In the old days, Everybody Smoked. Smoking was practically ubiquitous, so showing people smoking wasn't all that special. It was even considered cool and glamorous to have a cigarette in your mouth at all times.
This is not true nowadays. In the modern day, Smoking Is Not Cool. Many people, especially younger people, see smoking as squicky and disgusting, and a specific stigma has arisen around smoking as a coping mechanism or a dangerous addiction. In the modern era, the "default" character does not smoke, so if a writer chooses to show a character smoking, that choice was likely made deliberately for the purpose of characterization. The smoker must be edgy, cynical, or rebellious enough to light up, or the world has to suck enough that a person's long-term health is an afterthought. Smoking's reputation is also often used to establish tone — gratuitous shots of people smoking in dark alleys immediately let you know you've entered a Wretched Hive or a Vice City. The bottom line: any time a cigarette shows up on screen there must be a reason for it, and very often that reason is some combination of trauma, edge, and Angst.
In Darker and Edgier works, the most cynical, amoral, and brooding Anti-Hero characters will constantly have a cigarette in their mouth to show how gritty and serious they are. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland or a Crapsack World you'll see a lot of smokers desperately searching through empty gas stations for leftover cigarettes. There's not much reason to worry about lung cancer when you could die to a zombie tomorrow, after all.
Even when the story isn't quite as angsty, smoking still shows up as a coping mechanism or a sign of worn-down morals. For writers, this makes it convenient shorthand for a Dark and Troubled Past. Expect the Shell-Shocked Veteran to be puffing a cigarette right next to their bottle of whiskey. The Defective Detective smokes because of their Standard Cop Backstory or because their love interest is dead. The grizzled Cynical Mentor or Retired Badass will often pull out a lighter on the regular because they've realized that the world is awful or they've done lots of awful things themselves. Compared to murder or war crimes, smoking would probably seem like a drop in the morality bucket.
This trope also works backwards: characters may take up smoking for the express purpose of coming across as more edgy, grizzled, or mature. This is often seen in Troubled Teens, Delinquents, and Emo Teens full of Rebellious Spirit who are looking to seem cool or be taken seriously. In these situations, it is often used interchangeably with Smoking Is Cool, since Cool People Rebel Against Authority. Smoking may be pushed by The Aggressive Drug Dealer. It is occasionally seen as an expression of Wangst in an attempt to evoke the "coping mechanism" associations of smoking.
There is considerable overlap between Smoking Is Cool and Smoking Is Edgy, since edginess and cynicism are often associated with maturity or "knowing how the world really works." This has the added effect of turning depressed, edgy, or unbelievably gory characters into Stealth Cigarette Commercials, even if the writers didn't intend it that way.
Characters who smoke are often more ruthless and sarcastic than their peers, for both heroes and villains. They also often wear Badass Longcoats and are less put-together, with appearances ranging from disheveled to dumpster. Characters who lean towards edgy and gritty are more likely to favor cigarettes, but more high-class or scholastic skeptics may smoke cigars or pipes instead.
Compare Cigarette of Anxiety, for when smoking doesn't mean edginess but emotional turmoil. Contrast Smoking Is Glamorous, Smoking Is Cool, and Smoking Is Not Cool. See also Drowning My Sorrows and Darker and Edgier.
Examples:
- Black Lagoon: The Villain Protagonists all smoke constantly and have a very cynical outlook on life (unsurprising, since they're criminals who live in a Wretched Hive, and their violent lifestyles and the relentless cruelty of the setting provide little reason for optimism).
- Cowboy Bebop: The main adult cast of the Bebop, and indeed the setting as a whole, are all chain smokers with varying levels of cynicism. They're an Anti-Hero Team all with their own unique Dark and Troubled Past and have given up on life in one way or another, living in Perpetual Poverty in the outskirts of society. Only Cheerful Child Ed and (genius) Precious Puppy Ein don't partake in smoking.
- Interspecies Reviewers: Elza is a hyena-girl who works as a prostitute, and is often seen scowling with a cigarette between her lips. She is first seen at the gender-swap brothel, willing to bed a male-to-female patron for cash. Elza even lets off a disdainful puff of smoke upon surveying the "clients" in the room.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders: Jotaro is shown to be a habitual cigarette smoker despite being only aged 17, to contrast him with his straitlaced ancestor Jonathan (who preferred pipes instead) and his roguish but still relatively gentlemanly grandfather Joseph, as well as every subsequent protagonist who isn't shown smoking at all.
- Batman: Jason Todd, the second Robin, is one of the most rebellious and reckless birds of Batman's nest. On-panel, before retcons, Jason is shown to smoke while he was a teenager:
- In Batman #408, Jason steals the Batmobile's wheels, and Batman goes into his apartment. Jason is shown smoking.
- In Gotham Knights #43, Jason in Robin's getup (who, at this time, was still in Dick Grayson's pixie boots and acrobat ensemble) tosses a lit cigarette to the ground.
- Excalibur: When Warren Ellis assumed the title in the 90s, he introduced British spy Pete Wisdom. He used to be shown smoking, and previous Audience Surrogate, Kitty Pryde, even dated him for a time, maybe to look like a "grown-up girl" and forget her literal childhood crush Colossus, from the X-Men's main team. Later, in his own Marvel MAX mini-series Wisdom (2006), he regains his smoking habit.
- Team Titans (a 90s spinoff of Teen Titans): One of the members of this team, who comes from the future, is Battalion, who looks like a living incarnation of a 90s Anti-Hero. He has a giant mane of hair, is described in-universe as a Drill Sergeant Nasty, wears spikes on his shoulders and boots, and uses lots of guns. In first very first on-panel appearance, he uses a giant gun to vaporize a bunch of normal street thugs from present time, chomping a cigar while doing so.
- Wild C.A.T.s: Grifter is shown smoking cigarettes in his solo title. He was also a mercenary before he joined the Wild CATS.
- Wolverine: In a 2001 storyline from Wolverine (1988), writer Frank Tieri introduces Mr. X, a killer from the upper crust whose telepathic powers kicked in when he watched a woman being run over by a car — similar to how Jean Grey's powers first emerged. Mr. X tells Wolverine that, after the car accident and the sensations he felt in his young mind, nothing could compare: cars, women, travels. The accompanying comic book panel has him smoking a cigarette with a bored look on his face, while a girl clings to his side.
- X-Men:
- Wolverine, one of the archetypical anti-heroes of the franchise, has been depicted as smoking, both in and out of uniform, to hammer the point home of how much of a rulebreaker he is, compared to boyscouts like X-leader Cyclops.
- Similarly, Gentleman Thief Gambit is also depicted smoking a cigarette in some comics. The item contributes to his "bad boy", unaffected persona.
- Age of Apocalypse is a Darker and Edgier, Crapsack World founded by Apocalypse, a mutant supremacist who believes in the survival of the fittest. One of the denizens of this alternate reality is Dazzler, who is shown to light up cigarettes with her light powers. In the main reality, Dazzler is a singer and has not been shown to smoke on panel.
- Grease: Played with. As in the play, the Greasers and Pink Ladies all smoke, and Sandy, the clean-cut 50s girl, doesn't handle her first cigarette well. Sandy infamously shows up in the final scene as a true Pink Lady, smoking a cigarette, but can also be seen taking cues from the other Pink Ladies on what to do with it, showing she is still learning to be edgy.
- Smiley's People by John le Carré has the wily British agent deduce the plans by his Soviet counterpart, Karla. The British are willing to welcome Karla and his troubled daughter to the West if he is willing to defect. George Smiley and cohorts await Karla on the western side of the Berlin Wall as Karla begins to make his way through the checkpoint and into no man's land. About a third of the way across, Karla stops to light a cigarette and view the scenery. He'd surely be gunned down on the spot if his Soviet masters ever wised up to what he was doing, and the Brits grudgingly admire the brass Karla has to enjoy a cig as though nothing at all was amiss.
- Carmine "Carmy" Berzano of The Bear usually has a cigarette in hand representing both edge and cynicism and often smokes while on the job.
- Choujin Sentai Jetman: Gai Yuki/Black Condor is shown to be a drinker and smoker, contrasting him with the straitlaced Ryu Tendo/Red Hawk, who doesn't smoke and prefers warm milk as his drink of choice.
- Gilmore Girls: Smoking is one of the big signs that 17-year-old Jess, sent From New York to Nowhere for acting up, is Troubled, but Cute. It plays a minor role in his characterization when he's first introduced, but eventually fades from the storyline and does not reappear following his Self-Made Man Character Development.
- Glee: At the beginning of Season 3, Quinn is revealed to have gone punk and joined a girl gang over the summer and, as a result, is now smoking under the bleachers. She even uses one to light one of her former club's pianos on fire. This seems to stop when she cleans up her act in order to be around her daughter more.
- On Shameless (US), oldest son Lip Gallagher is often seen with a cigarette as a way of expressing his rebellious and edgy personality.
- In Slow Horses, Jackson Lamb is a past-his-prime spy who runs Slough House and is constantly seen drinking and smoking. He is clearly the most cynical of the group and is often a Jerkass to the other characters. Later, we find out that, among other dubiously ethical things, he had to kill a former friend of his after MI 5 found out he had leaked secrets to the Russians.
- Grease: Many adult productions show that the Greasers and Pink Ladies all smoke. Sandy, the Girl Next Door, doesn't take well to her first smoke at the sleepover, showing she isn't edgy and doesn't fit in with the Pink Ladies. However, she appears in the final scene as a full-out Pink Lady, with many productions showing her comfortably with a cigarette as well. Mostly averted with the 2016 Live TV Special, except for one reference to Rizzo not being surprised that Sandy has never smoked.
- Ride the Cyclone: "Noel's Lament" shows Noel Gruber's fantasy of being a female prostitute in post-war France with the most over-the-top edgy, tragic life he can possibly imagine (based on the French New Wave films he loves). This includes burning "herself" with cigarettes "just to somehow prove I'm still alive".
- Control: Every vision of Trench that Jesse Faden encounters has him smoking a cigarette; Trench was a highly cynical Control Freak in life, with his job at the FBC costing him the life of his daughter, but the cigarette might serve another purpose; it's implied to be half of the Ashtray Maze Object of Power, which bars Jesse from Dimensional Research until she meets up with Ahti late into the game.
- Cyberpunk 2077 has Johnny Silverhand, who is constantly shown smoking (or begging for a hit of nicotine) in many of his appearances. It ties into both his rebellious rockerboy anti-authoritarian persona (being the iconic rockerboy thanks to his nuclear assault on Arasaka tower in 2023) but also shows how he's been abusing drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism for his untreated PTSD from his war days. This is in contrast to the Player Character V, who can get thoroughly plastered on every booze consumable out there but is not shown to be a smoker at least until Johnny moves into their head as an engram.
- DmC: Devil May Cry: This game was a Darker and Edgier reboot of the game Devil May Cry, so the new version of Dante was made more angry, crass, and cynical than he originally was. The Tokyo Game Show trailer showed him smoking but this was removed from the game due to backlash.
- Night in the Woods: Bea has a gloomy and cynical personality stemming from the death of her mother when she was in high school. Her father's subsequent decline in mental health forced her to take over her family business at a young age and crushed her dreams of going to college. She dresses in an all-black, goth-like manner and often has a cigarette hanging from her mouth.
- South Park: The Stick of Truth: Cartman orders the New Kid to recruit the school's Goth Kids to their faction, but they refuse to hang out with anyone who isn't as cynical or brooding as them. To prove he is worth their time, they demand, among other things, that the New Kid starts smoking.
- In Dominic Deegan, Dominic Deegan smokes a pipe in almost every panel at the beginning of the comic. Dominic is a jaded seer who is tired of using his second sight on frivolous customer requests, and he is easily one of the most cynical and sarcastic characters in the story at that point. He is eventually cured of his smoking habit when his brother, Gregory Deegan, releases a burst of healing White Magic.
- Parodied in Unwinder's Tall Comics:
- In one page
, Howard takes up smoking an e-cig, which inspires him to start acting like a cyberpunk protagonist: wearing a black trench coat and sunglasses indoors, and muttering about how rules don't exist. In spite of himself, Unwinder finds the ensemble so cool that he can't bring himself to ask Howard to stop smoking indoors.
- In another page, Unwinder and Barbecue Sauce become enamored with Jack Yak, a former cigarette brand spokesman (who now mostly vapes). He's shown wearing a leather jacket with a woman on each arm, while Horse-Man warns Unwinder and Barbecue Sauce to stay away from Jack, fearing that he'll be a bad influence. However, Jack Yak is quickly revealed to be an almost squeaky-clean role model who donates to the homeless, adopts pets from the local animal shelter, plays saxophone at charity benefit concerts, and volunteers at the retirement home.
- In one page
- In A Test Of Fayth, the character Rose is shown smoking. She is someone with heavy amounts of trauma, is highly cynical, and very untrusting. The world of the story does not seem to see smoking in the same way as we do, but Rose smoking is clearly meant to be an early sign that something is seriously wrong with her outlook.
- In Arcane, smoking is almost exclusively seen in the Crapsack World of the Undercity. Shots of random shady-looking people smoking are used as set dressing in the Undercity to help establish the edgy tone. Most of the more ruthless, cynical villains, especially Silco and his minions, are also shown smoking.
- The Simpsons: Krusty the Clown regularly smokes off stage to show that he is a Depraved Kids' Show Host who Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight. The episode "The Last Temptation of Krust" shows him smoking on stage as well after reinventing himself as an edgier, anti-establishment stand-up comedian.
- South Park: The Goth Kids despise life, which they view as painful and pointless. Their bitterness is reflected in their habit of drinking coffee while smoking cigarettes.
