Editing Talk:Black Hat

I will start this page with a (perhaps unique) assumption I have formulated about Black Hat and Danish. It is that I can't help hearing them with an affected British accent. That is to say, I do not consider the British to ''be'' Black Hat and Danish to be British, but there is a stereotype Stateside that the British are snooty and consider themselves superior to us "silly Americans", and that is something the comic's Machiavells would certainly pick up on. Let the discussion thread begin. Anonymous  10:09, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

==Didn't look like a porkpie hat until Season 1 of Breaking Bad==
The hat in the early comics, 2005-2007, looks like a top hat. Then sometime in season 1 of Breaking Bad, Walter White starts wearing a black pork pie hat -- maybe in the final episode, May 2008, and after that XKCD's black hat has flattened out to a pork pie style. Coincidence? --[[Special:Contributions/199.27.129.167|199.27.129.167]] 23:03, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

He’s not a “top hat”. He’s a “black hat”. [[User:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|SilverTheTerribleMathematician]] ([[User talk:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|talk]]) 07:03, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

== Name ==

Should he really be called "Black Hat"?
After I started reading xkcd but before I began visiting this wiki, I addressed this character as Hat Guy in discussion with friends, and in my own head. But, when I first visited this site, I started calling him Black Hat, because that is how he is named here. However, as seen in the title text of comic #493, Actuarial, he is addressed as Hat guy. This begs my question, for which I have no answer, what do we call this character?
--[[User:Fallencrow305|Fallencrow305]] ([[User talk:Fallencrow305|talk]]) 21:51, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

In the online what-if 13 [http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/], the title texts call him "a man in a hat." If even Randall himself is inconsistent, why can't we make up our own name? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.78.125|172.68.78.125]] 22:58, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

In the xkcd store page [https://store.xkcd.com/collections/apparel/products/hat-guy-polo], one of the items is a "Hat Guy Polo". In the description: "... polo shirt with the guy with the hat embroidered ...". I think it's clear that Randall makes no clear distinction between both formulations, but definitely doesn't use the word "black". --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.64|162.158.114.64]] 11:44, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

:When he was referred to as Hat Guy, he was the only character in xkcd who wore a hat. Back then we didn't have to call him Black Hat because there was no need to differentiate him and White Hat, he was the only character that could be called that. It wasn't until around comic #915 when White Hat started to appear more frequently (Black Hat appeared in almost a hundred comics before #915, White Hat only appeared in three). Since they both wear the same type of hat, only in different colors, there was a need to differentiate the two. Afterwards Randall stopped referring to Black Hat as Hat Guy, so for now I don't think there's any need to change his name. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 13:31, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

He should definitely be called “Black Hat”. Black hat hackers are hackers that are very typically malicious, and I would say that he’s depicted as an antagonist in the comic. And on a side note: to differentiate between him and White Hat, it would be even more practical. [[User:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|SilverTheTerribleMathematician]] ([[User talk:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|talk]]) 07:06, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

== Category for his strange powers? ==

Black Hat seems to have some strange/supernatural powers. Should we have a category (at least a mention on this page) for this, similar to [[:Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy]]? [[User:Pzq Alex|Pzq Alex]] ([[User talk:Pzq Alex|talk]]) 09:44, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

== Theories on March 1997 ==

Hi, it's me, that dumb stupid idiot [https://www.youtube.com/@ArtemisAYO/ Caliban]. I feel as though there's a lot of untapped lore in this guy. More specifically, the incident that caused him to lose all belief: ''March 1997''. General consensus seems to be that he was entangled with {{w|Heaven's Gate (religious group)|Heaven's Gate}}, a weird UFO cult whose members took their own lives on the 26th. But the specifics have never been specified. Sure, maybe [[Randall]] never had much lore planned for him: after all, this guy's been depicted as a [[1139: Rubber and Glue|child]] (''[[1753: Thumb War|twice]]'', might I add), and he's already a classhole.

But theorising is fun, so whatever.

On the [[Talk:792: Password Reuse|792 talk page]], I saw a decent theory written by 172.71.150.150 on 14 December 2023, which read:

{{Quote|Nah [in response to another IP editor's theory], i think he was a cultist who hesitated in commiting suicide, and upon seeing his fellow brethren die and NOT be trasported to a ship in the tail of the comet, his beliefs shattered... he ran. And now he's a sadistic classhole.|[[Special:Contributions/172.71.150.150|172.71.150.150]]}}

This feels like a genuinely interesting story, and I would love to see this pursued further.

What are your thoughts on this?

''Stay constant.'' -- [[User:CalibansCreations|'''<span style="color:#ff0000;">Caliban</span>''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 10:10, 10 February 2025 (UTC)