That's no overreaction. Plumbing is very demanding work.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: someone wearing a necktie around the head as an improvised Martial Arts Headband.
A trope often associated with salarymen and other corporate types whose business clothes come with a necktie. Sometimes they get overenthusiastic during an after-work party, or they get involved in Serious Business that justifies dropping the Dress Code.
In real life, most specifically in the hard drinking context, this custom comes from a drunken guy's ostensibly failed attempt to take off his necktie, which remains wrapped around his head for the rest of the party after they forget the matter or quit trying due to alcohol-numb fingers.
Sister Trope to Lampshade Wearing.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A 1999 This Is Sports Center ad had anchors discussing a test of their Y2K emergency procedures. The test goes less than optimally as chaos in the offices break out. The kicker, though, is Charlie Steiner shoving his face into the camera, wearing a necktie on his head and holding a latern while shouting, "Follow me! Follow me to freedom!"
Anime & Manga
- Worn by Bradley in an omake of Fullmetal Alchemist parodying the bit where he turns out not to be dead.
- Oji "Gabriel" Tanaka does this when playing guitar in the early episodes of The Legend of Black Heaven. Later on, he just takes the tie off.
- Discussed in Lucky Star when Konata, Kagami and Tsukasa wonder why a drunk person is always depicted wearing a necktie around their head; they conclude that it's likely because they're too drunk to take it off properly.
- My Monster Secret has a chapter where Youko's father Genjirou sports one of these after having too much to drink. This is doubly funny because 1) he wasn't even wearing a tie before, and 2) as a full-blooded vampire he's somewhere between two and three times taller than the rest of the cast.
- Seen on a horde of drunken salarymen in Peepo Choo.
- Trigun: Vash the Stampede does this a couple times in both versions, when he gets down to some serious drinking. We never see the tie otherwise—he seems to only pull it out for this purpose.
- Episode 10 of Yuri!!! on Ice reveals that Yuri did this while drunk at the previous year's gala. Even more funny since he is seen removing the tie earlier, meaning that either he or someone else purposely tied that tie around his head.
Film — Live Action
- Black Rat: When the Black Rat offers to let Takashi go if he can block his shot on goal, Takashi takes off his necktie and ties it around his head to show how serious he is. It doesn't help.
- Done by some of the clerks when they turn pirate in The Crimson Permanent Assurance short that accompanies Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
- Abby in Planet Terror
- Lisa sports one in The Room (2003) while she and Johnny get very drunk on Scotchka before their second love scene.
- In Sam, Steve is wearing his necktie as headband by the end of his Stag Party.
- Shaun in Shaun of the Dead does this to cover a dart wound.
- Arlo Pear in Moving when he wants his furniture back from the movers. Reflects his earlier martial arts fantasy.
Literature
- The Bad Guys has Mr. Snake tie his tie around his head in Book 7.
Live-Action TV
- 100 Things to Do Before High School: In "Sit at a Different Lunch Table Thing!", Fenwick gets carried away with his impersonation of an 8th grader, and ends up dancing on the 8th grade patio wearing his tie as a headband.
- Doctor Who: In "The Girl in the Fireplace", the Tenth Doctor dons his necktie as a headband after partying with 18th century French aristocrats. Of course, since it's the Doctor, it's all part of his plan to make the bad guys underestimate him.
- Will does this on the first day at his upper class school in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air arguing that while the dress code specifies a tie in a half-Windsor knot, it doesn't say where he has to wear it.
- House of Anubis: When celebrating their last day of class before graduation with the other girls, KT is shown to have converted her uniform tie into a headband.
- In a fifth season episode of How I Met Your Mother, Ted Mosby ends up with a tie wrapped around his head during a quick montage of a Drinking Game.
- My Name Is Earl: Randy unties Earl's tie (which Earl doesn't know how to retie) in order to show Earl what he would look like as an eighties guy at a rock concert.
Theater
- In Black Friday, Gary Goldstien puts his tie around his head like this after joining the impromptu mall cult and keeps it that way for the rest of the show, implied to be due to the mania and mob mentality the Wiggly Dolls are causing.
Video Games
- Tao Cheng in Grand Theft Auto V wears one at the beginning of the mission "Crystal Maze".
- In Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, the salaryman dons a neckie headband to get ready for a showdown with a giant mouse monster.
- The OST album cover for Pizza Tower has Peppino wearing a necktie like that while singing karaoke.
- Yakuza 4: One of the revelations that you can get as Saejima and Kiryu has an insanely drunk office worker with his tie wrapped around his head telling off a younger guy for harassing a young woman. He tries to punch the young guy when he keeps bothering her, but his tie gets caught up in the automatic doors yanking him back, and with the motion he accidentally kicks the young guy, knocking both of them out. Saejima notes that it was common back in his day (as in, 1985) for people to wrap their ties around their heads when they went drinking, while Kiryu remarks that alcohol can make heroes even from the most ordinary men.
Webcomics
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Dr. McNinja does this a couple of times when he's either about to do something awesome or when he's drunk.
- In El Goonish Shive, Elliot does
this as part of a gradual slide toward being sexily undressed.
- Used by the very first hero in The Superest: The Unopposinator.
- Kane does it when tackling an after-hours assignment in Yellow Peril.
Web Video
- Critical Role: Donned by Sam during Scanlan's solo assault on the manor in Episode 31.
- In The Muppets' version of "Jungle Boogie", Sam the Eagle has this at one point, even though he was never wearing a tie in the first place.
Western Animation
- An episode of Codename: Kids Next Door has Numbuh 1 teaming up with a former salaryman hunting a serpent-like tie monster whose breath forcibly turns people into suit-wearing businessmen who slave away in corporate management. The man in question, Vin Moosk, wears his former necktie as a headband and later goes on to become one of the few adults Numbuh 1 is trusting of/considers to be cool.
- Agent/Principal Phil Coulson of Ultimate Spider-Man seems prone to this trope when going into battle. After all, nothing says Badass Principal like an improvised Martial Arts Headband.
Real Life
- At at least one factory in the US, labor union representatives wore their neckties on their heads to a meeting with Japanese executives overseeing the plant to show their willingness to stand for their positions.
