The Inquisitor General

Ask anybody in the military, what's the most nerve-wracking experience they will ever face? Enemy tanks? Air strikes? Being shot to death?

No, you may find they most lament having to deal with The Inquisitor General.

This is a character whose job it is to go over everything you do with a fine-toothed comb and an electron microscope, making sure to catalog each of your transgressions, big and small. He could be a Drill Sergeant Nasty, The Neidermeyer, or even Colonel Badass. Assuming that he is a benevolent form of this trope, his goal is to help you become as flawless at what you do as possible, so you'll be less likely to make any mistakes when it counts for real. Of course, it's also possible that he's a Jerkass whose only goal is to make you look like an incompetent fool or get you angry enough to do something you'll regret.

Given his role, the Inquisitor General will tend to be Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, or Lawful Evil. This is, of course, very much Truth in Television for many organizations, who use these guys as checks against complacency and corruption.

A Sister Trope to Internal Affairs, which is more commonly found in works about the police. Compare and contrast with The Political Officer.

Examples of The Inquisitor General include:

Anime and Manga

• Nova Satori from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and its Robotech version. She's part of the Global Military Police, which are a unit that works to check misbehavior in the Army of the Southern Cross, and it's her job to drag the protagonist in when she's broken regulations yet again.

Film

• The Danny Kaye film The Inspector General has a man arrested for vagrancy mistaken for an Inspector General in disguise.

Literature

• Miles Vorkosigan pulls off faking this in The Warrior's Apprentice as part of an Indy Ploy - or rather, the latest in a long string of Indy Ploys.
  • Miles Vorkosigan also plays Inspector General on ImpSec in Memory, this time with the authority to make it stick. He thinks he's killing time waiting for field agents to report on off-planet leads. As it happens, after a few days of snooping, he finds what he needs to crack the case in the basement.
• In the Honor Harrington short story Fanatic, a State Sec Political Officer is sweating bullets after the suspected murder of his superior, whilst the government he works for, the People's Republic of Haven, is undergoing considerable political turmoil and purges. Things quickly get worse when he finds that the Inspector General being sent to investigate the death is none other than Victor Cachat, holder of many nicknames with terrifying implications. It doesn't help him much that he doesn't know what the readers know, that Victor is a good guy, just a terrifyingly cold blooded one, and recognizes that the protagonist is also obviously a good guy, despite who he worked for.
• In the novel Warbirds, centered around an Air Force F-4 squadron before and during a fictional Middle East war, the egotistical, incompetent, and ambitious General Blevins forces the inspectorate to give the squadron (which is in fact a model of Air Force regulations) terrible report to destroy the career of the commanding officer, who made Blevins look like an idiot at the beginning of the book.
• Mercilessly parodied (as was everything else) with the "Latrines General" in Good Soldier Švejk — a bumbling, dimwitted general whose only passion in life was inspecting and regulating military latrines.

Live Action Television

• Babylon 5 had several different kinds of examples:
  • The first-season episode "Eyes" had an officer named Colonel Ari Ben Zayn arrive on the station to inquire into the details of recent events aboard the station, going all the way back to the series pilot episode. He also brings along Harriman Gray, a telepath who is to scan each of the officers aboard the station to ensure that they are loyal to EarthGov. Ivonova refuses, ostensibly because she is offended that her superiors would even suggest her loyalty could be in question, but in actuality it is because she is a rogue telepath.
    • In addition, it turned out that the Colonel was really was trying to destroy the station commander's reputation, because he had been seeking that posting but was passed over in favor of the Commander.
    • For his part, Gray, upon realizing how corrupt and unhinged the investigator was, quickly came to the aid of the heroes. In fact, he first began to be suspicious when he found out he was assigned to the investigator by Alfred Bester.
  • Alfed Bester, being a Psi Cop, is in a way this trope for the rest of the Psi Corps. He also uses his talents and authority to generally fuck with the mundanes when it serves his purposes.
  • In "A Call To Arms", it is evident that the foreman at the shipyard for the new destroyers considers Micheal Garibaldi to be a most unwelcome version of this, but for the inverse of the normal reason: The foreman wants to get everything perfect, and Garibaldi is insisting that he accept things as "Good Enough" and move on so they can actually complete the project. Of course, it's also possible he was delaying over every little problem because he was actually The Mole.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation featured Inspector General officers in several episodes.
  • In "Coming Of Age", two officers are inspecting the Enterprise and her crew, second-guessing every decision and action they've taken thus far. In the end, it is revealed that they suspected that an alien force was infiltrating Starfleet, and that at the end of their investigation, they found the Enterprise to be the finest ship in the fleet.
  • Another episode later that same season revealed that Both officers had been taken over by the infiltrating aliens, along with many of Starfleet's key senior officers. Several starship captains became suspicious of their seniors' suspicious behavior, including trying to bluff their way out of conversations about topics they should be familiar and comfortable with, such as mutual friends or past encounters.

Tabletop RPG

• In Paranoia IntSec (Internal Security) has this function.

Web Comics

• Air Force Blues has a mild example in the form of Barbie's ex girlfriend, Captain Dhart. She appears from time to time to inspect the 809th, though nothing ever seems to come of it.
• A Running Gag in Crew Dogs was that the Inspector General was a malicious Jerkass turned Up to Eleven, who seemed to have almost supernatural powers to catch the officers making mistakes.
  • One strip had the squadron commander assuring his daughter that there was no monster in the closet. When he opened the door to show her, the Inspector General was standing in the closet, asking the father "How's it feel to lie to your kid?"
  • In fact, the very first time the Inspector General is mentioned in the comic, one of the characters is trying to equate the Inspector General to a Mad Scientist. The logic behind his conclusion is a a bit weak, to say the least.