62 Facts About Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey leads a small anti-gang unit primarily tasked with curbing the rampant drug trade in the fictional Farmington district of Los Angeles.

Vic Mackey commits several crimes throughout the series including drug dealing, extortion, police brutality, and murder.

Vic Mackey is often depicted justifying his crimes as a means to an end.

Vic Mackey was this bulldog with this intensity and energy that matched.

Vic Mackey saw and read the character differently and better than anyone who came in before or after him.

Vic Mackey was best known at the time for portraying the balding, friendly and slightly overweight Tony Scali in The Commish, and similar roles prior.

Vic Mackey underwent an intense workout regime and shaved his head, completely transforming his appearance.

Vic Mackey's casting as Mackey was seen as unusual at the time given his previous roles.

Vic Mackey came in with this shaved head and his biceps, and he just chewed through the scene.

Vic Mackey's surname is of Irish or Scottish origin, and he is occasionally seen in a shamrock T-shirt.

Vic Mackey leads the 'Strike Team,' an experimental anti-gang unit.

At the start of the series, Vic Mackey is happily married to his wife, Corrine, and they have three children, Matthew, Megan and Cassidy.

Vic Mackey is secretly warned of this by his friend, Assistant Chief Ben Gilroy.

Shane expresses remorse and guilt in the aftermath of the murder, but Vic Mackey remains stoic, though he would later express his own feelings of regret about it.

Lem offers to transfer off the Strike Team, but with news that the team will be disbanded if that happens, Vic Mackey makes attempts to reconcile with Lem.

Season four begins with Vic Mackey working solely with Gardocki, both now relegated largely to desk work since the team's disbandment.

Shane pleads to Vic Mackey for help and Vic Mackey comes to the aid of his former best friend, joined by Ronnie, and eventually by Lemansky too.

Around the same time, Vic Mackey learns he is being forced into early retirement after he reaches his 15 year milestone, a short time away.

Vic Mackey learns of Shane's murder of Lemansky, and cannot forgive him for it.

Vic Mackey subsequently becomes a lot closer to Gardocki, now his sole friend.

The Strike Team, which Ronnie has been the de jure leader of since the news of Vic Mackey's impending retirement, is disbanded .

Vic Mackey was especially disturbed by news from Mara, Shane's wife, that Vic tried to kill her and Shane, despite Mara's pregnancy.

Vic Mackey has since been working with the police to put Vic in jail.

The police begin to suspect Vic Mackey is becoming wise to Corrine's cooperation with them, so to maintain her cover, Corrine is mock-arrested in front of Vic Mackey.

Vic Mackey now believes Corrine is in serious trouble with the law, and resolves to help her, unaware of her betrayal of him.

In exchange for helping ICE develop a Federal case against Beltran, a drug lord, Vic Mackey arranges for full immunity for himself and for Corrine.

Vic Mackey is unable to secure the same deal for Ronnie and decides to leave him out.

Vic Mackey admits to all the crimes he has committed including the slayings of Terry Crowley, Margos Dezerian, Guardo Lima, and many others, and receives full immunity from prosecution for all of them.

Vic Mackey then brings Vic into the interrogation room and reads Shane's suicide letter aloud, while showing him photographs of his body.

Vic Mackey restrains himself from reacting emotionally when he notices the surveillance camera that Wyms is watching him on.

Gardocki is informed that Vic Mackey took the deal with ICE and confessed to everything the Strike Team did as part of his immunity deal, leaving Ronnie to take the fall for all of it and be sent to prison.

Vic Mackey explains that he thought Corrine was in trouble and did not think he had a choice.

Vic Mackey is assigned to a desk job, forbidden to carry a weapon while on duty, and required to write a 10-page duty report every day and submit to weekly drug testing.

Vic Mackey makes it clear to Vic that even the smallest violation of these condition will result in his immunity being revoked and certain prison time.

Vic Mackey becomes visibly angry, retrieves his weapon, holsters it under his shirt, and walks off into the night.

Indeed, he finds himself embroiled in it when Shane accuses Vic Mackey of taking other people's side against him when they are supposed to be best friends.

Vic Mackey calls Mara a bitch who has got Shane so twisted that he cannot think straight anymore.

When Vic Mackey learns the truth about Shane's murder of Lem, Vic Mackey confronts Shane, and tells him that if he ever sees him again, he would kill him.

At the last second, Vic Mackey tries to call off the hit on Shane, but was unable to reach Shane on his cell phone.

Shane tries to force Vic Mackey to provide him with enough money to escape and information to keep the LAPD away until that can happen, but a series of mistakes by Shane leads to his decision to turn Vic Mackey in and accept his likely life sentence in prison, as long as he can get immunity for Mara on the way.

Vic Mackey later goes for and gets the deal for himself when he believes he has to betray Ronnie in order to save his wife from being arrested and sent to jail.

However, after witnessing the staged arrest of his ex-wife, Corinne, Vic Mackey takes the deal and confesses to everything.

Vic Mackey is noticeably crushed by seeing his last remaining friend arrested.

Lem's loyalty is tested when he found out Vic Mackey killed Terry, but he remains loyal to the team.

Lem, the only one Vic Mackey still had an untainted friendship with, remained the one Strike Team member in the Strike Team photo in Vic Mackey's cubicle at ICE.

Clark's legacy to Vic Mackey was the justification that they always "did more good than bad".

Vic Mackey participates in one raid, and realizes this type of occupation is both dangerous and unnecessarily cruel.

Vic Mackey has a close friendship with a prostitute, Connie Reisler, whom in an unseen story he found "lying in a bathroom in a pool of bloody crystals", trying to end her pregnancy with drain cleaner and a plunger.

Vic Mackey told her if she ever needed any help she could call him, and they developed a deep bond.

Vic Mackey is later angered by Danny's attempts to have Vic Mackey sign documents legally abandoning his claim to being Lee's father.

In season 6, Vic's daughter Cassidy angrily confronts Mackey after listening to her mother discussing the baby's paternity over the telephone.

Vic Mackey discovers Julien is involved in a homosexual relationship with a wanted fugitive.

Vic Mackey perceives Dutch as arrogant, making him the target of Vic Mackey's practical jokes early in the series.

When Vic Mackey learns that Dutch has been pointing the finger at him to Aceveda, Vic Mackey's respect for Dutch evaporates and the practical jokes resume.

Vic Mackey initially has a neutral relationship with Detective Claudette Wyms, the two initially share no friendship or antagonism, and even successfully collaborate in series one.

Similar to Aceveda before her, she tries unsuccessfully to have Vic Mackey brought to justice.

Vic Mackey has been summarised as an "effective but corrupt cop who operates under his own set of rules" and is often regarded as one of the greatest antiheroes in television history.

Dariel Figueroa of Uproxx rejects the idea that Vic Mackey is easy to sympathize with.

Vic Mackey put away bad guys just as well as the best TV cops.

Vic Mackey did have a family that he cared for, but with Mackey you got a general sense that his family was just a buoy that at the back of his mind he needed to help him validate all the evil things he had done.

Vic Mackey was seen as a pattern of more violent anti-heroes on television.

Vic Mackey has killed just to better his own station in life, and that gives the show's attitudes towards him a problematic strain.