Bully Hunters in Live-Action TV series.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Buffy has a habit of doing this, once pinning Larry to the wall when he was about to beat up Xander. Helps that she has Super-Strength. Also saves the world.
- She also gets a group persecuting witches to back down by smiling at them. The fact she is known as a pyromaniac (her old school gym), possible murderer (Ted, Kendra), borderline psychotic (thanks Cordy), or any combination of the above helps.
- In a scene late in The Movie, Buffy is already in a bad mood when a lecherous male student grabs her rear end. Within seconds, she's judo-flipped him into the lockers and reduced him to a cringing coward who instantly apologizes. The other students at Hemery High just look on in shock, since Buffy has never been seen doing anything like this before.
- And yet again during a self-defense class when Larry the Jerk Jock is leering at a female student and wanting to get his hands on her. Buffy bounds right up to her side and sweetly offers to be his partner instead, the implication that she will kick his ass six ways from Sunday very clear. Willow then intervenes, leaving Buffy to pout about ruining her fun. Said jock then makes the mistake of groping her behind...
- Buffy also defends Willow whenever people attempt to pick on her.
- Season 7 has Buffy working as school counselor. When Amanda tells her about an abusive boyfriend Buffy says she needs to stand up for herself. Amanda replies she already did and smashed his face into the pavement, she needs advice on whether she should do it more.
- MTV Show Bully Beatdown is this trope manifested, with professional mixed martial artists as the bully hunters.
- Parodied on Burnistoun. The Doberman is a masked, Batman-style superhero who's dedicated to making the city safe and protecting the weak so that no virgin will have to be forced to hump a pole ever again. In practice, this mostly involves targeting Johnny Wee Tollen's Boy, the guy who bullied him as a teen, and it's not very effective, as Johnny Wee Tollen's Boy's bullying tactics are still effective and get the better of The Doberman most of the time.
- Jeff Winger in Community is an odd example of this. On the surface, he's a self-involved Jerkass who is thoroughly reluctant to involve himself in anything outside his little bubble and isn't exactly shy about shooting nasty comments at people, whether they're his friends or not. However, he consistently appears to be unwilling and/or unable to let bullying go unchallenged; every time a bully or group of bullies has appeared, even if his friends aren't the direct victims (although especially if they are) Jeff has almost inevitably ended up challenging and getting into conflict with them. He'll usually frame it as challenging them for being an obnoxious, irritating dickhead rather than a bully, but it's a consistent trait of his. In one episode we learn he himself was bullied as a child, which might explain it.
- The Criminal Minds episode "Elephant's Memory" had a brilliant but deeply troubled student who was the victim of truly horrific bullying hunt down and kill all of his previous tormentors. Reid, a victim of bullying, is sympathetic to him.
- Considering that Reid's day job is hunting down sadistic serial killers, he probably qualifies as a bully hunter himself. Other members of the BAU like Hotch and Morgan chose their careers as a catharsis for the abuse they suffered during their childhood, and Rossi's barely veiled rage toward serial killers (he wrote in one of his bestselling books that the death penalty is not about justice but revenge, and that it is a good thing) may show that the BAU Unit the show is centered on is a team of Bully Hunters who treat their job as a personal crusade.
- The episode "The Anti-Terror Squad" is named for a group of bully victims who formed the titular squad as more of a self-help group for dealing with bullies, helping each other avoid their tormentors and such. One of the members decides to take things to the next level and target the bullies' families (since he fells it will instill more fear in the bulies than targetting them directly).
- Seth Bullock in Deadwood hints at this background. When Hearst gets into a particularly loathsome rant, Bullock interrupts with barely contained rage, stating that bullies never know when to shut up. Hearst takes the hint and leaves. Much earlier, Alma's father gives Seth a Hannibal Lecture that speculates about his driving motive:Otis Garrett: Were you bullied, Mr. Bullock, when young and incapable? Now you see wrongs everywhere, and bullying you feel called to remedy? The bully who oppressed your youth isn't at the table with us — perhaps he's long dead.
- The Flash becomes this for one episode, when he has to face his super-powered childhood bully Tony Woodward (known as Girder in the comics). Being able to turn his skin into iron makes him Flash-proof. Thanks to Cisco's calculations, Barry appears to run away, but stops at the 5.3-mile mark and runs back as fast as he can, breaking the sound barrier and punching out Tony (although, for some reason, Tony hears the boom before being punched out, which is physically impossible). Cisco suggests that Barry go beat up his school bully.
- Game of Thrones:
- Jon and his little sister Arya demonstrate this early on. Jon insists on fighting back against the Night's Watch recruits who harass Samwell, while Arya defends the butcher's boy against the psychopathic Prince Joffrey.
- Gendry is introduced defending Arya from Hot Pie and Lommy, and calls them out for picking on the smaller "boy".
- In Season 2 of Glee Santana blackmails bully Karofsky into forming the Bully Whips so they can win Prom King and Queen.
- Tucker had this reputation in Grange Hill.
- On Judge Judy, if the case is about bullying expect Judy to make the bully break down in tears.
- In Malcolm in the Middle, one episode saw Reese realize what a jerk he'd been at school and turn into a pacifist. With the alpha jerk of the schoolyard gone, the entire school goes into chaos as over a dozen bullies all vie for the empty throne left vacant, multiple bullies harassing the same kids multiple times in a row (one of them gets his shirt and shoes taken after the first bully gets his lunch money). When several of them team up on Stevie, Reese is outraged that his wheelchair immunity is being ignored and rises up to perform a bully beatdown of epic proportions.
- M*A*S*H: In the 11th season episode "Run for the Money", Winchester witnesses a captain berating one of his men who speaks with a stutter, and threatens to put the captain on report if he does so again. His expression when confronting the captain is a classic example of Tranquil Fury. Turns out the situation hits Winchester close to home; at the end of the episode he is listening to a recorded message from his sister Honoria, who also stutters.
- NCIS: Timothy McGee. He even mentions that he used to be bullied, and now he's the one with the badge and the gun. Probably a lot more in other Crime and Punishment Series.
- The eponymous Ned of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide becomes this during his brief stint as "The Revenger"
- Deconstructed in Northern Rescue: When Taylor is getting cyber-bullied her older sister's friend Gwen goes to confront the (12-year-old) bully and try to intimidate her into taking down the video. This ends up embarrassing Taylor when word of it gets out, and Maddie points out to Gwen that bullying a bully (especially one younger than you) doesn't magically make things right.
- In Person of Interest, John Reese tells his therapist, "My school didn't have bullies; I kept them in line."
- Power Rangers:
- Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Jason, Tommy and, to a lesser extent, Zack like to humiliate Bulk and Skull whenever the duo bullies someone. At times, their revenge feels harsher than whatever Bulk and Skull do, but the ranger-teens are always portrayed as being in the right.
- Troy from Power Rangers Megaforce steps in to save a nameless victim from a pair of nameless bullies. When the bullies try to pick on him instead, he scares them away by calmly staring them down.
- Adult example in Scrubs. Dr. Kelso does his absolute best to make Elliot's life a living hell. When he engages in a particularly brutal session (while Elliot was in the middle of her own personal Trauma Conga Line), Dr. Cox, the resident Jerk with a Heart of Gold, steps in and wallops Kelso so hard he has a squeak in his nose that makes him audible from a hallway away. And out of his shoes, don't forget that. He whacked him so hard his shoes stayed perfectly stationary while his feet came out of 'em.
- In an episode of Sliders, "The Guardian," Quinn tries to coach a younger version of himself on an alternate world to stand up to school bullies, hoping to right a wrong that happened when he was a kid. Partially subverted, as it turns out Quinn's goal is not to get back at the bullies but to prevent his younger self from permanently disabling one of them with a baseball bat. Instead he teaches the kid self-defense so he fights them with his hands.
- Happens on Step by Step, of all shows. When the nerdy Mark is being bullied, he doesn't tell anyone about it because he's too humiliated at being beaten up by a girl. When his tomboyish stepsister Al finds out about it, she confronts the bully directly and gives her some very blunt threats about what she'll do if the bully ever picks on Mark again. The bully, remembering that Al beat the crap out of the toughest male bully in the school, immediately complies.
- Steve Wilkos, the eponymous host of The Steve Wilkos Show.
- Veronica Mars is a complicated example. She does on occasion do some vigilante non-pay bully hunting (this is the initial basis of her friendship with Wallace), but she also at times takes on bullies for a fee. The main point of ambivalence is that she often gets mad at the people she helps for not sticking out for themselves.
- Another partial example is Weevil, who prefers hunting strictly rich, 09er bullies. However, he is a violent bully himself.
- Walker, Texas Ranger: Upon learning that a bully is intimidating or hurting people weaker than they are, Walker will immediately step in and make the bully regret it. This was particularly true in an episode where a kid who was bullied by a gang of jocks killed himself and Walker intervened.
