Retired Badass / Live-Action TV

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• Christopher Henderson in 24, though a dark take since once Jack attempts to coax him out of retirement, it's revealed that he had already come out of retirement, did a Face–Heel Turn and was now a Dragon for the season's Big Bad.
  • Jack himself attempts to retire twice FOUR TIMES. The first time is following the first season. Jack is not retired in the true sense and listed as inactive. This is mainly due to the breakdown of his relationship with Kim, as well as suicidal thoughts following the big twist at the end of the season. Even so he's pretty quick to tell people he doesn't work for CTU anymore. Next is between Seasons 3 and 4, where he opts for a desk job in the Department of Defense. The third time is between Seasons 6 and 7 where he chooses simply not to come back to the United States. Obviously, this doesn't quite work out. As of Day 8, Jack is FINALLY truly retired from government work. He even tells someone this in the trailer for the season. He's living peacefully in New York City with Kim and his grandchild (guess this means you can add Retired Badass as well). No DoD desk job, no running from China and no trip to Africa. Needless to say since this is 24 it's not going to last long. Near the end of said trailer cue Dramatic Gun Cock and typical Awesome Music that goes with nearly everything 24 related.
  • President of Awesome David Palmer. After some rather unfortunate business in Season 3, he decided not to run for re-election and left political life. Come Season 4, and the current President, the weakly Charles Logan, decides that he needs somebody with balls to save America from mass nuking. One phone call later and President Palmer is back in the saddle (much to the annoyance of the actual Republican cabinet). Rule of Cool? Yes, but who cares?
• Billy the Exterminator: Big Bill used to be an exterminator, but due to his age and health problems, he mostly stays in the office. He still occasionally goes out into the field, but only in spite of Donnie's extreme reluctance.
• Bones: Max Keenan, the kindest guy who will stab you to death, gut you, put you on a stick and set you on fire if you put his family in danger. Normally he's a science teacher who loves kids. Mess with his kids or his grandkids and he comes out of retirement.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Rupert Giles, the bookish demon expert of the group, has a hinted-at past as rebellious badass "Ripper", but now all he does is sit around in the library and help out a few kids. Except for, you know, when he charged into the Big Bad's headquarters, no support, completely alone, with a flaming baseball bat. And kicked vampire ass.
  • Oh, and the time he scared or tortured someone for information in the time it took for Willow to fetch some rope. And the time he forced Ethan to tell him how to break a spell.
• Sam Axe in Burn Notice. He's a former... something or other (it's not explicitly mentioned what he was) Navy SEAL Commander with buddies in seemingly every major US Agency. At the beginning of the show, he was making a living mooching off retired women in Miami. When his friend Michael comes back to town, however, he proves himself to be just as badass as he ever was.
  • Lampshaded in "Friends Like These" when the supposedly bad guy Sam's interrogating is Serbian intelligence. He proceeds to try and psych Sam out by asking him what he used to do before he was an "errand boy" and figures out Sam is ex-military. He insults the SEALs to bait Sam into coming closer, then knocks Sam down and disarms him.
    Milovan: Navy SEALs? Little girls! You've gone soft! How stupid are you? [goes to fire, and the gun clicks uselessly]
    Sam: [drawing a second gun and getting up] Not stupid enough to let you near a loaded gun. Now sit down. [fires an inch from Milovan's foot] Please.
  • Well, he's played by Bruce Campbell of all people...
• Brigadier Sir Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart of Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Enjoys gardening. Will still shoot the hell out of any alien invader who sets foot on his planet.
  • Unless he's stranded in Peru.
  • It doesn't take any great leap of the imagination to see the First Doctor companion Ian Chesterton as belonging here. People often remark on the incongruity of a Secondary School science teacher apparently being able to nonchalantly kick various kinds of arse. Glance at a calendar and do some mental arithmetic, and you'll realise that, as a man in his late-30's/early-40's in 1963, Ian probably had quite an important event tucked away in his backstory. You can bet that not even the mental kids acted up in his class.
  • The Curator, the caretaker of the National Gallery, who looks suspiciously like an older version of the Fourth Doctor. His Cryptic Conversation with the Eleventh Doctor in "The Day of the Doctor" suggests that he's a future incarnation of the Doctor, who has since retired from saving the universe and now spends his retirement between working as a humble museum worker and revisiting a few of his old faces (but only the favourites!).
• Shepherd Book of Firefly fame is a relatively kindly old preacher whose mission in life is to guide the flock he's found on the good ship Serenity. Sometimes, said flock gets in trouble, and when that happens, the same kindly old preacher starts blasting men in the knees, knocking a cop senseless with his bare hands, and slicing apart battle droids with a giant curved machete.
• In The Flash (1990), the Nightshade used to be a masked hero and a Gadgeteer Genius decades ago. He has since retired. Barry eventually learns the Nightshade's secret identity, when the latter decides to don his costume again to fight an old enemy known as the Ghost. And then again, when someone calling himself the Deadly Nightshade shows up and tries to take up the Nightshade's mantle.
• The 2014 Flash series has Jay Garrick, the Scarlet Speedster of Earth 3. He is introduced as an old, but not obsolete hero with loads of experience. Jay guides the Earth-1 Flash, Barry Allen several times, but he ultimately grows too old and tired of his profession. By Season 6, he has successfully retired.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Ned's had enough of fighting in war and clearly intends to spend his remaining years governing the North with his family. That is, until Robert showed up out of the blue, hellbent on making him the next Hand of the King.
  • Sandor looks to be at peace with Septon Ray and his followers, and seriously considers just giving up his hate and living a normal life. Rogue members of The Brotherhood Without Banners derail that, though.
  • Barristan, after being removed from the Kingsguard by Joffrey to elevate Jaime and make room for the Hound — until Season 3, that is.
• Claude Rains, the Invisible Man from Heroes is a variant of this. Subverted somewhat, as he's less of a Retired Badass and more of a Screw-This-I'm-Outta-Here Badass.
• JAG:
  • General Williams in "Desert Son", former Commandant of the Marine Corps and Medal of Honor recipient. Even as a retiree, he still warrants his own helicopter transport and honor guard.
  • The trio of retired underwater demolition divers (one of them played by Ernest Borgnine), in "Yesterday’s Heroes", whom despite living at a retirement home in Florida decides to take on a drug dealer.
  • Admiral Boone (Terry O'Quinn), the wingman of Harm's dad, is recalled to active duty in Season 7.
• On Leverage, Archie Leach is this. He is also Parker's mentor and father figure. With a taser built into his cane. And another cane with a six inch stiletto blade.
• Madam Secretary: Secretary McCord's husband Dr. Henry McCord now teaches at Georgetown, but he's also a retired USMC captain and operative for the NSA and is reactivated in episode eight.
• While not a conventional example, Hal from Malcolm in the Middle can take any one of his sons in a fight and leave them gasping for air in seconds (his words). Now if you've ever seen Francis and/or Reese cut loose, you know this sweet, unassuming guy has got to be like seven kinds of badass.
• King Uther Pendragon of Merlin, played by the same guy as Giles, has handed over most of the combat to his extremely Badass son. He spends most of his time being a Reasonable Authority Figure (unless magic is involved) and Well-Intentioned Extremist against any magic he encounters (he genuinely believes it is evil) and by Series 4 he is bed/chair bound and in a permanent bout of Heroic BSoD. Try and hurt his son or his people and he will kill you. He once held off his own son, who is unmatchable with a sword, refusing to attack, and took out an assassin during the fourth series bout of Heroic BSoD.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Sins of Commission", it turns out the three "victims" all tried to murder the same nice older lady - who happened to have been an agent with the Special Operations Executive during WWII.
• NCIS: Mike Franks, Gibbs's mentor, is this. Implied that he retired due to the Khobar Towers bombing, then he went to live in a beach at Mexico. Whenever a situation arises that has him come back to the United States, however, he turns to be still quite good at what he used to do, and during at least two cases he got and trailed leads before Gibbs did, in one of these occasions taking the episode's villain himself. He also sneaked by and terminated Jenny Sheppard's killers and was instrumental in a case holding some keys to Gibb's past.
• Although we haven't seen him cut loose it's implied that Zeke from Parenthood is this.
• Tommy from Power Rangers has tried to become this several times, but he keeps getting chosen for new powers and duties. He probably would have stayed retired, if his initial idea of "peaceful retirement" hadn't been "Mad Scientist experimenting with oversized cyborg dinosaurs and magic rocks on a private island". By the end of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, however, he had to take care of the aftermath of that little booboo, and was in the much more relaxing career of "high school science teacher", which, while stressful, is not apocalyptically so.
  • On the Super Sentai side, technically everyone who lost their powers during Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger's Great Legend War. While some heroes, such as the members of the Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger and Chouriki Sentai Oh Ranger are still active in their day jobs, some have settled down to be teachers, shop owners and, in one case, driving instructors.
  • Some of the mentors qualify as well. Samurai Sentai Shinkenger features Ji, who's old enough to be a grandfather and is mainly in charge of the day-to-day operations of Shiba manor, but he is able to take on a horde of Nanashi using a naginata and a katana, and once killed one barehanded.
• Sherlock: John and Mary. You don't want to mess with those two. Oh, and if you mess with John's best friend-you'll wind up lying in a pool if your own blood. Also, don't mess with John. Mary will kick your ass if you do.
  • Mary wants to stay in this position, though, in contrast to John.
• Subverted in The Shield with Vic's mentor Joe Clark. He taught Vic everything he knows and is played by the quintessence Cool Old Guy actor Carl Weathers, but it quickly turns out that being a rule-bending Cowboy Cop resulted in him being stripped of his pension for assaulting a suspect unprovoked and he's now a broke, washed-up loser barely scraping by and on often illegal work to boot.
• Jack O'Neill begins Stargate SG-1 in retirement, but doesn't stay that way long once Apophis comes to town. SG-1's Reasonable Authority Figure, General Hammond, had also planned on retiring before the Stargate mission began, though he wasn't retired yet...and didn't retire for many years afterward, as he was having too much goddamn fun.
• Star Trek: Picard: By the start of the series, Picard has long since retired from Starfleet to tend his family vineyard in France, in the wake of Starfleet banning artificial lifeforms and refusing to help the Romulans in the face of their impending supernova. Though 94 and showing his age (yet still fitter than many people now would be) he managed to take out a couple of the Romulans who invaded his chateau.
• Samuel Colt of Supernatural, as shown in one of the Time Travel episodes. When two demons come knocking, he tells them quite politely to walk away, he's retired. When they refuse, he kills both of them in the span of two seconds, and only laments that they knocked over his bottle of whiskey.
  • Bobby could be seen as semi-retired, fielding phone calls and doing research, but is in fact a crafty, tough old bastard with an encyclopedic knowledge of the occult.
• On Teen Wolf, Dr. Deaton. He repeatedly states HE'S RETIRED, but the end of Season 2 sees him back in action going after Gerard.

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