What is the name of the detective played by Mark Ruffalo in Zodiac?

Mark Ruffalo plays Inspector Dave Toschi in Zodiac. Toschi was a real San Francisco Police Department inspector who investigated the Zodiac Killer case, and Ruffalo portrays him as one of the film’s central investigators.

David Fincher’s 2007 film follows the long-running hunt for the unidentified killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jake Gyllenhaal plays cartoonist Robert Graysmith, whose books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked provided the film’s source material. Robert Downey Jr. plays San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, while Ruffalo’s Toschi represents the police investigation.

The film is deliberately structured around the case’s uncertainty. The Zodiac sent threatening letters and ciphers to newspapers, and although investigators pursued numerous suspects, the killer’s identity has never been conclusively established. Toschi became a prominent real-life figure in the investigation and was known for his detailed casework.

A frequent mix-up is Robert Graysmith, who is the character most determined to solve the case, not Ruffalo’s detective. Paul Avery is the journalist, while William Somerset is Morgan Freeman’s detective in Fincher’s earlier film Se7en.