Robe and Wizard Hat

The robe is stylish. The hat is magic.


Magic users, especially in medieval fantasy, will almost always wear robes of one sort or another. The particular type of robe varies, and even those mages who eschew the robe tend to wear cloaks, capes, or (for more modern characters) trenchcoats. At least in part, this seems to be because the loose, billowy clothes look that much more impressive during a magic-induced Chunky Updraft or Dramatic Wind. Even the Stripperiffic costumes worn by nymphet sorceresses tend to have a few loose scraps of cloth fluttering about.

On the other hand, nobody who wears a pointy hat can be anything but a magician of some kind. No matter what, the pointy hat is a guarantee of magical power, or at least aspirations thereto. (The primary exception is if you're in the Deep South. They may have an "Imperial Wizard" leading them, but that's a way different group there.) Depending on the setting, exceptions may be made if you are a princess locked in a tower (this version usually has a ribbon of sheer fabric coming off of the top and is technically called a Steeple Hennin), some manner of gnome (this version is usually red, and gnomes are generally magical) or of course, the classic Dunce Cap, but in such a case, a magic-user can be identified by the fact that their pointy hat has a brim, while the hats of princesses, gnomes and dunces do not. If it's your head that's pointed, you're reading the wrong trope; see Coneheads.

Wizarding School students tend to be wear a blend of this and whatever is considered that country's traditional school uniform; expect the more powerful teachers to do it straight.

The lesson you should be taking from all of this, of course, is that if you see someone wearing a pointy hat, then they will also be wearing a robe. This trope is a subtrope of Nice Hat and Badass Long Robe, naturally. If the hat itself ends up being magical than it may be a Hat of Power. Very often this trope is accompanied by a Magic Staff. Sub-trope of Stock Costume Traits. See also Wizard Classic for a character type who is especially prone to wearing this outfit.

It's often believed that the trope comes from the Norse god Odin's traveling outfit.

Examples of Robe and Wizard Hat include:

Anime and Manga

  • Honami Takase Ambler, the Celtic magic-using witch of Rental Magica, wears a black cloak and pointy hat over her school uniform as her business outfit. When she had to change from her casual clothes to her business one, she changed into her school uniform first before putting on the cloak and hat.
    • In the Flash Back episode to her time in a Wizarding School, the other students also wore cloaks, but she was the only student wearing a pointy hat.
  • Yuki Nagato's class in Suzumiya Haruhi dressed her up as a fortune-telling witch for the School Festival by means of a cloak and pointy hat over her school uniform. Haruhi hijacked the costume (and the wearer) for her own student movie.
    • As a highly advanced, probability altering alien, her predictions are all 100% accurate (much to the chagrin of some students).
    • In Lucky Star, Konata cosplays as Yuki in the witch outfit.
  • Yukari Sendou from Rosario + Vampire has a traditional style pointy hat worn at all times, including the swimming pool and beach.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima present a strange mix of uses and inversions of this trope:
    • The full garb is apparently part of the uniform of the two Wizarding Schools the main protagonist and the Little Miss Snarker attended. Several other characters appeared with the pointy hat and it's a permanent part of Anya's clothing. There was also that child mage in the Bad Future.
    • On the other hand, the standard mage clothing seems to be a long, billowing white cloak with a hood replacing the hat. No (named) adult so far (except Stan) has worn a hat.
    • An early conception of "conflict" between Negi and Evangeline was that she would refuse to take her wizard hat off. This never made it into the series.
    • The important characters will usually wear a Badass Long Robe (often tattered).
  • While the Dark Magician's cape leaves much to be desired, he has a truly epic pointy hat.
  • Aversion: Zangulus from the Slayers TV series is a pointy-hat wearer who is not a wizard. Instead, he's a Blood Knight swordsman who has an enchanted sword. He can cast some magic, though.
  • Berserk: Schierke.
  • Tsubame, from Urusei Yatsura, always wears a traditional "magician's cape", though without the pointy hat. Given his other favored attire is a tuxedo, and his comments about having gone to "the West" to study his magic, it's clear he's supposed to be a parody of/reference to the stage magician, instead of the actual Hermetic Magic-using Squishy Wizard associated with Western magic users.
  • Ginger Bread from Katekyo Hitman Reborn fits this trope, though he's only pretending to use sorcery; in fact, the source of his power are spiders imbued with Sun Flames.
  • Oibore from Rurouni Kenshin is not a mage, but his outfit (natty robes, a pointy bamboo hat, and a scraggly hobo beard) add weight to his role as The Obi-Wan.
  • The Dark Magician Girl in Yu-Gi-Oh! wears a Sexy Whatever Outfit of this trope.
  • In Witch Craft Works, the main characters wear them so they can be invisible to muggles.


Comic Books

  • Jingle Belle's gal pal Polly Green, the halloween Witch, wears the traditional witch's pointed hat.
  • The DCU's Enchantress had a witch's hat, until the Shadowpact series took it away.
  • Cyclone, the first Red Tornado's granddaughter, wears a robe...thing and pointy hat, despite not actually being a mage. Her wind and air manipulation superpowers are nanomachine-based. It's a reference to her favourite book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
  • Doctor Strange wore a red cloak while Sorcerer Supreme and a brown trenchcoat after surrendering the office. No hat; but the cloak's collar had two distinct pointy extensions on it.
  • The comic strip Wizards at War which featured in the British Anthology Comic The Beano used this trope on its main two recurring characters who were wizards and always fighting.
  • There aren't many pointy hats on display in the DC Books of Magic miniseries, but at one point young Tim Hunter meets a gathering of trench-coated DC magic heroes which he describes as "looking like a perverts convention."
  • Vaughan Bode's underground comix Cheech Wizard is a crude, dissolute fake whose wizard hat covers him down to his navel - he never takes it off, claiming if anyone saw who he was, they'd go mad.


Fan Works

  • Averted in With Strings Attached, where every person in Baravada, wizards and otherwise, wears the same kind of outfit: silky shirt and trousers. Except Bayanis, who does wear robes, but she's crazy.
    • Well, crazier than all the other wizards, anyway.


Film

  • The Sorcerer's Apprentice section from Fantasia features a particularly nice wizard hat. Just don't play with it while the owner's out.
  • In Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles have a brief scene playing robed, hatted wizards keeping tabs on the movie's cast (themselves included).
  • For some reason, the astronomers in early silent film A Trip to the Moon are dressed in full wizard gear for a meeting.
  • In the film adaptation of Hogfather (see Literature below), the wizards are never seen without their pointy hats - except if bathing, when they have pointy plastic showercaps.
  • The Rabbi (who is also an astrologer, alchemist and magician) in the silent movie The Golem wears a pointy hat and a robe, making him look like a textbook wizard.


Literature

  • Somewhat inverted in Tamora Pierce's Immortals Quartet. Numair, the most powerful wizard mage of his generation, is one of the seven people in the world who have earned the right to wear the black robe. He avoids doing so at every possibility - he finds it hot and itchy.
  • The Discworld likes this trope. A lot.
    • Rincewind has covered most of the Disc, usually at speed, and is prepared to leave almost anything behind to make a quick getaway, but the idea of being Rincewind without a pointy hat just breaks his brain. He needs it.
    • Also somewhat subverted in Night Watch, when Archchancellor Ridcully's bath moves itself outside while he's bathing. He calls for his hat, but doesn't think of the robe yet:

Stibbons: "You're, er, not sufficiently dressed, sir."
Ridcully: "What? I've got my hat on, haven't I?"
Stibbons:"Yes, sir-"
Ridcully:"Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is just frippery."

Ridcully: I would like to congratulate you on being properly dressed. You are wearing your pointy hat, which is the sine qua non of a wizard in public.
Stibbons: Yes, sir.
Ridcully: They say a wizard without his hat is naked.
Stibbons: Yes, sir.
Ridcully: Yet you are wearing your hat, yet are, in a very real sense, naked.

    • According to Granny Weatherwax, most of witchcraft is "headology" (i.e. folk-psychology). This only works if everyone knows you're a witch, hence the black cloak and pointy hat. This results in Granny having to actually try to intimidate someone when she goes to a location where people can't recognize a witch on sight.
    • Also worth noting: in theory, anyone can wear a pointy hat. But in practice, imagine what happens to such charlatans when they meet a person with the RIGHT to wear one.
    • In Hogfather, a Wizard's idea of going incognito (so people don't recognize that he is a wizard) is to wear a darker, less fancy pointy hat.
      • And of course, the Dean, who gets ... very gung-ho about whatever new idea has caught the wizards' fancy this time, has occasionally been spotted with pointy hair.
    • It's been noted in the Discworld series that pointy hats are pretty much hardwired into being a wizard, along with (at the very least,) deep seated distrust and dislike of other wizards, and a desire to build a tower.
  • Wizarding casual dress in the Harry Potter series appears to be... you guessed it... a Robe and Wizard Hat.
    • The later films put Harry and company in a regular school uniform with a robe, possibly to avoid evoking Narm among the less fantasy-inclined members of the audience.
      • Conversely, in the Worst Witch Series by Jill Murphy, Pointed hats and robes are FANCY/Formal dress. The student wear variations on their school colors of black and grey even in their off hours. Including their PJs.
    • Apparently, some Wizards have a hard time distinguishing female muggle clothing from male muggle clothing Leading to an extremely funny exchange in "Goblet of fire"
  • Lord of the Rings has this. Gandalf is a particularly well-known example, and may have revitalized the concept into the modern era.
  • The Dresden Files informs us that the reason for the robes is that wizards' lairs get cold in the winter. This doesn't stop them from being the required formal wear at White Council meetings. Harry Dresden himself subverts this by trading in a robe and wizard hat for a Badass Longcoat and cowboy hat (at least on the book covers. He doesn't wear the hat much in the stories, which is a shame).
    • Harry also subverts it by wearing a baby blue bathrobe to a Council meeting, because he's a smartass and flat broke.
    • Possible further justification - Harry's Badass Longcoat is enchanted with magic-, fire-, and bullet-resistant enchantments, which are supposedly difficult to get right, and he mostly wears it for protection - why magic-up several sets of shirts and pants when you can just throw a robe over it for throat-to-shoes protection that rarely needs drycleaning. Of course, when a particularly hot summer hits Chicago, he ends up debating whether the protection is worth the heat.
  • Belgarath the Sorcerer of David Eddings' Belgariad notably avoids such things whenever possible, choosing instead to wear comfortable clothes that allow him to blend in. However, in those rare instances where he had to make a public appearance as 'The Almighty, Immortal Sorcerer, Belgarath!', he dons a white robe and staff to make sure everybody knows he's a wizard. (Keep in mind, the only people who've ever managed to get him to actually do that, is his busybody daughter, Polgara - and the combined might of roughly a dozen reigning monarchs.)
  • The sorcerers and sorceresses in the world of the Witcher usually wear casual, if elegant, garbs (though the latter often opt for awfully whorely dresses), but robes-and-pointy hats suits do exist. They are traditional dress kept for special occasions, emphasizing their unity as magic users.
  • Through The Riftwar Cycle, magicians either forego hats entirely or stick to something scholarly or in courtly fashion, and on the rare occasion a magician wears a practical broad-brimmed hat, only Kulgan's, at the very beginning of the series, is pointy. Still, the almost-universal preference for robes is a dead giveaway for their profession.
  • Subverted in The Princess 99, in that the wizards, er Crafters want to get rid of "old stereotypes" and "streamline their appearance", as put by Professeur Wilde. Most of them wear slightly altered suits or hats, with the more traditional Crafters wearing hats and robes.
  • Played with in The Bartimaeus Trilogy, where it is only the lesser magicians who dress as stereotypical wizards as a way to compensate for their lesser standing. The truly powerful mages tend dress like accountants.
  • Although magic exists in A Song of Ice and Fire, this is apparently still the uniform of wizards in fiction in that universe, since when Arya tells her father she overheard people plotting to kill him and says they mentioned a wizard, he asks if the wizard was wearing a starry pointed hat and tells her they were mummers and she misunderstood.


Live Action TV

  • In the third episode of Merlin, the title character—who has mostly averted this trope by wearing typical clothes—sarcastically argues that he should wear a pointy hat to convince Arthur that he's a wizard.

Merlin: He thinks he is so sharp. Even when I told him I was a wizard, he still couldn't see it.
Gaius: Sometimes it's pretty hard to spot.
Merlin: Maybe I should go around wearing a pointy hat?
Gaius: I don't think you'll find one big enough.

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fifth season - At the grand opening of his magic store, Giles is wearing a wizard's hat and robe. Buffy stares at him. A long time. He quietly, sheepishly removes it (but does wear it in a later Halloween episode).
  • Baby Chris wore a cute little wizard with robe for Halloween in Charmed.
  • In Power Rangers Mystic Force, the Rangers have robes, each with a different design based on their element and color. As for the hat, the Megazord has one. Or rather, the top of its head is designed like one.


Myth And Legend


Newspaper Comics

  • Howland Owl from Pogo wore a wizard hat all the time, despite not being a wizard of any kind. As for why, perhaps Albert put it best: "He's got a point, but his hat hides it."


Tabletop Games

  • Played straight and averted equally often in Warhammer 40,000, where Eldar farseers, human sanctioned psykers, and some Chaos sorcerers wear futuristic robes and hats, while other sorcerers, farseers, and all Astartes librarians wear the same battle armor as their non-psychic comrades.
    • Similarily played with in Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Wizard clothes run the gamut from traditional cloak and pointy hat to shamanistic feathers and headdressess to naked. Chaos sorcerers, on the other hand can, and often do, wear full plate armor.
  • Common in early editions of Dungeons & Dragons
    • Some AD&D2 materials mentioned that this outfit rarely is the first choice of people who work outdoors rather than in an iconic tower with high ceilings. So even if they don't hide their occupation, there are less pointy hats and more pouch belts.
    • From 3rd Edition onward the art shied away from pointy hats in favor of a more Dungeon Punk look. Not even Elminster wears a pointy hat anymore! The rules however do include a "scholar's outfit" describe as "a robe, a belt, a cap, soft shoes, and possibly a cloak" but there's no requirement wizards wear or even own such an outfit.
    • An issue of Dragon magazine explained that gnomes wear pointy hats because they symbolize the power of knowledge in much the same way pyramids do: few at the top, many at the base.
    • In 3rd edition, wearing any armor worth its name entails a fixed percentage of spell failure, wasting both the spell and the time used to cast it. Not that wizards need armor, considering that they can out-tank the heaviest armor wearer using defensive spells.
      • The most recent editions (4th and 5th) of the game has done away with all spell failure, but require proficiency with armor to cast in it. By default most casters have no armor proficiency though they can learn it and any Magic Knight will have it.
    • Speaking of Elminster, both the elves (who taught him) and the wizards of Dales (who want to learn from him) prefer practical adventuring clothes. The Word of God on this is that the hat was largely a creation of the TSR Art Department. It was also implied - and later confirmed - that "Old Mage" is an image cultivated on purpose, because "lead by example" works better when the example looks like a fellow mortal "old goat" in generic wizard garb rather than warrior-thief-priestess-divine agent or something.
    • Spelljammer boxed set reminds that the tactical considerations tend to overrule in more aggressive settings:

Typical orders for any crew, whether at sea or in space, are "Shoot at anyone who looks like a wizard". Of course, this often means that the man who looks like a wizard really isn't.

    • The official "Complete Arcane" expansion adds a class called "Warmage" which is kind of a cross between fighter and sorcerer. This class can wear light armor and light shields with no spell-failure penalty and can train to wear medium armor as a feat at later levels. Add in a Mithril Chain Shirt and a high Dex, and you have a sorcerer with almost as good AC as the Paladin tank in heavy plate with a tower shield.
  • Thankfully avoided in Mage: The Awakening and Mage: The Ascension. However, since both games reference The Invisibles in their source material... the new Robe and Wizard Hat is usually a trenchcoat and a punk haircut.
    • For the sake of accuracy, it would be difficult for Mage: The Ascension to reference The Invisibles in its source material, since the game was written at least a year before the comic was - and the design/thematic elements of the game that led to a lack of robes and hats was in place right from the very first edition. That being said, it's interesting to note that both Mage and The Invisibles were later cited as sources the Wachowski Brothers were inspired by (or stole directly from) when writing The Matrix.
    • In their defense, White Wolf did mention that players who were looking for "High flying fantasy adventures in the vein a certain popular magical school in Great Britain" should probably look elsewhere. Too bad they kept the Glass Cannon Squishy Wizard of Dungeons & Dragons everywhere else.
  • Shadowrun subverts this trope. Mages can wear body armor—just like anyone else—and fire a gun—just like anyone else. Provided that their stats are high enough to allow the armor (mmm, encumbrance) and skilled at firearms (mmm, defaulting).
  • WARMACHINE mostly avoids this trope, as most warcasters prefer to go to battle wearing a full set of steam powered platemail. One's even fused to a Humongous Mecha.
  • Generic enemy mages in the Fire Emblem series have this on in their portraits in the 3rd and 4th games. In battle and in the other games in the series generic mages instead wear cloaks with a very pointy stiff hood that gives the appearance of this be worn underneeth. Only in Fire Emblem Awakening do any (and all) mages wear the classic combo.

Video Games

  • Black Mages from the Final Fantasy series dress in blue robes and yellow wizard hats. Red Mages use a variation, a red tabard and a magnificent red chevalier with a white feather. White Mages wear a white robe or poncho with blood-red triangles around the edges, which may or may not include a hood, occasionally with a set of Cat Ears on the hood as in the case of Krile of Final Fantasy V. Less commonly, the Time Mage class wear conical red hats with a star on them and loose-fitting robes and Summoners wear a phallic-headband-and-robe getup.
    • By proxy, so do Red Mage and Black Mage of Eight Bit Theater, the former often mocked for his hat with a feather, and the latter for his robe he gets after a class advancement that makes him look like some sort of jester.

White Mage: "Pardon me, clown?"
Black Mage: "Oh, this guy is not talking to me."
White Mage: "You there, in the doofy hat and parachute pants."

    • Related: Nobuo Uematsu's band, named after the eponymous Black Mages, utilize this type of garb for their stage costumes in some of their performances, most notably in the Darkness & Starlight DVD and the music video for Neo-Exdeath.
  • Nethack provides mechanical justification: Robes decrease spell failure chance for everyone, and a wizard who wears a cornuthaum gets intelligence and charisma bonuses. Anybody else will get a penalty, since non-wizards look silly with the hat on.
  • City of Heroes features the Cabal, an all-female group of witches, who wear black capes and pointy hats. If the player manages to prove themselves against the Cabal's leader, they unlock Witch Hats at the tailor for their own use.
    • The human members of the Circle of Thorns also dress in robes. Some of them wear hats (not pointy, but still unmistakably magey).
  • Found in most MMORPGs, and bemoaned by a music video made from World of Warcraft by a wizard who asks (in the chorus) "So why I ask, it just doesn't make much sense / for a man of my stature to have to wear a dress / I mean what may I enquire, were you thinking on that day / when you conjured up for a man like me a robe that looks so gay-ay?".
    • In Warcraft 2, this was averted by the Human Mage unit, who wore a Badass Longcoat.
      • A number of people have suggested that the Badass Longcoat and Fedora combo is the modern Robe And Wizard Hat.
    • Oddly enough, right now the tanking paladin ensemble involves... a plate-armor skirt.
    • Another video references the plight of Paladin healers being forced to wear similar outfits in raids to be effective healers. "I only wore it once... and I was sexy".
    • Guild Wars is one MMORPG that manages to avoid this trope. The armor for spellcaster professions are usually coats and trousers, with occasional skirts or Badass Longcoats. There aren't any hats, but each profession does have distinctive headwear - theater masks for mesmers, scalp tattoos for monks, head wrappings for ritualists, etc.
    • Asheron's Call also avoids this trope, as almost any character can wear almost any armor or clothing, and spellcasting is not penalized by equipment. However, for the first few years of the game, there was a loud group of players who complained that their mage characters were forced to wear armor because robes didn't provide enough protection and that they couldn't dress like typical mages.
  • In Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, spellcasting tires you out, meaning mages tend to wear light clothing, such as robes, but nothing stops you from wearing enchanted armor (mechanical armor, like every other technological item, is bad for you though) if you strong enough to carry it without penalty (decently possible for chain mail, fairly hard for plate mail).
  • Justified in The Elder Scrolls, where robes can hold much more powerful enchantments than regular apparel.
    • In Oblivion at least, there are spell efficiency penalties for wearing armor. For those role-playing as casters (or any spell-heavy type of class) this reduces desirable outfits to robe & hood or regular civilian style clothes. Usually enchanted.
      • Interestingly, the only non-armor wrist items for in Oblivion are the Wrist Irons you start the game with. All other items count as armor and lower the spell efficiency. They are the only pair in the original game, though more can be found with the Shivering Isles expansion.
      • It's averted by the many pre-set spellcasting builds that include some form of armor training, then inverted by the many acrobatic/thiefly/monkly classes, for whom the high-enchant and low encumbrance of a robe and hat ensemble is more valuable.
  • Melody, the bath house keeper from Rune Factory wears one, even though she doesn't know any magic.
  • There are magical Robes aplenty in Dungeons & Dragons related games due to the fact wizards and he like can suffer from Arcane spell failure if the wear armour, which is an indirect cause of Squishy Wizard. Characters who draw there powers from holy sources can run around in full suits of armour with no problems, probably because they can rely on divine assistance.
    • Sort of a Deconstructed Trope to many players and Game Masters, most agree that anyone telegraphing that they are squishy by wearing this garb is guaranteed to be the first target of any intelligent creature in combat.
    • And then Baldur's Gate rolled along and subverts it and provides Player Characters with no pointy hats to put on. But then still cameo's Elminster with one! Party mages have to settle for imposing looking hoods instead.
  • In The Sims 2, magic users wear a robe and pointy hat, and the colors magically change upon their alignment. Good ones wear white robes with gold trim, and evil ones wear black robes.Neutral ones wear brown and grey robes.
    • In The Sims Medieval, the majority of outfits available to Wizards are robes, and there's a pointy hat that only Wizards can wear.
  • Though the other wizards show up randomly, and have a variety of different looks, Mithra in Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, the first one you pick up, the one that shows up in a cutscene and is the only non-random Einherjar you find, fits the Robe and Wizard Hat description to a T.
  • Selfi, the snobby-but-cute witch in Azure Dreams.
  • Amadeus the Magnificent, The Casanova wizard from Trine, is clad in this getup.
  • Lillet Blan, despite being a "newbie" in Grim Grimoire sure dresses the part.
  • In the game Space Station 13', A gamemode that comes up where one of the crew of the ship has been selected to be a space wizard, they use a radio and teleport to an area to get spells, and come back to the ship. When they come back in order for them to use their spells (Many at least)none other than a Robe and Wizard Hat and a Beard.
  • Marisa Kirisame of Touhou fame wears a pointy wizard hat, though her robes are rather unstandard.
    • The other (stated) magicians, Alice Margatroid and Patchouli knowledge, both have robes (Alice's are colorful but loosely standard, while Patchy's are more like pajamas - justified by her tendency towards being ill far too much), but Alice has only a hair band, and Patchy's hat only has a point on it because she has a cresent moon shape attached to it.
      • And then there is Marisa's former master Mima, who wears a pointed blue cap with a sun on it and blue robes.
      • There is one more magician in the series - Byakuren Hijiri. However, she averts this - being one of hte few characters in the entire series to not have any head decoration whatsoever. (take note that animal ears are being counted as hair decorations here)
  • The Magikoopas in Super Mario Bros. are dressed like this, especially Kamek from Yoshi's Island and Kammy Koopa from Paper Mario.
    • Merlon's family and all Shamans from the Paper Mario series and Super Mario RPG respectively also share this trait, although they use hoods instead of hats.
  • Might and Magic mostly averts it for the game characters (as even the most Squishy Wizard get to wear leather armor, there is absolutely no penalty for wearing a helmet or other supposedly heavy headgear, and there are, in fact, no equippable robes to be found), but plays it straight for many mage NPCs and enemies. VI's description for the one sort of pointy hat in the game handwaves its popularity amongst mages as a result of the 'conical shape attracting creatures of the spirit world', making the hat easier to enchant. Even so, it is not the best cloth-headgear to enchant.
  • One of the special Items-of-the-month in Kingdom of Loathing is the Jewel-eyed wizard hat, probably the best hat for Mysticality classes (like with the chefstaves, power is not as important as the mysticality-related bonuses it gives).
  • Disgaea actually references the trope namer in the description of the Wizard Robe.
  • In Ragnarok Online, the pointy wizard hats have valuable int, dex and/or magic bonuses. The male mages all wear robes, but for some reason, female mages are Stripperiffic. They start wearing robes in higher job classes, though.
  • Pretty much everyone wears some variation of a robe and pointy hat in the Spellcasting 101/201/301 series. In fact, depending on the game mode, that's ALL the protagonist wears, which is used for comedic effect on a lot of occasions.
  • Magicka depicts all wizards in hooded robes, and some may opt to wear a wizard hat instead. It also makes a Shout-Out to the Trope Namer in the name of the achievement for picking up all the spellbooks.
  • The uniform in Magical Diary: Horse Hall, although only the teachers get hats, and the capes are slightly different for males and females.
  • In the Avernum games, wearing armor makes it impossible to cast higher level mage spells (unless the character has the Natural Mage trait) so they usually end up wearing robes.
  • Worn by the title character in Soulcaster and Soulcaster II.

Webcomics

  • The Chapel Chronicles: In Dumbledore Voodoo, Chapel wears a wizard cape and hat and uses a wand to find her math homework by using Accio Math Journal
  • Used as an Overly Pre-Prepared Gag by Shiden in Yosh! [dead link]
  • Used for a Breaking the Fourth Wall gag in El Goonish Shive here, and a wizard's fedora and trenchcoat as the modern version is noted in the rant here.
  • Though the party wizard doesn't wear a hat, Elan of Order of the Stick puts one on when he's considering multiclassing to wizard. And while they don't wear hats, pretty much any wizard, sorcerer, or druid in the series wears robes, including Xykon, Varsuvius, and Roy's Dad. A couple side characters DO wear hats as well, such as the Oracle, and the Azure City teleporting wizard.
  • Sal from Emergency Exit occasionally, especially for magic users' conventions, wears a Stripperiffic version with one button holding the robe together, and nothing but a fishnet top and a loosely tied skirt beneath.
  • Worn by all the teachers in Wizard School - including a striped referee robe and hat for the umpire of the magical sport Transmogritus.


Western Animation


Web Original

  • The legendary tale of the man they call.... Bloodninja (Warning: NSFW)
  • Wizards, sorcerors and their like in Adylheim tend to follow this trope, mainly because it's a cultural expectation though and the wizards's staff, robes and occasionally hat are considered to be part of the uniform.
  • The Spells-R-Us (SRU) Wizard wears this outfit, although he's commonly called the Old Man in a bathrobe.
  • Both averted and played straight in the same video, "Magiconomy".
  • This random generator creates outfits along these lines.


Real Life

  • The classical grimoires, the books which purport to teach ritual magic, often include detailed instructions for making and consecrating the special ceremonial garb required by the ritual. This includes (and is usually not limited to) robes and (frequently pointy) hats. Many of these texts date back to the late middle ages.
  • Many of the higher clergy in the Catholic Church, most notably the Pope. You can't tell me this doesn't get "Flowing Robe and Pointy Hat" points. Their original purpose was to be identified in a crowd easily. Now they are to symbolize their office rather than to cast level 1,000,000 lightning, but still. (Of course, it's debatable whether or not His Holiness can call down epic-level lightning...)
  • The Zoroastrian Magi of Persia are thought to have originated the pointed-hat look and symbol-covered robes, while the broad-brimmed hat and long white beard may be derived from Odin. The words "magic" and "mage" are derived from magi, so there might be something there.
  • A number of ancient Saka people from in central and east Asia were found by archaeologists buried in incredibly tall pointy hats—which leads one to wonder just how far back this trope goes. The Saka were related to the above mentioned Zoroastrians, as they were both Iranian-language speakers. The Saka however did not wear robes, or at least wore trousers underneath them. Indeed one of the tribes of the Saka were called "Saka tigraxauda," or "Saka with pointed hats," by the Persians. [dead link]
  • Academia generates a lot of fuss about ceremonial garb. There are no pointy hats, but there are hats you're only allowed to wear if you have a Ph D, and the shape and color of graduates' hoods has a long and very specific history that varies depending on the institution. And, of course, they're accompanied by robes.
  • During times of plague in the medieval era, doctors "treating" plague victims really, seriously did wear big robes and hats, presumably to keep skin-to-skin contact to a minimum. They also wore creepy-looking masks with pointy faces stuffed with aromatics to cut down on the smell; many had little glass lenses to see out of. They even used staffs to point at people and direct them, since their voices were muffled. The combined effect was like something out of Silent Hill—especially when they were surrounded by all the rotting corpses.
  • The English style of headgear in the 17th century ran to high-crowned (pointy) hats, which became the stereotypical "witch's hat" in Halloween iconography.
  1. ↑ Apparently an academic, if not biological, predecessor of hers who is essentially the Sigmund Freud of pony magic (insofar as that comparison works on any level at all)
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