tvtropes.org

Helmets Are Hardly Heroic - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Aug 16 2009

Helmets Are Hardly Heroic (trope)

"WHERE'S MY HELMET?!" is not what he's yelling, though it probably should be.

"This helmet, I suppose,
Was meant to ward off blows,
It's very hot,
And weighs a lot,
As many a guardsman knows,
So off that helmet goes!"

In any work where a hero wears armor, whether powered or otherwise, the helmet is rarely worn, even in combat. In Real Life, the helmet is the most important piece of personal armor ever invented, besides perhaps the shield, since the skull and brain are highly vulnerable to all kinds of weapon blows and projectiles. The head is also one of the easiest parts of the body to armor, given its simple shape and lack of joints. In an ancient shield formation, your large shield would usually protect your torso but leave your head sticking over the top, thus inviting the slings, arrows, swords, and spears of the enemy (in fact, it was far from uncommon in the era for more lightly-equipped soldiers to have only a helmet and a shield for protection). In modern ranged combat, you have to expose your head every time you peek out of your trench or foxhole, and all kinds of debris and shrapnel from explosions might fall on your head. In the historical development of armor, helmets were the last form of body armor to be abandoned, and the first form of it to be readopted in the modern era. Clearly, helmets are a good idea. So why does a character who has access to a helmet rarely use it?

In visual media this is usually the creators bowing to Rule of Perception and Shoot the Money. Even an open-faced helmet will at least obscure a character's hair. Hairstyles can be important for identifying a character in a crowd, especially in animated works with Only Six Faces. A fully enclosed or visored helmet can be an even bigger problem because people are good at recognizing faces, and associate faces with having individuality and personhood. A person without a face is dehumanized and treated as expendable by way of the Faceless Goons trope, which is no good for a character whom you want the audience to care about. In film and television, both the director and the actor will want the audience to see their facial expressions as the heart of their performance. It defeats the purpose of hiring a famous and probably good-looking actor or actress if you're going to make them harder to recognize. Also, according to The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort, less armour implies a character is skilled enough not to need it.

Alternately, the armor the main character wears might not be distinctive enough to make him stand out from other people wearing armor; we wouldn't want to lose track of our hero among the Faceless Goons, after all. Writers and artists often try to alleviate this by giving main characters almost, but not quite the same uniform as the Faceless Goons — or cheat by giving the hero a helmet, but one that shows their face clearly, while everyone else wears a full face helmet. When this is used to distinguish someone from an identical group of mooks, it's also Uniformity Exception. Real life battlefield recognition solutions adopted by armored warriors such as knights and samurai included elaborate helmet crests; heraldic colors on shields, surcoats, or horse trappings; armors decorated with etching, inlay, appliqué ornaments, heat/chemical bluing, paint, lacquer, or textile covering; and all kinds of Bling of War. Often, fiction will not take full advantage of these options. Also, curiously enough, this trope is especially common for superheroes even though almost all of them do have a completely unique costume that would be instantly recognizable even if the wearer's face weren’t visible.

And in video games where you can customize your character's appearance, wearing a helmet will often obscure it and waste all the effort you put into it.

A variation is that when modern characters are depicted in boxing or martial arts training, they will rarely be shown wearing padded headgear that would generally be mandatory. It's also common for the Badass Biker to forego a helmet.

This may be justified in certain situations. Helmets can be somewhat heavy and restrictive, so a person who relies on keen vision, hearing, or freedom of movement might prioritize those things over the protection a helmet provides. Helmets are also bulky and awkward to carry when not being worn, so a Walking the Earth-type hero is also likely to forego them for the long haul. A character who starts out with a helmet might discard it after it becomes too damaged to use, but this might invite the question of why they don't look for a replacement. In any case, there's still little excuse not to use one in open battle, especially when characters go through the trouble of armoring every part of their body except for the head.

On a related note, in virtually every superhero movie in which the main character wears a mask, it will be pulled off during the climax of the movie. Usually it's torn off or so badly damaged that there's no point in keeping it on; sometimes the hero just decides to take it off.

Contrast Cool Helmet (where the helmet enhances the hero's image) and Fantasy Helmet Enforcement (where the hero is setting a safety-conscious good example). Also contrast Never Bareheaded (in which the heroic character is never shown without a helmet on his head) and Signature Headgear (when the hero's distinctive helmet makes them stand out). Compare Masked Villains, Unmasked Heroes.

Example subpages:

Other examples:

open/close all folders 

Comic Books 

  • Batwoman (2017):
    • A flashback of Kate sparring with her girlfriend Sophie shows that not only are the two fighting without boxing or MMA gloves, they also lack headgear and mouthguards.
    • Colony!Kate's uniform seems to lack a helmet.
  • Superman:
    • One reason why Superman, Supergirl... and other relatives wear no mask is to increase trust of people, showing they have nothing to hide. Of course, their invulnerability means they don't need protection.
    • "The Unknown Legionnaire": Subverted. Supergirl hardly wears a helmet, but she builds and wears a lead helmet when she loses her memories due to her instinctive need to protect her secret identity.
  • Played straight throughout the entirety of the World War I serial "Golden Eyes" and Her Hero "Bill". Golden Eyes, an ambulance driver, is never shown with a helmet.note  Bill, an actual soldier, is only ever depicted in his helmet once throughout the series' run, and that's when he storms the German trenches to rescue Golden Eyes. Other members of the allied force are intermittently depicted in their helmets, while the villainous German officer who captures Golden Eyes is introduced wearing a prominent picklehaube, and wears a hat for the majority of his other appearances.
  • Sleepless:
    • Issues 3 begins with a flashback to Sir Cyrenic and King Verato fighting in the Aenitian War — Cyrenic starts out with a helmet but loses it after one page. King Verato also fights without a helm, while their Aenitian enemies wear face-concealing helmets with chainmail aventails.
    • The tournament in Issue 4 sees Cyrenic go without his helmet during the jousting and hand-to-hand combat events. (Ibette and Lord Helder also go without, despite their opponents wearing protective chainmail aventails.)
  • Star-Lord's trademark helmet is technically just a glorified mask, since it still leaves his hair open for some reason.
  • Star Wars Legends: A weird example in the Star Wars Empire arc covering the Imperial backstory of Biggs Darklighter that somehow averts and plays the trope straight at the same time. Instead of the faceless TIE helmets seen in the movie, Biggs, Hobbie, and other main characters in the arc wear a helmet where we can see their faces while piloting their fighters. These helmets are never seen again in this continuity.
  • Defied in Sturmtruppen: while the characters aren't exactly heroes they're still soldiers, and quick to note that not wearing a helmet during a shelling is just plain stupid (though not as much as not taking covernote ). Notably, during the famous story arc where the troopers had discovered the regulations didn't state they had to wear the uniform the only item of clothing they consistently wore was the helmet, both in the barracks and when attacking the enemy.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Amazons have helmets, but even when Diana, Mala or other named Amazons are donning more armor and protective gear they never grab a helmet. The exception to this is Nubia, who is a named recurring Amazon who usually wears a helmet.
  • X-Men:
    • Throughout the Genoshan Excalibur, Magneto wears a less-armored black version of his usual outfit. It's helmetless. He also had a helmetless outfit during much of the time when he was leading the X-Men while Xavier was in Shi'ar space. (These days, though, Mags' outfit doesn't change no matter how nice he's playing.) It should be noted that the primary use of Magneto's helmet is to protect his mind from telepathic intrusion from the likes of Charles Xavier and Jean Grey. He has far less need of it when they are his allies.
    • Discussed in All-New Wolverine, when Laura utilises a stolen suit of Iron Man armour:

Fan Works 

  • Totally averted in A Ballad of the Dragon and She-Wolf, almost every named character wears a helmet into battle. This is a far cry from the source material, which played the trope painfully straight.
  • Subverted in Juxtapose. Izuku wanted a hood or a cowl to go with his costume. But Mei ends up designing him a helmet to protect him from the high-velocity impacts his Quirk puts him through. At the very least, it retains the All Might-esque v-shaped motif and can neatly fold up into a pair of headphones and a mic for when he wants to speak with others face-to-face.
  • Let the Galaxy Burn:
    • A number of Southern nobles and knights refuse to wear helmets in ground combat on this basis. It gets them killed, with Janos Slynt's POV sections making this especially blatant.
    • Loras Tyrell struts into Storm's End in impeccably shiny (and downright gaudy) Terminator armor, with no helmet. In fact he didn't even bring it. Stannis notes that as such, the protection the armor provides is minimal.
    • Lampshaded in Part B of Chapter 1 of the Ten Warlords arc; Gerion's men manage to take a White Cloak down in one shot because he wasn't wearing his helmet. Shiera's immediate reaction is "He should have worn his helmet"
    • Taken to its maximum during the Epilogue of the Ten Warlords arc: Aegon takes off his helmet in the middle of the battle — and an enemy promptly shoots him in the neck, gravely injuring him.
  • Discussed in The Rising of the Shield Hero fanfic The Hero Melromarc Needs and Deserves, where one of Deathmask's recommendations to the other Heroes is that "wearing no helmet when you can do so isn't heroic, it's stupid". At least Ren listened, as when he's seen again he's indeed wearing a helmet.
  • Tanya of Kazuma V Tanya makes a point to get a wooden helmet, as the local magic affects metal and she knows she was taught to go for the head. The more heroic Kazuma doesn't wear a helmet, but neither do the other Mistborn who are more evil than Tanya.
  • In Clight: Baldur's Gate, which is one of the numerous retellings of the original story from Baldur's Gate with a custom main character, Clight starts out with a helmet he bought from Candlekeep. He dutifully wears it for combat, even though it's awkwardly heavy, restricts his vision, and looks stupid on him. (It's exactly the kind of horned helmet available at the beginning of the game.) After it gets dangerously in his way a couple of times, he finally discards it and never wears one again, relying instead on his speed and reflexes (and the author being nice about not letting him get hit on the head). It's mentioned he envies Khalid's much lighter helmet, which is seen on his character portrait in the game.
  • The Mountain and the Wolf:
    • The one time the Wolf wears any kind of head protection, it's not a helmet but kind of spiked coronet. While it's not explicitly stated, one item of wargear is a Crown Of Thorns that regenerates wounds. Possibly justified given his fighting style, which involves taunting the enemy into attacking in blind rage, and the fact that he's usually a good foot or two taller than them.
    • The Mountain starts off his duel wearing a helmet, but loses it in the duel. He doesn't notice that it rips a big wound in the side of his face as it does as he's pumped full of the local equivalent of morphine.
    • During his duel with Ramsay, Ramsay manages to sneak-shot an arrow into the Wolf's chin. As this only pisses him off, it shows why he never seems to bother with one.
    • Subverted with Akkarulf, who always wears a face-concealing helmet at the Wolf's command both so no one recognizes him and so that he can impersonate Euron Greyjoy. Tyrion catches on to the fact that anybody could have worn a helmet last seen on Euron, and starts snooping into it. This gets him thinking maybe the Wolf isn't the Dumb Muscle he seems to be.

Films — Animation 

  • While most of the cast of How To Train Your Dragon wear horned helmets, they never cover any of the face or anything below the ears, meaning they're effectively more like hats.
  • All of the racers in Wreck-It Ralph wear helmets, except for Vanellope. (Who wears goggles — part of the time.)

Literature 

  • Justified in the Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment. The Squad stop at a garrison town to equip themselves, but what equipment they find is so thoroughly battered that the helmets aren't even capable of keeping the rain off.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Harry, Michael and Kincaid all usually wear full-body armor (an enchanted duster, a Kevlar-padded full plate and a cross between ballistic vest and biker gear respectively), but never any helmets. Though, Harry can (and did) pull his duster over his head in a pinch and Kincaid prefers to snipe nasties from afar. Not to mention that said nasties are usually capable of ripping one's head off if given the chance, helmet or not.
    • In Changes, Harry is given a magical suit of armor by his fairy godmother but refuses to wear the helmet, mostly just because he thinks it looks silly, and points out that it does come with a forcefield so his head's still protected. He regrets this later because the material of the suit does provides protection against magic, and when under mental attack he's reduced to shoving his arms in front of his head to get more of it between his enemy and himself.
  • Used in Fate/Zero the same as Fate/Stay Night. The exception is Black Knight who wears a full black suit of mail with helmet. The helmet keeps not only his head but also his identity safe for almost the entire war, and it is only revealed in the moment of his death.
  • Journey to Chaos: Out of the main cast of semi-heroic mercenaries, Tiza is the only one consistently wearing a helmet. Eric joins her in wearing headgear starting in Mana Mutation Menace, but his is actually transforming his head from flesh to metal. You could say his head becomes his helmet. During the Mana Mutation Summit, Kasile deliberately instructs her personal guard not to wear helmets so everyone can see their faces and thus their individuality and emotions, which is supposed to highlight the contrast between her and Lunas with his Faceless Goons.
  • Kings of the Wyld: Clay really hates helmets, claiming that all they do is muffle your hearing, block your peripheral vision, and they don't even do a good job of protecting against blows to the head. With only one notable exception, no one else in the book wears one, either.
  • A Little Hatred: The warrior prince Stour Nightfall goes into battle without a helmet, which is implied to be an expression of his extreme arrogance. When dueling him, Leo dan Brock also forgoes his helmet to match him.
  • Hilariously deconstructed in A Practical Guide to Evil. Before the Battle of Three Hills the Exiled Prince rides in front of the Legion's formation to deliver his Kirk Summation, without wearing a helmet to show off his princely good looks. Villain Protagonist Catherine takes the opportunity to have him shot with a crossbow and the magical arrow-deflecting properties of his armor deflect the bolt upwards into his unprotected neck, turning a potentially survivable wound (for a hero) into a One-Hit Kill.
  • At the start of the Secret World Chronicle series, hardly any of the Echo superheroes wear helmets. After the opening battle of the Thulian invasion, where many of them die from head wounds, all the survivors whose powers don't include being bulletproof start using helmets.
  • Totally averted in both The Silmarillion and in The Lord of the Rings. Both Elves and Men are depicted to have helmets.
    • Subverted by Éowyn, who removes her helmet just before delivering the final fatal blow to Witch-King — to demonstrate she is no man.
  • Variation: Justified in Snow Crash: Y.T. does without a helmet because it plays havoc with her hearing and peripheral vision, and anyway she has enough other safety gear that the presence or absence of a helmet would be largely academic.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Tyrion removes his helmet during the Battle of Blackwater to stop himself from drowning, and later takes an axe to the head that nearly kills him. After he's mostly recovered his father reprimands him for doing it, saying that his brother would never have been foolish enough to take off his helmet during battle.
    • Earlier in that same battle Tyrion reprimands the king for raising his visor, for fear he'll get an arrow in his eye. The king is not expected to fight (and in fact is too cowardly to do so) but if he is killed morale will be destroyed (not to mention the Queen Regent will be really pissed off at Tyrion).
    • Ser Barristan chooses not to wear his helmet on one occasion, because he's expecting to be in tight quarters with many side passages, and considers retaining peripheral vision more important than the protection. When a fight happens he and his opponent are both fully aware of the vulnerability, but Barristan is too skilled to let him take advantage of it.
  • In the Star Trek novel Gulliver's Fugitives, a documentary/propaganda maker tells his "star" to take his helmet off before getting in a fist fight with one of the resistance members. Yes, the bad guys manage to stage events like that in real combat missions.
  • The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Helmets are only allowed to a select few (never protagonists). The Guards, Vestigial Imperialists, Barbary Vikings (with horns), mooks of the Dark Lord (to render them faceless) and foreigners (so they can have exotic shapes). Armies will rarely get them, unless having boiling oil poured on them happens during a Siege.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Lampshaded in at least one Ciaphas Cain novel, where Cain comments on the stupidity of going in to battle while wearing powered armour but no helmets. His own uniform includes a peaked cap, which precludes him from using a helmet. He frequently regrets that this is the case. A later novel comments on the Adepta Sororitas' habit of omitting their helmets, which probably would have saved a few of them against the 'nids.
    • Justified in the Space Wolf novels. The Wolves rely heavily on the enhanced senses unique to their chapter's genetic makeup, and when they do need to wear helmets they grumble that it feels like the world is muffled. Plus, their skeletons are just as hard as other Astartes so a headshot isn't as great a worry. (So long as they're the protagonists, anyways. In stories where they aren't, their enemies gleefully take advantage of of the Space Wolves' helmetlessness to headshot them by the score.)
    • Exploited in Black Legion: during the battle of Prospero, Khayon kills several Space Wolves easily by the way of head shots, blessing them for choosing to go into battle without helmets. He, on the other hand, always has his at hand, unless he's aboard Tlaloc.

Music Videos 

Myths & Religion 

  • Classical Mythology: Athena was frequently portrayed as having a face-concealing Corinthian helmet, but she's also rarely ever shown wearing it down — instead, it was tipped up and off her face, as was common for actual warriors who were wearing the helmet out of combat. However, when she was portrayed with another style of helmet (that would be pretty likely to not be face-concealing), she would instead be wearing it normally.

Pinballs 

Roleplay 

Toys 

  • The "we need to recognize the characters" reason is inverted in BIONICLE: Thanks to the wonders of standardized toy parts, most if not all characters in any given story arc will have the exact same face. So a character's unique headgear more or less is his face, and serves as a major way to tell people apart. (In the occasional movie where characters need to actively emote, there are various workarounds, like removing a mouthplate or using an Expressive Mask). It's also worth noting that there's an in-universe practical reason to keep faces covered, too: some races have "losing your mask" as a Weaksauce Weakness.
  • G.I. Joe:
    • Played straight through most of the original 1982-1994 toyline with poster boy Duke, whose action figures generally included a helmet amongst other items of kit but who was almost never depicted actually wearing it.
    • Larry Hama said in an interview that he created The Baroness just so he'd have one unmasked/unhelmeted bad guy that he could have give facial reactions.
  • Transformers: Inverted in the case of Optimus Prime, who wears a mouth-concealing faceplate, while his evil nemesis Megatron doesn't. This trope does take effect in later adaptations that expose Optimus' face more by reducing his faceplate to a temporary mask that's only deployed during battle, but he still usually has one while Megatron doesn't.

Visual Novels 

  • Fate/stay night: Some of the super-powered Servants wear armor to protect themselves, but they don't bother with the helmets. The armor they wear do come with helmets; the design shows up in the artbooks, the Servants just prefer not to have them. This actually bites one of them in the ass at one point: Saber is nearly defeated because her head is the only unarmoured portion of her. Incidentally, the only time we see her helmet in the actual game is in the Heaven's Feel path, coloured in the black and red of Saber Alter, where it's almost immediately shattered by Berserker's attacks, which may explain why Saber prefers not to wear it in combat. That, and it's less of a helmet and more of a visor that only covers her eyes and nose.

Web Animation 

  • Inverted with the Custodian Guard from If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device (with the exception of Kitten, who just wears 24-Hour Armor). They always wear their helmets, but everything else (with the exception of loincloths) they left behind long ago. Supposedly it was in mourning of the Emperor's interment on the Golden Throne, but considering how they act and how they outright ignore any of the Emperor's orders to Please Put Some Clothes On, that's up for questioning. Notably, this was, at one point, canon — back in the Rogue Trader days, the Custodes were said to have given up their armor in shame for having failed to protect the Emperor. Modern depictions of the Custodes have them wearing their clothes, however.

Webcomics 

  • Awkward Zombie: In this strip poking fun at Fire Emblem, Aran appears to be another faceless soldier mook until Laura recruits him. He immediately removes his helmet, exposes his face, and starts killing other faceless soldier mooks.
  • Dumbing of Age usually averts this—Sal almost always has her face-covering helmet on while riding her motorcycle, and her assorted rollerblading and skateboarding friends always have the proper safety equipment. However, during a 2018 storyline in which Sal vents to Danny about her feelings while giving him a ride for the first time, neither of them have helmets. David Willis, the author, reacted to dismay from readers by pointing out that this was an emotionally-charged scene and being able to show the characters' faces took precedent. Nevertheless, a Patreon-exclusive comic depicted a trucker at a bar, complaining to his friends about the foolishness of the helmetless biker who swerved in front of him earlier that day.
  • In Exterminatus Now, it's custom for officers not to wear helmets. When asked "how many of them were killed by a sniper bullet to the brain", the answer was "Ooph. Well, I mean, y'know... a few..."
    • Considering its origins (as mentioned on its own page), this is undoubtedly a jib at Warhammer 40,000.
  • In Girl Genius, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach reveals he has been shot in the side but he was wearing full body armor. One of the Jaegers points out he wasn't wearing a helmet. He justifies it by saying they had to know it was him. Being Jaegers, they suggest a giant hat for that purpose. They provide one. Later, it's the only way for many people to recognize him.
  • Lampshaded in Nerf NOW!!, which points out even when a female character wears "realistic" armor instead of a Chainmail Bikini, the helmet is still forgone for heroes.
  • Schlock Mercenary:
    • Ebby often goes around without bothering to deploy his helmet, but as a Unioc his "head" is just a giant eyeball (which can be regrown with medical technology) and his brain is in his pelvic cradle.
    • Played with here, when Tagon doesn't deploy his suit's helmet because his client didn't have one, and the client wasn't deploying her suit's helmet because Tagon didn't have one.

      Tagon: [as both characters deploy helmets] We're idiots.

  • Unsounded: Lemuel is the only member of the Lions of Mercy to show up to attack the shrine without a helmet, he's also the character readers were most eager to see again and his helmetless state made him easy to recognize. His eyes end up damaged from the smoke of a nearby explosion due to his lack of goggles.
  • The Weekly Roll's dwarves almost universally wear face-concealing helmets and full armor all the time. Enforced by the fact that their home city is infested by cave goblins who like dropping rocks (and the dwarves don't do anything about it precisely because it teaches the children an important lesson in always staying covered and builds character).

Web Videos 

  • A Door Monster sketch parodying the first Half-Life has Gordon Freeman complaining that the HEV suit doesn't come with a helmet, although a fellow scientist insists that it's not necessary. Freeman is even less amused after the facility gets overrun by headcrabs, so named "because it attacks your FRIGGING HEAD!"
  • It became a Running Gag throughout Freeman's Mind and into its sequel that Gordon Freeman would always be without a helmet, and keenly regretful of this fact. There are meta-reasons for this portrayal: partly a commentary on the official art in Half-Life (see above), and partly a justification to disable the in-game HUD, which would be distracting to a viewer. Based on Freeman's commentary, we can infer that he acquires a lot of lacerations and other facial wounds throughout the series as a result. When Freeman DOES finally find a helmet for his HEV suit, its worn on a corpse that's been rotting on Xen for who knows how long, so he decides the potential germs aren't worth putting it on.
  • Quite averted in The Knight of Hope which makes it pretty clear that the Knight's helmet is a very key reason he can beat over ten men at once, with a noticeable instance where a crossbow bolt is deflected by his almost-entirely face-obscuring helmet.
  • Life SMP: No one on the server wears a helmet. Enforced in that one of the rules of the server specifies that no one is allowed to wear one, presumably so they're more recognizable in others' videos.
    • Tango is executed by firing squad in Season 1 for violating this rule.
    • Scar makes and puts on a helmet in Season 5 twice in brief failures to remember the rules. No one but the viewers notice it on Day 2, and he burns it at the beginning of Day 3, but then he makes another on Day 4. This time, Martyn and Joel catch him with the helmet on and tell him to "come over here and take that helmet off"; however, since Scar's secret task that day is to do the opposite of what everyone tells him to do, he's required to run away and keep it on.
  • "How The Mandalorian Solved the Hollywood Helmet Problem" is a YouTube video by Mythwest exploring this trope in detail. It concludes that avoiding or losing helmets for the sake of letting the characters emote isn't a fatality, and more a sign of lack of creativity, as The Mandalorian proved you can have an always helmeted main protagonist and still convey emotions by subtler means.
  • Subverted in "A helmet has always been a good idea", which has a Viking chieftain about to go to war when his son brings him his helmet. He tries to avoid wearing it despite his men's recommendations because it makes his scalp itch, but gives in when his wife shows up. The final scene has him bump his (helmeted) head on a wooden beam. The whole thing is a PSA for wearing bicycle helmets.