Leroy Jethro Gibbs - Personality

Personality

Gibbs is a no-nonsense agent who displays a continuous urgency about the investigation he pursues, specifically when being given technical information about complex subject matter. The typical response to such information is "Give it to me in English", thus forcing the expert to get to the point, as well as making it easy for the audience to understand. He also displays elements of sarcasm particularly in relation to someone in his company stating something obvious. The typical sarcastic answer "Ya think?" is his preferred retort. He displays a degree of impatience toward high-tech hardware, as in the Season 4 episode "Witch Hunt" when he stomps a Roomba to pieces in order to prevent it from vacuuming up evidence at a crime scene. Gibbs also does not tolerate being interrupted when interrogating a suspect as McGee quickly learned first hand in Season 1 Episode 18, "unSEALed". After McGee goes into the interrogation room to inform Gibbs about a new lead in the case they were investigating, Gibbs follows him out in the hallway and before McGee can tell him what he found out, though he does not yell at McGee, Gibbs quietly but sternly warns him to "Never...interrupt an interrogation, McGee. Never."

When he thinks it absolutely necessary, he will turn over command of the team to one of his agents, as seen in the Season 6 episode "Bounce". Here, the murder of a Navy officer has apparent connections to an embezzlement case handled by Tony DiNozzo years earlier, so Gibbs trades places with him. Gibbs' laconic explanation: "Your case, your lead." The two resume their normal roles by the end of the episode. On rare occasions, if the usual judicial process is incapable of bringing a suspect to justice, he will turn a blind eye and allow "street justice" to run its course. One example occurs in the Season 3 episode "Iced", when a street gang member suspected of killing three of his subordinates must be released for lack of evidence. Gibbs drops him off on a street corner where he runs into several angry gang members, who have learned of the circumstances through a visit to the NCIS morgue; the team later sees a TV news report that the suspect has been shot dead, but Gibbs suggests that they stop watching and get back to work.

He is a dedicated coffee drinker, a fact played out with his team setting up someone to innocently drink or spill his coffee, incurring Gibbs' ire. In the episode "Forced Entry", when McGee unknowingly drinks Gibbs' coffee, an on-base security officer explains that rule #23 is "Never mess with a Marine's coffee if you want to live." At episode's end, Gibbs endows McGee with a cup of coffee as a thank-you. In the episode "Hiatus (Part I)", Ziva claims that if Gibbs had been killed in the explosion on the ship, the color of his guts would "be more coffee brown than red". Gibbs has dropped or voluntarily given up his coffee, of his own volition, three times; all three incidents have involved forensic scientist Abby Sciuto.

His hobby is woodworking. Gibbs is shown to almost always have a wooden-hulled sailboat under construction in his basement, which he builds entirely by hand using no power tools. In the episode "Tribes", he tells FBI Agent Langer: "Finished it twice. This is number three." He later tells NCIS Director Jenny Shepard that he is working on his fourth boat, and that he named one of the previous boats after his (then current) wife when he finished it, then burned it after their divorce. When asked why he did not simply sell it, Gibbs replies that he "couldn't stand to see someone else sailing Diane." Dr. Mallard tells Colonel Mann that another of Gibbs' boats was named after his daughter, Kelly. It is not revealed what Gibbs did with the other completed boats, nor how he could remove their twenty-five-foot hulls intact from his basement. When asked by McGee, Gibbs cryptically replied, "Just break the bottle." In the episode "Honor Code", when Gibbs is talking with a lieutenant commander's son, he does mention a possible method which would involve taking down part of his wall and hauling it out through the now wide enough space, thus breaking the bottle. Gibbs has also been shown making wooden toys around Christmas time, fixing the roof on Mike Franks' beach house, and offering to build Franks a teak hot tub. In "Pyramid", it is revealed that Gibbs built Mike Franks' coffin.

One of Gibbs' "trademarks" is that he will often slap the members of his team on the back of the head when displeased with their performance or, if they get sidetracked on another topic, to get them focused back on the case. He does this more frequently to DiNozzo than the other members. In the episode "SWAK", when a pneumonic plague-infected DiNozzo seemed to be unresponsive, Gibbs slapped him on the forehead. When Gibbs "retired", and Tony gained his position as leader for a short while, Tony often slapped the team members in a similar fashion; in the episode "Hiatus (Part II)", Mike Franks is shown slapping Gibbs in the same manner in a flashback. As revealed by Ducky in the episode "Mind Games", about ten years earlier he was just like Tony. When asked why he slaps his team only on the back of the head Gibbs responded, "A slap to the face would be humiliating. Back of the head is a wake-up call." At one point he also threatens to slap Abby, though not on the head. In the episode "Family Secret", Gibbs even slaps his own head for breaking chain-of-evidence rules. In "Driven", the team, including Gibbs, attends a sexual harassment seminar where they are told that the head slaps must stop or else they would face charges, but no charges or other consequences have come forth.

Another of Gibbs' quirks is his tendency to stop the building's elevator between floors if he needs to have a short, urgent, private conversation with someone. He does this most often with his agents, and occasionally with his superiors or other law enforcement personnel.

When somebody mentions the loss of children and wives, Gibbs rarely comments although he may react slightly. When Caitlin Todd was killed, Ducky, who at that point did not know of Shannon and Kelly's story, mentioned that Ari was targeting women and neither of them (Ducky or Gibbs) has ever lost a loved one, Gibbs paused and did not say anything.

Gibbs still cared for Jenny at the time of her death and he was unable to open her body bag and look at her corpse.

In the episode "Faking It", it is revealed that Gibbs speaks fluent Russian, and he at least speaks a little Japanese and Chinese ("Call of Silence" and "My Other Left Foot", respectively). He also signs American Sign Language, which appears in many episodes in conversations with forensic scientist Abby Sciuto.

In the episode "Heartland" it is revealed that he had bought a 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T which he planned to restore, but never did. Later in the same episode it turns out that his father had restored the car the way Gibbs wanted it. The car was yellow with a black hood stripe and was stated to have the 426 HEMI and R/T suspension package. He drove the car with a smile on his face the first time out. Apart from the Dodge Challenger, Gibbs drives a Ford F-250 as shown in "Shalom" and in "Life Before His Eyes".