Head Hat
The act of wearing your freshly killed opponent's head on your own. Obviously reserved for the Ax Crazy types, but a few Crazy Awesome Heroic Sociopath Villain Protagonists pull it off.
There are two variants:
- Wearing the skull as a helmet
- Just the skin, as a cowl/mask.
Of course, the more acceptable version uses an animal's head as a hat. Very popular among shamans.
Examples of Head Hat include:
Anime & Manga
- In Battle Angel Alita, the motorball player "Caligula" Armburst has a habit of cutting off the hands of someone from the audience and wearing them on the horns of his helmet as a good luck charm for the game.
- Cubone from Pokémon:
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Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find out who this Cubone guy is. Any cute cartoon animal who wears the skull of one of his defeated enemies as headwear is my kinda cute cartoon animal.
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Comic Books
- A Batman comic had the villain communicate with the heroes, who were stranded on the island to which a millionaire invited them, while wearing their host's face.
Film
- Garland Greene from Con Air: "One girl, I drove through three states wearing her head as a hat."
Mythology
- The Ur Example would have to be Herakles, who is often portrayed as wearing the Nemean Lion's fur with the heads matched up. Following this, most works featuring the Roman Army have standard-bearers with lion or bear skins wrapped around their heads (Asterix, for example).
Tabletop Games
- In Warhammer 40,000, one Ork Nob miniature from the Assault On Black Reach starter set is wearing a pickelhaube with a skull impaled on it.
Video Games
- The minions in Overlord do this sometimes.
Webcomics
- Belkar of Order of the Stick, with YokYok.
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YikYik: "He was a good father." |
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- Richard of Looking for Group. He also sports a dashing kidney hat. "Made with real kidney."
- If we allow Richard's kidney hat, we allow this Chopping Block comic.
- Used as a punchline at least once in Ctrl+Alt+Del.
- In Eight Bit Theater, Black Mage wore Red Mage's burning corpse as a hat. (Red Mage eventually got better.)
- Scott demonstrates his fondness for Nightmare Fuel in these two VG Cats strips.
Web Original
- In episode 7 of There Will Be Brawl, we learn that Kirby killed Daisy and wore her head. Kirby being their equivalent of Hannibal Lecter.
Western Animation
- Don Hertzfeldt's "Rejected Cartoons": I am the Queen of France!