Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
This trope brought to you by Death playing an electric guitar, on the peak of a mountain with a shard of his own scythe.
But it's tough to really care about questions like, "Why did that happen?" or even "What's going on?" when you're constantly interrupted by "Oh my goodness! Giant robots! Wheeee!"
— Peter Suderman, reviewing the 2007 film adaptation of Transformers
Graydon: And then they're on the roof!
Clifford: Why are they on the roof?
The limit of the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its degree of coolness.
Stated another way, all but the most pedantic of viewers will forgive liberties with reality as long as the result is wicked sweet or awesome. This applies to the audience in general; there will naturally be a different threshold for each individual.
The Rule Of Cool is another principle that seeks to dispel arguments among fans over implausibility in fiction. It has been cited by animation director Steve Loter (of Kim Possible, Clerks The Animated Series, Tarzan, and American Dragon Jake Long) in response to questions from fans attempting to justify temporary breaches in logical consistency. It is a complement to Bellisario's Maxim and the MST 3 K Mantra.
Of scientific laws that this trope circumvents, the third law of motion is probably the most frequently revoked, with the square-cube law probably a close second.
Note that you only get to invoke the Rule of Cool if the end product is, in fact, cool. (If the coolness itself causes the result, then it's Pure Awesomeness.) Note also that different opinions on what is "cool" create the most arguments over this. That being said, the Rule of Cool is very subjective. Failure to properly use this trope can cause collision damage with walls.
You will need to refer to The Utterly And Completely Definitive Guide To Cool.
See also: Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot. Compare Rule Of Funny, Rule Of Fun, Rule Of Scary, Rule Of Drama, Rule Of Romantic. Contrast Viewers Are Morons.
A Sub Trope of Artistic License.
Tropes that exist just because of this rule:
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
Comic Books
- Pretty much the reason for the existence of Requiem: The Vampire.
- The whole premise of Godyssey. The Greek pantheon appears before Jesus on the cross and demands that he stop mocking divinity by renouncing the low and filthy mortals he serves. Jesus responds by removing himself from the cross and beating the shit out of them all. See for yourself here
 , just past halfway down the page.
- This trope explains Rex, The Wonder Dog far better than anything else ever could. I mean, we're talking a dog who kills dinosaurs with atom bombs here.
- The One World Government will take away your guns with ninja dogs!
- The legendary Doom comic features the ultimate gut-tearing, demon-shooting, semi-witty-quipping soldier. His cause is just, his faith is strong, and his gun is very, very large.
- This comic
- Nextwave. If you need to ask why,read the entry.
- Superheroes in general. Superman became Mr. New Powers As The Plot Demands during the forties and fifties because it fulfilled Rule Of Cool for the target demographic. This is also the reason Batman still has the ''T. rex'' and a giant penny in the Batcave even after shifting back to Darker And Edgier.
Film
- Six String Samurai. After the Russians nuke everything, Elvis becomes King of the remains of Lost Vegas. A samurai Buddy Holly battles Slash to claim his throne. "Only one man can kill so many Russians. Bring his guitar to me!"
- Um, CRANK anyone? Also... it has an upcoming sequel...
- The awesomeness can be quantified by the fact that the protagonist dies at the end of the first movie. As the trailer for the sequel points out, "Anyone else would be so dead by now."
- Probably the best example comes near the end of the first film. After Chase is disarmed, he makes a gun out of his finger and thumb, points it at a guy, and goes "Bang." And it kills him. It turns out to be his backup, but for a few seconds everyone watching the movie went "Mind bullets...?! Okay, mind bullets, let's go with that."
- Also Crank 2.
- Crank 2 is made of this. It makes less than no sense, but after seeing it, you grow a set of balls bigger than your head, pick a fight with five burly sea toughs and win, and make a full grown lion piss itself. Its that kind of movie.
- The canonical definition for this is the utterly preposterous premise of The Matrix, in which robots farm humans for power, using a computer generated reality to placate their minds. This ignores both the first and the second laws of thermodynamics, but who cares? Robots, man!
- Hey, Neo draws his sunglasses before he starts to fight Smith. THAT is the Rule Of Cool in action.
- This trope is the sole reason the "Burly Brawl" scene in Reloaded exists. It's ten minutes of Neo fighting endless clones of Smith for no real plot-enhancing reason. It just looks cool.
- Its supposed to show Neo realising that despite being the One, he is not invincible.
- Either that or the Transformers Movie, Revenge of the Fallen even more so. Let's be honest, there is no other reason for these films to exist or for anyone to watch them except that Giant Transforming Robots are inherantly cool. It could be argued that Michael Bay's entire career rests on this trope.
- In the second Austin Powers movie, Basil Exposition turns to the camera and tells the (young, irritable members of the) audience not to get upset about any contradictions in the Time Travel plot of the story.
- Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, concerning such questions as "Why is Darth Maul here?" and "Why would a security system made of impenetrable force fields go on and off periodically?"
- On the topic of Darth Maul, you kind of have to wonder why he didn't make a return appearance in Episode II (remember, it wasn't called Star Wars: Attack of The Clones for nothing). Okay, in reality, everything of significance that happened in the trilogy probably did so because it allowed Darth Sidious to better manipulate Anakin and Obi-Wan but you have to admit, if a lone Darth Maul was cool, then an entire army of Clone Mauls would have given the Rule of Cool itself a case of whiplash.
- The revelation in Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones that R2-D2 had the ability to fly was cheered enthusiastically, even though he never showed this ability in the original trilogy, which chronologically occurred after. One possibility is that the flight system just broke down and never got repaired, which would fit with the deliberately greater Used Future quotient of the original trilogy.
- General Grievous would not exist were it not for this trope. An evil alien cyborg general with four arms who hunts Jedi for sport? Hell yes!
- Clone Wars uses this even more. For example, you once see the same weapon on the Millennium Falcon being carried around by a single ARC trooper, and instead of using four arms, Grievous regularly juggles three lightsabers around between his hands and prehensile feet, making for some of the best fights in Star Wars history.
- And of course, lightsabers, themselves. The single best weapon ever.
- Pretty much anything Quentin Tarantino is involved in, growing more so in proportion to his budget.
- The end of Four Rooms, has the most understated rule of cool bet ever. For a $1000 tip, the bellboy wields the ax in a car-or-pinky-finger bet about whether or not one of the guys can start his lucky Zippo lighter 10 times. Chop, snatch and strut out the door.
- It takes liberal Fridge Logic to see it, but a large proportion of the film version of Stormbreaker is based on this.
- 300. If you're bothered by the fact that Xerxes' army did not, in fact, include cave trolls, ninjas and rhinos, and that Spartans wore armor and had backup, you should recite the MST 3 K Mantra. Either way, the badassery of the movie can be overwhelming to untermenschen.
- Snakes On A Plane. Samuel L. Jackson (amongst others) is trapped in an aircraft, and he's particularly incensed about the eponymous reptiles with acted-upon Oedipal complexes. Memetic Mutation was drawn to this movie like flies to stink, and the rest is history.
- The Martial Arts genre wouldn't exist without this trope.
- In particular, the Wuxia genre absolutely thrives on it. How else can you explain somebody jumping 30 feet in the air, and then jumping off of their sword in midair to gain more altitude?
- And let's not forget the infamous Flying Guillotine, which was made infamous because of these movies. It's basically a nasty little contraption that consists of a basket with blades and a chain. You throw the basket onto somebody's head, pull the chain, the blades go to work, and it's Off With His Head!
- Everything that happens in the film Shoot Em Up.
- For example, Clive Owen having sex with Monica Bellucci while shooting people. The awesomeness cannot be described on paper.
- There is a shootout while skydiving. This isn't a movie, it's a religious experience.
- Flynning looks cooler than real fencing. Just ask Mandy Patinkin and Cary Elwes.
- In the commentary for Serenity, Joss Whedon discusses the scene where the good guys come through the opaque and sensor-killing "ion cloud" followed by an army of Reavers to back them up against the Alliance. Because the cloud kept the Alliance from seeing them coming, it was a perfect cavalry-coming-over-the-hill moment: 'I don't know what an "ion cloud" is, we just made that up. But I would have sold all my knowledge of science to get that scene.' (paraphrased)
- Pretty much all of Hot Fuzz.
- Officer Angel makes filling police forms look intense, action-packed and cool.
- Arguably The Forbidden Kingdom, considering that it had the working title of The J & J Project (the whole point of which was to make the Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan dream fight finally happen on camera).
- The entirety of Doomsday (along with Refuge In Audacity), a film so bad it's ***ING AWESOME. A detachable bionic eye/camera? Rule of Cool. Foam grenades? Rule of Cool. Glasgow!? Rule of Cool. The entire thing is an exercise in attaching balls to walls.
- And that's to say nothing of the medieval combat and Bentley Continental GT.
- Supposedly the director had a dream about an awesome showdown between a medieval knight and a modern soldier, and decided to write a movie around it.
- Don't forget the Scottish cannibal ninja stripper punks! "This is the best worst movie ever!"
- Ultraviolet : Equilibrium's Gun Kata was cool enough, but the film seriously lacked a gravity-switch, clothes and hair that change colors at will, kids in suitcases, literal Hyperspace Arsenal and vampire ninjas. Thankfully, its spiritual sequel corrects that.
- And also a female lead in skin-tight clothes. Movies like that is made of pure win!
- "Warning: Intruder. Weapons: ...Many."
- It looks like Wanted is built entirely on this concept.
- Oh Hell yes. And let's not forget the director's previous films, Night Watch and Day Watch, where things exist for no other reason than because they're cool. Example: Let's drive a car across a building. Why? Why not?
- You get the feeling that when they were thinking of the concept for this movie, someone said "What would happen if you took all the cool stunts from the Matrix, and turned them up to eleven?"
- The Back To The Future films rely heavily on this as well as the Rule Of Funny. One particular example, pointed out by Bob Gale on a DVD Commentary, occurs in the third film. Doc and Marty try to get the DeLorean up to eighty-eight miles per hour by pulling it with horses. Gale pointed out that the Doc would know horses don't run that fast and the Doc even points that out in the scene. However, the filmmakers had to do that shot with the DeLorean being ridden across Monument Valley like a covered wagon because it would look cool.
- The movie Tron. This movie has become a cult movie, heavily enjoyed by geeks and people into computers, even though it's obvious to any such person, or for that matter, anyone above the age of seven, that computer programs are not glowing people running around inside a computer. It's just so much fun that this doesn't matter.
- This notion was the central focus of Underworld, a world where vampires are at literal constant war with werewolves. Naturally, all of naturally know overly powerful martial arts and humans are practically invisible throughout the two films
- The Bourne Trilogy. What else is to be said?
- The jungle swordfight between Mutt and the bad girl in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Realistic? Not in the least. Supremely friggin' awesome? Hell yes.
- The scene in the original Raiders, where Indy shoots the giant, black-draped swordsman in the Cairo marketplace, was originally to have been a complex whip-and-sword duel (which got cut due to a general ailment among the cast and crew that day). In fact, the Rule of Cool applies to pretty much any action sequence in the entire Indiana Jones franchise.
- 6 funny examples how Rule Of Cool can mingle with something and get rabies. "...should be pretty cool. Right?"
- Alfred Hitchcock invoked this trope when he made North By Northwest, answering the question "Why would someone use a crop duster as a murder weapon?" with the understanding that the audience would be too engrossed in watching the next pass to care.
- Almost anything James Bond ever does is in some way governed by this trope.
- The climactic fight scene in the movie version of V For Vendetta. It's a ridiculously overblown Matrix ripoff, especially given that in the comic V just lets Finch shoot him, but still completely awesome.
- Considering that it was directed by the Wachowski brothers, it's not surprising that they ripped off The Matrix. They made that one, after all.
- The Godzilla franchise. Giant robots? Check. Radioactive dinosaurs? Check. Awesome fight scenes? Check and double check. Great music? Check!
- Roger Ebert says in his review of the Iron Man movie that military weapons tend not to look nearly as cool as Iron Man, but also that "It wouldn't be nearly as much fun to see a fight scene between two refrigerators crossed with the leftovers from a boiler room."
- The French film Dobermann, where everything goes up to eleven.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean Period. You got your pirates, your undead, your curses, your sea monsters, your totally impossible swordfights and Captain Jack Sparrow.
- The13th Warrior is loaded with this.
- The Italian Job (original of course). Minis that would normally collapse with that much gold? Jumping across gaps in said cars? Driving on the roof of a building and then off again? Oh, and let's not forget only blowing the bloody doors off!
- Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The guitar case that's really a flame thrower! Johnny Depp with his eyes gouged out, blood flowing down his face, shooting bad guys! Back in Desperado there was a guitar case hiding a HEAVY MASHINE GUN and another with a RAWKET LAWNCHAIR.
- GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which features a Powered Armor Car Chase through Paris, an underwater dog fight, and Snake-Eyes.
- In the "making of" commentary on the DVD, one crew member attributes the mantra (loosely paraphrased) "overdo everything; then make it even bigger" to director Stephen Sommers, and says that they were reminded of this policy daily during the production of the film.
- Postal the movie. From a notoriously bad director, based on a non-politically correct game, starring unknowns and having a ridiculous plot, all of which is redeemed by a constant onslaught of "how in the hell did they get away with this, this is unbelievably cool".
- Speed Racer: every glorious second of it.
- In the Lord Of The Rings films, due to Tolkien's terminology ("wings of shadow") describing the Balrog, nobody on the prodution team was quite sure whether the wings were literal or metaphorical. Peter Jackson later admitted they added the wings just because it looked cool.
- Terminator: Salvation. Sure, the "collector terminator" (the thirty or forty foot tall golem with six arms) looked neat and all, but aside from serving the Rule of Cool (and making a good Boss character for the video games, and possibly something that could be marketed as a neat toy), did it really serve the plot in any way that a dozen other, less over-the-top methods might not have?
- And would you seriously trust a man who was crazy enough to jump into an ocean with twenty or thirty foot swells, and during a virtual typhoon, with the survival of the entire human race? Cool, in a "I'm doing this Because I Can and I'm A Bad Mo-Fo" sort of way, but the sign of a rational leader? Hardly...
- The 2009 Star Trek movie. You have to ask yourself, why on earth would even a certifiably insane Romulan — 130 years after the time of the original series or not — build a mining ship that was as heavily armed and had the appearance — inside and out — of Captain Nero's Narada. I mean, come on, platforms suspended in mid-air, apparently randomly, where one misstep might mean falling tens of hundreds of feet to a terribly messy death? I think not.
- In fairness, I suppose, even in the movie this is subtly referred to at least once when Mr. Scott tells Kirk and Spock that "if there's any sense to the design of that ship" he'll be beaming them somewhere into the mostly deserted launch bay. In the director commentary it's also remarked that "these aren't ordinary romulans. These are some really bad-ass romulans."
- There's also the water filtration system on the Enterprise, which seems a bit extravagant even by early 21st century standards, let alone whatever those two-hundred years in the future might look like (and which brings to mind the engineering conduits on the Original Series, marked "GNDN" [Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing], which existed only as "window dressing").
- And if "red matter" is everything that it's cracked up to be, why would you need to inject it into a planet's core in the first place (one would think that a singularity at sea level, or even a sub-orbital one, would be sufficient to ruin the entire planetary population's day)? Answer: because it gives the writers an excuse to include the retractable orbital energy drill, which is Cool.
- And Sulu's sword. Never mind that you can't really fence with a katana. Never mind that a collapsible sword probably doesn't have much structural integrity. It's just awesome.
- In Jurassic Park, why does the T. Rex show up in the nick of time to save Grant, Ellie and the kids from becoming Raptor chow? Because the T. Rex is awesome and the animators wanted to show it off some more.
- The famous lobby scene in The Matrix. There was no reason for them to be there, except for an awesome shootout.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Early seasons of Xena Warrior Princess really had her pushing the limits of being a Badass Normal. She could fight one-on-one with a Physical God or even against entire armies and win, as well as pull off superhuman feats. A specific example: In one scene, she jumps from a cliff and horizontally spins hundreds of feet onto a passing ship. She could do this because she was Just That Cool. Her blood-quickening theme music sung by the Bulgarian Women's Choir always accompanied such feats. Later seasons had plot-devices and flashbacks explaining various powers.
- The Myth Busters always follow up a "busted" myth with an over-the-top experiment under improbable circumstances, just to see how cool it looks like when it explodes. After all, "we've replicated the circumstances of the myth, now let's replicate the results", and "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing".
- While testing to see if small amounts of dynamite can clean the inside of cement trucks of solidified cement, they ended up filling one up with FBI provided high explosives and blowing it up to smithereens. Why would this be considered important information in the busting the of this myth? The correct answer is: Who even cares?
- They recently topped themselves by creating an even bigger explosion. For comparison, the cement truck vaporization took 800 pounds of explosives. This explosion used 5000 pounds of explosives. It's actually kinda justified, as they were trying to determine if the pressure caused by a massive explosion could create a diamond. It didn't create a diamond, but it was so enormous that it left a crater.
- And while the explosions wheren't nearly as impressive, it still boggles the mind that they made a cannon entirely out of duct tape. Again, a cannon made of duct tape. And the damned thing worked.
- Pretty much the sole reason that the monsters in Tokusatsu shows explode into fireballs upon defeat. (well, that and it's a flashy way to get rid of a monster without more expensive post-editing effects)
- Top Gear follows this. Why race a Bugatti Veyron against an RAF Eurofighter Typhoon? Why attempt to turn a Reliant Robin into a space shuttle? Why do any of the things they do? Because they're cool, dammit!
- What about the Cool Wall? Nothing else matters, not how fast it is, how safe, or how functional. All that matter is how cool it is.
- Nothing in Doctor Who makes any sense at all. Not a single goddamn thing. Not the Really Seven Hundred Years Old regenerating Human Alien who travels around time and space in a police box, not the Technobabble he delivers at a hundred kilometres an hour to justify the latest Reverse Polarity, not the perpetually vague or contradicting continuity, not the Omnicidal Maniac motorised pepper pots armed with a whisk and a toilet plunger, and definitely not the screwdriver that gets New Powers As The Plot Demands. There is also, however, not a single person that cares.
- "What you gonna do, sucker me to death?" Yes!
- And for a specific example, the 2008 Christmas special features a GIGANTIC STEAMPUNK CYBERMECHA. Sure, it was completely ridiculous, but... gigantic steampunk cybermecha!
- Or how about this one: in the climax of "Tooth and Claw", the Tenth Doctor uses a telescope and diamond to fire a beam capable of lifting a werewolf, easily weighing 3-400 lbs, into the air, using only moonlight.
- The Fonz can channel this trope through his fist, into a jukebox, activating it just to impress chicks, with no effort.
- The Fonz was pretty much an avatar of this rule.
- The creators of Rome admitted they ignored the date the real Atia died simply because they loved the character and wanted to keep her on. Most fans agreed.
- Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report uses this trope when he was protecting the identity of a former employee deployed in Afghanistan - "For security reasons I can't show his photo, and for cool reasons I will refer to him as 'Tank Gunbullet'."
- The The Future Is Wild BBC miniseries, a followup to the popular Walking with ___ serieses, focuses on what life might be like millions of years in the future. It's got elements of evolutionary biology, but most of it is rule of cool all over.
- Even the producers of 24 have pointed out that the workings of both the terrorists and the government in the show are hardly realistic. Like anybody cares.
- You could fill a hundred encyclopedias with all the technical and narrative inaccuracies in Star Trek; two dimensional space, clear contradictions in the standard operating procedures of Starfleet, glaringly inefficient ship designs, questionable character development, unrealistic scale of space, unrealistic equipment, convuluted timeline of events, the list is infinite. But....when Trek fires on all
cylinders warp nacelles, NOBODY gives a damn.
- This is not completely true, as the Star Trek writers sometimes write in extra, unnecessary Technobabble explanations for unrealistic technology, most likely due to fan complaints. One example is that the Star Trek transporter technology, which violates Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, has "Heisenberg Compensators", mentioned in Star Trek:TNG episodes "Realm Of Fear" and "Ship In A Bottle", and in Star Trek:DS 9 episode "Past Tense, Part I".
- The Power Rangers episode "Forever Red." There was no reason for half those rangers to be able to morph, but they did, anyway, just because.
Music
- This is the basis of the Lemon Demon song, "The Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny" (which inspired a well-known Flash video), in which Neil Cicierega describes a battle royale started by Godzilla and Batman. As the fight went on, more pop culture icons join in, including Shaquille O'Neal, Abraham Lincoln, Optimus Prime, Jackie Chan, Indiana Jones, the Power Rangers, Chuck Norris, Darth Vader, Superman, Benito Mussolini, and countless others:
The fight raged on for a century,
Many lives were claimed, but eventually
The champion stood, the rest saw their better:
Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater.
- The video for Muse's Knights Of Cydonia features cowboys, androids, birds of prey, seduction, kung fu, rayguns, dirtbikes, execution, Soviet imagery, holographic band members, a unicorn and a half-submerged Statue Of Liberty, and is apparently set in a goldrush town named after the Martian region of Cydonîa. It doesn't make a great deal of sense, But it is still awesome!
- Rule of Cool is really the reason for Muse's existence. It ain't high art, but who cares if you have songs about "superstars sucked into the supermassive", with huge riffs and piano's that would make an appropriate soundtrack to Dante's Inferno. Oh, and the live shows are truly awesomely epic. The Power Of Rock, indeed.
- The video for Shine On Me by Chris Dane Owens. It's every fantasy movie imaginable fed through a wood chipper, spliced with shots of a Legolas lookalike strumming a guitar. And it's epic.
- The reason anyone likes Dragon Force.
- Two words: Captain Dan . More specifically, Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew, a group of rapping pirates with song titles like "Hook it up," and "Keel Haul 'Em."
- Seasick Steve is a folk singer who used to be a hobo. Need I say any more?
- Rush's 2112 is 20 minutes long and the vocals account for less than 10 of them. Does most of the rest of the song have anything to do with the story it tells? For the most part, no, but that's not going to stop it from being awesome.
- Liquid Tension Experiment; when Dream Theater members gave up any semblance of composition and just dazzled everyone with their unbelievable instrumental prowess.
- "Godzilla Eats Las Vegas". Which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- Michael Angelo Batio. Particularly the Double and Quad guitar. Look it up in Youtube.
- Frank Zappa's "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" series and "Black Page Pt. 2"
- GWAR. Just GWAR.
- All Cynic songs, but "Textures" from Focus features a bass solo that would make Jaco Pastorius shit himself.
Professional Wrestling
- It runs on this trope. We really need not say more, but... what the hell.
- Some wrestling moves (especially the more elaborate finishers) fall into this category; the most obvious one is TNA wrestler Petey Williams' "Canadian Destroyer", a flip piledriver that would break the laws of physics if the opponent weren't helping — but it looks incredibly awesome, so it doesn't matter too much.
- Jeff Hardy....I...have nothing else to say...
- Rob Van Dam.
- The effectiveness off every move used in pro wrestling is directly proportionate to how cool it looks. An example is the people's elbow, which could finish anyone off, despite being done from a standing position, as well as The Rock bouncing off the ropes twice for no reason.
Tabletop Games
- This is, in fact, the central rule of the White Wolf tabletop RPG Exalted. Not only do many, many things in the setting exist solely because they're cool, but it's an actual rule — although it doesn't use that name, it's a mechanical manifestation of it in spirit — where giving a cool description to accompany an action grants a bonus to perform it.
- "Stunting", the actual Rule of Cool also makes it into Changeling: The Lost by the same company, in the specific context of Dream Combat, and with some caveats appropriate to that.
- Scion, also by the same company, uses the same "stunting" rule as Exalted.
- The open-source game Wushu also thrives on this, giving you dice for every detail that you hammer down for a given action. And everything you describe happens unless the other players veto it.
- Case in point for the Exalted Rule of Cool outside of the stunt mechanic: chainklaves.
- Ever wanted to play a wise-cracking time-hopping secret warrior maverick cop with a heart of gold from the future with kung fu powers dual wielding his BFG in one hand and a magitek energy rifle in the other trying to stop evil eunuch sorcerers and cyborg gorillas from replacing the entire history of mankind with their own warped version just by capturing a few places that are heavily tied to the chi of the world? Try Feng Shui. The entire game is pretty much built on every Rule Of Cool trope ever. It makes Exalted look like very Serious Business indeed. Based on a card game called Shadowfist.
- The Eberron campaign setting in Dungeons And Dragons. For one thing, there's a magic train that exists for the sole purpose of players fighting on its roof. Then there's the Lost World continent, the modular magic-powered robots known as the Warforged (who are a PC race!), the dinosaur-riding halflings...
- The small RPG company Atomic Sock Monkey Press has a particular obsession with the Rule of Cool. At least one of their games ("Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot") relies entirely upon the principle behind the Rule to exist. Most games from the company incorporate a rule called "Being Badass," where if the player describes something he does in a particularly cool or effective way, the attempt gets a +2 on the dice roll (and in a game that uses only two six-siders, even +2 is a worthwhile bonus).
- The RPG Fireborn from Fantasy Flight Games was built on this trope, featuring as it does reincarnated dragons. Who fight the forces of darkness in near-future London. With kung fu. As the game progresses, they get flashbacks to when they ruled the ancient world as full-size dragons.
- Warhammer 40000. Physics is the Rule Of Cool.
- In GURPS the Rule of Cool is neatly quantified for G Ms wishing to run cinematic campaigns: "The “cinematic” campaign is one where realism doesn’t rule – because if it did, it would constantly get in the way of the story. In a cinematic campaign, swashbuckling heroes can defeat dozens of foes because the story calls for it. Spacecraft whoosh or roar in the silence of space because fast things whoosh and powerful engines roar. Rightness always overrules mere correctness."
- Shadowrun lives off of this trope too. The game has been described thusly: "Say your mission was to get a can of coke from a vending machine. Step four can be 'pull out rocket launcher' and nobody will blink."
- Spirit Of The Century besides having P Cs able to pull off basically anything they've ever seen in a movie (that doesn't involve post 1920s technology, at any rate, and even then its possible for the Man Of Science), fight gorillas on top of a zeppelin, ride dinosaurs, etc., actually asks the GM to stop and think, before declaring any rule, "What happens if the P Cs succeed, and what happens if they fail?" and is expected to come up with a sufficiently interesting answer for both, just to guarantee every roll will have cool enough results either way to be worthwhile.
- The game also encourages things like taking gangsters and making the zombie gangsters, or making their leader a talking gorilla, etc.
- Star Wars Saga Edition has the Second Wind mechanic, Force Points, and Destiny Points, which are practically Rules FOR Cool. The Second Wind ability allows a heavily beaten character to pull himself back on his feet and return to the fight for a short duration. The rare Force Points significantly increase the chances for success in critical situations, while the even rarer Destiny Points can almost guarantee success when it is vital for everything he fought for. (Like having only one single shot left before the Death Star blows all your friends up.)
Video Games
- Luminoth Script in Metroid Prime 2. It's a three-dimensional array of lit and unlit nodes, linked by lines, with the shape and which nodes are lit or unlit apparently conveying the message. This array is impossible to read or write in two dimensions, needlessly complicated, and likely can't actually convey the amount of information it's shown to... but it looks awesome.
- For that matter, almost any technology in any of the Metroid games exists either to be unnecessarily cool or to be unnecessarily complicated, and often both.
- A good deal of the things Dante from Devil May Cry does. If you don't think that Dante's motorbiking up the vertical walls of the Temen-ni-Gru was cool, your definition might be unnecessarily strict. And that's just one of the most famous. In fact, the core basis of the gameplay is beating shit up and making it look goood. Like rocking on a guitar bearing the soul of a lightning succubus for crowd control.
- Oh yeah, and the bike had flamethrower attachments.
- Did we mention that Nero's sword revs like a motorbike? That it revs like a goddamned motorbike?!
- In fact, it's even been theorized that Dante's half-demon background physically forces him to do absolutely everything as awesomely as he possibly can.
- Rule Of Cool explains how Dante still manages to get business, even though the standard response to a call for help seems to be to kick the front door out, shoot randomly at the street, and blow up your own damn shop, if the bonus clip in Devil May Cry 4 is to be believed.
- Fallout 3 can allow your to launch mini-nukes from a handheld launcher capable of hurling a multitude of different kinds projectiles. It gets even better with the experimental MIRV nuke launcher. You don't NEED to fire eight mini-nukes at once, but it looks incredible.
- Just about ALL of Fallout 3 runs on Rule Of Cool, really. That and the intentional Zeerust are the only things that can explain the giant scorpions, the radiation hanging around after 200 years and keeping things a wasteland, and the fact that that many buildings are still there after being nuked then left to rot for over 200 years. And the cars that explode in mushroom clouds.
- Hey, don't forget Liberty Prime. A giant, bipedal robot with Gort's laser eyes and a backpack of miniature nuclear missiles, which it throws like footballs. Which is voiced by Peter 'Optimus Prime' Cullen.
- Is it possible to blow someone's head apart by launching a teddy bear at them? Probably not. When you get the Rock-it Launcher and manage to do just that, will you care about the previous question? No.
- The final battle in Kingdom Hearts 2, where Sora and Riku fight Xemnas, especially the parts when you're floating in space, and you can slice buildings flying at you in half and send them flying back without moving, is so impossible the only explanation is that the laws of physics were breaking. (Though considering what was happening at the end of the game, that's actually not too far-fetched.)
- The opening sequence of the first Kingdom Hearts counts. Yes, it's a tutorial level, but does it really matter when Sora is navigating a black void, walking on stained-glass floors of Disney characters, and it all culminates in a battle against a giant Heartless with a hole in its chest in the shape of a heart symbol?
- A lot of the combination attacks with world-specific partners fall into this area, as do the Drive Forms. Where did Donald and Goofy go? Why does Sora roaring with Beast kill everything? Why does Auron's sword do more damage when he's got Sora attatched to his back? Where did Sora and Mulan get all those fireworks? Better question. Who cares!? It's freaking awesome!
- What do you expect from Square Enix and Disney anyway? I guess they tried to add the awesomeness of Final Fantasy with all the epicness of Disney. And SUCCEEDED TOO WELL!
- Painkiller predominantly operates on Rule of Cool. Why is one of the bosses an impossibly enormous zombie/Frankensteins Monster? Why do your weapons include a divine weed whacker with a laser grapple, a shotgun that can fire freezing blasts, a combined rotary cannon and rocket launcher, and a strange weapon that fires shurikens and arcs of electricity? Why can your character turn into a demon, becoming invincible, killing nearly everything in one hit with blasts of inexplicable force, and slowing down time? Because it's cool.
- This is even more true of the Gaiden Game Painkiller: Overdose. Why is your character a wisecracking angel/demon hybrid who makes pop-culture references his backstory couldn't possibly let him know? Why are your first three weapons a disembodied demon head with dangling spine, a redesign of the aforementioned shotgun as a weapon that fires bone shards and petrifying sludge, and a redesign of the aforementioned weed whacker as a magical puzzle cube? Why is one of your stated opponents at the start of the game the Jerkass angel that ordered Daniel around in the original game? Because it's cool.
- Serious Sam and Serious Sam: Second Encounter. Hordes of enemies rushing at you for no reason in locales so vast, grandeur and glorious that the only real explanation is to look cool and make you feel like the coolest player ever.
- Metal Wolf Chaos was probably created with this rule specifically in mind. It's the only logical explanation for why you're playing as the President of the United States battling a coup by the Vice President in a heavily-armed mech.
- Ragnell in the 10th Fire Emblem is said to be indestructible, but in the ending cutscreen it is shown heavily nicked for no other reason than to look cool.
- Super Smash Bros in its entirety is fuled by nothing but Rule Of Cool and Rule Of Fun. There is no other way to justify scenes such as a crossdressing ninja punching a hole through a fighter jet to fight its anthropomorphic fox pilot or a giant penguin bitchslaping a turtle-dragon.
- Don't forget, following the crossdressing ninja punching a hole through a fighter jet to fight its anthropomorphic fox pilot, both fighters are stopped by being offered tea by a princess. All of the storymode in Brawl is built on 'that would look so cool'.
- Also don't forget that the princess and the fighters to whom she is offering tea are on top of a moving airship that is currently engaged in combat.
- Pretty much everything in Red Alert 2.
- And Red Alert 3, too. Armored paratrooper bears, anyone?
- BioShock. No, they didn't have automated turrets or flying unmanned machinegun robots in the 60s, and the technology to build an entire city on the bottom of the ocean wasn't even feasible in the late 1940s. But that's terribly irrrelevent when one considers that you also have a Magical Hand That Shoots Bees and can set people on fire by snapping your fingers.
- Absolutely everything in God Hand.
- Just to give you an idea, a Meme about the game goes from "These levels look bland" to "HOLY SHIT THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME I'M THE MOTHERFUCKING FIST OF THE NORTH STAR JESUS CHRIST" in three panels. And it doesn't even mention the Luchadore Gorilla.
- God Of War. You play as a large Spartan wearing little but a tunic, wielding blades attached to chains that are sheared into his arms, and you kill monsters 10 times bigger than you in brutal over the top ways. Also, you get to kill a god. Several times.
- Hell, half the stuff Kratos does would seem appalling if they weren't so damn awesome.
- Fighting games in general lean heavily on this one, but the most prominent example in recent memory has to be Yoda and Darth Vader in Soul Calibur 4. There is no other possible explanation, and if the developers try to provide one, they are lying bastards.
- Disgaea .There is an entirely logical explanation as to why your Pettanko brawler can punch her enemies into the sun: it's because it is ridiculously awesome looking.
- And not just that, you can also launch the entire battle map into the sun.
- Ninja Gaiden indulged in this from time to time, but Ninja Gaiden II for 360 positively revels in it. There are zombies with chainsaws and cannons for arms, six-limbed werewolves with giant scythes, flying battleships, ninja special ops forces with rocket launchers, and a boss fight on the Statue of Liberty.
- And then Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 went Beyond The Impossible by making you fight the goddamn Statue of Liberty itself.
- And two-headed robot spider women, can't forget those.
- Army Of Two. I doubt very many Private Military Contractors run around in scary flaming skull masks, chokeslamming terrorists into the pavement, blasting small armies back-to-back, and outblasting the entire Chinese military, but that's quite irrelevant in the face of how much awesome is involved in all of the above.
- Supreme Commander features quite a few units that operate by this trope, including virtually all of the experimentals. The Fatboy, Czar, and Megalith are Military Mashup Machines par excellence, the Galactic Colossus is a textbook example of Awesome But Impractical, the Monkeylord is just kind of the Monkeylord... the list goes on.
- Majora's Mask featured a moon falling to the planet over the course of three days. If it isn't stopped it'll destroy just about everything, even at a speed of five mph, once you beat the game it becomes a rainbow, apparently. Neither of these conclusions are great for the tides and oceans. Looks pretty good though.
- Rocket Knight Adventures lives and breathes this trope. It stars a heavily armored anthropomorphic opossum who flies around with a rocket pack and wields a sword that can generate Razor Wind, it's utterly saturated with Steam Punk Humongous Mecha, Airborne Aircraft Carriers, and Military Mashup Machines, and your enemies do things like deliberately blowing a hole in the side of their own spaceship to try and kill you or following you down through re-entry into the planet's atmosphere.
- The Prince Of Persia went from possible, though infeasible (largely due to human stamina limits) acrobatics in Jordan Mechner's original games, to Ubisoft's complete and utter disregard for the laws of physics relative to human motion. Could a man jumping twelve feet out into space at a sheer stone wall grab an eight-inch, ninety-degree angle stone ledge with anything resembling enough grip to keep himself from falling? Oh, man... roll the dice. One man in a hundred, maybe, could pull that off once, and he probably wouldn't feel his fingers for a week afterward. Try doing it ten times within a minute's span, with your life on the line each time. This is not to mention running along or up walls for anything more than three steps at most. Why does it all work? Because it's cool as hell.
- Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid fame is at times a quiet and profound kind of cool, and at other times an artistically lethal example of the beauty of perfect motion. The cutscenes from Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes almost invariably function on splicing this trope directly with another trope (or several others) for multiplicative results. One Boss Battle and the cutscene following it actually manage to include more than ten tropes that are easily identifiable offhand, wherein Snake takes on Revolver Ocelot in a running firefight to save a tortured hostage tied to a pillar in the middle of the square room, forcing the player to carefully avoid shooting him throughout the fight. Moreover, the entire center square of the room is criss-crossed with tension wires tied to blinking Semtex bombs, meaning the player has to be extra careful not to so much as touch one while still trying to dodge Ocelot's impossible ricocheting shots which can hit you even if you're safely behind cover, or the game will immediately end in failure. And if all that wasn't enough, winning the fight cues the sudden appearance of a stealth ninja cyborg character who announces his entrance by cutting off Ocelot's right hand in mid-aim, then surgically severing the trigger wires in such a way that no one is killed when the bombs all explode. The ninja then attacks Snake, immediately deflecting several bullets with his sword. Snake employs a combination of gunfire, martial arts, and desperate gymnastics to bring about a split-second stalemate with the ninja's sword at his throat and his SOCOM pistol at the ninja's head, point-blank. Now, the ten separate tropes linked here are all present and actively played during this scene, but would you believe there are actually even more in there? This entire game gets a double award for usage of the Rule Of Cool, since not only the events within the narrative clearly qualify, but the writers and directors score likewise for the pure and utter improbability of all of these elements ever playing together so well, and the greatest part (as well as the part which makes it a fit addition to this section) of all? It seriously works. See for yourself here. And here. And here. And, probably most impressively, here.
- A Let's Play series for Persona 3 calls attention to this when it happens to mention who the main character's ultimate Persona is: "Messiah is...well, he's that guy. Yeah. THAT guy. We're going to battle against the incarnation of Death by summoning that guy. I don't think this game could possibly be any more metal."
- Elite Beat Agents. The game's plot revolves around an organization of men in black and Cool Shades who appear to help people out with their problems while dancing to pop songs. Helping a white blood cell fight off a virus just in time for the Olympics to Ashlee Simpson's La La? No problem. Assisting a coffee-addicted taxi driver in driving a pregnant woman to the hospital to the song Sk8er Boi? That's nothing for the EBA. Helping a diver find treasure while YMCA is blaring in the background? Come on; that's not even trying! And then there's the final level.
- And how do you save a down-on-his-luck baseball player? By helping him win his next game? No! Clearly, the solution is to help him save a small boy from a giant lava-spewing rock monster in an amusement park! With baseball!
- Needless to say, EBA's predecessor, Osu Tatakae Ouendan, ran on this trope too - if using Japanese-style male cheerleading to encourage a buddy cop pair to fight back against an invading army of battery-like aliens, or an overworked salaryman to protect his city and his daughter in Ultraman fashion, or the entire planet to blast an oncoming meteor with concentrated willpower isn't Rule Of Cool, I don't know what is.
- Contra 3: The Alien Wars for SNES had one level is almost entirely composed of the player riding on in-flight missiles. By holding onto them from underneath using only one arm. And then jumping from missile to missile. One of the coolest things any fictional action hero has ever done, and one of the most unlikely.
- And the upcoming Contra game for Wiiware attempts to one-up this by having the character ride down the flaming remains of a space station during reentry, and jump from one to the other. While fighting a boss.
- The only possible way to explain Dissidia: Final Fantasy, in which the heroes and villains of the first ten Final Fantasy games all beat the crap out of each other. Not to mention the battle mechanics, where, among other things, if you can hit someone with your giant sword in just they right way... they will apparently explode.
- Final Fantasy in general runs on this trope.
- Agreed. The Summons being particularly good examples. In Final Fantasy VIII there's one particularly extreme case where a giant interstellar entity hurtles your enemies into a galaxy going supernova. Of course, Bahamut's got a long history of destroying things from orbit.
- Bahumut can do that, huh? For example, in "Crisis Core", his signature move, Exaflare, involves the giant dragon surrounding the MOON with crystals, blowing half of it up, and turning it into a GIANT LAZER which is pointed towards the planet, thus taking out a good amount of HP.
- The Gungrave series is built on this. For example, in the original Gungrave video game, if a boss comes close to dying, using a demolition shot as the killing blow causes Grave to activate the "Graveyard Special" (insane Finishing Move), where his coffin launches a super-charged attack (which usually combines two or more his normal demolition shots). While this is not required to kill any boss, the demolition shot is so over the top that it just looks plain awesome. Not to mention your player character is the reanimated corpse of a hitman with Guns Akimbo and a large coffin on his back that shoots rockets and can semi-morph into a machine gun.
- Not to mention almost everything in the game (even your character's style pose) explodes. Why? Just 'cause.
- The makers of Deadly Creatures even said the game was built upon this. "In real life, tarantulas don't go web swinging from area to area. But wouldn't it be cool?" Also, most of the scorpion's finishing moves.
- ALL of Ratchet's guns are powered by this except the most basic ones (sometimes not even them). Let's consider a few:
- The RYNO: a Macross Missile Massacre gun so large Ratchet can barely even lift it. The later versions get even more excessive.
- The Morph-O-Ray and related weapons: stated in the fourth game,
Gladiator Deadlocked, to be based on "Heisenberg uncertainty particles". In Up Your Arsenal, it can turn your opponents into phoenix ducks from hell. With an infinite ammo supply.
- The Glove of Doom and related weapons: At first, it simply summons kamikaze walking robots. Then, things go insane, with a "gold" version that throws robots the same size as Ratchet (with an ammo capacity of 40 robots, released in groups of four), and the higher levels of the Agents of Doom, which produce flying drones with rocket launchers...
- Even the basic rapid-fire weapon in Up Your Arsenal develops Rule Of Cool powers after a while - not only does each shot ricochet an ungodly number of times, they also discharge red lightning when they hit.
- The Karmic Transformers in Okami. Sure, they don't serve any other purpose than making Amaterasu look different, but there's something awesome about seeing a Japanese◊ Spitz◊ beat up enemies and bosses. Oh, and while we're on the rule of cool, how about Waka's flute, which can turn into a glowing sword? Not to mention the fact that it's called 'Pillow Talk'.
- The official roleplay rules for Furcadia involve something called the Rule of COOL, but that has nothing to do with this trope, although our Rule Of Cool probably gets invoked by the players often enough.
- Pretty much any time you become Super Sonic in a Sonic Game. A flying golden hedgehog going well over the speed of sound? Hell yes.
- Prett much how Crazy Taxi works. In real life taxicabs wouldn't be allowed to break every traffic law in existence in an effort to get their customer to their destination as fast as possible. Thanks goodness this isn't real life.
- Diviner Maros in City of Villains. He's a seer who can see an entire section of time at once and spends his time forgetting what week it is and creating time paradoxes. At one point he starts to send you on a mission, only to realize you did that two missions ago and then pauses to remember when he is. And he frequently sends you to places he only knows about because you told him where they were when you got back, or gives you advice based on stuff you told him in the future, because he gave you that advice. How can he do this? Because he's cool.
- Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar.
- Mischief Makers is a game that takes the Rule Of Cool Beyond The Impossible. Sequences in the game include outrunning a tidal wave on a tricycle, riding giant bees, and a stage literally called Missile Surf.
- Prototype's combat is the definition of the Rule Of Cool. Sure, you can punch your enemies to death, but why do that when you can achieve the same result by shoryukening them, punching them thrice in midair, then slamming them into the ground like a rail spike?
- Six words: Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ. Sure, Little Red Riding Hood may not be the definition of cool. We've seen zombies in media a million and a half times. BB Qs are what middle age men do to show off their cooking skills while keeping their testicles intact. But there is nothing uncool about a grown Little Red Riding Hood in skimpy clothing using a flamethrower on the undead.
- All of you lose to the sheer badassery that is Ninja Blade.
- Ninja Blade loses to Scribblenauts. Why make a game where you can make God fight Cthulu? Why make a game where you can travel back in time, ride a dinosaur through the time machine, kill robot zombies with said dinosaur? Because you can.
- Not strictly in a video game, but the Nintendo 64 controller was made with three prongs instead of two because it would look cooler, nevermind the fact that it prevents all of the buttons from being in reach at the same time. Also perhaps trying to 1up the Play Station, released about a year and a half previous, whose controller only had two prongs.
- Shinobi III, Return of the Ninja Master runs on this trope. Ninjas on surfboads? Check. Ninjas on kites? Check. Climbing your way to the top of a cliff on falling rocks while fighting flying ninjas? Hell yes, check.
- Touhou has Marisa, who mentions that spellcards aren't made to be overwhelmingly powerful, but to have beautiful patterns and just look cool in both Silent Sinner in Blue, and her own Grimoire of Marisa. That isn't to say there aren't spell cards that worry more about pure power rather than style, but as a whole, you could sell tickets to an audiance to see a spellcard lightshow if you were so inclined.
- While Naruto isn't exactly a prime example of Rule of Cool, the Narutimate (or Naruto: Ultimate Ninja) series certainly is. Using an Ougi (or Ultimate) triggers a cutscene of your character using his powers with all the almighty coolness you couldn't ever think you would see in a Naruto character. Ougis are absolutely ran by the Rule Of Cool.
- Crimson Skies. All of both the PC and Xbox versions. Everything is powered by the Rule Of Cool.
- Ace Attorney: Court proceedings aren't anything like that in real life, but after you've played a bit, you'll wish they were.
- Team Fortress 2: So it comes time to update the most overpowered and controversial class in the game with a new weapon, what do you give him? Valve gave him a claymore sword that decapitates on killing blows, and a shield that resists fire and explosions, AND makes him run faster than any other class in the game. All of this for seemingly no reason other than the fact that the demoman is Scottish, and it makes a pretty cool Braveheart reference.
- Star Wars: The Force Unleased was a game ENTIRELY BASED on doing things with the Force that were so epic it blew your mind away. Fighting a forty-story tall alien tentacle monster? Throwing Darth Freakin' Vader into the wall? Oh, I know, how about crashing a low-flying STAR DESTROYER into a major city! I don't care if it never happened in the movies or books- I brought down a Star Destroyer with the power of my -mind-.
- And let's not forget the tutorial level. You're freakin' Darth Vader. You just arrived at Kashyyyk and you already know that the sortie is not going well, showing your displeasure to an Imperial Officer. You got word that the Wookies are helping a fugitive Jedi Master hide out in their world and you'll have none of it. So what do you do? You proceed to kick some furry ass and take names as you learn the nuances of using your powers of the Force. Basically, the level is all about mopping the floor with the Wookies either by slicing and dicing, tossing them like ragdolls or Force choking them to death as Darth freaking Vader! You can''t get a better beginning than this in a game.
- A lot of Beatmania's background videos could count as this. Especially GOLDEN CROSS, which makes the Shoji board game crazy awesome.
- In Shadow The Hedgehog, there's a little cutscene showing Shadow doing chaos control quickly, then punching some alines. The cutscene does look pretty cool, and has no effect om the game at al, so the use of chaos control here is justified by this rule (You need a chaos emerald and charge up the chaos control to do it, you cannot do it instantly).
- Also, he uses the samr chaos control on '06. This didn't look cool at all after the haxx00r part of Shadow blasting through the robots, and is thus
a subversion an aversion. But this '06, so yeah.
Webcomics
- Webcomic example: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja positively thrives on this. The inclusion of raptor-riding banditos alone pretty much proves the point here, but if that doesn't convince you, there's also Dracula, who happens to have a moon base. With a moon laser. Where he hangs out with Paul McCartney, the real Micheal Jackson, and Tupac.
- Eventually, you get to this.
- Apparently, KING RADICAL epitomizes the Rule Of Cool. So...radical....
- It gets even better in the most recent issue with this strip and the one directly following it. No other webcomic features a ninja MD flying a private jet into a thunderstorm where he will be attacked by missile volleys and
pterodactyls birdosauruses, which he will subsequently defeat in a single minute so that he may continue on to the apocalyptic Aztec tennis temple to save the world's greatest tennis champion who must play a game of tennis against the avatar of the Aztec god of destruction in order to save the world from imminent doom. The only reason any of the above makes any sense, at all, is because it is so goddamn cool.
- Ent. With. Helicopter. Head.
- Another webcomic example: this strip.
- Sluggy Freelance uses this mixed with Rule Of Funny to make its bizarre and frequently absurd mythology work. Probably reaches its peak during the "Holiday Wars" arc. Bun-Bun, a murderous talking rabbit with the stolen powers of Halloween and the Easter Bunny, leads an army of ghouls in battle against a mutated, alien Santa and his own army of black ops elves. Santa and Bun-Bun have their final showdown where they fight each other at Super Speed using the same ability that lets them deliver presents/hide eggs all over the world in a single day. Eventually Bun-Bun performs a Coup De Grace on Santa using a Nerf gun. Seriously.
- Then he manage to steal the Deus Ex Oveum before he can use it at a least resort because... well he is the Easter Bunny, he hide eggs deal with it.
- In Mixed Myth, this is treated as one of the laws of the universe (under the name of Cynmatics). It causes anything that looks awesome to be inherently more powerful, such as how a gold wand with crystals in it is more powerful than a wooden wand. The Genre Savvy characters often take advantages of this, particularly the elves, who take it a bit too far (sometimes receiving a What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome from other characters).
- Chess Piece by Neo Yi has some sequences that fit this. Seeing Crimson Chin, Doug Quailman and XJ-9 duke it out is certainly awesome. Also, Phantom using blood bending. Awesome Nightmare Fuel!
- This comic brought to you by a man on a shark fighting a Werepire
- (Ahem) In the Name of the Gun. Jesus gets fed up with God's inaction, and comes back to Earth circa 1940. He precedes to kill Nazis. With the help of other celebrities. Like Ernest Hemingway.
- At some point we must all chose between what is right and what is awsome.
- In Order Of The Stick, Rule of Cool seems to be the only explanation for how this is possible.
- In Snowflakes, Wray's logic and knowledge of history, and even her grip on reality, are often come into question. But who cares if Erik the Red never piloted the Enterprise, or whether there are wraiths? It's awesome.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Be Prepared, Scar's songfrom Lion King has the ground lifting up to the moon while Scar and the Hyenas are standing on it to make a menacing tower. Why? Because it's COOL!
- You Fools missed the pyrotechnics of the scene.
- Transformers would probably not exist without this, in just about any incarnation. Several commercials for the 2007 movie were constructed basically of the robots appearing onscreen and onlookers standing around saying "cool."
- Animated takes it to new extremes. For starters, Optimus Prime has a rocket-powered axe.
- Screw that- Prowl is an alien ninja robot. Who turns into a motorcycle. Why would giant alien robots have ninjas, you ask? Because it's cool.
- Much of the Animated Adaptation of Teen Titans is built between the Rule Of Cool and the Rule Of Funny, resulting in quite a bit of varying controversy. Many recurring questions that linger in the fandom are the the identity of Red X, the identity of Slade and the fuel behind his motives, and which of the Robins Robin is. Glen Murakami on the other hand has openly expressed that he couldn't care less about any of these things, so long as the kids liked it and found it cool. In one interview, he uses the word "cool" a good fifteen times to answer just about every other question. Inevitably, the series concluded with more unresolved plotlines than you can count on your hand.
- Isn't the identity of Slade... Slade?
- It's less his name, and more his background, his motives beyond getting an apprentince, and what his real face looks like.
- ...No, his ACTUAL villainous name is Deathstroke, from the original DC Comic. Slade comes from Slade Wilson, Deathstroke's Alter Ego. As Teen Titans is targeted at 'Tweens, the name 'Deathstroke' is a No-No.
- ...Meaning, of course, his identity is...Slade.
- The show's faithful enough to just have those answers be the same as his comic incarnation: namely, experiment guinea pig who uses every part of his brain that the average person does not, that he likes money, and that he's a guy with white hair and an eyepatch. The creative team probably (rightly) assumed that anyone interested would just look up comic Deathstroke and make the connection. And Robin was Dick Grayson, obviously (he hooks up with Starfire and turns into Nightwing and it's still in question? Geez.)
- Parodied in Invader Zim, where the Virtual Ghost of a Martian justifies their embarking on a ridiculous, pointless project that drove their race into extinction with "Because it's cool."
- To be fair, they turned their entire planet into one giant moveable spaceship. That's pretty dang cool!
- Tai Lung of Kung Fu Panda embodies this trope. What else can explain picking a lock with a feather, kicking spears out of mid-air, defying gravity repeatedly, or being able to fight with his fists on fire? A close second would be Tigress and the rest of the Five's fight at the bridge, Shifu's Bullet Time flip of a buster sword, Po's training (and later use of the Wuxi Finger Hold) and kung fu in general.
- The Rambo cartoon, go with it, seems to be loaded with this kind of thing as seen here. Most of the time it's just cringe-worthy how ridiculous it all is, the flawed animation and complete insanity of the idea of basing a cartoon for children on an ultra-violent action hero making it impossible to take seriously. Highlights include Rambo wrestling a panther under water, driving a motorcycle on top of a train and jumping out of a burning aircraft with a rocket launcher and somehow managing to turn around and blow up several missiles headed straight for his ally's helicopter with it.
- The creators of The Batman, the Continuity Reboot to Batman The Animated Series, were looking for a way to set their series apart from the rest. So, they made a spin-off movie entitled, The Batman... versus Dracula. Batman. Versus. Dracula. The epic bat-imagery crossover lets it actually make a twisted kind of sense, despite being a complete derailment of the Batman franchise. And the movie lives up to the concept. Yes, Batman finds a cure for vampirism at the end, and all the citizens of Gotham who were vamps go back to normal. The Penguin becomes The Renfield. Oh, and as if it wasn't cool enough already, the Joker gets turned into a vampire for a while. Vampire Joker. VAMPIRE. JOKER. This isn't Rule Of Cool, this is Rule Of PURE AWESOME.
- In George Shrinks Becky asks George why his ghost catching machine requires bells and horns. His answer: "they're cool!".
- In one episode Kim Possible jumped off a plane, without a parachute. Even while she was falling towards her doom, she didn't panic once, and just by sheer luck was she saved by a blimp. While asked why Kim would do such a deadly stunt, the director answered that it was cool.
- Near the end of the third season of Re Boot, with the system crashing, "User" characters from every game seen prior to the episode suddenly begin appearing in Mainframe. This is explained by the instability of the system releasing "undeleted RAM" — but it seems more like a thinly-veiled excuse for a battle royale between the cast and every User at once. Nobody complained.
- A better example would be the episode with Enzo's birthday party. During the festivities, Big Bad Megabyte crashes the party, and brings out... a guitar? With a dial turned to 11? Megabyte begins jamming, almost painful because of how loud it is. Then Bob steps up to face him, seeming angry at him for crashing the party. Then he commands his keytool to turn into a guitar and thus begins a rocking guitar duel, between the Hero and the Big Bad! The whole thing ends with Megabyte giving Enzo his guitar, "I've always wanted to do that" and then leaving. Sure, it could've been a trap, or just about anything, but those thoughts never crossed ANYONE'S mind, simply because it was just that freaking AWESOME.
- Batman The Brave And The Bold lives on Rule of Cool. As well it should, being inspired by the glorious lunacy of Silver Age DC Comics.
- MEGAS. FREAKING. X. L. R. A badass opening theme song, a badass robot that can turn into a car and is piloted with a video game system, the fact that Coop can pull off amazing and special moves because he played video games all his life, an episode where Coop fantasizes about destroying the DMV, awesomely designed villains (some with their own Ominous Latin Chanting music), and some of the most high-octane giant robot fights to rival any Giant Robot Show Japan has made. In fact, it was so awesome, Cartoon Network couldn't take it, and canceled it.
- It can all be summed up by these two lines, from the episode where Coop enters Megas into a car show:
Coop: Man, there's some tough competition this year.
Jamie: Competition? Dude, you have a giant robot from the future, with a car for a head.
- Tried, but failed, in a Mister T animated series. (If it managed to fail at the Rule Of Cool despite having Mister T as the main character, you know it failed big-time). While a few moments (most notably spinning an alligator over his head) managed it, the punctuating thuds of anvils landing got in the way.
- Sokka has a space sword. A sword made from meterorite. So Yeah
- Swat Kats... pretty much constantly. How did they manage to build an entire serviceable jet fighter from parts in a salvage yard? One better than the official military's jets? After building a secret hangar? And many of their Special Missiles completely violate logic and physics. Not to mention the times their jet ends up crashing into the water with stalled engines and they manage to get the engines restarted underwater and fly away. But who cares? It's RADICAL. And plays to an awesome electric guitar soundtrack.
- Samurai Jack refines this trope to a fine art form.
- An in-story example appears in Toy Story: Almost no-one calls out Buzz Lightyear on his delusion about being a real space hero as opposed to a toy, because he's just that cool. Applies regardless of how many of them may actually believe him, because if they do, it's still because he's so cool.
- The Star Wars The Clone Wars episode The Mandalore Plot featured a villain with a lightsaber. Not just any lightsaber, one with a black blade and shaped like a katana.
Other
- This promo poster from Watchmen. True, he could be lighting the cigar purely from the convection of heat, or off the barrel of the flamethrower, but you do NOT want to taste a cigar that's been lit off a kerosene flame. Just trust me on this one.
- The vast majority of super-powers fall under this.
- This image.◊
- Some of the items sold by such catalogues as Skymall and The Bradford Exchange would never exist were it not for this trope. This editor's personal favorite is the wall-sculpture ''Night Flight''. Depending on your point of view, it's either awesome on top of awesome or actually kind of impressive in terms of sheer ridiculousness.
- This is an explicit rule of design in Magic The Gathering. Pretty much anything can see print if it's cool enough.
- The Rule of Cool most likely explains why people usually portray phoenixes as birds of prey. Granted, herons and ibises (which phoenixes were historically based on) are effective predators in their environments, but they're just not as cool as hawks or eagles.
- Heck, showing phoenixes as birds made of fire when the original myths just said they were regular birds reborn in fire is an example of this trope.
- This was also Denis Leary reacting to his new super-hi-tech stereo system on the Lock And Load album.
"...and the other stuff where you don't even know what it does but it looks fuckin' great! It's reeeeally shinyyy."
- This is the reason the spacesuits that the Mercury astronauts wore were silver. The coating really served no practical purpose. But if you're going to fly into space, why not do it in a shiny suit?
- This piece◊ of Stephen Colbert fanart. The best part? Until his producers nixed it, this was going to be a World Of Warcraft card. It's the little details that make it: notice the microphone and eagle talon in the hilt of the flaming sword. All thats missing is him riding a flaming unicorn/pegasus while wielding a flaming laser chainsaw and fighting Hitler and Osama Bin Laden on a Hydra, who is also on fire, Someone please draw that.
- Someone's working on it, I'm sure. How about a drawing of Colbert as The Incredible Hulk stabbing a bear through the head with the American flag to tide you over?
- The simple act of taking Luke Skywalker's prop lightsaber up on the space shuttle.
- The album cover of Painkiller by Judas Priest definitely qualifies. It has a silver angel riding a motorcycle with buzzsaw blades for wheels, and a chassis that is a dragon. This shiny angel rides his impossible motorcycle through the air over a bunch of skyscrapers slowly sinking into lava. That, is just amazingly cool.
- The only reason for the existence of the Bugatti Veyron (they say it's For Science but I don't believe them).
- Parodied in The Onion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyph_DZa_GQ&feature=channel
- This game. I tried to think of something else to say to describe this, I really did, but the game really cannot be put into words. It's THAT awesome.
- 4chan, particularly in /m/, the section devoted to Humongous Mecha, often generally has any argument about...well, just about anything, really, solved by using this as the defining factor.
- There's an Orbitz commercial where a guy is watering his lawn, and a scientist-type from an earlier spot floats down in a hovercraft. Getting out, he strides over to the guy and removes an envelope from his coat.
Scientist: Hi! You booked a flight and the price went down, so here's an Orbitz Price Assurance check for the difference.
Guy: Thanks! But why didn't you just mail it?
- the toy line from the eighties Dino-Riders, time traveling humans and alien monsters, some with sharks for heads fighting each other while riding on dinosaurs outfitted with space age armour missle launchers and laser cannons
- I assume that the store Brookstone basically exists because of the fascination with this trope.
- Parkour and Freerunning, when performed by professionals.
- This applies to Freerunning, but Parkour is more concerned with efficiency.
- Concorde. An experiment in engineering that was the epitome of cool. Such it was that running in the red didn't matter. It just had to fly.
|
|
