In any work where a hero wears protection armor, the helmet isn’t worn, even in combat, whether powered or otherwise. In the real world, the helmet is the most vital piece of private armor that have ever invented besides the shield since the skull and brain are highly liable to every kind of weapon blows and projectiles. In an ancient shield formation, your extensive protection would usually protect your torso but leave your head sticking over the highest, thus inviting the enemy’s slings, arrows, swords, and spears. In modern ranged combat, you have got to reveal your head each time you peek out of your trench or foxhole, and every one style of debris and shrapnel from explosions might fall on your head. Helmets are a fair idea. So why does a personality who has access to a helmet rarely use it? It is a necessity, get yours here because they got the best deals made for you.
This is often the creators bowing to the Rule of Perception and Shoot the money in visual media. Even an open-faced helmet will a minimum of obscure a character’s hair. Hairstyles are essential for identifying a personality during a crowd, especially in animated works with Only Six Faces. a wholly enclosed or visored helmet is a bigger problem because people are good at recognizing faces and associate faces with having individuality and personhood. An individual without a look is dehumanized and treated as expendable by the Faceless Goons trope, which is not any good for a personality you would like the audience to worry about. In film and tv, both the director and the actor will want the audience to determine their facial expressions because of the heart of their performance. It defeats the aim of hiring a famous and possibly good-looking actor or actress if you will form them harder to acknowledge. Also, consistent with The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort, less armor implies a personality is skilled enough not to need it.
Alternately, the armor the most character wears may not be distinctive enough to form him stand out from others wearing armor; we wouldn’t want to lose track of our hero among the Faceless Goons, after all. Writers and artists often attempt to alleviate this by giving main characters almost identical uniforms because of the Faceless Goons — or cheating by giving the hero a helmet but clearly showing their face. At the same time, everyone else wears a full-face helmet. When this is often wont to distinguish someone from an analogous group of mooks, it is also Uniformity Exception. Reality battlefield recognition solutions adopted by armored warriors like 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 every one forms of Bling of War. Often, fiction won’t take full advantage of those options. Also, strangely enough, this trope is widespread for superheroes. However, most of them have a unique costume that may be instantly recognizable whether or not the wearer’s face wasn’t visible.
And in video games where you’ll be able to customize your character’s appearance, wearing a helmet will often obscure it and waste all the trouble you place into it.
A variation is that when modern characters are depicted in boxing or martial arts training, they’ll rarely be shown wearing padded headgear that might generally be mandatory. It is also common for the Badass Biker to forego a helmet.
This may be justified in certain situations. Helmets may be somewhat heavy and restrictive, so an individual who relies on keen vision, hearing, or freedom of movement might prioritize those things over the protection a helmet provides. Helmets are bulky and awkward to hold when not being worn, so a Walking the Earth-type hero is additionally likely to forego them for the long term. A personality who starts with a helmet might discard it after it becomes too damaged to use, but this might invite the question of why they do not hunt for a replacement. In any case, there’s still little excuse not to use one in open battle, especially when characters bear the difficulty of armoring every part of their body apart from the top.
On a related note, in virtually every superhero movie within which the most character wears a mask, it’ll be achieved during the film’s climax. Usually, it’s torn off, approximately severely damaged that there is no point keep it on; sometimes, the hero decides to require it off.
Contrast Cool Helmet (where the helmet enhances the hero’s image) and Fantasy Helmet Enforcement (where the hero is setting an excellent safety-conscious example). Also, contrast Never Bareheaded (the heroic character isn’t shown without a helmet on his head) and Signature Headgear (when the hero’s distinctive helmet makes them stand out).
