Discussion Main / TrenchCoatBrigade

How is this not the exact same thing as Hardboiled Detective or Occult Detective? I don't see the point of this trope at all.

Can someone WTF this trope is meant to be? I understand the need to be 'hilarious' with self-demonstrating articles, but come on.

Pulled the following for a) not actually being an Occult Detective, b) not fitting the John Constantine mould that's the point of the trope or c) both.

• Samuel Burke from Spawn. Although overweight, the guy sees everything in the shades of grey. He smokes from time to time and when he taggles along with Spawn in his adventures, he becomes an Occult Detective.
• Lt. Kellaway from The Mask qualifies. He wears a trench coat and smokes, even having a cynical yet-by-the-book look in his cases, and as he chases down the reality-warping maniac Big Head.
• Harvey Bullock from the Batman mythos. This fat trenchcoat, cigar smoking, and donut eating cop is morally ambiguous in his cases. Lampshaded much in Gotham Central, which has the "freak beat"; the cops in that section deal with Batman's superpowered rogues gallery.

• Fitz Kreiner, from the Eighth Doctor Adventures. Being Genre Savvy, he seems to know it, too. He smokes, wears a leather coat most of the time and a trench coat some of the time, swears more than basically anyone he knows, has Perma-Stubble (because he's bad at shaving), and is a lower-middle-class Londoner and a Guile Sidekick. He's also basically quite sweet and sensitive, but most characters, upon first meeting him, distrust him. Like all of the Doctor's compainions, he's given a Weirdness Magnet, to make sure when he wanders off, he discovers the nearest source of alien influence.

• Some incarnations of the Doctor in Doctor Who, specifically the ones who are cold and snarky bastards.
• Agent Mulder and Agent Scully , FBI

• The not so badass, not so witty, and bumbling idiot Dick Gumshoe from the Ace Attorney series. The only thing he had was the similar shoes, similar cigars, and similar attitude.

Removed questionable film, literature, video game and web examples with too little context:

Film

• The movie version of John in Constantine just barely qualifies. He has the Dark and Troubled Past and the trenchcoat, which he generally does not wear.
• Selene from Underworld is a female example.
• Balthazar Blake from The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Guess what... he's a sorcerer too.

Literature

• John Taylor from the Nightside series by Simon R Green fits this rather well...
  • Though he does subvert it a bit by the coat being white.
• ...as does Felix Castor from The Devil You Know and its sequels by Mike Carey (given the fact that Carey wrote Hellblazer for a while).
• Cal McDonald (see comics examples above) has also appeared in a series of novels by creator Steven Niles.
• Harry Dresden has definite shades of this. Considering John Constantine has been around since 1985,and Jim Butcher is a self-proclaimed fan of the series, the real question is whether it is a case of "influenced by", "inspired by", or Captain Ersatz.
  • Though given Harry's stupid sense of humor, he might be closer to a cross between John Constantine and Spider-Man. (Which he has also admitted: "I follow the Tao of Peter Parker," anyone?)
  • Given Harry's status as a Pop-Cultured Badass, he was probably trying to invoke the image intentionally.
• Anton of Night Watch.
• Magic hater Roland Deschlain from the The Dark Tower.
• Dilbert Pinkerton from The Armadillo Mysteries.

Video Games

• Gillian Seed from Snatcher. Subverted in that despite being modelled pretty blatantly after Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, he's well-groomed, not too moody and occasionally a bit of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
  • And by way of Gillian Seed, Old Snake's cover story in Metal Gear Solid 4's third act is that he's one of these.
• Revolver Ocelot from Metal Gear Solid fits in this trope. Although he sometimes wears a duster than a coat.
• Aiden Pearce from the upcoming video game Watch_Dogs, albeit in a Cyberpunk setting rather than Urban Fantasy; instead of magic, he has the power of Hollywood Hacking. Eh, close enough.
• Looker of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Black and White wears a brown trenchcoat. It doesn't flutter in the wind a lot, but he still looks like a badass.

Web Original

• The Net.Trenchcoat Brigade, a Vertigo-inspired Legion Of Net Heroes spinoff.

These examples have too little context to verify that they fit the trope description.

Comic Books

• Jack Carter from Warren Ellis' Planetary goes from a John Constantine analogue to a Spider Jerusalem analogue. (Warren Ellis, of course, created Spider Jerusalem.)
• Grant Morrison wanted Constantine to become a recurring character in his Doom Patrol, but couldn't, so he created Willoughby Kipling. However, instead of looking like Sting, he looks like Richard E Grant from Withnail and I.
• Phil Foglio uses Ambrose Bierce for his series Stanley and His Monster. He even gives him a bit of Lampshade Hanging as shown in the above quote.
• John Ostrander had to use Rasputin in his Firestorm series instead of Constantine.
• With the breaking of the Vertigo embargo in 2011, John's reclaimed the Trenchcoat Brigade role in the main DCU.

• Cal McDonald from the Criminal Macabre comics by Steven Niles isn't British, but otherwise fits this trope to a T.
• Hellboy from Dark Horse, not only is he an occult detective, he's a trenchcoat fan and a heavy smoker.
  • He was first appeared on earth in Britain (though he was actually born in Hell.) He considers himself American, though.
• Gravel, another Warren Ellis invention (a writer of Hellblazer), is an example of this trope, and was explicitly created by Ellis as a Constantine Expy, although he's evolved away from that as his adventures progressed.
• Garth Ennis, former Hellblazer writer, created Preacher. The protagonist Jesse Custer is an example.
• Michael Jones from Desolation Jones. Another of Ellis' characters to take the Hellblazer tone of a darker world. Note the blond hair and Trench Coat.
• Although Hannibal King from Blade precedes John by some years, he later becomes one in later years.
• Lampshaded in Knights of the Dinner Table with the Whisper.
• Shade The Changing Man