Cape Swish

Not enough Dramatic Wind to blow your cape around in a satisfactory manner? Make your own! The easiest way is to turn around quickly, causing your cape to billow out behind. You might also want to hold it out with one hand as you swoop for maximum surface area, but a true master of the technique can achieve awesome cape flaring with a minimum of movement. Running forward or other sudden movements can also make a cape flare, but is less dignified.

This is a favorite move of any character that wears a cape, especially the Dastardly Whiplash. However, any character with a cape can pull it off. It can also be done with a cloak, robe, coat, or any similar long garment, or even with Rapunzel Hair.

Compare Badass Cape, Ominous Opera Cape.

Examples of Cape Swish include:

Anime and Manga

• Piccolo of Dragonball Z is quite good at this, though notably does it less often after his Heel Face Turn.
• The Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann does this, as do all the characters who sport capes, especially Simon and Kamina.
• Zero from Code Geass adores this trope. Every one of his incredibly dramatic public addresses is punctuated by a well-timed Cape Swish.
• Tuxedo Mask of Sailor Moon is fond of this. Kunzite was also known to do it.

Comics

• A staple of Batman, whose Cape Swish is actually weaponized. The cape contains weights, the better to smack Mooks upside the head with.
• In Asterix and the Big Fight, the rival village chieftain tells Vitalstatistix he turns his back on the to-be-defeated chief, which he does with a Cape Swish. Unfortunately his Shield Bearers think this also applies to them, so he ends up facing them again.
• A staple of The Shadow, who, in the original Pulp Magazine stories, used his cape to deflect bullets (the ability to cloud men's minds came later, with the radio adaptation).
• Doctor Strange's Cloak of Levitation, helpfully, grants flight powers and has some (very vaguely defined) sentience. It can billow around on its own, and often does.

Film

• A staple also of Maleficent, and probably picked up from her by Jenner.
  • The Wicked Queen in Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs manages a particularly impressive one when rushing down from the Mirror Room to her secret spell-chamber.
• Prince Proteus from Dreamworks' Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas makes a dignified attempt at one, but the wind blows it back at him and it just ends up looking silly.
• M. Bison does this EVERY SCENE in the Street Fighter movie. Seriously, every scene, at least once. Given how massive of a Large Ham he is, it's hilarious.
• Gerard Butler's Phantom does this a lot, most notably in "Point Of No Return."
  • Because it's at the beginning of the 'Music of the Night' scene, one could have an infinite loop of cape swishing.
• Vincent Valentine has a habit of doing this in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
• Mother Gothel is a master of this trope. She normally manages to use it to vanish, which is one of the hints she's a witch.

Theatre

• Graf von Krolock in Tanz der Vampire does this a lot, not least because the design of his cape actually forces the actor playing him to swoosh it back just to gesture- and being a musical, there's a lot of gesturing.
• Similarly, the cloak worn by the title character in The Phantom of the Opera is designed to drape over and move with his arms, ensuring plenty of appropriately melodramatic cape swishing.

Literature

• The Star Wars Expanded Universe mentions more than once that Darth Vader's cape streams behind him when he walks. In Death Star a gunner's hand is brushed by the edge of it as Vader passes. In Allegiance, Mara Jade can identify him from a distance because of that cape.
• Severus Snape from Harry Potter is known for this, particularly when entering his classroom. It fits with his "evil bat of the dungeons" persona.
• Bumbling magician Schmendrick in The Last Unicorn wants Dramatic Wind but has to settle for this instead.
• Hrathen does this in Elantris. When Sarene first sees him, she hopes he'll trip on it.

Live Action TV

• Bruce Campbell in Jack of All Trades. Pretty much every scene where he's in his Daring Dragoon persona.
• The Master, principally when played by Anthony Ainley, on Doctor Who.
• Angel does this in the Angel Investigations commercial Cordelia describes in a first season episode.
• Alan Statham from Green Wing attempts to do this with his lab coat, and spends a great deal of time walking back and forth and turning sharply in order to achieve this. It doesn't manage to make him any cooler.

Theater

• In Wicked, the musical, the choreography of "No Good Deed" ends with Elphaba swishing her cape with dramatic lighting to accompany the powerful, bitter music. It's badass.

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Asylum: Um, it's BATMAN!
• Nu-13's heavy attacks involve swishing her Cape Wings made of swords at her foe.
• Mask de Smith does this whenever you use the 180 turn button while running
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has a very fluid movement animation for Alucard, cape and all.
• Golbez does this with pretty much every appearance he makes in the FFIV DS remake and, in the Dissidia games, his block animation is basically a dramatic cape swish.
• Meta Knight does this a lot with his cape. Especially in Brawl.
• Lord Malak pulls this off in Knights of the Old Republic when torturing Bastila.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, when Ganondorf finally turns to face you in his tower, he does one of these.
• Valvatorez of Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten is fond of this gesture, especially right before a Rousing Speech (that is more often than not about how amazing sardines are.)
• Queen Odette teleports by swishing her Pimped-Out Dress.

Web Comics

• The Head Alien, in those moments he chooses to be genuinely menacing.

Western Animation

• Mojo Jojo. It's one of the things he does best.
• Disney's Darkwing Duck is another chronic cape-swisher (probably in reference to The Shadow.
• Witness also Jenner's swish in the rats' council hall in Secret of NIMH.
• Exaggerated Trope in The Legend of Korra, with Tenzin, whose naturally theatric movements as a tall man with an expansive Badass Cape are intensified by his near-reflexive Airbending when peeved. He does indeed "make his own" Dramatic Wind.