Vigilantes are characters who take the law into their own hands without any legal authority. They can be similar to anti-heroes since they tend to work outside the law as some of their methods include murder or violence. No matter how good their intentions may be, though, most vigilantes are hypocrites due to dismissing civil and legal laws while punishing others for doing similar (normally heroic vigilantes justify this by adopting a strict personal code to differ themselves from their enemies but some of the more extreme examples can be no better than the villains they fight against).

Perfect examples of this are Dex Parios from Stumptown who tries to stop and detain criminals and Batman from the DC Comics who happens to do the exact same thing but with a tragic motif with his parents and eventually for the sake of protecting those in Gotham.