Basic Trope: A judge, who may be corrupt, who is well-known for handing down severe sentences for even minor infractions.
- Straight: Judge Graves has a reputation for ordering disproportionately severe sentences for people whose guilt is questionable.
- Exaggerated:
- Judge Graves will order the death sentence for every crime, even for people convicted of jaywalking ... and has a 100% conviction rate.
- Judge Graves will not only order the death sentence, even for those of jaywalking, but he executes them himself as well.
- Judge Graves gives the death sentence even to those found innocent.
- Judge Graves doesn't even bother to go through the regular motions of a trial: every day he takes note of the people who have been appointed to go to his courtroom, deems them all guilty just for this fact, and orders them all sent to the nearest maximum-security jail.
- Judge Graves doesn't merely hand out a death sentence: anyone sent to his courtroom will have a Fate Worse than Death inflicted upon them.
- Downplayed: For the most part, Judge Graves' sentences fit the crime. However, when it comes to some specific crimes, he will always go for the harshest penalty.
- Justified:
- Judge Graves was appointed specifically to bring about order to a lawless town by terrifying would-be criminals.
- Judge Graves hates criminals for something that happened in his childhood, and as such is very unforgiving in his dealings with them.
- Judge Graves was appointed to enact harsh penalties on criminals who come to him as part of a leveled judge system.
- Judge Graves merely saw the judge system as a means for glory.
- Jugde Graves genuinely wanted to eradicate all criminals at all cost, regardless of how petty the crimes were.
- Judge Graves gets a kickback for every person sent to Super Max Facility 108.
- Judge Graves just happens to be asked to sentence a lot of people who are genuinely guilty of very severe crimes.
- Inverted: Judge Graves is known for giving very lenient sentences (at worst he'll sentence them to a few weeks of Community Service), and even letting guilty men walk free.
- Subverted:
- Bob has been accused of a crime, and is terrified when he hears that the judge presiding over his case has a reputation for convicting everyone. However, when Bob appears in court, Judge Graves gives him a fair trial, with a sensible sentence if Bob is found guilty.
- Except when Emperor Evulz committed mass murder, Judge Graves helped Evulz to get away scot-free.
- It's not the judge who's the problem, it's the extremely powerful plaintiff who has gone to great lengths to destroy any evidence that could have cleared the defendant.
- The Man Behind the Man is threatening to harm Judge Graves' family if he doesn't produce a guilty verdict.
- It turns out to be just an act. Judge Graves is really an okay guy, but likes to play the Hanging Judge in court so the defense will do their absolute best to make their case. He drops the act if a not-guilty verdict comes through.
- Double Subverted:
- Until it is revealed that Judge Graves fixed the trial, and that the fair-sounding sentence will be carried out in an especially cruel way.
- But then Judge Graves executed Evulz privately by shooting him from behind, mocking Evulz for even trusting him in the first place.
- After Graves passes his harsh sentence to the defendant, he turns towards the plaintiff, makes clear that he knows what the plaintiff and his connections did, thanks them for making this procedure run smoother than usual, and passes an equally brutal sentence to the plaintiff for any peccadilloes the plaintiff did in Graves' court (such as taking his permanent smirk as "contempt").
- Whoever is threatening Judge Graves didn't have to do so; he would have given the maximum sentence regardless.
- Judge Graves leans into his act a bit too hard.
- Parodied:
- "All rise for the Honorable Judge Hang'em!" "Guilty with a capital G! ... I mean, please be seated."
- The judge doesn't have any judicial power; he just runs around raving and proclaiming people as guilty.
- Judge Graves is strangely determined to get a guilty verdict for Alice, who is obviously innocent, so much so that he keeps jumping to conclusions, relying on tangential connections between pieces of evidence and Insane Troll Logic, and abruptly swaps out charges just to get her indicted on something.
- Judge Graves built himself the electric chair/gas chamber/guillotine that he uses for his death sentences and has even given it a pet name. He even completely disregards all the safety procedures just so he can see the death row inmates suffer even more!
- Zig-Zagged:
- Judge Graves begins his career giving lenient sentences, before becoming jaded and beginning to give progressively stricter sentences, until he realizes what he's become and returns to giving criminals the benefit of the doubt, until he learns somebody he set free went on a crime rampage and starts punishing severely again...
- Judge Graves is normally a fair and reasonable judge, but he is also notorious for throwing the book at people who constantly get into trouble with the law for ill-advised acts that are their own fault and never seem to learn from any of their many mistakes, especially when they outright lie to him or make weak excuses for why they did something for which they have gotten into trouble many times before yet again.
- Averted: Judge Graves is a Consummate Professional of a fair judge who treats all accused persons with respect, and, if they are found guilty, gives them an appropriate sentence.
- Enforced:
- "We'll have to make the judge terrifying so Bob's trial will be more dramatic."
- "The idea of a homage to The Fugitive sounds interesting, but this is a kids show and there is no crime we can add to a kids show that would merit someone going to prison, let alone escape from it." "How about making the judge a maniac who would send jaywalkers to the chair?" "…ok, that may work…"
- Lampshaded: "Off with His Head!!"
- Invoked: One of Judge Graves' defendants is a kid named Flash Young, accused of the grisly murder of known slimeball named Tommy Sharpe. In spite of the fact that Flash had every right to fight back (Tommy was going to rape him), Flash pleaded guilty, and even urged Judge Graves to just send him to Super Max Facility 108. Thus, began Judge Graves' Start of Darkness...
- Exploited:
- Bob's enemies manage to get his trial before Judge Graves, knowing Graves' reputation.
- Other corrupt members of the law enforcement machine make sure that Judge Graves is assigned to certain cases with certain undesirables that they really wish to suffer…
- Defied: Bob tries to bribe someone to prevent Judge Graves from being drawn, or fabricates a conflict of interest in order to avoid him. If caught, he may wind up with Judge Graves just because he upset the wrong person.
- Discussed: "Did you know Judge Graves has sent more people to the electric chair than all the other judges in the state? Combined?"
- Conversed: "Judge Graves is like the evil judge straight out of an old western."
- Implied: Bob is being convicted for jaywalking, and says "Well, I'm sure I can get the judge to see reason..." At the next shot, he's at the gallows.
- Deconstructed:
- Judge Graves was inspired to become a judge when the murderer of his parents got off with a slap on the wrist at most. As time goes on, he sees each accused criminal who appears before him as worse than the last, convicting and executing more and more of them. Eventually, evidence is presented that he ordered the execution of an innocent man, leaving the man's children as orphans, and he is horrified that he has become the murderer he sought to extinguish.
- There is still a trial by jury and Judge Graves is so blatantly unfairly biased against Bob that the jury decides to acquit Bob as there is inherently reasonable doubt.
- Judge Graves becomes so extreme in punishing people without due process that the citizens decide to get rid of him...by any means necessary...
- Reconstructed:
- Yet even despite the horrors he has committed, Judge Graves has single-handedly struck fear into the hearts of criminals and significantly reduced the crime rate in his jurisdiction.
- He promptly adopts the orphans and promises without a hint of irony that the wretch who allowed this miscarriage of justice must also hang...
- Judge Graves is Rightly Self-Righteous. He never takes a trial without investigation beforehand, but once someone's put in his courtroom, it's formality to decide their punishment.
- Played for Laughs:
- Judge Graves is a Large Ham who orders parking tickets to be paid and people placed in the drunk tank with the same gravitas as passing a death sentence.
- Judge Graves is such a hard-core example of this that the Big Bad, in a moment of letting pettiness overrule practicality, chooses him as the judge in his Frivolous Lawsuit against Hiro. Cue the two sides of the lawsuit pulling all sort of courtroom antics to both win and try (and fail) not to piss Graves off and be sent to jail for life on the charge of contempt (and, of course, the Big Bad loses and gets the book tossed at him in the end).
- Played for Drama: Judge Graves' excessive sentencing is additional injury (and insult) on a Miscarriage of Justice.
- Played for Horror:
- Judge Graves is a psychopath who personally performs death sentences. He takes joy in meting out every Cruel and Unusual Death.
- "Judge Graves" is a Knight Templar demon or angel.
GUILTY! ...I mean, please go back to Hanging Judge.
