At one point he bought an entire building just so he could blow it up - it was between the best secure firing position he could find and the place where his target would be out in the open, and he needed to clear the firing lane. However, there have been multiple times when he's been forced to lose his entire fortune, so his actual wealth varies depending on his recent adventures.
138* FilmNoir: The mood constantly comes across this way--especially when the episode takes place in the city.
139* GambitPileup: One client of Golgo's hired him to take out a partner in his business so he could take it over. What the client didn't expect was that one of his disgruntled employees had swapped his lucky bowling ball for a bomb. This led to one of the only times that Golgo's been surprised.
140* {{Gaslighting}}: He smoked out the spy who'd endangered his life by spending millions of dollars on top-notch actors and 100% genuine planes and equipment in order to convince the person he suspected that World War II was still going on and that they were in danger of shot down by Germans. It took the entirety of his savings up to that point, but since said spy had arranged for the president of the secret Swiss bank his funds were kept in to try and kill him, he certainly wasn't going to be keeping his money ''there'' anymore anyway. Besides, it worked.
141* GeniusBonus: In the "Germany is One" arc, a clubs of select leaders of the EU are shown to play a tabletop game wherein they speculate upon future events of the world. Appropriately, the chapter names derive from terms within Dungeons & Dragons. The chapter in which Golgo 13 is hired is called "Cacodemon"--the name of a spell in 1st Edition D&D which summoned a powerful demon to the caster's position. And as with the spell, an error in the bargain you make with the demon means it will be able to turn on and destroy the caster--as the people who hire Golgo in that story learn after they warn the target, thinking the bodyguards or the East German police will take Golgo down after the assassination.
142* GeniusBruiser: Golgo 13 is noted for being both physically tough and also very intelligent, especially when it comes to calculations. A good example can be found in the story "The Masterpiece Assault Rifle". In it Golgo 13 engages in a sniper duel with two mercenaries using advanced rifles superior to his own M16, and modified with a unique electronic "super scope". Based on their firing patterns, he deduces that the scopes have a vulnerability in that they do not take shifts in gradient into account. He then calculates the gradient necessary for their shots to be totally inaccurate, and positions himself in an area of the battlefield with that gradient, easily blowing them away.
143* GetIntoJailFree: This happens notably in "Sleep Inside the Cage". Duke Togo allows himself to be arrested so he'll end up in the same ludicrously high-security prison as his target: a crook whose old companions are worried about spilling the beans on them.
144* GodzillaThreshold: When government agencies or fellow criminals hire a professional killer of Golgo's standing, you can bet that the job they had in mind is too difficult, dangerous, or controversial to do themselves.
145* GoodIsDumb: The occasional NiceGuy or girl is not unheard of in Golgo 13's world and come in all sizes and stations, but they're often rather oblivious to the sinister happenings around them and tend to get in the way, if not outright killed.
146* GoodScarsEvilScars: In his first appearance, Duke Togo, aka Golgo 13, had no scars. Over the course of the series, he's collected a great deal of them on his body. They're covered by clothing much of the time. As for morality, you pay him, he does the job, no moral issues involved [[ContractOnTheHitman unless you double-cross him]].
147* GoodWithNumbers: Golgo. He's a sniper, so he has to be.
148* GreyAndGreyMorality: Like Golgo, the manga often takes an objective viewpoint to the conflicts surrounding his assignments, often playing no favorites and depicting both sides as flawed.
149** In "Power to the People", an arc wherein Nelson Mandela himself pays Golgo to take out a well-organized group of pro-apartheid Afrikaners, time is taken to show both points of view.
150* GroinAttack: Curiously, Golgo has never been the subject of these, according to the Viz releases's bonus features. A karate ''dan'' who was interviewed for it noted that one could try to use it on Golgo to make him give up under torture.
151* HandicappedBadass: A once-off rival assassin [[spoiler: is blind]].
152* HandWave:
153** Downplayed. As an assault rifle, an M16 is not exactly the perfect weapon for a sniper. The Viz release explains this by pointing out Golgo typically opts to use the rifle at shorter distances, IE at around 300 meters. This is, after all, the generally accepted maximum range of the rifle. If the hit requires a longer weapon, he'll often swap the M16 for a more proper long range rifle.
154** Of course it should be noted that Golgo frequently uses [[AceCustom customized M16s]], and not the factory-created versions.
155** It should also be said that, technically speaking, at the usual ranges Golgo operates, he's not really a sniper ''per se''. [[https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/designated-marksman-the-infantry-squads-long-distance-solution/ At 300-600 meters, he's more of a designated marksman instead.]]
156* HatesSmallTalk: Golgo has shown a blatant dislike of his potential employers making small talk. Should they lapse into deviating too much from anything important and relevant to his assignment, he's not shy of telling them.
157* HistoricalDomainCharacter: As mentioned before, Golgo has had many meetings with famous real-life characters who not only have played a big role in history but have sometimes employed his services. One of the most notable has been Nelson Mandela in "Power to the People". As mentioned, Golgo shared a cell with Mandela whom later hired him to help deal with ethnic supremacists who seek to undermine the status quo of his government.
158* HistoricalInJoke: The example in the previous trope above is a good showcasing of how Golgo 13 has played a fiction-based role in helping history unfold through his assignments.
159* HitmanWithAHeart: Mostly averted. Once he accepts a job, he'll do it. He just usually doesn't accept "easy" jobs, but will kill anyone he does agree to kill, be it man, woman or child. The latter is just very, very rare. Besides, while some of his rivals tend to kill their targets in gruesome ways (like Snake in ''The Professional''), Duke does get rid of his targets quick and easy.
160** The most notable example of him showing any amount of scruples is in ''[[Anime/Golgo13 Queen Bee]]'': Golgo, in the end, goes through with the hit and kills Sonia, as he does. However, as she dies, she reveals that she wishes they had met under different circumstances and had been able to have a child from Golgo, and hires him to take out Thomas Waltham and his associates. Golgo's eyes are completely lacking their usual hardness, instead being the closest they've ever had to ''looking sad'', and as she finally lays dead, Golgo states the job WILL get done. [[Awesome/Golgo13 In the mid-credits sequence, Golgo proceeds to kill Waltham and his associates, who are cruising on a yatch, from the beach, in 30 seconds.]]
161* HostageSituation: Golgo has been contracted with helping to end hostage situations typically by eliminating hostage takers. The stories "At Pin-Hole!", "Jet Stream", and "Angry Waves", involve Golgo being tasked with eliminating very delicate hostage situations in land, air, and sea, respectively.
162* HyperAwareness: In "Eye of God" Dr. Belmeyer's incredible talent for accurate interpretation of the images taken by the observational Keyhole-13 satellite in orbit effectively make him a living interface between the satellite and people on the ground. He can, by looking through its "eyes", effectively see nearly anything on the Earth.
163* IKnowYoureWatchingMe:
164** As mentioned under AwesomenessByAnalysis, Golgo did this with a spy satellite in the manga story "Eye of God".
165** In "Telepath", Duke Togo has a NotSoStoic moment when he fires at a target...and misses [[InvincibleHero for the first time in his life]] because a woman pushed the target out of the way. She then turns and looks directly at where Togo is looking through the sniper scope. Turns out the woman has PsychicPowers.
166** A moviemaker decides to [[TooDumbToLive make a movie about Duke Togo carrying out an assassination]]. He has an OhCrap moment when Togo pauses while getting into a taxi to look directly at them, but his DOP assures him that at the distance they are filming, their camera will be too small to make out. Whether or not Togo did see them is unclear, but he picks up enough clues to work out what's going on anyway.
167* ImprobableAimingSkills: While he has these in spades, Duke does not lean on them heavily, preferring more realistic shots. If he forgoes his modded M16 during a mission for a specialized long-range rifle, you know he's going to use them, though he is capable of doing fantastic feats with his M16. Examples include the following:
168** In the story "Hollywood Cinderella", he kills another person while sighting through a ''television!''
169** The story "Sharp Shoot on the G String" has him contracted to sever ''a single violin string'' in the middle of a concert, without damaging either the violinist or the violin. He was able to do this because [[CrazyPrepared he spent hours watching a tape of that performer playing that same piece in a previous concert over and over again to find the exact moment that the violinist would be holding his instrument at an angle where such a shot would be theoretically possible]]. This allowed him to work out the fraction of a second in which he could shoot a target less than a millimeter wide.
170** In the story "The Glass Fortress", he manages to ricochet a shot off of the small wave created by someone playing in a pool to score a headshot.. [[spoiler: ''twice''.]]
171** "GT The Sniper" - Duke hits a target moving in a high speed train from several thousand yards away while riding in the backseat of a moving car.
172** "At Pin-Hole!" - Similar situation: Golgo's target is a plane-hijacker. The terrain is wide open, so the only way to not be seen setting up to snipe is to do so from at least a kilometer out, and since the hijacker has a bomb, the shot must be an instant one-hit kill so that he can't set the bomb off before expiring. The plane has had its wheels shot out, causing it to slant to the side, making a poor shooting angle for anyone trying to snipe. The tire shooting out was a last minute change to buy Golgo time to set up, which means that he was also preparing for a shot at a different angle from a different range until half an hour before he got into position. Add to the fact that the sun is in the eyes of anyone trying to shoot. Golgo [[spoiler: with a highly-specialized target rifle, snipes the hijacker from 2000 meters away]].
173** "One Second Out of 36,000" - Golgo's target is in a high-security jail, protected by a revolving door. The door slides at just the right angle for a successful shot to be made, but only at one VERY particular time, and even then, it's open for one second. [[spoiler: Golgo decides to set up a position in a nearby tree and wait until that moment. He gets a muscle relaxant so his muscles won't be tense for that amount of time. And of course, he makes the shot.]]
174** The 1983 movie had him take a sniping position behind a building blocking his target's (supposedly) bulletproof penthouse suite. [[spoiler: By setting his M16 to semiauto, he looses off a burst that breaks through the windows of the building, which end up going through the penthouse's windows and nailing the target... just as he was making out with a hooker.]]
175** "Diamond vs. Diamond" - Golgo has a gunsmith make a special bullet that's made out of a diamond. He uses it to destroy a BIGGER diamond by shooting the center point of the latter.
176** Perhaps his personal best is the story "The Impossible Hit"/"Room 909", where he makes the "Impossible" and "Improbable" parts integral to the plot.
177*** To begin with, the cops manage to get all the evidence they needed to incriminate him: they found him in the only hotel room the shot could be taken from, they found the custom precision rifle he used in the dust chute, they found the shell casing from the high-powered bullet (which a patrolman picked up ''when it was still warm'', perfectly matching it to the time of death), etc. For all purposes, he was caught.
178*** Then... they did the math on the shot: he sniped from a distance of 500 meters away (that's ''five football fields''), through a two-foot gap between buildings (less than the length of ''an adult arm''), at sundown with the sun shining on the window so the glare would render it all but ''opaque'', with the wind blowing perpendicular to the line of fire requiring the shot to be ''off-center''. Oh, and he put that {{Pretty Little Headshot|s}} right between the target's ''eyes.''
179*** Final assessment; the shot was ''statistically impossible.'' They had to let him go, because a trial would be a waste of time; despite the reams of evidence, no jury on Earth would believe a human being could make that shot. And he chose the room in advance solely to take advantage of this; in order to convict him, a jury would first have to be convinced that Improbable Aiming Skills of his caliber are even ''possible''. The head inspector even comments "To prove that he's guilty, you'd have to prove there's a monster amongst us with the skills of a god."
180*** Oh, and just in passing? The shell casing was found because he ''screwed up!'' The custom rifle was a bolt-action that wouldn't have automatically ejected the casing, and he could have just broken it down and strolled away. Except he heard a noise behind him just after he fired, so his ReflexiveResponse was to work the action to chamber a round as he spun around... to see that it had been just a freaking ''[[CatScare cat]]'' knocking over a flowerpot, and [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness his eyes actually widen for a moment]] as he sees the casing fly right off the balcony and land right next to a damn ''patrol cop.'' He cooked up the whole RefugeInAudacity plan -- staying in the room he fired from for a full day afterward -- to cover for it.
181* ImprobableWeaponUser: Golgo doesn't rely on them, but he can use them when he needs to, like a gun designed for zero-recoil shooting in space, a special bullet-reflecting belt buckle, or special bullets made out of rare materials.
182* ImmuneToBullets: Many targets have bulletproof glass or something similar protecting them, though Golgo always finds a way.
183* IntimateHealing: Golgo often engages in sexual activity with women as a means of relieving tension and stress. He mainly does this before going after his targets so he is more effective in eliminating them.
184* InvincibleHero: Or AntiHero, in this case. Golgo 13 very rarely fails an assignment, or for that matter misses a shot. If he did, he'd lose his reputation as an assassin and there would be no series. Later chapters solve the problem by focusing more on the people who hire him and how their situations deteriorate to the point that they need to bring in a hitman. (Infamously, he doesn't appear in one story at all; the central character merely uses Golgo 13's reputation as a weapon.) The fact that the stories are standalone and bounce around time help in this regard. That said, his heavily scarred body shows that while he's almost unbeatable, he isn't personally invincible.
185** For completeness sake, there have been several occasions of him missing, at least once by weapons sabotage creating a misfire, as well as at least one instance in which he wasn't able to do the job because someone else killed his target first, and one complete miss caused by his bodyguard who used {{telepathy}}. He did make up for the last one by eliminating his targets in a spectacular manner though. During the misfire incident though... [[spoiler: he outright quits the job so he can hunt down the person behind the misfire.]]
186* InvisiblePresident: [[AvertedTrope Averted]]; because they have to sign off on the hiring, whenever the US government hires Golgo 13, the president in office at the time of the story's writing will make an appearance.
187* IrrevocableOrder: Once hired, Golgo 13 ''will'' kill his target. He will not accept cancellations, [[spoiler: though at one point, he's been outwitted, and on the other, he quit for personal reasons.]] If you hire him, you ''damn well'' better want the target dead.
188* ISurrenderSuckers: Duke will go to great lengths to complete a job. Such as getting arrested just to get past the layers of security a target put around himself.
189* IWorkAlone: Golgo has worked a majority of the time alone. There have been a few instance where he has been dynamic and has been seen temporarily working with others, sometimes his clients, to achieve his objectives. He also has multiple contacts from around the globe who supply him with weapons and intel on his targets. The closest he has to a true partner/sidekick is recurring character Dave [=McCartney=], a Scottish gunsmith who supplies Golgo with weapons on an infrequent basis.
190** A good example can be found in the story "Shadow of Death" ("Deadly Shadow of the Setting Sun" in the anime) where Golgo 13 teams with another assassin hired by the Soviet government, AX-3. Both have been hired to destroy a syndicate hideout where poisons are being manufactured. In what could be also considered a anti-hero variant of the PragmaticVillainy trope, Golgo 13 agrees to work with AX-3 to better destroy the hideout.
191* JerkassHasAPoint:
192* KillSat: In "The Orbital Hit", the U.S. government has a network of these in orbit, with [[UsefulNotes/PeaceThroughSuperiorFirepower nuclear missiles]].
193* KnifeThrowingAct: A hitman posing as a circus performer demonstrates his skill with his blades by throwing a knife into the bulls-eye of a dartboard, just past his girlfriend's head. She shows her own badass credentials by [[NervesOfSteel not flinching]]. After playing the trope straight on stage, he then uses his skills against Togo, who unfortunately is an unflinching badass himself.
194* LastMinuteReprieve: Played with in the story "One Minute Past Midnight". The target is a Death Row prisoner who is remarkably calm about his upcoming execution. For good reason; he's a corrupt ex-CIA agent who has enough blackmail material on the Agency that they're arranging for the state governor to grant him a last minute reprieve. The brother of one of his victims hires Golgo to kill the prisoner, even though he's behind the prison's security and a ring of protesters against the death penalty. Golgo accomplishes this by [[spoiler:assassinating ''the governor'' in his mansion, just before he can grant clemency. The CIA agent in the room with the governor can't give the failsafe code on his behalf, and despite the prisoner's suddenly frantic pleas, the execution is carried out on time.]]
195* LeaveNoWitnesses: Golgo practices this regularly. The only real exceptions are if he needs an assistant for the job or his client specifically requests to be there to see the target's end. Even then, don't try to acquire any incriminating evidence about the job if you want to live.
196* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Stories often see this trope come into play as Golgo's often faced or assigned to eliminate people even worse than he is. Even despite being despicable himself, readers are nudged into siding with him given he is comparatively less horrible than they are.
197* LighterAndSofter:
198** The ending of "The Wrong Man", in comparison to most stories. [[spoiler: A Duke Togo lookalike (with the same last name, no less) is confused for the real thing, and doesn't seem to realize the error until he is knee-deep in an assassination job. It's an honest mistake, but Duke Togo's intolerance for impersonators puts an innocent man's fate to question until the story's climax. The man lives, though it is unclear if Duke was forgiving, or actually ''using him to set up the hit''.]]
199** "The Cheerful Sniper" features very little violence, [[spoiler: and at the end, Golgo's rival in the story is the only character who ends up dead.]]
200** "Okinawa Syndrome" has Duke hired to stop Lt. Iba, an Okinawan [[TheAce hero]] of the JSDF, from launching a coup to make his homeland independent. [[spoiler:Although he assassinates the industrialist who had been manipulating Iba, he and the United States special forces placed under his command are able to defeat Iba's forces without any lives lost on either side. Golgo 13 even willingly faces Iba in a one-on-one duel, and only takes his life as the [[{{Seppuku}} second]] when Iba is DrivenToSuicide. Golgo's client in the story phrases this request as a 'professional challenge' -- "Can you ''save'' people, instead of only killing them?!"]]
201* LiteralCliffhanger: In the live-action ''Assignment Kowloon'' Golgo eliminates his target thanks to this trope. He does so by hanging himself by rope suspensions from the edge a cliff he deduces a helicopter carrying his target will fly past.
202* LiveActionAdaptation: Two to date. The first was released in 1973 with Ken Takakura as Golgo. The more famous adaptation though is 1977's ''Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon'' where Golgo was played by Sonny Chiba.
203* LockedRoomMystery: "The Serizawa Family Murders". Two witnesses to an old murder, brother and sister, agree to a meeting in a hotel room guarded -- but ''not'' under surveillance -- by the police. They go in, but when the police storm the room after several hours, only the brother is in the room, [[BlatantLies denying that he ever saw his sister that evening]]. Despite being the prime suspect, they have to release him because they never find even a trace of the sister's body. [[spoiler:"Down the toilet, one by one." The sister fatally wounded herself and told her brother -- the murderer in the old case -- how to systematically butcher her body to hide the evidence, if he didn't want to confess. Years later, one of the detectives who had been working on the original murder figures out how to do the same thing with sides of beef while staying in the same room for weeks.]]
204* LoudOfWar: In the story "Statistically Explained Sniping", the last of a series of tortures used on Duke Togo is Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy" at high volume (the Written Sound Effect being "ZUN ZUN ZUN"). This shocks Golgo enough to give him temporary deafness for a few days.
205* TheMafia: The story "Wiseguy" deconstructs the romanticized aspects of this trope. For example, [[Film/TheGodfather Michael Corleone's]] possible future in Congress is given a darker spin with the story's villain, a Congressman from a Mafia family, who's taken gang warfare to a higher level thanks to government connections. Moreover, plenty of Golgo's targets and clients are Mafiosi themselves.
206* MeaningfulName: The eponymous character's codename in Golgo 13 carries a definite meaning. That meaning is a source of mystery as there have been numerous theories made by characters as to what it means.
207** However the most popular theory, both in stories and to readers, is that it's a call-out to Golgotha: the hill on which Christ was crucified. The 13 is linked to the thirteenth disciple, Judas. This theory definitely has merit considering the iconic series symbol of a skeleton wearing a crown of thorns.
208** [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness In the first chapter]], it's mentioned as a nickname given to him by fellow inmates in a West German work camp as his prison number was 1214. However, the chapter also mentions the above theory as well.
209* MetalDetectorCheckpoint: "An Offering to God" sees Golgo hired to eliminate a high-ranking associate of a major politician at a political rally. This required him to pass through a checkpoint. He arranges to get a pistol made entirely of plastic (the plastic firing pin was explicitly stated to only be strong enough to stand up to firing one shot, but Golgo only ''needed'' one shot), which he concealed in a balloon, and hid the bullet in his mouth, which caused the man with the metal detector wand to assume that it was giving a false positive off of some dental work.
210* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: The story "Telepath" has several variations of this trope.
211** The psychic Anna is disgusted by men, as she can read their filthy thoughts in all of their details. She becomes infatuated with Golgo, who's mind is pure of lustful intentions despite being strikingly masculine -- which raises questions about how he regards all the sex he's had.
212** Later, a yogi reading Golgo's soul is shocked that he effectively leaped to the sixth stage of yoga with no training or practice, only his own mental discipline. The yogi finds the ability to control one's body and mind to kill with nothing but pure intentions terrifying in a murderer, and is deeply unsettled after Golgo leaves.
213** Still later, a scientist hired to monitor Duke's brainwaves was also shocked when Golgo's mind goes from nothing to full throttle in an instant, asking if he's developed some sort of self-hypnosis, or possessed some alteration in his brain.
214* MindRape: A chemically-based one. The "Hydra" storyline involves a Corsican drug ring with a brilliant chemist who has not only purified heroin, but drastically improved the formula. We get shown the effects right away.
215-->'''Agent Thomas:''' (Wild-eyed and struggling as two other agents restrain him.) "SIR!! '''HELP ME''', SIR! I'M '''SICK''', SIR! ''SIR!'' '''SIR!'''"
216-->'''Administrator of Intelligence:''' "I sent Agent Thomas to Marseilles to get the evidence to prove it's happening, but he brought back no evidence...Now he ''is'' the evidence. They...[[DrivenToMadness maimed Thomas's mind]] with...something."
217* MoeGreeneSpecial: Duke delivers a double [[spoiler: to a spy satellite image analyst who tried to set him up to become a BoxedCrook, just for the KarmicDeath value.]] He also delivered one to his target in "One Second Out of 36,000".
218* {{Mooks}}: Golgo's had to sometimes contend with antagonists who this trope in large quantity and who are often employed against him to stop him from killing them. Typically they underestimate Golgo as JustOneMan but regret that line of thinking as Golgo 13 is very capable of being a OneManArmy.
219** A good example is in the story "End of the Century Hollywood". In it Golgo is assigned to eliminate whoever is trying to kill Lee: the star of an Asian film being made in America. He discovers that the attacks are being orchestrated by the head of American Company who believes that the Hong Kong film industry is eroding the American film industry and that the success of Lee's film will result in his company being bankrupted if it becomes a success. Despite using his influence to acquire a plethora of EliteMooks in the form of Defense Intelligence Agency soldiers to kill Lee, Golgo routs them all single-handedly and kills the executive all in the span of a single night.
220* {{Mukokuseki}}: Very meta on this one. Golgo 13 is a worldly, adult-oriented manga sometimes incorporating world news events, where people will actually be drawn with something approaching recognizable ethnicity, especially the many portrayals of real people (Even Nelson Mandela needs Golgo, sometimes!). However, Golgo's own mukokuseki good looks (along with his polyglot abilities) become one of his greatest assets for being undetected, and even the other characters are confused about what ethnicity he is. Even then, however, people tend to vaguely assume he might be at least partly Japanese.
221* MultipleChoicePast: Several of the stories in the series, such as "Kensaku Azuma, The Japanese", "The Serizawa Family Murders", "All To The People" and "The Last Will of Mao Zedong", seem to be possible origins for Golgo. However, they always end on at least a loud note of ambiguity ensuring Golgo 13's past remains mysterious.
222* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: That language? He speaks it. That gun? Oh yeah, he can shoot it. That vehicle, can he pilot it? Of course.
223* NippleAndDimed: Always averted.
224* NominalHero: Golgo 13 is a ColdSniper and a [[ConsummateProfessional Consummate]] ProfessionalKiller who will take ''any'' job no matter how dirty it is (as long as you don't [[ContractOnTheHitman betray him]]), but his targets include ruthless criminals who would have rap sheets the length of a freeway if they were ever caught.
225** Other times, such as in "Wasteland" and "The Orbital Hit", he has to clean up disasters waiting to happen. (nuclear meltdown in the former, KillSat gone rogue in the latter.)
226* NonIdleRich: Togo probably has more cash than anyone could estimate at this point, (the latest estimate, as per the Viz release being well over 12 trillion yen) with some assignments worth millions (including one worth 100 million dollars). But with his constant work and traveling, it doesn't seem like that half the time.
227** He also owns an ''island''. One can only assume that even there he doesn't feel comfortable when not on the job.
228** The Viz appendices also mention he has properties and safehouses worldwide.
229* NoSell: Golgo resists torture, and even the effects of drugs very well, and with Yoga training was even able to render himself and his thoughts invisible to PsychicPowers.
230* NoSmoking: Though Golgo 13 is famous for his chain-smoking, the TV series erases this aspect of his character. It's definitely one of the most questionable changes to be sure considering it's a famous characteristic of his.
231* NotProven: On numerous occasions, the police manage to detain Golgo, but ultimately have to let him go because they can't get enough evidence to prove that he was the one who did it.
232* {{Omniglot}}: Golgo 13 can speak 13 languages. Some of them include English, Japanese, French, Tagalog and Spanish.
233* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: The story "Accidental" features a supposedly routine hit get sabotaged when his rifle refuses to fire. Despite pleas from his client, Golgo straight-up quits the job. The story ends with him uncovering the mastermind: [[spoiler: it was the weaponsmith who gave him the gun in the first place. Just before he kills the man, the guy gives his reason: [[ItAmusedMe he thought it would be a good joke to sabotage the reputation of the world's greatest hitman by giving him a faulty weapon.]]]] Seeing as we never see Golgo follow up on this failure, this can be definitely counted as one of the few times the great Golgo 13 failed to do the job. [[StatusQuoIsGod Not that it affects his reputation anyways]].
234* OneBulletLeft: "Deadly Shadow of the Setting Sun" provides an excellent example but with a twist. After Golgo 13 and AX-3 destroy their target, a poison producing hideout, AX-3 gets a call telling him to kill Duke. AX-3 states that he's been CountingBullets and knows both of them have only one bullet left. As they're of equal skill, the winner will be the one who breaks position first. They both move at the same time and both miss. However Duke turns out to be moving to a knife which he throws killing AX-3 while he's drawing a silenced pistol.
235* TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou: Variant: Golgo 13 makes a point of not allowing his target to be killed by some unrelated person or accident. He must be the cause of the target's death, if only as a proxy. Perhaps most notable in the climax of the animated film where the antagonist leaps from a skyscraper window to his death, only for Golgo to fire one bullet down at him, killing him in mid-air before the ground can do the job for him.
236* OnTheNextEpisodeOfCatchPhrase: "Do not stand behind him, if you value your life."
237* OurPresidentsAreDifferent: Averted; Golgo's worked for the U.S. government several times and each time the then-current real-world president was (surprisingly accurately) drawn.
238* OutOfCharacterMoment:
239** Golgo has had a lot of these in the early years, owning to EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. He smiles, is a bit more talkative, and he gets caught because of his own mistakes. He even flinches more than once.
240** This spills over to the later stories as well. In "Power to the People" not only laughs, but he displays a surprising amount of loyalty to Nelson Mandela. In "Request From A Saint", he's betrayed by a Filipino contact working for the local communist rebel group who try to kill him. Golgo gets away, but spares his life!
241* OvertOperative: Golgo 13 almost always uses some variant on "Duke Togo" as a cover identity. Which wouldn't apply except that Duke Togo is also the name he goes by in public. He has subverted the trope by using fairly different names, but he keeps coming back to Duke Togo. The most common fan rationalization for this is that Golgo just doesn't care. People have tried to take him in before and it's never worked. He's untouchable and he knows it.
242%%** But if he was caught, who would the government in question use when they needed people shot in the head?
243%%** Notice how many of the guys who hire him are government personnel? The man is too valuable as a tool of death, to keep him in prison or get rid of him for that reason.
244%%** The story "Afterglow" deals with a detective who came as close to anyone to catching Golgo, but whose case was suppressed by the State Department.
245%%** Also, in "An Offering To God", a lawyer actually manages to exploit loopholes in a cop's attempt to nail him in crime.
246* PerpetualFrowner: The title character is one of the trope's fathers.
247* PinPullingTeeth: In an anime episode, Duke Togo finds out another hitman is also stalking his target. He teeth-pulls the pin from a grenade (presumably to show he's just as cool as Togo) and tosses it back into the room where he just [[KneeCapping kneecap]]-interrogated a man. Duke shows he's even cooler by calmly looking at his watch, whereupon [[TimeBomb half the buildings around them blow up.]] Realising they're both after the same target the two assassins team up, whereupon we get a SplitScreen shot of them both engaging in this trope as they toss grenades around.
248* PlaysGreatEthnics:
249** In-universe. Golgo's ambiguous facial features tend to have people believing he's at least partially Asian, but he's passed as Jewish, Arabic, European...at one point even used a chemical to darken his skin and successfully pass for African. His skill as an {{Omniglot}} helps greatly with this. Indeed, most of the theories for his origins claim he may be Japanese, Japanese-Russian, Japanese-German, Chinese, or Mongolian.
250** However, in "The Lost Assignment", he does speak in Japanese when he loses his memory, hinting he may really be from Japan (or has some of his roots there).
251* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Racism is one of the more common markers for legitimately villainous characters, as opposed to those just doing their jobs.
252* PrettyLittleHeadshots: Virtually Golgo 13's CallingCard.
253* ProfessionalKiller: Golgo exemplifies the Assassin archetype from this trope.
254* ProfessorGuineaPig: One episode features a brilliant scientist working for a drug cartel who's been working on purifying and improving their product, and tested the results personally. [[spoiler:She]] seems stable at first, but gradually loses [[spoiler:her]] grip as the tension rises, demonstrating schizophrenia and multiple personalities at the very least.
255* PsychicPowers:
256** In the "Telepath" a subject of the Lytkarino Clinic by the name of Anna demonstrates abilities such as sensing Golgo's presence, reading minds, and causing heart attacks. Implicitly, she, or another subject caused a number of mental illnesses among American diplomats assigned to the Soviet Union. Golgo counters her by studying Yoga and [[PsychicStatic meditating to make himself invisible to her powers even as his willpower rose to pull the trigger]].
257** A prodigy from the early years of the program is mentioned as having affected the Yalta Conference, having influenced Roosevelt's mind to be more sympathetic toward Stalin.
258** An experienced yogi was able to scan Golgo's soul (remarkably pure, even with all the murders) and the progress he'd somehow made in yogic disciplines without even knowing that's what they were.
259* QuickDraw: Golgo has an insanely fast draw speed, which anyone attempting to confront the legendary sniper at close range tends to learn the hard way.
260%%* RatedMForManly: A DarkerAndEdgier version.
261* ReallyGetsAround: Golgo's had a ''lot'' of sexual encounters over the years, and is suggested to have fathered numerous illegitimate children. In fact, two of the anime-adapted stories involve alleged children of Golgo's, one dead (he pays his respects to the grave before leaving town) and one alive (he saves the kid's life from his target, but then leaves without making any provision for the boy despite his mother ending up as collateral damage).
262* ReflexiveResponse: Do ''not'' stand behind Duke when he's sitting if you value your life for ANY reason. Just don't.
263** Still not convinced? As people's rear quarters are a textbook blind spot that can be taken advantage of to induce death, Golgo is indiscriminate in attacking people who directly approach him from behind without letting their presence be known immediately. This reflex has some occasions saved his life.
264** But it is a double-edged sword that's gotten him into trouble. This is best illustrated in the very first story of the series "Operation Big Safe". During a stay in Hamburg, Germany, a woman he has just slept with makes the mistake of trying to playfully creep up on him from behind without saying anything at all. She gets punched by Golgo, causing her to hit a nearby bedpost, knocking her out. This results in him not only arousing the wrath of two burly hotel tenants who try subduing him for hitting her (whom he beats very soundly), but is arrested by the police after trying to escape.
265* RevealingCoverup: The key of arms merchant Jakob Nachtbloem's plan to survive exploiting Golgo 13's reputation in the story "A Fierce Southern Current". Jakob's plan involves manipulating six nations into a war over a small set of oil-rich Pacific islands by implying Duke would invest the billions he's earned with the winner; if he followed his standard procedure by just killing Nachtbloem, the sudden death in the growing story with him already in the background would cause a stream of reporters who would be led onto the trail of the mysterious Golgo 13, and killing them as usual would just lead him into a downward spiral. However, Duke manages to figure out how to TakeAThirdOption.
266* RiddleForTheAges: In "Garimpeiro", Golgo initially rebuffs a client's request to kill an armed gang, and the man's offer of stolen diamonds doesn't seem to match the assassin's usual 3 million price. Despite not actually agreeing to the assignment before the client dies, Golgo nonetheless not only proceeds to exterminate the gang, but also take out the corrupt paramilitary police force the client complained about, but did not actually request to be assassinated. In the end, the CIA wonders who asked Golgo to clean up the Amazon, while the assassin's motives for this assignment are never revealed.
267* RippedFromTheHeadlines: The manga started during the turbulent times of the Cold War, and many of Golgo's assignments reflected this, with his kills occasionally influencing events in the war.
268** "The Orbital Hit" took place during the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in 1975, which would have accidentally intercepted and triggered the rogue KillSat without Golgo's intervention.
269** Another story had the Knights Templar hire Golgo to rescue Pope John Paul II from a Soviet plot to replace him with a BodyDouble.
270* TheRival: Subverted. Duke has faced plenty of would-be rivals over the years, [[spoiler: many of whom end up dead by the end of the story]]. Known examples include...
271** Spartacus, from "The Brute's Banquet". A veteran of the [[UsefulNotes/SierraLeone Sierra Leone Civil War]] just as feared a hitman in the Golgo 13 universe. Golgo himself even admitted that he "moved beautifully", and that was after he was grazed in the head by one of Spartacus' shots AND forced Golgo to use all his spare ammunition. It comes as no surprise as Golgo's Japanese fans voted him number 1 in a poll for Golgo's greatest rival. That's on top of him having had the rare honor of joining Duke in the anime and in ''Top Secret Episode''.
272** AX-3, [[AllThereInTheManual real name Hans Jurgens]]. A KGB hitman co-starring in "Shadow of Death". Needless to say, when they both team up out of PragmaticVillainy to destroy a Syndicate-funded biological/chemical weapons program, AX-3 shows from the start that he is just as much an equally effective killing machine as Golgo is. The Viz release states, rightly so, that he is "one of the few men he could call an equal!"
273** Big Snake, from the 1983 movie. He actually managed to put Golgo on the ropes in a man-to-man fight and was on the verge of killing him. However, [[spoiler:a helicopter appears, miniguns the elevator they're fighting in, and Duke uses him as a shield.]]
274** Gold and Silver, from the same movie. They [[spoiler:annihilated an entire battalion of guerillas by themselves and managed to make Golgo scream in pain after he fought off Snake.]]
275** There were also three CIA agents who managed to cripple Duke after he completed a routine job. [[spoiler:They didn't last very long against Snake.]]
276** The title character in "Cassowary" is a unique example - she's a lesbian with a complete aversion to men. But she proves to be a very tough opponent to put down, resulting in Golgo utilizing some... [[FullFrontalAssault interetsing tactics.]][[note]]The sight of Golgo's penis distracts Cassowary, allowing Golgo to make a kill shot.[[/note]]
277** Ixion, the first major example in the series. He's a [[spoiler:blind sniper with a guide dog,]] and his draw speed is described as "godly".
278** Dave "Golden Boy" Krueger: An Olympic gold medalist shooter and gangster protege who challenged Duke to a duel after the death of his sister. He manages to wound the assassin with his skills.
279** Katz Double: A young sniper who tries to outwit Duke when he targets the Jordanian ambassador to the US. He also proves that he can be just as calculating as Golgo is. [[spoiler:This doesn't save him from his cockiness as Golgo snipes him and the target from the last place he expected.]]
280** Brigitta: A female assassin who comes up with a near-foolproof plan to take Duke out and even [[spoiler:manages to have sex with him before the hit. However, she is outwitted by Golgo, who kills her afterwards.]]
281** In "The Masterpiece Assault Rifle" Duke is ostensibly on a job to spoil the efforts of a Japanese racing crew in the desert, but is suddenly ambushed by two ex-French Foreign Legion commandos, the Savine brothers. They force Duke into a tight spot with their modified automatic rifles. [[spoiler:He beats them by taking the gradient into account while using the passing race cars' headlights to spoil their aim.]]
282** In the story "Bionic Soldier", Riley, the title character, is assigned by the CIA to kill Golgo. A genetically-bred {{Ubermensch}} shown to have heightened senses, ultra-fast reflexes, and superhuman response time. He ends up putting Golgo on the defensive for a good chunk of the story, until [[spoiler:Golgo realizes that his hyper-sensitive hearing can be exploited. By overloading his headphones with static, Riley is distracted long enough for Golgo to nail him with a headshot.]]
283** Nikolai Ledelovitch, an ex-Olympic medalist Polish sniper in "The Superstar's Joint Appearance" is hired to protect Golgo's mark and snipe Golgo's client. He actually meets Golgo in a bar and offers him a drink, but with Golgo being Golgo, coldly refuses. When Nikolai finds out who he is, he calls his employer and demands a pay raise as he did not expect that he was going to shoot it out with Golgo 13. He gets his raise, but [[spoiler:Golgo outsnipes him regardless.]]
284** In the story "The Cheerful Sniper", Golgo is hired by [=McDonnell=]-Douglas to snipe a Grumman plane's radar dish that's on demonstration along with their own plane for a lucrative Ethiopian defense contract. Grumman hires Barnaby, a rival sniper, who's much more loose and freewheeling than Duke is to do the same to the [=McDonnell=]-Douglas plane. On the day of the hit, Golgo hits his target, but his rival doesn't. At the end, Barnaby meets Golgo on the road, [[spoiler:before losing in an off-screen duel with Golgo to the tune of "Everybody Loves Somebody".]]
285* ScottyTime: Recurring gunsmith character Dave [=McCartney=] gets hit with this quite a lot, especially when Golgo comes calling for a special weapon. How he takes this differs from the material - in the manga he's almost always exasperated; in the anime he frequently takes it as a challenge, or otherwise shrugs off.
286* SedgwickSpeech: ''Assignment Kowloon'' shows two men working for Golgo's employer spying on a meeting between him and the assassin with a telescope. When Golgo spots them and aims his M16 at them, one of them remarks "it's 500 meters away. The bullet will never reach." Golgo promptly disproves this by delivering two head shots to each one.
287* ShootHimHeHasAWallet: Anyone attempting to remove an object from their pocket in Golgo's presence will find a pistol in their face faster than they can blink, and Golgo instructing them to remove whatever item they're reaching for ''slowly''.
288* ShootTheShaggyDogStory: One story involves three HoneyTrap assassins targeting Duke to protect their boss. While having sex with the first one, Duke [[HoistByHisOwnPetard turns her own poison needle on her]] and tosses her naked corpse off a balcony like garbage. The second assassin attempts a SuicideAttack by throwing herself in the way of Duke's car so she can attempt to slash his throat when he checks on her. She fails and dies on his arms with a miserable look on her face. The third assassin just commits suicide when Duke has her cornered... and then it's revealed Duke was in the area to kill a completely different person than what they expected.
289* SniperRifle: Duke occasionally uses various models of sniper rifles to assassinate his targets. However, since he usually operates from somewhat closer ranges, he more often prefers an M16 which is also modified to shoot long distances.
290* SnuffFilm: "The Brute's Banquet" features two rich men who enjoy watching acts of death, and arrange for Golgo to fight another assassin named Spartacus for their own amusement. After learning that he was hired not to protect his clients but to die for their amusement, Spartacus' dying act is to hire Golgo to kill them.
291* SpottingTheThread: People with the appropriate skill and experience can observe the look in his eyes and his movements and realize he's no ordinary person, even when he disguises himself. This has gotten him caught out a few times.
292* StatuteOfLimitations: Nobody ever tries busting Golgo for crimes he committed in a previous adventure.
293** As noted under OvertOperative, Golgo has worked for multiple governing bodies. If the police tried to hold him, they would most likely receive a phone call from a higher authority telling them to let him go. This in fact happens for instance in the story "At Pin-Hole!" in which both the CIA and the FBI work in conjunction to release him from a jail in Texas so he may assist them with a hostage situation aboard a plane.
294* TheStoic: Besides showing some blatant emotions in his very first stories, as the CharacterizationMarchesOn trope above notes, Duke now embodies this trope rarely showing any emotion.
295* StuffBlowingUp: The result of Golgo destroying a tank by shooting down its main gun in "Armalite vs. Tank" and "Revelations of a Coup D'Etat".
296* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute:
297** In the older stories, Golgo's M16 usually lacks is the rifle's distinctive carry handle, or at least has a custom one capable of mounting a scope. [[https://smallarmsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/008-21.jpg The US actually developed such a weapon designated the Colt 656]]. Golgo would later use his weapon proper in ''The Professional''.
298** The [=M16A2=] Golgo currently uses has a custom barrel, cheek pad, and a special scope mounting. [[https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/64/871/desirable-cased-colt-delta-match-hbar-sporter-rifle-with-scope This is highly similar to an actual [=M16A2=] variant known as the HBAR (High Barrel) Delta]], which possesses those same attributes, except that it retains the standard carry handle.
299* SwissBankAccount: Golgo makes use of these among the many secretive financial institutions he uses to store his money.
300** It also plays a vital role in one story in which a SmugSnake villain learns about said bank accounts and the fantastic sum that must be in them to run an international scam. Needless to say, after Golgo finds out, it doesn't end well.
301** Another one has the target blackmail the bank owner. He teams up with Golgo to stop the mastermind.
302* SympatheticInspectorAntagonist: Just like his would-be rivals, Golgo has a long list of these.
303** Detective Smith in ''Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon'' is a textbook example of this trope.
304** Detective Shire in "Room No. 909"/"The Impossible Hit". He and his fellow cops are all good people who do their jobs well [[spoiler:but Golgo went out of his way to specifically set up a shot that anyone in their right mind would call impossible for a human being to perform, and with no eyewitnesses to corroborate their theory their attempt to arrest him would be pointless as no jury would convict him, if the case even went that far]].
305** "Bannings The Hunter": An aging Interpol detective, who desperately wants Golgo brought in. He is forced to be in an illegal operation bound to fail. At the end Duke gets away, of course, [[spoiler: but the whole operation is caught on tape. Duke then burns the tape.]]
306** The client and his girlfriend in "The Saint With The Stench of Death".
307** "Touch Down": An old-school Baltimore PD detective tries to find the one who killed a beloved quarterback while his colleagues try using a new supercomputer to reconstruct the crime scene. The killer is Golgo, of course. While Duke gets away (by shooting up the computer) [[spoiler: the detective does manage to avenge the target's death by killing the clients.]]
308** "Hit and Run": A former SFPD detective's girlfriend is run over by a crime boss. What does the man do? [[spoiler: He doesn't hire Golgo, surprisingly. Instead he spreads a rumor that Golgo is out to get the boss in question, then takes a pot shot at the boss' penthouse window after his moll, goons, and criminal associates leave him to his "fate". Come the next morning, he admits to the hit-and-run incident, desperate for police protection. As a bonus he also offers to reveal the names of his associates.]]
309** Leon Goldman, from "Afterglow" crosses paths with Golgo. The two have had a history with each other, and Leon, an FBI agent in the twilight of his career, tries to make Golgo leave. [[spoiler: Sadly, Duke kills him at story's end.]]
310** Dahl/Doll the Hotel Detetcive in "Christmas 24 Hours". She's a unique example due to her [[{{Crossover}} also being one of Takao Saito's own creations.]]
311* TakeMeOutAtTheBallgame:
312** In "Touch Down", Golgo assassinates a quarterback while he's making a running play during a game. [[spoiler: His client was the man behind the target in the depth chart.]]
313** Subverted in "The Blood-Stained Stadium". The hit actually takes place at an empty stadium.
314** A variation happens in "The Law of The Pedigree": Golgo's target is not a person. [[spoiler: It's a prize racehorse.]]
315** The stories "Gate In" and "The Law of the Pedigree" both take place at British horse races.
316* ATasteOfTheLash: The story "Power to the People" sees Golgo tied up and forced to undergo a whipping by South African customs agents after discovering he's carrying a concealed submachine gun in his luggage. Oddly enough this is enough to make him laugh subtly.
317* TakeAThirdOption: Duke is a master at this. The incident during "A Fierce Southern Current" notwithstanding, there was also one time in "The Serizawa Family Murders" when he [[spoiler: was asked if he was a child implicated in the murders of a secret ninja family after [=WW2=] ended. The detective, [[ThatOneCase who had essentially sacrificed his life seeking an answer to the case]], stakes everything to get an answer out of Duke; Golgo is hired to kill the detective with a very specific condition. At the scheduled time, the detective would be waving a cane from side to side: the contract said that Golgo would shoot while the cane leaned to the right if he was the kid, or while it was leaning to the left if he wasn't. Come midnight, the detective's visiting ex-partner, who the detective explained his plan to, hears a gunshot. When he finds his colleague's corpse with a {{Pretty Little Headshot|s}}, he also finds a broken cane. With a quick bit of detective work, the partner realizes Golgo had shot while the cane was directly in front of the detective, not leaning in either direction. In other words, Golgo refused to give ANY answer.]]
318* TechnicianVsPerformer: Several assassins Golgo meets consider themselves artists, and some romanticize killing. Golgo, in comparison, just coldly executes his marks (and the other assassins).
319* {{Telepathy}}: The aptly titled story "Telepath" has Golgo 13 faced off against this in the form of Alina Dovator: a KGB agent who, as a result of covert experiments by the Soviet Union, is telepathic. She's able to use her mind to manipulate, sense threats and even cause death. Her telepathy serves as a major plot point for the story. As stated previously, this trope is credited with Golgo 13 missing two shots intended for his target, who Alina was protecting at the time.
320* ThatOneCase:
321** Golgo is usually the cause of this for many a SympatheticInspectorAntagonist he's met over the years. [[MultipleChoicePast Possibly]] the most extreme example would be the Japanese detective Shukuro Yasui from "The Serizawa Family Murders" (Story #100), whose obsession with a murder case in 1946, less than a year after the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, lasted until the present day of the story's publication in 1975, [[spoiler:and only ended because Shukuro committed suicide by assassin in one last attempt to get an answer out of Golgo 13.]]
322** Story #79, "Accidental" features the first time Golgo has failed a job. This was given a subtle nod at in "The Last Will of Mao Zedong" where it's mentioned, by that time, Golgo had a 99.4% success rate.[[note]]The story was #168. 167 is 99.4% of 168.[[/note]]
323** The second happened in Story #218, "Rockford's Ambition - Flaw in the Strategy". The Rockfords, yearning for revenge after Golgo killed David Rockford in "Rockford's Ambition", had a rival sniper take Golgo's target out mere seconds before the latter could pull the trigger. To top it all off, Golgo returned the payoff his client had given him.
324* ThoseWackyNazis: During the early years of the manga, ex-Nazis of various kinds were common targets. In the 80s, Golgo had to face off against the so-called "Fourth Reich" (a Nazi revival group, lead by, of all people, an aging Martin Bormann) on three separate occasions.
325* ThrowAwayGuns: Golgo sometimes discards the weapons he uses for a job after it is done. Given that he charges seven figure fees for his services, he can afford to replace his guns whenever he wants to, especially since his normal go-to weapon is fairly inexpensive and easy to acquire as military hardware goes.
326* TwistEnding:
327** The most famous in the series is perhaps the one in "Trap of the Emperor", which became the basis for ''The Professional'': [[spoiler: Robert Dawson hired Golgo to commit SuicideByCop.]]
328** In "The Yellow Rose'", Duke is hired to kill a playboy only known as The Yellow Rose, who's infamous for seducing rich, famous women who later turn up dead. A pornographic film featuring a Creator/MarilynMonroe-expy leads him to a rug factory in Iran, where he discovers countless other films, where he also notices that all the men appearing in the films are different people and can't be the Yellow Rose. Finally, it turns out [[spoiler: The REAL Yellow Rose is a hermaphrodite living as a woman, who's the brains behind the operation. She sells the films for high prizes to her rich clients and smuggles them around the world with hidden inexpensive Persian rugs. Her motivation? She hates the world because of her condition and takes it out on rich, beautiful women. This revelation is even enough to make Golgo surprised.]]
329** In the 1987 story "Route 95", a former Nevada businessman turned motel owner is found murdered. [[spoiler: Turns out the one responsible is one of his employees, who is actually a hitman sent by his old associates from the Mob. Then comes another hitman who, ostensibly is there for the businessman's funeral, is there to take out the said employee. He does, but then Golgo shows up and shoots the second hitman in the arm. The last twist is that Golgo was only hired to maim, not kill him. He then leaves the second hitman be.]]
330* {{Tykebomb}}: Goro Serizawa from "The Serizawa Family Murders", [[spoiler:who may or may not have become Golgo 13. In either case, Goro was the youngest son of a clan of assassins trained from birth to do the government's dirty work. In the aftermath of Japan's surrender to the United States at the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Goro was forced to watch his mother be killed for failing an assignment -- but since he was too young to be fully indoctrinated, he snaps, steals a gun, and kills the rest of his family except for his younger sister. Despite this, he never talks about anything to the police, and an OldRetainer trains him into a formidable sharpshooter who eventually goes into the family business on his own terms.]]
331* {{Ubermensch}}/SuperSoldier:
332** Golgo has indeed been doing these throughout his career.
333** Some of his rivals have had shades of this as well. The most significant example was perhaps Riley, his rival in "Bionic Soldier", who had been the project of a long-running CIA SuperSoldier project.
334* UnderestimatingBadassery: While they're correct in assuming he's not invincible, Golgo's more treacherous clients operate under the belief that he's formidable enough to get the job done, but weak enough to assassinate. Some are foolish enough not to trust that he can keep his mouth shut.
335* VillainCred: Golgo has spent his whole lifetime building his legend.
336* VillainProtagonist: To an extent. Generally whomever he's trying to kill (and sometimes his employer) is even worse.
337* VisibleSilence: Possibly first introduced to the West by Golgo, and is quite fond of this.
338* WarForFunAndProfit: "A Fierce Southern Current" revolves around an arms merchant trying to start a war in the south Pacific, with the promise of the billions Golgo's earned over the years going to the winner. [[spoiler:Duke beats him by immediately donating the money from the accounts supposedly up for grabs to the United Nations' nature conservation efforts, making it clear to all parties that he is refusing to be a player, then killing the arms merchant for good measure.]]
339* WeaponSpecialization: A modified M16. M16s are generic and easy to find, so he can drop it after a mission with no problem, whereas hauling around a giant, expensive sniper's rifle would make discreet escapes nearly impossible. Also, he is the lone wolf of lone wolves, so he lacks a spotter or permanent sidekick of any kind. No one is watching his back for him. Using an assault rifle like the M16 gives him a weapon that is equally suited for self-defense if he is attacked during a mission.
340** Moreover, considering there are thousands of M16s everywhere, if Duke does lose his gun, he can always get another one, as stated in the Viz release's commentaries. This even comes into play when he gets one on-site in the story "Strike Back from Zero". Heck, in "Mammoth's Tusk", he even uses his M16-of-the-week as a tow hook, though its gets destroyed because of it.
341** TechnologyMarchesOn makes this less awesome than it once was. When Saito began the series, sniping with an M16 made about as much sense as sniping with an uzi. AR platform weapons are now common bases for sniper rifles, without losing their assault rifle functionality. However, the Viz release actually manages to explain the probable reasoning behind this in one volume: if the situation calls for it, Golgo can instantly switch his gun to automatic to mow down anyone who gets in his way.
342** The series even makes note of this; Duke has upgraded to each new model of M16 a few years ''after'' it becomes commonplace - presumably because he's waiting for all the bugs to be worked out.
343* ToThePain:
344** Golgo's threatened to shoot people one body part at a time without killing them in order to get information. He's also done more than threaten.
345** He's also been subjected to this, but he's never broken under torture. Not for lack of trying from his enemies though.
346* TruthSerum: One story features Golgo using this in gaseous form.
347* VillainRespect: In ''The Impossible Hit'' (anime episode title: ''Room 909'') Detective Sam Shire is determined to find something that would convince a jury that Golgo was the assassin. Golgo sits quietly in his hotel room and allows the detective and his assistant to search the room and analyze everything. The detective knew he was right (so did Golgo[[note]]A mistake by Duke during his hit caused the spent shell to drop to the street beginning the leads directly to him[[/note]]) but the physics and other technical aspects of the kill worked against him. Golgo was never condescending to Shire and actually threw him a [[CombatCompliment "Nice Try" type of line at the end]].
348-->'''Duke''': "Can I go now, Detective Shire? It's that time."
349* WhiteMaskOfDoom: The cult leader Gabriel in "The Saint with the Stench of Death" wears one. Underneath, [[NightmareFace he's horribly disfigured.]]
350* WouldHitAGirl: Golgo has no compunction about killing women should it be required and especially when they are his targets.
351* WouldHurtAChild: Unfortunately, yes he would. It's just extremely rare that he has to. While he normally wouldn't even bother to accept a contract on a child, if he discovers that his target is one... well, he is a professional after all. [[spoiler: Upon reading some of the more obscure stories such as "The Republic of Hunger" and "Checkmate" it has been shown and proven that Golgo is fully capable of enforcing this trope.]]
352* WoundedGazelleGambit: During "The Orbital Hit" the CIA gets a particularly IntrepidReporter out of the way by hiring a call girl to meet him in the name of his contact and tear her dress in front of him, crying out that he was trying to rape her. After the mission is resolved, the charges are dropped and the reporter's set free. As the CIA man who tells him about the hit points out, cooling his heels in the clink for a few days is easily one of the ''least'' horrible things they could've done to him, particularly as they've hired the girl again to pick him up from jail...
353
354----
355->''"Unfortunately, Golgo 13, these Tropers, [[HeKnowsTooMuch they know too much...]]"''
356->'''''[[BoomHeadshot BANG]]'''''
357->''*cue a [[PrettyLittleHeadshots Pretty Little Headshot]] on the Troper's forehead*''

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