World’s Greatest Detective

(This isn’t really a spoiler:) The Dark Knight has a useless, throw-away scene where Batman extracts a brick from a wall with a bullet-hole in it, takes it back to his Bat Lab and does a bunch of ridiculous CSI bullshit where he re-assembles the shattered bullet with computer imagery so he can glean a fingerprint from when the shooter pushed the round into the clip.

This is a stupid waste of time, of course, but then I thought about it and realized that it *is* one of the few things in any of the Batman movies that establishes Batman as “[The World’s Greatest Detective](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/imageviewer.asp?ean=9781596871151).” ‘Cuz mostly he just punches people.

It got me wondering, though, if Batman had any serious competitors for World’s Greatest Detective nowadays. So I went on Google and came up with a list:

* Sherlock Holmes (of course, although he might be disqualified by being dead).
* Batman
* L from [Death Note](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=6592)

Those three win pretty handily in the Google estimation. There are some other contenders for the title:

* Inspector Clouseau (surely this is debatable).
* Hercule Poirot
* [Daryl Zero](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Effect)
* [Detective Conan](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=454)
* [Elvis Cole](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Cole)
* Dick Tracy
* [Sherlock Hemlock](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7l5AGcaGQg) :D
* [Shamrock Bones](http://users.cwnet.com/xephyr/rich/dzone/hoozoo/shamrock.html)
* [Herlock Sholmes](http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/images/1587154641/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=52033011&s=english-books) (although Ellen says Arsene Lupin was a pretty good detective himself…)
* Nero Wolf
* [Supersleuth®](http://www.supersleuth.tv/site-usa/USA-home.html)
* [Big Max](http://www.amazon.ca/Big-Max-Kin-Platt/dp/0064440060)
* [Jay J Armes](http://www.amazon.com/Jay-J-Armes-Investigator-Successful/dp/0025032003)

…and I could go on…