Friendly Sniper

G'day!

"Snipin's a good job, mate. It's challenging work, out of doors; I guarantee you'll not go 'ungry, 'cuz at the end of the day, as long as there's two people left on the planet, someone's gonna want someone dead."

— The Sniper, Team Fortress 2

The Friendly Sniper is the polar opposite of the Cold Sniper. They're one of the friendliest people you'll meet: personable, cheerful, and likely to be The Face of his group.

Of course, their light attitude doesn't mean they aren't good at what they do. In battle, they're able to snipe and hit anything courtesy of their Improbable Aiming Skills.

Can often (but not always) overlap with Hitman with a Heart. The Friendly Sniper is closely related to the Boisterous Bruiser, except their strength is in their guns and their terrifyingly precise aim rather than their muscles.

In Real Life, there is a distinct difference between a sniper and a sharpshooter. Though they employ similar weapons and each specialize in long-range shooting, their modus operandi are different. A sharpshooter acts as a member of a platoon or company and fights alongside other men.^note The military typically refers to this role as "designated marksman", and the custom weapon they carry a "designated marksman rifle", or DMR, usually of the same caliber as the other soldiers, for practical purposes. A sniper usually is a solitary killer and employed usually as spotter-shooter pairs.^note Note that this is only regards to the actual sniping work itself; maintaining a sniping position still requires security, sometimes in excess of ten men or more for particularly contested areas, although the security detail will only be standing watch unless the position is attacked. Although in the early 21st century snipers tend to be more team-oriented due to sniper teams becoming the norm in many armed forces, the image of a sniper in media as the lone killer is yet to change. A sharpshooter, on the other hand, is very likely to be a Friendly Sniper.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Nadie in El Cazador de la Bruja is a rather nice and personable girl, who is very very skilled with her pistol and will not hesitate to kill you.

• Ryo Saeba from City Hunter is usually The Gunslinger, but may double as Friendly Sniper thanks to him being a very friendly Lovable Sex Maniac and the ability to shoot the barrel of a rifle, a belt, and the buttons of a shirt AT ONE KM (according to the target, a crooked police sniper, all of these shots were impossible).
• Suou in the second season of Darker than Black becomes a Cold Sniper when her powers initially kick in, but after that, goes back to her normal friendly personality.
• Awesomely, Watari from Death Note turns out to be one of these.
• Fairy Tail's own Bisca Connell. Despite her In-Universe Hyperspace Arsenal, her signature weapon is a Magitek sniper rifle.
• Jemmy Jay "JJ" Adams in FAKE is a Crazy Jealous Guy and the precinct's resident Keet. He's also the best shot in the precinct and, with Ryo, serves as the department's sniper whenever one is called for. Ryo is a pretty pleasant guy himself, but a bit too reserved and not outgoing enough to meet the trope description.
• Kurz Weber from Full Metal Panic! is a former fashion model, Lovable Sex Maniac, and generally a sociable and talkative guy who, when temporarily assigned to cover bodyguarding Kaname in Sousuke's place, introduced himself directly to her and her friend, playing Funny Foreigner and getting the girls to take him out for karaoke. True to the trope, he's also an expert sniper who once managed to take out a Humongous Mecha's machine gun by firing into its barrel... from the bed of a speeding pickup truck. The Light Novels eventually reveal that Kurz made a conscious choice to avoid becoming a Cold Sniper following his training with one of them.
  Kurz: This is Uruz 6, I'm in firing position. It's time to party!! *snipe, snipe, snipe*
• Marcel Jansen in Gunka No Baltzar.
• Gunslinger Girl. The perpetually-cheerful and friendly cyborg girl Rico, though that's partially due to her conditioning which means that killing people doesn't affect her in the slightest.
• Fusui Kure in Kengan Ashura almost never goes without a genuine smile and even on the job where she will stay behind a large sniper rifle for days keeping overwatch on a target she stays very amicable interacting with her family members.
• Ikalgo in Hunter × Hunter is armed with a sniper rifle that shoots fleas, which have anti-coagulants and are thus designed to bleed his opponents to death. He is one of the few characters able to land a first hit on Killua, who is normally very agile and hyper-alert. Unlike most of his fellow Chimera Ants, he is very friendly to his comrades, believes strongly in repaying kindness, and even later defects from the Chimera Ants to join the heroes—upon which he keeps finding opponents in close quarters leaving him unable to use his sniping skills.
• Vice of Lyrical Nanoha. Cheerful, personable, laid-back, and can snipe the head of a running target from a moving helicopter even though there's an ally obscuring his line of sight.
  • His partner, Storm Raider, is a Friendly Sniper Gun.
• Macross Frontier has Mikhail Blanc (and apparently his older sister Jessica was the same way).
  • Another Century's Episode R somewhat lampshades the concept: when Mikhail introduces himself as Skull Squadron's sniper, Kurz says "I guess that means we're going to be rivals, then" and Mikhail responds "I suppose it does", both of them with smiles on their faces the whole time.
• The eponymous lead of Madlax is a formidable sniper and very friendly.
• As a Captain Ersatz of Kurz, Mobile Suit Gundam 00's Lockon Stratos also qualifies - both of them, but especially the original.
• Usopp from One Piece is a wacky Gadgeteer Genius more inclined to cower in terror of a fight than to pick one. He's still fully capable of drilling a man between the eyes at extreme distances using only a slingshot.
  Usopp: I'm the sniper; support is glory! Unnoticed by others, I shoot down the enemy to protect my friends!
  • He's commonly one of the trio of most energetic characters on the ship. One of the quartet once Brook joins up.
• Gain Bijou from Overman King Gainer is a laid-back The Casanova who can shoot down any Overman the Siberian Railroad tries to stop the Exodus with. And he does so in an obsolete Silhouette Machine (at least, until he upgrades to the Emperanza), so he also counts as a Badass Normal.
• In Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Panty Anarchy may be far from friendly, but she's really talkative and snarky. There's no denying her skill as an occasional sniper, with her ability to Shoot the Bullet.
• The titular Kaname Madoka from Puella Magi Madoka Magica is one of the nicest characters of the entire series, always affable and emotional. She is also very skilled with bow and arrow; her niceness eventually even leads to her becoming the concept of hope, giving her own existence away in the process. All the while still being a sniper.
• Rebuild World: The Ojou Reina eventually becomes this. Akira was very impressed with her shooting skill while they fought as Back-to-Back Badasses, and she has two bodyguards who work best as a Close-Range Combatant. Reina shows off to Akira, who she’s eventually Fire-Forged Friends with, by getting a One Hit Poly Kill on three monsters.
• Sgt. Frog has Garuru, who is very amiable and friendly, especially towards his baby brother Giroro... in the manga, at least. The anime, however, flanderized him into more of a Cold Sniper and Aloof Big Brother. This partly has to do with timing: the manga introduces him while he's helping the platoon escape when a medical exam causes their mission to almost be canceled, while the anime waited until the Wham Arc of his platoon being sent to replace them.
• Space Battleship Yamato has Susumu Kodai: very friendly, and snipes with the original Wave-Motion Gun.

• Those Who Hunt Elves has Ritsuko. She's a very friendly and cheerful teenager who just happens to also be a Gun Nut who loves all things military.
• A number of snipers in World Trigger are friendly and deadly. Touma, who is the undisputed number one sniper, is free-spirited, very approachable, and helpful to his juniors. He loves a challenge and only shoots targets that are difficult to hit, such as all top snipers in Border whom he head shots during hide-and-seek training. There's also Azuma, the teacher of all snipers. He is always happy to mentor his juniors in sniping or in strategy, unless they are facing him in battle, in which he will snipe them through the walls or snipe their bullets down. And then there's Amatori, who's the nicest person in the entire series but functions as a sniper because her projectiles hit with so much force that she has to shoot from far away to not get caught in her own blasts.
  • The one exception seems to be Tooru Narasaka, who is always serious and rather grumpy. For example, he loses patience when his teammate and also Sniper Shouhei Kodera worries about everything Yuma does in their unit's battle with him.
• Zoids: New Century: Naomi Fluegel totes the line between this trope and the Cold Sniper, but she still leans more towards the "friendly" side. She's perfectly cordial and friendly towards the Blitz Team (far more than they usually are to each other), and towards her temporary teammates in her first appearance.

Comic Books

• Craig Nicholas from the Commando story "Crackshot Craig". He's an ex-SAS marksman who started his own bodyguard/security firm.

• Owens from Red Robin is a jovial sniper who befriends people easily. He's also a member of the League of Assassins so he's definitely an Affably Evil example.
• The unnamed IRA sniper in Sin City was Affably Evil, as were the rest of the Irish mercenaries in The Big Fat Kill.
• Amy Rose from Sonic the Comic: friendly but an excellent sharpshooter with her crossbow.
• Andrea in The Walking Dead. Friendly as they come, but if she has you in her sights you're done for.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Glamora Treat is one of the friendliest of the pretty much entirely friendly Holliday Girls, some think a bit too friendly around good-looking young men, and her weapon of choice with which she is very accurate is her rifle. She's not averse to unarmed fighting either.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Artemis (the goddess, not Artemis of Bana-Mighdall) can reliably hit a target from a dimension away and is generally fairly disarmingly friendly in a subdued way.

Fan Works

• Holo-Chronicles has a few Long-Range Fighters amongst them, but the one that fits the bill for this trope the best is one Botan Shishiro. She's sweet, reliable, chill, and generally an amazing person to be around... but she can easily kill someone from 8000 meters away (that's 8 kilometers, which translates to around 4,97096954 miles) if she gets her hands on a sniper rifle. Possessing Super-Senses of the highest caliber in the setting may have something to do with this.
• The Legacy of the Blood Ravens: Soras Kippler, from the Daredevils is quiet, but has some of the best one-liners and snarking from a team of snarking badasses.
• Mass Effect has a cast full of snipers and sharpshooters. Jocelyn Sheppard is a Friendly Sniper (with a Knight in Sour Armor sense of humour). Legion on the other hand is a Cold Sniper (although this is Justified; he's, effectively, an advanced robot).
• Pierre from the fanfilm Metal Gear Solid: Philanthropy is a quirky, good-natured guy who affectionately teases people and spends his time playing Animal Crossing while waiting for marks.
• Snark from The Life fits the archetype well. Hell, his call sign is Snark on account of the sheer amount of snarkiness that he can pull off. He usually goes into a slightly more professional mode when in combat.
• Hugh from The Night Unfurls is The Pollyanna, as well as the sharpshooter of the five Hunters (he also uses melee weapons, but he specialises in ranged combat).
  The mute looked up at them and gave an easy smile, absolutely terrifying as he was surrounded by orc corpses that were riddled with arrows. Not one had managed to get within fifty paces of him.
• Aerilynn from Project Ignition, she's a bubbly, cheerful, klutzy girl. In her NEXT Hrist, she'll shoot you with her Phact Railcannon from outside your possible visual range... yes, you, Magnus Lux, and your >100KM eyesight.
• The Pony POV Series has Private (later Lance-Corporal) Captive Audience, one of Shining Armor's squadmates, whose special ops training makes him one of the best snipers in the business, but also one of the nicest ponies you'll ever meet.

Film — Live-Action

• Michael McCandles in Big Jake. He won't kill humans or animals, except for food (in the case of the latter) or in self-defense (in the case of the former). He is also polite and respectful to his father, despite the fact that said father walked out on him during his youth.
• Captain America: The First Avenger upgrades Bucky Barnes to the Howling Commandos' team sharpshooter. He would be the friendliest person on the team if not for Cap.
  • Speaking of the MCU, Hawkeye. One of the most friendly and personable members of The Avengers (aside from Captain America, of course) and a badass archer who's the best shot in the MCU, despite having no superpowers.
• "Crocodile" Dundee: Mick Dundee could give those Colombian drug lords a run for their money, and he's the friendliest bloke there is.
• In Dawn of the Dead (2004), the survivors befriend a gun shop owner who fits this trope stuck on a roof across the street, despite their only method of communication being messages written on dry erase boards. Check out the DVD, which includes his video log.
  • The original Dawn of the Dead (1978) features a complicated example with a group of rural types shooting zombies as if it’s a turkey-shoot. Friendly to each other and working to protect their community but in a way, many find disconcerting due to being a little cavalier about what their doing.
• Daylight's End: Bishop is one of the more friendly and level-headed survivors, and gives the party heading to the Alpha's nest detailed and concerned instructions about the conditions under which he'll be able to provide covering fire during their retreat. Ultimately, though, he's only ever seen using grenades and short-range firearms (both of which he's effective with) against the zombies.
• Jude Law's portrayal of heroic Soviet sniper and Propaganda Hero Vasily Zaitsev in Enemy at the Gates.
• Billy the Kid from The Expendables 2. Interestingly he's introduced as the Cold Sniper first: he's cool as a cucumber when he's behind a scope, spookily calm and lethally accurate, but a Nice Guy off-duty. He gets killed by the Big Bad Jean Vilain.
• Scarlet from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is one of the friendliest of the main cast and their best rifle shot.
  • Mouse from G.I. Joe: Retaliation serves as the team's sharpshooter for the opening mission.
• Anthony Swofford, the protagonist (and autobiographical author) of Jarhead is one who, despite his best efforts, never sees combat.
• Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon was one in the Vietnam War, although he’s better known as a pistol marksman in the main series.
• An extremely friendly sniper ends up saving the day in the comedy My Fellow Americans.
• Dane in Navy Seals (1990). He's an all-around nice guy, but his callsign is God for a reason.
• The Negotiator: SWAT sniper Palermo is a genial man who chews a toothpick on the job to calm his nerves. He seems reluctant to believe the worst of the Wrongfully Accused Danny Roman, refusing to take a shot at him, and being one of the only prominent honest cops on the team.
• Quigley Down Under: Matthew Quigley is a gentleman in the best Old West tradition who is affable to everyone he meets and is the first to stick up for the less fortunate. He’s also a professional sniper and is perfectly willing to lie in wait all day to take out two of the villain’s mooks with a single bullet.
• Schoolboy from Rambo IV. He's the most honest of the mercenaries, the most idealistic, and the most kind-hearted - proving it by being the only one who comes back for Rambo and Sarah. Later on, faced with a bad situation he can't change, he's visibly upset at the slaughter of good guys about to go on. And then, when Rambo shows up and unlocks the situation, Schoolboy makes an "oh well" face, casually looks through the sight, and starts blasting bad guys apart.
• Barry Pepper's Southern-Fried Private Daniel Jackson from Saving Private Ryan. Jackson is like this to his squadmates, but to the Germans he casually picks off while quoting the Bible, he's a lot colder.
• Stake Land: Peggy is a humble, sociable, optimistic teenaged girl whose home is surrounded by the corpses of vampires she killed from a distance with her crossbow.
• Frank Sinatra played a non-heroic Friendly Sniper in Suddenly.
• The Thing (1982): The Norwegian helicopter passenger spends most of his screen time shooting at the Thing with a scoped rifle (albeit unsuccessfully) and he shows some concern for his pilot and the American scientists the Thing is approaching in his Bilingual Bonus dialogue.
• Through Black Spruce: Will is a nice man overall, though when pushed sufficiently he shoots Marius in the head to protect his family against his gang, sniping him in his car when he drives past from a building with his rifle.
• Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell: Valerie is a kind-hearted Perpetual Smiler and likes to hug people. She has a lot of knowledge about the best way of zeroing rifle scopes, helps kill Graboids endangering her friends, and boasts that she can drop an elk at 800 yards. Valerie's friendliness is also emphasized by her banter with Vargas, who serves as her spotter, between shots.
• War (2007): Goi is an FBI marksman who loyally assists Crawford in his pursuit of Rogue and cracks jokes about the size of his sniper rifle.
• At first, Mick Taylor (not to be confused with the former Rolling Stone) of Wolf Creek seems to be this. Until he gives you a ride back to his place to "fix your car". Then things get very chilly.
• Wolves: John is a caring, laidback old man who is a deadly shot with a scoped rifle.
• Wonder Woman (2017): Charlie is a talented marksman and a boisterous Scotsman, although it's shown he's not always good at putting aside his emotions when the time comes to use his marksmanship. He's dealing with his own demons and freezes up at one point.

Jokes

• Two strangers met on a golf course and the topic came around to occupations. The first man said he was in real estate, pointing out the condominiums he sold and lived in in the distance. The second man said he was a professional assassin. When the first was skeptical, the second took a tube and some other items and assembled a high-powered rifle right there on the spot. The first man asked to see the rifle and was indeed impressed with the high-powered scope. "I can see into my apartment from here... there's my wife... and she's in there with another man!" Furious, he asked the assassin how much he charged for his services. "$1000 a bullet", he said. The first guy said "I'll buy two. Use the first to shoot my wife, and the second to shoot the guy's balls off!" The assassin took a look through the scope and said "If you hang on a minute, I can save you $1000."

Literature

• Ha Leeha, the main character of Arcane Sniper is a honest and earnest guy with a wide array of emotions that sometimes cross into Manchild territory. He also has the largest attack range in Middle Earth with distustingly high weapon attack damage, turning himself into Paranoia Fuel for his fellow players. He eventually reaches a point where even the air pressure left by his bullets deal heavy damage. But at the end of the day, he'd rather not get into fights and focus on his own hing.
• 1632: Julie Sims is a cheerful, friendly, outgoing high-school cheerleader. She is also the single most talented sniper in Europe, with an operational range few 'downtimers' are actually able to grasp.
• Robin is The Girl from the Miracles District's only Nice Guy, but also a deadly sniper.
• Sally "Eagle" Culpepper, from The Gone-Away World, switches from this, to Team Mom to Cold Sniper.
• Lee Scoresby in His Dark Materials is probably one of the most friendly and laidback characters, but can bring down whole teams of men with a rifle when the situation calls for it.
• InCryptid: Enid Healy is one of the nicest people you'll meet, provided you're not an enemy. She's also one of the deadliest, renowned for her sniping skills and one half of a fearsome Battle Couple with her husband Alexander.
• Anthony Swofford, the protagonist (and autobiographical author) of Jarhead.
• Dox from Barry Eisler's Hit Man With A Heart John Rain book series. Dox is actually short for "Unorthodox," which the character earns by not fitting the Cold Sniper stereotype.
• The various western series by William Johnstone and his niece J.A. Johnstone are more likely to feature a Cold Sniper but a few friendly ones show up. Bernard Leaf from Ambush Valley is a notable example, being the sharpshooter for his band of Punch-Clock Hero bounty hunters. Scenes where he’s not on the job show him learning to play the guitar in a cantina, and posing in a photography studio, while on the job he’s a crack shot who unhesitatingly volunteers to perform a Heroic Sacrifice when the bounty hunters (and their quarry) come under attack by Apaches (his boss talks him out of it though) and is notably ‘’not’’ among the members of the group who try to steal the outlaws cached money rather than returning it for a smaller reward.
• The Louis L'Amour Shared Universe:
  • The Kentuckian Hatfield brothers from The Mountain Valley War, good neighbors and friends who do most of the books long-distance shooting.
  • Tom Burnside in Trouble Shooter is a retired lawman who was hired to provide security for the local stagecoach by his son-in-law (the express agent) as a way of giving him an easier job in retirement, but still one that he finds purpose doing. Burnside is armed with a rifle to use against potential robbers and is described as having paced all of the areas on the cliffs and take practice shots to test his range from every area he could shoot from (and he does indeed end up killing two stage robbers later on). Off duty, he's a pleasant family man with an open mind who proves to be friendly towards the heroes.
• Deputy Nathan is the department sharpshooter in the third Lincoln Rhyme book. Nathan is honest and earnest and protests orders to take a shot prematurely during a hostage situation.
• Link Baxter in The Mako Saga. You will never meet a guy more your friend in a bar, except perhaps his best friend Hamish Lunley. You will also never meet a guy more proficient at making Your Head Asplode.
• The Northwest Front books feature "Cat-Eyes" Lockhart. Off-duty, he's unassuming, friendly, and approachable. On duty, he's one of the NVA's main assets all by himself.
• Emile from Only Walk So Far was trained as an army sharpshooter, and is the most consistently cheerful and kind-hearted among the main characters.
• Serge Storms: Orange Crush, Sergeant Rock Tex Jackson is A Father to His Men and is willing to fight numerically superior enemies to keep civilians from being massacred. The sniper part isn't overly emphasized, but in one scene he climbs a tree with his rifle and the narration notes that he's relying on his experience as a deer hunter. His platoon mates hear three shots and are still trying to figure out if Tex shot their pursuers or got shot by them when he appears behind them and says to start moving.
• The Paradox Trilogy has Rashid, a sniper hired to serve as a member of the Glorious Fool's security team. He has an extremely friendly demeanor when not on the job, but is ruthlessly effective when he fights.
• The Passage: Bernard Kitteridge AKA Last Stand in Denver, is a Warrior Poet who starts out holed up in a penthouse with a sniper rifle, making an Apocalyptic Log of his actions on Youtube in the hopes it might help others trying to survive and after being driven out ends up as a protector for various survivors he encounters.
• Rick Brant: Rick's good-natured sidekick Scotty is a World War II veteran who is very attached to his rifle and uses it to injure or intimidate villains in several books.
• Some more fun-loving versions of Robin Hood, alternatively Little John or Will Scarlet.
• In the Stephen Hunter novels which inspired Shooter this is played straight and averted with Bob Lee. He's old-fashioned and polite to those he has to deal with, but he's also reclusive and withdrawn from the world at large, and once he gets on scope he's a Cold Sniper.
  • Chuck McKenzie is this to a T, off and on the scope.
  • Ex-spetsnaz sniper Strelnikov, who cooperates with a couple of Bob Lee's investigations, is also fairly jovial.
  • Milli Petrova from Sniper's Honor acts reserved and unquestioning, but this is actually a survival tactic to avoid punishment from her Soviet superiors (as well as grief over her dead family) and nonverbally shows hesitation about the purpose of her mission early on (before learning what kind of a monster she's being sent after), gave several burning German tankers Mercy Kill's after being specifically ordered not to waste the bullets, and is protective of the partisans helping her.
  • Ron Fields from I, Sniper is a very amiable man dedicated to helping out Nick and Bob Lee who's a shrewd investigator and has served as a sniper for several hostage situations without once having to shoot anyone.
  • Subverted with Anto Grogan and his fellow sniper trainers from I, Sniper (all of them ex-SAS). They are incredibly cheerful people but are also hired killers who take some pleasure in their work.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Satin, the former whore and steward to Lord Commander Jon Snow of the Night's Watch, evolves into this (with a crossbow) during the attack on the King's Tower.
• X-Wing Series: Wes Janson is very friendly. He's very good at playing pranks, acting like a little kid, and hitting anything he aims at. He tends to prefer sidearms to rifles, though. Despite his childlike personality in general, when he is in combat he reverts to a Cold Sniper.

Live-Action TV

• Cameron Hicks of Alphas is basically the world's greatest sniper, being both a military-trained marksman and an Alpha with Improbable Aiming Skills. When not on mission, he's a fairly friendly guy (though he does occasionally drift into Jerk with a Heart of Gold territory).
• Doubling as a Real Life example, Shifty Powers in Band of Brothers is the best shot in the company. He's also one of the nicest. Lampshaded in the interview segments, where the actual Shifty Powers says it pained him to think that the people he killed might have been much the same as him.
• Booth in Bones is fairly personable (much more than the titular character, who has No Social Skills), and is a crack shot with a sniper rifle thanks to his Army Ranger days. At one point, he disarmed a fellow sniper (an ex-Ranger who has gone rogue) by shooting the other's rifle from another rooftop. Well, he’s friendly as long as you don’t try hurting Brennan or his kids. Or any of “his people” as he refers to the lab crew.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith after her Heel–Face Turn. By the time she gets her own series she's a positive sweetheart, and Sam, Riley's wife, turns up as a Friendly Sniper.
• Former Army Ranger Jay Halstead serves this capacity in Chicago P.D..
• Mick Rawson of Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. Very good shot, possibly former British Special Forces, and a fairly friendly and well-adjusted guy, albeit with a mild ego.
• The female sniper in Flashpoint is played by the actress who played Pink Ranger in the Power Rangers. 'Nuff said.
  • Ed Lane, the lead sniper, will kill when he has to, but in something of a departure from this trope, he does often lose sleep over it, to the point where a story arc had him experiencing PTSD as the number of people he's had to end in the line of duty comes back to haunt him, big time.
  • Although he can be very cold and calculating when taking the shot Sam is a genuinely nice guy and has stated he did not want to just be the point-and-shoot guy when he left the military.
• Game of Thrones: Anguy the Archer is one of the deadliest archers in Westeros and a genuinely friendly guy.
• "Fruity" Rudy Reyes from Generation Kill. Also a Real Life example, as he plays himself.
• Kono is the go-to girl when the Five-0 team needs to reach out and touch a bad guy with a bullet at long range.
• Gunnery Sergeant Ray Crockett, in the JAG episode "High Ground, is both a Friendly Sniper and a Cold Sniper at the same time.
• The Kill Point: Quincy, a police sniper stationed on the roof opposite the bank, is often shown making wisecracks about the situation and playfully bantering with his spotter.
• Of the The Musketeers, Aramis is the best shot of the group and a very cheerful sociable person.
• Kensi in NCIS: Los Angeles is as cold-blooded as they come when on a mission, but she is able to almost instantly switch off and be smiling and joking with Deeks and her teammates before her target is even cold.
• NUMB3RS: Agent Ian Edgerton oscillates between a mild version of this and Cold Sniper depending on the episode. It might be done purposely since we know he likes messing with people's minds. Especially Charlie and the team's.
• Hagman in Sharpe. He seems to enjoy the company of his unit and breaks into song at every opportunity. And he can take a man down at eight hundred yards with a flintlock rifle. To a lesser extent, this is true of the entire rifle unit, who are all a pretty fun bunch of guys.
• John Watson in BBC's Sherlock is a friendly, affable doctor. But he's also a Combat Medic who once shot a guy through two windows, in another building. Basically, piss him off by messing with his friend-you'll wind up lying in a pool of your own blood, and he won't regret putting you there.
• The Stargate SG-1 episode "Orpheus" saw Jack O'Neill, SG-1's resident Mildly Military Deadpan Snarker, using a sniper rifle to great effect against a Goa'uld POW Camp's guards. Let us not forget that our Friendly Neighborhood Colonel spent most of The '80s doing black ops.
• Jack Hudson in Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye.
• Tetsuya Sakai in Super Robot Red Baron.
• S.W.A.T. (2017): Chris is a friendly and caring woman (albeit she often puts up a tough exterior) who serves as the sniper of the unit.
• While not strictly a sniper, Hawkeye of Terrahawks fame serves as the gunner and general sharpshooter of the Terrahawks, and is very personable and easy-going.
• Pretty much every shooter in The Unit.

Tabletop Games

• En in Legend's Osaka Street Stories module, who ends a note to the Player Characters with the following:
  You have proven yourself more than worthy, and for that I thank you. Further, I would meet with you and pay you my respects, if you would do me the honor of accepting. Enclosed is the location where you will find my abode. No harm will befall you: the contract has ended with my death, and I bear you no ill will. These word ring true. If they do not, may I be banished from this mortal world and thrown beyond the veil, never to return.
  —En
  P.S. Please? I’ll bake cookies!

Video Games

• Gabriel Monsigny from The 3rd Birthday, to the point she became Aya's big sister figure.
• Apex Legends:
  • Pathfinder and Horizon can become this, should the player choose to arm them with sniper-classed guns. Both are delightfully optimistic, even when picking off opponents from afar.
  • Vantage, whose specialty is sniping, is a constant one. She keeps up the banter even while sniping foes from afar with her Ultimate, the Sniper's Mark.
• Mordecai from Borderlands is hardly unfriendly. Unless you're a target, that is.
• Argilla in Digital Devil Saga, after her somewhat traumatic Character Development.
• Dragon Age:
  • Any Player Character who plays as a rogue, uses bow as their Weapon Specialization, and being generally nice and compassionate individual throughout their respective game's run will qualify them as this.
  • Leliana in Dragon Age: Origins, since it's much easier to develop her as an archer than a backstabber (and one of her best weapons is her former mentor's bow).
  • Dragon Age II has Varric Tethras, whose friendliness more often than not sends him into Team Mom territory, as many in-game dialogues imply that he becomes responsible for the other teammates' well-being, even at his own expense. Sebastian Vael also falls into this, for generally being unrelentingly nice unless you refuse to kill Anders in Act III, then he becomes decidedly less nice. And when the third game comes around, he makes true to his word to raze Kirkwall.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition has Sera - while occasionally abrasive, she's a serial prankster and her main motivation is helping the downtrodden and protect them against nobles who would abuse them.
• Kardel Sharpeye, the Dwarven Sniper from Defense of the Ancients is pretty chipper in his soundbites.
  • Sniper is a pretty jolly fellow in Dot A 2. Doesn't mean he's any less enthusiastic about killing, though.
• Both Dusty games have a sniper character who backs up the titular rabbit:
  • Dusty Revenge has the basset hound sniper, McCoy, who turns out to be a friend of Dusty's father Dante. He's introduced in a cutscene saving Dusty from a mongoose aiming at the latter, and helps Dusty by sniping enemies throughout gameplay. He's also a jovial wisecracker when not kicking ass or shooting at stuff.
  • Dusty Raging Fist have a Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Snow the snow leopard, who's a mercenary lugging a sniper rifle. He's similarly friendly when not using his gun, and even asks Leo if he'd sign an autograph on his rifle.
• In Fallout: New Vegas most members of 1st Recon tend towards this, being generally approachable people at the least. Boone, Betsy, and Bitter-Root however are an exception, though you can't exactly blame them.
  • You could play that way. High enough Charisma, speech and guns/Energy Weapon skill, and grabbing effective long-ranged weapons make you a friendly sniper
  • Lovingly called the diplosniper, one of the game's standard builds.
• Grace Armstrong from Far Cry 5, part of the new Guns for Hire system. An Afghanistan veteran who assists the Deputy in battling the Project at Eden's Gate. Doubles as a Cold Sniper towards Eden's Gate themselves.
• Irvine Kinneas in Final Fantasy VIII initially talks a pretty good game about "the loneliness of the sharpshooter"... when he's not hitting on all of the girls one right after the other. Once he's integrated himself properly into the party, he proves to be The Heart of the team.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Wil from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade who can promote to a sniper, is a very social and cheery young man. Sain thinks he is a miser though because he will not lend him any gold. Likewise, Rebecca, another possible sniper, is a friendly and bright youth.
  • Claude of Fire Emblem: Three Houses one of the most affable and casual students in the monastery and by far the friendliest of the three Lords, is a designated bow wielder.
  • Ashe of the same game is one of the nicest characters in the monastery and similarly wields a bow. Unlike Claude, he actually uses the Sniper class when encountered as an enemy.
• Chitose Karasuma from Galaxy Angel: Moonlit Lovers, a friendly sniper... in space!
• Rho from Ground Control 2 is this. He's the protagonist's best friend and a pretty sociable guy with a habit of collecting battlefield souvenirs and playing cards. Doesn't change the fact that he's a pretty good sniper at the same time.
• Guardian Tales: Hekate is a freelance sniper who's affable when off the clock. On a job, however, she'd gun you down before you knew what hit you.
• Halo:
  • Although he's got a bit of an attitude, your squad's sniper in Halo 3: ODST, Kojo Agu, is nicknamed Romeo for, evidently, being quite a ladies' man outside of battle.
  • In Halo: Reach, though all the Spartan-IIIs are at least a little unhinged so it's your call on whether or not he's "friendly", Jun is the most talkative member of Noble Team who isn't totally Ax-Crazy.
• Sheila "Scope" Sterling from Jagged Alliance 2. One of the highest marksmanship stats in the game, and she's easily one of the most upbeat and cheerful of all the mercenaries.
• Xigbar from Kingdom Hearts II would probably count. He's not friendly, per se, but he is much more relaxed and outgoing than most of his associates. And when you engage him in battle, he makes Xaldin look like a freaking pansy.
  "You clever little sneak!"
• Kazu of LBX: Little Battlers eXperience stands out in a series where most LBX (functioning Gunpla) players prefer melee models. He's nice and generally less of a trouble-seeker than his friends but given what LBX can do in this series, it's unwise to underestimate him.
• Mass Effect:
  • Though he's not the only companion with skills as a sniper, Garrus Vakarian is the one best-remembered for being a crack shot and also the most friendly and personable, especially in the first game.
  • Legion also deserves a mention for being - although not what you'd call outgoing or prone to displays of emotion - surprisingly nice to the point of being Moe.
  • Paragon Shepard definitely counts when playing as an Infiltrator or Soldier, or taking sniper rifles as a bonus talent.
• Iris from the Japanese flash game Material Sniper.
• MechWarrior 4: Vengeance has Ian Dresari's squadmate Casey Nolan, a cheerful, talkative, and rather snarky long-range combat specialist. He introduces himself to Dresari as "the team sniper" and advocates equipping everyone's 'Mechs with the most powerful long-ranged weapons possible (such as long-range missiles, Gauss rifles, and ER-PPCs) and taking out enemies before they can even close. He's pretty good with them, too, and the game even suggests taking his advice more often than not.
• Metal Gear Solid: Though she obsesses over her targets and will only think about them until she's taken them out, Sniper Wolf is by far the nicest member of FOXHOUND, making friends with Otacon before the Shadow Moses Revolt and adoring wolves and dogs.
• Cpt. McMillan from Modern Warfare comes across as a very friendly, even easy-going guy and proves himself as a very deadly sniper.
• Nintendo Wars: Grit from Advance Wars falls into this category, being the more friendly and laid-back foil to his superior Olaf. Of course, he never actually shoots anybody, being a CO and all, but his specialty (long-range weaponry) gives him the proper qualifications for this trope.
• Buxom Irish sniper Cynthia Rivele from Operation Darkness.
• Meet Ana Amari from Overwatch. A hardened sniper once working for the now fallen Overwatch. She's also a support character whose biotic rifle can heal allies, and she is the mother to the hardcore soldier Pharah.
• Kinessa the Bounty Hunter from Paladins. She's pretty cheerful, especially when remarking on how much she loves collecting bounties.
• Samurai Warriors has Saiga Magoichi. While he has a burning hatred towards his target, Oda Nobunaga, he cracks smart remarks, helps innocents and defeated allies escape battlefields, fights with the underdogs, and makes friends with fellow wandering warrior Keiji Maeda. That's when he's not chasing kimonos, of course.
• Takuma from Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is an expert firearms craftsman with deadly precision on the sniper rifle. He's also a jolly old man.
• Any of the snipers from the Freedom faction from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. Freedom has a much larger amount of snipers than their rival faction; Duty (who don't have any at all, preferring to wade into combat headfirst with an Exoskeleton and light machine gun), as they prefer to attack guerrilla-style, but when they aren't fighting for free access to the Zone they're the most easygoing and cheerful guys in the entire game series.
• Cathari from Suikoden V.
• Excellen Browning of Super Robot Wars. Cool Big Sis, Hard-Drinking Party Girl, and a rather goofy person all around. She can also shoot down a nuke without blowing it up and accurately snipe individual targets while moving at speeds where her mech is outrunning her laser shots!
• The Team Fortress 2 Sniper is an odd case; on your team, he's this. On the other team, he's the Cold Sniper, in much the same way that the Heavy is The Big Guy while on your team but The Brute while on the other team. This is exemplified by the fact that he once had the Cold Sniper's page quote.
  "Feelin's? Look, mate, you know who has a lot of feelin's? Blokes what bludgeon their wife to death wif a golf trophy. Professionals have standards: be polite, be efficient, have a plan to kill everyone you meet."
  • Though this also depends on how the player deals with him; get the "high five" taunt and he gets really friendly.
  • It also depends if he is scoped in or not. Almost all of his voice responses have two recorded versions, the loud boisterous version he uses when not scoped in, and the quieter menacing version he uses when he is.
  • Even towards his enemies, he's not always the Cold Sniper he likes to think of himself as; he can't quite help tossing out bitingly sarcastic zingers like "Thanks for standin' still, wanker!" and "I'm runnin' out of places to put holes in ya!"
  • His canonization in the comics and shorts meanwhile combine his Friendly and Cold Sniper tendencies by canonizing him as having Tranquil Fury towards his enemies, and is an aloof but mostly well-meaning Deadpan Snarker either on camera or with his allies.
• Alicia Winston from Time Crisis 3. She's quite a good shot, shooting Zott's gun out of his hands when he's about to execute her brother and is also enthusiastically friendly to the VSSE agents when they arrive and helps bail them out a few times, even hugging them at the end when they survived.

• Clive in Wild ARMs 3 is quite a friendly, good-natured guy. He even has a lovely wife and cute little daughter back at home.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has Sharla, the local Team Mom and Combat Medic, and her huge ether rifle. It really helps that she tends to use it more to cure wounds than to inflict them.

Webcomics

• Samuel from Angel Down is a friendly Manchild paladin whose favored weapon is a long-range anti-material sniper rifle.
• The End is portrayed this way in The Cobra Days - he's an amiable old guy, relatively sane by Quirky Miniboss Squad standards, and one of the few people not to make The Sorrow's existence miserable as a newcomer.
• Crosshairs from Gone with the Blastwave is a middle ground between this trope and Cold Sniper- as the Only Sane Man he reacts less-than-positively to the idiocy of his fellow Reds, but he does have a friendly conversation with another soldier he'd just helped take out a tank, and engages in some Comedic Sociopathy trick shooting like sniping an enemy's gas mask and a barrel of noxious gas.
• In The Green-Eyed Sniper, Shanti, the main character, is a sniper killer with high morals and a cheerful, positive and kind personality. Although she mostly does her killings solo, she occasionally partners with others. In the story, she reveals Sekhmet about her job and accepts Sekhmet's help in killing her target, Vega.
• Peggy, in Grrl Power, a Badass Normal in a team of formidable superheroes, is entirely useful as a member of the team, even when ordered to avoid fatalities.
• Jade Harley from Homestuck apparently hones her sharpshooting skills by using a high-power rifle to... play fetch with her Reality Warper dog. Good dog! Best friend!
• Sniper Wolf and Desert Vulture (especially the latter) in The Last Days of FOXHOUND.
• In Marilith, Kimiko becomes one after Marilith trains her to be an assassin.
• In Terra Grey O'Shea is a bit of a wisecracking joker with a slight penchant for eating his own foot. His Establishing Character Moment is putting a sniper round through the faceplate of an Azatoth soldier to save a fellow trooper, then calming his spotter down when he starts to get panicky.

Web Original

• Morgan from The Return is a very friendly sniper, of course she is a succubus so that helps.
• Red vs. Blue: Agent North Dakota, the incredibly skilled sniper of Project Freelancer, is a genuinely Nice Guy, a protective brother to his twin sister, and a proud papa to his childlike AI, Theta.
• RWBY has Ruby Rose, who wields a scythe that harbours a sniper rifle. She's a resolutely optimistic Genki Girl and has led two combat teams as of Volume 5.

Western Animation

• The season 9 episode of American Dad! "Permanent Record Wrecker" features Stan being fired from the CIA, then looking for a new job. During an interview, he tells a prospective employer that he once worked for the CIA, who doesn't believe him, calling up Stan's former employer, Avery Bullock, to confirm. The interviewer is still incredulous, believing that Stan put one of his friends up to the supposed prank, even having him end the call with the "now that I told you, I'm gonna have to kill you" line. Seconds later, the interviewer is shot through the head by a sniper from across the street, a pleasant-looking fellow who cheerfully waves to Stan, saying "Hi Stan! You gotta stop telling people, Stan!" Later in the episode, the sniper strikes again, after Stan mentions his CIA background to a new coworker. Still jovial, the sniper follows up with "You really gotta put a sock in it, Stan!"
• Deadpool is this in Hulk Vs.. His introductory scene involves him sniping Wolverine with tranquilizers, and then lightheartedly (though ironically) greeting him as Logan passes out.
  "Logan, buddy! It's me, Deadpool! I shot you!"
• In Inside Job "Grassy" Noel Atkinson, the sniper Who Shot JFK?, is a Cool Old Guy who's the most beloved employee at Cognito. To the point where Reagan and Brett face a rebellion when they decide to fire him.
• Finn from Storm Hawks is the team sniper, and also the team clown.
• Bluestreak and Moonracer from Transformers are both very friendly and youthful, innocent even; however both are very deadly snipers with perfect aim.
  Powerglide: I hope you're still the best sharpshooter in the galaxy, Moonracer.
  Moonracer: In the universe, Powerglide!

Real Life

• One of the best snipers from the United States, Vietnam War veteran Carlos "White Feather" Hathcock. He's credited with almost a hundred kills (as well as a Real Life Scope Snipe on an enemy sniper) before his tour was cut short when a vehicle he was riding was struck by an anti-tank mine. Despite wearing a white feather strapped to his bush hat and having a battalion of Vietnamese snipers sent with orders to find and kill him, they never succeeded—and that includes having a searching Vietnamese soldier nearly step on him without noticing either him or his white feather. He often referred to his targets as "hamburger". You'd expect a guy like this to be a Cold Sniper through and through, but this is what he had to say about himself after the war:
  "Hell, anybody would be crazy to like to go out and kill folks. I like shooting, and I love hunting. But I never did enjoy killing anybody. It's my job. If I don't get those bastards, then they're gonna kill a lot of these kids we got dressed up like Marines. That's just the way I see it."
• Eric R. England, another Vietnam sniper with 98 confirmed kills, was described by the above-mentioned Hathcock, as "a great man, a great shooter, and a great Marine."
• Simo Häyhä, the greatest sniper in history, was very friendly and humble off the battlefield. Like Hathcock in the entry above, sniping was simply a job that needed to be done.
  "I did what I was told to as well as I could."
• Roza Shanina, "the unseen terror of East Prussia", the first female Soviet sniper to be awarded the Order Of Glory, was described by war correspondent Pyotr Molchanov, as "a person of unusual will with a genuine, bright nature."
• Although neither one of them is true, for years urban legends have circulated claiming that John Denver and Mr. Rogers were U.S. Army snipers in the Vietnam War.
• First World War Australian sniper, Billy Sing, credited with over two hundred confirmed kills during the Gallipoli campaign alone, was said by his fellow soldiers to have a great sense of humor and a very distinctive laugh.
  • This was before telescopic sights were around, a further testament to his Improbable Aiming Skills.
• And of course, we've got Chris Kyle. With 160 confirmed kills under his belt, the Marines and Army men he saved in Iraq, and his widow, Taya, remember him fondly as a good ol' boy from Texas and a loving family man. Folks who met Chris at a book signing remember as he joked leaning in saying "I am so sorry. Here you waited all this time and got to the front only to find another dumb redneck standing here." As the line burst in laughter.
  • Averted by the fact that he was a notable bigot who wrote numerous disturbing passages in his journal.
• Several real-world snipers have admitted to attempting to cultivate this image. Because of the stress and stigma associated with snipers, a friendly demeanor and jovial attitude allow for an emotional release on the part of the sniper, while also endearing them to non-military personnel.
• Abu Tahsin was an Iraqi sniper credited with the killings of 384 Daesh militants at the time of his death in 2017. Although generally seen as a bit of a Blood Knight by outsiders, people closer to him described him more as a friendly Boisterous Bruiser.

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