Many long-running works are known for having a character that everyone in the cast knows is of questionable moral/ethical fiber. At best, they're a Jerkass who doesn't get along with anyone, or someone who you could get along with but wouldn't trust any further than you could throw them. At worst, they're an uncouth ruffian who would just as soon put a knife in your back as talk to you, and that's on a good day. They may have a well-known criminal background as a thief, smuggler, or information broker, or a more violent trade like a sellsword or enforcer. Anything they say should be taken with a handful of salt. They find great humor in poking fun at the law and the cast members who are dedicated to upholding the law, whether in jest or with actual mockery. They also are very savvy to their reputation and enjoy how it can twist up others to have to interact with them.
However, despite all of this, getting rid of them would be a detriment. Their background has given them skills and/or abilities that may not be held by any other character and which make them necessary to keep around, or has given them a wealth of connections, information, and avenues through the setting's underworld. Thus, they are frequently asked to aid with investigations, find people or goods, or lend their fists and/or weapons in a fight. They will, usually, play along and do what's asked of them, but they often relish in the idea of the good guys needing to rely on someone like them to do their dirty work.
The Lovable Rogue is the most idealized version of this type of character; at the opposite end, they may be a Token Evil Teammate or Psycho Sidekick. A Lovable Traitor or The Friend Nobody Likes can also find themself in this role if their skillset is right.
Often overlaps with The Team Benefactor, who brings access to resources as their skillset rather than being able to do anything themselves.
Compare Bunny-Ears Lawyer, when the indispensable character in question is simply eccentric instead of shifty.
Related to Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work and Better the Devil You Know.
The Informant is a Sub-Trope.
See also Boxed Crook and Can't Kill You, Still Need You, which apply more to similar characters in one-off works.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Bungo Stray Dogs: Dazai's unique power to nullify most other Abilities through touch and near-superhuman intelligence ensure his plans are always successful. During his mafia days before making a Heel–Face Turn, he was known for employing any number of horrific tactics to ensure victory, giving him a terrifying reputation and allowing him to become an executive by sixteen. Since joining the ADA, Dazai still has a poor grasp of morality, often does questionable things for his plans, and also drives people up the wall for his own entertainment, but is considered an invaluable resource.
- Dragon Ball:
- Piccolo started off as this, being the former Demon King who tried to take over the world. But he is quickly forced into an Enemy Mine with the heroes with the arrival of the Saiyans, who are much worse than him given their desires to wipe out all life on the planet. He later softens up and goes through a Heel–Face Turn due to spending time with Goku's son, Gohan.
- Vegeta is an even better example. He spends a great deal of the series as a Token Evil Teammate and a Nominal Hero, who the heroes treat with absolute contempt. But at the same time, they know they cannot afford to lose him since he's the only fighter who can match Goku's power level; at times when Goku is incapacitated or busy fighting off another supervillain, Vegeta remains the devil they need against the increasingly stronger threats. It isn't until the Majin Buu Saga where Vegeta has genuinely reformed and even then he had to go through a Heel–Face Revolving Door of momentarily returning back to his evil ways before finally going straight.
- In Dr. STONE, Gen Asagiri is a noted magician and mentalist, so his skills at sleight of hand, human psychology, manipulation, and lying put him in a unique position where he could comfortably thrive in either Senku's "Kingdom of Science" or Tsukasa's Empire. Things like "loyalty" or "ethics" are less important to him than his own comfort, so it's more a matter of which side offers the better deal for his services. While the latter revived him, Senku is able to sway Gen to his side, both to deny Tsukasa the information Gen was sent for and so Senku has another person who can actually understand his goals and (some) science talk. Even when he's acting for Senku's benefit it can be easy to doubt his intentions.
- Durarara!!: Izaya is an informant who cruelly manipulates people for his own amusement and is responsible for instigating numerous conflicts. However, he's also exceptionally useful, and the benefits of his information usually outweigh the cost of dealing with him, so he's kept around. However, it's deconstructed as his awful personality and deeds make it so next to no one cares about him, which is lampshaded by Namie when the rest of the cast has a hot pot party without him.
Comic Books
- Reggie Mantle of Archie Comics is a Spoiled Brat Jerkass prankster, snarking at others and glorifying himself. He is a talented musician, though, so the Archies keep him in the band. Once, when Archie needed to learn square dancing, Betty suggested consulting Reggie.
Archie: That hip character knows square dancing?
Betty: He's basically a rotten person, but when it comes to the social graces, he keeps up. - Crossed: Deconstructed with the Gamekeeper. While he is no doubt a skillful and adapted man, the Gamekeeper constantly torments the luxury couple for whom he used to work before the Crossed pandemic (even raping the female repeatedly) and treats every other member of his group of survivors as expendable, showing no sympathy to people dying around him. Even without the Crossed nearby, the Gamekeeper is still a horrible person, but the scariest thing is that he is necessary for the other members of his group to survive and he knows it, freely abusing his power and brutalizing them all the time. The survivors don't dare to stop him because none of them have his survivorship skills against the Crossed.
- The Kingpin fills this niche in the Marvel Universe. He's a ruthless villain who has all kinds of shady dealings to say the least and he fills that role of being the general Big Bad for street-level heroes like Daredevil and Spider-Man. However, the reason no hero dares to seriously end him for good is that as bad as Fisk is, his presence manages to have a stabilizing effect on the criminal underworld; if he was out of the picture, the underworld would fall into such a state of chaos that more innocents would suffer than if he were still around and keeping crime at manageable and stable levels.
Film — Live-Action
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Hector Barbossa starts as an outright villain, but over the course of the series he works with just about every main character and faction depending on whose aims best align with his own. As a competent naval leader, an infamous pirate, and one of the very few characters who can keep up with Jack Sparrow's scheming, he's got a wide range of contacts and skills and is very useful to have on your side...if you can keep him there.
Literature
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Varys the Spider was able to stay on as Master of Whisperers for three successive kings owing to this trope. No-one trusts Varys, and he sets off pretty much ever 'untrustworthy' flag to Westerosi culture (he's foreign, he's a eunuch, he's a professional spy in a very martial society, and he has a taste for 'soft' things like nice clothing and perfumes), but his ability to collect information makes him extremely useful even to people who trust him about as far as they could throw him.
- Harry Potter: Mundungus Fletcher is a thief and con man who, despite his slimy nature, is a member of the Order of the Phoenix because his connections to the wizarding underworld and the intel and items he provides for the Order are too valuable to lose. He also helps Fred and George Weasley with product research for their joke shop. Subverted, though, in that his actions cause Harry and his friends a lot of grief, and his cowardice gets Mad Eye Moody killed in The Deathly Hallows.
Live-Action TV
- Dad's Army: Private Walker is the kind of spiv who thrives in the midst of wartime rationing and shortages. He joins the Home Guard partly to stave off conscription into the regular army, partly to get opportunities to travel widely under cover of military service, and partly to exploit Army supplies. The platoon tolerates him because he acts as their quartermaster and uses his expertise to keep the unit well supplied.
- Farscape: Rygel is a greedy, selfish Jerkass who frequently betrays Moya's crew for his own gain and is almost always running various illegal schemes that get the crew into trouble. The crew keeps him around because, unlike everyone else, Rygel is an incredibly good negotiator who is able to mostly keep the crew out of trouble and organize jobs for them, making him too valuable to lose.
- Game of Thrones: Ser Bronn of the Blackwater is a mercenary who works as Tyrion's bodyguard, and then later takes on the same role for Jaime. He has something of a sense of honor, is surprisingly intellectual, and will commit to doing 100% of the dirty work for whoever he's working for. At the same time, he's a Combat Pragmatist who never fights fair, is only working for Tyrion because the pay's good and later abandons Tyrion for Cersei when she makes him a better offer, and is unapologetic about his mercenary nature.
Meryn: You're an upjumped cutthroat. Nothing more.
Bronn: That's exactly who I am. - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- Elim Garak is a former member of the Cardassian Obsidian Order, who in his time has picked up an enormous skillset which includes: spy, fighter, thief, saboteur, assassin, demolitions expert, torturer...and tailor, which is his occupation on DS9. He's well known for being a Consummate Liar and Deadpan Snarker, and no one trusts him any further than they could throw him, but he becomes an integral part of the crew's efforts to stop the Dominion.
- Quark, meanwhile, is an incredibly sketchy Ferengi businessman. He runs the station bar, and what would be a brothel if the holosuites had real people. On top of that, he has a hand in the majority of the wheeling, dealing, and shady business on the station. Sisko keeps him around despite this, and even blackmails him into not leaving. His business skills and contacts are valuable, as is knowing exactly who to shake down for information.
- Star Trek: Discovery: Emperor Georgiou, autocratic leader of an Empire which would make the Third Reich seem friendly, ends up in the prime universe where humans are equal partners in a multilateral peacekeeping organization rather than a race of genocidal conquerors. Maximum security prison would be the best place for her, but she swaps universes in the middle of a galactic war at a time that makes her cutthroat tactics invaluable. She then spends a stint in Section 31, the less shiny part of Starfleet. When the Discovery crew lands in a future where the Federation has fallen, her ability to intimidate faction leaders into backing down is very useful.
- Supernatural: Crowley is a demon, an Ex-Big Bad, the former King of Hell, and an on-again-off-again ally of Team Free Will. After going through the Heel–Face Revolving Door, Crowley eventually settles into becoming a more permanent member of Team Free Will, where despite his shady past, the heroes allow him to stick around due to how critical his aid is as the villains become increasingly more powerful.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Rogues often fill this role in a party. They're mechanically built to be the "skill monkey", with some unique skills like Thieves Cant, and have proficiency with thieves' tools, which means only they can bypass certain obstacles (while the Quirky Bard is usually a Jack of All Trades, they can't access these). They also have much more "expertise" and ability score increases in 5th Edition, effectively allowing them to take more feats, and letting them roll much higher on specific skill checks. There's an assumption that they're usually untrustworthy sorts, and the archetypal rogue is an "edgy" character with a tragic past, although naturally the player can decide how straight their character plays this.
Video Games
- Demon's Souls: Patches is one for the players themselves. Patches is a scoundrel who's made a career of tricking people to their deaths and kicking the player into pits, having the audacity to ask for forgiveness if you confront him again, only to trick you again later. However, he's also a merchant who will sell you his wares, which include higher-tier healing grass and arrows, some of which are only available for purchase through him. For that reason, most players keep him around to buy stuff from him or just because they've learned to enjoy his antics throughout his appearances (or at the very least, wait until near the end of the game to kill him).
- God of War: Throughout the series, the crazy mass-murdering Blood Knight Kratos is used as a One-Man Army by multiple pantheons, since their situations prevent them from fighting themselves:
- God of War: In the first game, Olympus enforced an Ape Shall Not Kill Ape rule between the gods, but when they discovered Ares planning on purging his entire family, he had to die. They decided to enlist Ares' former champion, a former general turned hitman, as to technically uphold their sacred law - this proved to be their greatest mistake, and they all learned to hate Kratos even before he turned on them.
- God of War II: In the second game, the Titans who survived the great war were kept imprisoned beneath the earth, and they had to plot and train their subtle magics for millennia to endorse Kratos for their mutual revenge. By the sequel, the Titans reveal that they never saw Kratos as a general and looked down upon him as a dumbass.
- God of War III: In the third game, Athena(?) has been weakened and changed by her death, so she empowers Kratos to kill both Gods and Titans. By the end of the game, her only demand is that he return the power of Hope to her before he commits suicide. Kratos responds by returning Hope - to mortals.
- God of War Ragnarök: Most of the Norse pantheon knows from the survivors of Kratos' slaughter about his pantheocide of Greece... but Odin is so monstrously genocidal and manipulative that they're willing to put up with the fear of Kratos losing himself to his rage, because the oppression from Asgard is that horrible.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: One of the Republic Trooper's companions is a dishonorably-discharged Republic officer named Tanno Vik. Compared to the Trooper's other companions, who are mostly idealistic and patriotic types, Vik is an egotistic opportunist who was thrown out of the military when they discovered he was running a Protection Racket. Still, his demolitions expertise makes him such a valuable addition to the Havoc Squad that everyone just kind of puts up with him and looks the other way as he continues to run legally questionable schemes between missions.
Webcomics
- Tiger, Tiger: Rakkatak is a slimy bastard absolutely loathed by Remy, who would fire him from the crew if he wasn't irreplaceable due to his expert knowledge of ships. Rakkatak knows this and uses his position as leverage to force Remy to give him ridiculously high pay and Ludo's hand in marriage. Ludo is disgusted when she finds out but is trapped in the same position as Remy and can't fire him without massive risk.
Western Animation
- Aladdin: The Series: Iago takes on this role when he joins the protagonists after Jafar's death. He still has his Jerkass personality and the others find him annoying, but they also rely on him for his knowledge of the arcane and sometimes make use of his crafty, cynical ways of getting things done in ways they won't.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Hondo Ohnaka is a pirate leader who is not affiliated with either side of the civil war which is the backdrop to the series. That said, he's one of the heroes' frequent allies because his connections, knowledge of the underworld, and lack of ethics for the sake of profit makes him a tremendously useful asset...unfortunately, he's also frequently pitted against the heroes for the same reasons. However, he always seems to get off pretty much scot-free and on relatively good terms with the heroes because there's never any malice and the heroes never know if his services will be needed again.
- The Legend of Tarzan: Renard Dumont is the only human villain who doesn't get kicked out of the jungle or killed. Despite his greed and disrespect towards nature, he often sides with Tarzan and his friends out of personal business pursuits and has the distinction of owning the Only Shop in Town for the jungle - which makes his business contacts, knowledge of the modern world, and resources indispensable for Tarzan's human friends.
