Great for hanging out with friends (and also hanging them).
This character's formal attire seems a bit... morbid. Basically in place of a necktie they're sporting a length of rope that's been tied off in the manner of a hangman's knot. This seems to pop up mostly (but not always) when a character is undead, as if to suggest that their death was due to Hanging Around. If not explicitly undead, characters with this feature will still often have a "spooky" Halloween air about them. A more lighthearted take on this trope is to compare a necktie to a noose to indicate that any job which requires formal attire is a Fate Worse than Death.
There may be some Lampshade Hanging about the logistics of wearing an article around one's neck that can be so easily pulled tighter. If not careful, this trope might well overlap with Killer Outfit.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- GTO: The Early Years: The scarf Souna made for Eikichi looks so much like a noose that at first he thinks she's metaphorically saying she wants him to die. It is pretty warm, though.
Comics
- Invoked in Calvin and Hobbes; Calvin has an Imagine Spot that he's a criminal going to the gallows while his parents are forcing him to put on a tie.
- Astro City: The Hanged Man, who is a ghost and may actually have been originally killed by hanging.
- DC Comics also has a character called the Hangman who has one of these (although when he was created in the forties by MLJ Comics- currently an Archie Publications imprint- he only had a rope belt).
- So prevalent is the "zombies wear necktie nooses" thing that in Blackest Night, Black Lantern Maxwell Lord wears one... despite having not been killed by hanging.
- Watchmen: Hooded Justice wears a noose, probably because he's intentionally trying to be a more intimidating kind of costumed hero. Paired with his face-concealing hood, it also evokes his pro-KKK sympathies.
- The Darker and Edgier version of the Scarecrow wears one in the Oz (Caliber) comics.
Films — Live-Action
- Scarecrow in Batman Begins, has a noose around his neck which comes with his bag gas mask. Which might be a reference to his appearance in Season Three of Batman: The Animated Series
- Mixed in with Chained by Fashion, Jason in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood has a chain noose around his neck after he was freed from his rock-bottom water-y grave by Tina. The chain came from the time he was sent to the bottom of Crystal Lake thanks to Tommy from the previous movie.
- The aiguillette is a Real Life military ornament consisting of a silk cord worn around the neck which looks like a noose. This is referenced in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life in the "Tiger in Africa" sketch. The soldiers are quite clearly wearing actual nooses that resemble aiguillettes, rather than vice versa.
Literature
- The Dresden Files: Nicodemus Archleone wears the actual noose Judas Iscariot hanged himself with as a bolo tie. In addition to playing up his "Biblical evil" motif, it renders him effectively invulnerable to physical harm. However, Harry figures out that Nicodemus is not immune to being strangled with the noose itself.
- On one cover, pulp hero The Spider is swinging in Tarzan-style on one that's still tied to something.
- In Shadow of a Dark Queen, Calis' secret paramilitary squad of condemned criminals are forced to wear nooses as a reminder that they are Legally Dead (they're even put through a fake "hanging") and will become actually dead if they fail during their Training from Hell.
Music
- The Monks (a Proto Punk Garage Rock band) would perform in all black, with nooses around their necks.
- In “Boombox” by The Lonely Island, a scene of businessmen in a boardroom is described in rather miserable and unflattering terms, complete with "the ties around their necks [being] like a hangman’s noose."
Tabletop Games
- Basic Dungeons & Dragons Immortals rules module IM3 The Best of Intentions. One of the pre-rolled character Immortals is The Hanged Man. In his normal form he wears a noose around his neck, a reminder of his mortal life when he was hanged by a lynch mob for practicing witchcraft.
- Over the Edge. The island of Al-Amarja is a very odd place, with a population that includes wizards, psychics, spies, criminals, conspiratorial groups, aliens, mad scientists, angels and mutants. Many native Al-Amarjans wear a noose around their necks as a fashion statement and a reference to their bizarre and dangerous lifestyle.
Video Games
- Scarecrow in the Batman: Arkham Series. After being nearly killed in the first game, he returns in Knight, where the noose seems to be tied into the system of orogastric tubes that are keeping him alive (and to complete the effect he's got a hooded jacket that resembles a bodybag).
- Invoked again by Scarecrow in the game Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu, based on the continuity of Batman: The Animated Series. This ends up being deconstructed, however, as after Batman beats him it gets snagged on a statue and nearly chokes him to death before Batman can cut him down again.
- Greed in The Binding of Isaac appears as as walking corpse with a noose around its neck. This carries over its alternative forms, such as Keeper and Ultra Greed.
- Injustice: Gods Among Us: The zombie Solomon Grundy wears one. It's signifies that he's gone through death multiple times, along with some other subtle clues like the dozen knives in his back.
- And come Injustice 2 Scarecrow's wearing his classic one.
- The Scarecrow enemies in The Color of Madness DLC in Darkest Dungeon sport one of these around their neck.
- Jesse Lynch, a secondary villain in the "Ghost Town" chapter of Red Dead Revolver is still wearing the noose that was used to hang him.
- The Scarecrow mask costume piece in Champions Online comes equipped with one of these.
- League of Legends has Fiddlesticks, an impossibly ancient scarecrow-shaped fear demon, who wears one of these, likely to evoke one of its hypothesized backstories that it Was Once a Man executed by an angry mob before it became a demon. Having gone through a few different designs over the years, it actually started off with a less conspicuous string with a mysterious key around its neck before it disappeared and was replaced by the noose, though its design since 2020 has given it both.
- While not exactly a noose, Dean Domino, featured in Fallout: New Vegas's Dead Money DLC often refers to the explosive bomb collars that he, the player, and the other two companions in that DLC wear (or have swallowed- It Makes Sense in Context) as "neckties". Given how ridiculously easy it is to accidentally trigger them on the speakers hidden in the villa, especially when the player is focused on dodging the Ghost People and the Cloud, it might as well be a noose.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: After the art shift in season 3, Scarecrow sports one, along with generally becoming a lot more intimidating and less cartoony. It proved popular enough to work in its way into other depictions.
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Invoked by Gentleman Ghost, who finds the noose he was hanged with a century ago and remarks "Ah! My old necktie. Some things never go out of fashion". He doesn't put it back on, though.
- Looney Tunes: In the short "Designs For Leaving", Daffy Duck shows Elmer Fudd a necktie tying machine that lets one choose which knot. Elmer is almost choked when Daffy selects the "Alcatraz Ascot".
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: In "Attack of the 5 1/2 Foot Geek", one of the members of the romance-hating Lonely Hearts Club Gang has a noose around his neck, implying a Bungled Suicide.
Real Life
- Invoked: You can find ties with a noose patterned on them, playing up the more lighthearted interpretation.
- The aiguillette is a military ornament consisting of a silk cord worn around the neck, strongly resembling this trope. There is a legend that is used to explain this: some military unit had been reprimanded for cowardice so often that they were told they would be hanged next time. They proceeded to distinguish themselves with acts of bravery, and the noose became a variant of Appropriated Appellation.
