Cool Board

Rocketing to the top of every skater kid's Christmas wishlist.... and every health and safety code violation list.

A cool board is a skateboard, surfboards, snowboards, Hover Board, etc that is either really cool, or used by a really cool character. The board can be used as transportation, a weapon, a Plot Device, or simply to show that the user is cool.

Some cool boards are cool only because of the cool character who rides it, but others are magical, rocket-powered, or weaponized in some way. Cool boards are sometimes subject to Rule of Cool, because a rocket-powered skateboard wouldn't work that way, the rider couldn't realistically skate that well, or some other reason.

See also Sky Surfing and Shield Surfing.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Case Closed: Conan Edogawa has a skateboard. Motorized, solar-powered, fast enough to outrun many a motorbike.
• Eureka Seven: All Kraft Light Fighters are equipped with ones, not only as flight equipments, but also as bladed weapons.
• Rakan from Negima! Magister Negi Magi has been known to surf on a sword at excesses of mach 5.
• Soul Eater: Death the Kid has one that can become a Hover Board.
• Yata Misaki from K fights on his skateboard, and uses it as a shield on more than one occasion when fighting enemies with swords. He uses his powers to propel it.
• Sk8 the Infinity, as might be expected, is full of them, from Langa's skateboard that he has a tendency to soar into the air with like a snowboarder that only he can really ride, thanks to his Gadgeteer Genius best friend Reki, to Kaoru's AI skateboard, to Reki adjusting his get-up depending on his strategy by episode 11.
• Killua in Hunter × Hunter shows up for his first Hunter Exam with a skateboard, and uses it in the "Follow the Leader" style first stage, until Leorio berates him for it, at which point he continues on foot. He later uses it in the second stage to attack a boar, but it is never seen since.
• Usui Horokeu from Shaman King channels his guardian spirit into a snowboard to create ice, which he can then ride to attack opponents.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS has the D-boards which are used in the computer generated world of Link Vrains. They allow duelists to duel on the move by riding the Data Storms in a manner similar to how a surfer would ride waves. However, this was not the first instance of Cool Boards in Yugioh as 3 series earlier there were the Duel Boards in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, which are essentially motorised skateboards for those not old enough to have a licence for a Duel Runner.

Comic Books

• New Warriors: Night Thrasher was a Fad Super with a high-tech skateboard. The skateboard was gradually phased out and replaced with a Cool Bike, leaving him with a name that made little sense.
• Robin (1993): When Tim Drake was at Boarding School and lost access to the Redbird, he designed a high-tech skateboard called the Redboard. He'd had a plain green skateboard since his earliest appearances but the Redboard was specifically built to be used in combat as Robin while still being able to be stored inconspicuously at school.
• Silver Surfer: The Silver Surfer should be the Trope Codifier, even if his origin looks like a cosmic god's joke◊.
• Spider-Man: Rocket Racer, a villain turned hero, has a high-tech skateboard that allows him to ride on the side of buildings.

Comic Strips

• Dennis the Menace (US): The titular character often rides a skateboard, and whenever he does, his dog, Ruff, usually follows him. Whenever Dennis leaves his skateboard in Mr. Wilson's yard, Mr. Wilson has the misfortune of slipping on it.

Fan Works

• In Amazing Fantasy, Mysterio produces a small fleet of rocket-powered skateboards to create the Rocket Racer Gang, just one group of the many new supervillains armed with the tech he provides from the Marvel Universe.

Films — Animation

• Treasure Planet has Jim Hawkins's "solar surfer," which is used to great effect in his introduction as a teen.
• In Turning Red, Miriam is often seen with her skateboard which she has emblazoned with several stickers.

Films — Live-Action

• Marty McFly's skateboard in Back to the Future. Instead of pulling off tricks with it, he actually uses it for transportation, grabbing the back of cars while riding it. He ends up with a Hover Board in Back to the Future Part II when he travels to 2015 - and makes us viewers desperate for them to be real as this specific year comes ever closer. It didn't.
• Firehouse Dog: Shane uses one of these as his main form of transportation. Eventually, Dewey shows off his own skills on it, which starts the process of them bonding with one another.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), Mikey has a jet propelled skateboard.
• Zack's sentient skateboard in The Skateboard Kid. It's motor-powered, has a prehensile arm, and it talks too—with Dom De Luise's voice no less!
• In Shredder Orpheus, Orpheus and the rebels all ride skateboards, and a fair bit of the film's runtime is dedicated to shredding. In the second half of the movie, Orpheus obtains a special board that can even shred the dangerous Underworld parking garage.

Literature

• In Skin Game, Butters uses a magic- (and Bob-) powered skateboard to flee from the warehouse when his spying on the heist crew is detected.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: In "Boom Town", Margaret/Blon the Slitheen decides the fastest way to get off Earth is to blow up the planet and ride the shockwave on a "pan-dimensional surfboard" (or "tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator"). The Doctor takes the board and integrates it into the TARDIS as a force-field generator.

Pro Wrestling

• Subverted with the Dynamic Dudes of WCW. They were supposed to be cool skateboarders meant to cash in on the sport's growing popularity in the late 1980s(yes, WCW was ahead of the curve for once), but their perceived lack of talent, on the boards and in the ring, made fans hate them more than the usual heel extraordinaire Tag Team The Midnight Express. Shane Douglas, as a former school dean, probably wasn't the best choice and Johnny Ace usually needed a cooler partner(his brothers, Kenta Kobashi, "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, etc) to play off of.
• Played straight with Ryder Reid of Midwest Championship Wrestling. He's properly booked as a heel, so the fans can freely hate his guts while acknowledging he does bring a pretty cool board to the arenas. And yell at the referees for continuing to discount it's potential as a shield, and a weapon.

Toys

• BIONICLE: Tahu Nuva's Magma Blades can be combined to become a lava surfboard.
  • Toa Lhikan had these as well.

Video Games

• Fantage: Unlike other games, where your primary method of moving around is via walking, you travel around in Fantage by the means of one of these. Collecting boards is one of the most popular things to do in the game. There are also a large variety of things that are classified as boards, from a mass of clouds to a smiley face with wings which sticks its tongue out at you.
• Ernie Eaglebeak uses a magical surfboard to travel between islands in The Spellcasting Series.
• Subverted in Final Fantasy VIII; Zell tries to take a hoverboard on the Seed mission, but the Garden administrator confiscates the board and it's never seen again.
• In BlazBlue, Jin Kisaragi can create an ice sword surfboard.
• Ventus's Keyblade Glider in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
• Funky Kong flies on his surfboard. Also, he uses it as a baseball bat.
• Beat from The World Ends with You. He's an avid skater to the point of using his skateboard as his weapon via Combat Parkour. When he's a Reaper, he's even capable of levitating with his board.
• Rune Factory Oceans: When wielding a two-handed sword, a certain aerial attack allows Azel to surf on the sword for a limited time.
• Sengoku Basara's Chosokabe Motochika uses his rocket-powered anchor to surf on dry land.
  • From the opening movie of Devil Kings, Takeda Shingen rides a huge log, while his apprentice Sanada Yukimura uses his own twin spears.
• Dante in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening uses...the mooks. Also Nero, in a cutscene.
• In Mega Man X, X uses the charged Shotgun Ice. Later, Mega Man ZX's Model L.
• In Shaun White Skateboarding, Shaun's skateboard is so cool it can free people's minds and color landscapes, and the player wields it to save the city.
• Every boarder in the Skate or Die series has a board suited for them, and the player uses theirs to win tournaments and save the town.
• The hoverboards in Subway Surfers. Most are shaped like standard skate-or-surrfboards, but timed-specials like Sidney's Ray board or Venice's Gondola definitely qualify. As well as the expensive special boards with built-in boosts (like the Teleporter [fast lane change] and the Lowrider [permanent ducking]).
• Daniel from the Richman series rides on a skateboard in the third main game (where he also debuts,) then rides another one when delivering some mail in the fourth main game, and rides the same one as his motorcycle (along with a hoverboard as his car) in the eleventh main title.
• In The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Hulk can smash a bus flat and use it as a skateboard, shield, or Frisbee. It's a great way to get around. Anything smaller than a tank gets sent flying if he runs into it while skating, too.
• Switch and his skateboard. It's so cool he can even skate up walls and along the ceiling.
• Skatebird: You play as a bird on a skateboard small enough that you can ride on it.
• One of Natla's henchmen in Tomb Raider I is a teenager who attacks Lara with dual Uzis while riding a skateboard in an underground mine.

Web Animation

• The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: Both Little Miss Epic and the Epic Skatepark Owner ride on skateboards during the series trailer. And then the fourth episode, “The Most Epically Inspirational Sports Movie Ever”, is entirely dedicated to them training for a skateboarding competition. Ridiculously Epic gets a skateboard of his own in that episode: it comes with a turbo engine, spikes, and “evil” literally written across it.
• RWBY has the minor character Reese Cloris, whose weapon of choice is a hoverboard that can separate into a pair of guns.

Webcomics

• Seiyuu CRUSH!: Shota is never seen without one of his skateboards, and even has built-in ramps and rails in his house. Plus the board doubles as a booster seat when he's driving.

Western Animation

• Alpha Teens on Machines: One of Axel Manning's vehicles is the Turboboard/Rocketboard, an oversized skateboard with a jet engine on the back.
• The Amazing Spiez!!: in episode "Operation Spy-Sitter", one of the Spiez' gadgets is a jet-powered 4 person surfboard.
• Lee Ping of Detentionaire is pretty handy with a skateboard, and has often used one to get out of sticky situations. In fact, the very first episode of the show opens with Lee being chased by the Cleaners on a skateboard, before going back to show us how he got into the situation.
• The Simpsons: Bart's signature skateboard.
• ThunderCats: The flying Space Boards used by Wilykat and Wilykit. First seen in "The Time Capsule".
• Kit Cloudkicker from TaleSpin has a collapsible board that he rides when being towed by Baloo when piloting the Sea Duck.
• Manic from Sonic Underground rides a flying hoverboard to get around quickly, since he's not naturally as fast as Sonic.
• In The Owl House episode "Follies at the Coven Day Parade", Amity briefly uses her abomination magic to create a skateboard for quick transportation.

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