Horned Hairdo

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Mrs. Lovett is a very good baker but not a nice person.

Hair, that infallible representation of a person's moral compass. In an effort to shape the world of fiction into something more logical than the unpredictable real world, authors have long given their characters physical traits that provide artful hints about where said character stands on the good-evil spectrum. Triangular shapes are the preferred way of telling the audience that a character is one bad dude or chick, but few are more unsubtle and in-your-face than a threatening hairstyle. And as far as that goes, you can't get much more direct than likening them to Old Scratch himself. A hairstyle shaped like horns is almost always a surefire sign of a heart as black as soot.

Not to be confused with a joke seen in cartoons in which a character's hair (feathers, if it's an avian character like Donald Duck) come together briefly into little devil horns whenever they have a truly malicious idea.

Examples of characters with Horned Hairdos include:

Anime and Manga

  • Ox Ford from Soul Eater. In no way evil, though.
  • The president of Lala's fanclub in To LOVE-Ru sports such a hairdo when she (apparently) goes Super Saiyan and starts beating up Rito.
  • Andore of Team Unicorn from Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds, who's not quite evil, but more of Manipulative Bastard. As you might guess by his team's name, his hair has a very prominent unicorn horn, which begs the question: how can he wear a biker helmet with that thing sticking out of his head?
  • Sailor Moon. Chibi-Usa/Rini has pointed buns that evoke her Trickster nature and certainly apply as an indicator of malice when she transforms into Black Lady/Wicked Lady. They also evoke the horns of a crescent moon, and her heroic nature as a moon princess.
    • In the case of Chibi-Usa, the hairstyle is meant to evoke the image of a rabbit. Cooan would be a more straight example.
  • Elyse in My Balls is a demon with real horns that turn into gravity-defying Princess Curls when she disguises herself as a human.
  • Akira in Shiki. He's not evil though; just a victim of a series with crazy amounts of Anime Hair.
  • Turles, the Evil Counterpart of Goku, has Goku's hairstyle with two horns.
    • Videl, the daughter of Mr. Satan,has her hair point up into horns occasionally when she's flustered or angry. This is mostly just part of the pun, though, as her name is actually an anagram of "devil".
  • Lord David, one of the many villains whom Kenshiro meets during his journey in Fist of the North Star.

Comic Books

  • Daredevil as he appeared in Marvel 1602.
  • In The Sandman comics, Lucifer looks this way. Also, Cain and Abel.
  • Daimon Hellstrom had horn-hair in the front during his Bronze Age Son of Satan years. As Hellstorm he's let them go and just worn his hair long. In Ultimate Marvel he's a minor character with emo spikes.
  • Subverted by Banana Man—his civilian alter ego Little Eric has horned hair, but it's supposed to represent the shape of a banana, instead of having anything to do with the devil. And far from being evil, he's a bumbling superhero.
  • Former The Dandy character "Lil Imp" has bunches that form horns.

Fan Works

Film

  • Maleficent, the evil fairy from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. It's also entirely possible that it's not actually hair and those are genuine horns.
  • In Pinocchio, the Coachman's hair actually becomes like this during the scene where he says "They'll never come back... ...as BOYS!!!"
  • Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy wears her hair like this in Batman and Robin.
  • A Wachootoo warrior arranges Ace Ventura's normally duckbilled hairdo like this during Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, in mockery of his nickname of "White Devil". Ace does not take it well.

Ace: All right...that's it! This "White Devil" thing has gone far enough. Nobody! Messes! With the 'do!

Literature

  • "Ole Devil" Hardin, in the novels of J. T. Edson, deliberately combs the hair over his temples into horn shapes to emphasise his Mephistophelean appearance.

Live-Action TV

Music

  • Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown of the Spice Girls.
  • French singer Mathieu Chedid has this, but whether he's evil is questionable. His stage name being "M", the hairdo (with a widow peak) is rather to suggest this letter.
  • The Prodigy: "I'm the firestarter! Twisted firestarter!"

Newspaper Comics

  • The Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert, although he's not evil so much as grossly incompetent. Well, he's still evil enough to steal credit and shift blame from/to his underlings.

Theatre

Video Games

Web Comics

  • Charby the Vampirate, though nowadays he has become somewhat non-evil. Still not a nice guy, however.
  • Elijah and Azuu has main character Azuu (and all of his family) sporting some variation of horned hair. Has crossed over with Charby above, which joked about the hair.
  • Zebra Girl, who has real horns a well. While basically good, Zebragirl has been transformed into a demon, with the darkness and violence that entails.

Western Animation

  • Jinx from Teen Titans. She starts out as a villain, but the horned hairdo stays after she has a change of heart.
  • The Simpsons
    • One episode sorta does this: Mayor Quimby is making a speech of some sort, but he's extremely sweaty, so when he passes his hand through his hair, he ends up looking like the Devil. Naturally, the TV crew filming him add hellfire surrounding him.
    • Similarly, in "Lisa the Buddhist", while the town is discussing fund-raising ideas to rebuild the church, the shadow of a horned figure falls upon them. It is then revealed that the silhouette belongs to Mr. Burns, who quickly slicks down his hair.
  • Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
  • Klarion the Witch-Boy from Young Justice sports a particularly pointy hairdo.
  • Jimmy's evil clone from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius.
  • Averted in Futurama: Unlucky Everydude Fry has vaguely horn-shaped hair (even referred to as his "hair-horn" once), yet is undoubtedly good.
  • Danny Phantom
    • Vlad Plasmius sports this in his ghost-form.
    • Likewise, Penelope Spectra also sports a similar hairdo. Hmm...perhaps they go to the same stylist?
  • Aunt Trudy in The Amazing Spiez, an annoying, but not evil, example.

Real Life

  • One well-circulated press photo of Heather Mills McCartney sees the wind do this to her.
  • Many Aztec (or Nahua in general) women wore their hair like this, mostly those who were married.
  • First Lady Mamie Eisenhower wore this hairstyle to her husband's inaugural ball.
  • Inverted with rhinos. Their horns are actually made of the same substance that makes up hair and fingernails.