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Hood or no hood, the universe knows who this guy is!
"They should be good men, their affairs as righteous. But all hoods make not monks."
Queen Katherine, Henry VIII

Somebody needs to disguise their identity and/or avoid attracting attention. Their solution? Wear a Black Cloak with a really big hood. Because nothing diverts attention away from oneself better than a big, creepy, black cloak that makes you look like the Grim Reaper. In modern times, however, a hoodie is a good substitute.

Of course, the physics of this attire choice are subjected to Rule of Cool. The hood will obscure their face (or at least from the mouth or nose up) in shadow, regardless of whether it is long enough to actually do so; and if it is, the eyes will be often completely covered by the cloth, making one wonder how they manage to actually see anything. In addition, the hood will never fall off accidentally, even if the wearer is fighting a Wind Mage in the middle of a typhoon.

Yes, wearing a hood during a fight isn't a good idea because it constricts your peripheral vision, but who cares as long as it looks cool? Besides, being mysterious is badass. Even more besides, no one has peripheral vision anyway.

Sometimes the character in question will have Glowing Eyes to contrast with their obscured face, resulting in Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes.

Video game designers of older days liked the trope because throwing an all-concealing hood (or suitable replacement) over an unimportant or "mysterious" character meant that they could skip on actually animating the character's speech.

This can be a Justified Trope if in a Wretched Hive or Bad Guy Bar, where this is a perfectly acceptable fashion accessory. Though it shouldn't be confused with a Hood Film, you can expect to find it there, too. It also works if you are pretending to be a monk.

Compare Eye-Obscuring Hat. Contrast with the Cool Masks worn by superheroes, which disguise them by making them look more conspicuous. When not, see Malevolent Masked Men.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • The British public information ad "Lonely Water" has The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, the Anthropomorphic Personification of drowning. The Spirit wanders near bodies of water, looking like a sinister monk, waiting for foolish children to fall in.
  • AMC Theaters' We Make Movies Better ad opens with Nicole Kidman approaching a movie theater wearing a hooded jacket, lowering the hood as she prepares to step inside.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Battle Spirits Shonen Toppa Bashin:
    • Suiren does this in the fourth episode to disguise herself when she wants to get away from her idol duties.
    • Later, this is also done by Meganeko and Card Sensei to sneak into a tournament.
  • When on an assassination mission, Guts from Berserk wears a dark cloak with a hood. He's also seen wearing his all-black hooded cape post-Eclipse after he becomes the Black Swordsman.
  • Bleach gives us the bizarre Pernida Parnkgjas, a Quincy whose hood renders all but the character's glowing eyes invisible.
  • Blood+: The schiff wear hoods for protection since sunlight kills them.
  • Claymore:
    • Clare wears a hooded cloak while infiltrating the Holy City of Rabona. She however has the sense to wear a dark cloak as a form of camouflage at night. Seven or so years later Clarice and Miata do the same but in broad daylight. It does not work out very well for them.
    • The Seven Ghosts frequently wear these as well. Of course, it is obvious that they are being mysterious, but they seem more concerned with avoiding positive identification.
  • In GaoGaiGar FINAL, with the exception of six members, all of the Planetary Masters of Sol wear hooded cloaks. Even after transforming into their mech forms, their actual faces are never shown.
  • Turkey from Hetalia: Axis Powers wears a hood and a mask as his default attire, when he isn't the Ottoman Turks (where he wears a mask and a huge hat instead).
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Stardust Crusaders: When the heroes reach Egypt, a Speedwagon agent who arrived earlier spots Dio's praetorian minions leaving a building in hoods after receiving orders.
    • Golden Wind: Diavolo's first appearance has him with this, covered in a shadowed blanket in a dark room while musing about Bucciarati's team bringing his daughter so he could personally kill her.
    • JoJolion: Daiya's first outfit has a hood with bear ears.
  • Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: Hermit's fighting uniform in his early appearances includes a dark hood which, combined with his advocacy of The Power of Hate, makes him look kind of like a Sith Lord.
  • Kill la Kill:
    • Guts is a non-speaking partially civilized doggy who is never seen without his little hoodie.
    • When Ryuko gets into her first real fight, she starts out wearing a body-concealing hood and cloak. It eventually gets torn up, revealing her now-iconic Stripperiffic outfit.
  • Sara from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch initially uses a white hood to hide her face. After she removes it for the first time, she never bothers with it again.
  • Moriarty the Patriot: William and Louis wear hooded black cloaks when performing Lord of Crime business to conceal their fairly recognizable features and only doff them when they're in front of their murder victims. William's hood blowing out of his face allows Charles Augustus Milverton to recognize him.
  • My Hero Academia: When villain Geten wears the fur-lined hood of his parka, his Glowing Eyes of Doom shine from his otherwise completely-concealed face.
  • The members of the Black Valley in My-Otome wear these; once it's revealed that they're not evil, it gets lampshaded when there's a little girl in the group, wearing a cloak and a hood and a pink bow over the hood.
  • Naruto:
    • In Part 1, Kiba Inuzuka wears a jacket with a hoodie that has fur on the hoodie. He has the hood on most of the time, and the fur on it makes it easy for the audience to mistake it for his hair. He later drops the hoodie look completely, starting with the Shippuuden.
    • In Shippuuden, Kiba's teammate Shino Aburame dons a new jacket with a hood, which he wears all the time, making him look even more like a freak than he already was in Part 1. Even when he later switches to a standard shinobi uniform in the Fourth Great Shinobi War arc, he still wears a hood on his head.
    • Averted with Kiba's and Shino's other teammate Hinata Hyuuga, who wears a hoodie in both parts, but she never has her head covered under the hood.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • Ku:Nel Sanders manages to go through an entire tournament without ever having his hood fall off (he's the semi-solid projection of a mage, so maybe a wizard did it). It doesn't generally mask his face from the reader, but the characters themselves can't see his face unless he shows them.
    • After Negi is Wrongly Accused in the Magic World, he doesn't go out without a hood when he's not disguised.
  • Subverted with Korumi in Onegai My Melody. Not only does her black hood disguise nothing, but the second season reveals that it's apparently genetic.
  • Fakir wears a hood to cover his distinctive green hair while he wears a mask in the tenth episode of Princess Tutu. This is probably in part because Fakir has a tendency to be a little theatrical when it comes to his role as the Knight.
  • Queen Millennia: Hannibal is an android builder from La-Metal who wears a cloak that covers his face and assists the Queen Millennia cycle. Despite declaring neutrality, he helps the Millennium Thieves a lot. On Earth he's said to be Timerhead Franklin, the mayor of New York.
  • Samurai Champloo: Yukimaru uses a hood that actually covers his entire face (except for his eyes) to hide his identity from the protagonists.
  • In the world of Somali and the Forest Spirit, humans are seen as livestock by the ruling class of monsterfolk, meaning the titular Somali must specifically wear a hooded cloak around other people to hide not her identity but her species. The false horns allow her to pass as a minotaur child.
  • Ultimate Muscle starting with episode 5, "Dial Up Danger", has Kevin Mask, Diabolic, and Pumpinator dressed with hoods that completely obscure their faces in black shadows as well as hide their bodies' true form.

    Comic Books 
  • The Beauty: In flashbacks, Ezerae is shown to have used to wear a red hoodie. It probably helps to differentiate her then and her now.
    • The two Serial Killers that Detectives Vaughn and Foster investigated in their first case together also wore hoodies to help in concealing their identities.
  • Calico (2020): The mysterious villain who shows up in Issue #4 has a hood as a part of his get-up.
  • Doctor Doom wears a dark-green hooded cloak of course, seeing as he is rather Genre Savvy about the sources of badassery.
  • The main villain of Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time wears a hood to hide his identity, as he can't let the Doctor recognise him before their first chronological meeting. He has another reason for the hood as well: He's former companion Adam Mitchell, who was left with a hole in his head when the Ninth Doctor expelled him from the TARDIS for bad behaviour.
  • Fairy Quest: Red has a red hood, which is obvious given that she's Little Red Riding Hood.
  • The Oliver Queen Green Arrow during the Mike Grell series The Longbow Hunters and the following Green Arrow monthly series (1980s and 1990s run) wore a hood. Dinah "Black Canary" Lance designed it for him so he wouldn't catch a chill in Seattle's rainy clime. Since he had abandoned his trick and gadget arrows for broadheads instead, it was a better fit for a darker and grittier GA than the old "Robin Hood" hat from the Golden Age. Initially he still wears his domino mask underneath the hood, but after enough people explain that they already know who he is, he gives up the mask and wears only the hood. Depending on the artist, it still hid the face—it was the beard that defeated the whole purpose of it all.
  • The Hood, who downright gets powers from the magic hood he found roaming around.
  • Horizon: Zhia is wearing a blue hoodie at the end of Issue #6 after the mission's over.
  • Knights of the Dinner Table: Newt's characters invariably dress this way as part of his attempt to imbue them with a Shrouded in Myth mystique. No one else is ever impressed.
  • Skroa used this in Book 7 and 8 of Les LĂ©gendaires to conceal his identity. Partially justified, as his real appearance is a giant, green, anthropomorphic bird-like demon, meaning any disguise would be better than just going around as himself. Ironically, this is actually of little use, as the only person he shows himself to in the arc dies a panel later, and the protagonists instantly recognize him when confronting him at the end.
  • Time Trapper, the mysterious purple-wearing X-factor villain in Legion of Super-Heroes, wears one. But since his identity changes all the time it doesn't matter when s/he takes it off.
  • Lunar Girl and Scarlet Sparrow: The man who resurrects Angelo Ombra wears a tattered hooded cape. W Hat purpose it serves isn't evident, outside of making him look spooky.
  • Moon Knight, whose Badass Cape has a white hood with a point end to enhance his Terror Hero look.
  • Planet Terry has The Hood, a hooded figure who captures Planet Terry's supposed mother and holds her hostage until Terry rescues her. The Hood, as it turns out, is a child about Terry's age who ends up being revealed as Vermin the Vile's real son.
  • The Red Hood originally only had a red bucket-like mask atop a red cape (The Joker) or a red mask (Jason Todd), but then Jason decided to actually have a red hood along with the mask in Red Hood/Arsenal, likely influenced by his depiction in Batman: Arkham Knight.
  • The secretive Red Robin villain known as a "Daughter of Acheron" always wears a heavy embroidered hooded cloak with a deep hood up until she has Tim captured and, she thinks, helpless, then divulges to him that she is the half-sister of Ra's al Ghul and intends to make an heir for herself with Tim and kill him.
  • Damian Wayne, the fifth Robin, includes a hood as part of his cape. Nightwing points out that a hood could block his peripheral vision and give enemies something to grab. Damian brushes off his concerns, stating that he can even fight blind if needed.
  • Robin (1993): "Dodge" wore a blue hoodie as his hero costume; after a Teleporter Accident leaves him mutated, he turns villain, blames Robin for it, and keeps the hood up constantly.
  • In The Scorpion, Hot Gypsy Woman Mejai frequently wears a long, hooded cloak (although blue rather than black) that wraps right around her whenever she is attempting to move about incognito.
  • Spider-Man: Roderick Kingsley, the original Hobgoblin, has a hood. More often than not, it casts a shadow that hides most of his mask while leaving only his glittering red eyes visible. Very creepy. When he temporarily gives up the role, his successor keeps the hood but never produces the shadow, just one of many many ways he's a failure. Eventually Kingsley comes out of retirement, kills him, takes the role of the Hobgoblin back, and sure enough, lots of creepy shadows.
    • Spider-Gwen sometimes has a hood in her costume, even she already wears a mask.
  • In her Spoiler incarnation, Bat-clan member Stephanie Brown combines a hood with a featureless black full-face mask further concealing her.
  • Stray: In one story, Rodney is trying to get a bunch of people off a subway car. One of them is wearing a thick hooded coat to hide that he's really Mister Macabre.
  • In Supergirl storyline The Killers of Krypton, Kara needs to carry out several stealth operations, so she dons a full-body black-and red suit complete with a black cowl which effectively obscures her features from the nose up.
  • Teen Titans: Raven loves the hood; it somehow conceals her face just as well as a mask but without that pesky glue. It even stays on when she flies. The cartoon provides a possible explanation for this by giving her telekinesis, a power she lacks in the comics.
  • Taskmaster, to the point the live-action debut in Black Widow (2021) changed the pirate-like costume to something akin to military armor, but still kept the hood as combining that with a skull mask just works so well.
  • Thin Blue Line: A number of anti-cop protestors wear masks and hoodies. This is likely done to conceal their identities while they commit crimes around the city.
  • Tintin: The members of the secret conspiracy that Tintin unmasks in Cigars of the Pharaoh dress in large hoods for their meetings so that nobody (except, one assumes, the leader) will know the identity of everybody else.
  • Subverted in The Traveler. While the Traveler always wears a hood, it's constantly falling off and he's shown putting it back on numerous times per issue. He wears a mask that covers everything but his eyes and mouth though, so his face still isn't seen even when the hood is down.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: As the Shroud, Kitty Pryde wears a hooded cloak to conceal her identity.
  • As his name suggests, Hooded Justice, the first costumed adventurer in the Backstory of Watchmen, wore a black hood that covered his entire face, meant to resemble an executioner or hanged criminal. The resemblance to a Klan hood was not accidental.
  • Sand Masters of White Sand have hoods as part of their robes, as they live in a land of Endless Daytime.
  • In the comic book version of W.I.T.C.H., the girls wear brown, hooded cloaks to be able to walk around undetected in Meridian. In their human forms. Note that we're talking about the comic version of Meridian here, where everyone is green-skinned, has tentacle hair, or is otherwise downright monstrous looking. For some reason, it works.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): The Earth-based slaver who brainwashes and sells humans to the Empire of Saturn always wears a deep hooded cloak for their dealings with Empire officials. This ensures that Count Dendum cannot identify them after they try to continue selling humans after the Empire makes it illegal, starts trying to return their human slaves to their places of origin, and forms a treaty with the US. They turn out to be the super-villain Hypnota.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): Circe will wear a heavy, deep-hooded, green cloak on the very rare occasion she wants to be inconspicuous.
  • Subverted by Rogue from the X-Men. When she first joins the team, her costume has a large hood, but you can count on one hand how many times she's actually seen wearing it. Later costume designs include a similarly-styled hood, which she wears on occasion, but not enough for it to be a signature look like her skunk stripe.

    Comic Strips 
  • Dr. Zook, the medicine man in Hägar the Horrible is always seen wearing the hood of his robe that conceals his face except for his long nose which sticks out.
  • Nero:
    • A hooded Klan-esque villain appears in De Linkadoors.
    • Another hooded man, this time a good man, yet equally mysterious, appears in De Grote Geheimzinnigaard.
    • In De Clo Clo Clan and De Wraak Van De Grote Clo, another Klan-esque antagonistic secret society dressed in hoods lives on the North Pole and call themselves The Clan.

    Fan Works 
  • Stella Zhau in the The Loud House fanfic Flowing Star occasionally puts the hood of her short-sleeved hoodie over her head to hide her face and feel more safe.
  • In the Turning Red fanfic Fragile; Handle with Care, Jesse wears a hood to a pharmacy to keep from being recognized, which attracts suspicion from an employee.
  • In I've Got Your Back, Marina wears a hoodie because hoods hide her tentacles. She's also a homeless Shrinking Violet, so they're also sturdy and fit her shy personality.
  • In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku's costume includes a hood styled to resemble All Might's hair thanks to his fanboying for the Number One Hero. It gets used against him during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise when Bakugou stuffs it full of bombs and throws it over Izuku's eyes before detonating them all at once. Luckily, he's Kryptonian and his suit is made of Seventh Metal fibers, so all he gets from it is Ash Face.
  • In the Harry Potter fic Rise of the Wizards, Harry's account manager sends him a note which mentions that Gringotts's nighttime customers tend to be of the more... disreputable sort and suggests that Harry "would not look out of place with a hooded black cloak."
  • Sins of the Past: Kamala prefers keeping her head covered when she can, as she detests attention. Unfortunately, this is thwarted at school, as her teacher M. Agreste quickly informs her that wearing one during class is against school policy. Once she becomes Ladybug, she's able to incorporate a hooded poncho into its design.
  • Viridian: The Green Guide: Izuku Midoriya uses a dark-green hoodie and green-tinted goggles that are Quirk-enhanced to not color the wearer's vision in order to hide his identity from villains and Pro-Heroes during his vigilante work.
  • In the Death Note fic Welcome to the Family, Light Yagami determines that not even the genii of Wammy's House can withstand the mighty stealth powers of the "magic hoodie" that somehow renders him unrecognizable whenever he goes out to do nefarious things.

    Films — Animation 
  • Brave: Merida hides her head on a few occasions with the hood of her cape.
  • Christine from Buster & Chauncey's Silent Night wears a hooded cloak when she comes to Oberndorf. Likely to keep warm, the movie taking place around Christmastime and all.
  • Coco: Miguel wears his hood up as part of his skeleton disguise.
  • Tip from Home (2015) wears a hoodie while on the run from the alien Boov.
  • Frollo's guards in The Hunchback of Notre Dame wear a combination of silver helmets and black hoods to give them that all-important terrifying Faceless Mooks look.
  • In Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the titular Phantasm's costume is meant to resemble The Grim Reaper, so it naturally includes a hooded cloak.
  • Alia from Arlo the Alligator Boy is never seen without her large red hoodie. It gets exaggerated in the I ♡ Arlo series, where she even puts hats on over the hood and wears a hooded wetsuit for swimming.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 21st Century Serial Killer: In his improv classes, Aaron is seen wearing a grey hoodie and sunglasses, possibly for the purpose of concealing his identity.
  • In .45, the figure who steals Big Al's jacket and .45 and murders Clancy disguises their identity with a hooded sweatshirt.
  • The ABCs of Death: In the "S" segment, Roxanne's mysterious pursuer the Hooded Man gets his name from the Badass Longcoat he wears, complete with a hood that obscures his face.
  • Aleta: Vampire Mistress: Aleta's outfits include a Black Cloak that includes a face-obscuring hoodie to hide her identity.
  • Assassin's Creed (2016): Aguilar's outfit includes a hood to hide his identity per the franchise's Assassins' tradition. What's more, the Brotherhood's symbol is embroidered on it.
  • Blood Ransom: Crystal is attacked in her home by two guys (one of whom is Daniel) in black hoodies and masks to conceal their identities.
  • The Bloody Man: In Sam's Dream Sequence about when his mom was alive, Michael goes to play an arcade game, and Amy goes to watch him. When Michael comments on being low on quarters, Amy's attention is captured by a man in a brown hoodie, who offers her a bloody Nickle. Later in the movie, The Bloody Man offers Amy a bloody Nickle, implying he was that same person.
  • A Classic Horror Story: Some of the Malevolent Masked Men wear long hooded robes, probably signifying a high rank among them.
  • The Mountain Man in Cold Prey 3 hides his face under a hood.
  • Coming Home in the Dark: Tubs, one of the two killers who kidnap Hoaggie and his wife, wears a hoodie when he makes his first appearance in the movie.
  • Cthulhu: The protagonist sees a line of Black Cloak-hooded figures coming across the bridge towards him, and is so freaked out that he steals a boat to avoid them.
  • Erin's Guide to Kissing Girls: Erin wears a blue hoodie to school one day. When she decides to deliver her Love Letter to Sydni, she pulls the hood over her head and crawls along the empty classroom floor. Liz comments on her actions.
    Liz: Do you have to be so dramatic?
    Narrator:: She did.
  • The Gingerweed Man: The main villain of the movie wears a Black Cloak with a hood that covers up his face, concealing his identity. He doesn't take it off until The Stinger>
  • Grandmother's Farm 2: The gang are seen pursued by an ominous-looking man who wears a shawl like a hood, which adds to his ominousness.
  • In Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, King Henry wears a hooded cloak to disguise his identity when he goes among his soldiers the night before the Battle of Agincourt.
  • Hot Fuzz:
    • Subverted with the ominous hoodies seen occasionally and hinted at as possible suspects; they're just local kids raging against authority via minor vandalism. And when you consider what that authority is doing...
    • Played straighter with the murderer, who is seen wearing a full-length black cloak and hood. This helps the Neighbourhood Watch maintain misdirection that there is only one murderer.
  • In John Doe: Vigilante, John Doe's "costume" consists of an expressionless flesh-coloured mask and a black hoodie. Because the mask matches his skin, with the hood up, it is not obvious to casual observers that he is wearing a mask.
  • The Jurassic Dead: Dr. Wojick Borge is seen wearing a hoodie down in the bunker after the Time Skip. He takes it off before leaving his room, and getting killed by the zombie dinosaur.
  • Little Dead Rotting Hood: Samantha's grandmother wears a red hooded robe reminiscent of a certain story. Samantha has to put it on, as it's apparently her life force. She has it on at the end of the film, stating she is now the new guardian of the woods.
  • The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring is first seen with his hood pulled up indoors, with only the light of his pipe illuminating his eyes. It's supposed to be ambiguous as to whether "Strider" is a good or bad guy at first.
  • Morgan spends most of the movie wearing a grey hoodie, to give a Creepy Child effect to someone who looks like a little girl but is actually an Artificial Human.
  • The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones:
    • Jace dons a few hoods while investigating Clary.
    • Magnus Bane wears a hooded long coat when he sneaks in the Institute to heal a mortally injured Alec Lightwood.
  • The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill: Some crew members (Rob and Cris) are seen wearing hoodies at night, possibly to keep warm. There's also the cultists, all of whom wear hooded robes.
  • In The Ribald Tales of Robin Hood, Robin escapes from his cell by slipping out posing as Marian, disguising himself with her hooded cloak.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Roxie initially attacks Scott while wearing a hoodie that obscures her identity and gender.
  • The Star Wars movies both avert it and play it straight.
    • The Jedi almost always shed their hooded cloaks before a battle but are otherwise seen in them. The hoods are usually down though. The out-of-universe reason they wear hooded cloaks to begin with is most likely Obi-Wan Kenobi's use of one, as detailed below.
    • Both Palpatine and Anakin (though he isn't hiding his identity, he briefly fights with a cloak on) use this straight. Sith Lords have their eyes obscured under their hoods, Darth Sidious in particular.
    • Obi-Wan Kenobi wears a hood that hides his face at his very first appearance, making him look like a mysterious scary thing that causes the Sandpeople to flee.
    • Luke wears a hood for a while in Return of the Jedi when he's dealing with Jabba and playing the mysterious scary Jedi.
    • Star Wars has an entire In The Hood species in the form of the Jawas, all of whom wear face-obscuring hoods no matter the situation. Does this make them a Planet of Hoods?
    • Queen PadmĂ© Amidala's handmaidens are often dressed in identical outfits with bulky hoods that obscure their faces. As the handmaidens are also the Queen's body doubles the hoods are a way of making it harder for onlookers to notice when they switch places.
  • Strippers Vs. Werewolves: The strippers all don Little Red Riding Hood-style red cloaks with hoods for their final showdown with the werewolf pack.
  • When not invisibly causing "accidents", Sharack's ghost in Superstition appears as a robed and hooded figure for mysteriousness purposes.
  • In The Three Musketeers (the 2023 version), Milady de Winter (Eva Green) dons a hood several times.
  • The Alchemist in Vidocq wears a black hood over his mirrored mask. Very creepy, since when a victim-to-be tries to glimpse under the hood, they only see their own face staring back.
  • The killer in Wishcraft wears a grotesque mask and a black hooded cloak.
  • Morgana, Eric, and their companion wear black hoodies as part of their disguise when they rob the gallery at the start of Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies.
  • The Wrong Cheerleader: Creepy guy Rob does most of his stalking in a black tracksuit, but covers his head with a hood when sneaking about practise gyms, locker rooms, and teenage girls' homes.
  • The killer in Young Sherlock Holmes conceals their identity by wearing a large hooded cloak.

    Literature 
  • In A Brother's Price, the criminals whom the Whistlers and the Princesses fight together use hoods. Doesn't help them (much), as the Whistlers just go after the person with the red hood, who they assume is the leader.
  • Discworld:
    • Lampshaded in Going Postal, in which the antagonist notes that running through dark and rainy streets with a hood and cloak is the surest way to attract attention and quietly orders a subordinate killed for his incompetence.
    • In Guards! Guards!, Vimes notes the same thing, albeit without the kill orders.
      Vimes: There are probably countless perfectly innocent reasons to stand in front of a secret society's recently destroyed headquarters while wearing a black robe and cowl and muttering to yourself. Perhaps I should ask him to name just one...
    • Discworld's Death, being a traditionally-minded Anthropomorphic Personification, wears the classic Grim Reaper outfit, a black robe with a hood. So does Death of Rats (at rat size, naturally). Notably, the Death of Rats is the only "new Death" to wear the outfit; other Deaths shown are a tad more appropriate to the situation (the Death of Trees is the sound of an axe swinging, while the Death of Mayflies is a ghostly salmon).
  • In The Dresden Files: The aptly nicknamed villain The Cowl wears a hood, so his real identity is yet unknown to Harry.
  • Forgotten Realms' Drizzt Do'Urden rarely wears the hood on his cloak unless the sun is particularly bright, though if he's going somewhere he never has before he at least tries to keep it up in the hopes that the gate guards will be stupid enough not to challenge a hooded traveler.
  • Fridthjof's Saga: When Fridthjof goes to King Hring's hall to see Ingibjörg again (who is now Hring's wife), he puts on a "great shaggy cloak" and a hood which hangs down over his face. When he enters the hall, pretending to be an old beggar, he takes a seat in a corner and keeps his hood on so that it "fall[s] over his face". Notably, the "success" of this disguise is depicted quite realistically, as the stranger arouses the attention of the king at once, and the further events imply that Hring immediately suspects that the stranger is Fridthjof, even though he has never seen him before.
  • Go to Sleep (A Jeff the Killer Rewrite): In the finale chapter, Jeff conceals his face in the shadow of his white hoodie as he shows himself to Randy, before pulling the hood off and revealing who he is.
  • The Dementors from Harry Potter wear cloaks with hoods at all times, only lifting them when they are about to suck out your soul.
  • He Who Fights With Monsters: Jason wears his hooded Cloak of Shadows so much, it's become part of his identity. Amusingly, each of his three familiars also adopt this fashion, though Colin's "cloak" is a bundle of bloody rags tied together in the rough shape of a cloak.
  • In The Iron Teeth, Blacknail the hobgoblin can easily pass as human with a good hooded cloak, if he also keeps his horns filed down and smooths his voice a bit. It helps that the only human city he's been to is Daggerpoint, where a good chunk of the populace goes around hooded.
  • In Journey to Chaos, Annala takes to wearing a hood after becoming the chaos cleric known as "Priestess" to hide her identity. She enchants it so that her face can't be seen from any angle as long as it is up and can't be removed by things like a wind spell.
  • Hastur, as The King in Yellow, is often portrayed as being hooded in artwork.
  • The Lord of the Rings:
    • The Ringwraiths wear hooded cloaks to conceal the fact that they're permanently invisible — if they lowered the hoods they'd appear to be headless, which tends to be noticed.
    • Eomer describes Saruman as creeping about on the borders of Rohan in the guise of an old man in a hooded cloak. When Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli actually see him, though, he's wearing a hat rather than a hood.
  • Max & the Midknights: In order to sneak back into Byjovia during the annual spiking of the town's water supply, Max and the Midknights hide in a potato cart and have Mumblin' and King Conrad disguise themselves as farmers with hooded cloaks.
  • Malazan Book of the Fallen:
    • In Gardens of the Moon, Elder God K'rul at first only appears as a cloaked figure with long and sinuous fingers, illustrating the fact that he can't fully materialise outside of his temple or Kruppe's dreams.
    • Shadowthrone's cloak is described as looking like a living shadow, making the rather scrawny and bent Shadowthrone into an imposing figure. Considering that he is the God of Shadow and Illusion, it fits.
    • Cotillion is described as wearing a hooded cloak. Since he is the Patron God of Assassins, it comes with the occupation. Additionally, unlike his companion Shadowthrone, Cotillion retained his human features upon becoming a god and wants to remain unrecognizable to anyone who may have known him when he was mortal.
  • The eponymous "Ghost Jogger" of the short story in Nancy Drew Ghost Stories makes full use of his hood to hide the fact that he's a young man assumed to be dead at the beginning of the series.
  • During Night's Dawn, Quinn Dexter adopts this trope deliberately to awe his Satanist followers and enemies, using his powers as the Possessed to make the hood particularly dark. The reader can tell he's lost his temper whenever his face makes a sudden reappearance.
  • In Ollie's Odyssey, Ollie wears a green hoodie as a part of his design.
  • In the Ranger's Apprentice series, the eponymous Rangers are well-known throughout Araluen for their ability to melt into the forest and move without being seen. The prevailing superstition is that their cloaks are imbued with magic, allowing them to turn invisible. The real reason? Part of it is that the cloaks are camouflaged, with a large hood to completely conceal the wearer's face in shadow. The other part is that due to his training, a Ranger can stay perfectly still and hidden even when the enemy is looking right at them. From any farther than a few meters, a Ranger in hiding literally blends into the surrounding forest.
  • According to the medieval Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong, Grettir was the tallest man in Iceland. He was an outlaw with a price on his head. He wore a hood and nobody ever recognized the tallest man in Iceland.
  • The Saga of Hrolf Kraki: When both Thorir Dog-foot and Bodvar Bjarki, each on their own, depart from their grandfather's kingdom, both of them first seek out their brother Elk-Frodi, who lives as a highwayman. Both times Frodi is not at home when his brother arrives, and both of them sit down in Frodi's cabin and pull their hoods down over their faces. Frodi comes home and behaves menacingly toward the stranger. ThorĂ­r reveals himself before they come to blows, but Bodvar simply ignores Frodi's threats until Frodi is about to attack him, and they wrestle with each other. In wrestling, the hood falls from Bodvar's face, and Frodi finally recognizes his brother.
  • The Saga of the Sworn Brothers: When Thormod and Skuf go to the ship ready to sail for Greenland, they meet a stranger who calls himself Gest and is "wearing a hood that prevented them from seeing his face", making it obvious that he is a man who does not want to be recognized. Much later, it is revealed that "Gest" is Steinar, a relative of Thorgeir who (like Thormod) wants to go to Greenland in order to avenge Thorgeir.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: The Faith of the Seven has "The Stranger" as one of the seven aspects of God, his face always half concealed by a hooded cloak.
  • Spice and Wolf: Holo switches between wearing a hood and a hat to cover up the animalistic wolf-ears on top of her head in different situations. The hood implies that she is a traveling nun, which is explained in the light novels to be the standard getup of any independent woman who wants to do traveling, and as such doesn't normally get a lot of attention. The hat is part of a typical city girl outfit, which is more convenient when she wants to go drinking and having fun, activities unsuitable for even a nun out of convenience rather than devotion.
  • In The Supervillainy Saga, the protagonist, Gary Karkofsky a.k.a Merciless: The Supervillain without Mercy, has a magical hooded cloak. He is often described as looking like a "Discount Walmart Sith Lord".
  • In Twisted (2010), Rodney is able to entirely conceal his identity by wearing a long hooded coat. Please note that Rodney is an animate rollercoaster with a long centipede-esque body and, while trying to conceal his important paint colour, he isn't wearing gloves.
  • Defied in The Wheel of Time: Myrddraal, the second-most common type of Shadowspawn, could easily pass for a human by wearing a dark hood. As a result, in several countries, the law states that everyone wearing a hood is to be killed on sight, just in case. In less watchful countries, this is not the case. Aes Sedai use this trick all the time to hide their trademark "ageless face".
  • The Will Be Done has Praen donning a hood for a night in order to deal with the town's criminals.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Angel:
    • The good guys wear them in an episode while sneaking in to spy on Darla and Drusilla as they have a meeting with many vampires and demons.
    • Lorne wears one for a magical ceremony and snipes, "You think this Dungeons & Dragons cloak is a fashion statement?"
  • Arrow:
    • Avenger-of-evil Oliver Queen's entire concept of hiding his identity is painting the area around his eyes dark green/black and pulling his hood up. It's amazing that his family and acquaintances don't put it together when he converses with them face-to-face. Consequently, for the first season, he isn't known as Green Arrow, but the Hood. The hood was worn by his first mentor Yao Fei and passed to his daughter Shado before Oliver got it.
    • Some members of Team Arrow copy Oliver's style, such as Roy Harper (as Arsenal) and Thea Queen (as Speedy), though they prefer a red hood.
    • In his guise as The Dark Archer, Malcolm Merlyn wore a hood to obscure his identity. Once Oliver discovered his identity, and Merlyn faked his death, the disguise was no longer needed. When he returned there was no need for one.
  • Blackadder: In "Beer" from the second series, the Queen decides to invade Blackadder's drinking party, by wearing a cloak with a cowl, and introducing herself as a friend of Lord Percy's. Blackadder does not recognise her as the Queen, and thinks she is Percy's girlfriend, whom he had mentioned earlier. Blackadder locks her in a cupboard before she can interfere.
  • The Cape from, well, The Cape initially uses a hood for a disguise, until it almost reveals his identity. Then he added a mask underneath the hood.
  • When interviewed on The Colbert Report, Smaug the Golden defends his use of lethal force against Bilbo Baggins via this trope. "What would you do if someone broke into your house wearing a hoodie?"
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Visitation": An alien traveling by cart through medieval England adopts this as a disguise that completely fails to cover his reptilian snout.
    • The Headless Monks from "A Good Man Goes to War" have special hoods that stand up to conceal their, well, headless nature. Usually, lowering one is a death sentence.
    • In "Asylum of the Daleks", a woman wearing a hooded cloak sets up a meeting with the Doctor. Suspecting there might be something nasty underneath he removes her hood...only to find an apparently ordinary human woman. Turns out the Dalek tech is inside her body.
    • In "Time Heist", the "Architect" wears an identity-concealing hood in a video briefing.
    • After his first series, the Twelfth Doctor started alternating between his usual smart suit and a more laid-back coat and hoodie combo.
    • This is how the Thirteenth Doctor was revealed in her debut trailer — lowering the hood of an outfit intentionally reminiscent of Twelve's. Her actual outfit also includes a hooded overcoat.
  • Game of Thrones:
  • Gladiators (2024): Phantom, one of the titular Gladiators, normally wears a hood for his entrance into the arena. It's purely for effect and is pulled back almost immediately, before he competes in any of the challenges.
  • House of the Dragon: Daemon Targaryen wears a Black Cloak with a hood when he confronts his Unwanted Spouse Rhea Royce to kill her.
  • Harrow: "Actus Reus" ("Guilty Act") opens with a figure in a boat Disposing of a Body; the figure's identity concealed by the hoodie he is wearing.
  • In one episode of Highlander the Series, Duncan is challenged by a mysterious spectral figure wearing an all-encompassing hooded cloak. The hood hides the fact that the figure isn't a specter, but actually another Immortal, once Duncan's friend, now intent on killing him.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • The eponymous Kamen Rider Ghost, as well as fellow Riders Specter and Necrom, don a hoodie when they transform; since the hoods are worn on top of the usual Kamen Rider face masks, it's less about hiding their identities than looking cool and mysterious. Though when the Riders are using their personal forms and not alternate ones, the first thing they usually do is throw their hoods back.
    • In Kamen Rider Revice, Vice gets a hood whenever he becomes a Kamen Rider. Though his various forms' hoods don't really work to make him look cool, as they're all animal-costume hoods with Cheap Costume-style fake stitching.
  • Kingdom Adventure:
    • Zordock is never seen without his horned hood. Probably because he's the only character played by a human actor instead of a puppet or a cartoon.
    • There's also an order of monks called Mosquitobites who take vows of silence, work in Lumia castle's library, and wear brown robes with the hoods up. Naturally, at one point, one of our heroes disguises himself as one to sneak into the castle.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Arondir makes his first appearance by wearing a hood, which makes it easier form him to travel incognito.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Jessica Jones: On a few occasions in season 1, Jessica has a grey hoodie under the leather jacket, and at times puts it over her head when she needs to go unnoticed.
    • Luke Cage: Luke wears a bullet-ridden hoodie as his superhero outfit. It's more Rule of Symbolism than anything, although it does come in useful when escaping into a crowd or for an I Am Spartacus moment near the end of the season when Harlem is helping him evade police.
  • Justified in Merlin (2008): Morgana creeps around in a hood, but all the soldiers already know that she is a princess and obey.
  • Midsomer Murders: The killer in "A Climate of Death" wears a voluminous hooded black anorak to conceal their identity.
  • Superhoodie of Misfits wears a hood, but uses a ski mask, and later a paintball helmet, to actually hide his identity of Simon from the future, as the hood fits pretty tightly over the top of his head and therefore provides no shadow.
  • Murdoch Mysteries: In "Bad Medicine", the killer conceals their identity in grim reaper costume with a large hood.
  • Resurrection: Ertuğrul:
    • The Season 5 villain Beybolat wears a face-concealing hood whenever he poses as Albasti.
    • Ertugrul and his beys does this a handful of times. For instance, they wear face-concealing articles in Season 4 when they walk into Karacahisar, claiming to be Tekfur Ares's soldiers until the time is right so they can eliminate Ares's guards.
  • On Revenge, Emily Thorne's outfit for doing ninja stuff includes a black hoodie.
  • Overdone in the 2006 BBC Robin Hood: Soldiers never inspect people wearing hoods.
  • Sherlock: The secret society in "The Abominable Bride" wear hooded robes, not unlike Ku Klux Klan robes, but purple in colour.
  • Smallville's Green Arrow gets by with a Unibomber-like hoodie and sunglasses-at-night. Later he gives members of the proto-Justice League matching outfits. Somehow action never knocks them off; even The Flash's hood fails to uncover his face while running at super-speed.

    Myths & Religion 
  • In "The Buried Moon", an English Fairy Tale, the moon spirit visits earth, using a dark cloak to hide her distinctive blonde hair, equated with moonlight.
  • The Grim Reaper is most often portrayed as a skeleton wearing a black cloak with a hood.
  • Robin Hood traditionally wears a feathered pointy hat, which was used by foresters, in his forest hideout. However, since he's an outlaw he has to conceal his face whenever he goes sneaking around in town, so he may use a hood then depending on the adaptation.

    Podcasts 
  • Welcome to Night Vale has various sinister hooded figures that lurk around town. There are implied to be enough of them to have an annual parade.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • LayCool did this in WWE, which some critics took to be a "Take That!" toward AJ Styles since they also tended to wear similar shades of blue and Michelle McCool used the Styles Clash (a move AJ invented on accident and since became his most famous finisher).
  • Cody Rhodes started wearing a hood and acrylic face mask after being "disfigured" and left "grotesque", "undashing" by Rey Mysterio, even though he looked exactly the same. This led to The Big Show calling him "Cody Von Doom".
  • Sheamus was known for wearing hoods even in the hot Florida summer. Given how pale he is, he likely figured being sweaty was better than being burnt, rather than any effort to look cool or disguise himself.
  • The cultist Kevin Sullivan disguised himself as a Gregorian Monk in SMW in order to ambush Brian Lee.
  • Ivelisse VĂ©lez took to wearing a hood during her time in the Radiant Rain's Valkyrie stable. It did more than look nice, it also made it easier to shut out the yapping of her partners when they got too annoying, such as Allysin Kay and Taylor Made. A hood and mask became her and Mercedes Martinez's signature when they became the main Tag Team of an anti-Valkyrie stable.

    Roleplay 
  • Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
    • After her superpower transformed Jenna from an ordinary girl into a mass of insects, she walks around in public in a hoodie to avoid drawing attention to her new, grotesque form.
    • Similarly, Jessica wears a hoodie after the empowering event to help hide her new purple skin and yellow eyes.

    Sports 
  • Of course, professional wrestlers do it because it is common in combat sports. Unlike wrestling, this is done to block out distractions, such as a roaring crowd, as you make your entrance, rather than to give people a distinct look to remember or make your entrance more elaborate. In both actual competition and simulated competition though, athletes may wear heavier clothing, hoods included, so as to stay warmed up and not get stiff before the game/performance starts, as that can lead to injuries.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Ars Magica: Magi in the lineage of Quendalon often imitate his habit of wearing deeply hooded robes. For Quendalon, it wasn't just fashion — when he became (or was replaced by) a Faerie, his eyes turned into rubies.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: The clichĂ© early-level quest giver is the mysterious hooded figure sitting in a dark corner of the village tavern.
  • Magic: The Gathering: Jace Beleren wears one almost all the time. His alternate art reveals that this is probably for the better.
  • In Nomine: In celestial form, the Archangel Dominic's face is always covered by a deep hood, from whose shadows many eyes gaze out at the world.

    Toys 

    Video Games 
  • Absented Age: Squarebound: At the start of the game, a mysterious hooded figure is seen leaving Karen's unconscious body. In the postgame, they resurface as a Superboss in the Warehouse Driftworld, and nothing significant is revealed about them even after using a Scan Baton on them. When they drop a gun, Tarte speculates that they're with the Elicio Church.
  • Afterimage: During your first encounters with her, 42 wears a black hooded cloak which hides her face and makes her a mysterious or suspicious individual from the perspectives of Renee and Ifree (the two don't even know her name at first). It turns out 42 doesn't always wear the hooded cloak, and during most times in the endgame when we don't see her putting it on, it's already been made clear that she's actually an ally.
  • The title character's hood in Amea turns out to serve as a case of Lazy Artistshe doesn't need new sprites after gouging her own eyes out.
  • Assassin's Creed:
    • AltaĂŻr from Assassin's Creed introduces the series to the Brotherhood's modus operandi. Interestingly, having a hood on one's traveling robe in the medieval Holy Land wasn't actually that uncommon. The shade helped keep your head cool if you needed to walk a long distance. It also matches the local scholars' robes perfectly, making it easy to blend in.
    • Assassin's Creed II:
      • Protagonist Ezio Auditore da Firenze's outfit is amazingly similar to AltaĂŻr's, just updated to fit with 15th-century Italian aesthetics. Amusingly, in that era and setting, a hood like that is very conspicuous compared to the large hats almost everybody else is wearing, so it's most likely out of tradition. note 
      • AltaĂŻr and Ezio's modern-day descendant Desmond Miles wears a hoodie, but initially isn't seen with the hood up. It should also be noted that said hoodie is white, just like traditional Assassin costumes from the past. It turns out that the hood is slightly pointed, just like his ancestors' "eagle beak" hoods. He finally puts his hood up in Assassin's Creed III, when he goes to the skyscraper and the stadium for the artefacts that will let him enter the Temple, and the Abstergo building he was held in in the first game to rescue his father.
      • Ezio's nemesis, Rodrigo Borgia, wears a stylistically similar, but black hood. Until he upgrades to Papal vestments, anyway.
      • Il Lupo, AKA The Prowler, is a Templar agent trained in the skills of the Assassins. Fittingly, his outfit is very similar to Ezio's, though black and red rather than white, and his hood is missing the distinctive point.
    • Connor from Assassin's Creed III keeps the tradition during his timeline. Since it's during The American Revolution and a large part of the world is snowy, his hood keeps his head warm. In "The Tyranny of King Washington" DLC, he wears a wolf skin instead, which also ends up looking like a (really strange) hood.
    • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag:
      • Edward Kenway gets a hood early when he takes them from the body of a man who tried to kill him. Most of his outfits after that also have the hood. Not the two Armor of Invincibility, though. Which makes it amusing when his animation still has him pulling up a hood that isn't there.
      • Almost all the assassins players meet along the way also have hoods. The one exception is James Kid/Mary Read, who talks a lot more and whose ability with disguise is more important to the plot.
    • Arno Dorian from Assassin's Creed: Unity resumes Ezio's "hoods are conspicuous" habit; other Assassins in Revolutionary France have hoods but keep them down, but after getting his hood, Arno only lowers it twice and once involuntarily.
    • Jacob Frye from Assassin's Creed Syndicate prefers a nice hat which is more appropriate for a man in London, unless he's in stealth mode. Then he pulls the hood up.
    • Bayek from Assassin's Creed Origins also has a justified hood despite the Assassin Brotherhood not existing yet, as Ancient Egypt is even hotter than the medieval Holy Land.
    • During the limited-time Assassin's Festival crossover with Final Fantasy XV, the party gained Medjay Assassin Robes based on Bayek's outfit. Noctis also had a possible unlock based on AltaĂŻr's robes, which was later made available to everyone in a free update. Noctis alone has hooded options, which were mandatory during the event due to an attack by the Niflheim Empire; in this case, he's inconspicuous because everyone is wearing Assassin cosplay, and having the hood raised is just to avoid the imperials from noticing his face.
  • Gorath from Betrayal at Krondor often wears his hood to conceal his identity from people who'd want to kill a dark elf like him, people who'd want to kill him, personally, or both. Justified, since his long ears are his most striking feature to the casual eye, and a hood does hide them well.
  • Crossbow Crusade: The merchant who sells you arrows in exchange for tickets wears a brown hood that obscures his face. His clothing also has a large cross on his chest, so it's possible he's a part of some holy order.
  • Darksiders: The character Draven, who helps Death in the Kingdom of the Dead, has his vision impaired by a cloak.
  • The Dark Souls series:
    • The Thief's Hood, a hood with a scarf blocking the face, the Hollow Thief's hood, a standard hood, and the Darkwraith Helm, a hood with a skull mask, are all pieces of equipment the player can wear.
    • Dark Souls II:
      • Priestess Licia wears the Saint's Hood, which not only gives +1 point to your Faith stat when worn, but also gives an extra cast to all your attuned spells.
      • Loyce Retainers all wear white hoods over their heads. It probably has something to do with how cold it is in the place that they're found in.
  • The Legion from Dead by Daylight are a gang of four knife-wielding delinquent teenagers who wear both hoodies and masks to obscure their identities during their reckless and criminal activities.
  • The Diablo series:
    • Archangel Tyrael from Diablo II wears a hood, completely concealing his face. This eventually proves rather unfortunate — Marius hands the soul stone over to his hooded confessor, who then reveals that he is not Tyrael, but Baal. Not that it would have gone better had he known.
    • In Diablo III, no one rocks the hoods better than the Demon Hunters, who have them as part of their Iconic Outfit. The hoods come with a set of glowing yellow eyes, which Demon Hunters get if they can see into a demon's soul without going mad.
  • Amy from Double Homework wears a hoodie both in public and on her Twitch streams to avoid being identified as Princess Amelia. She even gets special permission to wear it to summer school, even though it violates the school dress code.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • Dragon Quest IX:
      • While a few robes and cloaks include hoods, they are typically shown folded back instead of actually being pulled over the wearer's head; certain helmets are the only hoods the player character can actually wear.
      • Played straight by the wandering ghost Serena, which ironically makes her stand out. On top of that, she's Invisible to Normals, so the hood doesn't actually serve any practical purpose other than making her look mysterious.
    • During the escape from the Heliodor Castle dungeons in Dragon Quest XI, Erik wears a hood over his head, only taking it off right before the final jump to safety when he decides to finally introduce himself by name to the Luminary. He puts it back on and gives the Luminary his own when the two sneak into Downtown Heliodor to avoid the guards while looking for the Red Orb.
  • Apostles from Dread Templar, worshippers of demons encountered in hell, are clad entirely in long white robes and face-concealing hoods. Whether they're humans, monsters, or ex-humans isn't really confirmed during gameplay, when you kill them their hoods stays on.
  • The NPC in Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes is shown to be wearing a hooded robe to cover his face and hide his identity from the players in Hoth Motigor during the game.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
  • Caster in Fate/stay night, though it's really not entirely clear as to why. It's clear that she's a beautiful woman, but she isn't really distinctive enough for it to identify her. Nevertheless, you only get one good look at her actual face. Perhaps it's to make sure the audience thinks of her as a manipulative witch and saves the reveal of her rather elfin features for when she gets all her sympathy points and won't need us to pity her anymore since she's already dying?
  • The semi-human "Habnabits" in Ferazel's Wand wear full-length cloaks with the hoods always up, shadowing their faces except for two features: large, vaguely human eyes, and a snout like an anteater. They're the good guys, though, as signified by the fact that their cloaks are a wide variety of colors rather than the generic black.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • The White Mage class in the Final Fantasy series have hooded robes, but whether or not they wear the hoods is variable—there are exceptions, but the general rule of thumb, as seen in III, V, and Tactics, is that male White Mages tend to wear the hood down, while female White Mages tend to wear the hood up. Particularly young or cute white mages (or related classes, such as III's Devouts) may get a hood with cute cat ears on it. N'awwwww.
    • In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, Kain runs around in such an outfit and is thus referred to as the Hooded Man. Dark Kain has made him an internationally wanted criminal, so he can't show himself until he gets his name cleared. He can adorn this outfit in Dissidia 012.
    • Garnet in Final Fantasy IX wears a hooded robe to conceal her identity in order to sneak out of the castle. She tosses the hood when Vivi accidentally sets it on fire.
    • Hooded robes are common low-level gear that players can wear in Final Fantasy XIV. The same hooded robes are also worn by enemies that are a part of a cult or gang.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • Granblue Fantasy: Upon meeting them for the first time, all Oracles bound to the Arcarum summons wear the hood of their cloak that covers their face in shadows. Though some of them still have slightly visible facial features underneath.
  • That Man from Guilty Gear certainly qualifies. Even in the boss battle against him, his hood never falls off even when hit by a Tyrant Rave.
  • Heavy Rain has Norman Jayden giving Ethan Mars a police coat with a hood so that he can escape.
  • In inFAMOUS, the first gang of the game, the normal Reapers, wear red reaper-style hoods while the Conduits wear white. Oddly enough, they normally paint a skull onto the hood itself. The hood happens to hide their face, no matter how much light is actually shining on it. Then again, they aren't entirely human according to later missions, so maybe they just have pitch-black faces.
  • The enemy Re-class battleship in KanColle apparently has her hood up for the look of it; you could hardly miss a girl wearing a scarf, a bra, a half-open coat, and a knapsack, with a tail that has its own mouth.
  • In Kindergarten 2, Lily and Billy wear colour-coded hoodies to conceal their identities while they're hiding out to investigate their new school's dark secrets.
  • A lot of people in Kingdom Hearts:
    • Organization XIII is one prominent example. Justified in that the cloaks most of the hoods belong to are designed to protect the wearer from unwelcome darkness, and the Organization (and most other characters who wear those cloaks) deal with a lot of that stuff.
    • Mickey's hood is actually altered to accommodate his ears... which sort of defeats the purpose of having a hood conceal your face in the first place. "Who's that small person with very large, noticeable, visibly circular ears?" "Hmm, I don't know, it's a mystery!"
    • Averted with Sora, whose outfits have hoods that are never worn over his head (except in one artwork). His hoods in his first two are instead used to hold Jiminy Cricket and his journal.
    • Kairi also has a hood she never wears (from KHII to present), but it's not as noticeable as long as you forget that it's the only black part of her otherwise completely pink-and-white outfit.
  • Hyness from Kirby Star Allies always wears a hood which conceals his true face. Why? Because he hates having people look at it. So when it falls off in the second phase, he flips out and begins to ambush Kirby and his friends with the Three Mage Sisters' bodies.
  • The blade-obsessed assassin Talon of League of Legends wears one as a Shout-Out to the standard garb of the Assassin Brotherhood from the Assassin's Creed series, as mentioned above.
  • The Hunters from Left 4 Dead wear hooded shirts, and are appropriately enough the stealth experts of the Infected. It also helps hide the fact that they have no eyes.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails
    • Trails of Cold Steel II: When Thomas operates undercover in the second game, he also adopts a cloak with a deeper voice to throw people off, leaving Rean shocked when he reveals himself.
    • In Trials through Daybreak, Ashlad's uniform includes a hood, which he has up most of the time to better hid his face.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games:
      • The true villains are shown as mysterious hooded figures when they first confront Link. It isn't until the end of either game that they reveal themselves to be Twinrova.
      • The miniboss Agunima's face is perpetually hidden by a deep hood, leaving only his eyes visible in the shadow.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Princess Zelda wears a hooded cloak for the majority of the game. She only uses it to conceal her identity for about two minutes, before she reveals herself to Link; the cloak is more a sort of mourning garb, given the state her kingdom is in for most of the game.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
      • The Old Man found on the Great Plateau at the start of game wears one. He eventually reveals himself to be King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule, and he initially hid his identity from Link so the latter wouldn't be even more overwhelmed than he already is with his amnesia.
      • Among the earliest head armour Link can obtain is the Hylian Hood, which combines this trope with a Badass Cape. He's seen wearing the Hood with his Champion's Tunic on the Rider amiibo. It returns in Tears of the Kingdom, but completing a quest in Hateno Village will let Link wear the hood lowered (thus baring his face while still providing the armour boost); he wear it thusly for his Tears amiibo.
    • Hyrule Warriors: Linkle wears a hooded green tunic as part of her belief that she is the legendary hero. In her original concept, the hood was pointed as a part of her "female Link" design; in the game proper, this is one of a few elements that were excised to make her into her own character.
  • Loom: Weavers wear hoods that completely conceal their face except for their glowing eyes. (They look like Jawas; since it's a LucasArts game, this may be a Shout-Out.) An in-universe myth says that it's fatal to look beneath a Weaver's hood; Cobb can't resist testing it out when he meets the main character. It's true.
  • Mass Effect 2: Classy Cat-Burglar Kasumi Goto wears a hood at all times so no one can ever really see her face.
  • In Mortal Kombat X, Ermac ditches his ninja garb from previous games in favor of something more akin to a sorcerer's coat, complete with hood.
  • The MUD Shadows of Isildur is guilty of this — just putting up your hood allows you to disguise everything but your build and the color of your cloak.
  • No Umbrellas Allowed: If she gets cured of being Fixed, Nari Jo can be found wearing her hood up around Ajik City to hide from AVAC.
  • Pankapu: With the Faith Aegis, Pankapu wears a blue wizard robe that has a blue hood.
  • The protagonist of Persona 5 wears a gray hoodie with the hood up after he fakes his death late in the game, since he has to stay incognito so the police and the Conspiracy don't realize the truth.
  • PlanetSide 2 incorporates hoods into several of its Cool Helmets and Nice Hats. The Vanu Sovereignty's "Avalon", "Avalanche", and the Terran Republic's "Arctic Wolf" are all full helmets with a hood slung over them. For Nice Hats, the New Conglomerate's "Flux" and the TR's "Wraith" are heavy hoods with extra sensors built into the top, obscuring the wearer's face. None of the hooded headgears (or any helmets, for that matter) obscure the user's field of view.
  • PokĂ©mon:
    • Scrafty is based off a mohawk hoodie; it is made up of the shed skin of its pre-evolved form. Slightly subverted as it doesn't really wear the hood during battle, but they are fighting-type PokĂ©mon and described as "hoodlums", so they have the attitude befitting the trope.
    • Decidueye is an archer with a hood-like structure around its head, complete with drawstrings it can use to tighten the hood and obscure its face. The hood helps it narrow its focus when aiming its Spirit Shackle arrows; said drawstrings also double as its bowstrings.
  • Primal Light: Sometimes, Krog will run into a green person in a brown hooded cloak. These people seem to be merchants who Krog can buy extra lives from.
  • In [PROTOTYPE], the main character, Alex Mercer, wears a hood to cover his face. This is because the real Alex Mercer was wearing a hood on his way to Penn Station because he was on the run. In the game, Alex keeps wearing that hood because that's what he was wearing when Blackwatch agents shot him dead. The Blacklight Virus simply copied his appearance at the time of his death and made it his Shapeshifter Default Form.
  • Pylons: One character in the game is a mysterious figure wearing a hood that makes his face impossible to see. He usually runs up to the Player Character to give them some vague warning about the pylons.
  • In Reflections on the River, one is worn by Zheng the witch (who's the protagonist). Upon removing it, Zheng notes that it's "great for dramatic effect, but it sort of impaired my peripheral vision".
  • Resident Evil:
    • The hooded figure in Resident Evil 5 that is with Wesker and Excella is a Brainwashed and Crazy Jill. The reason for the hood may be to hide her radically changed hair color until the right time.
    • Lucas Baker from Resident Evil 7 appears to have always favored wearing hoodies, but after he becomes infected by the e-Mutamycete, he's never seen outside of his own personal playground without his hood up, reflecting his villainous status as a sneaky trickster who becomes cocky and complacent when the balance of power is stacked in his favor. His hood doesn't hide his face during play, but it completely casts his eyes in shadow above a nasty grin in the loading screen for the section of the game he serves as the arc boss of, enhancing his look of deviousness.
  • Tokugawa Ieyasu in Sengoku Basara 3 wears one, though it doesn't obscure his face. Considering his look and moveset is based on boxing, it could be due to this.
  • Spiritfarer: Prior to arriving on your ship and taking on their true form, the spirits all just look like the same sort of hooded figure that most of the generic NPCs are, but with an aura shaped like their animal selves. Buck and Daria are exceptions since they're already in their animal forms when Stella recruits them.
  • In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Bandits of the more experienced ranks are clothed in black and/or brown hooded raincoats and are always seen with balaclavas covering their faces, unless if it's a named NPC, who usually ditches either the balaclava or the hood, or both. They are the weakest armored experienced enemies in the games, and provide no reason wearing these coats other than to look cool.
  • Strider: Grandmaster Meio always wears a hood to look threatening.
  • Eshe from Sundered wears a white cloak with a matching hood. It's justified, as she was trekking through a desert in the middle of a sandstorm before getting pulled into the game's nightmarish world, and so would have needed protection from the elements.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate:
    • Simon Belmont initially wears one in his trailer, both to protect himself from the rain outside Dracula's Castle and to conceal his identity to viewers before doing a Dramatic Unmask to reveal himself as a Guest Fighter for the game.
    • Incineroar pulls a similar trick in his own trailer, though in that case it's one of those hooded robes that boxers wear when entering the ring (given that Incineroar is butting in on the aftermath of a boxing match between Ken Masters and Little Mac).
  • Theia - The Crimson Eclipse: Seth's unique action if placed at the front of the party is to put his hood on, just for Rule of Cool. During stealth missions, this affects the line-of-sight of certain guards, since some are more inclined to ignore him if he's hooded while others are more inclined to notice him.
  • The main character of the Thief series. Of course, everyone who needs to know who Garrett is already knows anyway.
  • Titan Quest: Referenced with the Bandit's Hood rare item.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: In one level, Peter has to spring into action when his costume isn't available to him, so he just puts the hood on his jacket over his head.
  • World of Warcraft: Amusingly played with. There are several types of hood, but about 70% of them don't cast any shadows over the face. About half of what is left is composed of larger hoods that also don't hide faces. Hilariously enough, most of the hoods that actually do cast shadows over the face are intended for priests, and when examined with the rest of their matching gear sets, seem to have been made with holy priests in mind. Similarly, there's also a properly sinister-looking high-level hood for Paladins. There's one for Warlocks too, and Death Knights start with a face-concealing shadowy hood.

    Web Comics 
  • Demonseed Redux: The Big Bad wears a red cloak that completely shadows his face. He later reveals to be rather similar to Chico, his son.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Noah wears this along with a Black Cloak to conceal his identity as the one fans refer to as the "The Child Left Behind". It helps that he seems to be able to literally cloak himself in shadow too, obscuring almost all details other than his shape. (In later appearances he has one glowing eye and Noah's bangs covering the other. So that's a bit of a clue.)
  • Girl Genius: When Agatha's party arrives in Mechanicsburg, they try a Black Cloak with hood to sneak in. They're stopped immediately by the guards looking for Agatha. Luckily, the heroes were smart enough to put Zeetha in the hood, even using her green hair color as an excuse why she was wearing the hood in the first place. The guards conclude that it's the wrong girl and let them go, while Agatha watches from a distance.
  • â„– 4 from Hell(p) likes to disappear into his black hoodie. For personal reasons.
  • In Homestuck, hoods (or god-hoods) are a standard part of the clothing of those who have ascended to the God Tiers. They vary significantly in design — a Seer's is a normal hood, but a Knight's is a close-fitting coif, while a Witch's is split and looks like a pair of stockings. Some are even more abstract; a Bard's isn't even a hood but a conical hat.
  • I'm the Grim Reaper: Scarlet wears one to hide her horns and make herself look more human.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Donning the hood of his green cloak is apparently all that's needed for Belkar to use his Hide skill. Examples include #107 and #469.
    • Miko Miyazaki wears a hood in her first handful of appearances, allowing for a Samus Is a Girl moment when it gets knocked off.
  • Rumors of War: Appearing in Chapter 8 is a character by the name of Manaus. He wears a brown cloak complete with a hood, which obscures everything but his eyes, creating an implausible, yet creepy effect akin to Scary Shiny Glasses. He's implied by context to be a Devil in Plain Sight.
  • In Sinfest, the executioner in the dungeon Squigly falls to wears a medieval black executioner's hood to convey his profession to the reader.
  • Oasis from Sluggy Freelance subverts Little Dead Riding Hood in her red hoodie, which eventually develops a reputation of its own among the underworld. With the hood up, she's much less conspicuous.
  • Duane from Unsounded constantly wears a hood because he's a galit and the glamour that keeps him looking human is broken by eye contact. In his case, being unhooded would actually draw more attention to himself. And mobs.
  • Vampire Girl: The Vampiress' robe features a hood that darkens and obscures her face from the nose up; her lackeys, Saul and Paul were initially introduced as Conspicuous Trenchcoat varieties.

    Web Original 
  • In The Chronicles of Taras: Red Dementia, Ghost, an albino girl, wears a black hoodie to protect from the sub-freezing temperatures of the black desert and the bright sunlight.
  • In the webserial The Descendants, the character Occult wears a hood that magically covers her face in shadow. Subverted due to the fact that under the hood, a glamour makes her look Nordic instead of Hispanic.

    Web Videos 
  • Hobo Bros: Parodied in "SM64 Halloween Mayhem". Luke, wearing a hoodie, claims that he's dressed as a "scary hobo" for Halloween.
  • Ultimately the most important character whose identity is initially hidden in Marble Hornets is the Hooded Man, also known as Brian Thomas, aka totheark, one of the most famous parts of the series. This was a surprise to anyone who bothered watching the video that revealed it. No, really.
  • Noob:
    • Spectre plays with this in his webseries and novel first appearances. His gaming avatar is wearing a face-concealing hood, but his identity gets revealed (to those who read the novels) when the cursor donning the name of a retired Living Legend appears over his head at the end of his battle against Ystos.
    • The Season 1 quest givers and the Soulless who are actually the same group of people have this for pure identity-concealing purposes.
  • The Runaway Guys' Lord Dona'tor uses a red hood to extremely effectively hide his identity.
  • Todd in the Shadows is constantly — you guessed it — shrouded in darkness, which makes the hood a bit of a redundancy but also gives him a very unique look. His Twitter profile pic is even Schroeder in said get-up. The hoodie actually hides nothing out of the shadows, though, so in his own videos, if he's required to be out of the darkness, his back is to the camera. In crossovers, he wears a black piece of fabric completely obscuring his face from the nose up, eyes included.

    Western Animation 
  • In Amphibia:
    • Marcy Wu always wears her school hoodie and never once took it off while on Earth. In Amphibia, her outfit features a hood that she occasionally has put up.
    • One of King Andrias' former friends, Leif, also wore a light brown hood as part of her normal outfit.
  • Malachia from Angel's Friends hides himself from people by wearing a gray-black hoodie with yellow eyes.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Zuko does this mostly just because he's melodramatic like that.
    • At one point Aang tries to pull his robe up over his head cornholio-style as a "disguise".
  • The supervillain Grim Reaper in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes wears a hooded cape that covers his eyes to reinforce the motif that his name implies.
  • Big City Greens: At the end of "Long Goodbye", Chip Whistler appears plotting his revenge while wearing a hoodie over his head. The only thing visible is a Slasher Smile with his trademark gap.
  • Barbara Gordon/Batgirl from DC Super Hero Girls 2019 always wears her purple bat-eared hoodie in her civilian identity. Diana of Themyscira initially donned a hooded black cloak when she wanted to move through populated areas without being disturbed, but she gets accosted by a truancy officer in the very first episode. Karen Beecher even explains to Diana that Diana was trying too hard to avoid drawing attention.
  • Death from Family Guy takes the form of The Grim Reaper, and so has the requisite black hood associated with him.
  • Hooded sweatshirts are probably the most common means of identity concealment for wrongdoers on Fillmore!.
  • The Grim Reaper from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy wears the whole hood/shroud deal, but it doesn't cover his face.
  • In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), Keldor initially sports this look after the Time Skip following his failed attempt to claim the Elders' power in the prologue. After using his new magical powers to defeat Randor in their rematch, he pulls the hood back and reveals his new identity as Skeletor.
  • The Mysterious Figure in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes keeps most of his face hidden with a hood. He's eventually revealed to not only be Professor Venomous, but also KO's father.
  • Hoods are very common in The Owl House:
    • Luz herself usually a hoodie with cat ears, which she often pulls over her head when she's feeling vunerable or is trying to be cute.
    • The Hexside school uniform has a black hooded tunic, though very few students are actually shown wearing it up (in fact, it'd be pretty much impossible for many of the demon students to do so due to their oddly shaped heads).
    • Members of the Emperor's Coven and the heads of the other nine main covens all have white hooded cloaks. Unlike at Hexside, coven members pretty much always have their hoods up, though the only coven head we see doing so is ironically the most trustworthy one.
    • Luz and Amity spend a good chunk of "Any Sport in a Storm" chasing after a hooded figure that they belive to be the author of The Good Witch Azura. It turns out to be Tiny Nose wearing stilts.
    • "Hollow Mind" features three members of the rebellion who spend the entire episode wearing cloaks and never speaking a single word. Despite this, there's more than enough clues for the audience to immediately ID them as Raine, Darius, and Eberwolf.
  • Santa's Christmas Crash: The desert robe Santa Claus changes into is revealed to have a hood when he gets back into the sky during a storm. When he's in it, he pulls the hood over his head as a form of protection.
  • The Smurfs (1981): Nemesis, who wears a hood over his face because it's so scary to look at. He will even remove the hood to show his face in order to scare his victims into submission.
  • Kenny from South Park has his face permanently obscured by the hood of his parka. Voice too, though apparently none of the main characters have a problem understanding him. In a few episodes, as well as the movie, we've been permitted a glimpse of what's underneath, but he definitely belongs here. He also adopts a face-obscuring hood when disguised as Mysterion (or at least one that hides his hair).
  • In Star Wars Rebels, "Fulcrum" communicates with Hera and Chopper via holograms rendering their appearance as a hooded figure with all features obscured, along with using a voice scrambler, until "Fire Across the Galaxy" reveals that Fulcrum is Ahsoka Tano. Usually hoods don't disguise her head cones/montrals, but this version did.
  • Steven Universe: Blue Diamond wears a hooded veil, concealing her eyes and making her look somewhere between a feminine Darth Sidious and an evil Virgin Mary.
  • Stripperella. When supervillain Queen Clitoris first makes an appearance she's hidden under a hood, solely so Stripperella can make the inevitable Double Entendre.
  • Raven from Teen Titans:
    • In Teen Titans (2003), she wears an outfit that includes a blue cape and hood. She's not disguising her identity, though, because that's a bit hard to do when you have purple hair and a big red gem encrusted in the middle of your forehead. Nor does she seem to have a problem being seen with her hood down in public places, either; it's just part of her superhero chic.
    • In Teen Titans Go!, her hood is always up. However, later episodes have begun to avert it every now and then.
  • The Transformers: The Red Wizard in the Season 3 episode "Madman's Paradise" appears to be an old man wearing a red hooded cloak. It's actually a Quintesson.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender: Haggar still wears a hood as part of her dress, and part of the reason why is to hide her Altean ears and other traits that pass her off as Altean. She drops the hood after returning from Oriande and resuming her Altean appearance.
  • In World of Winx we have Jim, who wears a hoodie with a hook-like design. Jim is revealed in the season finale to be a rejuvenated Captain Hook, making the purpose of the hood to hint towards his identity.
  • Nightcrawler wears a trenchcoat with a hood during his introduction in the X-Men: Evolution episode "Strategy X" to hide his demonic appearance.
  • Miss Martian from Young Justice (2010) occasionally wears a stealth outfit that includes a hooded cloak. She usually doesn't wear the hood up unless she's using her camouflage powers.

    Real Life 
  • Truth in Television: Hoodies. Many shops in the UK have banned them, and in the US some businesses at high-risk for robbery (liquor stores, gas stations/convenience stores, banks) have a sign on the door stating "Hoods or face obscuring headgear must be removed prior to entry", or some variation.
  • A partial example occurs with this in regards to medieval executioners and their hoods. They were usually depicted in contemporary art as bald and pox-ridden or scarred, but never with hoods. The association probably came about due to the fact that after the English Civil War, no one wanted to execute the king, so the executioner disguised himself with a black hood in order to protect his identity, and later on pieces of art made this standard even in settings where it would have made no sense.
  • The white, pointy, face-concealing hood has become all but emblematic of the Ku Klux Klan, who frequently used them when engaging in cross-burnings and other acts of terror.
  • The iconic police sketch of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Which is how the poker player Phil Laak got the nickname "The Unabomber", as he always wears a hoodie and sunglasses similar to Ted Kaczynski. He wears them to make it harder to read his facial expressions.

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Toronto Life reporter Tatiana Wynn got her throat hacked from the back by a guy in a hoodie.

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