Martin Riggs

Martin Riggs is a homicide Detective for the LAPD and the main protagonist of the Lethal Weapon film series along with his partner Seargent Roger Murtaugh.

Riggs is portrayed by Mel Gibson in all four films of the series.

Early Life
Riggs joined the U.S. Army  at age 19, eventually becoming a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, receiving specialized training in weaponry and hand-to-hand combat. These skills would later serve him well when he became a police officer. Most of Riggs' time in special forces was in Vietnam, where he served as an assassin under the CIA 's " Phoenix Project " directive; while his ability as a trained killer would later plague his conscience , he thought of it as "...the only thing I was ever really good at."

Later in Riggs' life he became a Police Officer and married a woman named Victoria Lynn and it is implied by Riggs himself that she was one of the only things, the other being his occupation as a Cop, that kept his life together. However In 1984, after 11 years of marriage Victoria Lynn, is killed in a seemingly tragic car accident, sending him into a deep depression. Driven to the brink with grief  and anger, he regularly puts himself (and anyone else near him) in harm's way, secretly hoping someone will put him out of his misery, something he has been unable to do himself. This total disregard for his safety gives him an edge over his enemies, turning him into a "lethal weapon".