Badass Labcoat - Television Tropes & Idioms

Are you going to argue with that labcoat?

"Oh no! He's wearing a white coat!"

—Scientist, Angry Beavers

The Badass Labcoat is a particular subtrope of Badass Longcoat - namely, a Badass Longcoat that is a white labcoat. An Action Girl in a Badass Labcoat usually doubles as a Hot Scientist. Can be, but is not necessarily, the dress code for the Badass Bookworm and Mad Scientist. The Deadly Doctor might also sport this.

There's just something about a Labcoat that makes almost any character instantly more attractive to female fans. It may have something to do with the combination of a doctor (sensitive healing) along with a genius, rolled together with all the sex appeal of the Badass Longcoat.

The page image already has most of our female editors excited...

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Leeron and Leyette from the Dai Gurren Brigade both qualify for this trope, though Leyette is the one who most often actually wears an actual labcoat or reasonable facsimile.
Rika in Shikabane Hime.
The Doctor in Hellsing
Dr. Saotome from Getter Robo, both the original and Armageddon versions (who is a substantially different character). Is succeeded later on by Heroic Sociopath Hayato Jin (one of the original pilots), who retains his Badassery into his role as a scientist.
Faust VIII in Shaman King.
Professor Tomoe in Sailor Moon.
Dr. Jail Scaglietti of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Say what you will of his morals, you've got to give him props for doing a Barehanded Blade Block on a BFS and staring down Super Mode Fate with a grin even though he knew his defeat was at hand.
Stein of Soul Eater. Crazy badass, but still badass.
- Like everything else to do with Stein, including the man himself, the labcoat is covered in lines of stitches.
Four Star Badass Tenpou from Saiyuki Gaiden exemplifies this trope. Arguably, so does Nii from the main series.
Arguably, Reilly from the Maximum Ride manga.
Tooya of Ayashi No Ceres when he disguised himself as a doctor at Aya's school to keep an eye on her...that is, when he's not out doing what he does best and wearing his usual Badass Longcoat.
Franken Fran.
Rintaro Okabe in Steins;Gate, after he Took a Level in Badass.
For some reason, Subaru can be seen wearing one of these in X/1999. Rule of Sexy, perhaps?
- Or just a white Badass Longcoat
"Sisters" in Witchblade are ladies made via artificial fertilization of hand-picked genetic material, raised in the biotechnological corporation and mostly working on next generations of the same. They have pretty rough combat training and those who show the best results were empowered with Cloneblades.
Dr Fudo aka Yusei's father in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. Also Yusei himself in the epilogue.

Comic Books

Warren Ellis's Doktor Sleepless intentionally invokes this: nobody listens to "real people," so he becomes the cartoony mad scientist character of Doktor Sleepless to draw attention.
Collin from Reality Check.
Both Leo Quintum◊ and Lex Luthor◊ get these in All-Star Superman - it adds to the fan theory that they may be the same person
Runaways: Chase's parents, Victor and Janet Stein are a pair of Mad Scientists who favour this as their dress code.
Spider-Man: the Lizard is usually wearing one of these. However, he's not always smart enough to call himself a scientist. Depends on who's writing.

Commercials

Played with in an ad for a tech company in which "The Rehabilitator", a female Badass Labcoat, comes (melo)dramatically to the rescue with her medical-imaging devices.

Film

The bloodproof surgical gown worn by the Repo Man in Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Live Action TV

Dr. K of Power Rangers RPM. Just watch "Ranger Green", "Ranger Yellow, Pt. 2", "Doctor K", and especially "Ancient History" for proof.
Helen Magnus of Sanctuary.
Dr. Statham of GreenWing at least attempts this. It fails, because nobody likes him.
And leave us not forget Abby the Lab Rat of NCIS. Seriously, ask the last assistant she had to take on.

Tabletop Games

Fabius Bile of Warhammer40000. It's made of human skin.

Video Games

Super Robot Wars gives us Bian Zoldark, Shu Shirakawa, and Lemon Browning. Outside of their Applied Phlebotinum mecha, not so much. In it...well, it was nice knowing you.
Antonio Guster in F-Zero
Mordin Solus in Mass Effect 2 has a futuristic sort of labcoat.
- Liara's outfit in Lair of the Shadow Broker also seems to be inspired by this. She retains it in Mass Effect 3, too.
Otacon's Metal Gear Solid 2 character art shows him as a◊ Badass Labcoat.
Jade Curtiss of Tales of the Abyss when in his doctor's outfit.
Shalua Rui of Dirge of Cerberus, who boasts the gunning skills of any badass longcoat despite having one prosthetic arm and poor depth perception (missing her left eye as well).
The Medic from Team Fortress 2
General Gabriel Marino from Haze. Come on, it's made from 100% cotton!
Bowman Jean from Star Ocean The Second Story
Caulder/Stolos from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin.
- Lash from Advance Wars has a black variant on this.
Luccia from Chrono Cross.
Professor Oak from Pokemon Red And Blue: Pokemon Master, former champion, inventer of the Pokedex, awesome coat.
- Also Rowan.
Final Fantasy VII: Hojo.
Derek Stiles and many others in Trauma Center.

Webcomics

The title character in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. In some early chapters, he even emulates Batman by handling his labcoat like a cape.
Bethany from Afterlife Blues which she drapes over her shoulders great-cloak style.
While he's essentially a lab assitant/ computer terminal, minor robot character Daedalus from Coga Suro 2 both wears a labcoat and arguably qualifies as a badass, remaining totally deadpan when mentioning that the building he's in is neatly crushing itself, or when his arms get cut off.
Mori of The Dragon Doctors
Doctor Sun in Girl Genius with his doctor's advice definitely qualifies. He manages to dominate Ax Crazy Bangladesh Dupree without raising his voice. Later, he demonstrates just how Badass he is by downing a giant clank by hand because its occupant wasn't getting the strict bed rest that he ordered.
- And Agatha herself, starting here.
Officer Preston in the final act of A Miracle of Science.
Dexter (yes, from Dexter's Laboratory) pulls off the Badass Labcoat quite nicely in Bleedman's Power Puff Girls Doujinshi.
Dr. Herville Schtein from String Theory is working his way towards this. He started out on his road to villaindom by sabotaging and (accidentally) blowing up his scientific rival's lab in revenge to his rival stealing Schtein's work, with his rival (and several other people) in it.
In The Zombie Hunters, Charlie, a consummate Bullet Proof Fashion Plate, rocks a basic version. A gag strip lampshaded its impressive Dirt Forcefield, even though he'd recently befouled it in the course of punching a zombie's head in. Team medic Sammie wears a more elaborate lab/trenchcoat accented with black buckled belts on the collar and sleeves that she's worn both in the field and on civilian clinic duty. Hers is especially Badass because she improvised a zombie-killing Epic Flail from a brick and one of its belts.
El Goonish Shive had this style played for laughs with the resident Mad Scientist a couple of times. As sketchbook says, being dramatic is "pretty easy when you have a long lab coat".

Web Original

Doctor Steel. You can basically see how it must be so due to the name: Dr. = Labcoat, Steel = Badass.
''Darwin's Soldiers'' (Version II), ''Darwin's Soldiers'' (Reboot), '''Darwin's Soldiers'' (Version I), ''Darwin's Soldiers II: Survival of the Fittest'' and ''The Spreading Hazard'' have more Badass Bookworms and Badass Labcoats than you can conceive. Oh, they are all SF Furry role plays.
- Dr. Shelton from Darwins Soldiers II is probably the only scientist from any of the R Ps who isn't a Badass Labcoat. And even he has his moments.
- Dr. Kerzach from Darwin's Soldiers II: Survival of the Fittest is also a Non-Action Guy. That is until He kills someone with a letter opener.
Herr Doktor Archeville, Doctor Simian, and Lord Doom from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe.
Doctor Horrible in Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. In the final scenes of Act 3, he exchanges his all white lab coat/trousers/boots ensemble for a blood-red one.
Arguably, Doctor Insano of The Spoony Experiment. When Spoony transforms into Dr. Insano in Kickassia, the labcoat is the first thing that appears.