Badass Longcoat

It's every cow's dying wish to have her hide made into something this awesome.

Doyle: He likes playing the hero. Walking off into the dark, his long coat flowing behind him in that mysterious and attractive way.
Cordelia: Is this a private moment? 'Cause I could leave you alone.
Doyle: I'm not saying I'm attracted.... Maybe I'm a little attracted.

—Angel

A Longcoat is the ideal action-hero garment, more practical than a cape but infinitely cooler than a sport coat or no coat. In addition, a Longcoat of any level of 'billowy-ness' makes an ideal cover for producing any number of weapons, tools, supplies and whatnot. Certain styles of Longcoat are deliberately designed to distort the wearer's frame, making their wearer's access to Hammerspace almost believable to mundane eyes. This distortion of the wearer's real shape also makes it genuinely harder to land an accurate attack on them.

Like capes, longcoats capitalize on the dramatic effect of having something that flutters behind you. A variant involves jackets and excessively long shirts, but having less material to billow in the gusts necessarily makes such people seem less badass. And of course, when the wearer of a Badass Longcoat takes the coat off, it's a sign that he's about to do some major damage.

The most common types of long coats are dusters and trench coats. The principle differences between the two are that dusters are longer overall, usually reaching nearly to the ankles, and since they're designed for horseback riding, have a long slit up the back as far as the waist. Dusters are also generally cut along fairly boxy lines. A trench coat, on the other hand, is usually more shaped, reaches to the knees or slightly below and the back slit generally only reaches mid-thigh or hip-level. Trench coats also usually feature a belt and epaulets. It should be noted that one way to tell if a trench coat indicates a spy or private investigator or is a Badass Longcoat is by whether it's buttoned and belted or not. A Badass Trenchcoat is never closed.

A third style is the great coat, a predecessor of the trench coat but usually much heavier, and with either a wider collar that can be turned up to protect against the wind or a short shoulder cape. Later great coats lost the cape, becoming a longer, heavier, double breasted overcoat, but retaining the name. Great coats were typically worn either buttoned, losing some of their badassitude, or simply draped over the shoulders without putting the arms into the sleeves, greatly increasing their badassitude. They're most often associated with 19th Century naval officers, Nazi German officers, and Russian soldiers. The Inverness cape is a lighter garment with a very similar appearance to the caped greatcoat. The cape, however, is longer, reaching slightly past the wrist rather than only to the elbow, and an Inverness cape has no sleeves at all.

Going back even further is a coat called a justaucorps (essentially the long coats of the 17th and 18th centuries; think Pirates of the Caribbean) though it has to be worn a certain way to pull off the Badass look.

A less modern example would be the Badass Long Robe. Cool Shades are a nice accessory, as are tacking on a Nice Hat and mask to achieve the Coat, Hat, Mask Effect. If the mask in question is a gas mask, then it's Gas Mask Longcoat. The Badass Longcoat is often combined with a pair of guns, either revolvers for a western or a pair of semiautomatic pistols or submachine guns in the modern day and beyond, for extra effect. Some characters will pack enough weapons in their longcoats to outfit a small army.

Longcoat-wearing heroes probably started with Westerns (for dusters) or Film Noir, (for the classic trenchcoat) but became especially common in the public mind after The Matrix.

The Badass Longcoat is closely associated with The Stoic. Compare Badass in a Nice Suit. Sometimes part of a Hot Chick in a Badass Suit's ensemble. Not related to Badass Longcat. Not to be confused with Conspicuous Trenchcoat, a specific type of coat that is also long, or Coat Cape, where a coat is worn over the shoulder like a cape for what is often a similar visual effect.

(Please note that this trope is about the coat, not the person. Please include information about the coat when adding examples, rather than simply listing a character. The coat is important.)

Examples of Badass Longcoat include:

Anime and Manga

  • Leonard Testarossa's auto-guarding coat from Full Metal Panic! is a good example of one. It repels throwing knives and bullets by fluttering around for a bit while all you need to do is standing there with your hands in your pockets looking smug. It does not seem to protect him from bitchslaps however.
  • The intro for Ghost In The Shell: S.A.C. The 2nd Gig shows you how its done.
  • Tooya from Ayashi no Ceres wears a trench coat (with shades and stoicism, to boot) at the beginning of the series, while he's still working for the Mikages. Additionally, he wears a labcoat when he disguises himself as a doctor at Aya's school, pulling off a couple of wicked rescues while he's there.
  • Jo from Burst Angel wears a Badass Longjacket, though she usually takes it off during combat.
  • Sven (while with the IBI), Train (while with Chronos) and Belze from Black Cat. Here, though, Train's long black coat isn't so much a symbol of his badassitude but of his place in Chronos as an assassin; during most of the series, he wears a cropped black jacket over a long shirt, even though he's still pretty badass. Significantly, he dons his old coat again for a major showdown.
  • Looker of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Black and White wears a brown trenchcoat. It doesn't flutter in the wind a lot, but he still looks like a badass.
  • Black Lagoon
    • Hotel Moscow mob boss Balalaika, who already is a Hot Chick in a Badass Suit, wears a heavy wool Soviet Army greatcoat (which was designed to be worn in the subzero Russian winter) draped open over her shoulders on top of a low-cut dress business suit... in tropical Thailand. It exemplifies the trope.
    • Rotton the Wizard isn't a badass, but his coat is. In a Badass series that lives by the Rule of Cool, Lotton is trying so damn hard to look cool and act cool, all the way down to his Cool Shades and black, flaring badass longcoat, he fails so badly that even though Revy shoots him mid-entrance, she doesn't remember who he is later.
    • And then there's Mr. Chang, the Chow Yun-Fat character. The few times we see him in action, he's wearing a very nice black longcoat with a big white scarf that looks like it came right out of a John Woo movie. He's awesome enough to earn Revy's respect, such as in one scene during the arc where he's introduced, where he stops a grenade with his foot and then kicks it right back into the throng of terrorists who threw it.
  • In Bleach, Ichigo's robes briefly transform into a long-sleeved, ankle-length black coat with red lining that is closed at his chest during Tensa Zangetsu, the final release of his zanpakuto. Many of the captains in this anime could be considered badass and do wear haori, a type of long coat—however, the captain coats are white.
    • Ulquiorra Schiffer's Las Noches uniform, with two tails that sweep the floor dramatically.
    • Shunsui Kyoraku (Eighth Squad Captain) is a powerful fighter with an incredibly badass pink, flowery haori over his uniform.
    • Ishida wears something much like a great coat, to the point of having a spare cape when one is destroyed.
    • Ichigo has recently claimed that his coat functions as a kind of Mana Meter: if only half of it is left, that means only half of his power is left.
    • Ivan Azgiaro dons a very cool militaty-esque trench coat in the Thousand Year Blood War arc.
  • Captain Bravo from Busou Renkin, who is entirely aware of how cool his longcoat makes him look.
  • Chrono Crusade adores this trope.
    • While Chrono's normal outfit includes a long red coat with tails and a shoulder cape, he appears to be a twelve-year-old boy, and the rest of his outfit is fairly dorky looking. However, when he goes into his badass true form of a demon he loses the coat, his coat being replaced by wings. It's possible his coat is supposed to be a visual reference to the wings he has in his true form.
    • The villain Aion is a straighter version of the Badass Longcoat. His coat is white with a dark lining and a double belt (which he always keeps open). He seems rather fond of his coat—he's worn it since the 1870s! In his demon form his armor also has an open skirt around his pants which mimics the look (much like Remington, see below).
    • Joshua wears a long black coat with his suit that looks appropriately dramatic when he uses his demonic powers.
    • Father Remington's exorcist uniform includes an odd skirt-like cape around his pants when, combined with a jacket, somewhat mimics the effect of a badass greatcoat.
  • The first set of uniforms for the Exorcists in D.Gray-man were longcoats (cross out Lavi and Lenalee, who wore a jacket and a miniskirt, respectively). The well-known black and white (silver-buttoned) longcoats were abandoned after the journey in Noah's Ark, and the Exorcists wore red and black jackets instead (save for Kanda, who just has to keep the longcoat outfit).
  • A couple of episodes of Cowboy Bebop feature Spike wearing a badass duster. Notably, he tends to go for the duster when things really get serious (usually when Vicious is involved), and mainly so he can carry more weapons on his person.
  • Hei from Darker than Black sports a green-lined black longcoat. The longcoat is even bulletproof, but only when he wears it.
  • Watari, the mysterious guardian and right-hand man to L in Death Note. He wears a trench coat, dark glasses and a trilby hat when working with L outside of headquarters to conceal his identity as a notorious inventor named Quillish Wammy.
  • In Descendents of Darkness, Dr. Muraki Kazutaka is almost always seen in a white trench coat, while Tsuzuki Asato sports the black variety.
  • Mephisto of Demon City Shinjuku wears a long red coat which billows out dramatically in convenient winds.
  • Gainax's OVA sequel to Gunbuster, Diebuster, features Dix-Neuf, a Humongous Mecha that wears a gigantic duster. Rule of Cool to the max.
    • Oh, it's far more than simply Rule of Cool. Firstly, it houses rocket engines used to fly when not in screw-you-physics mode. Secondly, he can throw it off so it will form a Wave Motion Gun which fires by itself. It also covers a face on his back.[1]
  • Rika/Ruki in Digimon Tamers (Word of God: one of her early character models was a character from The Matrix), and Captain Sampson/Satsuma and BanchouLeomon in Digimon Savers.
    • For added BA points for Rika/Ruki, her longcoat is PASTEL YELLOW! And yet she still looks incredibly BA and awesome.
  • Bolt Crank from Eat Man sports a floor length trench coat while firing an assortment of 'uge freekin guns one handed. Interestingly, he doesn't actually keep the weapons in his coat. Instead, he just keeps all of his miscellaneous BFGs, BFSs, bombs, and... steam train locomotives... in a sort of built-in Hammerspace inside of his body.
  • The standard uniform of the Amestrian military in Fullmetal Alchemist is a badass greatcoat.
    • Ed wears a red duster, but has yet to be dismembered while wearing it (his missing limbs were before the coat). Unless you count the number of times his automail has broken, but otherwise, he's good. He makes a point of wearing a red coat anywhere for various reasons (the biggest being to cover up his automail). In one chapter, as his group is Heading for what appears to be the final confrontation, he buys a roll of red cloth and transmutes it into his signature jacket, most likely to show that he means business.
    • The new Greed himself wears a black longcoat / changshan.
    • The Briggs Brigade had full longcoat for their standard uniform. In manga universe, there are reasons for it, since they arestationed in the cold permafrost of Briggs mountain, but for us, it shows that that they are the most badass group in the Amestris army.
    • Roy Mustang even tops the Amestrian greatcoat by wearing a coat over that coat, to give note of his Colonel Badass status. Granted, it's also part of the uniform, but he stands out most when he wears it.
  • Kuroudou Akabane in GetBackers: long, black and very elegant. Ban Mido would fall under the "excessively long shirt" subset.
  • Ryoma Nagare from Getter Robo Armageddon combines this with Scarf of Asskicking and Hotblooded Sideburns.
  • In the 5th opening of Gintama, Takasugi is shown sporting a long dark trench coat while fighting hordes of aliens with Gintoki, Katsura, and Sakamoto in what appears to be a hopelessly one-sided battle.
  • Brandon "Beyond The Grave" Heat from Gungrave in both the anime and video game. He wears an intricately detailed purple coat with a large Gothic cross emblazoned on the back. And lots of little studs and buttons. Even in normal clothes he wears a black longcoat that is mostly prominent in the anime (in the game he's seen wearing it only in the opening and quickly changes to his "battle suit").
  • Radinov in the Gunsmith Cats anime wears a bulletproof one but can't be bothered to keep it closed even during gunfights - either because she carries most of her arsenal inside it or because she's batshit insane.
  • Van in Gun X Sword doesn't just wear a long coat, he wears a full tailcoat.
  • Hellsing
    • Alucard's signature longcoat is deep crimson.
    • Luke Valentine, who wears a long white coat.
    • Alexander Anderson, who wears a grey cassock.
    • Integra sometimes wears one too; when she does, it's a brown one, styled somewhere between a trench coat and a greatcoat
    • Major Montana. His is a grey military-style greatcoat.
    • The Captain too, whose Badass quotient is enough to easily stand up to the Charles Atlas Superpowered Battle Butler and have his tails do the bat-wing flutter even though it's a fully buttoned, double-breasted affair. Bonus points for also putting No Shirt, Long Jacket into play.
  • Jotaro Kujo from Part 3 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. A dark blue greatcoat style, with a tan or grey lining for added impact when it flairs out.
  • Mai-Otome with Garderobe headmistress Natsuki Kruger and her dark-blue longcoat.
    • The trope also applies to a handful of Robes, chief among them Natsuki's, Haruka's, and Shizuru's.
  • In Nanoha Force, Nanoha, Fate, and Signum appear to sport trench coats as their regular attire.
    • Fate already had this since StrikerS, with her barrier jacket in impulse form. One damn awesome, shining white coat.
    • Hayate and Subaru both sport a costume similar to Archer's (see F/SN example above). Like him, they both achieve an effect similar to the actual longcoats of their allies.
    • Chrono Harlaown has been rocking a black longcoat as both uniform and barrier jacket since the first season
  • Several characters in Naruto don one of these:
    • All the Kages officially get one.
    • Minato had an additional one of his own, with the kanji for "Fourth Hokage" written on the back.
    • Naruto wears one throughout during his fight with Pain.
    • Naruto gets a new one made of chakra when he finally gains full control over the Kurama, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox.
    • The standard Akatsuki uniform consists of a black coat with red clouds.
    • Mitarashi Anko wears a cream-colored badass longcoat.
    • Morino Ibiki is also usually seen wearing a longcoat.
    • Madara Uchiha's Susano'o sports one in its complete, perfect state.
  • Some high-ranking Marines in One Piece, since a large, white greatcoat is standard uniform issue for them: Admiral Aokiji when he was Vice-Admiral Kuzan, complete with Sinister Shades; Captain Hina and Vice-Admiral Garp, although the former usually takes her Marine coat off, and the latter does it when he gets serious. Admiral Kizaru, also complete with Scary Shiny Glasses (sort of, he's always cheery, but he's every pirate's worst nightmare); Fleet Admiral Sengoku: His white Marine greatcoat is oversized.
    • One Piece takes the coats-are-like-capes aspect of this trope to extremes by having very few high-ranked Marines ever actually wear their longcoats. Instead, they tend to drape the coats over their shoulders, with the sleeves billowing in the wind along with the rest of the coat. Despite this, the coats never fall off, even when the wearers leap through the air, fight in violent battles against dozens of pirates, or get sent flying by stronger opponents. This is a justified phenomenon.
    • This trick is also practiced by Crocodile, who does it with a pimpin' fur coat. In the desert.
    • Luffy himself gets an unbelievably cool black longcoat [dead link] in the tenth movie. As if he wasn't badass enough.
  • Kyuzo in Samurai 7, an SF adaptation of Kurosawa Akira's original Jidai Geki film Seven Samurai. Unofficially is the most skilled of the samurai, possibly exceeding the group's experienced leader, and definitely the most deadly. Sports blonde hair and a distinctive crimson-red coat.
  • Slayers NEXT's Gaav sports a suitably badass orange longcoat.
  • Sola: Takeshi, who fights with a sword and darts that explode into light wears a long black trench coat.
  • Maka Albarn from Soul Eater sports a kickass black longcoat with two large buttons and defined shoulders that makes for awesome emphasis whenever she jumps around.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann with Kamina and later on Simon, while they're kicking ass in space, who both wear these kinds of clothing. Kamina's longcoat is an interesting example in that it technically is a cape, but he usually wears it like a longcoat kind of fashion. Both come off in more action-filled scenes. Countless bonus points added for having the flaming skull with Triangle Shades on the back.
  • Trigun's Vash the Stampede's is geranium-red duster which should warn people, but his opponents usually think he's a harmless idiot. You can buy the red duster or an impressive leather replica.
    • Vash has other reasons for the long coat: hiding the effects of heavily subverted Hollywood Healing and his black...leather...body-armour...stuff. You have to assume this stuff is really practical desert wear for some reason. Although he also just likes the coat.
  • Abel Nightroad in Trinity Blood wears a black-with-silver-trim greatcoat that billows nicely when he activates his Crusnik powers.
  • Aya and Yoji of Weiss Kreuz both wear long coats, but it's not until sequel series Weiss Kreuz: Gluhen that they upgrade to properly billowing Badass Longcoats.
  • In Witch Hunter Robin, the title character of the series was badass in her own right, and not coincidentally, she also wore a red long-coat.
    • Actually, most of the Hunters take to longcoats when they are on the hunt.
  • When Seishirou and Subaru are introduced in X 1999, both sport badass longcoats, with Seishirou's in black and Subaru's in white.
    • Fuuma appears to have a closet just full of a wide variety of stylish longcoats. He owns one that is both black and white (very appropriate to the character).
  • In all Yu-Gi-Oh! series, the main Rival (and some arc villains) will have an incredibly badass coat that has the innate ability to defy the laws of Gravity and flare out even with no wind.
    • Kaiba in the original series has several long coats, starting with a blue duster, then a studded purple one, before settling to his trademark white one.
    • Tristan. That is all.
    • Thief King Bakura, the main villain of season five wears a long, red coat for the majority of his screentime.
      • Dark Bakura, who controls his actions in the game, changed his blue shirt for a black coat.
    • Manjoume in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX wears a black trenchcoat. In the first season, despite it being the school uniform, only his coat has the Yu-Gi-Oh! Rival requisite gravity-defying flare.
    • Ryo adopts a black duster after his Freak-Out transformation into Hell Kaiser.
    • Judai trades in his jacket for a longer coat after coming through his Break the Cutie arc.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, the requisite badass longcoat is worn by anti-hero Jack Atlas, who ironically spends more time in his skintight bodysuit rather then utilizing the full dramatic effect of his coat. Further exemplified in third season, where he wears a completely over the top long coat that can only be described as a 'White Pimp Suit'.
  • The eponymous character of Shakugan no Shana wears a long coat that also doubles as Hammerspace.
  • Mao from Code Geass wears a white great coat, studded with black belts and blue trim. Jeremiah Gottwald sports an incredibly badass coat in R2, white and purple with a gold trim. Ohgi and Tohdoh wear trench coats in R2 as well.
  • One of the newest characters in Umineko no Naku Koro ni wears a blue longcoat, which is very striking when combined with his Eyes of Gold.
  • Aoshi's trenchcoat in Rurouni Kenshin.
  • The military setting and 1930-esque era of Maiden Rose mean that Badass Longcoats abound. Taki's tendency towards appearing with dramatic wind probably makes his the most prominent example though.
  • Macross Frontier gives a longcoat to Brera Sterne in The Movie while retaining all his levels in Badass.
  • The Netherlands in Axis Powers Hetalia is shown wearing one.
    • Romania also wears a rather nice one, though Himaruya can't seem to decide on which color is it.
  • In his Galactic Pretty Boy persona, Takuto Tsunashi of Star Driver wears a Fabulous Longcoat!
  • Yomiko Readman of Read or Die appears to subvert this trope with her trenchcoat full of paperbacks, newspapers and magazines... Until you realize that a Paper Master can do anything with that much paper on hand.
  • Saiga in Speed Grapher usually has one of the shorter examples, but one opening shows it billowing like a Batman-style Badass Cape. The villain Suitengu has a longer one that doubles as a Pimp Coat.
  • Claire Stanfield from Baccano!, in the anime he wear it with button closed, in the Light Novels he wears it open.
  • Jiro Mochizuki in Black Blood Brothers rocks a bright red one, like a lot of these examples. Doesn't fit Bring My Red Jacket, though.
  • Any version of the eponymous character from Black★Rock Shooter, long black coat with a cracked white star emblazoned at the back.
  • Gai in Guilty Crown wears one as the leader of the Funeral Parlor group. Shu takes it for himself and adds a Scarf of Asskicking after Gai dies.
  • Darkness Aoi the closest thing that Ring X Mama has to a Big Bad is often wearing one.


Comic Books

  • Nick Fury has been known to wear a brown trenchcoat over a three-piece business suit, or more usually his SHIELD jumpsuit.
  • In 100 Bullets, Agent Shepperd wears brown trench coat as a signature piece of wardrobe and the guy proves why he's the only one in the series who can wear it.
    • It appears to be a status-symbol of the trust's Warlord As Lono is shown to be wearing it when he takes over the job after Shepperd is killed.
  • Batman villain The Joker has been wearing a purple or black trenchcoat since Marshall Rogers first drew the character with one in the mid 1970s. Much of the time he wears it as an overcoat and removes it when he’s indoors or relaxing but some works like Brian Azzarello's Joker feature the badass longcoat as a staple of Joker's outfit.
    • The Dark Knight Saga version of The Joker wears a longer duster. When the cops take it off him, they find out it's holding about a dozen or so knives. On top of that, early in the movie there's about half a dozen grenades inside it.
  • Desolation Jones somehow manges to look badass in a bright orange trenchcoat.
  • Hellboy's outfit is a pretty obvious example of this.
  • The page image is taken from the Marvel prequel comics of Stephen King's Dark Tower series: namely, the resident protagonist, Roland of Gilead. He wears it pretty well.
  • John Constantine from Hellblazer. It's a wrinkled, beat-up looking khaki trenchcoat. It's still badass.
    • Lampshaded in The Books of Magic where a meeting of mystical characters (Constantine, Dr. Occult, Phantom Stranger, & Mr. E) are all wearing trenches. (The Phantom Stranger wears a cape and suit combination, but he's still included in the group.)

Constantine: Just what the world's been waiting for. The Charge of the Trenchcoat Brigade.
The Stranger: I heard that, John Constantine.

  • The titular character of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac steals one from a store after being sent to Hell.
  • Jonah Hex sometimes wears a classic duster and sometimes an Army greatcoat.
  • Iceman sported one for a short time during Chuck Austen's run. It would break away when his powers were activated
  • Nextwave: Badass Longcoats appear to be standard issue for this squad.
    • Wallace habitually wears a trenchcoat that comes to his ankles and earns bonus points for the fact that he is also a Retired Badass and has Badass Long Hair.
  • The Saint of Killers from Preacher (Comic Book) has been described as "a one-man holocaust in a duster coat," and with good reason.
  • The Punisher has been known to wear black leather longcoats, especially in the stories written by Garth Ennis.
  • The Question. His coat is so badass that he wears it as a civilian and a vigilante, though it changes color from nondescript brown to vibrant blue when the Question goes into action. He uses special laundry detergent which, combined with the gas he uses to make his mask stick, reacts chemically and makes his clothes change colour.
  • The heroes of Frank Miller's Sin City have also been known to don the Badass Longcoat.
    • Marv's longcoats tend to get ripped to shreds during big fights, requiring him to find another big longcoat, usually off a bad guy. There was actually a oneshot where he wakes up in a new coat, with no memory of where he got it, and tries to work out where it came from.
    • Dwight McCarthy from "The Big Fat Kill" combines the badass longcoat with Guns Akimbo.
  • Spider-Man—Dr. Octopus has been doing this since before it was cool. After a while they changed his look into a high-tech looking jumpsuit (the Eighties), but the trenchcoat remained his "classic" look, up until they brought back the old style.
    • In Spider-Man Noir, this is Spidey's own look—he modified it from Uncle Ben's WWI pilot uniform!
  • The Spirit would sometimes add a trenchcoat to his trademark blue suit.
  • The Sandman - Dream wears one. It's black, long enough to drag on the floor, and has a really great collar. It also billows strangely, regardless of wind or movement. Justified Trope: Dream is a very dramatically inclined Anthropomorphic Personification, and making his coat billow dramatically in the wind (even without wind) would be right up his alley.
  • Trese - The fabric that would become the coat was a baby shower gift for the eponymous prophecy child, having protective runes drawn into it. The coat itself has some snazzy slinglike Chinese-button fasteners.
  • Flint Henry's reincarnation of Grimjack has John Gaunt aka Jim Twilly make his entrance in a dark purple greatcoat with gold embroidery. The coat is later shown to hold about 50 lbs. of guns and edged weapons when he is busted by robot cops.
  • All of The Boys wear long black coats. In addition contrasting with the Badass Capes the Smug Supers wear, it also helps them identify fellow team members during intense brawls.

Billy Butcher: "When in doubt, fuck-up any cunt not wearin' a coat."

  • Watchmen - Misaimed Fandom aside, Rorschach looks awesome in his trenchcoat—even the backup one, with the stains. It also serves as a nice contrast with the capes his fellow superheroes wear. Then again, he is an Expy of The Question.
  • Gambit of X-Men fame is seldom seen without his brown longcoat.
  • Blacksad does love his trenchcoat.
  • The Midnighter wears one in The Authority, and throughout his whole comics career.
  • Joe Fixit often wore a purple trenchcoat, especially during the period of time where he was still repressing the Bruce Banner persona and exposure to sunlight weakened him.
  • Doctor Strange has worn a trenchcoat or a duster since he lost the office of Sorcerer Supreme. For one story arc, he modified the Cloak to look more like a flowing red coat.


Fan Works


Film

  • A good 75% of the characters in The Matrix trilogy wear them. Quite possibly they're the main reason for the current popularity of the Badass Longcoat. Most of them are black leather dusters because it's easier to render dark objects against dark backgrounds. In the sequel, the Twins wear white longcoats to set them apart. Neo's longcoat changes to something resembling a cassock in the sequels, probably intended to make him look more like a priest.
  • Marv in Sin City not only wears a badass longboat for his entire portion of the movie, he continually trades up by taking them off his victims. "That's one fine coat you're wearing!"
    • Dwight and Hardigan also rock the longcoat.
  • The eponymous hero of the movie Hellboy wears a brown trenchcoat over black clothes as he does in the comics, though in the comics it's intended to help portray his average, blue-collar joe sensibilities.
  • Mark and Ken Gor (both played by Chow Yun-Fat) from John Woo's A Better Tomorrow series, wear black fabric trenchcoats. Ken's badass quotient is doubled by the fact he wears his twin brother's old bullet-hole riddled badass longcoat in the final action sequence. The main bad guy of the first movie, Shing, wears a white badass longcoat. After the release of the first film wearing similar coats became a trend among young men in Hong Kong, and the style of coat is still sometimes referred to as "Brother Mark's Coat."
  • Carlito Brigante with his black leather trenchcoat in Carlitos Way.
  • Jason Dean (Christian Slater) in Heathers sports a black longcoat throughout the entire film.
  • Eric Draven (played by the late Brandon Lee) in The Crow. He takes it off Tin Tin, the first of the guys responsible for murdering him and his fiancee. He sets it aside when he finishes them off... and after it's filled with holes from about five hundred bullets.
  • Selene in the Underworld films is an archetypal Action Girl who wears a leather longcoat. In Awakening she makes a point to break into a store so she can get a new longcoat. This one isn't made of leather, so she ditches it when she comes across a leather one.
  • William 'The Butcher' Cutter from Gangs of New York wears badass frock coats in several colors. His nemesis Priest Vallon also wears a longcoat.
  • The title character of the Blade series of movies has a longcoat in all his incarnations. Starting with the second film, it's got a red lining.
  • Mister Furious from Mystery Men wears a black overcoat, drives a black motorcycle and refers to himself as the "lone wolf".
  • In the film version of Starship Troopers, with Col. Carl Jenkins wearing a important SS-looking longcoat, when his key role came of finding out the brain bug was scared.
  • Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven's A New Nightmare is the first and only time he appeared in a long coat, in addition to the usual striped sweater.
  • For another villainous example, Spider-Man 2's Doctor Octopus wears a long coat and pairs it with Cool Shades.
  • Lampshaded in Rustlers' Rhapsody when the narrator notes that western villains always have thugs who wear "raincoats" in the desert.
  • From the Mutant Chronicles movie, Sgt. Mitch Hunter's incredibly shiny coat qualifies.
  • Doc Brown in Back to The Future Part III, for his first appearance: shooting the rope hanging Marty, and forcing Buford Tannen and his gang to back down. He wears it for the remainder of the movie, and it does look badass, especially when he's enacting the Western archetype of leaping from car to car on a train he's about to hijack.
  • The Shadow: His long black greatcoat is so badass it deflects bullets.
  • Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West:

Cheyenne: Nobody around these parts got the guts to wear those dusters except Cheyenne's men...and Cheyenne's men don't get killed.

  • Played with by Blondie in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He wears a badass longcoat (in the form of a Confederate Army greatcoat) for most of the film, until he gives his coat to a dying soldier. Rather than disturb the corpse, he picks up a poncho, which had become part of the Man With No Name's trademark outfit by that film.
  • Snake Eyes briefly gets a black badass longcoat for one scene in G.I. Joe the Rise of Cobra. This being G.I. Joe, it's included in an action figure, too.
  • The title character of the Samuel L. Jackson remake of Shaft wears a black leather trench coat that's every bit as badass as he is.
  • Bryan Mills from Taken puts a black one on for most of the movie and some of the publicity material has him in it.
  • Jade in Bulletproof Monk ends the movie in a Badass Longcoat. It helps that she has been kicking ass the entire movie.
  • Brotherhood of the Wolf. In one of the first scenes of the narrative, a pair of Great Coat-wearing badasses (with the added conceit of tricorner hats) lay waste to a group of soldiers harassing an old man and his daughter in the pouring rain.
  • Lampshaded in Straight To Hell.

Get the longcoats, boys!

  • The Octopus in The Spirit. In the denouement, he's wearing a badass long fur coat. Why? Cause he's Samuel L. Jackson!
  • The Big Lebowski The Dude's bathrobe fits this trope in a weird kind of way. As the movie is a parody of film-noir detective stories, that's probably supposed to resemble a gumshoe's traditional trenchcoat.
  • In Escape From L.A., Snake is given a special all-black outfit to wear for his mission, which includes a long black trenchcoat.
  • In A Fistful of Dynamite early Irish nationalist John Mallory wears a longcoat packed with explosives on the inside.
  • In Uncle Buck, the titular character has a long tweed overcoat, which he wears for some of his moments of Badassery (like meeting Maizy's assistant principal and searching for Tia at the house party).
  • In The Prophecy all angels (who are definitely badass) wear some kind of longcoat. It is interesting that the type of garment reflects personality of the wearer: benevolent Simon is shown in gray woolen greatcoat, relentless Uziel wears black duster, silver-tongued Lucifer is portrayed in a slick coat while psychotic Gabriel prefers an unbuttoned cassock.
  • Jason Bourne wears a longcoat throughout The Bourne Supremacy.
  • The film's portrayal of Mortal Kombat's Shang Tsung has him wearing a black longcoat for most of the movie.
  • In The Boondock Saints, Il Duce wears a longcoat to hide his arsenal of revolvers. The McManus brothers wear peacoats, which reach their thighs, as part of their working class Boston Irish style.
  • Selena in 28 Days Later wears a long, brown coat at first.
  • In 'In Time', the Timekeepers, and most prominently the antagonist Raymond Leon, wear longcoats.
  • David Bowie wears two [dead link] different [dead link] ones in Labyrinth. One is very sparkly, the other is leather. Neither one does anything to interfere with seeing his AREA.
  • Parodied in Shaolin Soccer when the poverty-stricken characters dramatically assemble on a rooftop. One wears a ratty bathrobe that catches the wind in slow motion like a badass longcoat would in such a scene.
  • In Tron: Legacy, Clu and Kevin Flynn both have one. Clu's even has Tron Lines, while Kevin simply has the interior parts glow.
  • In 2004's King Arthur, the Saxon chieftain (a major Badass in his own right) runs around in a longcoat so cool, he easily overshadows any other character.
  • The team of assassins in Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man all wear black bulletproof coats.
  • The weasels from the 1996 live action movie version of The Wind in the Willows wear Badass Longcoats in a dark yellow color. They wear them to complete their elegantly evil outfits; the coats are a huge feature of the costume.
  • In the Mimic, the Badass giant insects look like people in longcoats.
  • Lord Shen the peacock from Kung Fu Panda 2 manages to pull this off with his tail feathers.
  • It helps that Moon Child has many slow-motion gunfight scenes, thus allowing Sho's long, white coat to flare out behind him in all its badass glory.
  • In the Lord of the Rings film adaptations, Aragorn wears a forest-green Ranger Coat for the better part of the film series, up until he forsakes his Ranger side and becomes the King of Gondor.
  • Steven Seagal is very well known for wearing trenchcoats at the climax of his films.
  • Hoyle wears a long, flowing black coat throughout the film Yesterday Was a Lie (often over a sexy business suit).
  • Carnegie from The Book of Eli sports a pretty badass longcoat that completes his goth image. Eli also wears a green one that is eventually passed on to his protege, Solara.
  • Matsu, the protagonist of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, wears a variety of long, black fabric coats; unusually, she buttons them to the neck. The one featured in Jailhouse 41 is belted, with a large, ornate gold buckle.
  • The mercenary leader Hanover in Deep Rising sports such attire throughout the first half of the film. He loses it halfway through, as it's easier to travel through the bottom of a water-filled cruise ship without it.
  • Michelle Yeoh sports a white metallic finished trenchcoat as the titular motorcycling vigilante in Silver Hawk, a Hong Kong martial arts/superhero hybrid.
  • Nick Fury wears a black leather duster in The Avengers because he's yet another character played by Samuel L. Jackson!


Literature

  • Roland Deschain from The Dark Tower series (pictured above), though he seems to lose it at some point, as later books don't address anything of the sort.
  • The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden famously sports a duster. He's enchanted it to be bulletproof and knifeproof, so almost never goes anywhere without it - no matter how unfashionable it is. It's not, however, impact-proof, as he notes on one occasion after being shoulder-checked by an enormous muscle-y brute, which demonstrates why it's an important measure but by no means a perfect one. He's gotten it to the point that the impact is spread out across his body, which any physics fanatic will tell you reduces the pressure of the impact. Though his shields do work better. It's also occasionally mentioned that before he was given the leather one, he wore a canvas duster.
  • Colt Regan typically wears a black duster when on the job, mostly because it looks cool.
  • Commissar Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) in Sandy Mitchell's novels of the Warhammer 40K setting, who kicks ass and takes names while wearing a huge, red-sashed and gold-trimmed greatcoat, complete with natty cap.
  • John Taylor from Simon R. Green's Nightside series wears a long white coat. It even has a self-destruct in it, which sends it up in flames if it gets too far from his body. Green gave a reasonably plausible justification (let a significant personal possession get loose, and you're likely to have all sorts of magic nastiness come down on you), but the reader suspects he had tongue firmly in cheek while writing that one...
    • John's probably kidding when he tells servants he'd prefer they not take his coat because he hasn't fed it recently. Probably.
    • Razor Eddie, also from Green's novels, wears a dirty gray longcoat and routinely cuts Cosmic Horror-caliber monsters into sashimi.
  • Carl Hollywood, a secondary character from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, would not even come close to being described as a bad ass for most of the book. He is for all intents and purposes the manager of a theater, and the job mostly fits his personality. He was, however, also raised essentially as a cowboy. So, at one point toward the end of the book while clad in a leather cowboy duster complete with hat and boots he proceeds to (with a small group of others) fight his way through a future Shanghai in the middle of a war zone.
  • While not a long coat exactly, Gerald Tarrant of the Coldfire Trilogy wears calf-length, medieval-style tunics, and he's fairly badass.
  • The Marquis de Carabas, from Neverwhere, wears what is somewhere between a trench coat and a frock coat.
  • Sherlock Holmes was known to pull this off, so much so that a billowing Inverness cape is frequently associated with images of him.
  • The same coat keeps turning up in Steven Brust's novels, usually on coachmen. The best description is in Freedom & Necessity: "Last week I found my most treasured item of clothing ... a vast and possibly antique driving coat, rusty black, with deep turned-back cuffs and a high-standing collar, and a pair of pockets so large that I could drop one of Mr Colt's pistols in each and hardly grudge the room. It swallows me up nearly to the ankles.... As his boots were to Puss, so this coat is to me. I assure myself that I seem a latter-day Dick Turpin when I've got it on, though I may in fact look a quite modern scare-crow."
  • American Gods with the "new god" of the Internet. He wears a black longcoat in a Shout-Out to The Matrix but is an unpleasant, physically weak nerd.
  • The Asha'man in The Wheel of Time are often identifiable only by their long, black coats.
  • A civilization of them in Sherwood Smith's Inda series. All Marlovan warriors wear long, gray dusters designed for riding.
  • Carmen Sandiego has that awesome red one!
  • Crystal Rain and its sequels by Tobias Buckell features the immortal cyborg killing machine Pepper, whose preferred garment is a trenchcoat.
  • In the Discworld, which runs on tropes, several characters have one. One of the most notable is Mr. Gryle, a Banshee, and he seems to wear it a little bit too easily; it helps to realize it's actually his wings. Another is the Ghost the one who's Walter Plinge in Maskerade.
  • Felix Castor makes frequent use of a Cossack-style greatcoat, citing the carrying capacity that's necessary for the tools of his trade as a freelance exorcist.
  • Percy Jackson and The Olympians sported this look temporarily in The Titans Curse after defeating the Nemean Lion (the pelt turning into a golden, bulletproof duster). He ends up sacrificing it to Poseidon so Bessie the Ophiotaurus and Grover back to camp, sadly. But it still counts.
  • In some medieval cultures, long surcoats were worn over armor, and show up in medieval romances, epics, and other martial literatures of those cultures. So, for example, in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the generals all wear "battle robes" as an outer layer, and at one point Lu Bu's is even described as fluttering in the wind. The samurai of Tale of the Heike wear something similar.
  • Badass Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood is usually described as wearing a long riding coat, even when he is not on horseback.
  • Sabbath, from the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures, wears a loose, grey, military-style overcoat, like Napoleon wears (which is rather amusing considering the fact he's described as not particularly tall at first, although he suddenly becomes very tall in later novels). It's ironic, because he thinks the military is absurd. (Since he was choosing his clothes to convey anti-authoritarian irony back in the 18th century, that might just make him the first hipster.) Not everyone is impressed; Anji considers it "stupid" and "embarrassing" and guesses that, like his name, he "thinks it's cool". He occasionally pulls various weapons out of it.
  • The coat quixotic Ariane wears in Greer Gilman's novel Moonwise is described thus:

"She wore her ruffianly greatcoat, caped and cuffed and quite staggeringly heavy, of moleish dusky wool, with rather fewer silver buttons than designed. It hung to her heels. With the wooden spoon she brandished, striding and swirling, it gave rather a Dulle Griet air of absurd panache, of rag-and-bone fantastical swagger: so boldly did I fight, me boys, although I'm but a wench."


Live Action TV

  • King Uther Pendragon of the BBC TV series Merlin often sports a black leather badass longcoat, unusual for a king in the Dark Ages.
    • And occassionaly his son, Arthur, rocks a rather nice ankle-length brown coat.
  • The Highlander franchise has a lot of these, starting with Connor MacLeod in the first movie. Not only do the dusters look cool, they provide a convenient Hand Wave for how Immortals pull their swords out of nowhere.
  • In the Firefly universe, a long brown coat was part of the standard uniform for Independent soldiers during The War, earning them the nickname "Browncoats". Mal Reynolds and Zoe Washburn are both seen in their old army browncoats.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Angel.
    • Spike. The coat was an explicit symbol of his badass-ness, taken from Slayer Nikki Wood when he killed her. In fact, one of the marks of Spike's Badass Decay was that he put the coat away towards the end of the sixth season. In a mid-season 7 episode of Buffy he realizes that he's turned into a wimp, so he pulls the old coat out and promptly starts kicking ass. He's never without it again, his Badass Decay briefly halted by the act. It is destroyed by an explosion in "The Girl in Question", only to be quickly replaced by the staff of W&H Rome.
    • Towards the end of the show, Buffy herself adds a long coat to her Unlimited Wardrobe.
    • Spoofed in season 7 with Andrew, who wears a longcoat similar to Spike's, but, decidedly, is not a badass. He's still a bit of a wimp and later gets bitchslapped by Willow (and not even the Evil One) in an alley. She does this with a lecture, without ever actually laying a hand on him, scares him shitless, and takes him prisoner. While he's wearing the longcoat.
    • There was also the Monster of the Week "Der Kindestod" (The Child's Death), a vaguely humanoid creature with a hideous face and some aspects of an old man (wrinkly skin, white hair). He wears a longcoat.
  • In Angel, Angel's black leather longcoat is badass enough to stay that way even when it's being worn by a muppet-Angel in the episode "Smile Time".
  • In Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes,
    • Gene Hunt wears a long camelhair longcoat in the Seventies; in the Eighties, he's traded it for a long black trench coat, just as badass and reflecting his Anti-Hero status.
    • Keats's grey trenchcoat would seem, at first, an aversion - he's not that badass in the beginning. But when his true nature is revealed? Yes.
  • Doctor Who knows the value of a Badass Longcoat:
    • The Third Doctor regularly wore a badass Inverness coat, and some badass opera cloaks, too.
    • The Fourth Doctor continued the trend (among the Doctors) by wearing a frock coat with his badass long scarf.
    • The Eighth Doctor wears a knee-length frock coat.
    • The alternate Ninth Doctor from the official Web Original serial Scream of the Shalka wears an impressive greatcoat.
    • And of course, the Tenth Doctor sports a camel-colored long coat as part of his silhouette. The pockets are Bigger on the Inside. (In the Eighth Doctor Adventures books, the Doctor cops to having used no such elegant solution—he just rips out the lining of his pockets, turning the whole lining of his coat into one big pocket.)
    • The Eleventh Doctor occasionally wore a green greatcoat starting from series 6, alternating with his tweed jacket.
  • Torchwood Captain Jack Harkness wears a Royal Air Force greatcoat [dead link] as part of his iconic 1940s-style ensemble. Rhys Williams refers to him as "That bloke with the coat" several times. Naturally, after being blown up one of his major priorities is replacing it.
  • Carmen Sandiego has that awesome red trench.
  • Farscape
    • John Crichton's increasing badass-ness on Farscape is symbolized by his abandonment of his IASA civvies and taking up of a Peacekeeper long black coat.
    • Scorpius, in his badass tailcoat.
    • Aeryn gets a moment so badass with her longcoat it ends up in the opening credits for a long time.
  • Parodied in the Stargate SG-1 episode "200", when Teal'c imagines himself as a Badass Longcoat detective.
    • In the Season Six episode "Nightwalkers", Carter, Teal'c and Jonas Quinn show up in a small Oregon town, all three wearing long, dark leather coats. Way to go, guys, could we look any MORE threatening and sinister?
  • Omar Little in The Wire uses a duster to conceal his kevlar vest and double-barreled shotgun while robbing drug dealers.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia parodies the longcoat on several occasions. In one episode, Charlie remarks how cool Frank's trenchcoat looks and wants one of his own. In another episode, Mac buys a black leather duster because he thinks it makes him tough. At one point he thinks it will help him kick down a door. When Charlie wants a try at the door, he demands to put the duster on first. Mac ends up hitting Charlie against the wall while Charlie wears the duster. In a third episode, Mac's will demands that his duster be burnt after his death, but Dennis insists on keeping it for himself.
  • Edward Woodward, The Equalizer. Standard light-tan tranch coat. Almost never closed unless he was out in bad weather.
  • The Badass Longcoat is part of a Makai Knight's standard uniform in the Toku series Garo. The title character wears a very cool white longcoat when he's not in armored mode.
  • Wraith officers in Stargate Atlantis tend to wear long, black leather coats as opposed to the pants and muscle shirts of the warriors.
    • Also, the series' most memorable human villain, Acastus Kolya, who wears a long black coat when not in uniform.
    • Trinity: Ronon and Teyla in black coats. The show's two most badass characters in long, black coats - simply badass. And while everyone wears BDUs offworld, Ronon tends to wear a coat instead.
    • The Mooks are specifically called "Longcoats" for their...long coats.
  • Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows was an Inverness-cape-wearing vampire.
  • Castiel, the warrior of God from Supernatural, is modeled after John Constantine wardrobe-wise (trench coat and all). Being an angel, Castiel's clothes have the added bonus of self-repairing damage from gunshot blasts and stabbings, and magical dry cleaning for blood stains.
  • Ren from Kamen Rider Ryuki was never without his black leather coat, whose billowing was even seen as part of his transformation. Actually mocked in an interview where all the riders did their transformation poses, and Shinji's actor waved the bottom of his shirt around for the same effect.
  • It's probably anachronistic, but Arthur's brown coat in Merlin definitely qualifies, and it looks in the set pictures like Uther might be going to wear one in season two.
  • Adam Lambert on the Season 8 American Idol performance finale wore a long, black trench coat with fog machines while singing "Mad World". It didn't necessarily make him badass, though.
  • In Season 9 of Smallville, Clark Kent takes to wearing one of these with an all black ensemble. Badass, but not his color or style. How about something figure hugging in red and blue?
    • Lex rocked the badass longcoat.
  • John Druitt from Sanctuary is rarely seen without his black leather longcoat.
  • He's not really that badass, but Eric Van Helsing wears one when he goes slaying in Young Dracula.
  • Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It wears a flowing black coat, most notably when vowing to his Number 10 colleagues "YOU WILL SEE ME AGAIN" and then walking out of Number10 as it billows after him.
  • NCIS: Ziva David wears them on occasion, ranging from a short black trenchcoat to a grey long coat (similar to the style worn by Neo in Matrix II & III) with red lining. She also has them in neon colors like green and orange.
  • Both Mulder and Scully of The X-Files wear trenchcoats in several episodes.
  • Holmes, or should I say Sherlock, in the new TV series (set in the 21st century). The dark blue tweed Belstaff, classically cut, has the sort of swirling tails one needs.

John: Oh please, can we not do this, this time.
Sherlock: Do what?
John: You being all mysterious with your... cheekbones and turning your coat collar up so you look cool.
Sherlock: I don't do that.
John: Yeah you do.

    • Unsurprisingly, the coat has become extremely sought-after, to the point where Belstaff reissued it after the series premiered (only for one season - it's now out of production, and still very much a fan favourite) and it is now being credited with bringing classic tweed coats back into fashion.
  • The opening credits for Walker, Texas Ranger feature Chuck Norris in a tan canvas duster, even though he's much more likely to be wearing a cattleman's short coat, a sheepskin jacket, or a leather vest during the episode.
  • In Tin Man, the soldiers of the Wicked Witch are called "Long-coats" and wear black leather dusters. Unfortunately, they attended Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy so they are only bad-ass versus unarmed peasants.
    • Cain (the eponymous Tin Man) and Glitch are straighter examples. Ish.
  • Anubis "Doggie" Cruger/Shadow Ranger of Power Rangers SPD and his tokusatsu counterpart Doggy Kruger/DekaMaster of Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger both sport longcoats when not transformed. Doggie ends up tossing his off when he morphs!
  • Olivia on Fringe regularly wears a long, black coat; Peter, Broyles, and Nina Sharp also occasionally wear them
  • Franky Fitzgerald, from the British T.V show Skins, wore a black longcoat during the first episode, which helped her gain the nickname "Franky Badass".


Music


Newspaper Comics


Professional Wrestling

  • Many wrestlers have adopted the longcoat to improve their image as badasses; among them are The Undertaker, Sting, Edge (one of the earliest adopters), and Christopher Daniels (who ups the badass quotient by wearing a sleeveless Badass Longcoat).
  • Matt Hardy recently started sporting a very nice Badass Longcoat, though at the moment he might be a subversion of the associated trope.


Tabletop Games

  • Imperial Commissars in Warhammer 40,000, who have absolutely no qualms with summarily executing their men for cowardice, disobedience, incompetence, fighting amongst themselves, drinking on duty, looking at heretical materials, wearing the wrong cap-badge, sneezing on the Emperor's holy icons.... * cough* Ciaphas Cain * coughcough* I mean most Commissars are also Badass enough to scare their underlings more than whatever horrors are faced. As mentioned in the Literature section above, though, some Commissars are more Badass than others.
    • Cypher The Fallen one, and indeed all "The Fallen" Dark Angels have taken to wear Badass Longcoats, in theory to hide their identity's. As they are seven to eight foot tall, and tend to wear said longcoats over their bulky Power Armour, its less than effective at hiding, but more than effective at showing off the Badass
    • On a larger scale, several units of the Imperial Guard wear longcoats. The Death Korps of Krieg are modeled after World War I Germany and wear heavy greatcoats that make them pull off a truly badass Gas Mask Longcoat look. The Armageddon Steel Legion, on the other hand, are modeled after World War II Germans and wear lighter-but-no-less awesome trenchcoats. Lastly, the Valhallan Ice Warriors, who are based on the Red Army of World War II, wear greatcoats as well.
    • The Chaos Lord mad scientist Fabius Bile wears a long lab coat made from stitched-together human skins. If anything is the last word in badass evil mad scientist gear, it's that.
  • The Imperial Trenchers in Mutant Chronicles universe are both specialized in trench warfare and wearing badass trenchcoats styled after the early 20th century British military (which they're a Fantasy Counterpart Culture). Retired Badass Jake Kramer and The Stoic Cybertronic Overseer Cyril Dent also wear those.
  • Badass longcoats are also very popular in Cyberpunk RPGs, like Shadowrun or CP 2020. Especially since you can use them very well to hide guns under them.
    • Shadowrun actually has a fun bit of flavor text in the Street Samurai's Catalog supplement about how Securetech's kevlar-lined trenchcoat has become something of a standard-issue uniform among runners.
    • Shadowrun's use of longcoats pre-dates the present fad for putting Badass action heroes in them, as the game's designers were trying to capture a "Wild West" feel for Awakened Seattle.
  • Deadlands, being inspired by Westerns and requiring a good deal of Badassitude from at least some character classes, are a kind of natural habitat for Badass Longcoats too.
    • Members of the Agency - the setting's The Men in Black organisation - are known by the nickname of Men In Black Dusters.
    • The Agency's counterparts south of the border, the Texas Rangers, issue dusters to their recruits, presumably invoking this trope.
  • Also very popular among players in The World of Darkness games, to the point that someone appearing in one, particularly if he uses a katana sword, is an utter, utter cliche. (Though it actually makes sense on a purely practical level. In game, Katanas are statistically one of the best weapons in the game, and a trenchcoat is the only garment that can conceal one, that really doesn't make it any less cliche.)
  • Going by the artwork in the books, trenchcoats are Standard Issue among Dark Champions vigilantes.
  • In Dogs in the Vineyard, a Badass Longcoat is standard issue to every player character. Depending on how the GM decides to run the game, they can even deflect bullets.
  • Every faction from Warmachine and Hordes has someone wearing an incredibly badass longcoat.
  • Quite a few of these are on the prowl in the Ravenloft setting, including were-hunter George Weathermay and some depictions of the darklord Malken. Even more common in the Ravenloft spinoff Gothic Earth, seeing as it's set in a spooky parallel Victorian-era Earth, so lots of people dress that way.
    • The Arthaus products made greatcoats standard outdoor garb for residents of Darkon, which gets chilly.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle's Wicth Hunters use a greatcoat as part of their standard uniform (along with a Nice Hat).
  • The Dungeon Master's Guide II for 3.5 has archetypes of player types. Under the "Supercoolness" heading is a half-orc in a long brown duster, two bloodstained broadswords, and a Nice Hat.
  • Imrijka, the iconic inquisitor from Pathfinder, could almost be a Distaff Counterpart to the DMG II half-orc (and an oddly sexy one, at that). Her hat and duster, however, are bright crimson and considerably more ornate.


Theatre

  • In the 10th Anniversary Dream Cast of Les Misérables, Javert gets one when he's undercover as a spy among the revolutionaries.
  • A production of Macbeth at the Guthrie Theater gave both Macbeth and Banquo long, black leather jackets in their first scene.
  • Ralph Fiennes brought new levels of whupass to a 1995 Broadway production of Hamlet with a long black leather greatcoat in the early scenes. This instantly elevated him from Emo Kid to Darker and Edgier, right off the bat, which is unusual. Picture here.


Video Games

  • Appears throughout the Growlanser series. Crevaniel, the protagonist in Wayfarer of Time is always wearing his longcoat.
  • The titular Dude of the Postal series wears a knee-length black trench coat over a blue Roswell T-shirt in the first and second games. This is replaced by an ankle-length brown duster, complete with bullet holes in the collar, for Postal 3.
  • Dante from Devil May Cry is known for his trademark red longcoat, which differs slightly in design each game. The DMC 3 version can be purchased, either in red or black.
    • Vergil and Nero also sport longcoats in blue.
  • Axel and Kurtis of the Disgaea series wear longcoats. The former's is white with an extremely high collar, and the latter's is gray with a light blue collar. Before reincarnating, the real!Overlord Zenon wore one of these, as well.
  • Parodied in the browser MMORPG Urban Dead, where characters with overly "badass" description, especially the ones with long coats, scars, katanas (and other weapons not in the game) etc. are mocked to no end. The term "trenchcoater" also a negative term for the Munchkins of the game. This also exists in the MMORPG Nexus War, which was founded and played by a lot of Urban Dead Players.
  • Carmen Sandiego has that awesome red one!
  • Antonio Guster in the F-Zero games wears a long lab coat over his combat outfit.
  • Thane Krios in Mass Effect 2 wears one, largely because the designers thought he looked silly without it.
  • The Final Fantasy series abounds with them:
    • Final Fantasy VI: The character of Setzer wears an overcoat, drinks, gambles, and pilots both of the only flying machines (The Blackjack and the Falcon) to appear in the game.
    • Final Fantasy V: Faris of has one very similar to Setzer's in the concept art and PS 1 version's FMV cutscenes. She is not depicted wearing this in the game, sadly.
    • Final Fantasy VIII's Seifer Almasy, the Rival Turned Evil for Squall, wears the Badass Longcoat in light grey. Irvine wears one in buckskin. In a Lighter and Softer version, Rinoa has a sleeveless powder-blue duster in some sort of rib knit.
    • Final Fantasy X's Auron wears one in deep red.
    • Final Fantasy Versus XIII: Noctis Lucis Caelum wore a long black coat in the first teaser trailer.
    • Final Fantasy VII's Big Bad Sephiroth wears a signature trenchcoat with pauldrons on the shoulders. His coat changes with every game he's in, but never too far from its original appearance (i.e. Kingdom Hearts, there are wings underneath the coat, and it even gets a red trim.) There is a replica of the original Final Fantasy VII version.
    • Crisis Core gives us Genesis's long red coat with black leather shoulders which floats around behind him nicely as he descends (backwards) from the sky.
    • Freya Crescent from Final Fantasy IX. Coat, hat, spear. Talk about awesome costumes.
    • Snow Villiers from XIII has one as well. And the coat is so badass, they made it into his weapon.
  • Gamov from the remake of Ninja Gaiden, despite having a long green coat, Cool Shades and a capacity for Offscreen Teleportation, he never does anything wow-inducing.
  • JC Denton in Deus Ex wears a dramatic long black coat; this is Lampshaded by Agent Navarre in an interview: "I do not expect you to perform as well as Agent Hermann, but the mission will require us to do more than frighten the NSF with our baggy coats that make us look bigger than we really are." His brother Paul wears such a coat as well, as does Walton Simons. That is to say, every nano-augmented person in the world wears a Badass Longcoat.
    • The protagonist of the third game, Adam Jensen, looks to be continuing... sorry, starting the tradition with a Badass neo-renascentist black trenchcoat, complete with an awesome floral print on the shoulders.
    • Also doubles as Awesome but Practical, as it has slits for his arm blades, and openings that magnetically attach themselves to his Typhoon Ports.
    • It's so cool that the producers actually made it available for purchase.
  • From Mugen no Frontier: Super Robot Wars OG Saga, we have Harken Browning, with his black and red longcoat.
  • Shinjiro of Persona 3, unlike the rest of the party, only has one outfit. And it's a Badass Longcoat. The protagonist's usual outfit can also sometimes display some aspects of the Badass Longcoat without being one.
  • The initial Persona of the Protaganist of Persona 4, Izanagi, sports an awesome black longcoat. Izanagi-No-Okami, the Protaganist's ultimate Persona who is only attainable in the True Ending, has an even more impressive white one that billows epically as he is summoned to defeat the final boss.
  • Which member of the Belmont clan succeeded in killing Dracula off for good? Julius, in his longcoat.
    • Soma Cruz has a white long coat that manages to be badass, especially with the pimp qualities. The 21st Century is obviously the era of Badass Fashion.
    • Also, in Curse of Darkness, Trevor Belmont wears a belt with the lower part of a trench coat on it, just because it looks cool.
    • Richter has a blue tailcoat extending to his ankles in some of his character models. Juste has a similar coat, this time in red.
    • Alucard has a black justaucorps trimmed with gold thread.
  • The not-all-there, blood-splattered trenchcoat wearing villain Walter Sullivan of Silent Hill 4.
  • Metal Gear Solid series.
    • Liquid Snake, Revolver Ocelot and Psycho Mantis all wear the same style: brown leather with wide epaulets.
    • Vulcan Raven wears one in the wide picture in the manual. It's a wonder it fits over his shoulders.
    • Fortune wears hers simply draped over her shoulders, giving her the best of both a Badass Longcoat and a Cape.
    • Decoy Octopus wears a long coat in official artwork, but fails to do much of anything that could be construed as badass.
    • Big Boss is always drawn with one of these (post-Peace Walker)
  • In the superhero MMORPG City of Heroes (and its sister game/expansion City of Villains), longcoats are unlocked for an account that's been active for over three months. They come in several types (long, short, tattered, split) and take up the 'back' slot for capes or wings. Like every costume choice, there is no effect on gameplay besides looking cool, but when you cross it with the Dual-Wielding Guns for the Blaster, you inject your character with Pure Awesomeness.
  • Two sorts of Elite Mooks (Theron Guards and Kantus) in Gears of War are distinguished first and foremost visually by their long dark coats.
    • Additionally, General RAAM wears a strikingly similar outfit in black.
  • Not-So-Elite Mooks (Helghast Stormtroopers) in Killzone: Liberation also wear distinguishing black coats.
  • Ganondorf in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker wears a pretty cool longcoat, the sleeves being so large that he actually has a sword hidden in each.
  • Caleb of the Blood series wears a dark brown one.
  • Sly Boots, the protagonist of Anachronox, is a Film Noir detective. In a trenchcoat.
  • Fallout 3 gives you the chance to wear at least two different types of dusters, both of which look badass.
    • Colonel Autumn wears a trenchcoat and gives a pretty good show of being evil.
    • The Regulators, a law enforcement group with standard issue dusters.
    • The Mysterious Stranger also wears a trench coat in the private eye tradition.
    • Grab the overcoat of General Chase (either from Operation Anchorage via console command or from Mothership Zeta's Cargo Hold).
    • The NCR Ranger combat armor in Fallout: New Vegas. It is exactly the armor the person in the game cover is wearing.
    • Ulysses wears one with the flag of the Old World on the back.
    • After Lonesome Road, Ulysses gives the Courier one of his own called "Courier's Duster" which also has a flag on the back, but changes to the flag of whatever faction you choose to rule the Mojave.
  • For a while, the standard garb for Swordmasters in Fire Emblem gave them the appearance of a Badass Longrobe (or Long-Slitted-Skirt for female characters), until Lloyd from FE7, whose sprite was edited to reflect the longcoat he wears in his character art. As of Radiant Dawn, the longcoat is the signature garb of the Trueblade.
    • The alternate sprite used for the Hero class unit is depicted with a longcoat in the GBA games. Notable Mercenary/Hero units include Raven, Callech, and most notably - Linus.
  • Crimson Viper from Street Fighter IV has a longcoat as her alternate costume. It's badass on its own, even before factoring in the taser gloves and flamethrower shoes.
  • The more-or-less unknown protagonist of Red Steel 2. All we know about him is that he wears a longcoat, and that he's chosen to take on the town of Caldera all by himself. And he wields a katana and a revolver.
  • Ragna the Bloodedge, Jin Kisaragi, Valkenhayn R. Hellsing, and Hazama all have variations of one in BlazBlue.
  • Ricardo from Tales of Innocence: black and double-breasted. What he wouldn't do for his little brother...
  • Albert Wesker in Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. Both his spiffy black trench-coat and his entire tight-fitting outfit are completely made out of leather. He just knows how to look cool.
  • Lewton from Discworld Noir: Brown trenchcoat with leather added over the shoulders, and a matching fedora.
  • Daniel from the free indie RPG Exit Fate wears a black one with gold trim.
  • In the first Shin Megami Tensei, although the Chaos Hero sports an urban camo trenchcoat and a brash demeanor, he is physically weak and openly admits to such, constantly relying on other characters for help. Although that may not be the case during gameplay...
    • In Persona2, the Masquerade bosses sport these.
    • In Devil Survivor 2, these are standard uniform for JP's.
  • Fable II allows you to wear a variety of coats, two of which stand out as badass: the Noble Gent's Coat and the Highwayman Coat.
  • In The Godfather: The Game, the menu hints outright tell you that the enemy gangsters with longcoats are superior to those without.
  • Sengoku Basara's Katakura Kojuurou wears a brown duster that sweeps to the ground. It's utterly anachronistic, but hey, what's history when compared to badassery, right? And he's so badass that they made him playable in the expansion pack.
  • Mickey Mouse in Kingdom Hearts. Seriously. Also anyone else wearing Organization XIII's uniform. All of them and Riku and DiZ. You can purchase a long coat replica or a hoodie version.
  • Inspector Cabanela in Ghost Trick has a pure white trenchcoat that signifies his spotless record. And there's the awesome moment later in the game is when Detective Jowd re-dons his own trenchcoat, symbolizing his transition from fatalistic Death Seeker to proactively pursuing the manipulator.
  • Count Veger in the third Jak and Daxter game. He's got a long, regal-looking coat, but isn't actually seen doing anything really badass.
  • Mr. R from Boy Love game Kichiku Megane probably qualifies. The coat is in varying shades of black and tied shut with a belt piece. It also has a high collar that hides even more of this face than his glasses (with their occasional bonus points) and his bangs.
  • Wes from Pokémon Colosseum has one. It is always blowing in the wind, even in Pokémon battles.
  • Cynthia from Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum has a black one.
  • Red Dead Redemption has a duster as a reward for having a high honor level, and the even cooler black coat you get for achieving Legend of the West status.
  • Issac from Golden Sun: Dark Dawn manages to snag himself one in the thirty year gap between it and Lost Age.
  • Wild Dog, the immortal (?) mercenary from Time Crisis. Quite fond of throwing it off dramatically when he gets down to business.
  • Omen Deng, the Chinese Secret Police agent of Alpha Protocol sports a rather impressive coat. He'll shed it when Mike Thorton fights him.
  • Raven from Tales of Vesperia has a very snazzy purple coat.
  • A variety of gear from Dark Souls allows the player to rock the badass longcoat look such as the Wanderer's Coat and the Black Cleric Robe.


Visual Novels

  • Detective Tyrell Badd of Ace Attorney Investigations, the only person ever to dodge one of Franziska's whip strikes. He wears it so he will never forget his greatest failure, and since then it has become riddled with holes. Bullet holes.
    • Subverted with Detective Dick Gumshoe, whose brown duster usually doesn't help out his Butt Monkey status.
    • If you pay attention to the stills of Edgeworth in 1-4 and 2-3, he seems to favour the Longcoat as well.
      • And speaking of the Edgeworths, Gregory Edgeworth seems to favour a long overcoat in his appearance in Ace Attorney Investigations 2, which he then passes on to his student after his death.
  • Archer from Fate/stay night! Badassery aside, it's not a true longcoat; it's actually a pair of sleeves and a long battle-skirt-thing. Looks damn similar, though.


Webcomics


Web Original

  • In Survival of the Fittest, Jacob Starr of v1 and Julie Mikan of v3 wear trenchcoats. Jacob started with a suit, but when the jacket was damaged in a gun battle he took the trenchcoat off of one of the people he killed.
    • In v4, Staffan Kronwall was actually assigned this as a weapon
  • Big Boss wears one of these in Stray, and another character comments on the garment's dramatic value.
  • Parodied by Travis Boles in Three in The Afternoon—he wears a bathrobe. Which, according to one of his foes, "smells".
  • Stone, from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, combined this with basic biker-wear to make his superhero "costume". It worked.
  • New York Magician: Michel's Burberry (and later London Fog).
  • Umbra from Shadowhunter Peril wears a long, badass, black duster. Simple yet elegant, but it got destroyed in a fight with Lilith. However, he easily replaced it.


Western Animation


Other

  • Being that he's a parody of film-noir detectives, obviously Nick Danger from the Firesign Theatre has one.
  • The character Xavier Draven in the Deadly Mistakes role-play wears one.
  • Robert Llewellyn wears a greyish one in Scrapheap Challenge. And looks strangely fit in it.


Real Life

  • Admiral Nelson in his naval uniform.
  • George Early, an American Gentleman Adventurer in the Balkans during World War II. He considered himself a super-spy and always wore a trenchcoat everywhere, presumably to announce himself to the Germans. The OSS was so exasperated that it simply yanked his clearance and used him for the rest of the war as no more then a decoy. Oddly enough, he showed some insight occasionally, once picking up a rumor about the atomic bomb.
  • The statue of Sir Robert Borden at the Parliament of Canada is wearing an overcoat which, combined with his awesome moustache and its location at the edge of a hill overlooking Wellington Street, makes for one badass statue. Picture!
  • Napoleon Bonaparte, when he was on the battlefield.
  • Bulletproof trench coats.
  • Eddie Izzard often wears one with a red silk interior.
  • This was a standard part of the military uniform in most colder countries throughout the 20th century, and still persists in many of them. They aren't called trenchcoats for nothing.
  • Erwin Rommel is well-documented to have worn one in North Africa of all places.
  1. ↑ the face also shoots lasers
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