Sheer luck or clumsiness usually saves him, as in the first film wherein a farcical car chase around a fountain results in the collision of all the vehicles and the capture of the thieves.
In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, assassins from all over the world are sent to kill Clouseau, whereupon he moves from their target at just the right moment to ensure that the killers eliminate one another.
Clouseau's superior, Charles Dreyfus, was introduced in A Shot in the Dark, wherein his door label identifies him as a Commissaire divisionnaire (Police colonel or Chief Superintendent) of the Brigade criminelle.
As in A Shot in the Dark, Dreyfus initially suffers a variety of personal injuries (involving his gun and a cigarette lighter of a similar shape and accidentally cutting off his thumb with a cigar cutter)---before accidentally strangling his therapist while fantasizing Clouseau's death, then trying to assassinate Clouseau with a sniper's rifle.
Then Dreyfus escapes the asylum and kidnaps a scientist, forcing him to build a disintegrator ray to intimidate the rest of the world into attempting to assassinate Clouseau.
Dreyfus appears to disintegrate at the end of Strikes Again, but subsequently (and without any explanation) re-appears in Revenge of the Pink Panther and is reinstated Chief Inspector when Clouseau is mistakenly declared dead.
Actor Herbert Lom gave his character a pronounced tic which occurred under particular stress, and an accompanying childlike giggle when plotting Clouseau's murder.
The Dreyfus character seems to get a quasi-reboot at the beginning of each new film as he mysteriously re-appears as Clouseau's superior, most often without explanation, after committing various heinous crimes.
In the 2006 reboot The Pink Panther, Dreyfus (again as Chief Inspector) uses Clouseau as a decoy while he himself attempts to solve the crimes.
Cato opens another brothel in Curse of the Pink Panther, and converts Clouseau's apartment into a museum featuring all the disguises the inspector has worn over the years.
François, Dreyfus' assistant, generally observes his boss' interactions with Clouseau (and subsequent emotional breakdowns) with placid bemusement.
In later films, an aging and frail Niven made cameo appearances in the role, with his voice dubbed by impressionist Rich Little.
Professor Balls has a wife, Martha (Liz Smith), and an assistant, Cunny (Danny Schiller), who make brief appearances.
The Little Man is a stock character best known for appearing in the original Pink Panther shorts created by David DePatie and Friz Freleng.
The Little Man was actually known by the animators at DePatie-Freleng as "Big Nose" and was originally created as a spoof and was done as a caricature of Friz Freleng as a joke.
)[1][2] The Little Man makes a cameo in the 1970 short "Bridgework", starring Roland and Rattfink, another pair of characters created by DePatie-Freleng.