One that pops to mind for me is Francis York Morgan, an FBI agent, and the main character of the "horror" game Deadly Premonition.
He's an eccentric, but nice, character who has an imaginary friend he talks to named Zach who helps him solve crimes.
He seemingly only solves serial murders and not assassinating leftist leaders...as far as we know..
Robocop
I'm still a little angry that they never did manage to get that secret prime directive out of his programming so he could go full-on murder-machine against OCP
Rust Cohle from True Detective is up there. I also can't help but like McNulty from The Wire.
If 2nd Season came out after 2019 everyone would be frothing it. Just suffered from a shitty ending and 2 pointless subplots
I wrote a mini-treatise on this recently, but essentially I think morality is different in fiction. Copaganda is still bad because it has negative real world consequences. BUT, as an example of different fictional morality, I believe that the police characters and even the police as an institution can still be good--setting aside the real world impact that this depiction may have--in a fictional world because the writer is free to write a police force that, say, actually exists for the primary purpose of protecting ordinary citizens from otherworldly threats or something, instead of protecting rich people's property.
You can write a cop character where we actually know they are good because we can actually get inside the head of the character and know with absolute truth their morality and motivations, and we can know, for example, that they serve a fictional police force that only does good. So it's ok to like, say, Commander Shepard from Mass Effect or Spider-Man from Spider-Man without that suddenly making you a cop sympathizer or warmonger irl.
I hadn't thought of that before, but it's true. I'd like to read more analysis about it, did you post that "treatise" somewhere?
I haven't. But I feel like I really should write something up and publish it properly. While I'm sure I'm not the first person to ever think of it, it's an angle of moral philosophy I personally haven't seen discussed much.
I think this is also why, for example, villains can be redeemed in fiction even when they've done horrible things that we might not forgive in real life. In fiction, we can know that they feel true remorse and have truly changed. It also why I can support killing bad people in fiction when I don't support the death penalty irl. In fiction, we can know both their guilt and their irredemability with true certainty.
On top of that, I think fictional constructs like, say, an afterlife, can significantly change the fundamental nature of morality. If Valhalla or Elysium exists, then even war has very different moral implications.
anything where Jackie Chan is a cop - Rush Hour 1-3, Police Story 1-3
Hot Fuzz
It's not to say that I like Judge Dredd, but I do like the comics' satire on Thatcherism, and Dredd himself is definitely not a good person, but he's definitely a compelling person. Plus the fact that the comic series has never ever rebooted itself like a lot of other comics means that every crazy thing that ever happened in the comics is canon. Maybe it's more that I like the series he's from more than the character.
Lieutenant Columbo. His befuddled demeanor conceals his keen intellect, and he catches murderers with seemingly-innocent but irritatingly persistent questions. The fact that the crooks he catches are all snooty aristocratic assholes doesn't hurt either.
Loved Gumshoe and now trying decide if he was a himbo or not. Wanna say yes.
