Cool Chair

The Mobius Chair allows your posterior to comfortably move through time and space.

"Somehow, I feel comfortable here."

— Captain Kathryn Janeway (trying out someone else's Cool Chair), Star Trek: Voyager, "Bride Of Chaotica!"

People Sit on Chairs all the time, but this one is awfully cool.

In Ye Olden Times, they called it a throne, and there was usually a King on it. Or a Queen. Or a princess. Or some dude named Orcus. Nowadays, the Corrupt Corporate Executive and Mob Boss use the swiveling chairs behind the desks of their penthouse offices to much the same effect.

More futuristic versions can include buttons on the armrest, which can help The Captain take a memo if there aren't any Bridge Bunnies around. Alternatively, if it belongs to the Big Bad (in black leather, natch), any built-in controls will probably have to do with the tidy disposal of underlings.

Other fiendish uses for the Couch of Villainy (muah-ha-ha!) include practicing your Slouch of Villainy and, naturally, the Chair Reveal.

Villains and roguish heroes of the barbarian or Middle Eastern persuasion will often be surrounded by scantily-clad women fanning them and feeding them grapes.

Cool Chairs will always be thematically appropriate. You will never find Lord Azazel the Befouler brooding atop his dread throne of plush cushions, and conversely you will never see Captain Jake McHero reclining on a seat made of iron spikes and human tibias. In The '60s, the Cool Chair was Eero Aarnio's Ball Chair.

People who have their own Cool Chairs tend to be (understandably) attached to them; should some irreverent interloper put his seat in your seat, feel free to declare: This Is My Chair.

A Sub-Trope of this is the Hovering Cool Chair, often found in video games and more fantastic works of fiction. Hovering Cool Chairs are also sometimes weaponized — machine guns, rockets, and lasers pop out of it to attack the villain's enemies — especially when also functioning as a Super Wheelchair. This may serve as a way to introduce a Boss Battle with a mastermind-type villain without resorting to Rank Scales with Asskicking. Swivel-Chair Antics is another sub-trope.

On occasion, the Chair may serve as an escape pod for the villain to make his getaway.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Major from Hellsing has a cool chair that is on an elevated platform in the zeppelin. It hides a surprise weapon too.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers: England tries to trick America into sitting on the "Infamous 'Sit and You Die' Busby Stoop Chair. Its evil doesn't stand a chance against Russia's, though, so it's not as cool as it could be.
• AKIRA:
  • Masaru's hovering chair, complete with bubble dome.
  • While we're at it, the concrete throne at the Olympic Stadium made a better Cool Chair for Tetsuo than anything else he could have sat on.
• The wheelchair in the last episode of Samurai Champloo is revealed to be a cool chair because it contains a hidden gun in one arm, a stick of dynamite in the other, and more dynamite stashed under the seat, all in place to lay a last resort final blow on a weakened Mugen. It still isn't enough to kill him.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Great Demon King Piccolo's giant chair is decorated with skulls and looks like it is made out of bone-like materials. Toriyama later uses that chair as the basic for designs like God's spaceship and the Namekian buildings. The Grand Elder has the same chair as Great Demon King Piccolo's sans the skull decoration.
  • Freeza's "bubble car", as the abridged series humorously puts it. Officially referred to as a "flying vehicle".
  • In Dragon Ball GT, Baby creates an improvised "throne room" atop a series of floating rock pillars over the spot where he believes he has defeated Goku. It is here that the possessed Dende presents Baby with the Black Star Dragon Balls in an ornate goblet. He also somehow constructed an actual throne and coat of arms as well. This throne is never seen or mentioned again after this scene.
• Soul Eater: While Franken Stein's rolling desk chair may look mundane, a frightful power is contained within.
• Bleach: All the oversized chairs in this work have achieved their very own parody Cargo Ship fandoms.
  • Aizen seems to have a fetish for oversized chairs. When meeting with the Espada, the chairs at his conference table are all inexplicably many feet taller than they should be and are shaped like works of modern art. His own 'throne' is a couch that so huge it very nearly dwarfs the dais it sits upon. Aizen looks tiny when sat on it.
  • The chair Aizen is bound to when imprisoned in Muken is extremely large and made out a substance that makes it almost invincible. When Aizen attempts to use Kidou #90 to break the chair and gain his freedom, the chair isn't even scratched. All he can do is admire its construction. The chair became a Memetic Badass because of that, being dubbed as "Chair-kun" by the fans.
• Code Geass: Rakshata, creator of the Guren and Japan's other Knightmare Frames, has a Cool Couch upon which she's often lounging. It's even on the bridge of the Black Knights' battleship in the second season, prompting fan jokes about it being a mini-Knightmare.
• Cyber Blue: The sleazy Elder Gaza issues orders to his chimera minions while surrounded by female servants, sitting on top of one and resting his arms and back on the breasts of other three as if they are a throne.
• In Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, Humpty-Dumpty is portrayed as a sexy woman in one of those egg-chairs, presiding over an erotic chess game.
• In The Vision of Escaflowne, Dilandau has a throne, despite not being a monarch.
• In Death Note, Mello has a zebra-print sofa. However, while Mello thinks it's cool, most of the fans view it as tacky, or Stylistic Suck at best.
• One Piece has the Empty Throne; it is a massive chair stationed in the Holy Land Marijoa, surrounded by weapons used by the 20 kings who founded the World Government, with armrests shaped like lion heads, and a map that is probably the New World half of the Grand Line carved into its back. No one sits in it, to symbolize that the World Government has no singular ruler. This is a lie. There is a singular ruler, known only as Imu, whom the Five Elder Stars serve and worship. When no one is looking, they sit on that chair.

Arts

• Seven Virtues: All of the women sit on elaborate thrones the backs of which resemble the architecture of a church's choir.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • Metron from New Gods has the Mobius Chair, which not only flies, it can travel extradimensionally, generate force fields, and provide the sitter with all the knowledge in the universe.
  • Every member of the Justice League of America has a chair in the round table. However, credit for Cool Chair would have to go to The Atom, who has a hovering cool chair that's just his size.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): The Sangtee Emperor's throne is sleek because it's also mobile and can move about the palace or the headquarters of other sectors on hidden tracks.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Thanos of Titan has had three "Space Thrones" made, each capable of generating a powerful, nearly impenetrable forcefield, energy-beam weapons capable of automatic targeting and firing, a teleportational device, a tractor beam emitter, and engines capable of transporting the craft through separate dimensions and realities, powerful sensor arrays, and an advanced computer system.
    • Interestingly enough, Jim Starlin originally conceived Thanos as an Expy of the above-mentioned Metron. Editor Roy Thomas said he should base the character on Darkseid instead. Thanos hover thrones are possibly a nod to the originally intended reference.
  • X-Men:
    • Professor X once had a high-tech hovering chair given to him by the Shi'ar.
    • Whiz Kid can turn any object of sufficient mass into any device he can imagine. His wheelchair being the closest thing at hand, it's been turned into a rocket-powered one-man tank on several occasions.
  • M.O.D.O.K. is his awesome hoverchair.
  • Satan's throne in Hell is an aversion. It looks like it was cobbled together (badly) with a bunch of wooden planks and nails. It does have an impressively tall back though. The various demon lords and archdevils such as Mephisto, some of whom even claim to be Satan themselves, hold councils around the throne. None dare claim it, for fear of being torn apart by the others.
  • A short story from the What If? series positing a future where Captain America was still active into his sixties had him attacked by his old nemesis the Red Skull. Equally aged but bereft of the super-soldier serum that allowed Cap the vitality of a man half his age, Skull was eager to show off his "Armchair of Death" which was basically a combination flying weapons platform/comfy chair (complete with leg rest). Were it anyone else using the thing, it would have been impossible to take seriously.
• Savah's chair in ElfQuest has a cool psychic light display behind it, but it's not nearly as ostentatious as Lord Voll's (later Winnowill's) throne.
• The Mekon, arch-villain of the Dan Dare comics, crouched on a flying throne shaped like half a lemon.
• The comics adaptation of The Thrawn Trilogy shows us the command chair on the Chimera, the Star Destroyer that Grand Admiral Thrawn picked as his flagship. It's this massive thronelike thing made out of slabs.
• The throne of the Raven kingdom in Scion is pretty awesome.
• Brianna Diggers in the comic Gold Digger built the "Lay-Z-Boy of Doom", a high-tech recliner with gatling gun armrests. Unfortunately for her, she didn't pay attention to the placement of all the guns' parts, and ended up with a lap full of hot shell casings when she used it. Upgraded versions appear later in the series, and they have enough firepower to single-handedly cause tremendous mayhem against alien invading fleets.
• Judge Dredd: Deputy Chief Judge Jura Edgar, head of the Public Surveillance Unit (the Justice department's "FBI") sits in a hovering wheelchair, hence her nickname," J. Edgar Hover": the character is based on a curious amalgam of J. Edgar Hoover, Margaret Thatcher, and......The Mekon!
• Black Moon Chronicles:
  • Gredinald's throne (later Wis). Turns out to be a potent magical artifact too.
  • Haazheel Thorn's throne is a massive crystalline beast with Spikes of Villainy that makes the Iron Throne look friendly.
• Astro City:
  • Each employee at Honor Guard's call center gets one of these — they automatically adjust to the weight and posture of whoever sits in them, auto-recline to a relaxing position, offer fingertip-ready touch controls, and display information on ergonomically-friendly floating screens.
    "You'll be in it a lot, and we want you comfortable."
  • The mob boss known as the Underlord ran his criminal empire from an ornate throne.

Films — Animation

• Jafar in Aladdin has a throne that's basically a couch with a giant carving of a cobra's head above it and more cobras for the legs. He also chains Princess Jasmine to it. Of course, the original throne of the sultan of Agrabah was pretty cool too, having an elephant carving.
• Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods: Caesar's throne has a massive golden eagle statue on it.
• Subverted in Kung Fu Panda 2. Lord Chen is admiring the throne, saying how his father promised it would one day be his. Gilligan Cut to his gorillas chucking the throne out the window and plonking Chen's cannon in its place.

Films — Live-Action

• Star Wars is full of them.
  • The Jedi Council hold their meetings in a tower, where each member gets a nice looking chair that you could almost swear was built specifically for them. Sometimes, when some of the members are away, they even fill their chairs via hologram communication.
  • And sometimes Yoda even uses a hover-chair.
  • And let us not forget the Emperor's cool chair while we're at it.
  • In Episode I, we get a scene of Viceroy Gunray on a "mechno-throne", a cool chair that walks around on four legs - very, very slowly... (And Legends EU sources add that the mechno-throne is a really uncomfortable ride. It's more of a status symbol than anything.)
  • Also in Episode I, Darth Sidious uses the "mechno-throne" as a hologram projector. Let me recap: he is sitting on a throne that walks around on its own power. And he is a hologram at the time. Is Evil cool or what?
  • Anakin's pod racing rival Sebulba had a special chair custom-made to accommodate his odd anatomy comfortably; it, along with his two very expensive twin Twi'lek slave girls was his way of rubbing his wealth in everyone else's face.
  • Don't forget Vader's cool chair in his meditation chamber. It's unique in that, rather than being the typical throne, it's low enough that Vader has to cross his legs when sitting in it.
• The Lord of the Rings
  • " ... One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne / In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie." Subverted somewhat in that Sauron is never seen on his throne. Doubly so in The Movie, where Sauron is portrayed as a giant Faceless Eye made out of fire, making a Cool Chair fairly useless—you know, what with him not having a butt and everything. However! This arguably gives Sauron the coolest chair of them all, as his chair routinely spawns gargantuan legions of horrifying abominations of pure twisted evil and is the tallest tower in the whole of Middle-earth! Can your chair do that??
  • Saruman's spiky black chair in a throne room made of spiky obsidian (film only). Christopher Lee described it as "a great place to throw a really classy party, but not too comfortable to sit in."
  • And let's not forget the Steward of Gondor's seat (book and film), a plain black chair below and to one side of the (permanently unoccupied) throne.
• Those egg chairs from Men in Black may be a subversion of this. They LOOK cool, but are horribly uncomfortable and it's almost impossible to write while sitting in one. Of course, that was the point — the written exam was a Secret Test of Character; the real test was to see which, if any, of their candidates realized that they were in a situation which was singularly unsuited to writing properly; noticed that there was a useful flat surface in the middle of the room; and go ahead and used that flat surface, even if it made that horrible screeching noise.
• In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the White Witch's throne of ice is a Cool Chair—literally, since she's an ice witch. The four thrones at Cair Paravel toward the end of the film are also quite spiff.
• Parodied in the Austin Powers series, where Dr. Evil's Cool Chair keeps malfunctioning, or he just doesn't know how to work it.
• Doctor Doom is seen briefly in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer sitting in a rotating chair with LCD screens on its armrests in a room where the walls are covered with larger monitors. Shame so little of it was shown, as it looked rather cool.
• The Riddler's throne from Batman Forever might be a subversion of this. Bruce Wayne's chair at Wayne Enterprises definitely is this: It looks ordinary enough, but just underneath it there's a tunnel which leads to Wayne Manor, accessed by super-high-speed capsule.
• Patrick Stewart's role as Charles Xavier in X-Men Film Series turned a wheelchair of all things into a freakin' cool chair. Those brain probes he uses for mass mind-readin' can't hurt the look, either.
• In The Stuntman movie, the director character has a hovering cool chair (suspended by a crane) he uses to pop in and out of scenes.
• Star Trek (2009): An awesome captain's chair.
  Spock: Out of the chair.
• Xerxes's gigantic throne in 300, which is the size of a small house, is carried around by no fewer than 100 slaves, and is lavishly decorated with statues, ivory, and gold.
• In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, the villain steals a pretty sweet looking couch to use as a throne. He'd also plundered the archives and complimented Archie Bunker on his choice of "thrones".
• Escape from New York had this scene where Snake, feeling uncertain of what to do next, picks a chair out of post-apocalyptic rubble and briefly sits on it to rest. As plain as the chair might've been, he looked chill and cool enough that this was among the scenes that got echoed in the sequel, Escape from L.A..
• Thranduil's antlered throne in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug which is carved from stone and an impressive part of the architecture in his main hall.
• The Matrix:
  • The classy leather armchairs in the Lafayette Hotel in the original film and Reloaded, with lion heads protruding from the armrests.
  • The Architect's high-backed black leather chair in Reloaded, dead-center in a room full of screens.
• Star Trek: Insurrection: Ru'afo doesn't just have a command chair on his bridge, he has a small couch that looks like it was made for a sultan.
  SF Debris: You gotta admire a guy who says "screw it, I just wanna be comfortable."
• Surprisingly not present in the samurai movie Throne of Blood; despite the English title, Washizu does not get a big fancy chair, bloodstained or otherwise, when he takes over the castle. Chairs aren't really a thing in Japan.
• In You Only Live Twice, Ernst Stavro Blofeld strokes his cat in a Model 62 G Plan swivel chair, marketed as "the most comfortable chair in the world" even though Blofeld is planning to end the world. The chair is still in production as "The Blofeld model".

Literature

• In the second Artemis Fowl book, Opal Koboi had a hovering chair.
• Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series: "The Mayors": King Lepold of Anacreon has a glowing (due to personal Deflector Shields) floating chair, built by the Foundation on Terminus. The awesome appearance is used to cement his divine right to rule. When his uncle, Prince Regent Wienis, authorized an attack against Terminus, the High Priest deactivated the chair's nuclear motor, making it fall (and taking away his divine right).
• In Dune, the Emperor's throne was a "massive chair carved from a single piece of Hagal quartz". In Dune Messiah this is changed to "Hagar emerald" (probably a typo). The aborted 1975 film version would have had the Harkonnen Capo Chair,◊ designed by H. R. Giger of Alien fame.
• In the Humanx Commonwealth novel Icerigger, the back of the Landgrave of Sofold's throne is carved from something that looks kind of like a tree trunk made of ivory. The main characters are suitably impressed when they learn the truth: Tran-ky-ky's largest lifeform is an animal called a "stavanzer", which could be (very) loosely described as a walrus the size of a blue whale, and the Landgrave's throne is carved from a stavanzer tusk.
• The Silver Chair from The Silver Chair, which apart from looking cool has the magical ability to completely brainwash its occupant for 23 hours a day, and keep him imprisoned for the remaining one.
• Nero Wolfe has a desk chair in his office that is custom-built (under his own supervision, of course) to accommodate his great bulk. The springs are designed to support up to 500 pounds, and are so stiff that Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin can barely get the chair to tilt backward when he sits in it. There's also the red leather chair in his office that's reserved for his client (or Inspector Cramer). If it's a story where Wolfe has multiple clients, the one he considers most important gets the red leather chair; if it's one with no paying client, it goes to the person Wolfe is more or less working for. In any case, the person who gets the red leather chair is virtually never the guilty party.
• A Song of Ice and Fire
  • The Iron Throne is intentionally Cool, but Inefficient. Aegon the Conqueror took the swords of all the defeated lords of Westeros and forged them with dragonfire into a scary but still very sharp throne, saying that a king should never sit easy. Kings often cut themselves on the throne, and legend states that it has killed at least one of them (thought that king may have been Driven to Suicide and impaled himself on the throne).
  • The populace seems to think that it might be magical and harm only bad kings. Joffrey gets stuck with it when he's at his most arrogant and bratty after the Battle of Blackwater (and goes crying to Mommy). Also, Jaime mentions that Mad King Aerys always has scabs from sitting on the Iron Throne. Both, of course, are awful rulers, so the assumption is that the throne is rejecting them. Of course, it could also just have been a really bad idea to create a chair out of swords.
  • It features quite prominently in promos◊ for the television series.
• The Eastern Empire from Mercedes Lackey's later Heralds of Valdemar also features a throne of blades, except it's all the personal weapons of every leader the entire line of Emperors has conquered in hundreds of years of history. They've also been completely melted down before being added to the throne, so there's no risk of injury if you lean back incautiously.
• Somewhat subverted in Garfield's PET FORCE, a series of short young-adult novellas written by Jim Davis, in which Garfield, Odie, Nermal, Arlene and Pooky are sucked into the universe of a comic book starring characters conveniently similar to them. The planet they end up on is a monarchy, and the king is...Jon Arbuckle. Since being royalty can do little to change the fact that he's still fundamentally Jon, he's had the traditional throne replaced with a recliner upholstered in naugahyde, chosen on the basis that stains wipe right off.
• The throne of Kinakuta in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. It looks like a chair designed by a Scandinavian with twin degrees in engineering and semiotics and given a blank cheque. When the Sultan sits in it, you know who's in charge here.
• The Dragonbone Chair of the first novel in Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series.
• Shadows of the Empire Prince Xizor has a chair that strengthens his muscles for him and tells him sycophantic nothings, although it always pronounces his name "Sheezor", much to his annoyance.
• The titular Ravenor of the Warhammer 40,000 novels has his Cool Chair Life support Prison, complete with Psi boosters, Communication jamming and intercept equipment and hidden machine guns.
  • A tagalong in one of the books even privately refers to him as 'The Chair'.
• William Albacastle / Willy Pete, authorial character of the White Wolf Mage: The Ascension supplement Iteration X and a major character in the novel Judgement Day by Bruce Baugh has a damn cool chair. The fact he's a technophillic quadrapalegic who uses waldoes to build telepresence drones and whose motorized wheelchair houses treads, robotic arms, and Hades knows what else gives him a good excuse to have one.
• Again, the Steward of Gondor's seat in The Return of the King is a plain black chair below and to one side of the (permanently unoccupied) throne.
• Discworld:
  • Patrician Vetinari's seat at the foot of the steps leading up to the long-unoccupied solid gold throne of Ankh-Morpork which the book Men at Arms reveals is actually fake, made of wood and so rotten that it would crumble should anyone attempt to sit in it.
  • Discworld addresses this idea again in The Fifth Elephant, with the Scone of Stone: revered seat "cushion" of the Low King of the dwarfs.
    • If "cushion" is really the right word for a baked good the consistency of stale granite.
  • When Lord Snapcase (not-yet Homicidal Lord Snapcase) replaces his successor Mad Lord Winder, the first thing he does is ask if the chair swivels. The secretary responds he can get a skilled swiveler first thing in the morning.
• In David Eddings' The Belgariad, Brand, the hereditary Rivan Warder, has a seat below the empty throne of the Rivan King. This is actually a reference, unintentional or not, to Denethor, Steward of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings, who sits on a plain wooden chair below and in front of the vacant throne of the King of Gondor.
• The chair in the courtroom of the Wizengamot in Harry Potter has chains that, depending on the occupant, may coil up and tie him or her to it. It seems to only do it if the occupant is perceived to be potentially dangerous; in the Death Eater trials Harry sees in the Pensieve, it chains up several Death Eaters, but when Harry himself comes to sit in it in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, it lets him alone.
• The Chairmaker in Use of Weapons makes a chair out of his step-sister's bones, whom he murdered. Nobody sits on it though; it's too fragile to take someone's weight.
• Each of the Olympian gods in Percy Jackson and the Olympians has a throne themed around their sphere of influence; for example, Hephaestus has a steampunk recliner, while Dionysus's is covered in grapevines. Apollo and Artemis's are gold and silver, respectively.

Live-Action TV

• The Frank Lloyd Wright chairs in the council chambers on Babylon 5, and the command chair on the White Star-class ships. One of the buttons on the latter was programmed, at the battle of Corianna VII, to detonate 500 Megaton thermonuclear mines. Can you get any cooler?
• Let's not forget Baltar's infamous swivelling chair in the original Battlestar Galactica. Though how he got up there in the first place is beyond me.
• Averted on the new Battlestar Galactica. As part of the design of the 2003 mini-series, the writers and producers attempted to avoid as many of the standard stylings of typical TV Space Opera. Commander Adama and Colonel Tigh always stand in CiC. Some folks think they didn't really think it all the way through...
• The Diary Room chair on Big Brother. Early examples were fairly simple but later seasons will usually have a specially-designed chair that's much more elaborate. Either way it's definitely shorthand for "Draaaaaaaa-mah! is about to occur!"
• After the death of a colleague, Booth on Bones goes on and on about how much he wants the man's chair. Others wonder if perhaps this is his way of coping with grief, but Booth insists it really is just about a cool chair.
• Doctor Who:
  • Having been crippled, Davros, the creator of the Daleks and recurring villain, has his lower body encased in a cool chair by the time of his initial appearance in Genesis of the Daleks and retains it in later appearances. In "The Witch's Familiar", the Twelfth Doctor steals the chair from Davros and rides around in it while confronting the Daleks.
    The Doctor: Proposition: Davros is an insane, paranoid genius who has survived among several billion trigger-happy mini-tanks for centuries. Conclusion: I'm definitely having his chair.
  • There's also the high-backed teleporting green throne used by the eponymous individual in "The Keeper of Traken".
  • "The Vampires of Venice": The Calvierri throne is a nice purple-and-gold affair that also serves as the control hub for a weather manipulation device.
• Rygel used a hovering throne-sled in Farscape.
• On Friends, Rachel buys a new armchair. It's really, really nice. So nice, in fact, that Joey deliberately breaks his leather Barcalounger in a desperate attempt to be allowed to sit in it. Twice (long story...).
• Game of Thrones:
  • The Iron Throne which was forged from the swords of Aegon the Conqueror's defeated enemies, although by all accounts it's not very comfortable to sit on (albeit not nearly as uncomfortable, let alone dangerous, as it is in the books).
    Varys: Ugly, don't you think?
    Baelish: Yet it has a certain appeal.
  • Subverted by Daenerys' simple bench in Meereen. However it's balanced by the impressive throne room, which makes an equally impressive chair unnecessary.
• The black leather chair contestants sat in on the game-show Mastermind. It was considered so cool that it was once kidnapped and held for ransom; the original is now in the house of original host Magnus Magnusson's daughter.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: To force people to confess to heresy, the Spanish Inquisition subjects their victims to...The Comfy Chair!!
• In the first episode of NCIS, Ducky and DiNozzo quickly snap photos of each other sitting in the President's chair on Air Force One.
• Pee-wee's Playhouse: Chairry, said to be the most comfortable chair in Puppetland.
• Number 2's Ball Chair in The Prisoner (1967). The desk it faced had several phones and a set of controls.
• Victoria's lounge chair "throne" is so iconic to Revenge (2011) that when events forced her to get rid of it (it got badly stained), it received a memorial title card at the end of the episode. Later, when she commits suicide by blowing up Grayson Manor, she gets the chair back to sit in as she dies.
• Averted in Rome. Cassius tries to convince Brutus that the curule seat Caesar has ordered for the Senate is actually a throne and indicative of a thirst for power. Brutus points out that "thrones are usually more decorative. That is decidedly plain and chair-like."
• Dad Anyfamily's mobile (as in gasoline-powered) chair from Roundhouse. It comes equipped with a TV, a propane grill, a cooler, and even brake lights.
• Saturday Night Live had a recurring couple of art dealers, Nuni and Nuni Schoener (played respectively by Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph), furnish their apartment with various unusual chairs, which they usually find more comfortable than their guests do. One sketch took this trope literally, when the wife showed off an armchair made out of ice.
• Stargate:
  • The Ancient control chairs in Stargate SG-1 and onwards launch Macross missile massacres on command from the sitter's thoughts, but if and only if the sitter has a particular gene. In Stargate Atlantis, the Ancient Control Chair allows people with the Ancient Gene to fly the entire City.
  • SG-1 gets a Cool Chair too in the form of General Hammond's chair. In "Proving Ground", Daniel (who is currently the leader of a fake alien incursion for a training exercise) gets to sit at the desk and revels in how comfortable it is. In "Prometheus Unbound", Hammond returns to the SGC to recruit Daniel for the latest flight to Atlantis. When Jack asks him if he misses the chair and wants it back, Hammond says yes... and has the chair shipped to his office in Washington. That must be a damn comfy chair. Possibly a reference to something his actor Don S. Davis said in an interview. When asked if he could play any other role in the show, who would it be, he replied, "I'd be my own damn role. I have the best chair on the set."
  • Daniel's control chair in his secret underground bunker in "Absolute Power" also definitely counts. It's on a cantilever, at least one of its armrests is a control panel, and it has a Deflector Shield, making it immune to shooting from a 9mm pistol.
  • In Stargate Universe, after discovering the bridge of Destiny, you can bet practically everyone is having an internal moment of squee when they first sit in the Captain's chair.
• The Captain's chairs on The Bridge in the Star Trek series and movies, starting with Captain Kirk's. Best described in this awful fanfic.
  • It's Colour-Coded for Your Convenience, as well: a Federation chair is done in soothing shades of beige, whereas Klingon furniture is all made from black leather and bolted-together slabs of iron. But the Klingons like it that way.
  • According to Wil Wheaton, the chair was so cool that, by unspoken consensus, no TNG cast or crew member ever sat upon it unless 1) they were Patrick Stewart or 2) the script specified it. (Visiting celebrities got to do whatever they wanted, of course.)
  • There's a delicious source of Narm in Star Trek: Insurrection, where the Big Bad's Cool Chair is a literal Couch Of Villainy. A big comfy red one. On a ultra-high-tech, stainless-steel Bridge. It really doesn't work, as seen here. (Perhaps the problem is that he isn't doing a a Slouch of Villainy on it...)
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Singularity", the crew become obsessed with trivial nonsense due to Space Madness, and engineer Trip Tucker went nuts trying to design the Ultimate Captain's Chair with interactive status displays, secondary helm control, inertial micro-dampers and cup holder (but apparently No Seat Belts). Ironically when everyone goes back to normal, Trip realises the chair is just one centimeter too high.
  Trip: I know you don't think this chair is important, but you're wrong. What's the most critical component on this ship? The main computer? The warp reactor? Uh-uh, it's the crew. And the most important member of the crew is the Captain. He makes life and death decisions every day and the last thing he needs to be thinking in a critical situation is, 'Gee, I wish this chair wasn't such a pain in the ass!'
• Referenced a few times in Star Trek: The Next Generation. One episode that stands out is where Worf has to play the role of captain to fool some 80-year-old Klingons fresh out of stasis that the Klingon Empire controls the Federation. After succeeding, Riker asks him how if felt being captain. Worf's response is thus: "Comfortable chair."
  • Made all the more hilarious by the fact that he spent most of his run on TNG standing, save for when he served at the front consoles periodically during the first season. At least he got to sit down on the Defiant, though, either at tactical or in the captain's chair.
  • Worf actually had his own Cool Chair in his quarters. It's a real chair, too: a Stokke Garden chair designed by Peter Opsvik in 1985.

Pinball

• In Flash Gordon, the throne of Ming the Merciless fills the entire upper playfield.

Podcasts

• The Adventure Zone: Graduation: Rainer is a Handicapped Badass whose chronic illness makes walking or even standing upright difficult or impossible on most days, so she's confined to a chair... that flies, lights up in any color she chooses, has lots of storage space, and can even be shrunk down and put inside someone's bag for transport.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! Khorne (he of BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! fame) sits on a massive throne of brass in the center of his fortress, which sits on a mountain of skulls in a lake of blood. Skulls taken and blood spilled by his warriors end up in the pile/lake, representing how his power waxes and wanes with the other three Chaos gods'.
  • The Emperor's Golden Throne might count too, despite the fact that it's not so much a chair, than an elaborate life support device the size of a large building. Apparently the part where the Emperor's body lies does look somewhat like a throne, though.
  • There is also Inquisitor Lord Karamazov's Throne of Judgement, which is essentially a Space Marine Dreadnought with a chair top.
• The Scarlet Throne◊ of Exalted is an elaborate thing made from magical jade of each colour carved into the shapes of the Five Elemental Dragons in a protective and deferential pose to the sitter, and has been the main symbol of the authority of the most powerful person in the world for 700 years. It's also a powerful magical artifact, and possesses at least some degree of consciousness: When the current regent seated himself upon it, the heads opened their mouths, hissed at him, and pulled back in a pre-striking pose. He hasn't dared enter the throne room since. You know you suck as a ruler when your own seat of office hates you.
• Forgotten Realms has the Wyrmskull Throne, a throne made from the skulls of four dragons slain by the ancient dwarven king Taark Shanat.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Elshadoll Shekhinaga is Nephilim using Apoqliphoth Killer as a throne, after forcing it into her servitude.
• Warhammer: The Throne of Power, sat upon by the High King of the Dwarves, bears on its back the Rune of Eternity. It is said that as long as the Rune remains intact, Dwarf civilization will never die out. Thorgim Grudgebearer, the current High King, is required by Dwarven law to never leave the Throne unattended; in battle, he is carried into battle atop the Throne by four very strong Dwarves.

Video Games

• A golden throne, studded with platinum and decorated with dragon bones, and carved with the glorious feats of the town's ruler, doesn't even get near how awesome chairs and thrones (as all furniture) can become in Dwarf Fortress.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Dr. Eggman has various incarnations of his signature Eggmobiles, which manage a trifecta of Cool Chair, cockpit of sundry Boss Battling machines, and omnivehicle escape pod. So enamored is he with his flying chair that it's rare to see him actually standing.
• Dr. Wily of Mega Man (Classic) fame probably should have filed a patent because while it looks different and often can't be seen inside of due to the opaque dome over where his head goes (except in some cases, such as when it's docked onto a Wily Machine, or the start of Mega Man 11), the Wily UFO is functionally identical to the Eggmobile, though unlike Eggman, he usually only uses it near the end of the game with his Wily Machines. Additionally, from Mega Man 4 onward, he'd escape the destruction of his Wily Machines in the far more dangerous, Boss Battle-worthy Wily Capsules, which are also another example of this trope.
• We never see her sit in it, but Azala in Chrono Trigger has a throne made of bones in Tyranno Palace. Choosing to sit in it causes the character doing so to give an Evil Laugh.
• Some Castlevania games have a sidequest centered around finding and sitting in Cool Chairs.
  • Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has a soul you can collect which, when equipped, will regenerate health at a fairly generous rate whenever you're sitting down-be it in a Cool Chair, a few boards and dowels barely held together with glue, or a crate.
  • The chair interactions typically involve characters who are somehow related to Dracula, who is rarely seen outside his throne room. In fact, his monster form at the end of Symphony of the Night was literally just his throne with arms and grotesque shapes growing out of it.
• The Frozen Throne of the Lich King in Warcraft games - a chair magically carved out of glacial ice, which doubles as Ner'zhul's phylactery. There's also a place called the Throne of Kil'Jaeden, but it's not an actual throne. Whether the Legionlord has an actual Cool Chair remains to be seen, as surely no self-respecting demon lord would go without an obsidian throne covered in skulls and spikes.
  • Several Cool Chairs can be found in World of Warcraft, usually in various throne rooms. Kel'thuzad has a particularly cool looking one, which is sadly somewhat wasted, as he's a semi-incorporeal lich and doesn't have the necessary bodyparts (like everything below his torso) to actually sit on it.
• Halo:
  • High-ranking Covenant Prophets glide on gravity thrones, which have Deflector Shields and can shoot lasers. Normally Master Chief vs. an old man wouldn't be much of a fight, so it's a good thing the Cool Chair fixes that.
  • Every Covenant Shipmaster has his own on the bridge of his ship. It's a fairly simple gravity throne, without any of the Prophets' offensive attachments, but the simple fact that Elites like Rtas 'Vadum and Thel 'Vadam direct planetwide destruction from them is enough to make them cool.
• In Darkstalkers one of Morigan's victory poses has her conjure up a throne made of bats which actually levitates.
• Sebastian Krist has a cool hoverchair in Rise of the Triad. It's so cool that it comes with built-in rocket launchers.
• Bowser has tons of these in the Super Mario Bros. series, with a clear example of such a sinister spike-covered throne found in Super Mario Galaxy 2 which is practically a fortress in its own right to accommodate Bowser's new size. Mario Party tends to give him these starting from Mario Party 4 onwards, with Bowser usually getting a different chair each game. Mario Party 10 takes it to its logical conclusion by making it a ranking system for the Bowser Challenge: The higher the score, the cooler the chair.
• Resident Evil 4's Leon Kennedy finds a Cool Chair while venturing into the final areas of the game. You even get an action command to sit it in, Dracula style (Doing so will reveal a collectible).
• Organization XIII of Kingdom Hearts has an entire circular meeting room with no less than thirteen cool chairs for each member of the Organization. Each one is raised to ridiculous heights on top of a plain white tower, and they seem built for people who are about ten feet tall (less of a problem when you can teleport). Since all the elevations vary depending on rank, it's amazing that they manage to have meetings without having to shout at each other to be heard. Naturally Xemnas, being the leader, has the highest chair.
• Ape Escape's evil genius simian antagonist Specter is seldom seen without his levitating chair. In the first game, he even fights the first half of the final battle in it. It doesn't appear to have any weapons of its own, but it does teleport and apparently give him mind-control beam and energy blast attacks, so it's pretty cool.
• Nethack - Occasionally you can come across a throne. Sitting in it can net you something nice...or something horrible.
• Tales of the Abyss: Dist has a cool flying chair.
• The thrones of the ruler of Ferelden, and the Viscount of Kirkwall. The Viscount's throne comes complete with a beer mug sitting on the arm. For 10 years.
• Mass Effect:
  • The Normandy SR-2's pilot chair is so spiffy that Joker has a Nerdgasm over it. Given that he's got a bone disease that requires him to spend most of his time sitting, his reaction is justified.
  • The Illusive Man's chair is impressive if only for its elegant simplicity. There's a reason why, in Mass Effect 3, he gets annoyed when Shepard sits in it.
• In Wii version A Boy and His Blob, the emperor sits on a rather slimy throne which is has several heads very much alive.
• Kristoph Gavin in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney gets a very expensive looking cool chair in prison. Chairs, nail polish and reading are his only hobbies, and given the circumstances, this means he's doing quite well for himself.
• Algol of Soul Calibur 4 and 5 sits in his throne during his pre-battle cutscene, and can both sit in it and WIELD it (admittedly telekinetically) during actual gameplay.
• MapleStory: You can earn increasingly cool-looking chairs to sit down in and restore HP and MP.
• Nine of them in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The thrones of the Jarls come with a Reclining Reigner animation, and the royal throne in Solitude has the prim and proper upright animation. There are also several of them in ancient ruins, usually filled with fearsome Draugr bosses.
• The Myst series has many forms of this trope.
  • There's the fancy thrones which Sirrus and Achenar used in the first game.
  • Gehn owns half a dozen button-studded chairs in Riven.
  • Sirrus continued the trend in Myst IV: Revelation with his Spider Throne, which doubles as a musical instrument of sorts.
• The Journeyman Project has an unusual variant: A couch, the Hi-Rez 4D Environ system.
• In Total Distortion, the player has one in their Personal Media Tower, which doubles as an elevator. A late-game location called the "LA Stage" also has an elevator chair, which has to be called using tickets.
• Master Albert from Mega Man ZX Advent has one when the protagonist confronts him. And then it turns into a giant, three-headed mechanical dragon, kicking off the the first part of the Final Battle.
• Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell gives the Armchair-A-Geddon, an armchair that floats and is equipped with dual Gatling guns and heat-seeking missiles. It represents, amongst the Seven Deadly Weapons, Sloth.
• In Dragon Age: Inquisition, you can collect various styles of thrones from which you issue judgment on prisoners.
• In Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Doctor Doom is given a floating, metallic throne for his intro and outro sequences, as well as his Level 3 Hyper Combo. If defeated by Tron Bonne, she'll happily claim it as part of her winnings.
• Kleese from Battleborn has his Battle Throne, MK. 1, a hovering high tech chair that he prefers to ride around and deploy his gadgets from rather than walk and get his hands dirty.
• Player-owned houses in Runescape can be outfitted with furnished throne rooms. The fanciest ones can be crafted from bones, crystal, or for optimum snazz and Money Sink efficiency, demonic magic stone.
• In Bloons Tower Defense 6, the Ray of Doom takes the form of a seat with an attached Wave-Motion Gun, so the monkey gunner can sit back in style while vaporizing swathes of bloons.
• President Haltmann in Kirby: Planet Robobot has a Gem-Encrusted, solid gold, Executive Suit that he uses in his boss fight against Kirby.
• In Richman 11, Wumela, one of the playable characters, rides stylized floating chairs as her motorcycle and car; the Landlord (boss-typed character) King Octopus also rides a floating chair as his motorcycle and a floating throne as his car.

Webcomics

• Lord Shojo from The Order of the Stick has a Cool Chair that contains a tear in the fabric of the universe.
• The lack of a cool chair is the reason the bug of Bug. could never be a super villain.
• King Samrick's throne in Charby the Vampirate may not be set on a dias or under a baldachin but it doesn't need such added decorations to make it more impressively large as it is easily bigger than a house, gilded, with red upholstery and a tail hole for comfort.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, all Nemesite chairs have narrow backs for wings, tail-holes, and four armrests. Bob finds them uncomfortable, but Molly and Galatea, who have tails, heartily approve of them.
• Homestuck: Fly, Pupa!!!!!!!! Flyyyyyyyy!
• The Brick Testament gives Satan a particularly nice throne here.
• In one Nodwick story, the protagonists were hired to fetch a pillow from a deceased wizard's mansion; Yeagar took a fancy to an Elysium Barcalounger, a fancy chair that had ivory mead cupholders, a Footrest of Pediatric Joy, and Stuffing of Plushiness covered by Upholstery of Mighty Massage. Not believing their employer's warning that everything in the house except the pillow was trapped, cursed, or both, he convinced Nodwick to pick it up, and... Well, what happened to them was hidden by a Gory Discretion Shot, but Artax needed a squeegee to collect their remains before Piffany could use healing magic to restore them.

Web Original

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Dr. Horrible has a big, giant overstuffed chair◊ in his laboratory. It's a bit too gaudy to be a proper Evil Overlord chair, which makes it probably an Affectionate Parody. Plus, meta-wise, the chair belonged to the person in whose home they filmed the Billy shots. "The chair really is that big," Whedon was quoted as saying. "We did not bring a chair increaser."
• The online program Habbo Hotel has the throne. Unfortunately, to obtain such an item means you have to scam it, trade for it or... gulp... buy it.
• Considering how much The Nostalgia Critic talks about it in Kickassia, his rocket chair must have been really awesome, even if it's never seen on-screen. He claims it could levitate using science.
• In The Great War, host Indy Neidell answers questions from viewers from the rather extravagantly named "Chair of Wisdom". In actual fact, it appears to be little more than an old but comfortable armchair.
• In the Strong Bad Email "the chair", Strong Bad goes shopping for a new place to sit while he checks emails. One of Bubs' offerings is the "Styleron Ecochair", an impractically-fancy piece of designer furniture that resembles a solid plastic bean-bag chair, or "a giant albino doggy-doody" as Strong Bad puts it. Strong Bad instead settles on "Le Restige", a classy high-backed chair with Corinthian leather lining and a "sweat-pants button". Unfortunately, the chair's back almost completely obscures the screen of his computer, and the sweat-pants button malfunctions and puts way too many pairs of sweat-pants on Strong Bad at once.
• World War II: As an Alternate Company Equivalent to The Chair of Wisdom from The Great War, Indy Neidell now sits in The Chair of Infinite Knowledge when answering viewer questions. It remains, as far as we know, simply a comfortable chair with a cool name.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-1609 used to be a chair that could sense when anyone nearby needed a place to sit down, and would teleport to wherever they were. Unfortunately, the Global Occult Coalition found it before the Foundation, and ran it through a woodchipper. Now it teleports into the lungs of anyone it perceives to be a threat.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Earth King has an ornate throne worked into an absolutely enormous wall fashioned in the likeness of a badgermole, and covered in what appears to be gold and jade. Firelord Sozin had a golden throne before a similar wall worked with a golden dragon and surrounded by fiery cressets. After he crosses the Moral Event Horizon this is replaced with what seems to be a simpler seat... that's hidden behind a wall of flames in an otherwise unlit hall.
• In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, episode "Trials of the Demon", a demon lord who is banished to his own personal pocket dimensional prison turns out to have a giant stone throne covered in spikes in there. Keep in mind that he's the only being in the entire prison, so you have to imagine: at some point he had to have formed a throne himself from the rocks just because a demon lord's gotta have a throne.
• The Thinking Chair from Blue's Clues. Which is kind of a tool that the three hosts use to think when they feel confused. Steve in particular is quite dependent on it, and when he can't sit on it, he uses snacks to think (which he calls "Thinking Snacks". When the Thinking Chair disappears in Blue's Clues & You!, Josh and Steve understandably panic.
• Superchairs are the weapon of choice for recurring Codename: Kids Next Door villains Mr. Wink and Mr. Fibb. Each chair they own becomes a Humongous Mecha and contains a variety of weaponry, from robotic legs to helicopter umbrellas to lasers to the occasional protective dome.
• Professor Farnsworth from Futurama pilots a flying, armed Laz-E-Boy when they are pushed back to 1940's Roswell.
  • Hedonism Bot is a Cool Chair.
• In Gravity Falls, the antagonist Bill Cipher builds a giant throne out of petrified citizens.
• On He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Zodak has a space-traveling chair clearly inspired by Metron's. Appearance-wise, it's based on the throne included in the Castle Grayskull toy.
• Inspector Gadget: Dr. Claw's high-backed chair.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: A temporarly smart Beezy makes a chair that can Time Travel.
• The Inspirationally Disadvantaged Felix Renton from Kim Possible has a wheelchair with a hover system and retractable Combat Tentacles. It was built by his mother, a cybertechnology expert who moved into town to work at the space center with Kim's father. In his second appearance, the bad guys steal it, causing Shego to remark that Even Evil Has Standards.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Discord fashions himself quite an evil-looking throne - a dark gray and deep red color scheme, a stylized skull shape with pointed teeth at the top, and a huge pair of antlers sprouting from the skull for added demonic imagery - and plops it right in the middle of Ponyville so that he can observe the chaos he's wrought firsthand.
  • The Crystal Empire's castle has one made of, well, Power Crystals. During The Dark Times, King Sombra enchanted it to trigger a hidden portal to his inner sanctum.
  • In Equestria Games, the four princesses each have their own elaborate thrones at the Games, emblazoned with stylized renditions of their cutie marks. This is similar to the VIP seating for the heads-of-state at the Olympics, including the leader of the host nation.
  • In the Season 6 finale, Queen Chrysalis is revealed to have a massive throne - with a long-range, Anti-Magic Field Power Effect (that only allows Changeling magic). Even the aforementioned Discord gets Brought Down to Normal once he sets foot in her domain.
• Big Bad Megabyte in ReBoot had a hovering Cool Chair. Of course, sitting in it required him to take his legs off to attach himself to it. He often had one of his Mooks polishing his legs while using his chair.
  Matrix (rebooted as Megabyte): Could you pass me my legs.
• Parodied on The Simpsons, where Mr. Burns offers to use his influence to get Homer into college to actually get his nuclear physics degree, saying "I have a chair on the admissions board of Springfield University". His "chair" turns out to be a giant throne with devils carved into it, skulls for the handrests, and two attack dogs chained to it.
  • Stephen Hawking's wheelchair from the same show. It could fly and was loaded with more tools than Inspector Gadget.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
  • When J. Jonah Jameson is 'invited' up to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier, we get the Chair Reveal on Nick 'The Pirate' Fury. He's sitting in some sort of awesome, electric, hovering chair. Just to underline the "These guys have loads of cool stuff" point.
  • When Norman Osborn hires Spencer Smythe to create the Spider Slayer, the terms of their deal includes Norman financing the development of a hover chair for Smythe's son. At the end of the episode, Spencer is believed dead and his son, blaming Spidey, Osborn, Jameson and Eddie Brock for this, agrees to work for the Kingpin, who provides him with a hover chair.
• In ThunderCats (2011) Thundera's Good King Claudus has a high-backed golden throne with cat's head armrests (appropriate to a Catfolk monarch) and royal blue cushions. Big Bad Sorcerous Overlord Mumm-Ra later sees fit to commandeer it after he's succesfully laid siege to Thundera.
• Transformers: Animated. Bulkhead's kibble.
  • When Megatron was still in pieces, Professor Sumdac used Megatron's hand as a chair.
    • And after Megatron rebuilt himself and captured Professor Sumdac:
  Megatron: I trust you're comfortable in your chair?
• Professor X in X-Men: The Animated Series has a hoverchair (because he had it in the comics at the time, though the cartoon doesn't explain where he got it, and presumably it was easier to animate).

Real Life

• Thrones. Duh.
  • Special mention to Imperial◊ Chinese◊ thrones,◊ which lean closer to works of architecture than pieces of furniture.
  • The Mughal Peacock Throne was so blinged out it cost twice as much as the Taj Mahal.
• The sedia gestatoria used by The Pope has to be seen to be believed.◊
• The term "chairman" comes from a time when all the members of a committee, save for the most important one, had to sit on benches. The most important one got a chair, which, when everyone else is sitting on benches, seems pretty cool all by itself.
  • In the British House of Commons, only the Speaker has a chair. Everyone else sits on benches. Historically, the Speaker was not allowed to leave the chamber all day while the House was in session, so the chair used to be flanked by curtains and functioned as a toilet. When necessary, the Speaker could draw the curtains, lift the seat and do his business without ever disrupting the session. It no longer functions as a commode but apparently the sewer system underneath still exists...
    • The Speaker of Canada's House of Commons also gets a big fancy chair, minus the built-in toilet. Unlike Britain, everyone else also gets a chair, but they're rather basic compared to the Speaker's chair. In addition, the Canadian Senate actually has three thrones, one for the Speaker, and two more behind it for the monarch/governor general and his/her spouse (generally only used when Parliament is being opened or the King/Queen is visiting Parliament).
  • The "chairman" of the British House of Lords (formerly the Lord Chancellor, now the Lord Speaker) does not get an actual chair but rather sits on the Woolsack, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: a (large, square) red sack full of wool. Originally, this signified the importance of wool to England's economy; however, the sack was destroyed when the Houses of Parliament were bombed in the Blitz, and after World War II, it was replaced with a new sack stuffed with wool from all over The Commonwealth (representing Commonwealth unity and, one supposes, the ongoing love affair between English-speakers and wool). Despite the absence of a back or arms (it does have a small backrest), it's apparently quite comfortable.
  • There's also a Judges' Woolsack, another (much longer) wool-filled cushion right in front of and below it, where the Law Lords—Britain's highest judicial authority until they were moved to the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in late 2009—sat during the State Opening of Parliament (although any Lord may sit on it during normal session); the Justices of the Supreme Court continue to sit on the Judges' Woolsack during the State Opening (Supreme Court Justices are still formally Lords, but are barred from sitting or voting while they serve).
  • The one cool true chair in the Lords Chamber is the monarch's throne, from which he/she gives the Speech every State Opening of Parliament—and unlike the Judges' Woolsack, if you're not supposed to be sitting in it but sit in it anyway, you will get in trouble.
• The old-school Chesterfield chairs and sofas are among the most recognisable upper class furniture, familiar from every Smoky Gentlemen's Club in fiction, ever.
• The Golden Stool of the Akan people is so cool (and so revered by their culture) that they were willing to resort to violence to keep the British governor from sitting on it. (Seriously. And even though that war broke the Ashanti Empire, they still chalk that one up as a win because no Brit ever sat on the stool.)
• The long-running TV show Jim'll Fix It featured a large chair for Jimmy Savile with concealed compartments that would open when he pressed the right button. When Tom Baker and K9 were on the show K9 said it was pleased to meet "Mr Savile and Chair". (Known in retrospect to be Blatant Lies, but the Doctor ain't risking Reapers.)
• The Atlantis resort and watermark in the Bahamas gives us The Golden Throne◊, a seat that guests are free to sit in (one at a time... normally)◊ and take pictures in for free.
• The "thrones" occupied by mall Santas tend to be fairly impressive to look at, at least to the small children who come to sit on his lap.
• Tank Chair. Yes, it is a real thing.
• These parents turned their kids' wheelchairs into cool chairs -an ice cream truck and a Tardis!
• If you've got about USD 10,000, you can buy this.

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