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"Maybe that's why you paladins are so full of yourselves. You're immune to the fear that you might be wrong. Immune to the fear of becoming tyrants." - Redcloak, The Order Of The Stick
Sometimes the Forces of Light get too hardcore. Beyond the Well Intentioned Extremist, they get blinded by themselves and their ideals, and this extreme becomes fascism. There may be a hidden Force of Darkness operative behind this, but other times, it's all their own fault.
Usually their primary step is to get rid of that pesky "free will" thing that is the cause of crime and evil. To many Knight Templar types, All Crimes Are Equal, and the lightest offenses are met with full imprisonment, death or brainwashing. Note that the canonical "minor offense with staggeringly out-of-proportion punishment" is jaywalking. If you're in a story like this, don't jaywalk.
It's important to note that the Knights Templar believe fully that they are the good guys, and their opponents are not. Simply generally invoking goodness and decency will have no effect, save for possibly making the Knight Templar hate your guts. After all, he is certain his cause is just and noble, and anyone who stands in the way is a criminal in his eyes. May believe that Utopia Justifies The Means.
Occasionally, this is a robot who was programmed to "stop war" or "protect humans" and took it too literally.
Often depicted as a possible Future Imperfect that acts as An Aesop for the heroes of this time.
Knights Templar often make up the Ancient Conspiracy.
Historical note: Its namesake were the members of a western Christian military order known as the Knights Templar. The Templars were skilled, pious and occasionally highly educated elite fighters, cavalry and bankers who fought to open the pilgrimage routes during the crusades. Subsequently after the defeat of the Latin Levant they continued to defend Christian interests from belligerent Muslim and pagan states. This would at times include offensive action. The organization continued to evolve until a French King decided to frame them with the help of the Pope so he wouldn't have to pay a big loan he'd taken on to fight the English.
The Templar Knights were all in all a fairly normal (if vastly successful until its demise) depiction of the religious warrior class born from the upper crust of medieval society. However its engagements in complex yet fundamentally religiously motivated operations that could be labeled either offensives or counter-offensives (to the vast Islamic expansions over the Greek (Asia minor, eastern and central Anatolia, northern Africa) and Latin world (Spain and France) over the last four centuries) as well as security operations for clergy on sovereign soil of pagan states have inevitably tarred it in the eyes of the post-religious (French Revolution), post-war (WWI&WWII) and post-colonial (1960's) western media as a bunch of rabid paladins on crack.
A mild, comedic version is Lord Error Prone. See also Knight Templar Parent.
Examples:
Multi-Media Examples
Comic Books
Anime
Live Action TV
- The Knights of Byzantium in season five of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- Jasmine in season four of Angel. Holtz is also an example of this.
- To an extent, the Syndicate of The X-Files qualifies for this, as over the series it developed that they were collaborating with the alien Colonists in order to stall for time to prevent the coming invasion and to work on a vaccine for the alien plague.
- The Vorlons in Babylon 5 are a clear example of this trope - they seek to maintain peace and order through manipulation of the "lesser races", often using very morally questionable methods.
- 'Infection,' from the first season of Babylon 5, finds the station under attack by a cyborg Templar. An ancient artifact infects a man, transforming him into a walking weapon designed to eradicate anyone not of 'pure Ikarran' stock.
- Iris Crowe on Carnivale believes that her brother Justin has a destiny. And she'll do anything to help him achieve it. Unfortunately, he's the Antichrist - and "anything," in this case, involves arson, multiple homicide, self-mutilation, and incest. The actual Knights Templar on the show is actually just a MacGuffin to distract us from the fact that Ben's a fairly crappy savior.
- Lord Dread of Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future wanted to create a better world by fusing man with machine, removing the "weakness" of emotions and allow humanity to be ruled solely by logic. Hence the "Metal Wars" and the subsequent "Project New Order", where the planet is ravaged, most of humanity is annihilated, with the few that remain are either loyal to Dread, or are in hiding or in an organized resistance movement that is opposing Dread's empire.
- While Lord Dread is plagued by the remnants of his humanity, and occasionally doubts the worthiness of the cause, the supercomputer Overmind is unflinching and resolute, and it can be argued that it doesn't share the same concern for humanity's ascension to perfection, being more focused on absolute domination by the machines.
- Near omnipresent in Alias, to the point where multiple terrorist cells successfully pose as CIA Knights Templar to recruit unsuspecting agents, and the core group of one of those cells going on to become an actual CIA Knights Templar.
- Charmed was notorious for relying on this one. A few examples: Paige Matthews' initiation as a witch was almost spoiled when the Big Bad of the time attempted to make her use her powers to tear out someone's heart. Incidentally, Paige's powers were staggeringly powerful in their possible implications - imagine calling nuclear weapons or lightning. When the evil and good worlds started becoming TOO evil and good, respectively, the good world was marked by extremely pleasant punishment for the slightest transgressions. And an Elder, a being of great rationality and goodness, spends a good portion of his time trying to murder an innocent baby out of fear that the baby is The Chosen One in a bad sense, of course creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- This editor is astonished that nobody has brought up Star Trek Deep Space Nine's Section 31, a secret rogue Federation agency who assassinate foreign dignitaries, kidnap disloyal officers and even attempt to commit genocide against the Founders in the name of protecting the Federation.
- There's also Admiral Leyton, Sisko's old XO who attempts to overthrow the Federation President and establish a military dictatorship in order to protect the Federation from Dominion attack.
- DCI Frank Morgan in Life On Mars is eventually revealed to be one of these. He starts off as something of a subversion of The Umbridge, being a more competent, enlightened and thoughtful administrator than Gene Hunt, who he replaces. It's then revealed that he's deliberately allowed a sting operation that Hunt has set up to be badly botched in order to reveal Gene Hunt's incompetence, thus allowing Morgan to take over and reform Hunt's department. That this will result in the deaths of everyone on Hunt's team is a sacrifice Morgan can live with.
- Eliot Stabler from Law And Order SVU has been known to act like this, especially in the early seasons. After he does things like waterboard a perp, mercilessly lock up a survivor of the Serbian genocide, and arrest a porn director for promoting pedophilia, even though said director's models were of age, and even though said pedophile was messed up even before he saw the porn, you have to wonder why you're supposed to sympathize with the guy. Not to mention that he's implied to be prejudiced against transgenders.
- Nago Keisuke in Kamen Rider Kiva has such a one-minded fixation on "justice" that at times he borders on self-parody of this trope. For example, as a young adult he led his father to commit suicide when he reported a simple accounting error to the police as evidence of corruption, and when lambasted by an understandably furious Papa he replied, "Sin is sin". To up the ante further, he can transform into rival Rider Kamen Rider IXA, whose motif is that of a white paladin. He's quite the Jerkass about it, too.
Literature
- Jorge of Burgos from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is the epitome of this trope. He's already a crazed extremist at the beginning of the book, and then he kills - or has killed - seven people. All to prevent somebody from reading a book that Jorge considers heretical. His Karmic Death comes as a huge relief. Even to his allies.
- The Whitecloaks in The Wheel Of Time series. They think all Aes Sedai are servants of the Dark Lord, they get neighbors to call each other "dark friends," and there are only three of them that are presented as honorable men.
- The Questioners, a branch that specializes in tortured confessions, are so nuts that not even the Whitecloaks can stand them.
- In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files novels, and to some degree the TV series based on them, the White Council and their enforcers, the Wardens, frequently come across as Knights Templar, primarily with their draconian enforcement of the Seven Laws of Magic (usually entailing instant beheading). Morgan, one of the leaders of the Wardens, is the first and best example of this. However, this ends up somewhat subverted later in the novel series when Harry, who had been viewed as a troublemaker at best and Lawbreaker at worst, and had once been under a one-strike-you're-dead parole, is recruited into the Wardens after many of them are slaughtered during the war with the vampire Red Court. Even Morgan changes his position; while he still believes that Harry is dangerous, he no longer thinks he's evil, just arrogant, undisciplined, and stupid. This is a major change from a character previously thought to be unchanging.
- Even more of a subversion, as Morgan's changed opinion is mostly right.
- Lilith de Tempscire in the Discworld novel Witches Abroad, whose warped narrative awareness leads her to believe that anything she does as a fairy godmother is justified by the Theory Of Narrative Causality, and means everyone will live happily ever after. She's absolutely shocked when Granny Weatherwax tells her she's not "the good one".
- In the Revelation Space universe, there is an entire species which plans to prevent any technological civilization from arising for 6 billion years to make sure that life can flourish after the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide. They are perfectly willing to kill trillions of sapient beings and wipe out whole species in order to achieve this goal.
- The disturbing feature is that this explains where all the aliens are.
- A similar feature is in Anvil of Stars and its prequel, where the good guys' mission is to defeat a group of planet destroyers who eliminated Earth. This involves eradicating nine different intelligent species who have the misfortune to be in the way.
- In certain time periods of Larry Niven's Known Space universe, minor crimes such as "repeated traffic violations" are punished by execution. However, this is primarily because the organs of all executed criminals are harvested for the "organ banks" for use in transplants.
- While Lord Asriel's grand plan in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels is certainly noble in theory, the fact remains that he first kills a child in order to open the first portal to the parallel worlds and then pulls a Lucifer and makes war on Heaven, all in a plot to kill God. We're not too sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that he succeeds. Asriel is still pretty awesome.
- In the Dragonlance series of books, the Kingpriest is a Knight Templar. His insistence on destroying all evil leads to him attacking neutral people and gods (because if you aren't with us, you are against us) as well as evil. His upsetting the balance, as well as demanding from the gods the power to destroy all evil, brings about the destruction of a large part of the planet, as all the gods decide that humans have gone too far and they get pissed.
- Inspector Javert from Les Miserables. To him, law is everything, and when he realizes that to act lawfully is to act unethically, he snaps and commits suicide.
- Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward portraits the whole world dominated by Knight Templars in quite serious inversion of many classical tropes.
Video Games
- The foot soldiers of the Scarlet Crusade in the video game World Of Warcraft, as opposed to the more restrained and favorable Argent Dawn.
- Ironically, their leader is A disguised and completely evil demon who made them into Knights Templar on purpose to use them as weapons against his enemies... which include basically everybody.
- Guilty Gear X has the Holy Order, who believe that the intentions of the Gears must be stopped at all costs. They use extremist actions to fight the Gears, even though Dizzy is a Gear who wishes for nothing but peace.
- Yggdrasill from Tales Of Symphonia set out to solve a war between two magitek nations and end the world's Fantastic Racism; creating a world where everyone could be free of discrimination. One Dead Little Sister later and he was accomplishing this by splitting the world in half, grinding the humans into the dirt and killing them off to create Soylent Green that would turn the half-elves into soulless, mindless and lifeless beings. It never even occurs to him to consider that he hasn't got the moral high ground.
- Vhailor from Planescape Torment is a member of the Mercykillers, a Planescape sect that believes in the absolute order of the law. Crime is violently punished, and rehabilitation is often not under consideration - their creed is thus: "Justice purges evil. Once all have been cleansed, the multiverse achieves perfection."
- The Knights Templar in Deus Ex: Invisible War.
- Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X believes that destroying the world of Spira and everything in it is the only way to save it from the Vicious Cycle it's trapped in (this train of thought is possibly due to his own troubled upbringing).
- Arguably, the Ur-Quan in Star Control II. The green Kzer-Za want to enslave all life and the black Kohr-Ah want to kill all life in order to ensure no species could ever potentially enslave them again as The Puppetmasters did - a kind of species-wide Freudian Excuse.
- The villains of Assassin's Creed are literal and figurative Knights Templar, while the assassin clan Altair works for are more moderate Well Intentioned Extremists.
- The Order of Burning Rose from The Witcher is a literal Knight Templar organization with Utopia Justifies The Means style of operation.
- City Of Heroes tries (and mostly fails) to portray the Malta group as this. The problem is that for all the dialogue describing them as thinking they're the good guys, nothing changes that they are just as ruthless and vicious as other villain groups (if not moreso).
- They're supposed to be more ruthless, and the development team goes out of their way to make them so - they're a grab bag of every other villain's evil characteristics, from mass assassination to kidnapping to brainwashing to indoctrination to more mundane blackmail and fighting legitimate heroes. That doesn't stop them from being legitimately interested in things they consider good ideals, such as keeping dangerous metahumans under control or fighting various fascist and communistic groups. That doesn't stop them from being really, really nasty, but it keeps them well within the Knight Templar definition.
- Interestingly, both Indigo and Crimson, the two contacts you use to stop Malta, could be considered 'good' versions of this. They will do anything to stop Malta, and players see them entrap bad guys, trick civilians into dangerous traps, lie to compatriots to test their network for leaks, protect bad guys when their loss would empower Malta, provide false evidence to a villain group to cause someone's execution, and 'protect' good guys without warning them that they are at risk.
- Nemesis is another example, and one that was never really pretending to be good in the first place. He's always been after the fascist control of the world, and just picked up the method of taking over or blocking dangerous heroes and villains while providing safety after the previous method of killing civilians didn't work.
- Both the Brotherhood of Nod and the Global Defense Initiative of Command And Conquer can be considered Knight Templars, especially in the later games, where the more "good guy" traits of GDI start getting subsumed in their more aggressive ruthlessness after Nod attacks them.
- The AI ODE System is an AI example of this. When the creator went emo, it is reprogrammed to gather humans together in one network to protect Earth from aliens. It took it very literally and goes on a mass kidnapping and absorbing spree, including its creator.
- Saren, the villain of Mass Effect, was an extremely violent Knight Templar during his tenure as a Spectre, prior to the events of the actual game, where he became more of a Dark Messiah.
- X and the Maverick Hunters start to fall into this in Megaman X4 and X5. Fast-forward 100 years to Megaman Zero and Copy-X is protecting humans by mass extermination of innocent Reploids.
- In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl, the C-Consciousness Project. Conceived to rid the world of all destructive and negative human emotion, its members accidentally cause a spatial tear that causes several kilometres around its site to become a desolate, radioactive wasteland fraught with dangerous mutants ("The Zone"). To prevent discovery of their project by those seeking valuable artifacts in The Zone, they use various devices that result in death and/or zombification of those who come near. Anyone who makes it past is diverted to what is believed by all to be an omnipotent wish granting device, but in reality it brainwashes the wisher into becoming a minion of the project, either as part of the official death squad, or as mindwiped individuals who have one singular mission to carry out, but aren't sure why. The player character begins as one of these individuals.
- Despite the name, the Protoss Zealot may or may not be like this. But on the major characters, Aldaris is a Knight Templar to the core. At first, he didn't care whether Tassadar was contacting the Dark Templar for the good of the Protoss race in general because he knows they are the only ones who can destroy the Overmind, he violated the Conclave's orders, so he must be arrested. He got better after seeing Tassadar and Zeratul's efforts (also Raynor's) to defeat the Overmind and started supporting them, but in Brood Wars, once again he acts as a Knight Templar, refusing to work with Kerrigan while the others had no choice but to ally with her. Unfortunately, this is the only time where his actions were actually RIGHT. And he's killed soon after. By Kerrigan, who reveals that she's been using the rest of the Protoss the whole time.
- War Craft III later introduces Maiev Shadowsong, a Warden hell-bent on recapturing her prisoner Illidan Stormrage. Her devotion was so intense she developed hatred for Tyrande Whisperwind for releasing him temporarily for the benefit of the Night Elves against Archimonde in the past (he took out Tichondrius), and she'd cover up her 'Missing In Action' status so she can goad Illidan's brother Malfurion to help her recapture him. Of course, when the cover was blown, Furion was equally furious. But Maiev didn't learn and STILL followed Illidan to the Outlands, beaten by the Blood Elves and Naga, later imprisoned there, until becoming available to be recruited in World Of Warcraft... in raiding Illidan.
Film
- Robocop has once been reprogrammed with an All Crimes Are Equal package as a means of making him ineffective and shot someone because he's smoking in a no-smoking zone... then he knows this is not right and goes on to get electrocuted to remove the programming, something the said programming didn't expect!
- The Operative in Serenity is another example - he truly believes in the ultimate rightness of his actions, even as he acknowledges that they are horrible things and he is a horrible person for doing them, and as such he will have no place in the perfect world he is trying to create.
- In a way, the entire Alliance can be seen as Knight Templars, considering that they killed thirty million people on Miranda while testing a peace-enducing chemical inhalant and the entire justification for them cutting River's brain up was to "make a better world."
- The Jigsaw serial killer in Saw sees himself as this, never admitting to actually killing anyone (and providing video "evidence" to prove it), and insists that his actions were intended to help the "wrongdoers" that were his victims "see the light" and reform their evil ways. Of course, the fact that he does this through Death Traps created to fit the "sin" of the victim, and requiring them to kill or maim another person or mutilate themselves to escape, makes his statements hard to believe.
- The government of Libria in Equilibrium suppressed human emotion, as it was believed responsible for causing the human tendency for violence that brought about the war that practically destroyed the world, which means destroying art, movies and other things inducive of emotion (including cute little dogs) and terminating "sense offenders" who go without the government mandated drug called Prozium.
- Jonathan Doe from the film Se7en believes that he is punishing the wicked by killing people that go against his belief system. It could be argued, however, that he is simply a sadistic psychopath.
- The Paladins in the film version of Jumper, led by Samuel L. Jackson. They believe they are doing God's will by murdering all of the jumpers, as "only God should have that power".
Webcomics
- Miko Miyazaki in Order Of The Stick, a paladin who went from uptight but lawful good to executing the head of her own holy order out of paranoia. Unlike most misguided villains, she went to her grave completely convinced that what she was doing was right.
- Miko might have realized she was wrong after talking to Soon, which could have started the process that leads to redemption. However, she was dying, and there was no time for her to improve herself.
- Arguably Redcloak (who provides the above quote) fits this trope. After all he hates Paladins (although to be fair they destroyed his home town and killed most of his family), his master plan is to threaten release a lovecraftian entity which could destroy the world in order to blackmail the gods into making Goblins more equal (in the OotS universe they were created as Cannon Fodder for PCs to kill) and his back-up plan is to let this happen anyway so the world can be recreated with his god having a say.
- Raf Maliksh in the webcomic Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire: as the Champion of Law, he took it upon himself to take whatever steps were necessary to ensure order - including performing human (well, elf) sacrifices and massacring anyone even associated with the rebellion against him - and when he fell from power, he created The Chosen, a chaos-worshiping cult that he intended to 'purify' the world with.
- Captain SNES
 : Alex's captor, Ryan, in the "present" acts like a Knight Templar.
- Webcomic example: in It's Walky!, after a particularly painful sequence of events, Sal snaps and goes on a quest to eradicate the evil that the Martians have brought to Earth, which eventually results in her coldly attempting to beat her own brother to death after he attempts to reach out to her, before deciding to wipe out everyone who was ever abducted by the Martians with an alien super-weapon - with the fact that this will also wipe out the entire continent of North America being of little concern to her.
- The Gatekeepers in Schlock Mercenary were definitely an example of this trope, cloning and murdering multiple times the entire population of the Milky Way galaxy in order to suppress teraport technology to maintain peace with the immensely powerful Paan'uri before Petey showed them that they've been deceived all along and the Paan'uri were planning to destroy the galaxy anyway.
Tabletop RPGs and Wargames
- Considered an ideal in Warhammer where rigid thought control is the only known way to keep the villains' More Than Mind Control from spreading.
- And presented again in Warhammer 40,000 by the Inquisition of the Imperium of Man, who eradicate entire worlds to stop "Heresy" from spreading.
- Arguably justified inasmuch as said heresy involves summoning demons and slaughtering people without anywhere near as much justification.
- Here's a subversion for you: in the tabletop RPG Deadlands: Hell on Earth, there is a group of people - including some player characters - that call themselves Templars. In a post-apocalyptic setting named, well, Hell on Earth, you can imagine what they're like: unflinchingly hard-nosed, often turning away those in need simply because they don't live up to some subjective moral standard. Even worse, sometimes they force others, who are less "worthy", to do unseemly tasks with their awesome supernatural powers. And they're the good guys. Their more messianic counterparts have been corrupted: while they start out trying to save everyone, they inevitably become pawns of evil.
Jo, Templar Grand-Master: Here's the way we see it. The old world was full of greedy, violent people. It was also full of lazy bags of crap who knew the world was going to Hell and didn't do a damn thing about it. The small minority who stood up against evil, who sacrificed everything to help fight oppression, didn't usually get much help. Templars have vowed not to let that happen again.
Western Animation
- Megatron from Beast Machines willed the establishment of total order by eradicating free will. After conquering Cybertron by disabling the Transformer population, he extracted every single one of their sparks and stored them away. He intended to absorb every spark into his consciousness to create a perfect, technologically precise entity.
- "Ben 10" contains an organization that actually calls themselves the Knights Templar, an organization that uses alien technology to rule the world.
- Subjected to Adaptation Decay in "Alien Force" where they have gone from taking over the world (trying to replace the president with a robot for example), to having their one and only agenda being the blind hatred of and the destruction of any and all dragons...
- At one point, the Autobots in Transformers became like this when Grimlock became leader after one of Optimus Prime's numerous Heroic Sacrifices.
- The Autobots also did this during the Nova Prime administration in the latest series of comics.
- Two examples from The Real Ghostbusters:
- In "Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream", the title creature seeks to end war - by making the entire human race sleep for 500 years.
- In "Ragnarok and Roll", a depressed young man with a broken heart decides to end human suffering - by using a magic flute to play a "song of destruction" that will end the world.
- Most of the Superman The Animated Series episode "Brave New Metropolis" takes place in a Mirror Universe where Lois Lane's death has turned Superman into a tyrant who cooperates with Lex Luthor.
- The two-part Justice League adventure "A Better World" featured a vaguely similar plot. It featured the League's Mirror Universe equivalents, the Well Intentioned Extremists called the Justice Lords, who decide to end crime by ruling their world as fascist dictators. Interestingly, in this version the straw that broke the camel's back was Superman killing Luthor. The aftermath of this encounter was seen in the first two seasons of Justice League Unlimited.
- Well really, the straw that broke the camel's back was President of the United States Lex Luthor murdering the Flash and then gloating about it in Superman's face. At that point, Supe snapped and showed why heat vision is not a toy.
- The Darkwing Duck episode "Time and Punishment" introduced a futuristic version of the character, Darkwarrior Duck, who not only had run every bad guy out of St. Canard, but was now enforcing his iron will on its citizens for such "crimes" as staying out too late and eating too much junk food.
- Nerissa, the villain of season two of WITCH, seeks to rule the universe in order to stop all conflict and war. She eventually gets this wish, if only as a illusionary world she's trapped in for all eternity.
Other
- The Order of Mata Nui from Bionicle is a secret organization. As such, they do not need to show morals (as nobody would judge their actions) and will have no problems in doing unethical things, like experimenting on and modifying an entire species to use as soldiers against the Brotherhood of Makuta.
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