Have you ever seen an item in the game that completely baffles you? Well about a month ago that’s what happened to me when I saw a Devilish Diablo effect sideways on the head of a pyro wearing a Head Full of Hot Air. I asked what the price was and the guy said 60 keys, and I bought it right then. This started to pique my interest in these obscure glitched-effect unusuals that I have heard sparsely about over the past year.

I started to research into this topic and contacted a few friends who had these specific unusuals. I gathered a bit of information from them, but not the full extent of information I wanted. I started to realize it was very specific effects that were glitched and on very specific hats based on my research and own testing.

Glitched Unusuals are unusuals that have their effect position skewed in someway that makes the effect upside down or sideways. These spawn on 5 specific case hats with very specific effects.

What causes this to happen? For certain hats it is based on how many points of contact the hat has on the character model. The game doesn't know where to place the unusual effect, so it makes the best assumption where to put it and that happens to be sideways. For other hats, the game spawns the hat upside down and backwards, and then places the model correctly on the character, but the effect is fixed to the position on the hat and flips effect upside down when the hat gets corrected.

• A Head Full of Hot Air (sideways)
  
• Phononaut (sideways)
  
• Captain Space Mann (unboxable) (sideways)
  
• Head Hedge (upside down)
  
• Crack Pot (upside down)
  
• Dumb Bell (upside down)

• Devilish Diablo
  
• Tempered Thorns
  
• Severed Serration
  
• Hospitable Festivity
  
• Condescending Embrace
  
• Spiraling Lights
  
• Twisting Lights
  
• Ardent Antlers
  
• Holiday Horns
  
• Shining Stag
  
• Haunted Kraken
  
• Eerie Kraken
  
• Soulful Slice
  
• Horsemann's Hack
  
• Haunted Forever!
  
• Forever And Forever!
  
• Cursed Forever!
  
• Haunted Wick
  
• Wicked Wick
  
• Spectral Wick

ONLY "UPSIDE DOWN" HATS

• Circling Peace Sign (spins counter-clockwise)
  
• Circling Heart (spins counter-clockwise)
  
• Circling TF Logo (spins counter-clockwise)
  
• Kraken does not work because the way particles are spawned

I had been gathering information on these hats slowly over a few weeks based on word-of-mouth and testing of my own. I had been told that the Phononaunt, the Head Full of Hot Air, and Head Hedge were glitched, but the other three hats I had to find out through extensive testing of my own. I would go through all classified listings of case hats and inspect them in game to see if they were glitched, but here's the catch, if they are glitched sometimes they don’t show on inspect, but only in game. I will get into this later. I started to go into the itemtest server and spawn hats with effects I knew were glitched to see if they showed up glitched on any case hats. In three instances they showed up glitched that were not previously known, but only two are unboxable. I would then test all effects on the hats I knew were glitched to see which effects were effected.

• Crack Pot
  
• Dumb Bell
  
• Captain Space Mann (unboxable)

The “upside down” hats can be broken down into two groups themselves:

• When adjusted goes to normal (Crack Pot)
  
• When adjusted stays glitched (Dumb Bell and Head Hedge)

Devilish Diablo and sister effects seem to have their horns stretched out longer than normal and do not curve as much. The "glow" seems to be bigger than normal as well.

Haunted Wick and sister effects will have the smoke and ghosts separated. The effect goes forward.

Condescending Embrace and sister effect will have half of the particle effects not present.

Haunted Forever! and sister effects will have the eyes under the smile and half the particles will be spawning downward, and the other half will be spawning upward.

Kraken effects do not work with upside down hats, because of the way particles are spawned. It is only lowered slightly in the body.

Circling Effects will rotate counter-clockwise, because the effect is "upside down"






Sideways effects will return to normal when adjusted

Haunted Wick and sister effects will have the smoke and ghosts separated and going straight up into the air.

Condescending Embrace and sister effect will have half of the particle effects not present.

Haunted Forever! and sister effects will have the eyes and smile at an angle and half the particles will be spawning outward and the other half will be spawning upward.

Kraken will spawn sideways but look flat from straight on.




When adjusted most hats will look like their glitch counterpart when editing your class and in the menu to pick your character, but in game, it is normal and vice versa. That is why it was difficult for me to find out which hats were glitched or not by the classified listings method, therefore I had to test most of the items myself.

Through my research I had found out the "upside down" effects have been in the game since at least 2013. On some hats Roboactive and Anti-Freeze will be upside down.



I believe that these upside down effects only happen on Sniper and Soldier, because they are the only class that has a cosmetic category for "Helmets".

The Horror Shawl has an interesting property with unadjusted regions. Effects will spawn in the lower abdomen of the Heavy and sometimes you can see the effects coming out from his back.




There has been one instance that I have seen with an unusual effect being glitched on a hat that doesn't normally express the consistent "normal" behavior for glitched unusuals. It was a Soulful Slice Seared Sorcerer with the effect being sideways.

Through my research I had also heard about in one instance of a taunt having a sideways effect and also one instance of a hat being unusual but not expressing any unusual effect at all.

Condescending Embrace Head Hedge





Holiday Horns Crack Pot





Soulful Slice Crack Pot





Devilish Diablo Head Hedge






Ardent Antlers Dumb Bell





Haunted Forever! Head Hedge





Devilish Diablo Head Full of Hot Air'






Shining Stag Head Full of Hot Air






Haunted Wick Head Full of Hot Air






Twisting Lights Head Full of Hot Air






Severed Serration Head Hedge






Soulful Slice Head Hedge






Wicked Wick Head Hedge






Spiraling Lights Head Hedge





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