Lawful Stupid Narrator

Basic Trope: A Lawful character carries the Idiot Ball because that is the Lawful thing to do. Straight: Jason, a self-declared Knight in Shining Armor, tends to go a bit overboard when it comes to enforcing the law, to the point where it supersedes other considerations like common sense. Exaggerated: Jason the paladin insists that he is a paragon of saintly virtue destined to purify the hopelessly corrupt world and overreacts to anything he deems sinful, to the point of dragging people to jail for jaywalking. Downplayed: Jason is a Knight in Shining Armor who constantly adheres to the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. He won't arrest Evulz because of crimes he committed in other cities because that isn't allowed by law, but when Evulz opens a shop, Jason performs a thorough inspection and, on finding what looks like a setup for smuggling in illegal items into the shop that is being built, arrests Evulz at once. Most of the time, Jason balances his duty to uphold the law with understanding of when to let minor infractions slide. But there are particular illegal acts that will turn off Jason's brain and make him do dumb things to avenge them. Justified: Jason is a naïve idiot. Jason knows he's not the sharpest tool in the shed and lacks any form of natural intuition, so he lets the law do the thinking for him. Jason is either a robot or he was raised in a way that programmed the law into his head. He believes the law is the highest morality there is and that listening to it is the only way to keep order which leads to some ... issues. Jason is an outlaw turned knight who feels he Must Make Amends for his history and goes overboard for that reason. Inverted: Chaotic Stupid Jason is lawful and is The Spock or The Smart Guy in the cast. Subverted: While Jason is a stickler for rules, he isn't so stringent about enforcing them that he loses sight of common sense. Jason is Lawful Evil, and his pettiness is deliberate. Double Subverted: After seeing his allies snatch a purse, Jason catches them and calmly makes them return the money and apologize, and seems to empathize with their plight and let them go... but then clubs them upside the back of the head when they turn to leave and drags their bleeding bodies to jail. Jason becomes so obsessed with punishing the Anti-Hero Bob by lawful means that he does things placing him in the categories of Evil is Petty and Stupid Evil. Parodied: Jason realizes that he is jaywalking in the middle of the forest, and promptly deploys his sword to kill himself in a holy fire of justice. The only people who are lawful are the ones who were already stupid. It would never occur to a stupid person to think to act outside the law in any way. In this universe, the numbers of scofflaws and criminals each exceed the number of law-abiders by a factor of at least two or three, so being lawful is stupid. This society persecutes intellectuals and people with common sense to a degree that makes it so only being stupid is lawful. Zig-Zagged: Mason starts out as a Reasonable Authority Figure, though he has a few niggling issues that act as his Berserk Buttons. These are well-explained, however, and he knows that they cloud his judgment and relies on others to help him keep a grip on his common sense. Unfortunately, his protégé Jason is a full-fledged Knight Templar, and while Mason keeps Jason's Lawful Stupidity in check for a time, he succumbs to the Mentor Occupational Hazard, after which Jason takes over the organization. Naturally, it gets worse. Averted: Jason is a Lawful paladin who has common sense. Enforced: "We need a rival for our Loveable Rogue to butt heads with! Let's create a paladin with little common sense." Lampshaded: A Street Urchin caught stealing bread sarcastically asks Jason upon being caught if he's gonna torture him for such a small crime. Invoked: ...Which is exactly what Jason ends up doing to the Street Urchin. Exploited: The Big Bad intentionally lures Jason's attention towards relatively minor infractions, serving to distract the good guys from his true intentions as well as make them Heroes with Bad Publicity to make their lives more difficult. Defied: Jason became a paladin because he was sick of Lawful Stupid paladins, and wanted to show them how they should be acting. Jason yells "Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!" when he encounters a choice between breaking the law to save hundreds of innocent people or following the law and letting them die. Jason's superiors/deity make clear that this is not the kind of enforcer they want on their payroll. Discussed: "Jason is a real stickler for the rules! Why can't he just have any common sense?" Conversed: "But his actions are morally questionable, as he doesn't seem to know how to be lawful without being unintelligent!" Deconstructed: The Knight Templar, which presents zeal at the price of compassion as a villainous trait. Reconstructed: As a result of something he did, something bad happens, causing Jason to have a My God, What Have I Done? moment. He learns that having common sense is important and stops being Lawful Stupid. Played for Laughs: Jason knows full well how many times he has exceeded the speed limit, gotten a parking ticket, jaywalked, or committed every kind of minor violation of the law in the book, but he is still determined to punish himself no matter how many times everyone he knows tells him that he should really just relax. Played for Drama: After the urchin grows up, he proceeds to frame everyone Jason loves and respects for equally small crimes, and make Jason aware of it so he's forced to torture them too. After Jason is left alone and confused, the urchin plays one final head game on Jason by crafting a scenario with such a terrible Logic Bomb that Jason is finally forced to make a Zeroth Law Rebellion or go insane. Once he's finally free of his Lawful Stupid way of thinking, the urchin wraps up the Tragedy by revealing the manipulation, and how he could have saved all his friends if he'd just been willing to use his brain. Played for Horror: Jason's bumbling and inflexible enforcement of the law has a strange way of ending with many people dead, not all of them by his hand, but definitely by his fault. Plotted a Good Waste: Jason is the Deliberately Bad Example Decoy Protagonist in The Wandering Paladin series, so the actual hero Peter doesn't need to waste x words explaining how "good" Paladins are supposed to act. Implied: Jason is The Ghost, but his superior officer describes him as this. Jason hesitates whenever somebody asks him whether he's late because he pursued personal revenge against some irrelevant person.

MEDIA EXAMPLES

Bleach: When the Central 46 makes a ruling, no-one is allowed to oppose that ruling, not even captains. It's later revealed that this system of justice was either set up by or helped to be set up by Yamamoto, who enforces it with an unforgiving rigidity. When Ukitake and Kyouraku, his two favourite students, rebel, he is willing to kill them for their transgression. Only when it's revealed that everything was Aizen's manipulations does Yamamoto back down and focus on the real problem. After the time-skip, Yamamoto has been softened enough by Ichigo's beliefs that he's finally willing to break the law to save Ichigo to repay the debt the captains owe him. This softening took over a thousand years to achieve; Yamamoto was that rigid. Suzaku Kururugi of Code Geass, who believes upholding the law is a better path towards change than revolution, even though said laws apply to a Darwinist government that would sooner keel over than give its so-called Numbers equal rights. Until his dark past and secret motive are revealed, and he more appropriately falls under Lawful Neutral. During a hostage situation, Suzaku actually protests against hacking open a locked door to save someone because "it's against the rules." He does have one reasonable point, though... The ease with which Britannia conquers Japan and the many years of failure that the Japanese resistance undergoes leaves Suzaku beyond believing that it's possible. The fairly easily accomplished defeat of the European superpower, and China's near submission, strongly suggest that he's right. Once Lelouch accidentally destroys one of the best perceivable hopes for the happiness of the Japanese, though still a little slim, Suzaku becomes beyond believing that anything Lelouch does is good. Suzaku finally comes around after accidentally nuking Tokyo though. This is, of course, debatable as Suzaku initially strongly adheres to the notion that the ends don’t justify the means, and Lelouch as Zero proves capable of nearly overthrowing Britannia’s rule over Japan several times if not precisely for Suzaku’s interference; proving it to indeed be possible. It thus indicates that even if change were achieved by rebellion, Suzaku would dismiss it as worthless because the means of doing so went against the law and current established authority, conveniently ignoring that said law and authority is designed so there's no legal way of doing so. Parodied in Excel♡Saga, when the Daitenzin decide to perform as many acts of justice as possible, however insignificant, so they can take off their suits. They end up fighting litterers, extortioners, and other petty criminals with the full force of Sentai heroes. The 3rd-year Pandoras in Freezing after Satellizer unleashes a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle on one of their peers. They try to justify their persecution of her in that the Pandoras are humanity's best line of defense against the monstrous, alien Novas, and that in battle, unit cohesion and the chain of command have to be maintained. What makes this truly stupid, though, is that none of them seem to care that the 3rd-year that Satellizer beat up had forcefully disrobed her and taken pictures of it, and was ready to have her male assistants rape Satellizer. And then it turns out that all Pandoras are expected to act Lawful Stupid by the government and anyone who acts out of line would be horrifically punished. Just ask Elizabeth. England from Hetalia: Axis Powers is guilty of this trope (with relative truth to it). He's always trying to make sense of the chaotic world he's in, taking offense to even minor inconveniences especially one's caused by either France or America. Most of England's suffering was the result of his own rigity and Tsundere-like behavior. And you wonder why, he has so little friends? Detective Lunge, the Inspector Javert from Monster has fallen under Lawful Stupid a few times when he continued to pursue Tenma despite the existence of Johann being right in front of him. My Bride is a Mermaid: Mawari Zenigata tries to be Lawful Good, but due to her overzealousness and nature as a Control Freak, she tends to veer into this territory more often than not. Haruka from the My-HiME manga, who is on a quest to expel the Orphan Resistance Unit from the school. Interestingly enough, though, she resorts to kidnapping, attempted theft of Elements, and recruiting known troublemakers like Nao to advance her agenda. Emily Sevensheep from Negima! Magister Negi Magi is not open to discussion with unarmed wanted criminals. It takes both Negi stripping her of her weapons and her boss telepathically contacting her for her to agree to discuss... for a time. One Piece: The World Government is ruled by a bunch of arrogant nobles who are not only perfectly willing to ignore a prison breakout that freed more than one hundred highly dangerous criminals back into the world, they are willing to cover it up as though it never happened. While focusing nearly the entirety of their forces into one single place to ensure the end of the bloodline of a decades-dead pirate. (Possibly an example of It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, as the reason for the cover-up of the prison break out was that after already taking a hit to their reputation, they didn't want to announce that their formerly impenetrable prison just had a massive break out and cause a panic/queue more trouble. That said, one has to wonder how you talk your way out of formerly imprisoned criminals suddenly appearing in the world. Besides, they can kill anyone who can prove they got out. Or so they assume. The World Government tends to have a Screw the Rules, I Make Them! attitude at times.) Admiral Kizaru is less evil than his bosses, but he tends to be this, emphasis on "stupid." He can't tell the difference between the "black" Den Den Mushi, only used for espionage, and the standard Den Den Mushi used as a phone, completely overlooks slavery and its many implications, and nearly destroyed an entire island in the Saobody Archipelago because he couldn't be bothered to check where he was aiming. Shown as a flaw in the hero system (albeit for laughs) in One-Punch Man, as C-class heroes need to do one good deed a week in order to keep their status, and his fights tend to not take place in public areas or get reported unless a fellow hero is there. Saitama was not aware of that, and was informed of it by his ally Genos when there was half a day left. The result was not him doing a good deed, but running around and scaring everyone with the expression on his face looking for one. Early on in Pokémon: The Series, Ash would frequently use only one Pokémon at a time against Team Rocket, even though Jessie and James would almost always send Ekans/Arbok and Koffing/Weezing at him at the same time. He cited the Pokémon League rules as why in the third episode. This is despite the fact that his battles with Team Rocket have nothing to do with the Pokémon League. He would eventually get over this. Played for Laughs in Ratman. The main character is tricked into signing a contract to act as an evil organization's super-villain and never thinks that since the signature was made under false pretenses, it's invalid. Plus just ignoring it even if it were legal. Thankfully, Jackal isn't really all that evil, so it's not so bad. Shaman King: The X-LAWS are all this. A group that vows to wipe out Hao and his allies. Okay, the only problem is that if you are not on their side you're automatically considered an enemy. They refuse to work with others outside their group and tend to look down on anyone not in their team (mostly Marco carries this attitude). The X-LAWS says they do this to rid evil from the world and stop the killing. It is not as bad in the manga, but in the anime, they take it to the extreme. Way to go ruining your chances helping other people stop the Big Bad. Hao even calls them out on this and insults their leader. The Patch Tribe become this in the final arc. They vow to serve as Hao's Praetorian Guard as he has become the Shaman King, and they're honor-bound to protect him. This despite the fact that Hao has made no secret of his plan to wipe out humanity. Early on in Slayers, Amelia's obsession with being a "Hero of Justice" could lead to this. Highlights include turning against Lina and Gourry when she learns that there is a (fake) bounty on their heads and an Imagine Spot in which she blasts someone with the Dragon Slave for picking up a lost quarter. She does relax her standards eventually, though. Snow White with the Red Hair: The Sereg Knight Commander locks up Mitsuhide when he's framed for the recent killings of several nobles, even though he knows Mitsuhide was framed, partially to try to lure the true culprit out by making it look like their plan is working. After capturing the real culprit he keeps Mitsuhide locked up, because he hasn't received orders from the palace to let Mitsuhide go. When it becomes clear the culprit had Mitsuhide framed in an effort to deprive Prince Zen of his loyal and competent bodyguard in preparation for assassinating the prince he still keeps him locked up, even placing the real culprit in a much less secure cell to ensure Mitsuhide is incapable of escaping, and even as the fortress is being overrun he refuses to free the innocent knight. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Post-Time Skip, Rossiu becomes overzealous in his task of upholding the newly created law, much to the very great annoyance of Chaotic Good Simon. For example, he believes the Grappal are far more advanced than the Gurren Lagann and keeps telling Simon that he must rely on his Red Shirt Army instead of fighting himself, even though, this being a Super Robot show, it's bleeding obvious that Simon's Gurren Lagann is the most powerful mecha in the world. In The Twelve Kingdoms, a flashback shows us King Chuutatsu of Hou. He was chosen for the job by Hourin for his strong sense of justice. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too strong. He eventually decreed All Crimes Are Equal and that someone guilty of any crime would be put to death by crucifixion (turns out Hou was the only one of the Kingdoms to still do so). The situation was not helped by his Queen falsely accusing officials and women of Court she didn't like just to be rid of them. After thirty years and hundreds of thousands of citizens put to death, his remaining officials revolted and beheaded him, the Queen, AND the dying Hourin, though the latter could also count as a Mercy Kill. The King's 13-year-old (actually 43) daughter was the only survivor, and her learning what people really thought of the King is the catalyst for her finally maturing. In the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, Isono (an employee of Kaiba's who acts as a referee during the Battle City finals) is a borderline example. He sticks adamantly to the rules of the game, even though something is obviously wrong (as in, Marik's demonic presence risking everyone's lives), and makes every call by the book. For example, a deleted scene from Yugi's duel with Marik has him rule that Yugi's drawing a card and setting it without confirming it is not allowed (if it's a monster, it's in the wrong slot), even though Yugi has a good reason for this. (Kaiba himself, however, overrules this ruling, saying it's "interesting", and the duel continues.) The worst example is when he forbids Yugi from helping Bakura, even though Bakura was dying because a duelist isn't allowed to make physical contact with an opponent. In an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, Takashi is appointed leader of the School Disciplinary Squad by the Student Council President and takes this job way too far. When Yuma is challenged to a duel by the President, Takashi forbids Yuma from using Gagaga Girl because her outfit violates the school dress code. (Never mind that a ruling like this would be considered outright cheating in the actual card game.) In Takashi's defense, when he realizes that the President is a Brainwashed and Crazy minion of the Barians who has been using him, he quickly resigns from his position, and Yuma is able to use any cards he wants from that point.