Basic Trope: An organization of crime-fighters which aren't officially connected to the government.
- Straight: In order to protect the people of Tropetown from criminals, citizens formed a militia called Bob's Band to take matters into their own hands. Bob's Band is not connected to the Tropetown Police Department.
- Exaggerated: Bob's Brethren is effectively an army, operating with military hardware and having complete control over its region.
- Downplayed: Some townspeople in Tropetown form a neighborhood watch to deter criminals and to report them to the TPD.
- Justified:
- The TPD is corrupt, letting criminals go for bribes or favors.
- The TPD is simply too undermanned and underfunded to even put a dent in Tropeland's massive crime rate.
- Inverted: The police in Tropetown are so competent and pure-hearted that the remaining criminals form The Syndicate just to have any chance.
- Subverted:
- Bob the Vigilante Man is approached by a group of fellow-citizens asking to join his fight against crime. He rejects their offer of assistance.
- Bob's Band turns out to have been deputized by a Sheriff, making it a Posse and thus fully legal.
- Double Subverted:
- After a fight against a gang leaves Bob bedridden for a month, he decides to form a militia after all.
- So Bob won't be their leader. No biggie. They will just have to march to their own tune, then.
- When the sheriff who deputized them is fired, Bob's Band refuses to disband.
- Parodied: Bob's Band starts selling merchandise to help fund their activities, including militiamen plushies.
- Zig-Zagged: A band of citizens upset about the increase in crime decide to approach Bob to ask him to teach them how to fight and organize. Bob refuses because he is a lone wolf. So they decide to fight themselves (and lose members in the bumbling mess) until Steve comes along and recruits them. Then Bob decides they are screwing up too much and for their own good he's going to have to force them to disband. They manage to overwhelm Bob and steal his equipment and resources to bolster their own. And then the police begins to crack down on vigilantism. So several members of the group become cops to throw chaff on the crackdown and maybe recruit more members amongst the cops. And then some idiot members of the band hurt innocents in an act of Vigilante brutality. And so the band decides to hand them over to the angry citizens as a peace offering, which ironically leads to more citizens wanting to become members knowing that the band is above "code of silence" crap. And the continuous escalation from the crooks to try to get rid of this obstacle? For every time they make Steve's Militia bleed, they only make them meaner.
- Averted: Nobody attempts to take the law into their own hands.
- Enforced: Executive Meddling insists showing about the evils of this trope after a particularly bad case of it in real life happened.
- Lampshaded: "When you can't be Batman or Charles Bronson, the best alternative is strength in numbers."
- Invoked: A Corrupt Politician with an undeserved reputation for justness forms a militia under the guise of fighting crime. He uses them to go after his equally-corrupt political rivals.
- Exploited: When Alice's little sister Carol is raped by a man the police won't go after, she instead takes the accusation to Bob's Band because she knows they'll get results.
- Defied:
- The Tropetown government cracks down hard on all vigilantes.
- Alternatively, the Tropetown government gives up on fighting Bob's Band and instead makes them the new police force. This legitimizes their activities in the eyes of the law.
- Deconstructed:
- The police arrest Bob's Band because vigilantism is illegal.
- Bob's Band winds up committing several crimes themselves in their efforts to protect Tropetown.
- Criminals escalate. Bob's Band escalates in turn. The result is a Mob War in all but name, with nothing to show for it but a lot of dead people.
- Discussed: "A vigilante militia? Bob, if we do that we'll probably end up killing innocent people by mistkae. We'll certainly end up behind bars when the proper police catch up with us."
- Conversed: "If this were a summer blockbuster then we'd have formed a militia by now."
Back to Vigilante Militia
