The three main categories that Katakana words fit into are onomatopoeia, loan words, and emphasis. From my research on unusual uses of Katakana words, I have found several, some of which came out to be either emphasis words or loan words from another country. For example, パン does not sound like "bread,"it is not an onomatopoeia, and it is not used for emphasis. However, I found that it is a loan word of Portuguese origin. Also, I have noticed that Katakana is used frequently in Japanese brand names instead of Hiragana. For instance Calpico in Katakana is カルピス as shown below:
I would categorize カルピス as an emphasis word for the purposes of internationalizing the company, in which case it is globally recognized. Instead of using Hiragana or Kanji, they use Katakana because Katakana is derived from many other languages.
Another example of this unusual use of Katakana is from the company ユニクロ (Uniqlo):
The left logo shows that this company prefers to use Katakana instead of Hiragana or Kanji. Uniqlo is a leading clothing manufacturer and is widely international. Again, this shows that them using Katakana can be for the purposes of being an international company.
Also, I have come across ゲロゲロwhich is an onomatopoeia as seen below:
For the most part, the only unusual Katakana words that did not seem to fit into the three criteria were generally names (i.e. scientific names or company names). The rest of the unusual Katakana words seemed like they were not emphasis or loan words because it is difficult to identify them in Hiragana or a foreign language other than English. I believe Katakana words are used differently depending on users. For instance, companies may use them as a strategy to be recognized globally. Now that it is gradually becoming a common practice to use Katakana, there are slightly different criteria for different users of Katakana words.
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