Hat of Power

Wario's dashing haberdashery, for your force, flight, and fire-related needs.

"There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found,
For when they placed it on his head, he began to dance around!"

— Frosty the Snowman

Some hats serve more of a purpose than just looking nice. Some even go beyond the mundane purpose of protecting the wearer's head. These Hats of Power grant superpowers, incredible luck, or other special abilities to whatever lucky chump happens to put them on.

Sometimes, this serves as a more vulnerable version of Clothes Make the Superman (or at least My Suit Is Also Super), since a super fedora is more likely to get blown off by a gust of wind than a super suit is.

May also be a Hat of Authority. Super-Trope to Hat of Flight and Crown of Power, Sub-Trope to Magical Accessory.

Compare Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat, Weaponized Headgear and Goggles Do Something Unusual.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Several Gadget-of-the-week from Doraemon are caps or hats, which grants it's wearer special abilities, like the Ace Cap (you'll never miss a throw with it, Nobita inevitably uses said gadget to cheat at baseball), the Esper Hat (granting the user Mind over Matter powers), Genius Helmet (wearer becomes a Gadgeteer Genius instantly), Stone Cap (wearer becomes invisible), Bird Hat (wearer becomes a human-bird, prominently featured in the Birdopia adventure), and to a lesser extent some one-shot gadget hats used as cheap gags (case in point, the Popcorn Hat can generate large amounts of popcorn if the wearer is angry).
• Chichi from Dragon Ball had one of these in her first appearance. It had a razor fin she could throw like a boomerange and shot lasers. This was a Shout-Out to Ultraman.
• In Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Kirby gains a new hat whenever he gets an ability. Some of them are the source of his attacks, generally from the Elemental Powers.
• In Nurse Angel Ririka SOS Ririka receives a nurse-like hat as a present from Nozumu. It ends up becoming her Transformation Trinket for becoming a Magical Girl Warrior.

Asian Animation

• The Motu Patlu episode "Alien Hat" features a hat that allows the wearer to get whatever they desire.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 17, Wolffy invents a hat that causes anyone who wears it to have good manners... if the pawprint symbol in front of it is flipped upside-down; otherwise, the wearer will become rude instead. Master Paopao runs into this hat and decides to wear it, not realizing it's on the rude manners setting.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: Jughead's hat granted him special abilities in two different comic book incarnations:
  • In Super Teens, Jughead could become Captain Hero, gaining a caped costume and more muscular physique (varying from story to story), but retaining his crown-shaped cap. Captain Hero appeared when Jughead recites the magic incantation:
  Teeny weeny magic beanie pointing towards the sky; give me muscle, power, strength - form a super guy!
  • In Jughead's Time Police, his beanie is a device that allows him to travel in time.
• Batman: The Mad Hatter, the name implies, is a psychotic supervillain with a range of lethal headware. His "normal" hat (if you can call it that) just lets him control people's minds; hats for special occasions include exploding hats, gas-emitting hats, hats that let you fly, and hats with hilarious pop-out guns.
• Justice League of America: The villain Brain Storm wears a special helmet which enables him to absorb and channel cosmic energy for a wide variety of effects.
• Sub-Mariner: The Serpent Crown, also known as the Helmet of Power, is an artifact linked to the Eldritch Abomination Set that gives wearers various psionic powers. It's an Expy of the Conan artifact the Cobra Crown.
• Wonder Woman (1942): Queen Atomia's crown allows her to telepathically control her lobotomized minions.
  • Wonder Woman's silver age stories included her as a child going on adventures with a genie named Genro. He had a turban that he warned her against unwrapping and using as a lasso, as it was the source of his magic and he would lose all his powers until it was reset.

Film - Animated

• Fantasia, in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" short, the sorcerer's wizard hat gave Mickey magic powers. Or maybe it amplified his own meager powers.
• The Hat from Superman vs. the Elite can summon demons from his magic fedora.

Film - Live Action

• The hats worn by members of The Adjustment Bureau are what allow them to use their Portal Network.
• In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, an unnamed golden crown(The Crown of Bethmoora) allows its wearer to command the unstoppable Golden Army.
• Fictional even in-universe, the Golden Helmet of Membrino. Although it looks like a mere barber's bowl, is said to grant marvelous powers to the wearer. It certainly seems to inspire a capacity for harmony and group singing in nearby swine herders and muleteers in Man of La Mancha.

Literature

• The Conan the Barbarian novel Conan the Buccaneer features the Cobra Crown, which gives magic powers to the wearer.
• Discworld: The Archchancellor's hat has the memories of all prior Archchancellors and can bestow them as it chooses on anyone who wears the hat, as well as possessing significant magical abilities of its own. At one point it freezes a thief solid for stealing it.
• In Tom Holt's comic fantasy Expecting Someone Taller, the Tarnhelm (just as in the opera that loosely inspired the novel) grants the wearer invisibility, shape-shifting, and teleportation powers.
• The Hobgoblin's Hat in Finn Family Moomintroll can transform anything: eggshells into rideable clouds, Moomintroll into an unpleasant creature,and a handful of weeds into a jungle.
• Myth-O-Mania: Being a retelling of Greek Myth from Hades' perspective, his helmet of invisibility features prominently.
• In the Nibelungenlied, the Tarnkappe grants the wearer invisibility. Fun thing: It was originally not a hat (cap), but an cloak (cape). Due to changes of language, with kappe shifting its meaning from 'cloak' to 'hat', it became interpreted as a hat. In modern German, the name has become the word for all kinds of stealth technology.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: There's Hades' helm, which allows him to become obscurity itself, and Annabeth's invisibility cap.
• In Der Ring des Nibelungen, the Tarnhelm grants the wearer invisibility, shape-shifting, and teleportation.
• In Robert Westall's Urn Burial, one of the two helmets contained in the burial cairn of Prepoc allows the wearer to gain the martial prowess of the Fefetheils war-leader; letting even a mere human move with the same catlike speed and grace and use the knowledge and tactics of long-dead hunter and warrior.
• In the Wild Cards novels, minor character Topper is an FBI agent with the ace power to pull anything out of her top hat that can fit through it. As with many ace powers, it is implied that need for the hat is a psychological limit she has imposed on herself (her power first manifested while doing a magic act in a high school talent show), but is so deeply ingrained that the power will not work without the hat.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Golden Cap that allows the wearer to summon the Winged Monkeys thrice.

Live Action TV

• SuperMagic PowerMan's magical headband which grants him superpowers in The Aquabats! Super Show!.
• In El Chapulín Colorado, wearing a wig made out from Samsom's hair gives the wearer Super-Strength and Nigh-Invulnerability. These powers are gone the instant they stop wearing the wig.
• Doctor Who: In "The Five Doctors", the Coronet of Rassilon gives the user the ability to amplify and to project their own will to dominate others.
• Guardian: The Lonely and Great God: Every grim reaper has a black hat that turns them invisible to humans when they wear it.
• In Once Upon a Time, the Mad Hatter had a hat that could be used as a portal between worlds, but thanks to one of the show's many evil plots it stopped working and he actually went mad because he was trying to get it to work to be reunited with his daughter.
• In the Pixelface episode "The Game's Up", QM comes up with a hat of invisibility that renders the wearer invisible. The drawback is that the hat itself remains visible.
• Barone Nero's hat in Ressha Sentai Toqger can be thrown like a boomerang and shoots a beam.
• On Today's Special, Jeff the mannequin was brought to life by a magical hat, but it only worked on the grounds of the department store where he lived.

Music

• In My Hat by Anthony and Those Other Guys, his hat makes him look cooler, makes him look cooler, cooler than he actually is... and it gets him laid.

Folklore & Mythology

• In Brazilian Folklore, the Saci-Pererê is a mischievous elf-like being with the appearance of a single-legged black child who has a red cap that grants his magical powers, such as traveling inside of dust-devils and passing through keyholes. If someone steals it from him, the Saci is rendered helpless, and has to either grant wishes to the thief or steal it back.
• Germanic folklore had a helmet that grants the wearer invisibility.
• Russian folklore had an invisibility cap, usually activated by turning it backwards and otherwise looking perfectly normal.
• Several Greek myths also mention a cap or helmet that could turn the wearer invisible. The most common version has the helmet forged by the Cyclopes for Hades during the battle with the Titans.
  • Other users of the invisible cap include Hermes, Athena, and the hero Perseus.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons/Pathfinder has many of these:
  • Caps
    • Healing Cap of Veluna: Priest/Cleric healing spells heal double normal number of Hit Points.
    • Nightcap of Vision: Can see in the dark.
    • Pileus: Gives wearer several powers allowing freeing of others from bondage.
  • Crowns:
    • Circlet of Persuasion — raises the wearer's charisma
    • Crown of Blindness — causes the wearer to go blind
  • Hats:
    • Hat of Difference: Can become another character class and gain Experience Points
    • Hat of Disguise — Exactly What It Says on the Tin
    • Hat of Hatreds — causes the wearer to take on the appearance of someone those around them hate. In addition, the wearer appears to be in a vulnerable condition.
    • Hat of Holding — Allows to pull out a rabbit, two long swords, a spare set of clothes... or whatever adventurers think they may need in the middle of nothing.
    • Hat of Wizardry: Doubles as an arcane focus for wizards, and allows the wearer to cast any cantrip available in the game once per day.
  • Headbands:
    • Headband of Alluring Charisma — raises the wearer's charisma
    • Headband of Inspired Wisdom — raises the wearer's perception and common sense
    • Headband of Vast Intelligence — raises the wearer's intelligence (although not as much as the name might suggest)
    • Headband of Mental Prowess — functions in the same way as any two of the above three items
    • Headband of Mental Superiority — raises all three mental stats (Charisma, Wisdom, Intelligence)
  • Helms:
    • Helm of Comprehend Languages and Read Magic — another Exactly What It Says on the Tin
    • Helm of Telepathy — and yet another Exactly What It Says on the Tin
    • Helm of Teleportation — Exactly What It Says on the Tin (the writers went for descriptive rather than creative names most of the time)
    • Helm of Underwater Action — allows the wearer to see clearly and breathe underwater
    • Helm of Brilliance: Grants many light and fire based spell abilities
    • Helm of Darkness: Can cast darkness, immune to many attack forms
    • Harrowhelm: Grants psionic abilities
    • Skull of Death: Gives several death-based abilities
• GURPS Magic Items 2 features several kinds of magic headgear, but perhaps the best example is the Hat of Magery. It is a silly-looking pointy hat that turns a mundane wearer into a mage, makes those who are already mages even more powerful, and lets the user perform improvised magic. What should make players a bit wary of donning it is that it was made by an infamous mad wizard, who insists he created it as a practical joke.
• Munchkin parodies this with such items as the "Horny Helmet" and "Pointy Hat of Power".
• The crown of Nagash from Warhammer is a potent artifact, turning the wearer into a necromancer and granting him increased intelligence and magic power at the cost of "hearing voices" —as the crown has personality of its own. It's implied that the crown used to be ordinary, and gained its powers from spending several centuries on the head of Nagash, the great necromancer.
  • It was last seen gracing the sloping brow of the orc warlord Azhag the Slaughterer. The crown occasionally helped by applying actual strategy to the Waaagh, but orcs are extremely tough mentally as well as physically, so Azhag often ends up yelling at himself.

Theatre

• Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung features the Tarnhelm, a helmet forged from the Rheingold that allows the wearer to turn invisible and transform into animals.

Toys

• In LEGO Time Cruisers, hats are used to pinpoint space/time coordinates for the good guys' Time Machine.

Video Games

• In The Adventures of Lomax, Lomax's helmet. It can be thrown like a boomerang, it can be thrown to explode (somehow multiplying itself in the process), its plume can stretch and grab certain surfaces, it can work like Helicopter Hair, and of course, wearing the helmet provides a protection from being a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
• Bug! has the Zap Cap, which allows the titular character to shock enemies in front of him.
• In Cave Story, the Demon Crown is an Artifact of Doom which grants its wearer magic powers, as well as complete control over a Quirky Miniboss Squad and the frenzied Mimigas. At least one war was fought over control of this Crown.
• Clonk: In the Defense of the Ancients-like scenario "Keepers", the Hunting Hat boosts your agility.
• The Crown of Wu, a game based on Journey to the West, somehow depicts Sun Wukong's Golden Fillet from the novels as a crown that amplifies it's wearer's magic powers. Turns out Sun Wukong used to be an all-powerful Great Sage Equal to Heaven before said crown was stolen by Wukong's ex-comrade, Zhu Bajie, when fought as a boss Bajie will use the crown's powers against Wukong; the final cutscene sees Wukong defeating the boss before regaining his Fillet and superpowers.
• One of Dante's gun weapons in Devil May Cry 5 is a cowboy hat that feeds off demon blood (read: Red Orbs) to attack enemies using projectiles. It is named the "Faust Hat", referencing an enemy from the fourth game that wore a similar hat.
• Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light makes hats the foundation of its Class and Level System. After completing certain quests, the party gets a new crown which grants them the abilities of a White Mage, a knight, etc. Usually these crowns match the abilities of the Guest-Star Party Member who they've just been helping. They get their first set from the Crystal.
  "To thee I give this gift of Light, upon thy head a crown of might."
• Early in Glimmer In Mirror, you collect a magic golden crown called Lyo who grants you Hand Blast abilities, as well as amplifying your attacking spells. For bonus points, Lyo can also talk and communicate with you at times.
• As implied by the title of A Hat in Time, Hat Kid's hat is a major game play mechanic. It has a variety of powers such as slowing down time, making the intangible tangible or simply showing you the way to go, as well as other powers.
• Kao The Kangaroo: Round 2 has helmets that briefly allow Kao to fly.
• In Kid Chameleon, various helmet/mask powerups enable the protagonist to transform into different forms with different powers.
• In Last Scenario, Helio wears a speed-increasing hair ribbon, and Flynn has a beret protecting against some detrimental effects. Also, there are items like the Arch-Angel's Halo, which immunizes against all negative status effects and gives huge defence boosts, the Spring Hat, massively increasing HP, and the Crystalline Crown (automatically bestowing P-Shield).
• The titular cap from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap grants the wishes of its wearer. However, it can't show its full power without the Light Force that Princess Zelda just happens to be full of. Ezlo is a weird example, because while he lets Link shrink whenever he is being worn, it's because he's a sapient being who is consciously using his own spell to do so.
• Vice Versa, Cerebella's hat, pet, and weapon of choice in Skullgirls. Vice Versa is a big, orange beanie with two muscular arms coming from the sides that Cerebella uses to grapple, crush, and bludgeon on command. Vice Versa's arms are strong to the point where they are able to lift up an elephant with one hand, or crush rocks into diamonds using both.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario 64's hats all fall under this, they're all power ups which give Mario different abilities like being made of metal, going through enemies and obstacles while invisible, and flight, and you can mix and match them all. Heck, Mario's normal hat too, he takes double damage without it somehow.
  • In Super Mario 64 DS, Yoshi can use a hat to turn into Mario. In general, this remake has special hats that can turn a character into another one.
  • In Super Mario Odyssey, Mario's hat is inhabited by a hat creature named Cappy. As a result, Mario can use it as a weapon, a temporary platform, or Capture other beings and even inanimate objects. Unusually for the trope, Mario has to take the hat off to use its special abilities.
• Averted in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Midna is wearing one of the Fused Shadows as a hat, but it doesn't have any power on its own (she uses her own Twili powers for teleportation). Only once you find them all does she use them to transform into a giant octopus from hell... that still isn't enough to beat Ganondorf.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: There's the various helms, circlets and hats, which boost your stats, but some ones whose Flavor Text gives them more power are the Saecelium Circlet, which says that "Time slows around this, giving the wearer more time to think." and the Goddess Helm, which "Contains the wisdom of the universe".
• Wario Land:
  • In Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, hats served as Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups. The jet hat allows Wario to fly, the dragon hat allows Wario to breathe fire, and the bull hat allows Wario to Ground Pound while also strengthening his normal charge attack.
  • Virtual Boy Wario Land has similar power-ups to the first game.
  • A Spiked Helmet similar to the bull hat (re)appears in Wario Land 3, but like all the power-ups in that game, it becomes a permanent effect (namely, letting you break blocks with your head) and does not show up on Wario's sprite.

Web Animation

• Ultra Fast Pony: In "Rocks, Clocks, and Two Stupid Ponies", Applejack claims her hat (and possibly every hat in the world) is magic. In fact, she attributes all her success in life to wearing this hat. And Twilight Sparkle agrees that AJ's hat might pose a serious threat to her own unicorn magic. At no point does anyone elaborate on what this hat actually does.

Webcomics

• Charby the Vampirate
  • Alps such as Tony and Yiska have a tarnkappe which allows them to transform, enter minds for a chat, turn invisible and alter dreams. Their evil eye is the only known part of their power set that works without it.
  • Kavonn's hat is sentient and altered his body to maintain his current height despite his age along with his more eerie physical features like his pale skin and pink eyes with torn lids. She is the one that gave him his staff and she also happens to contain an interdemensional portal which is frequented by jackalopes to Kavonn's annoyance.
• The Hat Lords and Ladies of Decrypting Rita are known as such because their hats are conduits of their power and may contain their soul.
• One of the magic types in Erfworld is "Hat Magic". The main examples seen so far are message hats, used to transmit notes and gems from one hat to another.
• In Kukuburi every member of la Brigade du Chapeaux wears one. It's strongly implied that the package Reggie was to deliver to Nadia contained one of these (so she could join as a member, probably). The hats are the endings of a Portal Network and the wearers also use them instead of telephones.
• Tails of Lanschilandia has the Madcap of Malvaric, a more evil-looking Happy Harlequin Hat which grants assorted magic powers to its wearer and serves as the MacGuffin of the comic's third story.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe: The psychic-amplifying tiara of Princess Arlon.

Western Animation

• In one episode of The Big Knights, the knights are given hats that render them invisible.
• On The Amazing World of Gumball, the family fights over a Tinfoil Hat that gives the wearer incredibly good luck. Anais takes it to the dump to destroy it, leading to a The Lord of the Rings parody with Gumball as Gollum.
• An episode of Doug had the eponymous character find a hat that gave him amazing luck, which he became so attached too he would refuse to take it off even when getting a haircut. By the end of the episode it flies off to places unknown and everything returns to the Status Quo.
• Frosty the Snowman was brought to life by a magic hat.
  • Curiously, some 15 years before the song was penned (1950), a cartoon called "The Snowman" (1936) had an Eskimo boy and his animal pals building a snowman which came to life when given a hat (here a metal chimney cap) - unfortunately he became a horrifying monster Snowlem.
• In Lost in Oz, Fitz controls the flying monkeys with a device set in his bowler hat.
• Mighty Max had a kid whose baseball cap made him the Capbearer, and apparently the guardian of reality or something. He used it to access a Portal Network around the world.
• A famous Rocky and Bullwinkle serial featured the Kerwood Derby^note a pun on the name of then-popular announcer Durwood Kirby, a hat that vastly amplified the wearer's intelligence. It's last known wearer was Albert Einstein.
• In Wander over Yonder, Wander's trademark baggy green hat is a Bag of Holding that can conjure up whatever someone needs (even if it's not necessarily what they want). "The Bad Hatter" reveals Wander stole the hat from a pair of interplanetary warlords who were fighting over, and abusing, its item-conjuring powers.
• In "What's Opera, Doc?", Siegfried Fudd had a "spear and magic helmet", the latter of which apparently gave him power to summon lightning and storms.
• Willoughby's Magic Hat is an odd 1940s cartoon from Columbia studios - it tells how Samson's hair was woven into a knit cap that gave the wearer super strength. Over the millenia it was a deciding factor in many historic events, and gets purchased by a little schnook of a guy who then faces off against a Frankenstein-like robot menacing a damsel.

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