A vigilante, usually a
Knight Templar or
Well Intentioned Extremist, who, rather than killing his chosen targets, imprisons them.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- In Kanokon,Yatsuka-sensei and the other nonhuman monsters' job is to make sure the nonhuman students stay put and don't break The Masquerade until they've figured out how to fit in with humans.
- Old Boy features a prison for people who need to get rid of someone but don't have the skills or the will to kill. The main character, in Chapter 1, is dumped back into the real world after fifteen years.
Comic Books
- Locksmith in the Marvel Universe who used to imprison super-humans.
- The Hangman, another Marvel Universe vigilante, would murder male evildoers but imprison female ones to 'protect them from corruption'. Unfortunately, he had a nasty habit of forgetting about them, leaving them without food or water...
- In the Marvel2099 universe, the Punisher (2099 version) had his own private prison. Of course, in his Cyberpunk Dystopia Crapsack World, anyone who could shell out the fine could get away with any crime, including murder. This made him - relatively speaking - as much an extremist in his world as the original Punisher (who just shoots everybody) was in his.
- Possibly more so; his prison came with a torture chamber.
- Rayek in Elf Quest, who never wanted to kill Winnowill (partly because he loves her, but mostly because if she dies her evil soul will be free to wreak havoc), and in the end becomes her living jailer, keeping her spirit within his own body as he tries to teach her to love.
- Faora Hu-Ul was a Phantom Zone villain introduced in Action Comics #471.She was a beautiful Kryptonian woman whose unexplained hatred for men led her to torture and kill 23 men at a secret concentration camp in her home.
Literature
- A borderline case occurs in the Young Bond novel Hurricane Gold by Charlie Higson. The main villain El Hurrican runs an island hideaway for criminals on the run. Once on the island, they can never leave. While their money lasts, they live a life of luxury, but once their money runs out, he puts them to work as a slave labour force. El Hurrican does confide to a youthful James Bond that he regards himself as the jailer of these criminals.
- In Soon I Will Be Invincible, major supervillain Baron Ether lives out his twilight years under house arrest in his mansion, with his nemesis The Mechanist as his jailer.
Tabletop Games
- Torog, Evil God of the Underdark. Patron of Jailors and Torturers.
Video Games
- The Ur-quan Kzer-za in Star Control 2. Either you joined them, or you got slave-shielded and trapped on your home world.
Western Animation
- Lock-Up from Batman The Animated Series (and Canon Immigrant to the Batman comics).
- Danny Phantom has Walker, the obsessive sheriff type.
- One episode of Gargoyles turns Goliath into this when he uses Odin's Eye to become a Physical God. The best way to "protect his friends" is to seal them in a cave for the rest of time. Nothing can get to them there.
- Hydraxon from Bionicle. To be fair, it is his job description, but he's a little too quick to assume that everyone is an escaped criminal. Botar, in charge of prisoner apprehension and transport, also likes his job a bit too much.
- Mr Moss from Storm Hawks.
- The Warden of Superjail! It's not like he's trying to uphold the law or anything. It's mostly because he loves incarceration that freaking much.
