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"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!'"
"So what if the construction of the pyramids didn't really overlap with the existence of the woolly mammoth? Can you honestly say you don't want to see a herd of crazed mammoths stampeding down the ramps of a pyramid in progress?"
"As for the guns, I could mention the hugely satisfying penis-extension gun that pins baddies to walls with entire trees but all you really need to know is that there's a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I wish I could make something like that up. It shoots shurikens and lightning ; it could only be more awesome if it had tits and was on fire."
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 so long as the result is wicked sweet and/or awesome. This applies to the audience in general, as there will naturally be a different threshold for each individual in the group.
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 square-cube law is probably the most frequently avoided, with the third law of motion probably a close second.
Note that you only get to invoke the Rule of Cool if the end product is, in fact, cool. Note also that different opinions on what is "cool" create the most arguments over this.
See also Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot. Compare Rule Of Funny and Rule Of Fun.
Tropes that exist just because of the Rule Of Cool:
Examples:
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!
- 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." I Am Not Making This Up .
Comics
- 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.
Film
- 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!
- Note that the biggest problem most fans have with the second and third movies revolves around this: They just weren't cool enough.
- Also, the whole "humans as a power source" is really a case of Executive Meddling, as the humans were originally scripted to have their nervous systems used to form a giant computer, but was changed as this was somehow seen as too hard to understand.
- For at least this troper, the coolest thing about The Matrix wasn't "Robots, man!" - even though the human-farms were awesome - but the idea (just slightly similar to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) that having found the real nature of the world, the characters weren't bound by the laws of physics and can dodge bullets, bound off buildings and stop time. That was seriously cool.
- 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?"
- 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 Millenium 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 prehensilbe feet making for some of the best fights in Star Wars history.
- And of course, lightsabers. The single best weapon ever. I mean, they're basically plasma chainsaws, for fuck's sake.
- Pretty much anything Quentin Tarantino is involved in, growing more so in proportion to his budget.
- It takes liberal Fridge Logic to see it, but a large proportion of the film version of Stormbreaker is based on this.
- The movie 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.
- 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.
- 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; this troper has yet to see that fight being reviewed negatively).
- 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.
- 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.
Live Action TV
Animation
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann can be best described as the Rule Of Cool Incarnate. Everything the characters or mechs do, and even the laws of physics themselves, are subject to Rule Of Cool. The fight scenes especially make absolutely no logical sense whatsoever, but it really doesn't matter because they're so awesome. Simon and Viral once actually kill enemies by the sheer awesome they radiate, for God's sake!!! (Note: This is not an exaggeration.)
- This troper found the end of the series rather formulaic once it passed a certain point. Robots the size of small cities duking it out - cool as long as the sheer scope is taken into account. Robots the size of galaxies shown fighting the same way they would if they were ANY OTHER SIZE - kinda boring the 17th time around.
- 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."
- Just how did mercurion work in Soukou No Strain? What is it? All we know is it's green. And why was the special ship pink, and what was with the big arm... Well, it looked cool.
- In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the fight sequences (long enough that you can consider the other scenes "non-fight sequences") consist entirely of "cool", and little to no realism.
- 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.
- Lampshaded by Kazuki and actually the motivating reason behind many of Captain Bravo's odd mannerisms in Busou Renkin. "Because it looks cool that way!"
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam relies on this moreso than usual to set itself apart from the rest of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. Among the concepts that walk the infamous thin line between "clever" and "stupid" are a German ninja, a giant robot mummy, and a martial arts master who takes off his sash and uses it to slash an enemy robot in half. The fact that the main character's special technique is called "Shining Finger" is also helped a great deal by this rule.
- 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."
- One word: Gao Gai Gar. What else can you say about a series where a cyborg combines with an alien robot lion, a bullet train, a drill car, and a stealth fighter to form a Humonguous Robot that uses a Hyperspace Mallet capable of turning whatever it strikes into light particles? And of course, the series features a rather famous Memetic Mutation to explain it all: "With courage, 1% becomes 100%!"
- 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.
- Subverted in Metal Fighter Miku. Early in the series, the team's mentor asks the girls to explain the purpose of the robot-like metal suits used in their wrestling league. After one team member gives a detailed explanation of the various computer systems and sensors built into the outfits, he dismisses it all with a simple "Because it looks cool!" In the end, it is revealed that his overarching goal has been to convince everyone to do away with all the pseudo-futuristic glitz and return the sport to the muscle-and-technique competition that wrestling is supposed to be.
- Black Lagoon -- where do we start? A cast consisting entirely of badasses, rounded out by a anti-heroine who is able to backflip seven feet into the air, shoot three people dead mid-jump and has the vision range of a chameleon? A torpedo boat performing a joust against a gunship -- and winning by using a boat-wreck as a ramp and torpedoing it mid-air? A one-eyed seventy year old nun who runs a gun-smuggling 'church of violence' and whose weapon of choice is a golden desert eagle she fires one handed? An invincible terminator maid with a shotgun umbrella?
- Fist Of The North Star, if examined with a critical eye, would collapse under the weight of its Fridge Logic... if not for how it essentially created the Rule Of Cool-based Shonen series. It's hard to complain about the implausbility of the premise when you're trying to retrieve your jaw following the fight scenes.
- Karas is the Sentai series that Power Rangers wishes it could be; it runs on Rule Of Cool. How else can you explain the ludicrously overpowered kick-arse hero who can transform into a jet and a car to combat the rise of blood-drinking Conspicuous CG cyborg demons?
- 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.
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. It's 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- 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 it's 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 it's anthropomorphic fox pilot before we get to a fight 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'.
- 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. Just ... God Of War.
- 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 Caliber 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.
- Ninja Gaiden indulged in this from time to time, but Ninja Gaiden II for 360 positively dabbles in this. There are zombies with chainsaws and cannons for arms, six-limbed werewolves and a boss fight on the Statue of Liberty.
- 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.
- Actually, Supreme Commander does a decent job making their big guns not being only per Rule Of Cool. The Galactic Colossus at least doesn't battle melee like all homumgus mechas out there, he seems to be more of a moving platform for an energy source big enough to power it's death rays, and being tall enough to have a high point of origin for it. Also, the Fatboy is a shielded front-line factory with mounted artillery for protection. Considering the level of technology in the game, these would be interesting uses for the energy/mass dynamic of their logistics.
Tabletop RP Gs
- 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.
- 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. Despite straying firmly into I Am Not Making This Up territory, this editor can't help but like it.
- Warhammer 40000. Physics is the Rule Of Cool.
Literature
- Beowulf. He is the Rule Of Cool personified. He can hold his breath for several days, rip off the arms of giants, and generally make a nuisance of himself to anyone that isn't awesome enough to hang out with him. The Oldest Ones In The Book and all that.
- On that note, mythological gods and heroes in general, from every culture in the world. That's the whole point of most of them. Hercules, Gilgamesh, the entire cast of The Romance Of Three Kingdoms...all fuelled by Ruleof Cool.
- A more American Oldest One in the Book is when Tom Sawyer in The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn decides that freeing Jim from the plantation simply getting the key and letting him out of his cell isn't romantic enough and wants to make an elaborate plan with Rope Ladders, a journal made of leaves, and food poisoned with sleep medicine, just like in the books.
- This seems to be the entire nature of witchcraft in the discworld series. A witch is simply someone Genre Savvy enough to take advantage of this.
- Snow Crash. A Mafia-controlled pizza delivery company, chaingun battles with aircraft carriers, ninja skateboard couriers, and intersections being shut down by sniper fire from rival road construction companies are just the beginning. Eventually you get to the part with the supersonic attack dogs and the man who drives around with a nuclear torpedo in his motorcycle's sidecar.
- Author Christopher Moore lampshades his use of this in the afterword to Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. At one point in the story Jesus goes to China and studies both Buddhism and martial arts at a Shaolinesque temple. Moore admits the temples wouldn't have been around at the time, but then says something along the lines of "But this brought me up against an important question: what if Jesus knew kung fu? Obviously I had to put it in".
New Media
- Master Chief vs. Samus vs. the Covenant, with massive carnage, lightsabers, breakdancing, a Sphere Of Destruction, and two instances of Samus Is A Girl with a bit of Les Yay.
- 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.
- Another webcomic example: this strip.
Misc.
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