Gas Mask, Longcoat

The last word in post-apocalyptic haute couture.

A subtrope of Coat, Hat, Mask.

Basically any character that wears a gas mask and, well, a longcoat. Occasionally, there will be a good reason for this, like the character deals with cold weather and/or toxic fumes on a regular basis, but mostly these characters exist because it looks really cool. Trench coats or dusters seem to be the preferred apparel, though other kinds of long coats are acceptable. To make it easier to breathe, some models allow you to hook up a motorized air pump to make sure you get enough air.

Often works as a particularly stylish variant of Hazmat Suit.

Can be one sign of a Post Apocalyptic setting with an unlivable environment (see Post Apocalyptic Gasmask for that). Also common attire for Doom Troops thanks to the dehumanizing and vaguely skeletal/insect-like look of gas masks as well as the implication that Weapons of Mass Destruction are in use by one or more sides. Either way, you are almost certainly living in a Crapsack World if this look is practical or common. See also Putting on the Reich.

Can overlap with Gas Mask Mooks if said mooks also include trenchcoats in their uniforms. Not to be confused with Badass Longcoat, although it can overlap. For a more historical version see Plague Doctor.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• The Vandenreich's Soldat forces from Bleach include a longcoat in their uniform as well as the gas masks that completely hide their faces.
• Shingen Kishitani from Durarara!! wears a gas mask at all times while visiting his son to protect him from Tokyo's air quality, even wearing it while showering (it's all but stated he's a Cloud Cuckoo Lander). He wears a lab coat, much like his son, Shinra, because of his occupation as a medical doctor. His second wife and Shinra's step-mother, also a doctor, wears a lab coat and a gas mask when she visits, but in a form of Goggles Do Nothing, she mostly wears it like a hat rather than a breathing device.

• Kill la Kill: Shiro Iori's overall look, with his uniform length extending far beyond his height. The mask itself becomes exaggerated upon activating his Goku Uniform.
• Shakugan no Shana: Haborym's choice of attire is two gas masks (for his two heads) and a long black cloak.

Comic Books

• Batman villain the Ratcatcher. Given he lives in Gotham's Absurdly-Spacious Sewers, this combo makes sense, but it also gives him a very creepy look.
• Major Maxim, hulking Nazi Super-Soldier and main antagonist from the Danger Girl series, wears a similar getup to Kroenen.
• Vlad from Hack/Slash. The gas mask helps his breathing. The coat is to hide he looks like a humanoid lizard.
• Dr. Kroenen from Hellboy. He is seen wearing a long coat as part of his Nazi uniform once or twice but eventually trades it in for a significantly less awesome apron.
• Knights of the Dinner Table: Newt wears this outfit when playing his character Corporal Punishment in Heroes of Hackleague.
• The Sandman, Wesley Dodds, from Sandman Mystery Theatre. He also has a hat. Probably the Ur-Example in fiction, since he's been sporting the look since 1939. Justified in that he has a gun that fires Knockout Gas and unlike other Coat, Hat, Mask characters with similar weapons, has thought through what happens if he enters the cloud himself.
  • Neil Gaiman's Sandman both homages Dodd's look and is retconned as inspiring him — though in his case, the "gas mask" is actually the skull and spinal column of a dead god.
• Partially invoked during the first few arcs of Y: The Last Man: Yorick disguises himself with a gas mask and poncho since his main aim is to disguise his male figure and features, rather than look intimidating or cool.

Fan Works

• Yognapped main antagonist Sben dresses this way to intimidate people. And because he's horribly mangled to the point of being unidentifiable as human.

Films — Animation

• The mooks from Atlantis: The Lost Empire wear greatcoats as part of their uniform and gas masks during the underground expedition, which is rather prudent since the risk of poison gas pockets would be very real and the climax takes place in an erupting volcano.
• The Assassin, the main character of Mad God dresses this way. This is one of the clues that the story is set After the End, but really, it's hard to tell what's going on.

Films — Live-Action

• Bane in The Dark Knight Rises wears a variant◊.
• Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) is introduced in this outfit when exploring a toxic planet, and since the mask is a Collapsible Helmet, he's seen in it a few more times throughout the film.
• Kroenen from Hellboy (2004) is dressed in a Nazi uniform, with a black coat and black cap, and a metallic gas mask.
• Resident Evil: Retribution. Umbrella Corporation soldiers, so they can look cool while Fast-Roping out the back of a tiltrotor gunship.
• Restoration features the main character, a Restoration-era doctor, venturing out to tend to plague victims in a plague mask and long coat. The film won an Oscar for best costume design.
• The Tatooine-informant alien in Star Wars: A New Hope who ratted out Kenobi and Skywalker to the Stormtroopers in Mos Eisley; he was an alien who looked like he had a gas mask, but he definitely had a long coat.
  • For that matter, Darth Vader could serve as an especially stylized example.
  • Zuckuss, one of the bounty hunters who cameos in The Empire Strikes Back, wears a gas mask because oxygen is poisonous to his alien species, and a longcoat because that's apparently a common fashion among bounty hunters of all species.
• The Suicide Squad: Cleo Cazo/Ratcatcher 2 wears a gas mask and a coat as part of her outfit.
• Trench 11: The German soldiers sent in to clear the facility are first seen wearing this combo. Justified by the World War I setting, where Deadly Gas was present and soldiers were commonly issued trench coats.

Literature

• Orson Gregory in The Dreamside Road is rarely found without his armored coat and often covers his face with an oxygen-filtering bandana.
• In Infinite Dendrogram Ray Starling, a paladin of the light, wears a black, light-absorbent coat that does not move in the wind and a gas mask. One of his main attacks involves using his wrist bracer that sprays poison gas to thin the ranks of his enemies. His partner, Nemesis, says that he looks villainous and more like the Hell General than the actual Hell General.

Live-Action TV

• Angel. The episode "War Zone" had vampires using these to attack a group of Vampire Hunters in daylight, after first flushing them out with smoke grenades.
• Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor in "The Poison Sky". He usually wears a Badass Longcoat and wore a gas mask because of the toxic gas being released from the cars.
• The Masked Singer has the Deer, which is basically this trope with antlers on. The fact that he sings like a country blues veteran doesn't quite diminish how nightmarish he really looks.

Music

• The music video for The Sword's Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians features a group of survivors sporting a variety of coats, coat-like rags, robes, and protective masks trekking across an atomic wasteland. Their leader gets bonus points for having a staff to go with his hooded robe, blurring the line between this and Robe and Wizard Hat.
• In Phase 3 of the Gorillaz, the Boogieman had this appearance, complete with red eye holes for his mask.

Tabletop Games

• Imperial trench infantry in Mutant Chronicles, complete with Brodie helmets.
• Standard uniform (along with a Brodie helmet) of the Deathwatch in Unhallowed Metropolis, it's also - along with a tophat - the signature look of the Undertaker class, though many other individuals sport a similar look given future London's pollution problems.
• The Death Korps of Krieg from Warhammer 40k are an entire army of this. The Armageddon Steel Legion use this trope as well.
  • Both are based on real-world militaries from the same nation but of different eras. The Death Korps is intended to resemble World War 1 German infantry, whereas the Steel Legion bears more of a resemblance to the later Wehrmacht uniforms. Interesting fact: the original Death Korps models were just Steel Legionaires painted with skulls on their masks. Now only the Grenadiers and Quartermasters wear skulls.

Video Games

• The Corroder from Clock Tower 3 wears a gas mask and a long brown stained apron that greatly resembles a coat. Justified in that his weapon of choice is a gun that shoots acid.

• The Fallout series contain a number of examples - generally of the at least quasi-heroic variety.
  • Tycho from Fallout wears the ensemble as part of his uniform as a Desert Ranger. Due to the graphical limitations of the time his in-game representation is simply one of the handful of standard NPC sprites, but the outfit is described in his flavour text.
  • Fallout: New Vegas includes a suit of Desert Ranger armour in its Honest Hearts DLC, which has evidently changed hands a number of times and has been decorated by its successive owners.
  • By the time the story of New Vegas takes place, the Desert Rangers have been amalgamated into the New California Republic, and their iconic trenchcoat worn over Pre-War riot armor has become the uniform of the NCR Veteran Rangers. Depicted in the page image above, contrary to the ominous look, they're the elite force of one of the more or less good factions, spreading democracy at gunpoint.
  • The Lonesome Road DLC introduces Riot Gear, several heavy-duty versions of the outfit adapted for riot control purposes.
    Random Chairman: "Hey baby, you dig these new troopers? The hot fashion is killer robot chic!
  • Also, Ulysses wears a coat with the Old World flag on his back as well as a breathing mask due to the radiation and dust storms of The Divide.
  • Fallout 1st subscribers for Fallout 76 get the ranger armor outfit, a suit very similar to the NCR Ranger and Desert Ranger combat armor which was used by the Charleston Police Department before the Great War as riot gear.
• The original design for the Half-Life 2 Combine Mooks featured the civil protection with gas masks and longcoats. The longcoats were cut, gas masks were not.
• The First Sons from inFAMOUS. Also crosses over with Gas Mask Mooks.
• Psycho Mantis is this in his first scene in Metal Gear Solid, where all the FOXHOUND members wear coats. He ditches the coat and keeps the gas mask shortly afterward, though.
• He lacked the coat initially, but Kabal from Mortal Kombat 3 gained a sleeveless one in Deception and Armageddon.
• Popular summer wear in Chernobyl in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. However, because the longcoat is the worst armour in the game, don't expect to combine this with Badass Longcoat, except the badass part means looking for a tougher challenge.
• One of the possible outfits in Brink, as well as various other Gas Mask Mook looks.
• Practically a requirement for characters in Metro 2033.
• E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy: standard-issue uniform for all Federal Cops
• Venom troopers in Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
• The Nazi Storm Elites and the Waffen Storm Leaders in the final mission of Medal of Honor: Airborne.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has the Renaissance period version of it, the Plague Doctor.
• The Bogeyman in Silent Hill: Downpour is an Invincible Villain who Invokes the look as a personification of the dehumanizing nature of revenge, a figure to be feared and hated when he's stomping toward you to crush your skull in with a hammer made of concrete and iron rebar. When Murphy does manage to knock him down the mask flashes on and off to reveal the face of either Napier (the man responsible for defiling and murdering Murphy's son) or Murphy himself. Murphy himself, as well as the player, also plays the role of the Bogeyman in the final boss fight against Anne Marie Cunningham, the prison officer who blames Murphy for the beating and eventual death of her father Frank Coleridge, also a prison cop, and had become the object of revenge in her own story.
• This is how Zero appears to Junpei when he is kidnapped in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors.
• The Whalers in Dishonored have this aesthetic, but what's kind of funny to note is that despite how the look nicely complements their identity as a band of deadly assassins, it actually has a pretty mundane origin: it's protective gear worn in whale oil processing plants, hence the name "Whalers".
• This is the public face of the East Coast Killer in Still Life 2.
• This is the uniform of the European Alliance Stormtroopers in March of War.
• Certain Bounty Hunter headwear in Star Wars: The Old Republic look a lot like gas masks, and a lot of the potential wardrobe includes longcoats, so...
• The Hunter Set in Remnant: From the Ashes consists of a hooded longcoat and a gas mask.
• The "War of the Chosen" expansion to XCOM 2 introduces the Reapers faction, whose units sport this look.
• Code Vein: Gas masks and longcoats are among the most common choice of wear for many characters. The masks are necessary to protect against the Miasma which transforms revenants into Lost, while most Blood Veils have some sort of coat or cloak involved.
• Some cosmetics such as the Hot Case in Team Fortress 2 allow the Pyro, who wears a gas mask by default, to wear a longcoat.

Visual Novels

• Clear from DRAMAtical Murder sports a gas mask and a long white coat for no apparent reason. He never removes his gas mask, even while eating. It's revealed later in the game that he wears the gas mask because his grandfather told him he must never show his face to anyone, probably because he is actually a robot whose face is identical to that of other robots. When he finally takes it off, it's a significant moment and goes towards establishing his humanity. He wears the long coat because it was his grandfather's.
• Zero from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors uses the look. It serves to hide their identity by hiding their voice and concealing their face and protecting them from the knockout gas they use to kidnap the main characters.

Webcomics

• The Captain from Romantically Apocalyptic.
• The Gas Mask Mooks (i.e, every single character) in Gone with the Blastwave. This is their army's answer to (apparently) the entire world now being an irradiated wasteland.
• If you count a nun's habit as a coat, then the satanistic Little Sisters of Belial from Scary Go Round do fit this trope.
• The Fan has Captain Nil, though it's technically a cape he's wearing.
• Remus introduces Williams wearing a gas mask and longcoat. He later drops the gas mask and replaces it with a more generic black balaclava.
• In The Wretched Ones, John plays as his friends' medic in a video game, his avatar having a gas mask and long coat.

Web Original

• A-GENT 88 wears this, mostly to help protect people from his ability.
• In Fallout: Nuka Break, we meet an NCR Ranger at the end of Episode 6 wearing the armor seen at the top of this page. Turns out he isn't even a Ranger at all. He just beat up a Ranger and stole his armor, which makes him even more badass.

Real Life

• Many soldiers, particularly German ones, in World War I. Most likely the Trope Maker.^note They weren't called trench coats for nothing as they protected the skin against blister agents.
• More primitive versions can be found in the Plague Doctor (Wikipedia articles on the profession and the costume), who were employed during The Black Death. The plague doctor's mask possessed glass eyepieces, and the nose was filled with herbs to ward away 'bad air', which was one of the believed causes of the plague at the time. The doctor then wore long thick outer garments to protect them from their surroundings and carried a cane to interact with things without directly touching them (think that claw thingy the trashman carries). Although there was very little the doctors could actually do for their patients besides taking note of the infected, offer hydration and rest, and instigating quarantines; they were paid relatively handsomely for the risk involved in their jobs. The adopted cleaning of the suits with smoke and use of wax unwittingly offered some degree of protection against the disease carrying fleas that transmitted the plague, whereas medical practice at the time thought foul smells carried the plague.
• The Loyon, an unidentified person spotted wandering in a Swiss forest, regularly seen for a decade. He wears a gas mask and sometimes a long camouflaged coat. Although the previous link can look like a hoax (it is actually quite exaggerated), the Loyon (gender unknown) really exists (look here for an article - in French - from an actual Swiss newspaper).
• OZK, Russian issue military hazmat kit, can actually be worn as a kind of oilcloth longcoat,◊ if the circumstances don't require the full-body protection.

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