Properly Paranoids in Anime & Manga.
- In the Basilisk manga, it's mentioned that Gennosuke actually was not the first option for Oboro. Her grandmother Ogen had thought at first of engaging Oboro to her second-in-command, Tenzen Yakushiji, but decided against it since she didn't fully trust him. Considering that Tenzen turned out to be a ninja version of the Evil Chancellor and the series' especially cruel and sadistic Big Bad, she was right. Obviously, that didn't stop him from trying to get Oboro as his puppet bride after Ogen's death, but still an example.
- In Battle Angel Alita this is why it's so hard to get rid of Desty Nova: whatever way you come up to kill him he's already prepared to survive it, to such a point that for a while in Last Order there's three of him (eventually reduced to just one after much effort).
- The protagonist in Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus is convinced that if he doesn't go to extraordinary lengths to keep his "Cheat Building" skill hidden, people will stop at nothing to enslave or execute him. He is proven right on the night of his very first day in the New World after trading a skill he custom-made for his first slave, Cecil Pharot, whom he planned to set free once he had finished questioning her about her knowledge of the new world he found himself in.
- A Certain Magical Index/A Certain Scientific Railgun:
- Misaki Shoukuhou is a paranoid mind-reader who assumes everyone is out to get her, and refuses to trust Mikoto due to her being immune to her telepathy. While sometimes this proves to be overkill (such as the entirety of the School Festival arc, where Misaki won't even ask Mikoto for help in rescuing Mikoto's own clone, who Mikoto already risked her life to rescue multiple times), she's proven right more often than not, such as anything involving Kihara. However, while she claims not to trust anyone she can't mind-read, there is one exception: She trusts Touma, the protagonist of the series, almost to a fault. New Testament volume 11 goes into their backstory together involving pre-amnesia Touma which culminates him suffering a serious injury protecting her and no longer being able to remember her.
- The Scavenger team is introduced by having the unspeakably terrible luck of running into Accelerator, one of the city's seven Level 5s and the most powerful one to boot. After, they reassured themselves that the chances of running into a Level 5 again was astronomical, but Leader still took the time to do some basic research on the others. When Mikoto stumbled into their operation, Leader was at least able to recognize her, and defused the situation before Mikoto ruined their mission.
- City Hunter: Ryo Saeba is this. First comes up during a job as the bodyguard of an actress, in which he tasted a cake that was to be eaten during the shooting to verify it wasn't poisoned, threw a rock on a path they were to walk on, and checked gun props by reflex: the cake wasn't poisoned, but that path was actually a minefield, and one of the gun props had live rounds inside (had someone pulled the trigger, it would have exploded). Other examples include the position of his home (a sniper can shoot at it only from one place. When a sniper did prepare himself to shoot at his home, he found Ryo's assistant there) and his Badass Longcoat (in which he hid, among a few things more fit for the Crazy-Prepared trope, a spare gun in case he was captured in spite of his incredible abilities. In one occasion he was captured).
- Most of the Exorcists in D.Gray-Man are like this. Since Akuma look completely normal until they fill you full of bullets that dissolve you into a cloud of toxic dust, it's kind of understandable that they're a little on edge.
- Death Note:
- L was spot on in his deductions and all of his seemingly paranoid schemes were completely justified. In Another Note, Mello explains that the reason L doesn't go out much or interact with many people face-to-face is that L's life is perpetually in danger due to his line of work.
- Light himself might qualify at times, but is more Crazy-Prepared.
- Dr. STONE: Being the Control Freak that he is, Ibara is immediately able to notice whenever something is amiss. For instance, he immediately notices that a barrel has moved itself two inches seemingly without anyone touching it, and suspects that someone is hiding inside (in this case, Ginro); Suika is able to distract him by causing a ruckus elsewhere. Later, when Suika and Ginro work together to get the mobile lab off the ship, Ibara suspects that it is no mere "beast" even though he has no concept of machines or moving vehicles, and orders his men to search every nook and cranny in Treasure Island in order to find possible intruders.
- Dragon Ball Z:
- Gohan may be a Half-Saiyan, but Chi-Chi was not okay with Gohan leaving to go to Namek for two months. While Chi-Chi may be unreasonable sometimes, she was rightfully paranoid with Gohan going to a potentially dangerous planet and leaving her alone for two months (she had not seen him for a whole year) to revive Piccolo, the same guy who blasted a hole through Goku and killed her husband in the Saiyan arc. And who followed that up by kidnapping Gohan to train him to fight against Vegeta and Nappa. She displays this trope throughout the series when Gohan goes up against the Androids and Cell, fearing for Gohan's health and well-being when he's fighting bad guys.
- Frieza fears the Saiyans not only for their natural power and the legend of the Super Saiyan, but also for their inability to be fully controlled like his other henchmen. So, he decides to destroy them along with their home planet. Turns out, Frieza was right to fear them. Not only were the Saiyans planning to overthrow him, but a Super Saiyan was more powerful than him. His actual mistake was that he only killed most of the Saiyans, rather than all of them.
- The first casualty of Frieza's planet-busting Supernova, Bardock, had ensured his younger son Kakarot (a.k.a. Goku) got off-world safely due to paranoia of his own. Goku and a time-traveler descended from another survivor (the prince, Vegeta IV, who was off-world on a mission at the time the planet was blown up) ended up killing him.
- In Durarara!!, Shizuo maintains that 99% of all the weird crap that goes down in Ikebukuro is completely and utterly Izaya's fault, whether it be gang wars or hordes of knife-wielding zombies. Made-up-on-the-spot statistics aside, he's more or less right.
- Every member of Section 9 (except maybe Togusa) in Ghost in the Shell. Their job is to fight terrorism, organized crime, and corrupt politicians in a failed state. As the Major is also a chessmaster, she's always prepared for everything. When things go wrong for them, it's because they weren't paranoid enough.
- Played for laughs in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. Sousuke, being a soldier brought to modern civilization to protect Kaname, will inevitably take something the completely wrong way and earn Kaname's ire and paper fan, like the time he obliterated a row of lockers because his locker was tampered with a love letter inside. One episode where he was proven correct was where he unwittingly protected the rolls he, Kaname and some of the others were selling from the gym teacher, who was trying to sabotage it.
- Gundam:
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Main character Amuro Ray is ridiculously paranoid about everything. For example, Bright is going to take the Gundam away, that new crewmember is a Zeon spy, the Neo Zeon fleet is a bunch of decoy balloons, etc. Thanks to the psychic-level empathic abilities that he possesses as a Newtype, he has never been wrong.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny Kira's faction got a lot of grief both in show and out for being antagonistic towards ZAFT because they believed it's leader was out to get them and was plotting something despite him coming off as a benevolent ruler. They ended up being right on the money, when towards the end of the show he announces a radical new plan that would let him decide the course of everyone's lives in both space and Earth. Thanks to the way he waged the war none of the Earth nations are in any shape to refuse because he got them to rely on ZAFT aid, and the two nations that can refuse are in range of his recently captured space laser.
- Kira had good reason to be suspicious of ZAFT: Someone had sent a Hit squad after Lacus, and the evidence pointed to someone high up in ZAFT Command (Military trained, ZAFT equipment, attackers all Coordinators, had resources and power to order said attack).
- Seiya from The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious. Right out of the gate, his paranoia causes him to refuse to even step foot in Gaeabrande without a rigorous week-long training session to level grind in safety. He viciously atomizes his first enemy - a mere slime - with a high-level technique because he's unsure if it's hiding its true stats, and then he continues to pound the crater where the slime used to be with more high-level techniques just to make sure it can't come back From a Single Cell. All of these turn out to be proper strategies when A) it's revealed that a high-level general of the Demon Lord has been keeping watch on the particular starting region they appear in so she can take out any heroes before they become a threat, B) said general hides her true stats multiple times and so does Seiya, grinding his Fake Out stat to hide his true level and stats from even the goddess that summoned him and C) this isn't the first time Seiya's been isekai'd, and failing to ensure that a powerful opponent he just killed actually is dead cost him dearly in the past to the point of making him so overly cautious even after losing his memories of that time.
- Subverted in Higurashi: When They Cry. If it seems like people are trying to kill you, it's usually hallucinations. Regardless, becoming like this will only make things worse.
- In the first arc of Gou, Keiichi's suspicions that Rena is trying to kill him turn out to be completely correct.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- After the first time skip of Part 1, Jonathan and Dio seem to have put their animosity behind them. However, Jonathan still remembers Dio's abuse of him when he first arrived years ago and is wary. An internal monologue from Dio confirms that Jonathan is right to be suspicious, as Dio still despises Jonathan.
- When the heroes of part 3 arrive in Egypt, they stop at a cafe, but Joseph warns them that they're in the heart of enemy territory so they need to be careful about what they eat or drink in case of poison. To that end, he instructs the waiter to give them bottled cola, insists on taking the caps off themselves, and even picks three specific bottles that he wants. Unknown to Joseph, the waiter is an enemy Stand user who was, in fact, plotting to poison them with the drinks they ordered.
- Dio, in his fight at the climax of Part 3, displays remarkable caution in fighting the Joestars despite his enormous advantage in Stand powers and physical abilities. Having watched their adventures so far, he's well-aware of the family's penchant for trickery and deception to lure their opponents into traps. Several times, he passes up on seemingly golden opportunities to drain Joseph's blood, which turns out to be wise because Joseph had suffused his own body with hamon energy, which is fatal to vampires like Dio. Later, he's incredibly cautious approaching a prone Jotaro, thinking (correctly) that Jotaro's merely Faking the Dead to get Dio into punching range.
- An incredibly odd example when Kakyoin discovers that the baby the party had recently been tasked with escorting is actually a Stand user trying to kill them in their dreams. Everyone else loses their usual paranoia about enemy Stand users and holds onto the Idiot Ball as they think Kakyoin is just losing his mind, but he's absolutely correct. Though in fairness to the rest of the team, to prospect that an infant could be one of Dio's minions was pretty outlandish even by Jojo-verse standards.
- In Part 4, Hayato Kawajiri has his entire house under surveillance via hidden cameras and is constantly spying on his father, believing that he's been replaced somehow. He's completely right: His real father has been killed and replaced by local serial killer Yoshikage Kira.
- Lupin III: Part II: After Lupin was arrested for impaired driving and crashing into the Christ the Redeemer statue along with Jigen and Goemon, Zenigata can't shake the feeling that something is off, knowing that Lupin was not the type to let himself be caught on such a minor felony. The chief of the Rio police department accuses him of worrying over nothing, but Zenigata remains unconvinced and goes to the cell to confirm his suspicions... which were right on the money, as Lupin and co. fooled the guards by using a pre-recorded film of them sleeping in their beds, while they were out and about.
- Maria no Danzai: After Kowase goes missing for three weeks, Okaya suspects that he might have been killed and warns his friends that "there might be a lunatic coming after them due to some unjustified resentment". He is exactly right (except for the "unjustified" part): Maria, the nurse at the school he goes to, killed Kowase three weeks ago and she's planning for the rest of Okaya's gang to join him as punishment for killing her son two years ago.
- In Mission: Yozakura Family, everything and everyone begins to look suspicious to Taiyo after he becomes a spy and Mutsumi's bodyguard. Given that Mutsumi is constantly being hounded by assassins, it's a valid concern. Also deconstructed, as even if his concerns are justified, it still makes him look like a weirdo and a creep in public, on top of making his date with Mutsumi awkward.
- In Naruto, Tobirama Senju is prejudiced against the Uchiha clan. While there are a few he holds in high regard (one of his apprentices was an Uchiha), Tobirama still has a belief that they're inherently evil unless they proven themselves to him. His mistrust in Madara was still completely valid. And decades after Tobirama's death, the Uchiha clan really did plot a coup against Konoha. The Uchiha clan's signature Sharingan powers are also detrimental to their sanity, with the loss of sanity tending to be greater with the strongest of the Uchiha. Tobirama was fully aware of this, and knew that very few Uchiha were actually capable of overcoming the condition known as "the Curse of Hatred" even if they wanted to.
- However, this trope is also a Deconstructed Trope as it shows some of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy elements of this behavior: Tobirama's attitude toward the Uchihas began souring relations with them in the first place. In fact, during a rebuilding of the village, the Uchiha Clan compound was placed off far from everyone else to keep an eye on them. Ultimately, the coup plan was the result of the Uchiha feeling isolated from the clan and being suspected for Kurama's attack (which, while technically done by an Uchiha (Obito), was not part of them at all as he was believed to be dead) was presumably the straw that broke the camel's back and led to the breakdown of communications that would lead to the plan of a coup. So while his suspicions were correct, him acting on those suspicions was what helped set the events in the first place.
- Danzo Shimura, the mastermind behind the Uchiha purge, destroyed his remaining implanted Sharingan (Shisui's eye) after taking a mortal wound, as he realized one of the reasons Sasuke came after him, other than revenge for the death of his clan was due to the Sharingan he had taken. That Sharingan's unique dojutsu, Kotoamatsukami, made it too dangerous to fall into enemy hands. Tobi cursed Danzo's name when he did this, as he wanted Shisui's eye for his plans.
- One Piece:
- During the Water Seven arc, Rob Lucci, a government assassin, and his team manage to secure both of the people they're looking for- Nico Robin and Franky- have apparently killed or incapacitated all their enemies, and are ready to leave Water 7 on the Puffing Tom sea train. It seems as though no one will be able to stop them now, but Lucci refuses to let his guard down for a moment. Sure enough, the Straw Hats are already preparing to rescue Robin, with Sanji stowing away aboard the Puffin Tom and the others following on the Rocket Man.
- During the Wano Country arc, one of the villains, the traitorous shogun Kurozumi Orochi, believes to an absolute fault the twenty-year prophecy that the nine samurai retainers of the deceased Kozuki Oden will return to lead a rebellion to overthrow him. Orochi's minions all secretly think he's crazy since they've already killed or imprisoned thousands of Oden's followers over the years, but the audience knows that Orochi is right to be afraid. One of the rebellion's allies even uses Orochi's seemingly unnecessary paranoia against him in a gambit that causes the shogun's guards to lose faith in him, lying to say that the supposed evidence of the rebellion was actually Orochi connecting dots that weren't actually there (that particular ankle tattoo design? Just a new fashion trend is all). It still doesn't stop the shogun from going ahead to try and sabotage the rebellion nonetheless, because he still has the power to command his guards to do what he says, even if they don't believe him.
- The world of Pokémon: The Series may be okay with letting kids run around unsupervised, but in Pokémon Adventures, Sir Berlitz hired a pair of bodyguards to accompany his daughter on her journey to Mt. Coronet. Good thing too, as she becomes the target of kidnapping and winds up in the battle against Team Galactic. Too bad due to a mishap she got a pair of aspiring comedians instead.
- Homura of Puella Magi Madoka Magica can come off as this. She's distrustful of her fellow magical girls and refuses to share any in-depth information she has with them while constantly trying to keep one of them, Madoka, from forming a contract. This paranoia proves justified, as Homura is a time traveler constantly going back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and when she did share her secrets with others they either didn't believe her or it backfired horribly.
- In Spy X Family, Donovan Desmond is the leader of the National Unity Party, a very conservative political faction of Ostania, and has quite a lot of influence because of his position. But he is also a recluse that rarely ever makes public appearances because he's certain there are people out there that will try to assassinate or otherwise gain control over him. Given that spy operatives like WISE are targeting him, though only in the hopes of getting to know his plans and not taking his life, he's quite correct in limiting his public appearance and keeping a very small circle of close acquaintances.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, Ryou Bakura finds it difficult to relax with his friends knowing Aigami can make people vanish, and could be watching them as they speak. Aigami is watching them as they speak.
