Eye-Obscuring Hat

"Next time, lift your lid and you might see it comin'!"

— The Engineer, Team Fortress 2, referring to the Soldier

Hats can be cool, but sometimes they can indicate something more mysterious. That's where this trope comes in. A character wearing a hat that conceals their eyes can often be seen as suspicious, mysterious, or even evil. Oddly enough, the character usually shows no signs of being unable to see despite the fact that their eyes can't be seen.

There are two variations of this trope (although they often overlap):

• The hat is tilted in a way that hides their eyes from others without a shadow.
• The hat casts a shadow that makes their eyes almost invisible.

This trope can make a character's eyes stand out much more when they stop wearing a hat, which usually indicates Serious Business.

See also The Faceless, Face Framed in Shadow, In the Hood, and Hidden Eyes. Not to be confused with Coat, Hat, Mask.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Lewin "Lightning" Light from Blue Exorcist, one of the True Cross Order's four Arc Knights, always wears a hat that does this.
• The Undertaker of Black Butler occasionally wears his hat in this manner.
• Kisuke Urahara of Bleach is seen with both the variations, especially the shadow-casting one.
• Genzo from Captain Tsubasa. Sometimes his hat cover the eyes.
• Toshiyuki Karasawa of Daily Lives of High School Boys almost constantly wears his baseball cap that covers his eyes with shade. He wears it because of the nasty scar Habara gave to him when she was known as "Archdemon". However, sometimes his eyes can be seen through the shadow.
• FLCL Progressive & Alternative: Marurao is never seen without a baseball cap, and while it doesn't obscure his eyes, it does obscure his tiny eyebrows, giving away that he's Amarao's son.
• In The Hating Girl, the school bomber wears a knitted wool hat that covers his eyes and the horn on his head.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has Jotaro Kujo, who is infamous for wearing his school uniform hat that seemingly blends into his hair this way. His catchphrase (yareyareda ze, or good grief) is almost always preceded by him tipping the brim of his hat to hide his eyes.
• Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III has his fedora canted downwards to obscure his eyes. Sometimes, Depending on the Artist, his eyes are covered in shadows, even when we should be able to see them, or aiming his revolver at someone. When the brim is canted upwards (very rare!), his eyes are easily seen, and he looks quite different. (Sometimes his eyes are seen to indicate surprise.)
• In Natsume's Book of Friends Houzuki-kami's followers wear white wide-brimmed domed hats that cover their faces.
• One Piece: In his first full appearance, Mihawk's hat is covering his eyes, then he raises his head, revealing his sharp gold eyes full of killing intent.
• In Nijiiro Days, also known as Rainbow Days, Toshimune Kakei is always seen with a hat, a headband or a cap and his eyes are almost never shown.
• In Saint Seiya, characters' eyes tend to be hidden by a shadow if they are wearing a helmet. The Pope, Gemini Gold Saint when the Cloth is empty and controled by an evil Saga during the Sanctuary arc or by Kanon during the Sanctuary part of the Hades arc might be the most well known examples, along with the Sea Dragon Marina (or Mariner). In some artworks, every saints, marinas or specters have their eyes hidden by a shadow due to their headpiece. Libra Dohko has this in an artwork too. This also happens in Saint Seiya Spin-offs.
• In Soul Eater, Patty Thompson sports this look while wearing a beanie in flashbacks. She and her sister sometimes do this with the peaks of their cowboy hats.
• In Witch Hat Atelier, the Brimhats, a group of criminal witches that are known to use hats to hide their faces, specially their eyes.

Asian Animation

• Several of the wolf soldiers in Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Mighty Little Defenders wear helmets that cover their eyes.

Comic Books

• "The Bat No More...?", in Batman: Black and White: When Batman is in disguise, the brim of his hat casts a dark shadow that hides his eyes. It gives him a sense of mystery and menace (and notably his antagonist in the same story never gets a similar shadow even though his hat brim is much larger and ought to cast an even bigger shadow).
• The Beacon in Big Bang Comics is a Captain Ersatz version of the Golden-Age Green Lantern. However, unlike his inspiration, he doesn't wear a mask — instead his identity is concealed by the shadow his miner's cap casts on his face.
• Action Beaver from Bunny vs. Monkey wears a big green helmet that covers his eyes.
• Pre-Ninja Snake Eyes in the G.I. Joe comic. This was even done on the action figure depicting him this way — the figure had no eyes and instead there was a shadow painted over his face beneath his boonie hat.
• The Phantom Stranger often has the "hat throws shadows" variety, even if the lighting is wrong for it.
• In the Judge Dredd Elseworld Dredd of Dock Green, PC Dredd wears a standard 1950s British police uniform. His custodian helmet somehow casts a shadow that conceals exactly as much of his face as the built-in visor of regular Dredd's helmet.

Comic Strips

• Andy Capp has always worn his cap to obscure his eyes, even while Reg Smythe adjusted his character models.
• Beetle Bailey always wears his GI cap or helmet so that his eyes are unseen, even when sleeping and showering. In his college days, Beetle wore a cambered porkpie hat this way as well. His eyes have only been seen once. Lampshaded in a strip: the Chaplain tells Sarge to see things from Beetle's viewpoint. The following frame:
  Sarge: (hat covering his eyes) Here's half his problem right here.
  • In another strip, Lt. Fuzz notices that he can never see Beetle's eyes, and Sarge tries to scare Beetle from behind to make his hat fly off; it works, but unfortunately, Beetle is wearing sunglasses.
• Gasoline Alley trash collectors Joel and Rufus always don these.

Films — Animation

• Trolls World Tour: Barb's drummer, Riff, wears a beanie cap that covers his eyes. He has to move it in order to make his eyes visible, though he otherwise doesn't seem to have any vision problems with it.

Films — Live-Action

• Staff Sergeant Williams in The Hill is a brutal sadist who literally works one of the prisoners under his command to death and plays the other guards like a fiddle through manipulation and blackmail. To make him appear that much more sinister and threatening, the peak of his cap is nearly always pulled down to hide his eyes.
• Dr. Claw in Inspector Gadget 2 uses a wide-brimmed hat as a means of concealing his face while still maintaining an active screen presence (Claw's face was completely unobscured in the previous film and it was not received well at all). For bonus points, his Malevolent Mugshot not only wears the hat but also holds the name-card over his face!
• The Water Knight from The Mighty One always had his eye-obscuring straw hat on.
• Officer Short Shrift from the film adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth.
• Sherlock Holmes (2009). The thug working for Lord Blackwood who tries to shoot Watson in the opening temple fight. Likely a sign that he's a Professional Killer (the hat pulled down is to obscure his face from witnesses).

Literature

• In The Balanced Sword, the mysterious wizard Khoros's face is always hidden by the shadow of his hat, no matter what the lighting conditions or the angle you look at him from.
• Danny, the Champion of the World: When poaching pheasants in the twilight, the importance of a peaked cap is mentioned, because the peak casts a shadow over one's face. Later, when Danny and his father are hiding in the woods, they spot a keeper from a distance, whose face is shadowed by the peak of his cap, but it seems to Danny that he is looking straight at them.
• At the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, "Mad-Eye" Moody wears a hat that's tilted to cover his artificial eye. He then reveals that eye to Vernon Dursley just to scare the crap out of him.
• Mr. Men: Mr. Silly, Mr. Nonsense, and Little Miss Scatterbrain all wear hats that cover their eyes.
• Steel Crow Saga: Xiulan always wears either bangs or a hat tilted rakishly over her left eye. She likes the aesthetic, but it's mainly to hide the fact that her pact mark from bonding a Shade Familiar manifested on her eyeball.
• Mat Cauthon of The Wheel of Time wears his hat this way after losing an eye, in a nod to Odin, described below.

Live-Action TV

• On Barney Miller, when Wojo reports a UFO, a Captain from the Air Force who wears his officer's cap in such a way that it obscures his eyes shows up to take his statement. Barney tries to peek around the brim.
• Anne Bonny, as portrayed on Black Sails, often wears her hat this way.
• A frequent Fourth Doctor bit in Doctor Who. He favoured wide-brimmed hats and often used them to hide his face when secretly worried, scared or upset.
• Fawlty Towers: Downplayed in "Waldorf Salad", when Basil wears a hat pulled down low over his temple, presumably to hide his injuries from being whacked by Sybil.
• The Rise of Phoenixes: Nan Yi wears one when he rescues Zhi Wei. It's a hat with metal decorations◊.
• St. Bear's Dolls Hospital: In "The Wrong Patient", Professor Teddy wears a raincoat with the hat pulled down over his eyes. Because of this, none of the staff recognize him.
• Stargate SG-1: Teal'c has been known to use one of these to cover his forehead as a Paper-Thin Disguise.

Music

• Whoever it is that Carly Simon sings about in "You're So Vain" wore a "hat strategically dipped below one eye".

Myths & Religion

• In Norse Mythology, Odin gave one of his eyes for a drink from the well of wisdom and wore a very wide-brimmed hat to conceal it. The hat part of Robe and Wizard Hat may come from this, via The Lord of the Rings.
  • Many re-tellings indicate it is impossible for Odin to go without concealing his missing eye somehow.

Print Media

• A 1969 MAD feature parodied the use of this trope in Beetle Bailey by having Sergeant Snorkel and Captain Scabbard sneak up on Beetle and pull off his cap in order to see what he's hiding underneath. They discover the message, "Get out of Vietnam!" written on his forehead.

Puppet Shows

• Boober of Fraggle Rock has his eyes perpetually covered by a brown newsboy cap, along with a mess of red hair. In reality, the puppet is not designed with eyes.

Theatre

• In The Ring of the Nibelung, the Wanderer (i.e. Wotan) wears his hat funny to cover his missing eye. Siegfried notices this.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: C, the Big Bad, constantly has his eyes covered by his hat. It only comes off after he's defeated.
• BlazBlue: Hazama/Yuuki Terumi often tilts his hat. Most of the characters (and audience) can tell he's up to no good thanks to this.
• Borderlands 2: One of the heads available for Gaige the Mechromancer is a newsboy cap (appropriately titled "Read All About It"), the peak of which hides her eyes (when viewing the character model on the title screen, either variant can occur depending on the angle her head is positioned).
• Capcom artist Edayan seems to always have at least one character like this, as Roberto Miura from Rival Schools and Cracker Jack from Street Fighter EX have their eyes perpetually covered by their hats.
• Carmen Sandiego's appearance tends to change Depending on the Artist, but one thing that stays constant is that she always has at least one eye (sometimes both) hidden by her hat.
• Dark Souls has the aptly-named "Big Hat Logan". You can even wear his hat yourself, and on several character models it will surround the player's head entirely. The item description deconstructs the trope by saying that Logan wore it out of shyness and fear, rather than out of any magical benefits it gave.
• Dawn of War:
  • The Commissar is shown like this, all you see of his face is his nose, grim-set mouth and massive chin.
  • The cover art for Commissar Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!), drawn in the style of overblown propaganda posters, often shows him like this, again emphasizing his Lantern Jaw of Justice.
• Dust: An Elysian Tail: Dust wears a veiled hat covering much of his face through most of the game. Considering his tragic backstory, this may overlap with Hidden Eyes. Fidget mercilessly Lampshades this in a conversation early in the game. She's amazed he can see anything in front of him with his hat in the way.
• Fatal Fury: SNK poster boy Terry Bogard zig-zags this. There is plenty of official art with his eyes clearly visible underneath his hat, but all of his game sprites have said hat obscuring them. Even when he ditches the hat in Garou, you can't see his eyes due to his hair.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV: Kain Highwind has his Dragoon helmet casting an impenetrable shadow over his eyes. More noticeable in Dissidia Final Fantasy due to the top-down spritework/low-res 3D models of his home game. His Holy Dragoon outfit lacks the helmet, though.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Blank wears a peculiar headwrap that involves a leather belt obscuring his eyes, complete with buckle. One wonders how he can see to do anything.
• Henry Stickmin: Infiltrating the Airship: Mr. Brimley wears his hat very low to the point that he covers his eyes, making it hard for him to see.
• Hotline Miami: Pretty much any character wearing a hat has their eyes hidden.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts II: A variation. In Space Paranoids, Sora wears armor that includes a large helmet that covers the top half of his eyes, just barely averting Blindfolded Vision. Anyone taller than his 5'7 feet height (such as Tron) cannot see his eyes as a result.
  • Kingdom Hearts χ: Brain's hat leaves his eyes hidden in shadow on his in-game model, adding to his shifty, rule-breaking persona. Averted in his official art, which shows his eyes.
• The Legend of Spyro: The Manweersmalls wear broad-brimmed hats that completely obscure their eyes.
• Listen To The Wind: Your character wears a wide-brimmed straw hat in all his scenes.
• Mother 3: Flint has a cowboy hat that achieves this. Turns out, he's bald.
• OFF: Concept art of the Batter' shows that his only visible facial feature is his mouth, despite his in-game sprite displaying eyes.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Bobbery wears his hat in such a way to obscure one of his eyes. Vivian and her sisters also use this trope.
• Pikmin Bloom:
  • The red and blue Park Decor Pikmin have parts of the vines they wear cover their right eyes.
  • The banana peel for the Super Market rock Pikmin covers its left eye.
  • The "Station" white Pikmin wears a paper train costume that covers their whole body, except for their stem.
• Pokémon: Red, Hilbert, and Hilda invoke this trope in their sprite animations.
• Puyo Puyo Fever 2: Gogotte wears an oddly-shaped hat that covers his eyes. His official bio mentions he doesn't like sunlight, which might explain this.
• River City Girls: The corrupt police's hats are tilted down to cover their eyes.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Scorpmen have turbans that cover the top half of their faces, hiding their eyes.
• Super Dungeon Bros: The four knights all wear helmets that have the visors down over their eyes.
• Team Fortress 2: The Soldier has a helmet as his default headwear, and it was tilted in a way that his eyes aren't visible. While there are many hats the soldier can wear that can show his eyes, there are also other hats that also obscure them.
• Timothy vs. the Aliens: Timothy wears his hat in a manner like this. Though sometimes his eyes will be seen.
• The Walking Dead: Season Two: An update edits a cutscene so that the brim of Clementine's baseball cap obscures her eyes should she choose to blackmail Rebecca in Episode 1.

Visual Novels

• In Magical Diary: Horse Hall, Balthasar's hair and eyes are always hidden under the hood of his cape.
  Virginia: I think he's got moss growing on him.

Web Animation

• Detective Sergeant Guy Chapman of Hunter: The Parenting is a downplayed example - his helmet doesn't fully obscure his eyes, but it's casting a visible shadow on the upper half of his face, making him appear more sinister. For a large chunk of his introductory audiolog it's up in the air whether he's just a normal copper or a Camarilla agent looking for a breach in the Masquerade. It's the latter, but thanks to Big-D's quick thinking and because his vampiric superiors' inattentiveness, he switches sides.

Webcomics

• Three cast members in the Dead Winter webcomic have this trope applied to them. Such as Jack "Hijack" Burkowitz whom wears a cap with a large visor, Reverend Phillip Murphy a Badass Preacher wearing a flat cap and lastly Sixgun Johnny Rhythm, a man who looked like he stepped out of a Wester, with a matching cowboy hat.
• In El Goonish Shive, Duck, a comicbook shop regular, always wears a baseball cap that acts as this.
• Ananth in Johnny Wander is always drawn with one of these. Apparently Eye Beamshappens if he doesn't.
• In Poison Ivy Gulch, the local lawman Marshal Art where a big cowboy hat that always covers his eyes, leaving his big nose, oversized moustache and ears visible.
• In The Whiteboard, Swampy's eyes are usually covered by his baseball cap or a paintball mask with a dark visor. There's no more than a score of strips with his eyes visible (when he remembers of pending taxes or in bed). In 2011 bangs appeared to easier tell hatless Swampy from Red.

Western Animation

• The titular character in the Hanna-Barbera TV special "The Adventures Of Robin Hoodnik" had a hat that covered his eyes.
• Amphibia:
  • The minor character Chuck wears a straw hat which covers his eyes, yet he can still see.
  • Marcy Wu wears an antlered helmet that completely obscures her face except for her mouth when The Core takes possession of her.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers:
  • One of the frequently-seen policemen (Muldoon) wears his hat low most of the time. Unless he sees a flying doghouse.
  • Snout wears a hat that usually covers his eyes. Le Sewer, his Suspiciously Similar Substitute from "Le Purrfect Crime", wears one as well.
• Numbuh Five/Abigail Lincoln of Codename: Kids Next Door almost always wears her Tomboyish Baseball Cap over her eyes, though she can be seen without it a few times.
• Hudson from Daft Planet.
• Dumb Donald of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids averts this trope. His knitted hat falls below his eyes, but he has made two eyeholes in the fabric to see through.
• The Garfield Show villain Mama Meany has his eyes obscured by his cowboy hat.
• Square Bear on The Hair Bear Bunch.
• Wade from Kick Buttowski has a knit cap that covers up his eyes.
• Looney Tunes
  • The abnormally short gangster Rocky from the Rocky and Mugsy cartoons has an absurdly tall hat which obscures his eyes.
  • Some of Speedy Gonzales' pals have their sombreros over their eyes.
• Mr. Lazy in The Mr. Men Show has a hat that covers his eyes.
• Schleprock in The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.
• Poet's bowler hat dramatically covers his eye a few times in Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker.
• Fern, a minor character from The Raccoons, has his eyes hidden behind his green cap.
• The Drill Sergeant from The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "In the Army" had a hat that covered his eyes.
• Pi from Sabrina: The Animated Series. His eyes are always covered by his hat, on at least one occasion his hat came off and his eyes are still covered by his hair.
• Averted by the title character of Secret Squirrel, whose hat brim almost touches his nose, but has two eye holes so that he can see.
• Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings (2002): The Cowboy in the Land Of Chalk Drawings wears his hat in this fashion.
• Sloppy Smurf of The Smurfs (1981) wears a Smurf hat that completely covers his eyes.
• Star Wars Rebels: Pretty much every unnamed Imperial officer wears their hat so that the brim is covering and shadowing their eyes, ensuring that their eyes are never seen regardless of the angle they are shown from.
• General Modula, the main villain of Sym-Bionic Titan, wears a tall hat with a green eye at the top that helps him communicate with the Mutraddi. The only time his eyes are seen is in the Whole Episode Flashback "Shadows of Youth".
• Mr. Lunt from VeggieTales has a hat that obscures his eyes^note When seen without it, we'll see that he apparently has none.

Real Life

• The singer Gabrielle has ptosis in one eye. She uses various means to hide it, including an eye obscuring hat on the cover of her Greatest Hits album.
• Late blues guitar icon Stevie Ray Vaughan made this a part of his standard look.

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