Hunter of Monsters

aka: The Hunter

"When I said 'Stay', I meant it!"

Image by AdmiraWijaya

Survivor: We're going to die here, aren't we?
Demon Hunter: No. Because as long as I'm here, they are the prey... and I am the hunter!

— Diablo III, Demon Hunter trailer

This character has embarked on a Hunt, a mission to eliminate all monsters in the world, dedicating their life to killing supernatural beings.

Whether this Hunter of Monsters is good or evil depends on how sympathetic the audience is supposed to feel towards their prey. Naturally, we see a hunter chasing our protagonist as wrong, but almost all hunters wrestle with some kind of fanaticism. Chasing a "good" version of their prey gives the character a chance to resolve that fanaticism, and potentially confront He Who Fights Monsters. Those who are "good" will often leave some examples of their prey alone because that person isn't evil like the rest. Others don't care about good and evil and consider all monsters to be beyond redemption, leading to Van Helsing Hate Crimes. And then there's the occasional one who feels that all monsters are beyond redemption and is absolutely right, despite protests from those less knowledgeable about these monsters.

The Hunter of Monsters seeks prey out of the following motivations (these may overlap):

• To protect humans from the dangers of these monsters; making the world safer for human life.
• The creatures are tortured souls who Cannot Self Terminate and eliminating them is a mercy. This is especially common if the monsters were once human and were turned against their will, with no means of turning them back.
• A supernatural authority says that some being shouldn't exist—or the individual believes that it says so, based on personal revelation or scripture—so they consider their Hunt a Mission from God. This style of Hunter is usually a Church Militant or some other religious type.
• They are part of a special government agency dedicated to keeping their country or world safe from these beings.
• Just plain old profit. The character is a mercenary who hunts their targets because it pays well. This style of Hunter overlaps with Bounty Hunter.
• These monsters are the ultimate blood sport, and the Hunter is a Blood Knight who enjoys the test of battle.
• They have suffered a terrible loss of some sort at the hands of the creatures, and now seek revenge. This style of Hunter usually has a specific individual among the creatures who is their personal enemy (usually the creature responsible for the wrong in question), and is particularly vulnerable to He Who Fights Monsters.
• Just good old-fashioned Fantastic Racism. Maybe there is just one type of monster with a bad rep that is the target, maybe they hate everything that isn't human. This style of Hunter is more likely than others to be a villain who commits Van Helsing Hate Crimes.
• They are themselves supernatural beings or Half-Human Hybrid killers who hunt their kind or the kind of their more monstrous progenitor.
• Pleasure. It was once acceptable for the Great White Hunter to kill tigers, but today they are too endangered for that. So why not start hunting a creature that is just as dangerous as Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, but is much more ethical to kill?
• An Egomaniac Hunter may choose to hunt dangerous monsters just to prove that they can, or to earn admiration from the crowd, regardless of the collateral damage they cause.
• (Super)natural instinct. There are a surprisingly large number of "hunter species" (compare with Mage Species) that hunt monsters just because that's kind of what they do, per their inherent impulses. Many of them are artificially created.

There are plenty of potential overlaps with other tropes:
A Hunter with no fixed home is probably also a Knight Errant, regardless of whether or not they hold an actual noble title. If they use magic, they may be a Blue-Collar Warlock. Groups or organizations that specialize in killing monsters are a Creature-Hunter Organization. A monster choosing to hunt their kind is a Hunter of His Own Kind. A particularly successful one who exterminates a "monstrous" species may be The Great Exterminator.

Contrast with Occult Detective (an investigator of supernatural mysteries), plus Nazi Hunter and Vigilante Man (the character hunts human "monsters").

Not to be confused with Classical Hunter, who goes after regular game. Although depending on the genre and setting, "regular" and "supernatural" game might indeed be the same.

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Sub-tropes:

• Creature-Hunter Organization: A larger group of people who are dedicated to hunting monsters.
• Demon Slaying: They specialize in fighting evil beings from Hell and/or exorcising possessed people.
• The Dragonslayer: They specialize in hunting overgrown giant reptiles.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: The monster hunter happens to also be a monster themselves.
• The Real Spoofbusters: These guys use the power of science to hunt the unhuntable! They usually specialize in chasing after ethereal undead spirits.
• Vampire Hunter: They specialize in slaying blood-sucking undead fiends.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: When the monster hunter is more of a villain than a hero, because they want to kill all monsters regardless of how evil or good they really are.
• Who You Gonna Call?: There are many different types of professionals who hunt monsters.
• The Witch Hunter: They specialize in fighting wicked wizards and witches, and countering the effects of their evil spells. Also more likely than most hunters to be a villain who indiscriminately attacks all witches and wizards (or those suspected of being such); regardless of whether they be evil or good, real or fake witches.
• Zombie Apocalypse Hero: They specialize in slaying flesh-eating undead ghouls and sending them back to their graves. Can come in either the Action Hero or Action Survivor variant.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Survey Corps from Attack on Titan. In this post-apocalyptic setting, most of humanity is content to stay within the fortified walls of the last remaining settlement that the Titans are always trying to breach. The Corps are the only ones brave (or stupid, if you believe some citizens) enough and skilled enough to stray outside to fight them, but even they tend to have tragically short lifespans. Referenced by the first opening theme, as the German at the beginning translates to "Are you the prey? No, we are the hunters!"
• After the Eclipse from Berserk, Guts becomes the Black Swordsman, dedicating himself to hunting down the demonic Apostles of the Godhand and putting them to the sword. He also seeks revenge upon Griffith for the betrayal that led to having the Brand of Sacrifice put on his neck and the utter destruction of his last group of True Companions, plus his lover being driven insane.
• In theory, this is the central responsibility of shinigami from Bleach, freeing the tortured souls that have become Hollows so they can reenter the cycle of reincarnation and stop killing and eating people, but what with their having been at war basically since actual shinigami characters started to be introduced, we haven't seen them do much of it.
• Kuroe Kurose from Blood Alone was one of these before the series began, and it's something he tries not to bring up, especially considering his living with a vampire.
• Nagi Kirima from Boogiepop Phantom, although in practice she fails more often than she succeeds.
• Claymore: half-demons hunting full-demons.
• The Exorcists in D.Gray-Man, or anyone in the Black Order, including scientists and Finders, all joined the Order at one point or another mainly for personal reasons, usually because their relatives died from Akuma attacks, or they embody Innocence and want to put it to use. Occasionally some members of the Black Order have other goals, but the first two are most common.
• Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist has dedicated his life to killing every state alchemist and singlehandedly defeating the nation of Amestris, to avenge their genocide of Ishval.
• Towards the end of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), the Elric brothers take it upon themselves to hunt down and destroy all the homunculi.
• The cast of Gantz are alien hunters. They don't know why, hell, they don't even know what they're hunting half the time.
• The eponymous Goblin Slayer, a Silver-ranked adventurer whose primary mission in life is to kill every last goblin he can find on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Note that he only targets goblins and specializes in killing only them. When he does fight something that isn't a goblin, it's almost always another monster controlling the goblins or connected to them, and he often has to come up with a creative solution to deal with them.
• Hellsing begins as a series about vampire hunters (with the subversion being that two of the main characters are vampires themselves), but the manga plot eventually becomes a war story whose entire opposition just happens to be made up of the undead. And/or robots.
• Kurapika from Hunter × Hunter is dedicated to hunting down the Phantom Troupe/Genei Ryodan (also known as The Spider, each member being a leg), the villainous True Companions who are responsible for making Kurapika Last of His Kind. His vendetta kills about two of the twelve^note not counting the fake 13th member Hisoka, who eventually leaves the group, and his replacement Kalluto of them dead and puts their leader out of play for a considerable period. We visit them beating up a splinter group of the Big Bads of the arc-after-next just because Togashi wanted to play with them and their powers more. He tends to bond with his villains.
• In Lyrical Nanoha, one of the original duties of the Wolkenritter was hunting mages or other magical creatures and stealing their mana from their Linker Cores. This process was not deadly and the victims eventually recover after some time, but gathering mana meant collecting pages for the Book of Darkness. If all 666 pages are complete, the ultimate destruction begins. Fortunately, Hayate Yagami, the last master of this book, breaks the cycle and has overwritten the the system of the book and the four Wolkenritter don't have to collect pages anymore.
• Inverted in Mugen Densetsu Takamagahara Dream Saga. Many of the "monsters" are hunting humans as revenge for their near-extinction.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: a Magical Girl contract with Kyubey involves the girl who makes a wish for a miracle to go out and fight Witches that spread despair and inflict suffering on humanity in exchange for it. Kyubey leaves out the part where the Magical Girl themselves eventually turn into the very Witches other Magical Girls hunt.
• The Flame Hazes of Shakugan no Shana hunt down the Guze no Tomogara to protect the balance of the world.
• Subversion: Those Who Hunt Elves (in a T-74 main battle tank, to strip them naked).
• Tokyo Ghoul has the Commission of Counter Ghoul (CCG), a paramilitary law enforcement organization charged with enforcing the laws concerning Ghouls, primarily through hunting down and killing them. They handle all cases suspected to involve Ghouls, investigating them and sending out Ghoul Investigators to handle killing the targets. Many employees are simple office workers and pencil pushers, but the highly-skilled Ghoul Investigators are trained to battle Ghouls using Quinque — specialized weapons created from Ghoul corpses. Many of these Investigators were children orphaned by Ghoul attacks, taken in by the organization and "encouraged" to pursue a higher calling. The Ghouls refer to them as "Doves", referencing the organization's symbol, and most greatly fear them.
• Subversion: Seishirou from Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- hunts a certain set of vampires because he wants to become one.
• Vampire Hunter D hunts vampires, mutants and demons in a post-apocalyptic future. He is the son of none other than Dracula himself.
• Vampire Princess Miyu fights the Shinma (God Demons) as her job and her fate. She is more antiheroic than many Hunters due to her use of humans to trap the Shinma, and sometimes hunting humans as well.
• Venus Versus Virus focuses on a group of two girls who fight The Virus, an evil spirit that steals people's souls.
• The SOLOMON organization, a.k.a. STN-J from Witch Hunter Robin, is an organization dedicated to hunting down witches, people born with superhuman abilities that many associate with magic, to keep these abilities from being used to hurt others. Robin is a witch who uses her powers in the service of the organization while trying not to fall into insanity like the witches they fight frequently do. Unfortunately, it soon becomes apparent that things a lot more sinister are happening behind the scenes, and even witches who have never used their powers for evil have reason to fear the group. Especially given what happens to captured witches.
• Quent Yaiden from Wolf's Rain hunts wolves to the point of obsession. However, we feel sorry for him because of Blue, his constant companion and Empathy Pet, and the fact that his wife and child were killed by wolves. Later on, it is revealed that his family was actually killed by Darcia's soldiers, and the wolves had only been driven to his home because they were caught in the middle. It's an understandably tragic misunderstanding, especially considering that it has long become his only reason for living. When Blue gains the ability to use a human disguise, he does not believe her when she tries to straighten things out. Nor does he (or any of the pack) enjoy Toboe's constant attempts to make peace between parties. And if you take it the right way, this leads to Toboe's death near the end of the series.
• Shinigami of Yami No Matsuei are the government-bureaucracy version of this; they manage to combine cop-show tropes with The Hunter tropes, and also all those frilly shoujou tropes. (And in the manga, This Is Your Premise on Drugs tropes. Matsushita's mind is strange.)
• In Youkai Shoujo - Monsuga, GCUP is a high-tech Knight Templar organization that hunts Youkai, which they call Abscesses. They initially try to recruit the protagonist due to his unique abilities, but immediately come into conflict with them by attacking the benevolent youkai that he has befriended.
• The role of Spirit Detective in YuYu Hakusho. After returning to life, Yusuke is hired to solve various supernatural cases, and all of them end with deadly fights against the perpetrators. The trope is abandoned during the Dark Tournament saga as he and his team are busy fighting other teams to death. Resumed once again in the Chapter Black Saga when a major conflict will test the characters' physical and intellectual skills to stop the fissure that threatens to bring demons from the Makai. It's also revealed in this latter arc that Shinobu Sensui was a Spirit Detective in the past, and he had been killing demons in self-defense since he was a very small child; Koenma just gave him some structure, and then moral relativism and confrontation with human evil broke his brain and he decided to Kill All Humans. Finally in the Three Kings saga, the concept of demon hunters and detectives is scrapped entirely for the rest of the main series (and not seen again until Poltergeist Report).
• Zombie Land Saga: The "Sagako Busters" from Gaiden are a self-ran group of demon hunters, comprised of women who hunt demons outside of their day jobs.

Comic Books

• Astro City: Mordecai Chalk is a cyborg monster hunter whose missing body parts were destroyed by occult creatures. Chalk makes quite an impression for a character who was only 'on screen' for a handful of panels.
• Blade: The eponymous hero is a half-vampire hunting down full vampires and other supernatural creatures. His reasons are a serious combination of a few of the above-mentioned ones. In The Tomb of Dracula, in which Blade was first introduced, there's also Quincy Harker and his band of vampire hunters working occasionally alongside Blade.
• Bloodstone: Ulysses Bloodstone is the premier monster hunter in the Marvel Universe. As shown in Marvel Universe (1998), for a time, Ulysses was even on a team called the Monster Hunters, which also included Dr. Druid, Makkari of the Eternals, the warrior woman Zawadi of the Wakandas, and the giant ape creature Gorgilla. Following his death, the mantle passed to his daughter Elsa Bloodstone.
• Crossed: A few of the stories in the +100 era (one group being seen as early as 2090, 82 years after C-Day) have people striking out against the Crossed seeking them out in hunting parties and gunning down the ones they find. While there are sympathetic Crossed out there, they are incredibly rare, few if any of them are the ones who come into contact with those hunters, and it's hard to blame people for trying to wipe out a race of creatures who reduced the uninfected population of the entire world to approximately a million people in the first couple of years after emerging, and who have infectious bodily fluids and a genetic disposition towards rape and torture.
• Hellblazer: John Constantine hunts down normal or supernatural bad guys either to protect his beloved London or just for his gain. Gods are no exception.
• Hellboy: The title character is a paranormal investigator, and he frequently tracks down and defeats various supernatural creatures and threats.
• Lucy Dreaming: In issue #3, about a 13-year-old girl who possesses random heroes every time she falls asleep, one of the heroes is a werewolf mother who, along with her teenage daughter, both hunt and kill monsters in their town.
• The Punisher: Robert Hellsgaard, who features in the Franken-Castle storyline, is out to kill every single monster on Earth after his family was killed by werewolves.
• Robin (1993): Jaeger films himself hunting monsters and monstrous looking metahumans for money. He does not care if they are a threat to humans or not as he's Only in It for the Money, not for any attempt to protect humanity, and most of his known "prey" are decent people.
• Scare Tactics (DC Comics): Graveyard Shift is a church-sanctioned organization of vampire hunters.
• Vampirella: The eponymous character is a vampire who hunts down monsters who prey on humanity.

Fan Works

• The Assassins' Guild of Ankh-Morpork awards the Jonathan Teatime Memorial Prize, for the best theoretical stratergy for the inhumation of a supernatural creature, anthrorpomorphic entity, creature of magic, or sentient being protected by magic. This was only ever intended to be an intellectual exercise. Then in the writings of A.A. Pessimal, Johanna Smith-Rhodes inhumed, in short order, a group of werecreatures, a powerful vampire, one Vice and one Virtue ^note They'll come back, of course and dispelled the Wintersmith. The Teatime Prize got to live in the trophy cabinet in Raven House for some years. Johanna completely failed to capture a unicorn, but then, everyone has a bad day at work.
• Cheating Death: Those That Lived: Skinner Alceto spends his life hunting dangerous mutations that threaten the people of District Ten, and enjoys both the thrill of the hunt and the sense of satisfaction in keeping District Ten safe. He kills tens of thousands of Mutts during his lifetime, many of them in the 69th Hunger Games. He largely avoids fighting and killing his fellow tributes in both his original games and the 3rd Quarter Quell. In the later arena, he's actually delighted to be pitted against a grotesque Mutt that's considered to be invincible, and which he wounded but failed to kill during the 69th Hunger Games.
  Skinner: If this is how it has to end...If this is the final hunt I'll be taking part in...I can't think of a better conclusion to it all, old friend.
• The Flower Princess and the Alchemist: Since Soul Reapers aren't found in Amestris, Orihime considers it her duty and responsiblity to take care of any Hollow and supernatural threats harming poor, unsuspecting people. However, she doesn't take any excitement of joy out of it, and only does it to protect the innocents. And since Hollows are essentially fallen souls that have been corrupted by their hatred and despair post-death, she deems killing them as a sign of mercy since they mostly Cannot Self Terminate. Because of this, It's Not You It's My Enemies comes into play, and why she continuously keeps Ed and Al Locked Out of the Loop.
• Gensokyo Tokyo: Matthjis Vos was known as the Silver Ripper in Japan. He was part of a long lineage of accomplished hunters rooting out whatever supernatural things threatened humans, but some devastating tragedy wiped out most of the family, which caused him to unravel and led him down a darker path. His traumatized daughter eventually grows up to be Sakuya Izayoi. Link.
• Cyril from The Good Hunter. Once a Player Character from Bloodborne, which is all about this trope, Cyril currently refers to himself as a Hunter of beasts, beasts regardless of the skin they choose to wear. Unusually, he is a Heroic Neutral who strikes only when his target either wants a fight or is plain hostile. Cyril does become more active after the attack on Sheffield's Union Festival, but rather than embarking on a mission to kill... whatever he thinks that is prey, he only goes for the targets that are assigned to him by his employer, and if said targets are more valuable alive, then he would keep them alive.
• The Grim Grey Path To Freedom: Hadrian "Hary The Hunter" Miller (victor of the Eighth Hunger Games) and his future district partner Sandra Sprocket spend all of their teenage years hunting the feral mutations that roam District 3. They make hunting an art, and upon being reaped, easily kill both their fellow tributes and the dinosaur mutations roaming the arena.
  ''If the rumors were correct, a boy and girl of District 3 made a habit of killing un-killable mutations for what seemed to be mostly for the challenge, somewhat for fun, and slightly for profit. Clearly that was the pair going into the Games.
• In Mongoose and its two sequels Harry was obsessed with killing vampires after one turned Ginny and he was forced to stake her.
• The Night Unfurls:
  • Kyril used to be a Hunter in Yharnam, responsible for hunting down beasts, madmen, and all sorts of monstrosities, to purge those who lost themselves to bloodlust and transformed into beasts. After reaching Eostia, he puts down roving packs of orcs to earn some coin.
  • After Taking Up the Mantle as "First Hunter", Kyril invokes this trope in the original version by finding people well suited to become Hunters, his apprentices. He took a total of 4, and under his tutelage, all 4 will give up every earthly pleasure to hunt down beasts, the insane, and the impossibly horrifying.
• Principal Celestia Hunts the Undead: Celestia, Luna and their friends spend their off-hours hunting the living dead, with Nagatha Harshwhinny having been part of an older group before teaching the sisters the business. The Pie family (sans Pinkie and Marble) have a similar occupation, but specialize in werewolves. Since Canterlot sits on a ley line that attracts monsters and magic events to itself, both groups have plenty to keep them busy.
• The Ultimate Evil has Nataline "Nat" Homoto, who comes from a long line of Japanese demon hunters. She meets the Chan Clan after tracking stories of their battles throughout the Demon Portal arc, and aids them in their fights with Bai Tza and showdown with Shendu. They part ways afterwards, but she promises to return if they ever need her help again. She makes good of that promise in the sequel when she shows up to aid against Drago and Tarakudo.
• The Odds Were Never In My Favour: Many Durmstrang students and graduates become members of a professional monster hunting guild. However, their competence is called into question when one of their members participating in the European Magical Tournament is badly injured by a chimera three minutes into the task, shedding the first blood of the competition.

Film — Animated

• General W.R. Monger from Monsters vs. Aliens, who heads a secret government program to capture monsters and lock them away so that the public doesn't have to worry about them and get on to more important things, like paying taxes. He is more sympathetic than most versions, as he doesn't seek to destroy them, and eventually grants them their freedom in exchange for battling the Alien Invasion.

Film — Live Action

• Beyond Loch Ness: James Murphy's first scene after the Distant Prologue establishes him as a Cigar Chomper with a cowboy hat, Badass Longcoat, and lots of hi-tech weaponry and equipment that he uses to hunt the Loch Ness Monster and its offspring to avenge the devouring of his father and to keep them from killing more innocent people. After he succeeds, he's jokingly asked if he plans to go after Bigfoot next, but replies that he's going to settle down peacefully.
• Blade, as in the comics, is a half-vampire who hunts full vampires.
• A lot of Dracula adaptations turn Abraham Van Helsing from an aged professor of Medicine into this sort of character. The Hammer Horror Dracula films are known for this, and Van Helsing follows in the tradition.
• When there's something strange in your neighborhood, Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters. Except that they don't fight ghosts because of a traumatic event, mission from a higher power, or because they are afraid of becoming ghosts themselves. They primarily fight ghosts because, well, they need money. Also, For Science! especially for Egon who in the series is revealed to have been also motivated by his traumatic encounter with the Boogieman as a child and decided to study and understand the supernatural to be able to overcome it.
• In the 2018 Dark Fantasy film The Head Hunter (2019), the protagonist is a medieval bounty hunter who's summoned by horn from a nearby castle to kill monsters. After slaying a creature, he collects his pay and stakes the beast's head on a spike mounted on a wall of his home.
• Howling II: Stirba: Werewolf Bitch: Stefan, Christopher Lee's character, holds the same role Van Helsing does in most interpretations of Dracula (with Stirba in place of the Count).
• Jeepers Creepers 3: While there's only one monster in the film, about a dozen hunters have spent over two decades training to fight it to avenge slain loved ones and remove a threat to their community. Their leader is the local sheriff, and one member has a mini-gun mounted on the roof of his pickup truck. Ultimately, the only thing that keeps them from being a Red Shirt Army is that most of them never actually encounter the Creeper.
• Robert Morgan, the protagonist from The Last Man on Earth, spends his days hunting and staking the mindless, photophobic monsters known in-universe as vampires. Unwittingly, he's also been depopulating Los Angeles of people that could be reasoned with despite being infected by The Virus, since they, too, are nocturnal.
• At the end of Lesbian Vampire Killers, Jimmy, Fletch and Lotte vow to become lesbian vampire killers.
• The Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys, fighting the undead for "Maximum body count."
• El Santo starred as himself in a series of movies where he was pledged to fight vampires and werewolves and all the various forces of evil, plus alien invaders and assorted mundane organized crime. It's anyone's guess why a professional wrestler should handle these matters, but damned if he doesn't get spectacular results.
• Tremors
  • Burt Gummer spends most of the movies and TV episodes traveling around, killing dangerous creatures for a mixture of personal enjoyment, occasional profit, and to protect his neighbors and other acquaintances.
  • In the second movie, Earl and Grady are hired to take out a dangerous community of Graboids due to Earl's role in defeating them in the first movie and Grady's Ascended Fanboy status. They spend a lot of the movie leisurely sitting back and sending out remote-controlled trucks rigged with bombs and detonating them once the tunneling monsters swallow the trucks.
• Hans is the titular character in The Troll Hunter. An interesting variation because he does it as government work (fantasy giving way to mundanity) and it involves some pretty awful things for the sake of progress (killing a Troll nest, children and all, to make space for a road) and a lot of bureaucrazy (lots of after-action forms).
• Ultraman Tiga Gaiden: Revival of the Ancient Giant has Maharoba, a warrior-girl who slays Kaiju, whose services are greatly appreciated in a world full of giant monsters... but no Ultramen protectors, because the sole guardian in the timeline, Ultraman Tiga, have not yet awakened.

Literature

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: The Hunter Ned Land accuses Nemo of being The Butcher after observing him massacring the cachalots. Captain Nemo claims to be hunting dangerous plagues.
  "Well, sir," replied the Canadian, whose enthusiasm had somewhat calmed; "it is a terrible spectacle, certainly. But I am not a butcher. I am a hunter, and I call this a butchery."
  "It is a massacre of mischievous creatures," replied the Captain; "and the Nautilus is not a butcher's knife."
• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
• Kate of Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom and the rest of the Catholic organization she belongs to. She's mainly driven by the need to protect her family.
• The eponymous hero of Andrew Vachss' Burke novels is a Hunter by nature; having been raised by the state and abused as a child, he has a pathological hatred of child molesters, but he doesn't hunt them full-time—only when he's getting paid or he's been crossed somehow.
• The Cemeteries of Amalo: One of the many duties of a witness for the dead is to respond to ghouls rising from the grave and put the spirits inhabiting the recently dead to rest to stop them from acting on their hunger for human flesh. In the first book, a local churchmen without the ability to speak to the dead attempts to defeat a ghoul by himself before a witness can arrive, which ends badly for him.
• Chrome Shelled Regios: The Military Artists and Heaven's Blade users are all Monster Hunters. Even with whole cities dedicated to the job of teaching future hunters and more cities hunting the Monsters/Contaminoids/Filth there is still no end to them.
• Gerald Tarrant of the Coldfire Trilogy is named "The Hunter". Granted, his prey of choice seems to run high on young, attractive, and terrified women but, hey, if you're going to scare the bejeezus out of someone and stalk them through a creepy forest, they might as well be nice to look at.
• Colt Regan is this to the various demons and other supernatural nasties that make a ruckus in his vicinity.
• Titus Crow is this for the Cthulhu Mythos. With his formidable Psychic Powers, he focuses initially on the Chthonians then moves to the Great Old Ones themselves.
• A Deal with a Demon: In The Gargoyle's Captive, Grace and her family have a long history of hunting and killing supernatural monsters which dates back to at least her grandfather.
• The Devil’s League:
  • The Anti-Villain Hoxton embarks on a personal crusade to eliminate monsters from existence in the name of the Christian God. Recognizing the irony of being one himself, his intentions are to end his own life as the last living monster.
  • Waylon Ross is a Big Game hunter who’s moved on to capturing and collecting different types of monsters since they’re a lot more of a challenge for him. Not only does he contrast Hoxton’s motivations, but Chapter 6 reveals that Hoxton was actually his first victim.
• Domina:
  • Monster slayers are people who hunt monsters created by the fey using the toy maker. These include everything from wild dogs with nightvision eyes, swarms of poisonous frogs and the mutated ostriches that eat them, and the really dangerous things. Gargants, in particular, are unique hand-crafted monsters that tend to kill hundreds of people if left unchecked. Derek is one of the best slayers in the city, and he trains Adam by taking him on some of the hunts.
  • The angels were founded as vampire hunters. While at first everyone loved them for it, over time the vampires became less insane and monstrous, but the angels kept slaughtering them like beasts. Eventually an uneasy peace was forced between the two groups.
• The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden evolves into this, and the Knights of the Cross are these.
  • The Knights of the Cross, Harry learns later, are an aversion. Their job is to save the hosts of the Denarians, whose free will has been coopted by the Fallen Angels they play host to. The monster hunting is just a side job and the miracle working is just Required Secondary Powers for their main gig.
  • The Wardens are not monster hunters. They serve as mostly a military/police force, and their primary responsibilities are hunting warlocks and keeping members of the White Council safe from other supernatural nations; any other good they do is out of scope, but many of them subscribe to Comes Great Responsibility and help people out wherever they can, resulting in more than their share of monster fighting.
  • There are monster hunters, but they operate almost exclusively in the shadows. One of the larger themes of the Dresden Files is that most things have a productive purpose, even if you only experience them as the things that go bump in the night.
    • This put the wizards at a severe disadvantage during the war with the Red Court and after the destruction of the Red Court, against the Fomor attempting to fill the power vacuum. The gradual militarization of the Wardens is an ongoing plot arc, viewed with trepidation by many older wizards and viewed favorably by many younger wizards, including Harry, who have spent much of their adult lives at war with the Red Court.
    • The Fellowship of St. Giles hunts Red Court Vampires, or, you know, they did.
    • The Venatori both the real ones and the decoys hunt gods in the Oblivion War. The Archive was created specifically for that purpose.
    • The original Warden, singular was established to contain monsters, and hunt them if they escaped.
    • The entire Winter Court exists to fight Outsiders, and the Summer Court exists to stop them from hunting mortals too much because of their need to reproduce. Checks and balances, at cosmic scale.
• Steel in "Eva Fairdeath" by Tanith Lee.
• Every Other Day: When her powers are working, Kali goes out to fight dangerous beasts like hellhounds, dragons, and chupacabra, not as much out of a sense of duty, but because she feels physically compelled to, while her blood gives off a scent that makes them attack her as well. During the main events of the book, she finds herself forced to do this while her powers aren't working.
• The antagonist of Warren Ellis' Gun Machine is only referred to as this. His "prey" are human beings, although he doesn't seem to recognize them as such.
• InCryptid has the Covenant, a pseudo-religious monster-hunting organization with the goal of exterminanting all creatures that were not on Noah's Ark (i.e. cyptids). The Price family considers them guilty of both murder and genocide, and strives to protect innocent cryptids from them.
• The beasthunters of the Jennifer Scales series are an entire species of this.
• The Memory Wars: Nathan Shepherd and Elena De Santis have been these throughout multiple past incarnations.
• The Mortal Instruments: The Shadowhunters protect humanity from supernatural creatures. However, the Shadowhunters are themselves supernatural.
• My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister has Taori, the main character's mother. She's remodeled her body to the point where she can easily swing around a weapon weighing more than 70 kilograms, and can survive for several years without food, water or oxygen. Her reason for going to this extent is intensely personal - she believes that her family was destroyed by one particular monster (Lilith, now the main character's stepmother) and wants to take revenge at all costs.
• Oliver Twisted: The Knights of Nostradamus hunt malevolent beasts, including the demons that made their home a Hell on Earth, as part of their job as wielders and protectors of good magic. Miss Bedwin says that "Knight of Nostradamus" is the fancy name for monster hunter.
• Pact has witch hunters, which despite the name often work with local magic users as enforcers and assassins of various supernatural creatures and rivals. Practitioners in the setting of Pact are unable to lie or to enter dwellings without permission, meaning that a properly trained and equipped ordinary human can be a nasty shock. Andy and Eva, the witch hunters most seen in the story, are a Brains and Brawn team that works as enforcers for the council of practitioners that control the small Canadian town of Jacob's Bell.
• Samhain Island: The St. Charles’s are known for monster hunting, targeting various monsters around the town for their research and/or personal gain. Zaccaria is the leader, and René is the muscle. Miss Vargas is there too, but isn't all that helpful.
• The Scholomance: Orion is a One-Man Army who focuses his magical ability on slaughtering the various monsters that eat magical children. Initially, people put this down to Chronic Hero Syndrome, but Orion eventually admits that the thrill of the fight means just as much to him, if not more, than the Good Feels Good emotions that come from saving lives.
• What does Takeshi Kovacs do after his ex-girlfriend is burnt at the stake by a fundamentalist religion in Woken Furies? Why, he tracks down the priests involved, and kills them. Then he kills everyone in the village who was eighteen or older at the time, and could have reasonably been expected to speak up. Then the starts killing every member of the Knights of the New Revelation on the planet. Because once you start killing people, it's hard to stop. He says this himself when the person whom he confessed it to asks "Where does it end?" The answer: "It doesn't."
• Trail of Lightning features Neizghání as the legendary monster hunter, an immortal dedicated to killing monsters to protect humans. His human apprentice Maggie takes up the title also, working for pay.
• The Twilight Saga: As a human, Carlisle was the son of a 15th century Church Militant pastor who led like-minded individuals in hunts for vampires, witches, and werewolves, with his efforts mostly resulting in Burn the Witch! fates for innocent people while the real monsters eluded them. When Carlisle takes over from his father, Edward notes "At first Carlisle was a disappointment; he was not quick to accuse, to see demons where they did not exist. But he was persistent, and more clever than his father. He actually discovered a coven of true vampires that lived hidden in the sewers of the city[.]" He and his fellows went after the vampires with Torches and Pitchforks but were badly outmatched, and it's not clear whether they killed any of the vampires due to their enemies' superior strength, speed, and durability. Carlisle was bitten in the fight, and became the first-known Vegetarian Vampire, leading to the events of the main series centuries later.
• The Vampire Earth: Besides hunting the Kurians, who are a type of Psychic Vampire, the heroes are also fighting all of the monster creations of the Kurians. This includes their vampire avatars the Reapers, zombie like Ravies, giant worms, Harpies, and the never ending new monster type that seemed to pop up each book.
• While he specializes in vampires, Leon hunted all kinds of things before the eponymous Vampirocracy came about.
• The titular witchers of The Witcher are traveling monster-slayers for hire. They were created to defend people from monsters when the land was being settled, but monsters have been driven back to the point that Witchers are seen as a relic of the past. They undergo a series of mutations making them super-humanly fast and strong, as well as giving them the ability to see in the dark. There isn't much explained beyond this, and since the only Witcher we get much information about is the main character Geralt, it's unclear what information applies to just him, what applies to Witchers who were taught in the same school as him, and what applies to Witchers in general.

Live-Action TV

• Ezekiel Stone of Brimstone is a hunter of the damned, who is tasked by the Devil with hunting down those who escaped from Hell and sending them back there.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "In every generation, there is a Chosen One..." well, you know the rest.
  • One-shot character Gib Cain was the dark side of the trope. He hunted werewolves, but just to sell the hides. He's not bothered about protecting the innocent (in fact, he's happy to go after targets who take pains to never harm anyone) and Buffy bends his gun out of shape and tells him to leave town.
  • Angel, sort of. He's not out to destroy demons in general - only ones who are openly threatening. Demons who aren't threats can grab a drink with him at the same karaoke bar without comment.
  • Holtz used to do this for the Catholic Church. When he went after a then-evil Angel, he bit off more than he could chew, and, well, there was this whole "abyss looking back at him" thing.
• Dexter for killers not otherwise brought to justice.
• In Diablero the titular diableros hunt demons, either for a price, or to sell later (or both).
• The Grimms in Grimm are people with the strange ability to see Wesen for what they are. Additionally, they also have enhanced strength, reactions, and senses that allow them to fight the Wesen on an almost-equal footing. Most Grimm tend to actively hunt Wesen, usually by following up on strange stories or newspaper articles. They also keep journals with pictures of the Wesen's true appearance as well as the best ways to kill them (typically, beheading does the trick, which is why they were called "Decapitare" in ancient times). Nick is a rare Grimm who doesn't actively hunt Wesen unless he runs afoul of hostile Wesen in his job as a police detective. He also doesn't reflexively kill every Wesen he sees, only doing so when he has no choice, and has several friends who are Wesen (a vegetarian Blutbad named Monroe, a Fuchsbau named Rosalee, and a perpetually-nervous Eisbiber named Bud), as well as a Friendly Enemy relationship with his Da Chief, who's a half-Zauberbiest. In Season 5, Nick is living with Adalind, a Hexenbiest, and their Grimm/Zauberbiest son.
• Sylar on Heroes hunts down and kills superhumans to take their abilities. And in Volume 4: Fugitives, there's a character named The Hunter, a U.S. Government Black Ops leader whose job it is to hunt down Superhumans for Uncle Sam to send to Super Guantanamo.
• Highlander: The Series features an organization called the Hunters, an evil offshoot of the Watchers dedicated to hunting down and killing Immortals.
• In iZombie, Major Lilywhite (Liv's ex-fiancé) eventually finds out about the existence of zombies. He eventually buys a shitload of guns and goes Van Helsing on a butcher shop, where a number of them work (killing homeless people and supplying the local zombie population with their brains), killing all but one zombie there. After being turned into a zombie and then cured, he gains the ability to sense when a zombie is nearby. Vaughn Du Clark then forces him to become a zombie hunter, threatening Liv if he doesn't comply, compiling a list of prominent city figures who have a high likelihood of being zombies. Major has become pretty good at breaking into people's cars and homes, kidnapping zombies (by injecting them with a sedative developed by Du Clark's people), driving them to a bridge, stuffing them in a bag, shooting them in the head, and dumping the bag into the water. He feels remorse, especially since many of the zombies are loving fathers and husbands and appear to be decent people (they didn't choose to be zombies), and has even spared one or two. His day job as a personal trainer helps him get close to many of the suspected zombies. Except it's later revealed that he doesn't kill anyone. Instead, he stuffs them into freezers and dumps bags of random stuff so as not to arouse Vaughn Du Clark's suspicions..
• The Auzora (Blue Sky) Association from Kamen Rider Kiva is this to the fangires and to a lesser extent the other monster races. How extreme it is taken varies between members though. Some are content to allow fangires to live as long as don't feed on humans whereas others will kill all fangires on site. Almost all of them warm up the half-fangire protagonist though.
• Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has it in really bad for Sauron and the Orcs after losing her brother and husband to them. She spent centuries killing Orcs and searching for Sauron's whereabouts wanting to exact her revenge on him. In present, she is widely known under the moniker of "The Scourge of the Orcs".
• NCIS: Leroy Jethro Gibbs is like that. EVERY time he is tracking a criminal It's Personal. When one of his team is endangered of course It's Personal.
• October Faction: Deloris and Fred, along with the Presidio generally, have the mission to destroy dangerous monsters (however some turn out to be benign or neutral at least).
• Van Mcnulty from the Smallville episode "Extinction". He hunts and kills anyone with superpowers, not caring if they are good or evil. Immediately after discovering Clark's secret and heroic career, Van attacks him with kryptonite bullets. After Clark defeats him and sends him to jail, he is murdered by two superpowered foes Clark had defeated and jailed earlier in the series.
• Dean and Sam Winchester from Supernatural and a large part of their supporting cast. The series places a heavy emphasis on how much the life sucks, to the point of deconstruction: hunters typically make money by hustling pool and poker and credit card fraud, often end up with criminal records, generally end up emotionally traumatized to some degree due to the things they've seen and experienced, and when they die, which they probably will sooner rather than later, there's a good chance no one will know how to dispose of their body properly (if it's even recoverable) but other hunters.
• The Argent family in Teen Wolf. They are part of a larger community of such people as well.

Manhwa

• Witch Hunter: Witch Hunters hunt witches. Well, more like are the last bastion of humanity against an overpowered magical force, but the routine is still to hunt single witches.

Pocasts

• As expected from a horror story set in a world of monsters, there are some in The Magnus Archives, though they are few and sorely outnumbered. Gertrude Robinson, the former Head Archivist of the titular archives, is the most prominent and relevant to the plot, having spent most of her life countering rituals concocted by the Dread Powers to enter our world and remake it in their image. Gerard Keay is a relatively minor one, working with Gertrude and supporting her in her work. Adelard Decker never appears in person, but was a very skilled hunter in his heyday, having killed or neutralized many monsters and avatars.

Religion and Mythology

• Orion of Classical Mythology initially worked for a king slaying monsters and other dangerous beasts that plagued said king's island. Orion was incredibly successful at his job and hoped that by ridding the island of its monsters the king would eventually allow him to marry his daughter (who Orion often gifted with trophies from his hunts). This did not work, and after an ordeal involving Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, eyes being gouged out, a journey to restore said eyes, and a failed attempt at revenge, Orion left the island. He later met and became the hunting companion of Artemis, and continued to hunt monsters along side her until his untimely death.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Planescape: The githyanki and githzerai are both descended from a Slave Race of the illithids; as a result, they often form bands called rrakkma warriors, who leave their planar fortresses on missions where they are not allowed to come back until they have slain several illithds equal to ten times the number of the band. (Most at least try to kill far more.) It's dangerous work, but among their people, successful rrakkma are the most admired and most revered.
  • The ranger character class is stereotypically the Hunter. Their "favored enemy" class ability gives them bonuses to finding and killing a specific category of creature. It is possible to subvert this trope by choosing favored enemies for reasons other than those of the Hunter. In the original AD&D, all rangers had goblinoids and giants as their enemy, owing to class having originally been inspired by Aragorn, but with the advent of Second Edition, one could choose which kind of enemy their ranger was dedicated to taking down. One could even have a human ranger who had certain kinds of evil humans as a favored enemy, such as pirates, brigands or slavers, or in the case of Drizzt, a drow ranger who rebelled against his evil kind. The original 3E removed restrictions on alignment, but you could not choose your race as a favored enemy unless you were evil, which was thrown out for 3.5.
  • Ravenloft:
    • Rudolph van Richten (an Alternate Company Equivalent of Abraham van Helsing in concept), a herbalist turned monster hunter after his son was sold to (and turned by) a vampire, who later killed his wife in revenge. Not only does van Richten personally go after these deadly evil creatures, but had several books published detailing the results of his research to give others the needed edge to kill the things. And on other monsters he met and had to fight in process, such as werewolves and liches.
    • The Player Characters could likely fit the trope in Ravenloft too, depending on how the DM is running the campaign.
  • Stormwrack, a sourcebook focused on campaigns on and beneath the seas, describes the leviathan hunter Prestige Class, which is focused around hunting giant sea monsters. Leviathan hunters don't pursue their prey out of hatred or to remove dangerous threats, although they often do as a side effect of their activities, but rather out of a deep-seated compulsion to test their strength against the mightiest things alive. (Could there be some literary influence there?)
• GURPS has a sub-line of PDF supplements covering this topic, entitled, yes, Monster Hunters.
• Hunter: The Reckoning:
  • All the player characters are monster hunters who've been granted mystical powers and are driven by a new urge to protect mankind from the supernatural beings that live among us. They also tend to be driven insane, and a lot of them (especially those of the Avenger creed) aren't fussy about whether the supernatural beings they hunt deserve to be slaughtered or not.
  • While Reckoning is the main oWoD Hunter game, there are other hunter groups, many of whom come to the hunt for their reasons and have their avenues of power: the Inquisition, the Arcanum, the Benandanti, the Shih, Strike Force Zero, government agencies, criminal organizations, religious groups...In a world as supernatural-heavy as the oWoD, there are a lot of hunters.
  • In the historical Dark Ages setting, the Shadow Inquisition, predecessor to the modern Inquisition, is the primary hunter group, tasked to hunt the supernatural on behalf of the Catholic Church. Each of its constituent groups has their own set of supernatural knacks... and drawbacks.
• Little Fears: The children are often driven to this because once they realize the monsters are out there, the monsters become aware of them, making it a matter of kill or be killed.
• Monster of the Week is all about monster hunters of every stripe that go forth and hunt down the supernatural.
• New World of Darkness:
  • Hunter: The Vigil, which draws more on the oWoD's secondary hunter groups. In HtV, player characters are generally bog-standard humans who become Hunters after some sort of incident breaks The Masquerade for them (although some have some supernatural heritage, others can call on some form of magic, and yet others have supertech developed to fight various types of monster).
  • Beast: The Primordial introduced us to Heroes, who were compelled to hunt down and destroy the titular Beasts (who were the player characters). Originally they were depicted as glory-seeking sociopathic narcissists who cared little for whether or not an individual quarry was dangerous, and treated collateral damage as a secondary concern. Later supplements developed them a little more to flesh out the setting.
  • Some fan-made supplements also offer their factions of Hunters:
    • Leviathan: The Tempest has the Ahabs (people who were made insane by a Leviathan and become obsessed with slaying the creatures responsible for their insanity) and the Marduck Society (Science Heroes who use super-science to fight Leviathans).
    • Dragon: The Embers has the Exterminators (a collective term used to design all mortals who seek Dragon Hearts to destroy them out of hatred for the whole species) and the Knights of the Bloody Chalice (a group of psychotic humans who keep themselves young by bathing in the blood of supernatural creatures, with a preference for Dragons).
    • Siren: The Drowning gives us the Flensers, a secret society of Siren hunters who lure and kill Sirens so they can get immortality from eating their flesh.
    • Princess: The Hopeful has the Stormwracked, humans who were granted Sworn powers by the Queen of Storms to fight the Outer Darkness.
    • fan-supplements Hunter the Vigil: Dream Catchers and Hunter: The Vigil – Dark and Light both features hunters of fae and Princesses respectively.
• Ponyfinder: Chaos hunters are ponies who develop a powerful compulsion to fight the forces of chaos, alongside supernatural powers that help them do so. They sacrifice all other drives, passions and interests for this, becoming dedicated to a neverending quest to hunt and battle all creatures that would spread disorder or attack civilization.
• Warhammer:
  • Empire Witch Hunters, despite their name, do not exclusively hunt witches: They are empowered by the Empire's state religion to hunt all kinds of monsters that threaten mankind. They go after their prey with little more than their weapons, their unshaking faith in Sigmar, and of course their hats. Some are accompanied by a rabble of zealous henchmen, others work alone.
  • Marcus Wulfhart, the Huntsmarshal of the Empire, is a firm 'protector of humanity' class of this trope. He got his career started when he hunted down and killed a cyclops that razed his hometown. He has since been officially comissioned by Karl Franz to hunt monsters and train others for the role, and comes equipped in-game with a specific bow, his unique regiment of huntsmen, and a rule called 'Monster Hunter' that makes him uniquely suited for this role.
  • Dwarf Slayers are all monster hunters, because they a) want to die in a society where downright suicide is dishonourable and b) the best way to ensure you die with honour is to pick a fight with the biggest, nastiest entity around, preferrably one that's already harmed dwarfs so that any non-death seeking dwarfs won't have to die fighting it. A starting slayer is called a troll slayer because trolls are big, nasty and readily available, and most slayers end their short careers trying to kill one. Really bad slayers (i.e. those few who actually win) go on to become giant slayers, seeking a similar end against the even bigger and nastier (but much rarer) giants. Slayers who fail so badly even a giant can't kill them go on to become dragon slayers. The absolute worst slayers in existence are called daemon slayers, and usually end up wandering into the Chaos Wastes to do battle with the Legions of Hell themselves in search of their Doom.
• The Inquisition of Warhammer 40,000 is this (on a much larger scale. Here the Inquisitor can essentially requisition entire planets, regiments of Guardsmen and even Space Marines if he so chooses (Though he is usually polite about it), and often the dangers they hunt require that kind of firepower to destroy. The Inquisition is divided into many groups or "Ordos" specializing in various prey, but only three have any real clout: rooting out traitors and heretics (Ordo Hereticus), dealing with Chaos Daemons and incursions (Ordo Malleus), or learning about/shooting aliens (Ordo Xenos).

Video Games

• Some characters in Yuri Visual Novel Akai Ito and its sort-of sequel Aoi Shiro fits hunter archetype.
  • Tsudura and Uzuki from Akai Ito are part of an ancient clan of demon hunters (the "Onikiri"). Tsudura is even the (unwilling) leader of it. From Aoi Shiro, Migiwa is also member of similar clan, except based in the southern islands. Kohaku was turned into immortal oni long time ago by her sorcerer foster-father, and now seek epic vendetta against him and his creations. Kaya is Back from the Dead and is on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to avenge her little sister that is, you.
  • The most dramatic example of The Hunter in this series is the main character of Akai Ito, Kei herself, in one of the Sakuya routes. She was killed by the Big Bad Nushi, and was given Emergency Transformation by Sakuya. She returned to (un?)life and, with Sakuya, is now going to kick the asses of Nushi's cultists for all eternity.
  • And hunters in this series are prone to all kind of moral problems that a hunter can expect to face in her career. Universally, they believe that all non-humans must be terminated. It's strongly implied that Tsudura have shot several dogs. Uzuki was Driven to Suicide after she accidentally killed Kei, believing that she's not that different from her quarries. Migiwa destroyed the astral body of Yasumi, rendering her comatose for the rest of her life. Both Kohaku and Kaya will not stop at anything to exact their Revenge, and in Kaya's case she can tragically kill you.
• Recruitable ranger Valygar Corthala in Baldur's Gate II is a wizard hunter thanks to a long family history of magical obsession leading to evil and death, although his favoured enemy is "golems" (presumably because a lot of evil mages use them). The only real question that has to be asked is why he's a ranger given that there's a fighter subclass known as the Wizard Slayer and specifically geared up to kill mages.
• The Hunter of Bloodborne, who doubles as Dream Walker, travels across the land of Yharnam to hunt beasts and to halt the source of the nightmare. Besides, almost every NPC encountered outdoors and out of the safe zones is one such character, even referred to as such. The three different covenants of the game each follow a certain aspect of the archetype - The Vilebloods hunt for pleasure, the Executioners hunt for the Church Militant, and the Hunters of Hunters hunt to protect humanity. And thanks to the Paleblood transfusion that becoming a hunter requires, you're more or less a Hunter of His Own Kind as well.
• Bloodhound has an Order called the Keeper of the Gates, dedicated to battle demonic forces of all kinds. Your titular character is their best member and needs to fight the Demon Queen, Astaroth, after she unleashed a Hell on Earth.
• Rayne of the BloodRayne series. She's dedicated her life to hunting down her vampire father, Kagan, and his other offspring. She has since also become an assassin and agent for the Brimstone society, who dispatch her against supernatural threats. During World War II she carried out assassinations of Nazi officers and scientists involved in paranormal warfare and research on behalf of the Allies on Brimstone's orders.
• The Belmont family in the Castlevania games, as well as the Belnades and Morris families. The Belmonts are described as a clan of vampire hunters, but in the end it's only really Dracula (and his countless minions) that they wind up hunting.
• Isaac Clarke becomes this throughout the Dead Space series.
• Dante from Devil May Cry is a half demon who works as a mercenary that hunts demons to avenge the death of his mother at their hands. He also has shades of a Blood Knight as he enjoys himself at it.
• The Demon Hunter class from Diablo III is a ranged class that is dedicated to Demon Slaying. They're typically recruited from among the survivors of villages ravaged by The Legions of Hell, and they're primarily motivated by vengeance against demons in general. The Player Character among them lost a sister to demon-induced madness after the two of them survived the destruction of their village.
• Doom: After starting out as just a seemingly - average marine in over his head, the player character eventually becomes this somewhere around the end of Doom 64, choosing to stay in Hell to fight the demons forever. By the time of the new games, he's been rechristened as the "Doom Slayer" and has dedicated himself to wiping out all demons everywhere.
• Eponymous characters of Dragon Valor hunt dragons, who represent the evil in the world.
• Dread Templar sees you as the titular character, a demon hunter who's among the best of his job. Your grandfather who raised you used to be one of their members before a powerful demon kills him, and you attempt uncovering the truth behind his demise while exploring the netherworld and leaving behind a trail of slain demons everywhere.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In Morrowind, Jiub is the Nerevarine's shirtless, bald, one-eyed fellow prisoner aboard the Imperial Prison Ship at the start of the game. He lets the Nerevarine known they've arrived in Morrowind and asks for the Nerevarine's name, and is never seen again once the Nerevarine exits the ship. Despite his very limited role, he was popular enough with fans to generate countless Fan Fics and Game Mods which add him back into the game. Bethesda took notice and, in Oblivion, mention that Jiub became a Saint after hunting the much reviled Cliff Racers to eradication as a form of atonement for his "sordid" past.
  • In Skyrim, the Dragonborn is considered to be the ultimate Dragon Slayer and "The One They Fear". According to lore, the Dragonborn are sent by Akatosh, for the sole purpose of acting as a natural predator to Dragons.
• The Hunters of Evolve. They each have their own motives, including revenge, a Worthy Opponent, money, For Science!, being a Death Seeker, being a Blood Knight, or simple self-preservation.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Characters affiliated with SPICA, PMEC and the Kinreikan do this for a living.
• Gabriel Knight is descended from the Ritters of Bavaria, a family line whose men were Schattenjägers, a German word loosely translating to "shadow hunters".
• Ghostlore sees you playing as a Ghosthunter, tasked with preventing the forces of evil from invading Singapore by travelling to several surrounding, haunted islands and wiping out whatever supernatural threat that appears.
• Half-Life 2's Father Grigori is clearly of the "putting a damned creature out of its misery" type. "A shepard must tend to his flock!", where his flock is the town of Ravenholm, who have all become zombies.
• The Hellgate: London features a faction called Hunters though they aren't the only ones out for demon blood.
• 2018-19 PC game HellSign from Ballistic Interactive, has you as a monster hunter working in Australia to battle infestations of various supernatural beings from the Afterlife and elsewhere, while combat is king - investigation and information gathering is a major aspect.
• Monsters sometimes appear in the village in Hometown Story and some of the villagers are hunters whose job explicitly include protecting the village from said monsters.
• Diablo-like games The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing and Victor Vran both feature a monster hunter in an Eastern European-style setting as their protagonist.
• In several games of the Ivalice Alliance series, the player characters belong to a monster-hunting clan which offers the bulk of the available optional quests.
• The Jackbox Party Pack 4: The Monster Hunter from "Monster Seeking Monster" has another player assigned as their quarry, and they get bonus points for each time they convince them to date the Hunter.
• Shauna Vayne from League of Legends is a utterly ruthless monster hunter, motivated to find and kill the demon that killed her parents. Hunting down monsters is the only thing in life that makes her happy. Vayne also counts witchcraft as monstrous.
• Juliet from Lollipop Chainsaw; the game itself is Buffy the Vampire Slayer on on acid instead of meth, but she is a professional zombie hunter when she isn't a cheerleader.
• Commander Shepard of Mass Effect is revered across the Galaxy as the only person who has managed to kill several Reapers, most of the time doing so entirely on foot, either through clever tactics or while practically staring them down. Even the Reapers know his/her name and are frankly terrified of him/her. Even Leviathan, one of the beings who created the AI that eventually created the Reapers says that Shepard is the only being that the Reapers have ever feared, in their billion plus years of existence.
  Dying Reaper: Shepard?!
  Shepard: You know who I am?
  Dying Reaper: Harbinger speaks of you!
• The Maverick Hunters of the Mega Man X series. Ironically, one of the organization's greatest hunters becomes a primary target of a similar organization, the Neo Arcadian military, in the Sequel Series Mega Man Zero.
• Metroid:
  • Samus Aran hunts the Space Pirates who devastated her homeworld and left her the sole survivor of the whole planet. In Metroid Prime, files recovered from a Space Pirate ship indicates that they refer to her, literally, as "The Hunter". Since the Space Pirates are bug-like aliens with a brutal totalitarian society, however, she can easily slaughter them by the thousands without worrying about the usual psychological problems.
  • There's also her recurring troubles with the series' eponymous creatures. In Metroid II: Return of Samus and Metroid: Samus Returns, the entire point of the game is to commit xenocide, wiping the Metroids off the planet one by one.
  • In the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the Space Pirates react to the appearance of Dark Samus by referring to a "Dark Hunter." Hilarious to read at first, as they express their horror at being hounded by two Hunters... but by Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Dark Samus has become their leader, resulting in some nightmarish logs detailing the Pirates' blind fanaticism and devotion to her.
• The titular player characters from Monster Hunter, who are card-carrying members of the Hunter's Guild, have the primary task of ensuring the safety and survival of civilization in the face of titanic, city-destroying wild animals and dragons by keeping their numbers manageable through hunting. It's subverted, however, in that the Guild itself, alongside several independent organizations, carry out monster preservation activities to ensure ecological stability, and generally look down on overhunting to the point that the Guild Knights are authorized to use lethal force on poachers. Of course, one won't be able to tell that given the grindy nature of the game.
• The unnamed protagonist of Monster Hunter (PC), who hunts monsters of all sorts, from Man Eating Plants to gremlins to vampires and mummies. Right up to fighting The Grim Reaper and his ghost army.
• Mortal Kombat: Ashrah is a demon who hunts others of her kind. She wields a holy sword that cleanses her of her demonic essence bit by bit with every demon warrior she kills with it, and she hopes to become completely purified and holy this way.
• Data East's Beat 'em Up game Night Slashers is a Schizo Tech world where you have an American cyborg psychic monster hunter, a magic-using vampire hunter from Europe and an Asian martial artist with some mystical abilities team up to take on a Fantasy Kitchen Sink of elementals, zombies, vampires, werewolves and weirder crap. Taken from the dustbins of 1993, it's available for download on the Nintendo Switch.
• Ninja Gaiden:
  • The main protagonist Ryu Hayabusa deals with several threats to human kind. Among them are the Fiends, a race of demonic creatures spawned from the evil deity Vigoor.
  • Rachel, a playable character and ally of Ryu is a straighter example of this trope being a Fiend hunter who is also part Fiend.
• Octopath Traveler: Master Z'aanta and later his disciple H'aanit protect people from the most fearsome beasts, such as the Big Bad of H'aanit's quest, Redeye.
• Tsukihime:
  • The future Tohno(/Nanaya) Shiki becomes this, hunting down the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors (some of the most powerful beings on the planet) for the sake of the vastly-weakened Arcueid. He is good at it.
  • Arcueid herself. She's been chasing one single vampire for 800 years, killing any of the others who get in her way. Even before going after him, she hunted the Demon Lords, fallen True Ancestors.
  • The Holy Church has the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament, a whole army of hunters dedicated to exterminating vampires and other threats to mankind. Among them we have the Burial Agency, seven (plus one) people or creatures chosen not for their faith but for the power and the will to exterminate the most dangerous creatures in the world that the Church finds inconvenient. Including the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors, except the one who is among their numbers.
  • Enhance, one of the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors, is hunting down his kin to slay all vampires. If he shows up at a vampire coven, he'll leave no survivors.
  • Barthomeloi Lorelei, one of the leaders of the Magical Association, harbors a fanatical hate for vampires and the power to kill even the Dead Apostle Ancestors.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Yukie Ōgami is a katana-wielding Cute Bruiser who hunted the wereshark that killed her master to America. She avoids Van Helsing Hate Crimes, however, and if the vampire Player Character helps her avenge her master, they can even show the beginnings of an Odd Friendship.
• As the name implies, Witch Hunters from Warhammer Online hunt rogue witches.
• As they are in the books, the witchers in The Witcher and its sequels are professional monster hunters, though the character played, Geralt, doesn't get around to a lot of dedicated monster hunting until the third game.
• World of Warcraft has a playable class called a Hunter^note Chuck Norris plays a hunter, but he does not hunt, because hunting implies the possibility of failure, but this trope is more closely represented by the demon hunters. Lorewise, Illidan Stormrage is/was regarded as the demon hunter.
• Yes, Your Grace:
  • Noaksey is known for being a famous monster hunter. It's possible to send him on a Snipe Hunt on behalf of another character who thinks he's a fraud. He'll come back with a trophy that looks suspiciously like deer antlers, and when confronted will admit to lying, but claim his lies make people less scared to venture outside their homes.
  • King Eryk eventually acquires his court hunter, who can be sent out to be deal with monsters bothering peasants.
• In The Outer Worlds, Nyoka is a wilderness guide who also happens to be Monarch's foremost huntress of the various alien beasts that live on the planet. Her years of hunting down beasts have given her experience in knowing the safe routes on Monarch as well as how to deal with them, such as suffocating a room full of them simply by altering the atmosphere via a nearby console.
• Yokai Hunter Shintaro stars a Yokai hunter (what else?) named Shintaro, alongside his protege Ayane, the two of them on an adventure to rid the land of evil Yokai. Practically all onscreen enemies they killed (except some generic zombies) are based on Yokai.

Webcomics

• In Black Hole (2019), Diana Nox works for an organization of paranormal investigators and travels the world to both investigate and eliminate any supernatural threats. The twist is that, instead of killing them, she simply drains their energy through her Sex Magic. She also doesn't display any Fantastic Racism towards the monsters and otherworldy beings she faces, but does think they can be a danger to regular people and tries to contain them as much she can.
• In Charby the Vampirate Blaine started hiring hunters to take out the vampires and other monsters preying on people living in Kellwood after seeing a vampire tear his parents apart and after becoming a competent hunter himself came before the mayor with proof of the supernatural and now has city support for his group of hunters.
• Here There Be Monsters focuses on Blaine's group during a turbulent period.
• Both the Vatican and the Norse "Æsir" churches field specialist troops to hunt down and exterminate immortals in Cry 'Havoc'.
• Curse Quest: Unsurprisingly, the Owl Hunter and probably more appropriately also his apprentice Minerva. The Owl Hunter claims to hunt ulvorn owl-bear hybrids. His method of fighting is wrestling, which sounds awesome but proves impractical considering Minerva one shots an ulvorn on her own.
• Parodied with Tiffany Winters of Eerie Cuties and Magick Chicks. Being an expy of Buffy Summers, she's dedicated to slaying vampire main character Layla DeLaCroix, who in turn is completely unaware of this fact. Her attempts to stake Layla usually end abruptly, due to being easily distracted and because of how well they get along, as they share a lot in common. Hence, why it was almost inevitable that they eventually became best friends. Sorta.
• In El Goonish Shive, Tedd's mother has a reputation as a legendary monster hunter.
• In Errant Story, the elven rangers are this, hunting down half-elves because the elves believe they all inevitably go murderously insane. It's suggested, though, that some rangers will let them go if the half-elf in question isn't a danger.
• Girl Genius has:
  • Vespiary Squad, an elite team specialized in hunting Slaver Wasps and containing (or killing revenants if anyone is already infected. From what we saw, they're very good against wasp warriors—established to be formidable even as battle constructs go—but mediocre against experienced human opponents. They have the characteristic Hunter attitude and even habitually strap skulls of Hive Warriors over their helmets.
  • Othar qualifies as well. He's on a quest to eliminate Sparks from the world, including (eventually) himself.
  • Grantz performs this role for Klaus Wulfenbach.
  • The Dreen are a group of mysterious creatures in long robes and conical hats. They are apparently extra-dimensional hunters who want to fight the giant monsters that are attracted by time blockages. Since they don't perceive time in the same way as everyone else, they've been hanging around for several centuries waiting for Klaus to create a time stoppage in Mechanicsburg that will summon one of these monsters for them to fight.
• Abner Van Slyk, professional vampire hunter of Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name. Bad news for Conrad.
• Jordan in Head Trip is a Furry Slayer -in-training. Or at least wants to be.
• L.A.W.L.S. comic has Autumn, The Slayer—more specifically, Furry Slayer.
• The central protagonists of Skela And The Oddstrange have taken it on as their duty to take care of the local Horrors.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: In the comic's Plague Zombie ridden world, one of the military jobs is hunter. Among the members of the main cast, Sigrun is one by profession.
• The Hunters in Weregeek believe Tabletop RPG players are a menace to society, to be stamped out with deadly force.

Web Original

• In RWBY, each of the four kingdoms has an academy that trains teenagers into becoming Hunters of the Grimm. They aren't directly called Hunters, however: it's "Huntsman" if male and "Huntress" if female.
• Harry Partridge's Trilby Dogtooth is a Deconstructive Parody of this trope. All the cool, dangerous monsters like vampires or werewolves have been driven to extinction long ago thanks to constant hunting from humans, and thus modern monster hunters like the titular Dogtooth are glorified exterminators wasting their talents on dumb, harmless creatures that do stuff like eating garbage cans.
• Nightbane, of the Whateley Universe, hunts supernatural monsters: vampires, goblins, what-have-you. She's currently trying to kill Carmilla. Only one problem: Carmilla is one of the heroes in this universe.

Western Animation

• American Dragon: Jake Long has the Huntsclan, a whole and fairly large organization of people dedicated to exterminate magical creatures. The strongest ones are easily recognized for their helmet, AKA the skull of the first dragon they slayed.
• Much like the video game it's adapted from, the Belmont family from Castlevania (2017) have been doing this for generations, at least until they were declared heretics and excommunicated. Now Trevor Belmont is the only one left, but he's more than capable of fighting demons, vampires, and various other monsters on equal footing. It takes a little while to convince him to join the fight against Dracula, though.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Valerie Gray is under the delusion that all ghosts are evil—her job originally started with her getting revenge on one who ruined her perfect life.
  • Skulker, who generally hunts rare ghosts. During his first appearance, he commented roughly along wanting "to hang [Danny's] pelt at the end of [his] bed".
  • Danny's parents, who are professional ghost hunters, and also happen to unknowingly supply him with all of his ghost hunting equipment.
• Dragons: Riders of Berk: Berk's dragon riders deal (normally peacefully) with every dragon problem like a fantasy Animal Control Agency. The Evil Counterpart of this are the literal Dragon Hunters who hunt dragons for very obscure reasons like selling their skins or auction them.
• DuckTales: In ''Merit Time Adventure, Captain Mallard, Dogface Pete, and two other sailors set out with a harpoon gun to pursue the sea serpent that destroyed Pete's salvage warehouse and Mallard's ship (eating Mallard's first mate, Quackerbill, in the process). Working with the heroes, they discover that the whole thing is a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax run by a Faking the Dead Quackerbill.
• Gutner Van Halen from Frankenstein's Cat. Van Halen, the "Monster Man", is a monster hunter who, as he puts it, "dedicated his life and limbs to their destruction", which is saying something, as he has sustained a few scars in his career; he lost his left arm whilst capturing a Two-Headed Transylvanian Zombie and lost his nose to a Giant Blood-Sucking Leech of the Black Lagoon. How he lost his left eye and his right leg are not known.
• First Gillecomgain and Duncan, then the Canmore family, from Gargoyles are dedicated to hunting down and exterminating the titular creatures.
• Hoss Delgado from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is a spectral exterminator, hunting down the supernatural. While sometimes his targets are truly evil, sometimes he targets the (mostly) benign Grim Reaper, or other fairly harmless, kind-hearted supernatural beings. He targets anything, really; at one point, he mentions he killed a bunch of lawyers because he thinks they're not human.
• In Mary Shelley's Frankenhole, it's a drunken redneck named Joe. He's mostly a Vampire Hunter but has Fantastic Racism for most creatures.
• Monster Loving Maniacs has Arthur Van Alten, who protects the town of Grusselbrook from its regular altercations with the supernatural and trains his grandkids Edith, Ernest, and Bo in monster hunting. However, said grandkids are more sympathetic to the monsters, and choose to train under their granddad to become monster experts and help monsters coexist with humans, much to Arthur's frustration.
• Dr. Nicholas Van Helden from The Real Ghostbusters episode "Transylvanian Homesick Blues" is a villainous example. The vampire Count Vostak (who seems harmless) explains that Stoker's novel is a fictionalized account of his longstanding feud between his and Van Helden's family; exactly how justified the feud was, he doesn't say, but Van Helden is doing it because he hates vampires, and is more than willing to commit immoral acts (including potentially murdering humans) to continue it.
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Star Butterfly regularly fights monsters due to her possession of the Royal Magic Wand, which monsters like Ludo want to overrun Mewni. Her ancestor, Queen Solaria the Monster Carver, is revered by Mewni as a hero who cut a swathe through the monster hordes. But as the story goes on, both of their actions are put in a much harsher light, and Solaria is shown to have become a genocidal psychopath near the end of her life who wanted nothing less than the total extermination of all monsters, insisting that they'd be "happier this way".
• The Strange Chores has Old Man Helsing (yes, he's named after THAT Helsing), who was considered the world's greatest monster hunter at the prime of his life and is still pretty good at capturing and subduing vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural horrors. Protagonist Charlie dreams of succeeding him as the world's best monster hunter someday, training with Pierce and Que as Helsing's apprentices. Notably, Helsing differs from a lot of examples here in that he does have a few monster allies, namely the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl Que and his pet monster Snorp.
• In The Venture Brothers there's Jefferson Twilight, Blacula hunter, who dedicated himself to the elimination of black vampires after his mother was raped by a group of them when he was 10. He breaks off their fangs to add to his necklace before he kills them. He even has a "blood eye" that allows him to detect the presence of blaculas despite not being magic in any other significant way. Keep in mind, the eye only works on blaculas- vampires of other races are not his quarry, and so he can't magically detect them.

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Hear him roar, see him foam, but I'm not coming home 'till he's dead! Good and dead! KILL THE BEAST!

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