Zima. The memorable Catch Phrase of the first (otherwise forgettable) Zima commercial (in which the annoying Zima spokesman pronounced all "s"es as "z"s) was "Nize hat."
Angel Beats!: Yuri wears one while issuing commands at headquarters, Naoi has a nice one too, as part of his uniform, and Angel wore one in episode 7 in the garden.
Angel Blade: Phantom Lady's helmet is her most distinctive feature. she looks suspiciously like the heroine's mother without it.
The Holy Roman Empire in Axis Powers Hetalia. Prussia has been seen with one during the War of Austrian Succession. Turkey also sports one alongside Mask Power. Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Sealand, and Egypt (if a keffiyeh counts) normally wear hats, and Liechtenstein, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, and Denmark have all had character designs with hats, though not all necessarily nice ones.
Generally speaking the mafia place value on hats which, while not particularly flashy, are still quite nice hats. In the scene where Firo gets his Fedora, we also see Isaac and Miria buy off a huge stash of ludicrous hats and helmets.
Black Butler (a.k.a. Kuroshitsuji) is full of nice hats. Considering the time period the series takes place in, hats were a must for men, women, and children when leaving the house, at least for the wealthy.
Ciel wears a tophat whenever he goes out, which often has a ribbon or some other decoration on it. The most memorable hat is probably the one he had to wear while crossdressing which included a ribbon, bow, and many flowers. There's also the adorable paperboy hat Ciel wears when he goes undercover.
Oh, and the hat from the Curry episode. How one can wear it without it falling off is anyone's guess. It must involve several hairpins and the will of God.
Undertaker's hat is also rather nice. It has that nifty ribbon thing flowing down off the top.
In Black Cat, Sven is almost always seen with his hat. It's become part of his Memetic Outfit.
Dr. Black Jack quickly acquires a black fedora in the Black Jack 21 series. There's no particular reason for it; it's just there for the sake of looking cool (which it totally does◊).
Gretel of Black Lagoon wore a Nice Hat for a brief moment in episode 15.
Later in the series, while fighting a pack of magically enraged dogs, a shot cuts to Tiellagory holding his hat, surround by them. When another character rushed to his aid, he turns to them and says, "My hat..." following which the dogs fall down dead.
Kotori from Da Capo sports a nice hat as part of her school uniform. Interestingly enough, her school uniform is different from every other girl, but no one seems to care.
The Millennium Earl of D.Gray-Man wears a different one every time he shows up; there have even been contests for fans to design more of them. They cover up his horns.GeneralCross Marian has an epic hat as well, along with a Badass Longcoat and a mask covering half his face. You cannot find a more badass outfit anywhere.
In one episode of Digimon Adventure 02 Takeru "TK" Takaishi's signature hat becomes an indicator of his state of mind when he crumples it and throws it to the ground in anger — disturbing Iori/Cody who, prior to that moment, saw Takeru as a Cheerful Child — just before he storms off on his own and physically attacks the Digimon Kaiser/Emperor. Later, once his anger had abated and his usual affable persona had been mostly restored, a still visibly shaken Iori gives him his hat back. About the only other time he takes it off is toward the end of the series as a solemn gesture of respect and mourning during the death of Yukio Oikawa.
Tomoki/Tommy from Digimon Frontier wears an orange hat 1.5 times the size of his head. In real life, that hat would be ridiculously ugly. He takes it off several times in the series. Every character except Junpei wears a hat or some type of headgear. (Takuya — goggle hat, Kouji — bandana, Kouichi — baseball cap (in flashback scenes), Izumi — purple cat-eared beanie)
And from Hiro Mashima's earlier work, Rave Master, we have Deep Snow and his ginormous hat that is in the realms of "Pope or Not Pope."
The H-manga Fudotei Student Academy (by Unagimaru) plays with this trope hilariously, as the confident, powerful, and dictatorial student council president becomes incredibly shy and meek when her German Officer-style hat is removed. Fortunately, the protagonist falls in love with both sides of her, so it's okay.
Asuka wears a rather impressive sun visor in races, complete with pink hearts on each side in the first two series (and in the first episode of ZERO). Miki, the series' resident Wrench Wench, wears a nice cap with her name on it.
Gudelhian wears a cowboy hat most of the time when he's not racing.
In Galaxy Express 999, both Maetel and Tetsuro wear distinctive hats. Maetel's is a tall, almost cylindrical fur hat, Tetsuro's is low, rumpled, and very wide-brimmed. Tetsuro's hat was made by the mother of Tochiro, who wears a similar hat.
In episodes 4 and 5 Albert wears a nice pirate hat.
Kuroudo "Doctor Jackal" Akabane from Get Backers always wears a wide-brimmed hat with a cut in the brim. All damage Kuroudo's clothing ever sustains quickly regenerates except for that one cool cut. The creator lampshades this by mentioning how the hat brim (along with his hair and coat) seem to get longer every time he shows up.
Zangetsu the Midday from Giant Robo: The Day The Earth Stood Still only appears for about ten or fifteen minutes, in the final episode. However, fans of the show have taken quite a liking to him, if only because of his nice hat.
Quite a few people were concerned that, three hundred years into the future, the United States Navy may tailor fanciful hats as part of an officer's standard uniform, as evidenced in Gundam 00.
Van from Gun X Sword sports a nice hat with a Jigen notch, a ring on one side (which he spins the hat around with to indicate its Humongous Mecha time), and is apparently pretty precious to him, considering we never see him without it.
Wannyuudou has an awesome wide-brimmed hat. In the first two seasons, he's rarely seen without it — which is understandable since he's bald underneath. In the third season, Ai's helpers are usually seen at school in disguise, so the hat appears less often.
The "Girlycard" version of the protagonist of Hellsing in the prequel The Dawn wears a white pillbox hat that at least once fanartist has shown being eaten. Alucard's and Alhambra's awesome fedoras ain't no slouches, either. Have a look◊.
Baron Will A. Zeppeli in Part 1 has a rather awesome checkered top hat. After his death in the Room of Dragon Decapitation, Speedwagon wears it for the rest of the part. In the second part, Zeppelli's descendant Caesar has apparently inherited the hat, though he sadly ditches it after his introduction.
By the third part, both Joseph and his grandson Jotaro have picked up nice hats — Joseph with a tan-colored Panama and Jotaro with a biker's cap that seamlessly blends with his hair at somewhere around his ears.
And nearly everybody in Part 7 Steel Ball Run has a hat of some sort. Most notably, Gyro Zeppeli's cowboy hat, and Johnny's hat with a horseshoe adorned on the front.
Every Jojo fan knows that Part 2 Joseph is the king of nice hats: in one of the Part 2 chapter covers he wears at least three at the same time◊. Joseph's "hat stack" is something of a meme within the fandom.
Uni wears the same Nice Hat◊ that her grandmother, Luce, wore.
When Tsuna and his guardians get blasted ten years into the future, the Varia have another illusionist by the name of Fran who is wearing a frog-shaped hat that is so large he can't even get his arms over it. We learn later when the Varia first went to recruit him, he's always had an odd taste in hats, as he was wearing a giant berry-shaped one...
Kobato 's hat (and outfit) changes every day mysteriously (considering she has little money and no possessions) and there are hints that Kobato should never take off her hat for reasons unknown as of yet.
Jigen's hat, in addition to being a fedora and therefore granting instant coolness, also holds the secret of his superhuman marksmanship — he sights along its brim.
Lupin also wore a fedora once in the manga when not in disguise. Also, many of the covers for the original manga series featured him in one.
Vita, from A's and StrikerS has a stylish red hat complete with stuffed undead bunnies on each side, and quickly got serious when Nanoha tore it.
In that same incident, the first clue that the Wolkenritter aren't all bad is when Signum shows up and the first thing she does is repair Vita's hat. The hat was a gift from their master, and they all love her very much.
Hayate has her beret, which Evil Twin Material-D conspicuously lacks.
MIYU's Traveller's Hat from Mai-Otome, so spiffy her canary made of nanomachines could sit on it.
Himari's hat in Mawaru-Penguindrum is an impressive piece penguin-themed piece of headgear. It's also a character in its own right and kick starts the plot by bringing Himari back from the dead and then commanding her brothers to find the "Penguindrum" if they want her to keep Himari alive.
Yoite from Nabari no Ou has a pretty nice gatsby. Enough that quite a few people recognize it as "The hat anime." Reportedly, Yoite's hat is what caused many fans to begin the series in the first place.
Each of the five Kages sport a Nice Hat◊ that is color coded and bears a kanji that matches the village they represent.
The Akatsuki used to wear nicely-designed, traditional Japanese-style straw hats.
Since it is a pirate manga/anime, there are a lot of Nice Hats in One Piece—
Monkey D. Luffy wears the straw hat Shanks gave him that once belonged to Gold Roger. One of the most memorable early moments was when he put it on Nami's head before storming off to liberate her island.
This is a bit of a subversion, as it's a very ordinary-looking straw hat that doesn't do anything special (as far as we know), and Luffy values it for sentimental reasons. Still, god help you if you damage it.
As for the rest of the Straw Hats: Zoro puts on a black bandanna when he gets serious about fighting. Tony Tony Chopper has a pink top hat the size of his head that his antlers can somehow poke through (After the time skip, he put a blue cover over his top hat that has antler holes AND ear holes). Robin occasionally sports a cowboy hat. Brook has a top hat that he wears ON TOP OF HIS AFRO.
Rob Lucci, uses a distinctive top have that he never removes, even while on a secret mission.
Admiral Sengoku, who has a whole seagull on top of his hat, presumably stuffed, although the author is crazy enough that it might be alive and calling the shots.
All but two of the Eleven Supernovas have very distinctive headgear. Kidd has a pair of studded goggles, Bonney has a turban-like hat, Benge has a mafia-style cowboy hat, Apoo sports a pair of headphones, Killer has a full head sports-helmet looking thing while X. Drake wears a white-plumed cocked hat AND a mask.
Ace has a cool hat, too. Fittingly, so did Luffy and Ace's 'brother' Sabo when they were young. It was last seen in a Dead Hat Shot.
Then there's Break's Nice Hat... the Eldritch Abomination. He also wears a pretty cool top hat in a few chapters. Though what would you expect from a manga heavily based on Alice in Wonderland?
Paradise Kiss Isabella and George often include hats in their many outfits. George usually settles for cowboy hats, while Isabella wears spectacular picture hats with ribbons and flowers most of the time.
Hero Ash has had his hat stolen by his Aipom, a Mankey that he later caught as a Primeape, and his own Pikachu in the second movie (in order to make Ash follow him). The very first hat he is seen with was said to be earned by tirelessly sending around two hundred coupons to win an official Pokemon League contest, and the other two were given to him by his mom. He has a habit of turning his hat backwards when he's about to get dangerous. In fact, this hat is so Nice it has its own Bulbapedia article.
In the Electric Tale of Pikachu manga, Misty used Ash's hat as the goal for the Cerulean Gym battle... against his will. Then it got sillier.
Assuming the thing on Brendan's head is hair (seriously, even the artists seem to get confused), his counterpart Ruby from Pokémon Special has a nice enough hat for the both of them.
Red from Pokémon Special also counts. He had his hat on while swimming, taking a bath, and even when he's literally half-naked in FRLG. It never fell off even in the most dire of consequences only on the last part of FRLG because the writer wanted both Pikachu to return it in the Emerald Saga.
There is also Yellow's hat, which she was given by Blue to disguise her identity and had feathers from Ho-oh and Lugia, which came in handy much later.
Other main character also have nice hats. Crystal has that weird bowl-shaped hat and Green/Blue has Leaf's nice hat after they were updated to match their game counterpart. Gold has his ball cap, Ruby has his weird hat that appears to be his hair (it isn't), Sapphire has her bandanna, Diamond has his hat and Platinum has her beanie.
In the anime, Nando and Riley both have very nice hats.
Protagonists all have their own Nice Hats, though May has a bandanna which is a fence example. As of lately even rivals are catching up on the phenomenon. Quite a few NPCs have Nice Hats too, including the first few trainer classes we meet.
In The Prince Of Tennis, one of Ryoma's trademarks is his Nice White Cap. Sanada has his contrasting Nice Black Cap, Kaidoh uses a Nice Bandanna (or several), Wakato from the anime also uses a Nice White Cap, and the Kisarazu twins started using Nice Headgear (a white cap for Ryo, a red headband for Atsushi) after an accidental Twin Switch.
The title Oriko Magica has an... interesting and difficult to describe hat. Quite nice, though. Yuma gets a cat-eared hood thing. This is what happens when you have a Touhou fan do character design.
Ranma ˝ has several instances of this. Shampoo has her odango covers. Multiple characters have headbands or bandanas of some kind. In fact, Ryoga wears several layers of bandanas, and will often attack with them. Ranma's pig tail is bound with the whisker of a dragon, which when boiled can produce a broth to regrow hair. Unfortunately for men who already have good hair, this will result in their hair growing until it all falls out, unless bound with said whisker.
Juliet, aka The Red Whirlwind, from Romeo X Juliet. Also sports a billowing cape and Cool Mask.
Jin of Samurai Champloo often wears a nice kasa. He uses it to demonstrate just how badass he is by tossing it into the air before a fight, invariably finishing his foe(s) in time to catch it before it falls below chest level.
Some of the headgear of the soldiers of Seirei no Moriboto is quite impressive, in both looks and elegance.
Hecate of Shakugan No Shana (pictured above) is lookin' kinda stylish, but where would she be without that huge hat?
Knuckles the Echidna of Sonic the Hedgehog fame randomly got a Nice Hat in the Sonic OVA. For the sadness of many (okay, some), the OVA is the only time where he wears the hat. The hat also made an appearance in the Archie comics, and was worn by an ancestor of his. He only wears it in stories set in a future timeline; according to a letter page it's because he doesn't want it to get damaged.
In Star Driver, Takuto's cybody Tauburn is a rare example of a mecha with a nice hat. So does Reiji's Reshbal in a similar fashion.
Strike Witches: While it's not something she ever wears in the anime itself, Yoshika Miyafuji has been portrayed in the occasional bonus art and some◊ toys with a nice sailor's cap. It also appears briefly (0:50 to 0:55) in the Over Sky ED.
Given that they have the traditional detective ensemble, the four girls of Milky Holmes in Tantei Opera Milky Holmes have colorful deerstalker caps on their outfits. Bonus points to Nero, who wears a similar hat as part of her school uniform.
How nice is Kotetsu's hat in Tiger & Bunny? So nice that the fandom rejoiced the moment Sunrise announced that they'd be selling them.
In Tokyo Babylon Subaru is always seen in somewhat extravagant hats, all proudly picked out by his sister Hokuto.
Lala of To Love-Ru certainly has a Nice Hat. It has wings. It also happens to be an intelligent robot that functions as her clothing.
Any high-ranking person in Trinity Blood, most notably the vampire Empress.
The title character has a nice Cavalier-style hat with a neat mother-of-pearl pin.
The trope title is used as an actual line when Action Girl Leila sees the portrait of Carmilla, whose hat◊ resembles a large red sausage placed on her head, made of part of her hair and odd, cap-like things on the end.
A few characters in Victorian Romance Emma can be seen wearing nice hats, mostly the nobles.
The outrageous headgear used by both heroes and villains in Violinist Of Hameln (manga and anime)—
Hamel's pointy, wide-brimmed feather hat is a huge plot point, even, since he hides a small horn — the only proof of his demon blood — under it. The hat's removal is usually followed by a Crowning Moment of Awesome, a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, or a horrible, horrible mob scene.
Raiel's hat is even more epic, but it just underlines his usual dorkery. Sizer's dragon helmet is awesome. And Tron wears a very frugal crown. Even Flute's hat becomes iconic. This manga knows about nice hats, evidently.
In the Korean comic Witch Hunter, a witch's powers come from her magical hat. Also, protagonist Tasha Godspell gets his own magical abilities by using a device that eats the hats' mana source.
Lilith's giant Traveller's Hat with a Great Big Eyeball from Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito. Heck, the Hat is in the title: "Traveller Yami, Hat, and Book".
Slyly subverted in Yotsuba&!, in that Yotsuba's most awesome adventures are signaled by her putting on a hat that can be charitably described as a pudding with a brim. Ena's hat, seen occasionally, looks even more like a pudding, without a brim. Not at all nice hats.
A minor joke among the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom: when the monster called Cosmo Queen is played, it is greeted with "Nice hat."
Yumekui Merry loves her hat, to the point that she panics blindly the first time we see her lose it. This could be an injoke — her creator was formerly best known for drawing Touhou doujinshi (see Video Games, below).
Art
Donatello's David (in bronze and not to be confused with the more famous Michelangelo's David in marble), which is made all the more amusing when you realize he's only wearing the hat and boots.
When asked about the Bat-Hat, the artist responsible justified it with "I took a lot of crap from friends about this hat. But I still like the design. Russia is cold, why can't Batman have a warm hat?"
Perhaps not quite the same, but in the newspaper comic Curtis, the title character often gives commentary on the church ladies' more and more extravagant (and silly) hats.
Curtis himself is always seen with an oversized green cap — he even sleeps with it on.
Galactus cares not what lesser mortals think of his hat!
Jay Garrick, The Flash, wears his father's World War One army helmet, modified to look like Mercury's winged hat. It's stylish, it protects his head, and it's a devastating weapon when thrown at Super Speed!
It might only appear in a single issue of Superman, but still - wouldn't it be neat if he always wore that hat?
In an issue of the Marvel G.I. Joe comic series, Firefly unveils his new outfit. The Joes he's facing are less than impressed. He notes that "you don't get the full effect without the hat" and puts his on (it's more of a helmet, but whatever), and although he's supposed to be a terrorist but is wearing neon green, he does look commensurately more badass.
In the Hitman comic, Tommy Monaghan's best friend is Natt 'The Hat' Walls. The hat in question is very nice indeed, and damage to it appears to serve as a Berserk Button for Natt.
Ki-Adi-Mundi also wears a wide-brimmed hat at times (hence the Fan Nickname "Don Ki-Adi-Mundi"), most notably in the Outlander story. It helps hide his very tall head.
In X-Men, Magneto's helmet tends to signify whether or not he's a villain this week; you're a lot likelier to be able to have a reasonable conversation with him if he's not wearing it.
Plus, in the movies, it serves as a psionic shield, making this Evil, Stylish, and Practical. No wonder he's a major villain.
There's a particularly interesting use in Excalibur v2 #11, where Magneto comes back home to Xavier after taking Scarlet Witch away from the Avengers. Charles reprimands him about wearing his helmet and Mags responds defensively, only calming down once he's taken the bucket off his head. Of course, this likely had more to do with the ridiculous amount of power he had just used, but the helmet was a good symbol.
He wears it when he feels a particular need to shield his mind from Xavier—which usually means he's up to something nasty.
The Juggernaut's Helmet which also keeps Charles out of his head. And the skull cap he wears underneath, which is also psy-proof.
Some (DC's) Enchantress fans weren't happy that she didn't have her trademark witch's hat in the Shadowpact series.
In an issue of Books of Magic, Zatanna is having a conversation about good and evil with the Affably Evil Tala. The latter is wearing a particularly stylish hat. Zatanna finishes her argument about how good is better with "It's the only thing that keeps me from stealing your hat." Not that Zatanna is any slouch◊ in the headgear department herself.
Watchmen: Rorschach wears a fedora. During the movie version, during the fight with Ozymandius, whenever his hat falls off, he won't fight until he's put it back on. This seems to hint that he considers it to be a part of his 'body', as he does his mask.
Alpha Flight villain/hero Smart Alec has a big, bulky helmet that also enhances his intellect and feeds him information at a superhuman rate.
The Mad Hatter is a Batman villain who not only has a hypnotic (literally) chapeau of his own, but who's fascinated with all headwear, especially the nicest one of all— Batman's cowl.
Lots of Batman villains have very nice hats: The Riddler has been known to sport a green bowler hat with a question mark, the Penguin usually wears a massive top hat, and the Joker sometimes accessorizes with a purple gambler hat◊. Niiiice.
Though he only wore it once and it was part of a specific tourist-themed outfit, the Joker's straw-brim hat from when he shot Barbara Gordon is also memorable.
Half the Gauls in Astérix wear nice helmets. The winged headgear worn by Chief Vitalstatistix actually has a chicken fall in love with it.
DC's Doctor Fate has a helmet which is the source of his power; it originally contained the spirit of Nabu that possessed Fate when he wore it. If put on by an enemy, the helmet would drive them insane. Later on, the helmet also fought evil on its own, approximating a body with his gloves and cape. Although Nabu left the helmet to usher in the new Age of Magic, it still has enough magic to impart knowledge to its host and contend with those that might abuse it for their own ends.
Dum Dum Dugan from Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos is very attached to his bowler. A major subplot in one of the issues involves the hat getting destroyed and Dugan's attempts to replace it. (His squad-mates get together to buy him a new one. D'awwwww.)
The Sandman: Death of the Endless has a floppy hat collection. She also borrows Emperor Norton's hat (see Real Life below) when she comes to collect him.
Can't forget Dream's trademark Alien-in-a-gas-mask helm (a Shout Out to the 1950s Sandman series), which he dons whenever he has serious business to take care of.
The Shade normally sports one in Starman, but he occasionally swaps out for a variety of other hats.
In Calamity Jack, the sequel to Rapunzels Revenge, ActionCowgirl Rapunzel buys a hat in Shyport, the Big City. It's right nice and smart, making Rapunzel look all citified and stylish and suchlike. The acquisition of Nice Hats is also the obsession of their friend Prudence, a pixie, who likely pointed Rapunzel to the city's finest haberdasher for the acquisition of her new chapeau.
The Redeemer from the Necromunda Comic of the same name. His flaming crown also doubles as a weapon, allowing an extra degree of Kill it with Fire when in a pinch.
Enemy Ace Hans von Hammer has very distinctive flying headgear.
Wolverine can usually be seen wearing a cowboy hat when out of costume.
Several characters Jack Kirby designed for the Thor mythos have gigantic, lavish Nice Hats, particularly Loki and Hela. Indeed, Kirby created a great many Nice Hats over his long career, as shown in the ongoing feature from Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull, The 5,000 Hats of Jack Kirby.
Phrygian cap style hats are pretty much standard clothing for The Smurfs. They may vary in appearance depending on the occupation of the Smurf wearing it, but they are rarely seen without it. Since male Smurfs are bald, the hats can be used to smuggle things (like in the Animated Adaptation's Greedy Smurf, who hides a dessert under his hat, or Clumsy, who hides an Explosive Breeder). In the live-action movie, the hats also serve as parachutes to slow the Smurfs' descent as they jump from the Winslows' apartment window in New York City to a nearby taxicab.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Captain Jack Sparrow really likes his leather tricorn. To the point that, when Jack tells the crew to leave his fallen-overboard hat behind (near the beginning of Dead Man's Chest) they know something is seriously amiss. Jack just learned that Davy Jones has sent his pet kraken on a seek-out-and-destroy mission, and Jack's the target.
In Curse Of The Black Pearl, Jack suggests an alliance with Barbossa. Offering to buy him a really big hat seals the deal.
Barbossa himself has a really nice hat. It never once leaves his head in the first three movies, and in the fourth, it symbolizes his return to piracy from privateering.
Geoffrey Rush, who plays Barbossa, does not take it well when his hat keeps getting blown off in the Hilarious Outtakes of the third movie. YE BLEW OFF MY HAT, YE BLEEP!
At the end of CotBP, Will acquires a hat with a big swashbuckling feather, lampshaded by Jack in a possible Trope Namer as he bids adieu to his captors. "And Will... Nice Hat."
Every western, ever. Cowboy hats are just naturally nice hats.
Even the cowboys in non-western films like Toy Story. Woody spends an entire scene of the second movie searching for his hat and in the third, Lotso shows it to the other toys to convince them that Woody had died trying to escape Sunnyside.
In one scene in The Last Crusade, he thinks he's lost it and he has a moment of silence for it.
In The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, picking up and putting on his hat is the first and last things he's shown doing on screen, both times with his theme playing, symbolizing his status as "Indy" or "hero".
There is a debunked urban legend that the hat was stapled to Harrison Ford's head. (Started, presumably, by an outtake in which Ford jokingly put the hat on his head and then applied a staplegun (empty). He did have to use adhesive tape, though.
The reason the hat never comes off is that the director simply didn't want to have to deal with the nearly-inevitable continuity errors which would have come along with losing the hat. Thus, the Improbably Sticking Hat.
We haven't mentioned that Bond has some nice hats too. Some early films show him throwing it into Moneypenny's office and it landing on the hat-stand. One can only imagine how many takes they must have done to get that shot.
The fedoras Jake and Elwood wore in The Blues Brothers. Notable in that Jake never removed his during the course of the film, and Elwood doffed his only twice.
In The Apartment, the protagonist starts wearing a neat little bowler when he gets a promotion.
"Givin' me the high hat!" said repeatedly by one of the few characters not to wear a hat.
The Spirit is deeply attached to his fedora (and the rest of his outfit) and is caught multiple times ensuring it doesn't get away and recapturing it after fights. The Octopus doesn't have a consistent hat but in his first appearance he dons a very nice hat.
Literal "Nice Hat" in Jurassic Park; Dennis Nedry to Lewis Dodgson. "What are you trying to look like, a secret agent?" The hat itself is not particularly notable apart from being a fedora.
There was also Dr. Grant's hat that he losses about half way through the first movie, but he has it throughout the third.
Ryan Evans from High School Musical is known for his collection of fabulous hats- mainly fedoras, but other types of hats have been seen. Due to his parents' immense wealth, he has enough hats to never repeat throughout the entire series. They are seen as his trademark- in the entire series, there are only two scenes in which he is seen without a hat.
Jef Costello, the hitman from Jean-Pierre Melville's crime film Le Samourai, never leaves his apartment unless his fedora is perfectly positioned atop his head. This is less OCD than extreme care about his appearance due to his code of honor.
The Shoveller in Mystery Men sports a miner's helmet. When he gets his costume upgrade, the light on the miner's helmet goes from ordinary-blah white to ooh-and-aah blue.
Ramirez' musketeer-style hat with the peacock feather sweep in Highlander. The Kurgan had a very impressive hat as well, made of a skull and fur.
John Shooter's wide-rimmed black bowler in Secret Window. Doesn't have any special powers, but it is important to the plot.
In Cannibal! The Musical, one of the bullying trappers wears a hat made out of a skunk. Whenever he tries to put down the main characters, Matt Stone's character always retorts, "Nice hat!", causing the trapper to look up at it self-consciously.
Van Helsing in Van Helsing - your average 17th-Century vampire hunting hat. See also Real Life examples.
Mrs. Calloway in Home on the Range. It's her Berserk Button, and she gains a love interest (albeit a weird one) when he compliments it.
The Japanese Academy hat worn by Coraline of Coraline is apparently very popular within the fandom. The hat was based on a hat that director Henry Selick bought for his son while on a trip to Japan.
Witch King and Sauron wore awesome and unbelievably awesome hats respectively in The Lord of the Rings.
In The Rocketeer, the eponymous character's finned helmet helps him steer.
A Clockwork Orange: Stanley Kubrick had Alex and his droogs dressed in the heighth of nadsat fashion. And even if their platties were not what was described in the book, they still looked real horrorshow.
Doris the bowler hat in Meet the Robinsons might qualify, if by "nice" you mean, "stylish and impressive," and don't mind that whole Evil Overlord issue.
The Mad Hatter in the 2009 Alice in Wonderland naturally has a very nice hat that seems to exist solely to cause cosplayers agony when it's not being used as a form of transportation.
Suffice to say that if he takes off the hat, the odds are good that he's about to do something incredibly risky or more crazy than usual (sacrificing himself to the Red Knights so that Alice can escape, letting Chessur take his place at the execution while he sneaks around behind the Red Queen, and dueling the Knave, to name a few).
Cougar in The Losers has a nice hat he's particularly attached to. It's commented on late in the movie and when a mook tries to take it he dodges out of the way. It appears that even with a gun to his head he's not about to give in.
Mook: You know, I like that hat. That's a great hat. [beat] I really don't care if there's a hole in it. What are you smiling at?
In Dirty Dancing there is a dancer with a Nice Hat. You see him briefly during the dance scene where Baby is carrying a watermelon.
Lawrence of Arabia's turban. At one point, General Allenby is fascinated enough by it to consider trying it on, but then relents, saying it looks better on Lawrence.
Matsu's preferred Roaring Rampage of Revenge garb in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series includes a large-brimmed, dome-crowned black sunhat with a floppy brim. As well as being a decent disguise, it also looks decidedly feminine without being inherently sexy, and the floppy brim frequently obscures one of her eyes, perpetuating the visual theme of Youkai references. The floppy brim disappears in later films, replaced by a flat, rigid brim and crown.
In Jurassic Park, Nedry says the trope's name outright to Dodgson
In the novel Design for Great-Day, a fancy hat wearing species is also capable of completely dominating the minds of many other creatures simultaneously... from a very long way away. They never use this tactic to defend their hats in the book.
Witches' and Wizards' hats are very important to their respective owners on the Discworld, as they let onlookers know not to screw with them. Rincewind's is a bit of a subversion, as his "Wizzard" hat is actually very shoddily put together and is falling apart. He still won't let go of it; though. ("How else would anyone know he was a wizard?") And, after he gets blown apparently irretrievably into the Dungeon Dimensions, the Librarian keeps his hat safe for him when he returns — because a wizard will always come back for his hat. He does.
Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully's hat is particularly nice, as it contains a tent, hunting and fishing supplies, and a bottle of booze in the tip. He had it made by a special firm of certified mad hatters to avoid the problems that stemmed from the former ceremonial Archchancellor's hat, which was worn by so many magical heads it developed a life of its own.
Which brings us to... the former Archchancellor's hat. Quite apart from being incredibly fancy, it was sapient, highly intelligent and a more powerful wizard than most actual wizards.
In Going Postal, Moist von Lipwig gets to wear a fairly Nice Hat as postmaster (it's gold, with wings on it). The old silk top hat he gets to wear as master of the Royal Mint in Making Money isn't nearly as nice, but is improved considerably by the application of a coating of gold sprinkles.
Sergeant Detritus has a helmet with built-in air-conditioning, since he can think better when his brain is kept cold.
Terry himself has been known to wear a pretty awesome fedora and various other big black brimmed hats. Apparently, they're his disguise. With them on, he's Terry Pratchett, Famous Author; otherwise he's just some random old nobody.
Neville's gran's accessorized-with-a-stuffed-vulture hat.
A constant Running Gag in The Dresden Files is that Harry does not own a hat, despite being depicted wearing neat black fedora on the cover of every book so far, looking far more cool than anyone has a right to be.
Jarlaxle, of R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt series, is famous for several things — the most immediately noticeable his wearing of an "outrageous plumed hat" — it is, effectively, the closest thing one can come to a pimp hat without actually being a pimp (though he may have been one at some point; who can tell with Jarlaxle?). Typically, said hat is loaded with useful magics. By Villain's Lorebook it's Hat of Holding.
Bruenor has a nice hat of his own, sort of — his distinctive helm with one broken horn.
Bartholomew Cubbins' hats pulled off a huge Refuge in Audacity-based plot that resulted in the disinheritance of an unworthy heir to the throne and Bartholomew getting 500 gold pieces. They're like the Puss In Boots of hats!
The Moomins children's books and spinoff media have two major characters with Nice Hats: big-brother figure Snufkin wears an odd, tapering, wide-brimmed, green very nice hat, and a big black top hat serves as Moominpappa's tertiary sexual characteristic, contrasted with Moominmamma's big red apron.
There was also a hat so awesome it warped reality at one point. As in, a giant ant-lion turns into a hedgehog, a lot of Eye-Watering Words come alive and so forth.
In Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, we learn that Anansi, trickster-god, spider-god, and the original owner of all stories, has a really nice hat: A bright-green fedora, which ONLY looks good if worn slightly lopsided, and even then only if you walk in just the right way. When the hat is passed on to one of the Boys, namely Fat Charlie Nancy, and he proves capable of wearing it just right, it clearly demonstrates how he's mastered the divine powers that comes with his origin. Especially since his brother, Spider, who's otherwise been awesome at EVERYTHING, has to admit that it doesn't look good on him.
Let's not forget the classics: the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland wears an impressive top hat. He's probably borrowing it from his store, as it's labeled "10/6", representing a price of ten shillings and sixpence. That Other Wiki says this would be about $100 today when adjusted for inflation, and notes that "this was likely to indicate a nice hat".
The minor Wild Cards character Topper uses her hat as her primary weapon, since she can pull anything that exists out of it.
Subverted in Life, the Universe, and Everything. When Slartibartfast, Ford and Arthur are at the flying party looking for the Silver Bail, Ford comes upon what seems to be a Nice Hat, and tells its owner this, but she says she's not wearing a hat, at which point Ford says, "Nice head."
In The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor, the character of Hatter Madigan is a member of the Millinery, where one of their biggest rules is that every member have one hat, and one hat only. It just so happens that that hat turns into a bladed boomerang disc. Nice hat? Oh, yes.
Holden was already sitting at his old shipmate's table, one hand holding a glass of wine, the other stretched out, pointing at a singularly magnificent diamond spray in Jack Aubrey's hat. "What, what is that?" he cried. "It is a chelengk," said Jack with some complacency. "Ain't I elegant?" "Wind it up again. Wind it up for him," said his friends, and the Captain set his hat, his best, gold-laced, number one full-dress scraper, on the table: the splendid bauble — two close-packed lines of small diamonds, each topped by a respectable stone and each four or five inches long — had a round, diamond-studded base; this he twisted anti-clockwise for several turns, and as he put on his hat again the chelengk sprang into motion, the round turning with a gentle whirr and the sprays quivering with a life of their own, so that Captain Aubrey sat in a small private coruscation, a confidential prismatic firework display, astonishingly brilliant in the sun. "Where, where did he get it?" cried Holden, turning to the others, as though Captain Aubrey might not be addressed while the chelengk blazed and trembled.
Go Dog Go contains an entire Nice Hat subplot, with two dogs meeting several times over the course of the book and one asking the other if he likes her hat, eventually leading to an extravagant headpiece.
Holden Caulfield spends a buck on a red hat in The Catcher in the Rye. It is, according to his roommate, a rip-off.
In The Fangs Of Kaath, at the end of his successful military campaign, Prince Raschid takes to wearing a traditional headdress given to him from his new friend, a desert nomad warrior king. He thinks it looks stylish and subconsciously marks his growing distance from his domineering mother, who can't stand it.
Bertie Wooster is prone to wearing hats he thinks are very nice; his man Jeeves disagrees.
The Golux in James Thurber's The 13 Clocks wears an "indescribable hat". When Prince Zorn does not find him particularly wonderful, his hat suddenly becomes describable.
James Thurber was apparently blind when he wrote it, but he worked closely with the illustrator to produce the pictures. Naturally, Thurber had him re-draw the Golux's hat until he was no longer able to describe it.
Martin Silenus in Hyperion sports a distinctive floppy purple beret.
The hat which Miles Vorkosigan sported in "The Borders of Infinity", while imaginary, was definitely pretty awesome.
Miles deliberately invokes this trope. One of the other prison inmates asks why, if he is pretending to have a hat, he doesn't pretend to have an entire suit. Miles goes on for a couple of paragraphs explaining all of the important uses of a hat, demonstrating with his imaginary hat.
Subverted in Crime and Punishment when Raskolinikov gets rid of his hat, because it makes him noticeable.
The Railway Series: The top hats worn by Sir Topham Hatt, the Fat Controller. James gets in a bit of trouble when he panics over ruining one and messes up the start of his first passenger journey.
The Three Musketeers has d'Artagnan's signature feathered cap, inspiring many future Nice Hats.
The Tudors displays quite a fantastic plethora of Nice Hats, most notably those worn by King Francis I and Charles Brandon. The good people of England never complained about Henry VIII creating his own church because they were too Distracted by the Sexy.
In Merlin, the official servant's ceremonial clothes include a huge feathered monstrosity of a hat. Gwen even comments, "nice hat," in between giggles.
Johnny Carson's shtick as Carnac the Magnificent was well known for the giant turban that apparently granted him psychic powers.
On the A&E TV series Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton) always dressed very well whenever he went out on business or pleasure, frequently topping off his outfit with a snappy fedora. Wolfe himself (Maury Chaykin) sported a few Nice Hats of his own on the rare occasions when he left the brownstone.
In the Sci Fi Channel's production of Dune there were several Nice Hats, mostly notably the Bene Gesserit, seen here◊ (the hat is the thing extending back from her head).
And the Spacing Guild representative; you know the Guild has been knocked down a peg when he appears without his bizarre black headgear.
Mention must go to Jayne Cobb's "cunning hat" in the Firefly episode "The Message"... knitted for him by his mom.
Wash: A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything.
There's also Badger, who, despite being a villain with a questionable taste in ties and suits and sports a bare chest under his coat and vest, wears a nice little derby, referred to by Mal as a "very fine hat".
Also, an inversion, where a Nice Hat doesn't help:
Mal: That's a mighty fine gun. Gun like that, boy must be your best shooter. Patience: We call him Two-Fry. He always makes it quick and clean. Mal: Two-Fry. Nice hat. (Jayne's sniper shot puts an entry hole in Two-Fry's hat, and his head)
And even Mal aspires to Nice Hat-dom. "And I'd like to be king of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat."
Aaaand just one more example: "I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you."
Aaaaaaaand another:
Saffron: I thought last night during the ceremony that you were pleased.
Mal: Well, yeah, last night I was. Had some mulled wine, pretty girl gave me a hat made out of a tree◊. Nobody said I was signing up to have and to hold.
It is worth noting that the vast majority of characters on the show who wear hats are bad guys. Joss Whedon half-jokingly said it was how you could always tell who the bad guys were. They always had hats.
Benton Fraser's Mountie standard issue wide-awake hat in Due South, which has a brim stiff enough to knock someone out when hurled Frisbee-style.
Some fans point out that Fraser's susceptibility to injury and harm is dependent on whether or not he has his hat. If he has his hat, he is invincible (the hat once saves him from being shot at point-blank range, by TAKING THE BULLET no less). The bullet went straight through the hat front-and-back, but without the hat, he'd spend an episode in the hospital. Inversely, through the entire episode of Victoria's Secret, he almost never wears the hat, and we ALL know how THAT went for him...
Several incarnations of the Doctor sport some distinctive headgear, notably the fourth◊, the fifth◊, and the seventh (owned by the actor).
Not one to be outdone in the fashion department, Romana sported at least four (if you count "Shada"). Not counting the awful Burberry one from "The Stones of Blood" that today screams uncool, there's "The Androids of Tara", "City of Death" (topping off a rather memorable outfit), "Shada" and the time she wore the entire Fourth Doctor get-up.
Though they're all tame compared to what most Time Lords wear.
The Second Doctor was somewhat prone to hat envy: "I should like a hat like that."
The Third also in his first appearance tried on a flat cap, before settling on a fedora. In his other installments, he went bare-headed.
In "The Big Bang" the Eleventh Doctor picks up a fez out of a museum, claiming that "Fezzes are cool". Amy and River take initiative to stop him from adding this to his accoutrements (which already contains a bowtie) by snatching it off his head, throwing it into the air, and blowing it up. Later he shows up in a genuinely nice top hat.
The fez has now reached Memetic Mutation levels, both in the show and fandom. It has become the Doctor's ongoing battle to try and keep a fez. He even steals one from Einstein.
And now in the first episode of Series 6, he turns up in America wearing a Stetson, only to have River Songshoot it off his head.
At the end of the same series, we see how he got it, and he still has it by the end of the episode, implying that this hat is around for keeps.
On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Whoopi Goldberg's character Guinan often wore what looked like a card table draped with velvet on her head. Behind the scenes, these hats were chosen because they hid Whoopi Goldberg's dreadlocks, which they thought wouldn't look right on Guinan (in later episodes, however, we end up seeing her dreadlocks anyway).
She also had a hexagonal version.
Spoofed in Sev Trek: Puss in Boots where Guinan's hat is used for serving drinks in Ten Forward.
In Deep Space Nine, Worf first meets Kira and Dax as they're exiting the Holosuite in ridiculous medieval regalia, complete with huge garish headgear. Worf's only response: "Nice hat."
Apparently Deep Space Nine actually had a specific part of their budget allocated toward making hats for various Planet of Hats aliens. Unfortunately the camera operators kept complaining the hats were obscuring the actors' faces, so the idea was dropped.
There's also Kai Winn's omnipresent little yellow hat◊. It was a lot neater than the ridiculous headgear she had to wear as a mere Vedek that made her look like Sydney opera house◊.
Let's not forget Spock's frequent wearing of hats when visiting human planets incognito on the original Star Trek. Ostensibly to cover his ears and eyebrows so he could pass for human, according to many sources it was really so Leonard Nimoy didn't have to wear the ear pieces, which made his ears very sore by the end of each season.
Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5 had a film-noir style fedora that he would occasionally wear for doing detectiv-y things. When G'kar leaves the station to search for him, he takes (and wears) said hat.
Played with in The Mighty Boosh episode "Electro." Howard meets the Spirit of Jazz, an intimidating ghost with a white top hat that's always on fire. At the end of the scene, the Spirit freaks out because he didn't realize that his hat was on fire. Howard apologizes for not warning him, saying he thought it was "just his look."
The Hitcher also wears a rather nice top hat, with polo mints imbedded into the band.
In one episode of Michael Palin's New Europe, he wears a huge hat made of oak leaves whilst celebrating a Latvian midsummer festival at which it's traditional for men to dance wearing one.
When Cain escapes from the Longcoats in Tin Man, he takes the time to wreak a little extra vengeance on the one who stole his hat.
In the Canadian children's show Todays Special, the main character, Jeff, is a mannequin brought to life by his magic hat (cap, really). When he takes it off, or it comes off, he turns back into a mannequin.
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode where she has the flu and is languishing in the hospital as Das Kindestod stalks the hall of the children's wing. It wears a Nice Hat, and when she brawls with it, the hat comes off. He seems to defeat her, picks the hat back up, and — this is the key point — makes sure the brim is straightened as he stalks off.
Frank from 30 Rock has a collection of humorous trucker hats, a variation on the Fun T-Shirt.
Angel Batista from Dexter usually sports a very sharp-looking hat.
Steed from The Avengers always wears an impeccable bowler hat, as befits his status as a perfect English gentleman. The steel plate concealed in the crown is just a bonus.
You will see Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters without his beret only while he is in the middle of putting on diving equipment or fireproof suits, and even then he will not been wearing it only for as long as absolutely neccessary.
Meanwhile, his co-host Adam Savage will put just about anything on his head.
He does wear a nice, brown Indiana Jones number pretty regularly.
The first season of Ghost Whisperer had a recurring evil spirit best-known as "Wide-Brim" after his distinctive, and yes, very nice hat.
Fruit from The Wire; in fact his pimp hat is a necessary distinguishing feature to get the audience to recognize him among the huge influx of new drug dealer characters in season three.
Also, in Season 1, Bubbles used a bag of Hats as a way of marking drug dealers for the watching police and their cameras. He had a particular red Nice Hat that he only put on major players.
A recent episode of The Daily Show featured the Secretary of the Interior giving Jon Stewart an exceedingly nice cowboy hat, matching the one said Secretary was already sporting.
Sister Bertrille was known as The Flying Nun because her hat was so nice it let her fly.
Jeeves and Wooster actually lets us see the hats that were only described in the original novels and that have driven so many plots with the arousal of Jeeves' Ultimate Fashion Police ire: The Alpine, the 42nd Street skimmer, the 10-gallon...
And let's not forget that iconic size-14 bowler.
Battlestar Galactica. While on New Caprica, Brother Cavil wears a hat that gives him a suitably sinister look, especially when he's arranging for the arrest and execution of several hundred hostages.
In Homicide: Life on the Street, Detective Lewis is rarely seen outside of the station house without his cool trilby. Detective Pembleton is also at times given to wearing a pretty sweet fedora. Various other rather cool hats make their appearance throughout the show.
Played with in the latter half of season three, wherein Bolander frequently wears a trilby... because he's been recently shot in the head and wears it to conceal the horrific scars.
1975's The Ghost Busters was pretty much all about the nice hats. Tracy, the gorilla sidekick, would go through about 10 hat-changes or more through the course of each episode.
In the pilot episode of White Collar, Agent Burke's probationary agent compliments Neal Caffrey on his hat when she first meets him, leading Caffrey to think that she's flirting with him, when Burke tells Caffrey that "She'd rather be wearing the hat", implying that she's actually a lesbian (which is confirmed later in the episode).
Sharp Dressed Man Neal has continued to wear the fedora, much to Peter's annoyance. In one episode, a witness for a case starts fanboying over Neal and gets a fedora of his own. He even changes his online dating profile picture to include the hat, which later allows Neal to take his place on a blind date with a suspect.
Stargate SG-1: Since he keeps his gut-pouch covered, the only thing preventing Teal'c from passing for human is his gold forehead tattoo. The obvious solution is a selection of Nice Hats, or in one case a fake Afro and bandanna.
Leverage: If Nate Ford can wear a hat, he will. And he looks damn good doing it.
Shotaro Hidari, the eponymous Kamen Rider Double, has a whole collection of Cool Hats he took up upon the death of his mentor, Sokichi Narumi. The Movie shows that Shokichi wore his Cool Hat before and after transforming into Kamen Rider Skull, a trait retained when the Dummy Dopant impersonates him. The way to tell the real Skull apart from the Dummy impersonating him is that the real Skull's hat has a notch in the brim, gained when one of the Taboo Dopant's energy bombs nicked it.
Worth pointing out, out of all Sokichi's hats, the only one Shotaro never touches is the white hat he was wearing when he died. In the penultimate episode, he finally takes that hat off the wall, signifying to one and all that the time for silliness has ended.And then he uses it in the fight where he kicks the Utopia Dopant's ass. Without transforming into Double.
Princess Ariel and her handmaiden Cassandra sport some pretty spectacular headdresses on Wizards And Warriors. Evil Wizard Vector claimed NOT to wear a hat - which means he had very odd hair.
Abby Bartlet, The West Wing's First Lady, occasionally wore scary wide-brimmed cartwheel hats, mostly for solemn occasions like funerals.
Scrubs: The rather outlandish hat that Turk wore after becoming Chief of Surgery probably qualifies. The fact that said hat was made by The Janitor probably nets it some sort of bonus points.
Justified: Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens is usually seen with his large beige cowboy hat.
Oz: Adebisi always wore a small knit cap perched on the top of his head. One of the other characters once asked him how he got it to stay there.
The America's Got Talent contestant Hannibal Means' actual performance is based on his singing, which is excellent, but he is also remembered for his unusual dressing habits, one of the most memorable of which featured a hat shaped like a rooster. More than that, he actually crochets these hats, and got Nick Cannon to wear one (which probably wasn't hard) during his most recent performance.
Farscape: When Crichton said that War Minister Ahkna scares him, Claudia Black ad-libbed the line "It's the hat."
Shirley Holmes has a plethora of hats, they're her signature look.
Vince Noir from The Mighty Boosh sports a wide array of awesome hats throughout the series. In one episode Howard curses Vince that the next hat he tries on will not suit him, prompting Vince to say that "All hats suit me! My hair is virtually a hat!"
Hee Haw: Minnie Pearl's flowery straw hat with the price tag hanging from it.
Bobby Singer on Supernatural is almost never seen without His Trucker cap
In an earlier episode, Xena had let herself be arrested by a corrupt ruler, in order to contact a rebel leader who was already in prison. Gabrielle, wearing what looked like a bowler, later arranged to get arrested as well, in order to smuggle in Xena's chakram (which was disguised as the brim of her hat), as well as her whip (which Gabrielle wore around her waist like a belt).
Mike's wool hats in The Monkees (also see Music below)
The Shadow Line has Gatehouse, who wears a nice trilby in most of his appearances.
Star-burns on Community acquires one for the second season.
Walter White from Breaking Bad wears one when in his Heisenberg persona.
This Trope plus Rap times Spinal Tap equals Fear of a Black Hat. Niggas With Hats are never without some kind of sick headgear.
Ray Stevens considered it as the ultimate route to fame in country music in 'You Gotta Have a Hat'; ultimately, he gave it up.
Devo's Energy Domes, originally modeled somewhat after ziggurats (not to be mistaken for flowerpots, lampshades, or pet dishes (Jerry Casale still offers a reward of 1000$ to anyone who can find a flowerpot in that shape that predates the Energy Dome)).
One-man band That One Guy, who gets bonus points for wearing a nice hat on top of another nice hat.
In the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, there was a swarm of so-called "hat acts" in Country Music, many of whom followed the example set by George Strait of wearing pressed shirts, jeans and cowboy hats. Some actually fit well into that image and did not seem to be following the leader (e.g. Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, etc.), while others were blatantly derivative. Come the end of The Nineties, "hat act" was largely a derogatory term in the genre.
Lady Gaga seems determined to have as many improbable hats as possible. To the point where her entire head is sometimes hidden by her headgear when she looks down.
Mercury/Hermes from Graeco-Roman myth also has a hat like this. It may be partly this dress choice (along with the common interest in poetry) that led the Romans and Germanic peoples to identify Woden/Odin/Wotan with Mercury, on the face of it a rather odd match.
Since Mat Cauthon from the Wheel of Time is an Odin Expy, he gains a really nice wide-brimmed hat in The Shadow Rising that he wears constantly even in battle.
Similarly, Gandalf from Tolkien'sworks had his appearance directly based off of Odin, complete with the iconic traveler's hat. This is where the popular image of a wizard wearing robes and having a wide-brimmed pointy hat come from.
Also in the wide-brimmed-hat club is Ankou, the Breton version of The Grim Reaper. Doesn't get much more awesome than that◊.
Santa Claus' hat is basically synonymous with Christmas.
New Media
Web Original/Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation has a nice hat. He goes so far as to mention it in his bio ("a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder") and draw it on his crude sprite in his reviews.
It's rather unfortunate that he didn't actually wear it the first time he appeared in live-action video, but he has some photos from his visit to Valve, and the next live-action segment featured Yahtzee wearing the hat instead of his microphone headset, communicating entirely in mime. And he says he hates the fans!
As a matter of fact, Trilby, from his adventure game series, the Chzo Mythos, wears the same hat. That's why he's named Trilby - that's what the hat is.
In his review of Metal Gear Solid 4, the sprite's brain pops out at one point... and has a miniature version of the nice hat on it.
He's Tweeted that he doesn't really wear it in public anymore, because it's so nice that it attracts unwanted attention.
Since it originated as an Avatar based forum, Gaia Online has lots of nice hats. Some with eyes, some with teeth, some that are in the shape of rude gestures. Many of them actually have real life counterparts available for sale. (Well, not the rude gesture hat, but most of the other ones). The hats are so iconic, that one of them actually has an enemy based off of in in the MMO.
In the realm of NPCs, the king of Nice Hats is Ian, with his iconic feathered fedora hat. His cat even wears one for a while. After being outed as a vampire (don't ask) and going back to his natural hair color, he ditched the hat. You can craft a replica of it though.
Another makeover has Ian wearing a rather tacky top hat with a feather in it. However, airship captain and resident JerkassCresento has ascended the throne of "King of Nice Hats on Gaia", even going so far as to coordinate a contest for users to submit their own Nice Hat designs.
Homsar's reality-defying bowler hat from Homestar Runner has to qualify.
Also, Homestar's buzzer cap. He wants it to be spun. It makes a whirring sound. And it plays the theme from Night Court. Hilarity Ensues.
The King of Town has a crown that is apparently worth a lot, considering how much it could be ransomed for. Though he may have just bought it at the costume shop.
Most of the Desu Des Brigade members have nice hats — Professor Otaku wears one both in his avatar and in real life, Arkada occasionally wears a similar one to Kimblee's, JesuOtaku sometimes wears an orange baseball cap, and Malakye has his Zero helmet in his avatar.
WWEwrestlerThe Undertaker's entire persona would be a lot less creepy and intimidating if it weren't for his Badass Longcoat and trademark wide-brimmed hat together making him look like a gigantic psychotic Amish gravedigger.
ECW Superfan "Hat Guy" is actually an inversion; his straw hat and loud tourist shirts made him look like he's (as Joel Gertner put it) "still hung over from the Reagan administration."
WCW's Buff Bagwell wears that giant top hat during his entrance theme.
Sheamus' Celtic crown that he began wearing ever since he became King of the Ring.
Billy and Bart Gunn/The Smokin' Gunns with their cowboy hats. The Berserk Button aspect was invoked when the Heavenly Bodies invaded and then made fun of and finally stomped on those hats, prompting a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
In certain section of Exalted fandom, the Dawn Caste, two-fisted fighter Demetheus is known as the hat man, simply due to a wide-brimmed hat he's been illustrated with a few times.
The High Elves of Warhammer Fantasy and the Eldar of Warhammer40000 both have an irrational fascination with really, really tall helmets. The converted Avatar at the bottom left of this page takes the cake, however.
Murlynd's Hat. In the GreyhawkD&D setting, Murlynd of The Company of Seven's leather chapeaux can have near any non-magical object be pulled out of it, and it grants a degree of protection. He also had revolvers and a whip, making him probably the most badass wizard/paladin in existence. But the hat man...the hat.
Though at least one commissar would rather wear a helmet...
All Orks of the Blood Axe clan seem to love Commissar's hats, or similar peaked caps looted from other officers.
It's a long running joke (with some truth to it) among 40k fans that the person with the biggest hat in any given place is the most important person there.
Warhammer Fantasy: The Empire. Every bloody soldier has some sort of outrageous wide-brimmed plumed construction, or a massive plume on a metal helmet. Except for the archers. Grand prize has to go to the triple-feathered hat in the Empire General kit, though (the one on the mounted guy in the picture).
The Chaos Dwarves in Warhammer apparently had hats whose height reflected the wearer's status. The superstructure of their warships also tended to look like giant versions of their hats.
In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, your character gets an 'Outrageous Hat' as a trapping if you have Charlatan as a career.
Warhammer also has the Witch Hunters's Hat of Doom. Characters have take a will test against fear just by seeing it.
The Lizardmen Skink Hero riding a Stegadon gets a choice between a skull hat (for a wizard) and a rather badass gold stegadon mask for a fighty hero. And for all your giant mummified frog fashion needs, there's Lord Kroak's deathmask. Of course, since so few Lizardmen wear any clothing at all, they have to make the headgear badass.
The Magic Burner for Burning Wheel covers wizard characters, who as part of the traditional Robe and Wizard Hat can find themselves with the "Impressive Hat" described as follows:
This character's hat is mightily impressive. It can be seen for miles! It's so impressive that people often remember the hat more than the person.
Munchkin has several, such as the Bad Ass Bandanna, the Helm of Peripheral Vision, the Horny Helmet, and the Helm of Courage (which is on backwards). For the grand prize, we have...the Magnificent Hat, complete with what appears to be a Jägermonster looking unusually proud. Does any other game have a hat so nice it reflects curses? Nope.
Many characters in Privateer Press's Warmachine tabletop game have pretty nice hats, but special props go to Protector of Menoth for their multitude of clergy hats and Deneghra for hers. Since the setting is Steam Punk, it's kind of required to have one.
In the party game Werewolf/Mafia, a role with a Nice Hat, Big Hat or White Hat will always be revealed upon elimination, even if roles would normally be hidden. A Black Hat, by contrast, will never be revealed regardless of circumstances.
Cirque du Soleilloves nice hats for its characters, ranging from bowlers to crowns to baseball caps to miscellaneous eccentric headpieces. The following specific examples are hats that also have special powers.
The blue top hat in Le Cirque Reinvente and its partial remake Fascination turns an "Ordinary Person" into a whimsical ringmaster; at the show's end he's changed back by removing it.
The blue bowler left behind by the title character in the opening scene of Quidam transports the Troubled Child Zoe to a Magical Land when she puts it on.
When The Everyman hero of the IMAX short Journey of Man loses his familiar black bowler as a young man, a Satan analogue gives him a golden one that winds up granting him a fortune, knowledge, and power...but not true happiness, as he becomes an isolated middle-aged man. Once he realizes what he's lost and decides to reconnect with other people, he tosses it away for his old hat, found by a Vagabond Girl... and it has its own magic, turning him into a loving, lively old man.
In the final episode of the made-for-TV Widget SeriesSolstrom, the top hat worn by the doorman of the Coolest Club Ever controls his robot bouncers so long as he has it on. The Inoffensive Crank who had been struggling to get inside all show gets a hold of it and has the robots carry the doorman off.
In The Golden Apple, Lovey Mars and Mrs. Juniper start a conversation by commenting on the magnificent hats they and Miss Minerva are wearing to the church social.
Toys
Too many LEGO kits to list, since the little plastic people can only be distinguished from one another by their nice hats at a quick glance.
However, the BIONICLE line is all about the characters striving to locate and control various Masks of Power - since all their "faces" are identical, they're literally defined by what they wear on their heads.
Warhammer Online has the Knights of the Blazing Sun, an elite army of wandering warrior monks who worship Myrmidia, goddess of warfare and civilization. They are commonly seen running around with golden helmets pimped out in gigantic feathers painted any variety of colors, ranging from red, to blue, to gold. Some of them may simply forego the feathers and have a gold statue of a falcon perched on their heads.
The Three Daedric helmets from Morrowind: The Daedric Face of God, Terror and Inspiration◊.
Hat wearers are a bit of rarity in the Disgaea series, but almost all of them have nice hats. Some examples include the Gunner class, Salvatore, and most recently, Fuka.
The Dynasty Warriors game series features a number of memorably bizarre hats taken from the Three Kingdoms era of China, most notably the Propeller Hat, which is Truth in Television.
Lu Xun's hat is particularly bizarre, up until the character design changes in the 6thgame. Fans have often taken the liberty of making fun of his hat in fanfiction.
Sun Quan's Propeller Hat looks like a thin piece of cardboard stuck to a sardine tin strapped to his head. Sun Quan wears a particular ostentatious version due to naming himself the King of Wu.
Sima Yi's headgear gets crazier with each installment. It's anyone's guess what he hides under the thing.
Lu Bu, the period's biggest badass, makes his presence known with a tiny cap sporting two enormous feathers that reach down to his feet. Only a real man could pull that off. In Chinese Opera, feathers denote a battle role.
Kessen II also takes place during the Three Kingdoms period and features some pretty redonkulous hats. Of particular note is Zhang Liao's antler helmet and Sun Quan's eagle hat.
The original game is in love with this trope, to the point where the rank of any given general can be inferred from the scale and elaborateness of his hat. Some of the most memorable include the enormous clan-crest of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the dragon-head helmet of Ukita Hideie, the Viking-esque horns of the Badass Beard Fukushima Masanori and, of course, Date Masamune's famous crescent-crest. The handful of exceptions become just as memorable by their inversion of this otherwise ubiquitous trope, particularly the Badass Mask-wearing Chosokabe Morichika and Badass Monk Ankokuji Ekei. As noted below, this is a pretty popular trope for this period of Japanese history.
Games set in the Sengoku era of Japan, such as Samurai Warriors and Sengoku Basara, also feature some pretty spectacular hats. There's Date Masamune's crescent helmet, Honda Tadakatsu's deer antler helmet, and Naoe Kanetsugu's helmet which is engraved with the kanji of "love." Mitsunari's ridiculous hat looks like he turned a sheepdog into a hat. Tokugawa Ieyasu's crazy tall hat, provoking Takeda Shingen to make the remark, "Ieyasu has two things that exceed his own worth, that warrior, Tadakatsu, and that ridiculous hat of his." Also Azai Nagamasa's helmet/hat.
Mouri Motonari's giant green "okra" hat deserves an honourable mention. His alternate hats are even more impressive, and his "chameleon" hat in the third game blows them all out of the water.
And the really funny thing is that most of those helmets, such as Masamune's, Tadakatsu's or Kanetsugu's? Were real. Nothing beats Date Shigezane, though, whose helmet was adorned by a bloody huge, golden centipede.
And the H-Game parody Sengoku Rance continues this proud tradition, and Uesegi Kenshin is the owner of a triangular hat that not looks nice, she uses it like a lance point while charging the enemy!
Mario, of course, has his iconic red cap with an "M" on it. It spawned out of the difficulty to draw hair on a sprite back in '81, so he was instead given a cap. Similar situations also spawned his equally iconic overalls and his moustache.
Super Mario 64 has several nice hats, including the Wing Cap to fly, the Vanish Cap that makes Mario invisible and the Metal Cap that makes him become metallic. Also when an enemy takes off Mario's own hat in a desert level, he takes damage from the heat. Noticeably, in any level, being hit by an enemy while hatless will make you take one Hit Point more damage than you would with the hat. Apparently Mario's hat projects its own forcefield.
In the remake of this game for the DS, picking up a playable character's hat (Mario, Luigi, or Wario) will turn you into that character. If you started the level as one of these characters and lose your original hat, hitting a Power Flower block will unleash an angry Bob-omb rather than the helpful flower.
In Super Mario Sunshine, Mario's health slowly drains if an enemy steals his hat. Apparently the stress of losing his hat weakens him, although, given that he's in the tropics, this is kinda understandable. Sunburns hurt!
Lechku and Nechku in Ōkami pull random objects out of their hats as attacks. Waka also has a pretty bitchin' hat which never comes off until he thoroughly gets his ass whooped by Yami. Orochi has eight giant, brightly colored Nice Hats that denote the element they rule over.
Some other characters in Okami also have some wacky headgear. Queen Himiko's hat is on fire while her husband, the Emperor, has a Miniature Treasure Boat for an hat. Mr. Flower, a Sei-An Citizen, has a Bonsai Sakura tree which seems to be merged with his skull. Kushi packed some Rice bales on her head. Madame Fawn, the fortune-teller, has a deer skull with some Ofuda on her head. Mika, a Shinto Priest, has a miniature building on his head. Yatsu, the (deceased) priest of the Gale Shrine, has a Miniature Windmill on his head. Orihime and King Wada A.K.A. The Water Dragon both seems to have containers on their head, the Dragon Palace guards have underwater flora or coral on their heads. Most if not all the Poncles have some kind of insect in guise of a hat. Nami has a bucket of Sake with an arrow embedded to it and Mushi's Mama has a Water Vase on her head at all times. Whew!
In Overlord, the player's impish minions have a fondness for nice hats, and will fashion them out of just about anything if they can't find a real one - gold or iron helmets, hoods, flowers, pumpkins, bits of dead enemies ... you name it, one of them will gleefully stick it on his head. The Overlord himself, of course, never, ever removes his helmet, although the player can upgrade it several times.
The most extreme example has to be in the sequel where one minion will make a hat out of the top of a Aquila which is golden and almost as tall as he is.
I-No in Guilty Gear has a living hat that looks like the Sorting Hat'sEvil Twin. Johnny and May naturally have some pretty sweet hats, too, being pirates. Johnny's is an homage to Johnny Cash.
Kirby has tons of hats, one for (almost) each of his powers. He should have his own haberdashery. Particular examples include the headdresses he gets for Fire, Ice and Plasma, the jester cap he has for Beam (and the shiny one for Mirror), Link's cap with a tassel for Sword, and the reversed ball cap he has for Yoyo.
When he absorbs a power in the Super Smash Bros. series, he usually adopts his victim's headgear as well. Mario's cap, Samus's helmet, Sonic's quills, even Snake's headband (and goatee). VG Cats' Scott shares his rendition. (The top half are real, the rest are just cool.)
In 8-Bit Theater, Red Mage's hat is a common victim of Black Mage's anger (it's even on his "death list").
Despite this, when Red Mage was dead/incapacitated Black Mage started wearing his hat on top of his own. Presumably as a trophy. Of course, Red Mage (on fire) is a nice hat...
In Final Fantasy XI the NPC Maat tests your fighting ability in your job to advance from 70 to 75. Beating Maat in all fifteen of the original and advanced jobs (To A and Wot G not included) nets the player a special scene with Maat's story and the reward of his iconic beret. A challenge less than .5% of all 500k+ players have completed.
All of the caster classes of Final Fantasy Tactics (save the Calculators) have a Nice Hat: Black Mages have a Robe and Wizard Hat, White Mages are In the Hood, Time Mages have a pointy pope-esque hat, and Summoners have positively Freudian headbands; furthermore, the Mediator's hat looks like a pillow, and the Lancers have some pretty sweet helmets evocative of dragon's heads.
Kain Highwind's dragon helmet in Final Fantasy IV is goddamn awesome.
Freya's red hat in Final Fantasy IX is a mix between the Red Mage pimp hat and the Dragoon helmet. It's so awesome that we never get to know what she looks under it.
In Metal Gear Solid 3, Ocelot is rather fond of his hat. During his duel with Naked Snake, Snake's allies actually suggest shooting off Ocelot's hat as a tactic.
Though it does not look very impressive, Naked Snake's Martial Arts Headband is still an impressive piece of headgear. Shortly after the beginning, on a covert operation within enemy territory, his Mother Mentor, Blood Sister, and best friend Boss betrays Snake and joins the Big Bad, who orders her to kill him. After having the crap beaten out of him, she throws him from a bridge into the river below and in a last desperate try to catch himself, his hand only gets a hold on her bandana. He narrowly survives and returns with the mission to stop the Big Bad and kill her, wearing the very same bandana...
Also, after becoming Big Boss, Naked Snake starts wearing a military beret. It makes him resemble Che Guevara with an eyepatch, which is even pointed out during Peace Walker.
Solid Snake has his a bandana of his very own, and sometimes it gives him infinite ammo.
It's so cool, that it even got a major role in Minish Cap, where it talked and had magical powers.
Chancellor Cole from Spirit Tracks wears two green top hats on top of his head, side by side. He has a horn underneath each, explaining how he's able to wear two hats as he does in the first place.
Sgt. Reznov's red star-adorned ushanka from World At War is rather nice, too.
Possibly subverted with Sgt. Roebuck, who is notable for (almost) never wearing a helmet.
Touhou is famous for giving many of its characters silly hats. The number of characters without head ornaments can be counted on one hand.
This has led to a recurring joke in the fandom that programmer and designer ZUN is a "hat fetishist."
In one of his interviews, he is seen wearing what is clearly◊ a Nice Hat.
Even in Touhou, however, where frilly hats are the norm, Shikieiki's hat stands out as a particularly nice hat. It's based on the traditional garb of the Great King Enma, seen here◊ and here◊.
While Touhou may be a universe of Nice Hats, Keine Kamishirasawa stands out. She wears what can only be described as a miniature pagoda on her head, in her human form.
You can equip hats in The World Ends with You, and you eventually get Minamimoto's cap as an item. It gives you more stat boosts than most good items do in one stat, in all three stats.
In Soul Calibur IV, Talim gets her own Nice Hat as part of her costume's redesign for the game. The Character Creation and customization modes have a bunch of them, so you can give them to just about anybody.
She also has one in her third costume in Soul Calibur II
Most of the named characters in Archaic Sealed Heat (and some of the generic units) that don't have amazing hats have ridiculous hair instead. Some of them have both at once. Now add goggles and eyepatches to the mix, and things just get awesome.
Maximillian's cap(s) in Dark Cloud 2 are probably the only thing that differentiates him from other standard RPG heroes appearance-wise. And they're neat looking, to say the least.
Made a Nice Hat even moreso because he will wear the cap when wearing nothing else, seriously.
The sequel suggests there may be good reason for it - one demon negotiation branch suggests he's covering something important up.
Bishop Sarasai from the Suikoden series wore a stunning example that was almost bigger than he was. Many tears were shed when he abandoned it for the third installment. In the same game, Yuber wore a rather stylish hat himself. Whether this makes up for the loss of Sasarai's is up for debate.
A recently-added quest to World of Warcraft involves meeting up with an old guy with a nice sombrero hat. Turns out that this old man used to be quite the fighter back in the day, and many would challenge him to a fight for said hat. Naturally, you can go back in time, find the younger version of the man, and beat him up in order to receive the hat as a reward (as well as another hat in the Heroic version of the dungeon, which summons the ghost of the man's coyote companion whom you killed to beat him). The quest name? Nice Hat...
There are also other hats which are worn just for their looks, including a pirate hat (which summons a matching parrot) that is incredibly hard to obtain. Another special case is a quest reward hat that you can reach into for a random beverage.
When Cataclysm (re)introduced the Gilneans as Victorian-era British, they naturally got top hats (and every worgen gets one as part of the starting quest progression). There is also an even fancier version (the aptly named High Society Top Hat) craftable by tailors.
Dizzy of Gears of War 2 has a cowboy hat◊, which can actually come off in multiplayer. Damn shame.
Ragnarok Online' has an awesome variety of Nice Headgears, and the players are obsessed with getting the nicer ones. Since they are the only noticeable change to player sprites, the obsession is pretty much justified.
Some Nice Hats do give Nice Bonuses to some classes.
In Fat Princess, you pick your character class by putting on the appropriate hat.
Joshua's hat in Fire Emblem 8. There is also a ROM hack featuring Gheb and it includes Joshua and his hat. The coolness of his hat is taken to such ridiculous extremes that it is treated as a living being and lord help anyone who insults his hat .
Isamu's newsboy-style hat in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne practically became its own character in fan art and 4Koma comics. Even his "God" wears the damn hat.
In Luisfe's Let's Play of Nocturne, Isamu was renamed "Sidekick McHat".
In Guild Wars, the ritualist class can get an extremely nice hat◊, though it is one of the most expensive items in the game and to get it you need to enter the Bonus Levelof Hell.
Inverted somewhat in Mega Man 9, where you can spend the game's currency for the privilege of playing as Mega Man without his trademark headgear.
However, Mega Man takes double damage when he's not wearing his helmet. Some Mega Man games have helmets of the character you are using as one up items. In Mega Man and Bass, the game over screen shows your character's helmet on the ground.
Meanwhile, in the Mega Man X series, the hero can always find additional upgrades to his helmet that has extra functionality and generally is part of a collectible series of items to unlock some sort of super awesome secret.
10 instead gives us the Wily Machine's awesome pirate hat.
The male player character Brendan in Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald has a hat so nice that it's practically indistinguishable from hair.
After years of debate, the games' artist Ken Sugimori finally confirmed via Twitter that it's a knit hat.
WRONG!! Wes and Michael don't have hats. The closest you'll get are Wes' flash goggles and Michael's Aura Reader.
Leaf and Red's Nice Hat's are so nice that you'll rarely hear from them without their originals.
Pfft, N from Black and White scoffs at your law. He and the protagonists have nice trucker caps.
Outside of Gen III, Bianca is the only rival who has one.
Fallout 3 has the Pre-war Hat, which is a spiffy fedora. Aside from looking nifty, it gives a bonus to Perception, making you shoot better. The downside is that it's rather fragile, and doesn't give much protection. But it's worth it for a killer hat. There's also the "Shady Hat" which not only increases your Perception, but your Sneaking ability as well.
Fallout 3 has so many nice hats it's a pity the player is restricted to one at a time. Further examples include Euology Jones' Pimp Hat, a 18th Century style wig, and Abraham Lincoln's stovepipe hat, which is just made for wearing while mowing down the slavers of Paradise Falls. Or the incredibly rare and hard to find Chinese Commando Hat, wear with a Duster of any kind and you can pretend to be a Soviet conscript!
The "Chinese Stealth Suit" from the Operation: Anchorage add-on has a fun but overpowering glitch, where wearing it allows you to wear as many hats as you please. With the right hats, one can almost completely max out on all of the player's stats.
The Stormchaser hat is particularly awesome. It's a white fedora, complete with goggles, and is worn over a hood. It looks especially awesome when worn with the T-51b Winterized Power Helmet, utilising the above glitch.
Fallout: New Vegas also has it's share of Nice Hats. 1st Recon members all have a red beret as a symbol of their Badassery (it gives the player a big boost in crit chance). Cass wears a nice cowboy hat. General Oliver's hat is far more impressive than the man whose head it rests upon, covered in gold stars and a golden NCR sigil.
Wario Land 1 has different types of hats as the power ups, including a hat with horns which increases strength, a dragon hat which breathes fire (even underwater), and a jet cap which is pretty much a head mounted jet pack.
.hack, both original tetralogy and G.U., has some very nice hats. To name a few, Kite's big red hat with earflaps, Mistral's enormous hat, Elk's more moderate one, Marlo's bitchin' helmet, Endrance's rose-covered one, Sakubo's transforming hat (with one end curving up into a point, the other curving downwards,) Atoli and Shino's big poofy hats with tassels, and assorted hats on NPCs. Yeah. It's a Hat Series.
Shiren's straw flat-topped kasa that usually obscures the top half of his face except for a small tear on one side that lets us see his left eye while he's wearing it. Apparently, it is magical enough to allow Shiren to avoid the effects of a kill-everything-in-the-room scroll by hiding completely inside it.
Fatal Fury/The King of Fighters: Terry Bogard is almost always seen wearing an ordinary (but still rather nice) baseball cap. It never leaves his head until a fight ends. In the case of his Fatal Fury appearance, The Anime of the Game upgraded his cap to include a metal plate for no discernible reason at all. Still looks Badass, though.
Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat is best known for his wide, blade-rimmed hat which he throws as a projectile and utilizes in most of his fatalities, including the classic in MK II where he slices an opponent in halfvertically.
Mortal Kombat 9 Test Your Luck mode may provide the Headless Kombat mode which has a major effect on Kung Lao. Without a head, he can't wear a hat and becomes unable to use half of his attacks.
Let's not forget Raiden and his iconic Conical Asian hat.
Most gun kills in Total Overdose cause the victim's hat to hover in the air briefly. Moving in to position your head beneath it at that time gives a 'Hat Catch' bonus plus extra points per kill while wearing it. There's also the 'Sombrero of Death', a Day-of-the-Dead costumed zombie in a sombrero, who packs a grenade launcher to fight for you.
Another case of a hat hurting you... Caffeine Nicotine out of Samurai Shodown 2 wears a nice-sized one. When armed, he swings it as his weak slash/punch. When unarmed, he just swings it for all side moves. And if he does a dive roll, the hat itself is what's seen as rolling along its brim.
The Pilot's Helmet in Ratchet & Clank is intended simply as a plot MacGuffin letting you use certain aircraft. It is, however, possible to equip it on dry land. It makes Ratchet stop looking like a weasel and start looking like a hero.
Kingdom of Loathing has a lot of nice hats, but the nicest one of them all is arguably the Plexiglass pith helmet. As the description states, it is shiny, indestructible, and undeniably badass.
Romancing Sa Ga: Minstrel Song features a lot of nice hats as part of The Remake giving the whole cast a makeover. Examples include Aisha's odd hair-wrappish thing (complete with twin braids hanging out the back in a way that leaves you wondering how she arranged it like that in the first place), Sif's Horny Vikings-invoking literal skull-cap, Hawke's puffy Pirate hat, and Diana's teensy crown that doubles at invoking Hair Decorations.
The male protagonist of Legend of Mana wears a big red floppy hat that gets complimented (and made fun of) on at least one occasion; for the female one, it's her kickin' rad hairpipes.
Professor Laytondefines this trope with his orange-banded top hat.
At one point, his hat is (for complicated reasons) causing extremely irritating problems for him and his apprentice Luke. When Luke logically suggests that the Professor take it off for a little while, though, the Professor flat-out refuses, since "a gentleman can never be seen without his hat."
One of the technological designs in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is the "Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion", which is a top hat that deflects bullets with SCIENCE!
In Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier, though it's never addressed in dialogue separate from his overall outfit, Haken seems to be very fond of his futuristic cowboy hat. Most of his dialogue portraits have him adjusting it to fit his expression in some way, and it even has a Jigen-style notch◊ for him to look through for his Super Move Portrait Attack.
Team Fortress 2, also known as The Quest For More Hats. At the time of their introduction, there was a single hat for each class giving a total of 9 hats. There are now well over a hundred. Hats are Serious Business in the Team Fortress 2 world and the base broke several times over various updates due to hats. The game is now advertised as "The world’s #1 war-themed hat simulator"!
One update was "The Hatless Update", promising 100% non-hats. And a hat-like pin was secretly included by a mischievous programmer, a promotion for Portal 2.
The hats in Baten Kaitos can give every hat in the this entry a run for its money. For crying out loud, look at the shopkeepers.
In Simon the Sorcerer, Simon has a nice wizard hat which he uses to store his inventory. Including ten-feet-long ladder.
Maxwell from Scribblenauts wears a strange but neat red hat that has been dubbed the "rooster hat" by fans and its creators. The best part? In some countries, a real life version of this hat is available as a pre-order bonus!
In the game itself you can spawn a top hat, glue it to a unicycle, make a panda ride the unicycle, glue a saddle to the panda, and then make a wizard sit on the saddle.
If your family member general is insane in Rome Total War, they will often give odd (or rather, crazy) pre-battle speeches, such as:
"Although the Enemy have the Moon People on their side, we need not fear, for we have our lovely hats, and they shall protect us from their fearsome gaze!"
From Software's Evergrace features many nice hats, which are also quite beneficial since normal clothing works just like armor, just with less durability. Fear be-hatted catgirl Sharline, FEAR.
The sentient phases of Spore offer an increasing selection of clothes, including Nice Hats.
Diablo and Diablo II have the Harlequin Crest. The original has a drawback of -3 to your Armor class, but the +2 to all attributes is tempting.
In Demon's Souls there is a way to get a very nice, very large yellow hat by slaying another player in PvP while fighting as a storyline boss.
A few Eternal Sonata characters sport some nice/interesting hats. Fredric Chopin's feathered top hat is something of a trademark for him; the same feathers appear in one of his attacks.
Shades' pink baseball cap with little wings on the sides in Ufouria. It may be a Shout Out to Dr Slump, where Arale often sported a similar cap.
Henry Hatsworth In The Puzzling Adventure kicks off when the title character discovers a bowler hat that deages him by several decades and opens up the Puzzle World. The hat is part of a full wardrobe set which Henry must assemble to fix the damage he's done.
The Rosetta Rosso from Luminous Arc 2 all wear nifty hats decorated with roses.
Jill Valentine wore a beret, until Tofu ended up with it somehow and when she joined the BSAA she started wearing a baseball cap.
Jack Krauser and Mikhail Victor also sport berets in their respective Resident Evil games. Honorable mention goes to the R.P.D. and their police caps. Too bad that most of them are zombified.
The main villain of Petz: Dogs 2 is a wolf with a magic technicolor top hat.
Pickory wears a giant purple cavalier hat which is bigger than he is.
In Hedgewars hedgehogs in each team are given their own hats, which currently is the only variable part of sprites. Lots of choice between various fruits, pumpkins, KISS hairdo and masks, Darth Vader's helm, cook's hat... you got the picture.
Fable II has several nice Enlightenment Era hats, ranging from tricorns to bicorns to top hats to wizard hats.
And let's not forget the Pimp Hat from the original Fable.
Carl Clover from BlazBlue wears a top hat several sizes too big for his age, and apparently hides a mechanical horse which acts as a weapon inside of it.
In the sequel Continuum Shift, Tsubaki Yayoi takes notes from Lelouch and wears a hat with wings on the sides and an eye on the brim. Hazama is not complete without his signature Smooth Criminal fedora, either.
Ojou in Suika absolutely refuses to remove her nice hat. It's black and has two bells hanging on it. It doesn't even come off when she's bathing or swimming. The closest to removal it gets is Hiroshi putting a 'second hat' (read: Archimedes) on top of her head.
Death's Hand has an impressive demon-face helmet that features prominently on the game's packaging.
Various girls in the Tokimeki Memorial series wears hats on some of her seasonal clothes, during Dating times. As a rule of thumb, standard pretty girls (ex. : Shiori, Mio, Miho) wear pimped-out or straw large hats ; Genki Girls (ex. Saki, Hikari) wear caps ; and Ojou and rich girls (ex : Yukari, Mei) wear berets.
Way too many characters to count in Mitsumete Knight, be it either male or female ones, wear hats with some of their thematic clothes. Even the Character Sheet's pics don't show them all.
In the Ace Attorney series, Jake Marshall and (in Apollo Justice) Phoenix Wright.
Gregory Edgeworth gets one in Gyakuten Kenji 2.
Skate/Sammy in the Streets of Rage series wear an iconic cap.
Persona 4 has Teddie, who rather has a nice HEAD, as Yosuke violently yanks it off.
The Sly Cooper games have a couple of examples. Though the main character has a rather standard flat cap (which, admittedly, can be used as a land mine with a certain ability in the first game), Don octavio, a boss from the third game, wears a fairly nice opera hat (given that he is an opera-themed villain), but most notable is Sir Raleigh the Frog, the first boss of the first game, who wears what is possibly the greatest Top Hat in existence.◊
The second-greatest appearance/item mod in Neverwinter Nights (after inserting Bastila's head) is the addition of wide-brimmed feathered musketeer hats.
The iPod touch/iPhone games by Rocket Cat Games make it a point to include unlockable hats. Hook Champ includes the classic Indiana Jones hat, a rainbow wig, a football helmet, a giant fishhead, a tophat or two, a bowler, a moustache ("Facial hair is like a hat for your mouth), etc.
Many Italians in Assassin's Creed II wear hats, while the lowest-ranking guards all wear berets.
In Jumper Three, there is a shop where you can buy loads and loads of useless-but-cool hats (and glasses).
Princess Alena from Dragon Quest IV wears a very distinctive Nice Hat. It's a sort of dark blue, brimless, crown-shaped hat with one cone-shaped protrusion from the middle.
Nice Hats abound in L.A. Noire, and there's even an Achievement for getting through a fistfight while retaining your hat.
Portal 2 has some rarer hats from Team Fortress 2 available in co-op.
In Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, while assaulting the Imperial Guard stronghold with the Orks, Warboss Gorgutz will lament that the Commissar's hat gets blown away with his head, because he wanted it.
Kaptain Bluddflagg, the ork leader from Dawn of War 2: Retribution, sports a truly inspired pirate hat. Furthermore, he is willing to search an entire sector for a renegade Space Marine commander and kill him, at the Inquisition's behest, for a fight with two imperial regiments and Inquisitor Andrastia's Nice Hat. The achievement for finishing the Ork campaign is even called Nice Hat, which is fitting since the ending involves Bluddflagg knocking Andrastia out and taking her hat, noting that the entire campaign "wasn't a total loss".
There's also King Graham's lucky hat in King's Quest. Crown goes off, the hat comes on, and you know that the Quest's started.
Ninten and Ness the two main lead protagonists for Mother and Mother 2 wear red baseball caps as part of their trademark clothing. Though the tradition of the lead main protagonist in the Mother series wearing these was averted in Mother 3 with Lucas who still wears a striped shirt but doesn't wear any baseball cap at all. His father Flint on the other hand wears a Cowboy hat. All three games in the series even use Hats as a type of armor for the characters who wear one.
Skullgirls has Cerebella, who wears a Living Weaponhat◊ named Vice-Versa. It consists of a pair of giant, muscular, gorilla-like arms with a skull-like face situated in the middle. She uses it as one would expect: to break people.
Peacock from the same game also sports a Nice Hat: She wears a large, tricked-out top hat that can among other uses turn into a bird's head and shoot a laser, serve as a Hammerspace portal, and also houses one of her cronies, a tiny peacock named Avery.
Visual Novels
Ama Shigure in Shuffle always wears some kind of cat-eared cap, to the point where Rin wonders if he's ever seen her without one. It hides her ears.
Webcomics
Three regulars in Charby the Vampirate: Mye, Tonius, Kavonn. Also semi-regular character Yiska.
The Jägermonsters of Girl Genius wear a wide variety of headgear, but whatever they wear, they take very seriously. It's implied that dead Jägers are buried with their hat. Indeed, Nice Hats are practically their hat. This makes the scene where Lars postmortem sort of becomes "honorary Jager"... well, listen to Maxim.
All of this is somewhat Truth in Television, since the Jägers (and the GG Verse in general) have heavily exaggerated elements of Prussia in their role and backstory: Prussia, the kingdom that brought you this. Even the eagle on top of that hat is wearing a hat. Prussian general Gerhardt "Vorwarts!" von Blücher, having helped win the Battle of Waterloo, donned Napoleon's captured hat, thus making clear to all the world that after 23 years of constant war, it was Really Truly All Over.
Maxim goes hatless for some time after giving his hat to Lars. Then comes the side story, "Elsewhere: Maxim Buys A Hat", where he sets out to get a new one from "Ol' Man Death! — De Big Guy Himself!"
Maxim: A Hat iz a badge of honor! A Trophy vat must be plucked from off de head of a vorthy enemy!
Oggie: Yah. Vun who happen to gots hyu same head size.
A throw- er, blowaway character with the radio tuner hat is listed in the cast page only as "The Idiot in an Awesome Hat". Lord Selnikov's hat is pretty epic too, though.
From the Girl Genius card game The Works, we have General Cannonhat and his Amazing Cannon Hat. His epaulets even have little hands to plug his ears!
Gilgamesh's hat takes the cake, though. Easily. It has wings, spikes, tubes, his name in big letters with "Schmott Guy!" underneath and a burneron top. Possibly the Nicest Hat ever, given by Jagers as a sign of respect. It even has a name, according to the cast page: Gil's Fabulous Hat. And someone whose job it is to take care of it.
This may also have something to do with Phil Foglio's taste in accessories. His Author Stand In character is always depicted with the same black bowler (which he lit on fire to signify his short-lived Face Heel Turn in What's New? with Phil and Dixie), and his card in one of the Munchkin expansions was "Phil Foglio's Magnificent Hat". There was even a Nodwickstrip where Phil's bowler somehow wound up in the dimension of the characters and gave Dumb Muscle Yeagar epic powers.
The Continentals: Set in Victorian England 1889, the entire cast of characters in this steampunk murder, mystery, scifi adventure webcomic wear a variety of fashionable headwear of the day from tophats, to derby's, etc. The most eyecatchingly noticeable would be the gender bending, cross dressing adventress Lady Fiona Fiziwigg, who's prominent and somewhat oversized tophats have earned her the nickname "her tophattedness" by the comics readers. Find it here.
In Flipside, Maytag's jester hat isn't just nice, it reflects — and maybe affects — her personality. New characters quickly learn how different she is without it.
Also, Nash Straw/Reynold Strom's wide-brimmed black hat, which complements his Badass Longcoat nicely. He even gets a version with Hereti-Corp's logo when he's working for them. And his rebel soldier counterpart in 4U City has one too.
In San Three Kingdoms Comic, which uses the Dynasty Warriors character models, Cao Cao's hat has a small duck atop it, and is referred to as "the Duck Hat". One of his advisors, Guo Jia, wears a Baozi (Meat Bun) Hat. Both hats possess the power of hypnosis, but Guo Jia's is apparently stronger.
Pv P occasionally features the 'Gaming Fez', a Fez which makes you awesome at (virtually) any game BECAUSE the Fez makes you look awesome. Only the remarkably thick-headed Skull the Troll has proven able to handle its awesome, shining power, while anyone else who've donned it soon became drunk on its power...
Freefall's Florence Ambrose receives a gold cloth hat that proves to be quite popular with robots for its transponder-blocking qualities: starting here.
In El Goonish Shive, Sarah's beret is so cute/awesome that the principle allows her to wear it despite it being against the school dress code. (Also, author Dan Shive is quite aware of the importance of hats, as seen here.)
The Brigade du Chapeau from Kukuburi consists of a gang of strange creatures wearing hats with special abilities (such as Rendo's Hammerspace bowler hat).
In Magicandphysics the character SPDA wears a hat (suspiciously similar to the one in xkcd). Also the character Marvil used to until he sold his hat for beer.
In Daddy Long Legs, everybody has a nice hat. Even the parasites.
The six-armed Spinnerette!, after a fat and gravity-powered villainess mocks her deodorant bill, angrily declares that "If I were going to insult you, I wouldn't go for the obvious. I'd make fun of ... your stupid HAT!" The villainess is outraged - you can insult her, but no one insults traditional Alpine hats.
Lowping, the Gnome rogue in Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth, ninja looted an epic mage hat, twice from Bloodrose, the group's mage. One of his most recurrent stock phrases (being a bot) is "I lewt da hat".
Circuit most everyone wears a hat at some point, a gangster hat or a fun guy hat or a wizard hat, the hats help describe the character for the whole story or perhaps just a period of time.
The Whitecoat, a Super Hero from The Descendants rocks a white stetson so nice that people think it's somehow part of his powers. They would be right, because he's got a vid screen with a heads up display under the brim!
The Minion in Project Million looks too conspicuous with her mask, so Hagan makes her switch it to a top hat with Mickey Mouse stuffed through the middle. It's still big enough to cover her entire head.
Every episode of LoadingReadyRun's Feed Dump ends with "There may be better sources for news, but they don't have this hat." The hat changes every time. This probably stems from the "sweet supply of hats" that LRR has collected over the years - the hats which Graham sought to protect in commodoreHUSTLE, possibly at the cost of crew member Jer.
The hat in the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence of Fantasia.
Aang wears a very nice hat to attend the theatre in Avatar's "Ember Island Players", which is the same as another character wore while pretending to be one of three people. Also, the earthbending soldier's hat Toph wore in the invasion.
Sokka at one point picks up a hat shaped like a wolf's head.
Even though she was a background character appearing only once with one line of dialogue, this woman◊ clearly knows how to accessorize.
Sokka's detective hat from "Avatar Day".
Fievel of An American Tail has a Nice Hat, though it becomes nicer in the sequel, Fievel Goes West when it gains the ability to turn into a cowboy hat when flipped inside out.
In Dragon Hunters, Gwizdo is usually shown wearing his aviator's cap, complete with goggles.
Dr. Facilier had a nice hat in The Princess and the Frog, being modelled on the dapper voodoo gods Papa Legba aka Baron Samedi. He also had nice Hat Hair.
An episode or two had an alien race of nice hats. Although, considering they were trying to take over the world as mind-control parasites, I'm not so sure "nice" really applies.
The evil aliens were set on Grand Theft Me. The good aliens were very nice hats, and their leader, Klattuu-tu, is a hat on par with the Pope's hat.
Donald Duck loves his sailor hat; anyone taking it from him, or damaging it in the slightest will soon be suffering Unstoppable Rage from Don.
Chowder has a frickin' nice hat (or "vacation home" as it is known by recurring character Chestnut).
The 1960 Paramount cartoon Top Cat (by Famous, the studio that produced Casper and such) features a cat who sings about the paramount importance of wearing the right kind of hat. As he demonstrates, if you want to succeed in life, all else pales to unimportance.
No relation to Hanna-Barbera's Top Cat, who sports a jaunty little straw boater.
And while we're on the subject of Hanna-Barbera and straw hats, Huckleberry Hound.
There's also Hokey Wolf and his sidekick Ding-A-Ling.
An episode of Duck Dodgers had nearly the entire cast mistake a brain probe on the main character's head for an awesome hat. Even the enemies who planted the probe on him mistook it for a cool hat.
The magic portal hat(s) in the Pixar short "Presto!" Not one awesome hat, but two!
All of the main four characters of South Park wear hats (though one would be hard pressed to consider them particularly "nice"). The episode, "Follow That Egg", however, has the following exchange:
Kyle: Do you really think my hat is stupid?
Stan: As a matter of fact... I think it is the nicest hat I have ever known.
Animals Close-Up With A Wide-Angle Lens Wearing Hats
Like Professor Layton, Edd from Ed, Edd n' Eddy is never seen without his black stocking cap with two white stripes going down it. Fans are very curious about what's under it.
Although, Edd's hat has come out a few times, and Edd has sometimes wore other things on his head (sometimes not removing his cap), with the most noble example being The Movie. Fans believed that they would finally see what would be under Edd's hat, but Ed's big fat head blocked the scene.
Kevin may fit this trope better than Professor Layton or Edd. In the first few seasons of the show, Kevin never, ever removed his hat. Even to take a bath.
The Mayor from The Powerpuff Girls has a very nice hat, and woe be unto he who steals it from him.
Buttercup: "But we don't get to fight crime anymore!" Mayor: "I don't care." Bubbles: "He's turned your office into a pig stye! Literally!" Mayor: "I don't care." Blossom: "He's tarnishing the image of what it means to be mayor!" Mayor: "I don't care." Ms. Bellum: "He's wearing your hat." Mayor: "...!!!!!"
Lampshaded somewhat during the "Kamp Krusty" episode of The Simpsons when Bart is listing the atrocities that were suffered at the camp.
Bart: And one of the kids was eaten by a bear! Krusty: OH MY GOD! (sobs uncontrollably) Bart: Well, it really only ate his hat. Krusty: Was it a Nice Hat? Bart: Oh yeah. Krusty: OH MY GOD! (sobs uncontrollably)
Hijitus, a cartoon series very popular in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay and emitted in Argentina between 1967 and 1974 and credited as the first serialized Latin-American cartoon, starred the eponymous character, a homeless boy with an unraveled top hat (his "sombreritus") which allowed him to transform into "Super Hijitus".
Doug Dimmadome (owner of the Dimmesdale Dimmadome) of The Fairly OddParents has a hat so nice, it can't always been seen in full; some episodes have it extend past the top of the screen regardless of how far away from the camera he is.
Of course, there's Timmy's hat, and the floaty crowny things.
It is worth noting that, midway through the live-action movie, Timmy loses his hat during his date with Tootie, but she gets him a pink fedora to replace it.
Numbuh 5 (a.k.a Abigal Lincoln or just "Abby"} from Codename: Kids Next Door rarely takes off her red cap (due to the fact it was a present from her older sister before her Face Heel Turn.) The only time she does is mostly to use it as weapon.
There is also the KND Supreme Leader, Numbuh 362, and her colander-helmet of power. Any headgear that include scimitars must fall under this trope.
Raphael: Nice hats! Michaelangelo: Yeah, we thought so, too. Donatello: Say what you will about the Foot, but they do not skimp on the headgear.
Twister in Rocket Power. He's barely recognizable without his hat and had a whole episode when he lost it.
Dale Gribble refuses to take off his hat in King of the Hill. He was hatless in one episode when he's working at an adhesives company when he can't exterminate anymore.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars introduces the elite Duros bounty hunter Cad Bane, in the running for the position of the biggest badass introduced in the show. Naturally, this comes complete with a Badass Longcoat and a sweet wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
After evading capture by the jedi, he sets out his accomplices to find guns and a ship while he finds... yeah, a cool hat replacement. One of his accomplices tells him off for attracting attention, but he's clearly too cool to care.
Serious Business indeed. In a recent episode, he kills another bounty hunter because he wore a hat identical to his old one (and then took it for himself, of course). Cad Bane clearly thinks it's a reallyNice Hat.
Secret Squirrel has a pretty nice hat himself—and he's the only one who can see through it. Penny wears one herself on the occasion when she goes on her own missions.
The Nightmare Before Christmas: Sandy Claws' red hat. Not awesome, you say? Consider that out of all the things blown up by the anti-aircraft shells, the hat was the only thing to remain intact. That is one Bad Ass hat.
In Batman The Brave And The Bold, the Joker celebrates becoming omnipotent by creating a crown with a giant whoopee cushion in the middle.
His counterpart on The Batman wore a number of hats too, often as part of a costume. He was visibly upset in a season 5 episode when his sea captain hat is blown off during a getaway. Later in the episode he dressed as a miner with matching hat.
In Phineas and Ferb, Perry the Platypus wears a fedora on his missions. It always signifies when he crosses over from mindless domesticated pet to heroic crime-fighter and vice versa. It's a Running Gag that Dr. Doofenshmirtz is incapable of recognizing Agent P without the Nice Hat.
In Hey Arnold!, Arnold makes a big deal of losing his hat which was blown away by the wind, this being because this is the only thing his parents gave him before they disappeared, and recovered by Helga who can now complete her gum sculpture of Arnold. He gets it back at the end.
The Rocky and Bullwinkle arc "Missouri Mish Mash" centers around Boris Badenov's quest to locate the Kirword Derby, a hat that makes its wearer the smartest person in the world.
The Mad Hatter from The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland leaves the Bears a series of personalty changing hats that leads them to him. Once they do find him he sings them a song about the wonder of hats.
Applejack's cowboy hat in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. So nice, it's the only article of clothing consistently worn by any of the mane characters. Rarity has designed a few of her own, but not for everyday use, and she even incorporates the cowboy hat hat into Applejack's dress for the Grand Galloping Gala. As for minor characters, Ensemble Darkpony Trixie wouldn't have been nearly so memorable without her pointy hat and ham acting.
Pinkie Pie breaks out a rainbow-colored umbrella hat a couple of times, and later wears a hat shaped like a bowl of chocolate pudding as part of her costume in "Hearth's Warming Eve."
The Mysterious Mare Do Well sports a Darkwing-style purple fedora, and Spike gets a white one from Cheerilee for his birthday.
Daring Do from "Read It and Weep" has a fairly-impressive safari hat. She even uses it to escape a Death Trap.
The Looney Tunes cartoon Bugs Bonnets explores the psychological theory that people's personalities can be affected by the way they dress, by littering a forest where Elmer Fudd is hunting Bugs Bunny with various hats. As Bugs and Elmer don each hat, their personalities change accordingly.
Truth in Television: His Holiness has quite a few nice hats, from the modest zuchetto skullcap, to the more ornate mitre, to the impossibly awesome Papal Tiara. The Papal Tiara, in fact, has apparently been deemed too awesome for a mere human, even one chosen as God's Earthly representative. It's not been worn in the last 40 years. So the hat is Too Nice For This Sinful Earth?
Most of the Catholic hierarchy in some form has a cool hat they wear, with the bishops, archbishops, and cardinals all having their own style of hat.
The papal camauro: Pope Benedict looks a lot less intimidating (and a bit less like Palpatine) when you see him in a Santa hat. Camauro is the actual name for a santa hat, as St. Nicholas of Myra was a bishop way back when.
The Imperial State Crown contains over 3,000 jewels, including a 317-carat diamond. It's Awesome, but Impractical; the damn thing apparently weighs a ton and is murder on your royal neck.*
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" indeed.
The St. Edwards Crown, which is the one normally used at coronations, is heavier.
Oddly enough, while the hat may be insane, that's the most subdued suit I've ever seen him in.
John Lennon wears a Nice Hat (a cap, really) for much of A Hard Day's Night. It's nice enough that some copies of his book In His Own Write have pictures of him in that hat.
Date Masamune is not just known for his one day which requires him an Eyepatch of Power. He's also known for his snazzy helmet with the crescent moon piece on the top of it. This helmet almost always appears alongside Masamune whenever he is featured in other media.
The various Chinese dynasties, being a multi-tiered bureaucracy from hell, featured funky-looking hats (and outfits) of all shapes and colors. Special mention goes to the ladies of the court, who would also wear fake hair shaped into a variety of mind-boggling shapes.
Otto von Bismarck◊ as mentioned in the Magnificent Bastard section. Although the hat was not unique as such, it was a Prussian cuirassier officers' helmet.
Terry Pratchett is often pictured in the covers of his books wearing a rather nifty black hat. It is apparently a form of disguise as without it he is, in his own words, just any other bald man with a beard. Indeed Moist von Lipwig relies on a similar technique in his Discworld books.
Dr. Gunther von Hagens is rarely seen without his black fedora, and has worn it while performing public dissections.
In North America, the wearing of men's hats as not only fashion but standard business and formal attire, began to fade during the early 1960s. One of the hallmark moments often cited for this decline in the various hats' popularity is the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in January of 1961. Though Kennedy wore a full formal morning suit, including top hat, to his inauguration speech, he was most famously seen on television without a hat while delivering his speech. American men's fashion began to become more relaxed as the 1960s went on and the hat, be it fedora or trilby, boater or bowler, faded out of fashion to be replaced with naught but the baseball cap as informal attire. Though the actual impact of a new, young, and fashionable President addressing the public sans-hat (an inversion of The Red Stapler) has been debated, the popularity of the men's hat has not returned in North America or elsewhere in the Western world.
The hats for women, most prevalently in the South, could get pretty wild and wacky, particularly in late 19th and 20th centuries (this tradition is kept alive to this day by some, though, as noted below). In the early days of movie theaters, one common slide you'd see where today you'd see "don't smoke, don't talk, turn cell phones off, throw trash in the receptacles, fire exits are at the sides", they'd have "Ladies, kindly remove your hats", maybe even accompanied by a cartoon of some poor sod's view being obstructed by, say, a two-foot-tall pineapple-wielding monster. (As an aside, another common slide in that era would also remind people "Don't Spit on the Floor — Remember the Johnstown Flood.").
Averted by Fidel Castro, who is known for his iconic yet understated military cloth cap◊, although some would hold this to be a Nice Hat of it's own for that very reason.
The fondness of military dictators (Mussolini, Pinochet, Amin, etc.) for huge peaked caps has led to them being called "dictator caps".
Mussolini is usually associated with a different, peak-less cap (but then he was not a military dictator and most frequently wore a fascist party uniform).
Tennis players are often fond of using Nice Baseball Caps when playing. The one who began the trend was Jim Courier, with his Nice White Cap. Kind of a Justified Trope for the absolutely asinine heat in some courts, especially during the Australian Grand Slam (50°C?! HOLY SHIT!)
It has become quite popular, The Milliner has made replicas which sell for $179.
African American women are all expected to have a Nice Hat that they can wear to church (as women were supposed to have their heads covered; this was just taken to Beyond the Impossible levels in Southern Baptist churches). They are often even called "crowns".
The top hat Hugh Jackman wears in the 2009 Oscars "The Musical" musical number... or just about anything he wears, actually.
Not hard at all, but the stovepipe was still just so him.
As Lisa Simpson once described it: "America's greatest citizen summed up in one piece of clothing."
Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando has a massive version of the Sorcerer's Hat (from the Fantasia version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice) over a pair of Mickey Ears.
What very few people know is that the Royal Ascot horse races are actually a horse racing event and not, as one might easily be mistaken, the worlds most important annual fashion convention for crazy hats.
Top Hats. Fred Astaire's is one of the more famous examples. It got its own song in Top Hat.
Zachary Quinto has a hat so well known to his fans that it has been dubbed the Fug Hat. It seems to have been replaced by a similar hat in blue, which is usually denoted as Fug Hat 2.0.
The pharaohs of Ancient Egypt had some serious hattage going on. Aside from the nemes◊ (aka King Tut's head-dress), there's also the White Crown of Upper Egypt, and the Red Crown of Lower Egypt. But it doesn't stop there, oh no. Eventually Upper and Lower Egypt were united, so the Egyptians went Beyondthe Impossible and stuck one hat inside the other to make one, unifying, reallyNice Hat. Brilliant.
One entry on Skippy's List states nothing but "Take that hat off." We can only imagine, but it was certainly some kind of Superlative Hat.
Since There Is No Such Thing as Notability: there's an online ESPNfantasyfootball league run locally out of Indianapolis that awards a huge Sombrero of Victory to whoever wins that year's championship (though, in practice somewhat similar to the handling of a certain local event's Borg-Warner Trophy, the Sombrero is not actually given over to the individual directly).
Whichever Ancient British chieftain wore this helmet◊ can make a claim to this trope.
The Medieval heraldic crest evolved out of an attempt to turn an essentially functional tin-can into a Nice Hat, with the express purpose of making a knight more identifiable at tournaments.
Yup. Standard issue for Prussian Cavalry officers.
Suleiman the Magnificent is consistently depicted with a turban(?) much larger than his own head.
He also owned an incredibly epic tiara◊, specifically made to outdo the Pope's. He apparently never actually wore it, likely because it was so huge that his spine would have crumbled under the weight.
Boxing historian and author Bert Randolph Sugar is rarely seen without his trademark fedora (and big cigar).
the late Isabella Blow was never photographed without a hat, and was in fact an early mentor/patron of Philip Treacy- she even got a museum exhibit dedicated to her headgear.
Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer Auguste Piccard◊, who inspired Hergé the character of Cuthbert Calculus in the Tintin series.
The Ushanka has become so synonymous with Reds With Rockets that it's become hard to imagine any Russian soldier not wearing it in winter.
Famed USMC sniper Carlos Hathcock was known as Long Tr'ang, or "White Feather", for wearing a feather on his hat. While the image itself might seem cliched, remember that this is a man who once shot a feared enemy sniper through his rifle's scope, performed a non-lethal shot on a courier on a bicycle from a mile away with a machine gun, wiped out a company of North Vietnamese soldiers along with his spotter in an isolated valley, crawled through an open field patrolled by enemies to assassinate a North Vietnamese general in a heavily guarded mansion, and severely burned himself rescuing several fellow Marines from a burning APC, after an exploding mine threw him off said APC. Definitely lots of cool to go with the hat there.
Southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit often wears quite a nice hat.
Instead of the mortarboard hats used at graduations in a lot of English-speaking countries, Scandinavians and Finns graduate from high school wearing these◊, which are often decorated according to the program/school you graduated from.
Princess Beatrice◊ from the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. It is headgear not to be missed.
It got nearly 20,000 fans on Facebook within hours.
The Chaperon (basically Medieval Europe's answer to the Turban) started off rather utilitarian and became increasingly complex over time. Even today, the exact nature of "its complicated construction is often misunderstood". Most people familiar with that era of history would recognize it as those ridiculous hats worn in Renaissance paintings. Its probably the inspiration for Quirrel's turban.
Moldavia's Eurovision Song Contest contribution in 2011... THEY MUST BE MORE THAN A METRE TALL!
German LARP scene has developed the "Blöder-Hut-Credo" (credo of the stupid hat). The core: "A good character concept always starts with a hat which is as stupid as possible!"
