Great Detective

The game is afoot.

"I never guess. It is a shocking habit — destructive to the logical faculty."

— Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four

A staple of Mystery Fiction and Detective Fiction, the Great Detective relies on powers of deduction and educated thought to solve crimes. The Great Detective is usually an Amateur Sleuth or a Private Detective (because Police Are Useless). Some of these detectives will have an Arch-Enemy that will be their equal, but in a different light.

The Great Detective tradition originates with Eugène François Vidocq, a Real Life criminal-turned-detective and founder of the French Sûreté in the early 19th century. Vidocq pioneered many of the scientific methods of detective work which would later become common in fictional detective stories.

The first Great Detective in fiction was Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin. Poe rejected the Vidocq model in favor of a more fantastic kind of detective. Later, the Dupin model was further codified by Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, the most famous example to this day. As such, the Sherlock Homage tends to be this in either pastiche or parody form, and many (though certainly not all) Great Detectives tend to at least nod to Holmes in some form.

In Japan, where The Golden Age Of Detective Fiction never quite ended, this type of character is called "Meitantei".

Compare: Hardboiled Detective, Little Old Lady Investigates, and Inspector Lestrade (whose greatness extends only to the evidence he gets). Contrast with Clueless Detective. Often opposed by a Gentleman and/or Phantom Thief.

Will often be accompanied by The Watson as an Audience Surrogate. Not uncommon for him to have natural defects.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Naturally, Edogawa Ranpo in Bungo Stray Dogs is a perfect execution of this trope. Being named after Japan's most famous novelist, he lives up to his namesake by solving mysteries the police can't and outwardly being referred to as the smartest character. Of course, he's also often accompanied by Edgar Allan Poe as well.
• Shin'ichi Kudo/Conan Edogawa, of Case Closed. Also, Heiji Hattori who is on par with him. Both are considered as the "Meitantei of East [Shin'ichi] and West [Heiji]", respectively. "The Sleeping Kogoro Mouri" is believed to be one, but it's actually Conan who solves the cases. However, the filler character Heihachiro Shiota was known as the "Legendary Great Detective" and was Kogoro's teacher.
  • "The Gathering of the Detectives" arc introduced five other Meitantei besides Shin'ichi/Conan/Sleeping Kogoro. One of them is Kaito KID's rival Saguru Hakuba.
  • Other detectives like Sera Masumi and Tooru Amuro are introduced late in the manga, but they are not on the same level as Shin'ichi and Heiji. That underlines these two as the real Meitantei of the series. The only character who is shown to be greater than Shin'ichi is his father Yusaku. However, Yusaku does not work as a detective, he's instead a writer.
• Oddly enough, Loki, Norse trickster god, in Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Manjoume has declared himself Super Detective Manjoume Thunder on a few occasions. He's miserable at it, but it doesn't stop him.
• L in Death Note, who later reveals that he is the world's three greatest detectives, by use of pseudonyms. After his death, L is succeeded by Mello and Near (L-M-N, get it?), two younger proteges trained in the same school/institution that produced L.
• Denjin N: The police hire the infamous detective twins Sudou, who are incredibly aloof, creepy, and very quickly deduce the killer is a supernatural being and his abilities, and manage to defeat him, twice.
• Houtarou Oreki of Hyouka, though he thinks otherwise.
• Practically everyone in Detective School Q, but specially people like Kyuu Renjou, Ryu Amakusa, Professor Morihiko Dan and Professor Dan's niece Sakurako Yukihira.
• Chiko in The Daughter of Twenty Faces is this, although her powers of deduction aren't really used to help the law per se...
• The Kindaichi Case Files:
  • Hajime Kindaichi is an Amateur Sleuth who solves crimes via deductive investigations despite not being a professional detective.
  • Kengo Akechi, a police detective, is The Rival to Kindaichi when it comes to detective work and proves himself quite capable both when he's the one to solve cases and when he provides investigative support to Kindaichi.
• Inspector Lunge in Monster seems heavily inspired by Holmes. Working on cases seems to be his entire life and he is shown repeatedly to be unable to stop, even using his forced vacation to continue the investigation.
• Meitantei Holmes, a Funny Animal adaptation of Sherlock Holmes (called Sherlock Hound in the US), created by (of all people) Hayao Miyazaki.
• Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple is a 2004 anime teaming up Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple through the device of Marple's great-niece Mabel West. Aimed at older teens.
• Karakurizoushi Ayatsuri Sakon (aka Doll Puppeteer Sakon). Sakon is a student and a traditional bunraku performer (a style of traditional Japanese theatre employing very detailed life-sized puppets). In his spare time, though, he is an Amateur Sleuth. And his partner in his investigations is his red-haired, loud-mouthed puppet, Ukon.
• Steam Detectives, the story of Boy Detective Narutaki and his endless fight against the various mad scientists and masked villains that are trying to take over Steam City.
• Subverted by Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, which appears to be a typical Meitantei about a genius teenage-girl detective specialising in Paranormal Investigation... but in reality, she's merely the slightly dense puppet of Neuro, a creepy-but-brilliant demon from Hell who "eats mysteries".
• In Rozen Maiden, there's a puppet Funny Animal one called Meitantei Kun Kun. Shinku is a fan.
• Future Diary: Akise Aru is the best non-diary holder after all.
• Gosick gives us Victorique the Elegant Gothic Lolita Great Detective. Her brother Grevil, meanwhile, is reputed to be this.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Solf J. Kimblee is the evil version of this. He may be a Psycho for Hire mass murderer, but he's also a brilliant detective.
  • Lt. Col. Maes Hughes as well, as he deduces that both the layout of Amestris and the locations of recent large-scale military conflicts form the same kind of transmutation circle needed to create a Philospher's Stone, a process that requires the sacrifice of human lives. Particularly notable in that Hughes himself isn't an alchemist, yet he picked up on these facts long before any other character. Unfortunately, he gets killed by one of the conspirators before he can share this information.
• Although, it, like everything else in Lupin III, is a case of Depending on the Writer, Zenigata is generally portrayed as a genuinely brilliant detective who has the unfortunate luck of going up against Lupin III, someone who is always a step ahead. Against anyone else besides Lupin and the rest of his gang, he brings them in with ease.
• This trope is invoked and exploited by the three Brilliant Detectives Sakaido, Anaido and Hijiriido, personas adopted by the protagonists of ID: Invaded. The first two are piloted by serial killer prisoners as it is required for them to have intentionally killed to be able to dive into and investigate ID-Wells. Their personalities are overridden with the Brilliant Detective personas because if their original memories resurface, it can cause the simulations to break down and trap them within the ID-Wells. It's also why characters aren't sent into their own ID-Wells, as said Wells contain reminders of their original selves.
• Naturally, Sherlock Holmes in Moriarty the Patriot is a consulting detective who relies on facts and deduction to get his casework done.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Batman. Yes, he is a top martial artist. Yes, he is a great chemist. But first, he's the world's greatest detective and a world class forensic scientist who has unravelled criminal conspiracies time and again. Here are some standout examples:
    • In the Hush storyline, Batman figures out that Killer Croc is working for someone based on the simple fact that Croc did something he's never been smart enough to do before: kidnap someone and hold them for ransom.
    • In the Zero Year storyline, Batman deduces that the dust residue from Dr. Death's handprints, which contained a mixture of phosphate and calcium as well as multiple sources of corrupted DNA, comes from old bones and that therefore his hideout must be located somewhere in the city's catacombs.
    • In the Court of Owls storyline, Batman finds a secret message written in linseed oil, a common paint thinner, because he noticed its smell was unusually strong in the room. Later when he's trapped in the Court's labyrinth, Batman deduces he's near the Gotham River based on the taste of the minerals found in the water he drank from a fountain. After escaping the labyrinth, Batman captures and forensically examines a Talon, a killer that works for the Court. He figures out that the Court freezes and defrosts the Talons using a conductive electrum tooth with an owl carving to preserve them for centuries. He also realizes that Nightwing was meant to be a Talon as Talons were recruited from Haly's Circus, Nightwing's childhood home. Batman punches Nightwing to knock out his electrum tooth and shows it to him.
    • In the Endgame storyline, Joker seems to be immortal with a new Joker toxin but Batman refuses to believe him despite all evidence pointing in Joker's favor. Instead, Batman theorizes that Joker ended up in a cave system after their last fight and found something there that gave him his regenerative abilities. When he searches the same caves, Batman finds a pit of Dionesium, a fluid with immense regenerative capabilities.
    • In Batman #431, the murder of a woman was never reported and the body never found. Batman checks out her apartment while disguised as a janitor to glean clues that may narrow down the FBI's list of Jane Does who turned up in the last couple of days and meet her description, and find out which corpse belongs to her. Batman can tell she's pigeon-toed by the angled wear of her shoe heels, or that she's anemic by the contents of her fridge, among many other details. He tracks down the body to a morgue in Los Angeles, and after examining it while disguised as a mortician, he discovers the method used to kill her and identifies the assassins, then deduces who ordered the hit based on which criminals had the money and contacts to hire those assassins.
    • In Batman #444, Batman unfolds a floor plan from a criminal's wallet and determines it was computer-generated because the angled and circular lines were jagged and not straight, then identifies the laser printer used to print it out by the signature laserjet toner streaks on the paper.
    • In Batman #499, Batman figures out a kidnapper regularly travels to a tropical island country in Latin America by analysing a bloodstained piece of his mask and discovering he was vaccinated against a rare strain of malaria based on the presence of a particular species of protozoans and an increased antibody count in his blood.
  • Oh and then there's also Tim Drake, who Batman has said will one day surpass him, in addition to being one of two people Ra's al Ghul calls "Detective". So some nice recommendations for the position.
  • The Riddler once performed a Heel–Face Turn and became one of these, with Batman grudgingly admitting he was good at it.
  • Private detective Harvey Harris (who appears in a couple of Whole Episode Flashback stories) was a renowned, veteran crime-solver a young Bruce Wayne went to in order to learn deductive reasoning, although his skills with his fists gave him elements of a Hard Boiled Detective.
  • Introduced in the Batman (Tom King) storyline "Their Dark Designs", Cassander Wycliffe Baker was once the world's greatest detective — until his Moriarty counterpart, the Designer, pushed himself to advance through ten years of experience in a single year, and left Wycliffe humiliated and broken.
• The ductile detective, Elongated Man. He's just as good as Batman, if not better, but is often overlooked because he's not a gritty, mean, tragic origin guy, nor has he had several movies and TV shows about him.
• The Question. He's a straight-up ace detective and lacks the gadgets and powers of the two above. He's also been referred to as the world's second greatest detective.
• Rorschach, unsurprisingly given he's an expy of Batman and the Question. He's hailed as the world's greatest detective in the Watchmen universe.
• The Spirit qualifies as both brainy investigator and two fisted gumshoe; his aide Ebony White has moments of brilliance as well.
• Detective Chimp from the DCU. A hyper-intelligent chimpanzee that happens to be one of the best detectives in the world. He likes reminding people that Batman is merely the world's greatest human detective. One team up story is actually called "The World's Greatest Detective and Batman".
• Hellboy, the title character is a a very skilled paranormal investigator who has solved many supernatural cases.
• John Constantine the Hellblazer, although with the word "occult" right before "detective".
• Gabriel Webb from The Maze Agency.
• Abraham Moth from the graphic novel The Woman in Red: Son of Sherlock Holmes.
• German example: Nick Knatterton.
• Simon Archard from Ruse, who is best described as "totally not Sherlock Holmes, honest."
• Mickey Mouse from Mickey Mouse Comic Universe. Sometimes Mickey's hobby of solving crimes is raised to this level of skill (and sometimes also made his profession), particularly when he goes up against a similarly elevated Phantom Blot. A couple of stories also point out that he'd be a great criminal if he wanted to due to that same ingenuity.
• In Baker Street, Sharon Ford is an Alternate Universe, 1980s, female, punk version of Sherlock Holmes.

Fan Works

• Goro Akechi is still a famous detective in The Evil Queen as he is in Persona 5, but in this setting he openly admits to Ann that he cheats. By using the Metaverse, he forces a change of heart onto criminals, then works backwards from there to "catch" them in the real world.
• Peter Parker Needs A Hug: Part of the reason why Peter is reluctant to trust the Bats is because he's heard that Batman is this trope, and (after what happened with Mysterio) he wants to be careful in case they figure out his secret identity. The Bats being who they are, they figure it out anyway
• Vow of Nudity: This is Serris of Tides' main characterization, with a healthy dose of Gadgeteer Genius on top thanks to his levels in artificer.

Film — Live-Action

• Benoit Blanc in Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion is an Affectionate Parody, being a rather flamboyant and eccentric private investigator with his own personal methods and philosophy of crime-solving attached to investigate a bizarre crime alongside a rather exasperated police officer, who is described in a New Yorker profile as "The Last of the Gentleman Sleuths". It's initially unclear whether he's just a bumbling clown or is Obfuscating Stupidity, but he turns out to have genuine chops by the end.
• Insomnia: While also fairly action-oriented, and a bit hard-boiled veteran LAPD Frank Dormer is introduced this way, having thirty years of prestigious cases under his belt, and picking up all kinds of useful details that the initial investigation had missed in the victim's room and on her body while conducting a clever trap against the killer which only fails due to a clumsy mistake.
• Quick Change: Chief Rotzinger is quick to try and plan ahead to anticipate Grimm's moves throughout the bank robbery and getaway, quickly realizes how some of the hostages (the disguised robbers) have disappeared, and does a good job of tracking them throughout the film. He's also mentioned as having broken tough cases like "The Peruvian Connection" and "The Subway Psycho."

Literature

• Sherlock Holmes, the Trope Codifier as far as mystery fiction and modern audiences are concerned.
• Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's fussy Belgian refugee with his immaculate moustache and incisive "little grey cells", has a pretty good claim to being the second most famous of literary Great Detectives just behind Sherlock Holmes. Which, given Poirot's legendary vanity, has to rankle just a little bit.
• Commissioner Jules Maigret by Belgian author Georges Simenon is perhaps the most famous French example, with the addition that he's a Lead Police Detective.
• Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin.
• Jack Reacher: A key part of Reacher and his Knight Errant wandering is his ability to make complicated deductions to learn information about people, communities, and conspiracies. He is only human and can make wrong deductions at important points, but the number of correct Awesome by Analysis moments he has easily make up for this.
• In Johannes Cabal Cabal himself would almost qualify except most of his stories aren't traditional detective stories-the second novel Johannes Cabal The Detective shows an example of this-it even ends with Cabal giving a lengthy, pompous summation. If Cabal were so inclined, he'd make an excellent detective in the Sherlock Holmes vein, but Cabal is a scientist (and necromancer) first, detective second.
  • In The Fall Of The House Of Cabal where things get a bit meta, Leonie Barrow, who proved an able sidekick to Cabal in his Detective novel, travels to a pocket universe where she is known as a Great Detective and Horst ends up being her comedy relief sidekick. While she serves well in the job (and is in real lief a forensic investigator) she laments that Cabal would have figured out the case sooner by dint of superior intellect-while Horst reminds her that Cabal's lack of social skills means he would have figured out means, but not motive.
• Gregory Temple of John Devil by Paul Féval
• Monsieur Lecoq created by Emile Gaboriau who was a direct influence on Sherlock Holmes
• Erast Fandorin, the popular fictional Russian detective created by Boris Akunin. He is actually teamed with Sherlock Holmes in one novella but neither is able to "prevail" over the other. See The Other Wiki for more information...
• Anyone in detective fiction from the time of Sherlock Holmes until the type was deconstructed in Trent's Last Case in 1913. Furthermore, in a genre-wide example of Fountain of Expies, such characters tended to be thinly veiled copies of Holmes.
• Harry Salt, the main character of Incompetence certainly qualifies. Granted, damn near everybody else in the book is completely useless at what they do, but he is able to piece together a reasonably accurate account of a murder, despite the fact that the files contradict each other.
• The Basil of Baker Street series by Eve Titus. The Film of the Book, The Great Mouse Detective, is by Disney.
• Peter Wickham, aka The Sleuth, in the Steampunk Superhero novel The Falling Machine by Andrew P. Mayer, is Sherlock Holmes crossed with Bruce Wayne without the bat symbolism.
• Nero Wolfe, who is also mostly a Phone-In Detective, solving crimes from his brownstone while leaving field work to his borderline Hardboiled Detective secretary Archie Goodwin.
• The title character of the Mediochre Q Seth Series has 'being a Great Detective' as a superpower.
• Commissaire Adamsberg (in Fred Vargas novels).
• Lord Darcy, who can best be described as "Sherlock Holmes in a Victorian world with magic".
• Nick Carter, a Dime Novel detective.
• Lord Peter Wimsey, a hereditary aristocrat and World War I veteran who solves mysteries partly out of a sense of justice, partly because he has no other work he needs to do, and partly as a way of coping with his trauma from the trenches.
• In The Invisible Library, Irene encounters one of these by the name of Perigrine Vale. He followed her trainee, deduced that they were after the same book thief he was investigating, and suggests that they should work together. Since she is a Magic Librarian and they are in a parallel universe where mythical creatures are real, it is not quite clear whether he is supposed to be part of the "things working according to story logic" reality, or just sort of there because it is London. Notably, he directly (and apparently unconsciously) quotes Holmes at one point, which Kai has trouble keeping a straight face about. Irene herself enjoys working with him; Word of God is that she took her chosen name from Irene Adler. Later books establish that Vale has a sister who is high up in British Intelligence, and an archenemy known only as The Professor (who, as a powerful Fae archetype, very much is there because of story logic).
• Julius Katz is a Man of Wealth and Taste who can solve complicated mysteries in very little time thanks to his excellent ability to read whether people's emotions and reactions to certain situations ring true, his skill at bluffing, and his A.I. assistant Archie's ability to hack into all kinds of databases. Notably, despite Archie being programmed with human emotions and reasoning skills, and typically having access to more information than Julius, Julius always solves the case before Archie.
  Julius: What is important is that in less than two hours I was able to determine with a high degree of probability that you were involved in these four robberies. I was also able to identify eight others over the past five years that I am fairly certain you were involved in ... I can't prove any of those yet. But I'm confident that if I were to dedicate a month or two to this, I'd be able to see you convicted of at least three of these crimes. Perhaps all of them.
• The Langoliers has mystery author Bob Jenkins, who through simple deduction and expertise rules out a lot of scenarios about what's happening to them and figures out the paranormal truth. If he was a science fiction author he’d be a Sole Surviving Scientist, and like a more competent example of that trope he even figures out the way to escape the time loop that is behind the situation.
• Whodunit Mysteries has Inspector Parnacki. He has his stoic personality, independent streak, and is reliant on deductive skills.
• Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., M.D., M.D.S., a.k.a. 'The Thinking Machine', was an early American imitator of Sherlock Holmes.
• In the Kjell Nilsen series, a series of satirical mystery books by Norwegian comedian Knut Nærum, the titular character (a crime novelist) usually ends up playing The Watson to his friend Oberon Qvist, who swings between being a genuine example of the trope, a parody, and a Deconstruction. Oberon Qvist is of course the brilliant detective who's always three steps ahead of everyone else and always solves the mystery, but is supremely frustrating to be around because he's an impatient and snappish grouch, and a bit of a Manipulative Bastard who's constantly insulting his friend's intelligence and never commits to any statement, much less explains anything to anyone, before the case is closed at the end of the book. His personality flaws are usually Played for Laughs, but especially in the final book they can also make him come across as an increasingly chilling and untrustworthy person willing to gamble with people's lives and safety in order to be the Great Detective.
• In Aria the Scarlet Ammo, a VERY NON-CANONICAL descendant of Sherlock Holmes comes from the young tsundere Aria. She obviously takes up the mantle.
• Heaven's Memo Pad gives us Alice, the Great Detective for the NEET detective team.
• In/Spectre: Iwanaga Kotoko is a young woman from a distinguished family who was kidnapped by Youkai at a young age and made into their "Goddess of Wisdom", responsible for mediating their disputes and helping maintain The Masquerade. While she doesn't have any more power than a normal person (less, in fact; assuming the position cost her right eye and left leg), she has a knack for deductive reasoning which makes her a master negotiator, and sometimes leads even Muggles to call on her aid. The catch is that Iwanaga doesn't particularly care whether her deductions are true - since she has myriad Invisible to Normals ghosts and goblins lurking around, she can usually find an unbiased witness to "spoil the twist" for her immediately. Instead she focuses more on the consequences that her answers will have, carefully constructing narratives in order to best provide people with closure and/or meddle with the power of collective belief. This is even more apparent in the book's original Japanese title Kyokou Suiri ("Invented Inference").
• In Nanana's Buried Treasure, Tensai gives herself the title Master Detective. While people laugh at her for it, she does actually live up to her claims, being able to figure out just about any mystery.
• Parodied with love by Pięć Przygód Detektywa Konopki whose protagonist is an Invincible Hero among detectives and good friends with his own Lemony Narrator, despite the latter never actually taking part in adventures.
• In The Shadow Pulps S 129 Crime Insured, Stampf is a brilliant and respected insurance company investigator who has cracked some very tough cases. He finds out the Shadow’s main alias, where his hideout is, and who most of his regular agents (save a few like Jericho) are after just ten days of shadowing people, planting listening devices, and analyzing newspaper reports, when many people have spent years vainly searching for a fraction of that information. Unfortunately, Stampf is Only in It for the Money and he turns his findings over to the underworld.

Live-Action TV

• Lieutenant Columbo, the famously inelegant and eccentric but very sharp-minded homicide police detective. Popularized the Reverse Whodunnit, also known as "howcatchum".
• Sherlock, being a modern update of Sherlock Holmes.
• And the modern update in America, Elementary
• Kamen Rider Double and Kamen Rider Drive are this in Toku form.
• Adrian Monk is one, despite also being a Defective Detective.
• Madame Vastra in Doctor Who, who is the In-Universe inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. The Doctor himself has been called "the great detective" on a few occasions, and though he rarely encounters traditional mysteries (or rather, the mysteries that he faces take the form of figuring out how to stop the villain rather than who it is), he is more than equal to the task, his Sherlock Scan second to none.
• The Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "The Perfect Crime" featured Charles Courtney, played by Vincent Price.

Tabletop Games

• Alanik Ray, Ravenloft's Sherlock Holmes expy, is even called "the Great Detective" in-universe.
• In Magic: The Gathering lore Jace Beleren has played this role a few times. Particularly recently wherein both Shadows over Innistrad and Eldrich Moon he and Tamiyo worked together to solve the mystery of the strange happenings surrounding the deteriorating mental state of Avacyn and the transformation of some of the planes population into Eldrich Horrors.
  • Several sets later, the Murders at Karlov Manor expansion introduces Alquist Proft, a master detective working on Ravnica who prides himself in untanling strange mysteries and puzzles.
• The Investigator class in Pathfinder functions like this, with various bonuses to knowledge checks and investigation-themed actions.
• The Kitsuki family in Legend of the Five Rings is well-known for its amazing deductive abilities. Its founder was unjustly accused of murder, and given twenty-four hours to exonerate himself, invented forensics to prove his innocence. The Dragon Clan were so impressed that they let him found his own family.

Theater

• In the Mrs. Hawking play series, the title character is in many ways a lady version of Sherlock Holmes, down to the Victorian setting.

Video Games

• Batman's detective skills are regularly put to the test in the overall Batman: Arkham Series. While he has more of a reliance on technology in Arkham Origins (something the developers said was intentional), in Asylum, City, and Knight he only uses his gadgets to aid him in whatever is humanly impossible for him to do and to store/reference information. One case involves him trying to solve a murder, but the crime scene was cleaned and bleached. So he calibrates his cowl to track the traces of bleach. When a forensic profile doesn't do enough to narrow down where Deadshot's been hiding his equipment, Batman uses the profile to correctly deduce that Deadshot's hiding his guns in the power substations mentioned in the profile.
• Professor Layton:
  • Professor Layton from the series of the same name — although the extent of how awesome he really is doesn't come into play until near the end of the first game. He's not a detective, he's an archaeologist!
  • In the Blood: his children, Alfendi and Katrielle, likewise display excellent detective abilities.
• L.A. Noire: If played correctly, Cole Phelps is potentially the greatest detective in Los Angeles, able to squeeze the truth out of anyone.
• Barawa is this in Granblue Fantasy. He's the one who usually drives mystery stories in the game and he's capable of detecting (most of the time) some of the thieves under their disguises and codenames. Though in the quests and events where he is featured, a majority of the puzzle-solving is done by the players, and his assistant Sarya can prove to be much better than him in deducing facts.
• The cast of Guilty Party, though the most classically Great Detective-ish of them is their patriarch, The Commodore/Dorian Dickens.
• C. Auguste Dupin resumes this mantle in each installment of the Dark Tales series.
• Temenos from Octopath Traveler II is an Inquisitor who analyzes a series of murder scenes and solve the mysteries in the Church of the Sacred Flame. He even has a fitting catchphrase when he uses his Sherlock Scan!
• Persona:
  • Persona 4 has Naoto Shirogane, the Detective Prince. The nature of the game doesn't give her much of a chance to shine, though - if the player doesn't figure out who the killer is, the investigation stalls and dies even with her help. Still, she manages to keep pace with the party despite not having any supernatural powers until a turn in the plot.
  • Sequel Persona 5 has Goro Akechi, titled "The Second Advent of the Detective Prince", who investigates the Phantom Thieves of Heart. Despite his initial and public denunciations of the Phantom Thieves' methods, he eventually joins the Phantom Thieves only to betray them, revealing that he's actually in league with the Conspiracy, as well as the illegitimate son of its ringleader, and also that he's the one who apparently caused all the crimes he investigated to being with, by using his power to make people's shadows go berserk. His ultimate goal is to help his father's plan succeed, only to betray him at the last minute, but feelings of attachment to the party and a desire for his father's recognition complicate this.
• The Invisible Hours has Gustaf Gustav, "the detective so good they named him twice." He's able deduce the who committed a murder within twenty minutes using a bit of trivia about timezones and good character judgment, despite drinking heavily during that whole time.
• Return of the Obra Dinn demands the player become one to figure out exactly what happened to every single member of a missing crew. Unusually, the goal is not to catch who killed these people, but rather to document the events for insurance and liability purposes. It still takes a lot of detective work.
• The protagonist of Disco Elysium might be a self-destructive burnout but throughout the game proves capable of amazing deductions borne through a combination of natural logic and vaguely-supranatural intuitions. As his backstory shows he was once renowned as one of the best detectives on the force, being able to solve a high number of crimes in a particularly brutal district with a limited number of confirmed kills and was once known as the "Human Can Opener" for his ability to get the truth out of anyone.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Luke Atmey has devoted his life to his detective work, especially to cases involving a master thief named Mask☆DeMasque. By the end of the case, we find out in a Subversion of this trope that he's been the mastermind behind almost everything Mask☆DeMasque has ever done, blackmailing the thief into heists and then taking advantage of them to improve his image in the public eye. He goes so far as to murder someone, then allow himself to be accused of being the thief himself to avoid this information getting out.
  • While it's not his official job title, due to the absurd amount of evidence he uncovers it can be argued that Phoenix himself (and later Athena and Apollo) fits the trope.
  • There's a reason the Miles Edgeworth game is called Ace Attorney Investigations when he's technically a prosecutor; all he does is detective about. He even has a special power that's making logical deductions by connecting known facts.
  • The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and its sequel also brings the one and only Sherlock Holmes (or, borrowing a page from the Arsène Lupin stories, "Herlock Sholmes" in the localization) himself into the series, with a unique take on the trope. While he's just as good with deduction and observation as expected, and brings forth a number of inventions that help him make forensic investigations, he's also highly eccentric, and his deductions can be hilariously off the mark. As such, he works best when he has a partner like Ryunosuke who can help point out where the flaws in his logic lie, and get his deductions on the proper track, which forms the premise of the "Dance of Deduction" mechanic.
• Erika Furudo from Umineko: When They Cry is a parody of the archetype: a Great Detective with ten times the brainpower of Sherlock Holmes and one-tenth the social graces of Sherlock Holmes. So convinced is she that crimes will happen wherever she goes, she actually begins her investigation into the murder before anybody has been murdered. In EP7, however, Willard H. Wright is a truly great detective.
• Danganronpa:
  • Kyoko Kirigiri, the Ultimate Detective from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. She comes from a clan of detectives considered the greatest in history, and this makes her vital in solving the mysteries of the school. By the end of the game, after solving multiple mysteries and acting much like her Watson of sorts, Makoto Naegi probably also counts.
    • The prequel novels Danganronpa Kirigiri reveals the existence of a system called the Detective Shelf Collection, which ranks every registered detective based on two levels of specialization and aptitude in those fields, with 9 being the lowest. While Kyoko specializes in solving murders, a rank of three zeros implies a mastery of every possible field of crime solving, so much that only four detectives have ever reached this level. Her grandfather Fuhito Kirigiri (who taught her everything she knows) is thought to qualify for this ranking if not for his being opposed to the DSC system at its founding.
  • While his role is not Ultimate Detective, the Ultimate Affluent Progeny, Byakuya Togami, constantly solves the case before the other students or asks the right questions and uncovers the right facts for him to undoubtedly count.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony introduces a new Ultimate Detective, Shuichi Saihara, who essentially plays the Watson role himself. He then takes up the protagonist role halfway through Chapter 1.
  • The other protagonists of the series also either through experience gained through the game and some hand-holding by other characters or through natural talent also count.

Webcomics

• League of Super Redundant Heroes: Flying Fox Man, as part of being a Batman Parody.
• In Monsieur Charlatan, Isidore Charlatan's Back Story.

Web Original

• Ryney from The Mystery Sphere certainly applies, though he is Brilliant, but Lazy.
• Dramatic Detective of Lis Dead claims to wear this mantle, and shows some deductive skill to back it up.

Western Animation

• In The Legend of Korra, Mako is Team Avatar's resident detective, constantly finding clues in the environment and suspicious patterns in peoples' behavior in order to lead his friends to the truth when things seem out of place. In fact, Chief Beifong of Republic City is sufficiently impressed with his perception to hire him as an officer, and he rather quickly rises to the position of an official detective thanks to his abilities.
• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: Spot's alter-ego — Pullet Marlow, Private Chick.

Real Life

• Speaking of Vidocq, there is a club aptly named The Vidocq Society. Made up of volunteers, they take on cold cases and many law enforcement agencies send them cases to review. Want to join? Well, you have to be an expert in some field of forensics to start off. Oh, and you have to be invited to join, pay $100 in member dues every year and attend at least one meeting yearly (meetings are held on the third Thursday of each month, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

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