History Main / SmokingIsCool

* In ''Theatre/{{Company}}'', Joanne states that smoking is "the best". In the DVD of the 2011 concert version where she is played by Patti [=LuPone=], you can see that she's smoking Pall Malls, which fits with [[LadyDrunk the sort of]] [[DeadpanSnarker character she is]].

* Takashi Ichinomiya from ''Manga/OniisamaE'' smokes on a regular basis. "Lady Vampanella" Hoshino also does it, but she does it when she's not in school.

* Unflappable, daring Literature{{Raffles}} famously favors Sullivan cigarettes to the point that, when returning to London after being lost and presumed dead, he doesn't dare smoke them, since he was so well-known to love that particular brand.

->''"There were guns in ''Out of the Past'', but the real hostility came when Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoked at each other."''

[[caption-width-right:250:[[FamilyUnfriendlyAesop Remember kids:]] Smoke, and you too can be this badass.]]

->''"There were guns in ''Film/OutOfThePast'', but the real hostility came when Creator/RobertMitchum and Creator/KirkDouglas smoked at each other."''

* In China, Korea, and Japan, you aren't considered a man unless you smoke. That includes Kung Fu masters, too.

** Death's manservant Albert also smokes foul cigarettes that he rolls himself. He, of course, has no reason to worry about the ill effects of smoking. In the miniseries made of ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'', it is a RunningGag that Albert constantly fails to roll his fag for various reasons. He finally succeeds at the end, grimaces at the taste and throws it away.
** In ''Discworld/{{Mort}}'' Death himself smokes an ornate pipe once, which definitely qualifies as cool at the same time as working as a stealth warning against smoking. He blows smoke rings with his eyeholes.

* Creator/JRRTolkien was an avid pipe-smoker, and built smoking into his work even though Middle-Earth is supposedly a legendarily ancient precursor of Europe and tobacco is a New World plant. When he later removed references to New World fruit and vegetables, he left pipeweed in, and it even became a plot element in that one of the reasons Saruman takes over the Shire is that it gives him access to the stuff. (Saruman in the movies disapproves of Gandalf's smoking habit.) His favourite blend, Capstan Nacy Cut Flake, is still in production.

At one time pipes looked more "intellectual" than cigarettes, so a [[TheProfessor professor]] or scientist, even quite a young one, would smoke a pipe, while policemen, soldiers and other men of action smoked cigarettes. Nowadays pipes denote old codgers or homages to Franchise/SherlockHolmes.

* Hobbits, Dwarves, humans, as well as Gandalf and Saruman, smoke in ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings''. Aragorn's introduction involves him smoking in a shadowy corner, with the light of his pipe briefly illuminating his eyes. Gandalf also uses his magic to blow a smoke sailboat in a smoke ring contest. Apparently, Peter Jackson considered giving Gandalf [[AddictionDisplacement candy to eat]] instead of [[NoSmoking a pipe]], but fortunately the idea was dropped; however, Gandalf is shown coughing while smoking in the third film.

* ''Disney/TheGreatMouseDetective'': Basil is seen smoking from a pipe most of the time, but he smokes a cigarette while in disguise at a pub, which admittedly makes him look very badass. Ratigan also smokes cigarettes with great flourish. TONS of other minor/secondary characters in the film smoke, both good and bad guys. This seemed to have the second or third most smoking in a Disney film (''Disney/TheThreeCaballeros'' had the most.) One scene even showed the awful side effects, when some mean woman at the bar blew smoke in Dawson's face to make him hack and wheeze, only to laugh at him!

* OlderThanRadio: The hookah-smoking Caterpillar in ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland''. In Disney's [[Disney/AliceInWonderland adaptation]], he's even ''cooler'', able to blow colored smoke rings in the shape of letters.

* Thin Man from ''Film/CharliesAngels'' smoked his cigarettes with almost poignant refinement, with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTOrcnd_nCk this scene]] as an example.

As a side note, much like the DrinkOrder, the actual forms of tobacco smoked seem to fall into tropes of their own. Cigarettes are smoked by the typical cool badasses. Pipes are smoked by wizened ancient old wizards and [[OldMaster martial artists]]. Cigars, if they're not being smoked by DaChief or a soldier, are typically the favored form of tobacco for gangsters and {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s.

* In ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' most of the members of the Fellowship smoke. In Middle-earth, smoking was invented by the Shire-Hobbits, and subsequently adopted by the people of Bree-land, and the Dwarves, and at least some of the Rangers of the North (including Aragorn); no other cultures have adopted it, and most places it is unknown. For the hobbits, it's one of their domestic comforts. Gandalf displays his magical nature by blowing special smoke rings. In the first film, Aragorn is introduced as a bad ass through his smoking, posed in the shadows with the light of the pipe illuminating his eyes. As part of Tolkien's LiteraryAgentHypothesis, he felt obliged to include an entire appendix explaining the history of smoking in his artificial pre-Literature/{{Beowulf}} myth cycle.

* Subverted in ''VisualNovel/AceAttorneyInvestigations'' with hard-boiled veteran detective Tyrell Badd, who looks like he has a cigarette in his mouth... until he takes it out and it's really a lollipop.

* [[CoolOldLady Old *Mute]] of ''VisualNovel/HatePlus'' can't actually smoke, being an AI, but the thin cigars her avatar smokes certainly make her ''look'' badass.

** TheMaster was very fond of cigars in his Delgado incarnation; but then he ''was'' the epitome of EvilIsSexy. According to the special features on the DVD of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E3TheMindOfEvil "The Mind of Evil"]], the director insisted Delgado smoke a cigar in the story because it would look cool, even though Delgado was a non-smoker in real life who hated doing it. Delgado complained and was unhappy, but complied... and when he saw the finished episodes he praised the director for the idea, agreeing it made him look amazing.

* Bizarrely, the supervisors at this troper’s last job had this mentality, as they complained often about anti-smoking ads being “lame” and “fake”.

[[folder: Theatre]]

!!Examples

* ''ComicStrip/{{Nero}}'': Madam Pheip, a middle-aged woman always smokes a pipe. She is nevertheless a badass fighter and can be very intelligent if a situation calls for it. In later albums, she tried to quit but always took on her habit again near the end of the story. The character was based on an actual pipe-smoking woman creator Marc Sleen saw as a child and was scared of.
* ''ComicStrip/PaulusDeBoskabouter'': Despite being a children's strip Paulus the wood gnome is often seen smoking a pipe.
* ''ComicStrip/RasmusKlump'': The captain smoked a pipe in the older stories, but in more recent editions he is drawn without one.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanMaskOfThePhantasm''. During flashbacks, mob boss Salvatore Valestra is shown smoking like the Badass gangster he is. Fast forward to the present, where he wheezes and coughs, forever slave to oxygen tanks.
* ''Disney/TheGreatMouseDetective'': Basil is seen smoking from a pipe most of the time, but he smokes a cigarette while in disguise at a pub, which admittedly makes him look very badass. Ratigan also smokes cigarettes with great flourish. TONS of other minor/secondary characters in the film smoke, both good and bad guys. This seemed to have the second or third most smoking in a Disney film (''Disney/TheThreeCaballeros'' had the most.) One scene even showed the awful side effects, when some mean woman at the bar blew smoke in Dawson's face to make him hack and wheeze, only to laugh at him!

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'': Andy Taylor can be seen lighting up in several episodes. For example, after he finished lecturing Opie about lying in the episode "Mr. Mc Beevee." (Mc Beevee -- unseen to Andy until the climactic scene -- also smokes in the episode, as told by Opie: "He can make smoke come out of his ears.") Andy's smoking is more prominent in the earlier black-and-white episodes, and by the first color season, he had put away his pack for good. (Don Knotts was also a known smoker, although he never lit up on the show.)
* ''Franchise/{{Dragnet}}'': Jack Webb was a heavy smoker in real life, and Sgt. Joe Friday was often seen puffing on a cigarette (frequently, these were in transitional scenes).
** The Webb-produced spinoffs -- ''Series/AdamTwelve'' and ''Series/{{Emergency}}'' -- also featured smoking, although it was seldom seen done by the lead characters. An early episode of ''Adam 12'' shows Officer Malloy (Martin Milner) putting out a cigarette, while in ''Emergency'', Nurse Dixie [=McCall=] (Julie London, Webb's real-life ex-wife) can also be seen smoking in at least one episode.

* ''Series/TheTonightShow'': Prior to the early 1980s, numerous guests brought their cigarettes with them, frequently resulting in the set being fogged over in cigarette smoke. Sometimes, five or more people had lighted cigarettes in hand at any one time, and ashtrays were liberally placed between the chairs. Johnny Carson was a smoker, and to a lesser extent so was Ed [=McMahon=], although both stopped lighting up on the set in the early 1980s as the habit became less socially acceptable. ([=McMahon=] ultimately quit, while some sources said that Carson continued his pack-plus-a-day habit for most of the rest of his life, ultimately dying in 2005 of respiratory failure brought on by emphysema.)
* ''You Again'', starring veteran actor Jack Klugman and then-newcomer John Stamos, in a sitcom where a boy in his late teens (Stamos) comes to live with his estranged father. Stamos' character lights up in one early episode, but (after Klugman's character puts the cigarette out) is never seen smoking again.
* Invoked by Chandler in an early episode of ''Series/{{Friends}}'' when the others try to talk him into quitting: "I've had it with your cancer, and your emphysema, and your heart disease. The bottom line is, smoking is ''cool'', and you know it."

** ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' even hung a lampshade on this trope when IneffectualSympatheticVillain[=/=]UnknownRival Harmony seeks "shelter" from the slayer in [[MagnificentBastard Spike's]] crypt, sparking up a cigarette. Parodied in that when she tries to do it, well, she looks like an idiot.
--> '''Spike:''' Taking up smoking, are we Harm?
--> '''Harmony:''' I am a villain, Spike. Hello. ''(takes one drag, coughs, splutters)''

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' had its Cigarette Smoking Man. However, the other characters consider it a bad habit, and he later develops lung cancer.
** Plus he does it everywhere, whether allowed to or not, even in FBI headquarters.
*** One ExpandedUniverse novel, namely ''Antibodies'' by Creator/KevinJAnderson, gave him a nasty cough.
*** The actor, however, hadn't smoked since the seventies - after a few episodes on regular cigarettes, he switched to Herbals for the rest of his tenure on the show.
* Hannibal Smith on ''Series/TheATeam''. Other characters did point it every now and then.
* TheMaster on ''Series/DoctorWho'' was very fond of cigars in his Delgado incarnation; but then he ''was'' the epitome of EvilIsSexy. According to the special features on the DVD of "The Mind of Evil", the director insisted Delgado smoke a cigar in the story because it would look cool, even though Delgado was a non-smoker in real life who hated doing it. Delgado complained and was unhappy, but complied... and when he saw the finished episodes he praised the director for the idea, agreeing it made him look amazing.
* Omar Little on ''Series/TheWire'', who has a tendency to be filmed at least once every season lurking in the shadows of a back alley smoking a cigarette.
* Played with in Katherine Applegate's ''Making Out'' series. Nina 'smokes', but never lights her cigarettes. Somehow, she still manages to get through packs at quite a pace.
* Gomez, debonaire and worldly patriarch of ''Series/TheAddamsFamily'' smoked cigars since early childhood, apparently at his mother's insistence. Indeed, whenever he takes one, it lights up on its own.
** Or is already lit. You reference the movie--in the original, live-action TV series, Morticia also smoked. She didn't use cigarettes, cigars, or pipes, she just... smoked.
*** Gomez and Morticia also occasionally shared a hookah.

* Both Starbucks, in both versions of ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'', have been seen smoking cigars; the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 modern version]] of Baltar was smoking a cheroot during his introduction, and Doc Cottle is almost never seen without a cigarette on the go. Yet it was Laura Roslin who got cancer; go figure.
* Both of the main characters from ''Series/TheSweeney'', just so you know they're double-hard bastards.
* Badass cop Zheglov in ''Series/TheMeetingPlaceCannotBeChanged''.

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}''.

* Creator/ErnieAnderson frequently smoked on television as Ghoulardi. [[ScareEmStraight And he died of cancer in 1997]].
* Brian Kinney in ''Series/QueerAsFolk''.
* Jennifer Paterson of ''Two Fat Ladies'' was rarely seen outside the kitchen without a cigarette. Of course, she also died of lung cancer.

* Many situation comedies -- including but not limited to ''Series/TheBradyBunch'', ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver'', and so forth -- featured single episodes where a teen-aged or child character experiments with smoking but decides he doesn't like it. On ''The Brady Bunch'', Mike (the father, played by Robert Reed) admits he smoked in his younger days, while on ''Beaver'' the titular character steals his father's rare pipe to smoke it. Another episode of ''Beaver'' had Wally dating a woman who smoked.
** Another situation comedy, ''Series/DiffrentStrokes'' graphically showed the negative effects of smoking. The father of Arnold's best friend admits to being a chronic smoker and needs a lung operation ... then, in a show of how addictive the habit can be, is shown lighting a cigarette as he leaves the Drummonds' apartment.
** While not a situation comedy, another negative depiction of smoking is seen in one of the most famous episodes of ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie''. In the set-up to the defining scene in the episode "May We Make Them Proud" (where a fire at the School for the Blind kills Alice Garvey, and the baby son of Adam and Mary Kendall), Albert and a friend sneak into the basement to smoke a pipe, but after being shooed from the basement, leave a burning pipe in a pile of blankets.
* ''Series/GoodTimes'': Wilnona is seen lighting up in at least one episode (the episode "Florida's Night Out," where the gang takes Florida out for the first time since the tragic death of her husband).
* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'': Amy says "I recently trained a capuchin monkey to smoke cigarettes... He looks much cooler than the non-smoking monkeys. Although it's not much of a contest. The other monkeys just sit around and masturbate."
* In ''Series/HaveGunWillTravel'', Paladin regularly smoked cigars.
* Harmon Rabb from ''Series/{{JAG}}'' used to smoke cigars until ”The Return of Jimmy Blackhorse” in the third season.
* Believe it or not, this trope actually appeared in ''Franchise/PowerRangers''. Well...sort of. Obviously the writers were never going to get away with having a ranger actually light up, so instead, they had the Black RPM Ranger suck on a lollipop. It's...more badass than it sounds, really.
* The eponymous bikers in ''Series/{{Sons of Anarchy}}'' all smoke like chimneys. Club president Clay Morrow goes one better and smokes big fat cigars, but that's because he's played by Creator/RonPerlman.

* In ''Series/MiamiVice'', Crockett smokes like a chimney throughout the first season, although he quietly drops the habit early in the second.

[[folder: Newspaper Comics]]
* Inverted in ''ComicStrip/PearlsBeforeSwine''. Stephan Pastis, as part of his SelfDeprecation, has his AuthorAvatar smoke to make him look more like a loser.
* Steve Dallas of ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty''. He quit smoking for a time, but shortly before the comic strip ended he instantly picked it back up again.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* Brock Samson of ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' (Useless Trivia Tidbit: Both "Brock" and "Samson" are name brands for loose leaf tobacco.) His habit has backfired on him occasionally, such as the time Molotov Cocktease spiked his cigarette with chloral hydrate.

* ''ComicStrip/RequiemVampireKnight'': During a lull in the extended fight between Cryptus and Tengu, their disciples Requiem and Dragon make conversation and light up together for absolutely no reason but this trope.

** "{{Literature/Omnilingual}}": This {{novellette}} ([[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19445/19445-h/19445-h.htm link]]) is about archaeology on Mars, using smoking as a plot point.

** Franchise/{{Wolverine}} is well known for smoking cigars. It was once explained that because of his healing factor, he can smoke them without any damage. When he temporarily lost it, he couldn't smoke.

* More or less inverted in various Disney comics. The only good guy who smokes in MickeyMouse comics is the rather incompetent cop Detective Casey, while PsychoForHire Pegleg Pete is just the most famous crook who is often seen with a cigar butt in his mouth. Meanwhile, on the Duck side, one of the few smokers is TheOldConvict Grampa Beagle and his corncob pipe.

* Thin Man from ''Film/CharliesAngels'' smoked his cigarettes with almost poignant refinement, with this [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTOrcnd_nCk this scene]] as an example.

* OlderThanRadio: The hookah-smoking Caterpillar in ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland''.
** In Disney's adaptation, he's even ''cooler'', able to blow colored smoke rings in the shape of letters.

* Many times, a heel wrestler (or manager) will use a lighted cigarette or cigar as a weapon – often, rubbing the burning tip into the eyes – against his opponent to set up a finish and gain a cheap win. The most common example is The Dream Team's win over the team of Wrestling/BarryWindham and Wrestling/MikeRotunda to win the WWF Tag Team Titles in 1985; the Dream Team's manager, Johnny Valiant, began chomping on a cigar during the bout and, when it came time for the finish, handed the lighted cigar to [[Wrestling/GregValentine Greg "the Hammer" Valentine]] to rub into Windham's face, setting him up for an easy pin by Windham's partner, Wrestling/BrutusBeefcake.

* Brock Samson of ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers''. (Useless Trivia Tidbit: Both "Brock" and "Samson" are name brands for loose leaf tobacco.)
** His habit has backfired on him occasionally, such as the time Molotov Cocktease spiked his cigarette with chloral hydrate.

* Creator/BenedictCumberbatch's photoshoot for the [[http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/05/09/sherlock-and-star-trek-benedict-cumberbatch-lights-it-up/ LA Times]]. On Tumblr, fans of the actor went absolutely crazy for it- some even saying things like "I don't like smoking but he makes it look sexy."

* UsefulNotes/JosephStalin's pipe became kind of his signature and a subject of some (rather somber, since he's the goddamn Stalin) jokes about him (check the RussianHumor).