Excellent Judge of Character

On one end, we have the Horrible Judge of Character; the character who couldn't tell a bad guy if it hit them in the face (sometimes literally). They trust the Obviously Evil characters, dismiss any and all claims of their true personalities, and are typically totally oblivious when it comes to who can be trusted or not, but on the opposite end, we have the character who is able to tell a bad guy with just one look! They see the evil in their eyes, the cockiness in that smirk, and the deceit in their voices that some of the other characters just can't see. As such, they can sometimes be Cassandra Truth people who try to convince everyone else of the bad person's true intentions only to be dismissed or brushed off. They're told that they're "jealous", "mean" and "overreacting" along with some other things that show how oblivious the person they're trying to convince is.

However, while that is often the case, it doesn't always have to be. Sometimes, another character will listen to them, and this doesn't just have to be about knowing who's an antagonist when the other characters usually don't. Sometimes, being a good judge of character is about knowing who to trust and having it pay off. When someone loses their memory, switches bodies, gets kidnapped then swapped with a clone/duplicated, mind controlled or someone's in disguise and they don't know it, they can sometimes feel or see that something's off as they try to find out the answer by figuring it out on their own, which shows that the person is trusting their instincts and judgment. They also sometimes see that something is going on as they either attack or give them a glare of suspicion, which could lead to something bad or finding out a terrible secret about them.

Because the Excellent Judge of Character is often subject to tremendous peer pressure to re-evaluate their opinion of the character being judged, this trope is one of the most decisive refutations of The Complainer Is Always Wrong.

Contrast Horrible Judge of Character. Not to be confused with Detect Evil, where someone uses magic instead of their instincts to determine antagonists. When an animal has this skill, that's Evil-Detecting Dog and sometimes Licked by the Dog. Can overlap with Cassandra Truth. Also compare Evil-Detecting Baby, where a baby is able to tell when a certain character is evil, usually by crying in their presence. May overlap with Living Lie Detector, which provides obvious advantages in assessing someone's trustworthiness.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• L from Death Note instantly becomes suspicious that Light is Kira, even before he has any real evidence. He's right.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: series' lead Tanjiro Kamado is an expert at telling a person’s true nature not long after meeting them; two shining examples are his encounters with Shinobu and Zenitsu: with the former Tanjiro is able to tell Shinobu harbors some deep anger under her constant pleasing smile that impresses the Hashira enough to tell him the reason why, with the latter Tanjiro is able to tell Zenitsu is actually a very strong demon slayer right away, despite Zenitsu repeating numerous times in their first encounter that he is weak, it reaches the comical irony in which Tanjiro is actually surprised to see, in the Red Light District arc, that Zenitsu has to rely on his trance sleep mode to unleash his full strength, while other people, like Inosuke, had to see Zenitsu during that state to see that he was strong after all. He isn't wrong about it either, since the time when Zenitsu fights without the influence of the trance, he's indeed powerful enough to create a technique to defeat his traitorous colleague, and later to gain an inch in the fight against Muzan.
• Speedwagon from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood accurately discerns Dio Brando's wicked nature upon first whiff.
• Lacus Clyne in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED proves to be this despite her young age, in addition to being an inspirational political figure. Throughout the series, she has entrusted power to several unlikely individuals (most notably, Kira, then a soldier fighting against her country), but has yet to experience a serious betrayal of her trust.
• Hans Georg Schubert from Monster was able to figure out how evil Johan Liebert was on his own because of how "perfect" he was acting. He knew that Johan couldn't have been any ordinary human being what with how intelligent and skilled he was at basically everything. He also drew this conclusion from noticing the parallels between himself as a young man — who wanted to be a beyond-human, chaotic monster — and Johan, who is most certainly those things. And this is before he saw firsthand what Johan was capable of, unlike Tenma, Nina, and Reichwein.
• No Longer Allowed in Another World: Sensei is really good at seeing through facades people put up, recognizing that most of the villains he faces are Not Evil, Just Misunderstood, the supposedly selfish witch Esche is actually a benevolent goddess trying to protect Toneriko and that Bishop Elton's whole "Good Sheperd" front is a giant charade and that he's been trying to manipulate his party since the moment they met him.
• One Piece: Despite being an Idiot Hero, Luffy is a phenomenal judge of character, which combined with him being a Magnetic Hero means that anyone he chooses to place his trust in almost invariably becomes a lifelong ally (even if they were originally planning on betraying or killing him). In over 1100 chapters, only one character managed to pull the wool over his eyes.
  • Perhaps unsurprisingly, Luffy's idol "Red-Haired" Shanks, a former member of the legendary Roger Pirates and presently one of the Four Emperors, is essentially the Big Good of the story. Due to a prior encounter with Marshall D. Teach, the pirate who would later become infamously known as Blackbeard, that implicitly left him with his signature scar, Shanks tried to warn Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate to avoid him at all costs despite Teach's crime of murdering a member of Newgate's crew, and importantly, to call off "Fire-Fist" Ace, the subordinate who was hunting him. Unfortunately, Whitebeard's Honor Before Reason approach to Shanks' request results in a cavalcade of severe consequences that culminate in Ace and Whitebeard's deaths, and Blackbeard usurping the latter as an Emperor himself.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Ash's Froakie correctly suspects that Team Rocket's Meowth is up to something when they're separated from their respective groups.
  • Ash's Pikachu grows suspicious of Chairman Rose the moment he meets him and is secretly glad that Ash declines his offer to help him achieve his goals.
  • Liko didn't need Sprigatito hissing at Amethio to realize that this stranger claiming to know her grandma and asking for her pendant was bad news, immediately planning an escape.
• A Timid Woman Longing For Her Delivery Girl has Rinko Komine, a delivery girl and one of the two leads. She quickly realizes that not all city people are bad when dealing with Kei Takase, despite the latter treating her a bit coldly(albeit without overt hostility) due to her trust issues. Rinko later finds Takase speaking with her former coworker Aida, an outwardly pleasant woman who'd badmouthed Takase behind her back at her old job and passive-aggressively insults her. Rinko gets "bad feeling" from Aida and quickly extracts a distressed Takase from the conversation.
• The Summer You Were There has Kaori Asaka. After taking a quick read through her classmate Shizuku Hoshikawa's manuscript of a web novel, in which the lead character commits suicide, Kaori realizes that Shizuku is suicidal, despite barely having spoken to her before. Kaori also notices that Shizuku is a kinder person than she realizes when, during their date to the aquarium, Shizuku buys Kaori a plushie that Kaori was eyeing. When she visits Shizuku at her house, she quickly gets the impression that Shizuku's mother and older sister are nice people, even though Shizuku is unsure whether she can confide in them.

Comic Books

• Godzilla: Aftershock: In this MonsterVerse graphic novel, Miles Atherton is concerned from the start that Emma Russell might not be emotionally fit to be managing Monarch's Titan-studying activities due to the loss she suffered in San Francisco, and his concerns deepen during his time with her. Considering Emma's actions in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Miles was more right than he knew about her.
• In The Walking Dead, when Magna and the group of survivors that she leads first encounter Rick and the Alexandria Safe Zone, they're deeply suspicious of the main characters, especially the fact that they insist on disarming the new survivors. This makes them worried that Rick and company mean to kill them and that Alexandria is a Town with a Dark Secret. This would seem to be confirmed when they poke around at night and find Negan, the Big Bad of the previous arc imprisoned and claiming that Rick is a cruel despot who has had him tortured. The other members of the group are ready to jump on this as proof of their suspicions, but Magna almost immediately sees through the story and realizes that Negan is trying to con them into freeing him. When asked about it, author Robert Kirkman credited Magna with having "a really good bullshit detector."

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, Madison Russell alone is immediately distrustful of Maia Simmons and Apex Cybernetics wanting to collaborate with Monarch, and anyone who watched Godzilla vs. Kong will know she's right to be suspicious of them.
• Throughout All Mixed Up!, Otto grows more and more suspicious of Mariana Mag and her aquarium to the point where he performs a Circling Monologue as he confronts her in Chapter 8. Not only is he right on the money with her being the culprit behind the transformed agents, he ends up being the last person who is able to stop Mariana at the climax.
• In The Awakening of a Magus, Harry has that as one of his special abilities... to the extent that he can, with but a glance, serve as a replacement for the Sorting Hat.
• Child of the Storm has Harry develop into one of these, thanks to a degree of Hyper-Awareness that he inherited from his mother (though the Psychic Powers most certainly help) with more than one person noting that he's a very shrewd judge of people. Since he's been known to use this to push their buttons and get exactly what he wants, this isn't the most positive trait. The only person this doesn't work on is Alexander Pierce, who's just that smooth.
• In Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron, when Princess Euphemia sees Haggar, she immediately realized that there is something off about her, which was why she chose to escape with Lelouch after seeing how terrified he was of her.
• Code Prime
  • When Euphemia first meets Megatron, despite telling her that they have the same goals, she could tell just by looking in his optics that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. Later on, when she, Lelouch, and Optimus are trapped on a deserted island, Euphemia informs them that when she looked into Megatron’s optics, she saw that there was no soul inside of him. Optimus tells Euphemia that she was correct about him, saying that if Megatron did have a soul, it was most likely long gone now.
  • Lelouch has a skill in spotting and analyzing social cues. In R1, when Makeshift (disguised as Wheeljack) asked Fixit about the Groundbridge status, Lelouch picked up the urgency in his tone, as well as his specific interest in how far it could currently transport someone. When he later meets General Smilas in R2, Lelouch immediately recognizes red flags when the general talks of his admiration of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his belief that one wise counsel (a dictatorship) would be better suited to govern than a body of individualistic mindsets. Lelouch asks Wizard to investigate Smilas as a result.
• In Crimson and Noire, Kagami is shown to be very insightful when it comes to people she meets.
  • When she meets Chloe and learns that she dislikes Marinette, she asks if Chloe can give a reason for why but the latter deflects her question. It lets Kagami know that Chloe feels insecure around Marinette, causing the blonde to lash out. Later in chapter 31, she points out that Chloe couldn't be the one to sabotage Marinette's birthday gift to their teacher since Chloe's hidden admiration of Marinette has limited her aggression to just verbal remarks rather than anything physical.
  • In chapter 34, she makes sure not to let Lila near her art notebook, recognizing that she isn't trustworthy compared to Marinette. Two chapters later, Kagami confines to Alya on how she noticed how jealous Lila was when Kagami was taking up Marinette's attention, with the former making it clear how she disliked the fencer through Passive-Aggressive Kombat.
  • In chapter 40, Kagami notes that Zoe tends to act as cold as her mother Audrey when she is by her but she acts more open towards the amicable Andre and the sociable and friendly Marinette. This leads her to reason that Zoe is acting as a mirror toward others to help fit in.
• In Man is the Cruelest Animal, prior to the events of the main story, Garp defected from the Marines and spent years raiding their research facilities in attempts to try to rescue his grandsons from being enslaved and experimented on by the Celestial Dragons. While the majority of the world has written him off as the "Marine Traitor", Koby realizes that a Living Legend like Garp might have had a very good reason for his actions and has resolved to hold off on trying to join the Marines until he learns them, earning him the approval of Luffy, the youngest of Garp's grandsons.
• In The Shield's Dragon, former yakuza Kazuma Kiryu can effectively tell who in Melromarc can be trusted and able to see through most of the bullshit perpetuated by the Royal family, the Church, and the other three useless Heroes when it comes to the Shield Hero's reputation due to decades of experience in Japan's criminal underworld resulting in superior maturity. It does help that Julius Harken, a former Royal Court mage had warned him about all of them in advance, but even then Kiryu doesn't fully take that information at face value until he sees it for himself.
• The main heroes of Showa & Vampire are almost all said to be one of these, as an easy explanation of why people should trust them vouching for somebody they like who happens to have a dubious background. Always a beautiful girl who will end up falling hopelessly in love with the "good judge of character", one notices.
• Kat from Tales From The Spirit Lands has been able to detect bad intentions in her father Mejuri, who turns out to be an abusive Jerkass, Farai, who even after protecting her from Kheri, made Kat uneasy to be around and she turned out to be a child murderer, molester and rather manipulative, Scar, who we all know as The Lion King (1994)'s main antagonist who murdered his brother and attempted the same with his nephew, and Kheri, who she disliked right from the start, and he turned out to be a murderer and rapist!
• In The Ultimate Big Brother, thanks to his experience on the Grand Line, Charlotte Katakuri is able to note that Monokuma is primarily motivated by sadistic bloodlust and the desire to crush hope. He uses it to play the bear like a fiddle, telling him that if he kills them all at the beginning, he'll never be able to sate his bloodlust. Katakuri is also able to better determine the personalities of Makoto's fellow classmates, being able to catch Mukuro's struggles with acting like Junko, and even discerns that she's working with the mastermind due to familial ties, realizing that Junko is the Big Bad.

Films — Animation

• In Disney's 101 Dalmatians, Roger is this towards Cruella. He is the one who invented the song "Cruella de Vil" after all. Just listen to the lyrics! Not to mention that he remembers how much Cruella wanted Pongo and Perdita's puppies and how aggressive and angry she got when she couldn't have them. As such, he proclaims her to be his "number one suspect" after they're kidnapped, even after Anita argues against his accusations. Turns out Roger was right about this, even though he doesn't find out in the end. However, in the sequel, Roger finds out after Cruella is exposed and arrested for her second attempt to kidnap the puppies.
• The Sultan from Aladdin claims he's one of these. He's right about Aladdin, but on the other hand, he also thinks Jafar is a reliable right-hand man up until the last part of the movie...^note However, it is shown throughout the movie that Jafar constantly uses hypnosis on the Sultan, so he has an excuse for this one.
• In Recess: School's Out, Principal Prickly explains to T.J. why the main villain and his former best friend, Dr. Phillium Benedict, turned out the way he did: Back in 1968, when the two of them and Miss Finster were young teachers at Third Street School, Benedict, who had also just became the school's principal (the youngest ever, according to Prickly), initiated a no-recess policy at the school in a misguided attempt to raise test scores and thus further his own career. This led to the students becoming overworked and with no free time, prompting their enraged parents to lay down a protest against the school unless recess is reinstated. Prickly, whom Benedict told about his plan, brought the Superintendent over to the school in hopes of reasoning with Benedict and overturning the policy to pacify the protesters. However, despite the no-recess edict being overturned and the Superintendent assuring the protesters that recess will never be abolished at the school so long as he's superintendent of the district, Benedict still refused to back down from his anti-recess beliefs and instead argues with the Superintendent, claiming he didn't "get it". The Superintendent, who rightfully sensed that Benedict has gone Drunk with Power due to his position, angrily fires him and promotes Prickly as the new principal, something which Prickly didn't expect to happen. This was also this event that drove an enraged Benedict, who believed Prickly told the Superintendent about the no-recess edict in order to get the job for himself, to break his friendship with Prickly and his relationship with Finster.
• King Kashekim Nedakh from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Given his past history of harnessing the power of the Heart of Atlantis as a weapon of war in his arrogance (which caused Atlantis to sink at the cost of his own eyesight and the lives of thousands of civilians, including his wife), he is determined to have the crystal hidden away, not only to let history repeat itself but also to spare his daughter Kida from the same fate. This event is what allowed him to correctly deduce that Rourke and his men have equipped themselves with weapons and a hidden agenda in their expedition; he even gives them only one night to rest and resupply as a warning that they must leave the city afterwards. The King is also able to detect a sense of goodness within a few members of the expedition as he accepted Sweet's aid when the latter attempts to tend to his injuries inflicted by Rourke; he even willingly entrusts Milo with the knowledge about the crystal's power and the responsibility to take care of Kida and the city before he dies.

Films — Live-Action

• Joked about in The Eagle Has Landed. When Devlin discovers a way for the Germans to escape the church they're trapped in, Steiner says, "Mr. Devlin, you're an extraordinary man." Devlin responds with, "Col. Steiner, you're an extraordinary judge of character."
• Kong: Skull Island: Whilst most of the soldiers who survive the initial onslaught want to have faith that the colonel leading them is prioritizing getting them off the island alive, Mills pegs very early on that the colonel is a General Ripper who cares more about killing the titular ape than he does about any of their lives at this point.
• Men in Black: During his MIB interview, Jay deduces that all the monstrous aliens in the simulated firing range are non-hostile, while the seemingly innocent girl is likely an Evil Genius and shoots at her instead. Seems that he was right, as he passed their Secret Test of Character.
• The Naked Gun: Detective Frank Drebin is a lot of bad things for his chosen line of work, up to and including being a Lethal Klutz, but ironically he is very good at feeling whether or not someone is innocent. In the first film, he had a sinking suspicion that Vincent Ludwig was hiding something long before finding out that he had a plan to assassinate the Queen of England, and in the second film he was able to notice that Meinheimer was acting differently compared to their first meeting which was correct because Meinheimer had been replaced by a Criminal Doppelgänger by an anti-alternate-energy consortium.
• John Mason in The Rock claims that he can tell that neither Goodspeed nor Hummel are willing to kill innocents. He's right on both counts.
• Spider-Man: No Way Home: Norman quickly trusts Peter Parker's MCU counterpart, although it may be due to his relationship with the latter in his universe. Also, Norman deduces that something is wrong with his friend and fellow scientist Otto Octavius, after hearing his grumpy and miserable behavior. Fortunately, while working with the MCU Peter, Norman realizes that he is right to trust his intuition, as he found out about Otto's situation that caused his downer behavior.

Literature

• The Dresden Files has Agent Tilly, introduced in Changes, is very good at telling when people are lying to him, so good that Harry suspects he has some latent magical talent helping him along. As a result, he's a very good judge of character. In fact, he develops a quick dislike for Rudolph (who is generally an asshole and turns out to be a pawn of the Red Court) and pegs Harry as trustworthy almost immediately.
• The French Lieutenant's Woman: Sarah is said to be very intelligent, and her intelligence is connected to judging people correctly and knowing their worth. The narrator even compares her ability to tell if someone is good or bad to some kind of computer. For example, she immediately recognizes that Mrs. Tranter is a kind woman whom she can trust and she's similarly drawn towards Charles.
• Harry Potter: Albus Dumbledore is largely very canny about people and has the ability to discern the quality of their character with very little information, which is particularly notable with respect to characters like Snape, who tend to confound other people's impressions of them. This may be a result of learning from his greatest mistake: when he was a boy, his friendship with and love of Gellert Grindelwald blinded him to Grindelwald's evil nature, only acknowledging the truth and stepping in to stop him once Grindelwald had become the world's most dangerous dark wizard.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Tullio Rossi realizes the first time he meets the New Transfer Student Yuri Leik in volume 6 that there's something off about him. Leik is in fact an Artificial Human created by a professor to be a Manchurian Agent to spy on the student body after Professor Enrico Forghieri turns up dead.
  Rossi: 'is eyes, they are unsettling. Like a child peering into an ant'ill. ... I 'ave a feeling I could punch 'im in the mouth and 'is smile would not waver. And I find that honestly unnerving.
• The Legendary Inge:
  • Inge, despite her lack of subtlety, can peg the characters of most people with little difficulty. She immediately recognizes that despite his fearsome reputation, Raske is a noble person and worthy of her trust. Conversely, she dislikes Bergstrom from the outset and can tell there's something off about him.
  • Torvald, Inge's father, was also a great judge of character, and King Harvald (who was one of his closest friends) remarks that Inge inherited this trait from him. Like Inge, Torvald was also able to tell what kind of person Bergstrom was.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Arya Stark, at all of 9 years old. From the get-go, she dislikes Queen Cersei and Prince Joffrey, even while her sister Sansa is fawning over them. As a prisoner at Harrenhal, she develops a skill for recognizing the cruel guards from the safer ones and doesn't reveal herself to Roose Bolton despite him being a Northern lord and (allegedly) sworn to her brother. The only character she does trust with her true identity, Gendry, comes through as a rare decent person and loyal friend. The fact she's less blinded by status than most nobles helps and she contrasts painfully with her parents and older brother and sister, whose Horrible Judge of Character is their Fatal Flaw.
• The Stranger Times is headed by Vincent Banecroft, who survived the cutthroat world of Fleet Street tabloids by having an excellent ability to read people. He quickly surmises Hannah’s past and personality, knows how to spot latent journalistic instincts in Stella (and Simon), and immediately shows booby-trap builders and prospective moles the door.

Live-Action Television

• Cobra Kai:
  • Part of what incentivizes Daniel LaRusso to reopen Miyagi-Do and go on the offense against Cobra Kai in Season 2 is seeing John Kreese return to the picture. While Johnny thinks Daniel is going too far (since he has blinders for Kreese and no knowledge of Daniel's experiences with Kreese and Terry Silver in The Karate Kid Part III), he has to learn the hard way that Daniel wasn't wrong about Kreese being a horrible person and the man was playing him like a fiddle.
  • Samantha LaRusso doesn't start the show as one. At the start of Season 1, she's so fixated on maintaining her popularity with the rich kids' clique at school that she doesn't realize just how awful they are until she finds out Kyler is a jerk and rapist, and Yasmine turns her cyberbullying on Samantha. After that, she's much warier of everyone around her. In Season 2, she's right on the money when she tells Aisha and Miguel that their new Cobra Kai classmate Tory Nichols is not a good person and they shouldn't be hanging out with her. Aisha and Miguel initially blow off her concerns, thinking Samantha is just jealous, but Miguel realizes it after he briefly cheats on Tory by kissing a drunken Samantha at a party, and in response, she decides to pick a fight with Samantha at school the next day. And while Samantha is separated from Miguel for Season 2 and the first part of Season 3, she realizes he's still deep down the good person she dated in Season 1, giving her the resolve to stand up to her dad when he catches her and Miguel making out in the Miyagi dojo.
• Daredevil (2015): Wilson Fisk has a strong reputation for this. This is how he knows just which sorts of people are easiest to manipulate for his own gain, and when to eliminate them after they become liabilities. The few times he lets his guard down, though, tend to end up costing him.
• Good Luck Charlie: Charlie hit and bit Teddy's boyfriend, Spencer, because she felt something was going on with him. Charlie was proven right when Teddy caught her boyfriend cheating on her and broke up with him.
• K.C. Undercover:
  • Spy-anoia Will Destroy Ya: K.C. suspects that Ernie's girlfriend Jolie is a spy but her family and Marisa don't believe her (mainly because K.C. is going through a "spy paranoia" phase). However, K.C. ends up being right about Jolie after she accidentally provokes her into speaking Russian and confirms this by tricking Jolie into going through K.C.'s locker, realizing that she lied about who she was. Although she told Marisa about being right about Jolie, K.C. decided not to tell her family, especially Ernie, about it.
  • Double Crossed Part 3: Marisa suspects something is off with "K.C.", after the real K.C. was imprisoned and replaced with a fake because she agreed to go to a party with Marisa. She tells Ernie and Kira about it but they don't believe her. However, Marisa realized that she was right to trust her judgment when the fake K.C. was surprised that Marisa knew about her spy life, forcing the fake to kidnap her. In the process, she led Marissa to her real best friend and helped K.C. escape. Also, Ernie and Kira eventually realized that Marisa was right about K.C. acting strange when Judy showed them and Craig video footage of the fake eating meat when the real K.C. is a vegetarian.
  • Do You Want to Know a Secret: Kira suspects her niece Abby is bad news and wasn't convinced at first that she is the daughter of her sister Erica. However in Rebel with a Cuz, Kira did a DNA test and realized that Abby is her niece but was still suspicious of her and was proven right in Accidents Will Happen, when Abby reveals that she works for the opposing spy organization alongside Erica.
• Lab Rats:
  • Leo realized that Marcus was evil the minute he met him and tried to convince everyone about it but no one believed him. However, the Lab Rats and Davenport finally realized that Leo was right about Marcus when he showed the latter his true colors by helping kidnap Davenport.
  • Perry became suspicious of Sebastian but no one believed her until it was too late when he revealed himself and his plan.
• Rocky in Shake it Up quickly realized that Deuce's girlfriend at the time, Savannah, was a Gold Digger since she abruptly got back together with him because of money. CeCe and Ty instantly believed Rocky and they worked together to expose Savannah to Deuce, along with setting him up with a new friend they made, Dina.
• In stark contrast to Tony, Junior Soprano has this ability in The Sopranos. He correctly deduces that Richie Aprile had no respect from within the DiMeo family to start a coup against Tony, can see through Janice for the Gold Digger that she is and places a large amount of trust in Bobby Baccalieri, who turns out to be one of the most loyal and reliable mobsters within the series.
• Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as part of his overall skill at deduction and analysis.
• Ted Lasso: Ted Lasso is generally someone who looks for the good in everyone (and in doing so often brings out the good in people). The one exception to this is Rupert Mannion, his boss Rebecca's ex-husband and the only prominent character devoid of redeeming qualities. While most people are swayed by Rupert's charm, Ted sees him for who he is almost immediately.

Video Games

• Elden Ring: Kenneth Haight is something of a stuffed shirt, but he knows how to read people. Once he realizes the state Limgrave is in, he abandons all idea of taking its throne himself and puts his weight behind Nepheli Loux, one of the most just and fair people in the kingdom. Complete her quest properly and Limgrave will prosper under her hand, proving Kenneth's judgment sound.
• This is a trait of the Septim family in The Elder Scrolls series. In particular, Martin in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion knows immediately that he can trust the Player Character. For that matter, so did the Emperor, however he had the benefit of a prophetic dream whereas Martin did not.
• God of War Ragnarök: This seems to be the Norns' true power, rather than control and knowledge of Fate and how to avert it. Mainly because (as they readily admit) there is no Fate; there is just people and their choices, and they know those well enough that they can predict what people will do down to their very downfalls. Especially when those people will do anything to avert their supposed destiny except change themselves, which is all too common among godly beings it seems. Going by their Brutal Honesty and the sheer personalized psychological savagery of each "test" on the way to their lake, they also know how to hit a person where it hurts.
• In Goodbye Volcano High, Fang is trying to get their band, Worm Drama, into the upcoming Battle of the Bands. To that end, they've been changing the band's music style based on advice given by LJ, who organizes the event and has been critical of Worm Drama's past music. Fang trusts LJ implicitly, even if their bandmates are doubtful about her intentions. Sure enough, LJ proves herself to be a reliable, caring mentor figure. More than just helping Fang find their direction in music, she counsels Fang during the story's Darkest Hour, and later donates her music equipment for Worm Drama's final concert.
• In Mass Effect, Urdnot Wrex informs Shepard that he was once offered a job by the game’s Big Bad Saren. Wrex then mentions that the instant he saw him, he suspected that there was something off about him, so Wrex decided to leave before he accepted the payment. Wrex then tells Shepard that he was right about Saren, as all of the other Mercenaries who took the job were killed a week later.
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous:
  • Daeran Arendae's Party Banter and other interactions make it clear that he's got all other party members and most NPCs he encounters very much figured out from the start. The only one who can stump him is the Commander, which is a major factor in his attraction towards them. Notably, he isn't even slightly fooled by Camellia Gwerm, who puts on the airs of a prim and proper noblewoman but is actually a sadistic Serial Killer.
  • Regill Derenge knows how people work and it makes him a masterful judge of them and their motives. He demonstrates this a few times, such as entrusting tasks that require bending the rules to Yaker, whom he knows will do them, and immediately calling Galfrey out on her jealousy of the Commander in the Midnight Fane on a Good path. He's also willing to trust and stick by the Commander on almost every path as long as they're getting the job done. The one exception is Arueshalae, whom he distrusts on principle for being a demon, but even she admits that the other 99% of the time he'd be completely right — pretending to be sincerely repentant is exactly the kind of trick a succubus would pull.
• In the backstory of Pillars of Eternity, Iovara The Heretic was known to pick her allies very carefully, which allowed her to evade the at-the-time all-powerful Inquisition for as long as she did. The only time she was wrong about a person was with the previous incarnation of the Player Character, who ultimately betrayed her to the Inquisition, although how wrong she was is left up to the player to decide.
• Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption II seems to have a perfect judge of people. Particularly he's confident about John Marston being loyal to the gang, one of the few to notice Dutch's changing behavior, and knows from the beginning that Micah shouldn't be trusted.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Even without his Magatama, Phoenix has an excellent eye for clients who didn't actually commit murder, no matter how watertight the case against them seems at first — with special mention to Lana Skye, the client who was caught stabbing the victim and outright confessed due to the real killer blackmailing her with her little sister's safety. The one time he did feel uneasy about a client and checked the guy's statements with the Magatama, the guy turned out to be guilty. Though in this case, Phoenix had a very good reason to doubt him; Maya was being held hostage to get Phoenix to take the case, and why would someone go to the trouble of kidnapping instead of just hiring Phoenix unless they were worried that Phoenix's reputation for honesty and finding the real killer every time would be bad for Matt? He was a bit worse about it in his college days, trusting Dahlia Hawthorne to the point of destroying a critical piece of evidence that could've proved her guilty of two murders because he just couldn't accept that she was Really Bad News, and reacting to her confessing to attempting to murder him by denying that the girl in court was really Dahlia. In a way, he was actually right. The girl he had been dating really didn't kill anyone and wasn't in court that day... because she was really Dahlia's identical twin sister Iris, who'd done a Twin Switch with Dahlia for dating Phoenix in an attempt to stop the real Dahlia from murdering him. Phoenix only met the real Dahlia when they first met and she gave him a necklace (actually a critical piece of evidence that she'd poisoned two people), and the day she testified against him in court (which was her getting tired with Iris's inability to retrieve the necklace and attempting to kill him for it).
  • Zak Gramarye was kind of an asshole, but he could peg anyone's character by playing a game of poker with them. This led to a major backstory event when he got framed for murder and ended up replacing his original attorney with Phoenix Wright after his card game with Kristoph Gavin led him to believe that the latter couldn't be trusted. Kristoph had, unbeknownst to Zak, planned to cheat his way to victory with a forged diary page, and once fired, got Phoenix disbarred out of jealousy and later killed Zak himself to keep the truth from coming out, proving Zak's point completely.
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Hiyoko firmly believes that many of Mikan's antics and her clumsiness are an act to gain attention. She's not exactly wrong; Mikan has been bullied so badly that she thinks the only attention she can get is bad attention.
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
  • Kaito Momota has an accurate and consistent read of the emotions and motivations of other people, but his total lack of logic often undermines this. In Chapter 1 when he's gathering up a group of students to fight Monokuma, he looks Maki up and down for about two seconds and instantly concludes, "Yeah, you look like you know how to fight." As far as anyone knows at this point, Maki is the Ultimate Child Caregiver, probably the last person you'd think would be any good in a fight. One chapter later, it's revealed that she'd been lying about her talent. She's actually the Ultimate Assassin. He also correctly concludes that Kirumi was being evasive about their motivations, as well as that Maki hadn't killed Ryoma. This works against him in the fourth trial, in which Gonta is the culprit. Kaito thinks that Gonta wouldn't murder anyone, and he is correct... but what he doesn't know is that Kokichi had manipulated Gonta into crossing the Despair Event Horizon while in the virtual reality, and Gonta had forgotten all about it afterwards due to a mistake he made plugging in. Gonta as he was in the trial wouldn't have killed Miu, but Gonta in the simulation was in a very different headspace, and did.

Web Comics

• In The Order of the Stick, Haley is the best at analyzing the motives of others. She determined that an early character is evil, while everyone else insisted that they should cooperate. That character became a major recurring villain.

Web Original

• Black Jack Justice: The episode "The More Things Change" features a client who wants to get married, but her great aunt, the family matriarch, is against it because she harbors suspicions against the fiancee. This leads the client to hire Jack and Trixie to prove her would-be husband is a good and virtuous man. Unfortunately, what they do instead is find out he's a crime banker, a man who gives criminals loans to finance their crimes. When the client refuses to believe any of this, Jack lays it out to her that her great aunt's good instincts for people seeing something wrong with the fiancee, even if she didn't know what, are saving her from herself.
• Hatchetfield: Alice would never admit it, but Bill's assessment of her choice of girlfriend is absolutely correct. He says that Deb is not worth Alice's time and that she could do better. He's fine with her being queer, but he wants her to date someone who will treat her well. Considering that Alice stayed in Hatchetfield rather than go to Clivesdale to spend an extra day with Deb, that gets her killed, she might have listened to her father. The Nightmare Time timeline has Alice worrying that Deb will hook up with someone else behind her back, and is heartbroken to see that her worries were true after checking Instagram.

Western Animation

• Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender is this. He's usually the only person on the team to tell if someone has bad intentions or not, and he's often brushed off as a result. An example would be with Jet.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • When Harley explains her motivations to Batman, he has a good laugh at her expense. Then he delineates exactly what kind of person the Joker is, how he really sees Harley, and without telling her, calculates correctly that her obsession for the Joker may be used to hand her a self-defeat.
  • The Joker towards Harley Quinn as well, just as Batman tells Harley:
    Batman: Joker had you pegged for hired help the minute you walked into Arkham.
• Sofia the First: In "The Floating Palace", Sven says that seahorses are very good at reading people, which is why he isn't trusting of strangers. True to this, it takes him one good look at Sofia to know that she's telling the truth about Oona being kidnapped by Cedric.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987):
  • In "The Old Switcheroo", after an accident caused Splinter and Shredder to switch bodies, the Turtles and Krang felt something was off with their respective friends because of their personalities because Shredder in Splinter's body made it easy for them to notice, which became clear during a training exercise and the way he was treating April, while Splinter in Shredder's body was being nice. However, Krang ends up shrugging off his suspicious when he brain scanned Splinter in Shredder's body but was unaware that he had been played because he controlled his brain waves in order to match his enemy's, while the Turtles realized that they were right to trust their instinct as their master came to them and explained everything.

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