Losing Your Head

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Kill me."[1]

"Now tho' you'd have said that head was dead
(For its owner dead was he),
It stood on its neck, with a smile well-bred,
And bowed three times to me!"

—Pooh-Bah, The Mikado ("The Criminal Cried")

A beheading can be a messy and extremely painful thing to see, let alone experience. While it's been said that, theoretically (It's understandably hard to confirm), consciousness may continue for a few seconds after decapitation, it seems to last much longer in speculative fiction. It has been shown that random brain activity can continue for many minutes, ending in a flurry of activity reminiscent of a brain seizure.

It may be justified for robots, who may have some power source in the skull that keeps them going after being separated from their shoulders, or might not have their core processor in their head anyway. The Undead may also exhibit this ability to have a functioning head and separate functioning body.

The head generally possesses the ability to audibly speak despite the lack of lungs. Robots could probably have their entire vocal system in their head, but anything else should only be able to mouth words. May or may not be capable of independent movement by either bouncing, rolling or levitating.

Sometimes the body will still be functional and capable of independent movement, resulting in the head trying to tell it to pick it up and reattach it. The Fridge Logic that the body has no ears to hear this is rarely addressed.

See also Alas, Poor Yorick, Brain In a Jar, Helping Hands, Your Head Asplode, Cranial Processing Unit, Detachment Combat.

Related: Head Transplantation, Headless Horseman, Pulling Themselves Together, Appendage Assimilation, and Having a Heart.

Contrast Decapitation Required.

As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Losing Your Head include:

Advertising

  • A TV advertisement for Gusto, a European snack food resembling shoestring potatoes, has a man's severed head lying on the floor, still talking, as his body stumbles around aimlessly.
  • A banner ad for Treximet, a prescription headache remedy, has a woman who says, "My migraines are so excruciating, I just want to take my head off."
  • A Dentyne Ice commercial plus Human Popsicle
  • Gary The Robot suffers this cruel fate in an ad for Pillsbury Pizza Pops.
  • In an advert for VO5 hair products a teenager removes his own head in order to style his hair. He then procedes to flirt with a woman holding her head in her hands.
  • An interesting case turned up in a commercial for Fruit Gushers that had a space theme. Toward the end of the commercial, some kid's head turns into a flying saucer. At the end of the commercial, we see the kid's Flying Saucer head fly away, leaving his headless body behind.
    • Could also have some Fridge Horror if you consider the fact that the kid's head might not come back, leaving his body without a head.
    • In a similar vein, the ad for Gushers Magic Pieces ended with a girl making a candy "disappear," only for her head to vanish in a puff of smoke. Her voice says, "Hey, where'd I go?" suggesting that the head has turned invisible or gone somewhere else. 'Cause, y'know, it's magic.

Anime and Manga

  • Dio Brando decapitates himself to avoid being killed by the Ripple in the first part of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. He later steals Jonathan Joestar's body to replace his own. In the second part, Wham briefly survives getting his head blown off, but the Ripple is already destroying it, so he dies not too long afterward.
    • In the third part, Vanilla Ice decapitates himself using his own Stand so he can offer his blood to Dio. Dio then uses his own blood to revive Ice, claiming "you don't need to die." Since Dio used his blood, Vanilla Ice becomes a vampire, making him unkillable until Polnareff exposes him to sunlight. Unfortunately for Ice, although he knew about the weakness, he didn't realize he was a vampire.
  • One Piece
    • Due to his Devil Fruit, Buggy the Clown can separate any body part, but his move "Chop Chop Quick Escape" involves him popping his head off to stop people from punching his face.
    • There's also Trafalgar Law, who apparently can do similar things to other people. The first instance of him using tricks like that in the manga involves a justifiably weirded out marine juggling the talking head of one of his comrades.
    • Crocodile recently got his head sliced off by Doflamingo, but because he can use his Logia fruit's reformation power by reflex he attached it just a second later.
    • This only happened in the manga, but after being attacked by Dalton, Wapol's troupe of doctors were quick to patch him up... except for the fact that they hadn't reattached his head to his body, which they did off-panel.
  • Princess Mononoke: "Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite."
  • Hidan from Naruto is immortal, but one time it was cut off he couldn't move until Kakuzu used his threads to sew it back on. Later Kakuzu isn't around to reattach it, and Shikamaru cuts his head off, but decides to be more thorough and blows up his body while throwing his head into a deep pit in the private land of the Nara clan and then buries it in an avalanche. While the head is screaming curses at him.
    • Later still, Kisame (not really) has this happen to him, and he is somehow able to get off a compliment on his opponents' abilities as his head flies through the air.
  • A number of people have had odd things happen to their heads in Franken Fran. Fran herself has sewn her own head back on after decapitation.
  • Reiko the Zombie Shop's protagonist zombifies her own head after an unfortunate run-in with a serial killer. She gets a new body in the second volume.
  • Invoked in class 3-A's Haunted House in the Mahora Festival of Mahou Sensei Negima, where Akira, the guide in the school themed haunted house, appeared to get decapitated and her head told Negi to run away. She's actually just lying on the ground with a cover that matches the floor tiles camouflaging the rest of her body, but Negi was too freaked out to notice.
    • In the backstory, Tertium did this to Secundum after Secundum rewrote Shiori's sister.
  • The duel between Mai and Marik in the Yu-Gi-Oh manga. Mai's monster manages to decapitate Marik's monster, which are both tied by lifelines to their respective duelists. Guess what happens to Marik...
  • Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist has Law do this to him with a huge sledgehammer as a demonstration of his powers. He then tells him to improve his aim after regenerating, due to him missing a part of his jaw.
    • Al also gets his head taken off multiple times. Of course, this barely affects him. He can still speak, although the sound could be coming from the blood seal.
    • Same goes for Barry, he just snaps his head back on whenever it gets knocked off.
    • Slicer's blood seal is in the helmet, so while it's still not fatal it does incapacitate him. Of course, then his younger brother can just take over.
  • Chronologically, this is how Genma gets introduced in Ninja Scroll, his head gets chopped off. It's later shown he can regenerate any wound ever, and someone put his head back on his neck and he sports a visible scar.
  • Happens to Android 16 in the Cell arc of Dragonball Z. After his Final Speech, Cell steps on the head and destroys it. Which makes Gohan go BATSHIT on Cell.
    • Also happened to Guldo when Vegeta slices his head off and he lives until Vegeta blows it up. Likewise, Dr. Gero had his head kicked off by Android 17, which appears to live until 17 also stepped on it.
    • Sergeant Metallic in Dragon Ball has his head blown up by Goku's Kamehameha, but survives as he's a robot. Surely, It scares and surprises him. Shortly after, however, Metallic runs out of battery.
  • Midori no Hibi did this with an android-version of a character. After she had been separated from her legs, her body later self destructed, but her head survived to jet into the professor who made her.
  • Transformers Headmasters
  • Naraku from Inuyasha often sends disguised puppets to fight in his place. The first time that this is revealed, the puppet is beheaded, and appears to be dead. After the protagonists let down their guard, the puppet springs back to life, including the head which rolls upright again, and begins to speak.
    • The episode "3000 Leagues in Search of Father" also focuses around this. Demons have enough vigor to survive decapitation for a day or two, which leads to the son of a demon to find his father's body and place the head back on.
  • One rather disturbing scene in the anime of Umineko no Naku Koro ni features Maria's head on a platter. Laughing psychotically and daring Rosa to eat her.
  • Happens to Reiha in the Vampire Princess Miyu TV series. After Miyu and Larva kill her, her body picks up her head and then disappears, sweating to return later.
  • Happens to various individuals around the heroine repeatedly in Hellsing, falling somewhere between Gorn and Narm.
  • In the manga Astro Boy's head is apparently not that well attached, judging by the frequency of which it detaches. Though it's stated that his electronic brain is in his chest and not his head, which is just for talking, hearing, and sight.
  • Tomie, but then she is an Eldritch Abomination in human form.
  • Happened to Hell King Bass in Violinist of Hameln during a flashback. Better yet, all of his body except for the head was annihilated. Unfortunately, he is a near-immortal mazoku, who can continue to exist even in this state, and he was swift to obtain a pupped to haul his (literally) disembodied head around.
  • Her head wasn't attached to begin with, but losing it is what sent Celty to search for it in Ikebukuro.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam's Grand Finale has 2 of this. Char's Zeong has a cockpit as the mobile armor's head, and he evantually has to saperate it from the body. The Gundam gets it head tore off during the battle, and the famous "Last Shooting" pose has it shoots a beam rifle into a colony to destroy an empty Zeong's head, without a head nor a left arm.
  • Played for Laughs in Doctor Slump. Arale is a little android girl whose head pops off quite easily. For example, this may cause momentary horror in an onlooker who thinks she's human.
  • Kikuchiyo's introduction in Seven Samurai has him get decapitated by Kambei as part of a ploy act to distract a guy holding a baby hostage, with his head later berating him for stealing his rescue attempt. Later on, in an infiltration plan in which some of the samurai let themselves get captured, his head is delivered as a trophy, while his body enters enemy territory hidden within a pile of hay.
  • Kendaman from Kinnikuman uses his head as a weapon, which is easy considering its more or less a wrecking ball attached to his arm.
  • Played for Laughs in Rosario + Vampire by Ling-Ling, a zombie who can (and frequently does) freely detach and reattach her body parts, most especially her head.
  • Literally Celty's character arc in Durarara!!: She's a dullahan (a Celtic fairy that takes the form of a person carrying their own severed head) whose head has gone missing, and she's looking for it.

Comic Books

  • The Amazing Screw-On Head is built on this trope.
  • An early issue of Transformers did this, with Optimus Prime's head held captive and his body under the Decepticons' remote control.
  • The comic book series Wildguard had a character named Segmented Man who could segment his body parts. He demonstrates with his head.
  • MF Enterprises had a character named "Captain Marvel" with similar powers.
  • Preacher (Comic Book) had vampire sidekick Cassidy, who gets his head cut off in one book and can still talk and such just fine.
    • Healing was difficult. Scarves were employed.
  • X-Men villain Cameron Hodge survived beheading due to a Deal with the Devil that had made him immortal.
  • Bloodpool had Rubble (who is indeed made of rubble), who liked to take off his head and throw it. In one issue, his head is blown to bits during this attack, and he still retains consciousness, channeling his dialogue through a telepathic teammate.
  • The villain Cyberface from The Savage Dragon survived as a disembodied head. Justified, in one aspect, that his power was interact with machinery.
  • Mr. Gone from The Maxx was somehow beheaded by an out-of-shape woman wielding a knife-length tooth of one of his henchmonsters, but that didn't stop him from continuing to play mind games with the heroes. Eventually he finds a chiropractor to reattach his head.
  • Numerous characters in Fables do this. including the Wooden Soldiers, Bright Day and Frankenstein's Monster.
  • The Mayor was able to posses dead bodies after his own death and eventually settled in a "patchwork" monster built by the Initiative with such an ability in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tie-in comic.
  • Mysterio projects an illusion of himself performing such an ability in various Spider-Man comics.
  • Green Lantern. Abin Sur, the man who gave Hal Jordan his ring, has an evil son. Sur Jr. gets his head chopped off. It's later revealed, his race (he's an alien) doesn't quite need their heads and he regrows it (slowly) and returns. Only to get shredded after killing some kids. No luck there.
  • Dimitri from the Sonic The Hedgehog Archie comic is a cyborg head in a floating fishbowl.
  • The Puzzler from Superman.
    • And confusingly enough, Superman himself once.
    • In the 1990s, this became Metallo's power - his head couldn't just operate without a body, it could seize control of any machinery and turn it into a body. In the absence of convenient machines, it scuttled around on spider-legs.
  • In the early 1990s Sleepwalker comics, Rick Sheridan ends up trapped in Sleepwalker's body and becomes trapped in the Mindscape, where he faces several different demons, including one that knocked his/Sleepwalker's head off. Cobweb points out that since Rick is in the Mindscape, the normal laws of nature don't apply, and it's also implied that the whole thing was just an illusion dreamt up by Cobweb to convince Rick that Sleepwalker's race actually planned to invade Earth.
  • Hellboy: The short story "Heads" is based on this trope. These heads reappear in Hellboy's Animated Adaptation "Sword of the Storms".
    • Also in the story "King Vold", the King in question carries his decapitated head at arms length.
  • A Variant cover for Marvel Zombies features the Undead X-Men with Cyclops carrying his head in his hands continuing to fire optic blasts at Magneto.
    • Also in Marvel Zombie, Zombie Hawkeye is a disembodied head who talks.
  • Brick of the Doom's IV.
  • The Scarecrow demonstrates in the cover of the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz #7
  • Niles Caulder of the Doom Patrol has spent time as a disembodied head in a jar. Hard to say if this is still true as of the latest retcon, though.
  • New Adventures of Superboy #25
  • Strange Adventures #136
  • Orpheus from The Sandman is beheaded but unable to die due to a deal with Death he made while in the throes of grief.
  • Brazilian comic Penadinho/Bug-a-booo's Stock Monsters include Cranicola/Skully, a disembodied skull who lies atop a stone (though he jumps from time to time) and sometimes misses his body.
  • Dick Grayson in The Dark Knight Strikes Again believe it or not.
  • Invoked by the Monkey King in American Born Chinese, who continues speaking uninterrupted even after being beheaded.
  • Played straight by Deadpool. Wolverine cuts his head off, and comments that even with regeneration he may still die from it. Unless his head get reattached soon afterwards. It does, and Deadpool himself comments that his mouth is dry and that he hadn't spoken for awhile. And later Zombie-Deadpool, reduced to nothing but a hungry head.
  • In Deaths Head's first encounter against Iron Man 2020, Iron Man decapitates Death's Head in battle. Annoyed, Death's Head used his headless body to beat up Iron Man and work off his aggression.
  • In the Robo-Hunter reboot, Sam has been reduced to this, forcing his granddaughter to take over running the business.

Fan Works

  • In the Harry Potter fic Can't Have It Both Ways, Nearly-Headless Nick stretched his head up by the hair so that Harry could cut it off properly with the Sword of Gryffindor. This resulted in the head shooting across the room while his body stumbled about blindly.
  • In part one of the Sailor Moon/Ranma ½ Crossover Shin Silver Millennium Monogatari by W. Suika Roberts, Ranma experiences a full-immersion flashback to the death by beheading of her Silver Millennium incarnation.
  • In the AU Spice Girls/S Club 7 Crossover fic, Spice Fortress short, "Is There a Medic in the House", Geri The Hacker has this misfortune. She tells Victoria the Medic, who's keeping Geri's head alive, to just kill her. Victoria rejects this while working on Melanie The Fighter.
    • In Getting Some Take-Out, Emma meets this fate thanks to a random giant chicken. Emma asks the others to get her headless body despite the fight with the Cucco Chicken. Most of the others suffer the same fate, leading Jo and Victoria fixing the mess, with comical results.
  • Case of the Missing Technology features this. First, the narrator explains to Jay about what happened Girls Aloud members being decapitated yet surviving thanks to being placed in a device to keep them alive. Later, Melanie meets the same fate, while kept frozen in PIECES. Yeh, even the narrator was disgusted by that.
  • Alternate Universe Fic/Real Person Fic, Spice Force Logic: Mind Games had both Melanie and Emma going on a medical operation called 'Brukhonenko' Method on Mars to save their lives after an accident onboard the space station called the Ira. The operation was successful, but this results in them with "cabinets" as substitutes until their bodies are rebuilt.

Film

Jeebs: You insensitive prick! Do you have any idea how much that stings?"
Kay: Now show him the merchandise, Jeebs, or you're gonna lose another head.

  • In the live-action Transformers, when Frenzy's head is severed with a sawzall, the head is capable of scuttling around on its trailing components, and also turning into Sam's cell phone.
  • Mars Attacks!. Donald and Natalie's heads are severed, but survive on hanging wires and attached to a chihuahua respectively.
  • The film adaptation of My Favorite Martian
  • In Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the Sultan cuts off the Treasurer's head, which flies through the air, lands in one of the harem baths, and winks at one of the Sultan's wives. And then there are the King and Queen of the Moon, who have detachable heads, but that's not quite the same thing.
  • Re-Animator has his rival's head in a jar and tells him, "You're a no-body!"
    • And the severed head still got more booty than him.
  • The Thing That Couldn't Die (a movie that later appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000) featured the disembodied head of an evil hypnotist, cursed to a Fate Worse Than Death back in the 1500's. It was dug up centuries later by a bunch of dim-witted ranchers and was able to manipulate anyone it made eye contact with. Only after it had been reattached to its body could it be destroyed. Tom Servo showed during the host segment of this film that he too possessed such a talent.
    • Subverted in that the severed head could only mouth words, not speak aloud.
    • Also on Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Brain That Wouldn't Die, where a scientist keeps his fiancée's head alive in a pan until he can retrieve a new body for her.
    • And in yet another episode, Tormented: although the deceased girlfriend was not beheaded or otherwise dismembered, she can send selected bits of herself to vex her unfaithful beau. Her detached head is quite sarcastic.
  • In the horror-comedy movie Idle Hands, Elden Henson's character Pnub is decapitated by a thrown circular saw blade, and as his head bounces down a flight of stairs, he looks up at the killer and says "Whoa, cool."
  • "Evil" Ash in Army of Darkness
    • A beheaded demon-possessed woman also does a rather memorable dance in Evil Dead 2.
  • "Evil" Gadget in the Live Action Adaptation of Inspector Gadget.
  • One of Davy Jones' crewman in Pirates of the Caribbean did this. Eventually his body ran off without him and the head crawled off on its own, using his Half-Human Hybrid abilities.

"Follow my voice! Follow my voice! To the left. No, the other left. (body rams into a tree) ...No, that's a tree."

    • Makes you wonder what his head was talking to his body for - the ears are also on the head.
    • The human ears, maybe. Davey Jones only knows how many fishes' ears the body might've had, or where they were located...
  • X Files 2: I Want to Believe
  • Mombi and her Hall of Heads plus Gump in Return to Oz
    • Which was adapted from Langwidere - see the literature section below.
  • Daffy Duck in Looney Tunes Back in Action. Lasers can be hazardous to your health.
  • B4 from Star Trek: Nemesis
  • C-3PO in Attack of the Clones, resulting in a horrifyingly cringe-inducing Hurricane of Puns.
  • The evil robots at the beginning of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey play hoops with their heads.
  • In The Last Starfighter, the android Beta removes his own head to repair it.
  • In Cyborg 2, Angelina Jolie's character has her head removed when being interrogated.
  • The Borg Queen, first introduced in Star Trek: First Contact, displayed the ability again in Voyager.
  • While not completely decapitated, Ash in Alien and The Terminator in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines are able to operate with only a few wires keeping their heads on their shoulders.
    • Bishop from Aliens is torn in half in that film, but in Alien³, after his ship crashes only his head (and part of the chest) "survives".
      • However Ripley does have to plug his remains into various pieces of hardware in oder to turn him back on/re-activate/bring back to life. As I recall she offers to keep him running in the hope of repair but he declines the offer and chooses to die/get turned off/de-re-activated.
    • After the femmebot in Friday the 13th (film) is decapitated by Jason, her head is retrieved by her creator and hooked up to the ship's computer.
  • Decapitating the monster in The Thing doesn't work, in one instance the head grows legs and walks away.
  • The Fireys in Labyrinth.
  • Rasputin in Anastasia.
  • In Aguirre, the Wrath of God, a member of the party who displeases Aguirre is decapitated from behind—the head says one more word before expiring.
  • In the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Humma Kavula takes one of Zaphod Beeblebrox's heads as collateral while they retrieved the POV gun. He mounted it on a hula girl bobblehead and put a sign that read "Idiot". (No, he's not bitter about losing the election to Zaphod. Why'd you ask?)
  • Alsatia in Toys. She's a robot, and does wind up needing a fair amount of repair work as a result of her decapitation.
  • X Men Origins: Wolverine: In one of The Stingers Deadpool's severed head wakes up before shushing to the audience and fading to black
    • And this scene is still not available in HD.
  • Corpse Bride: Paul the "Head Waiter" He can't move under his own power very efficiently, so he is carried on the backs of cockroaches.
  • This happened to a soldier ant in Antz during a battle; he was still alive which made for a pretty bizarre death scene.
  • The two friends in nothing eventually wish away everything around each other in an argument until they're both down to just their heads... which they find they can't bring themselves to wish away because they still like each other after all. Awwwwww.
  • The film poster of Beetlejuice.
    • In the movie Barbara decapitates Adam to scare the living folks out of their house - unfortunately the two of them are Invisible to Normals except Lydia.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas: And since I am dead, I can take off my head/To recite Shakespearean quotations!"
  • The Mayor's Daughter from Cemetery Man.
  • They Saved Hitlers Brain - Hitler's head in a jar pretty much has to have inspired the folks at Futurama.
  • Inverted in Tank Girl, where Kesslee suffers a terrible facial injury from the Rippers, so has his own head cut off deliberately and his consciousness downloaded into a hologram-projecting computer, installed in his neck. No telling how he eats and breathes and perceives his surroundings thereafter, but it generates a 3-D image of his head that moves in synch with a voice synthesizer.
  • The ending of Freddy vs. Jason. That was good example.
  • Prince of Darkness. The woman who becomes The Chosen One of Satan has her head cut off. She picks up her head and puts it back on her neck, where it re-attaches itself.
  • The first shark attack in Jaws 3-D is on a large grouper, the head of which is left floating in a cloud of blood. Its mouth is still moving.
  • The movie version of Sin City has one of the protagonists imagining that a dead body is talking to him. At one point, the dead body loses a head. The main character later imagines the decapitated head trying to talk with him briefly.
  • Ghostbusters II discussed this trope when detailing the fate of Vigo the Carpathian. Just before his head died, he uttered a prophetic statement that he would return.
  • An example near the end of Wolfen has a character's throat torn out by a wolf, resulting in his head ending up separate from his body. When it's obvious from the attempted mouthing of words and blinking that the head is still functional, a colleague shoots the car he's next to, putting him out of his misery.
  • R.L. Stine's Mostly Ghostly: Who Let the Ghosts Out?. The live action movie version of "Mostly Ghostly" has this happen to the ghost boy called Nicky when listening to a portal in the wall to an evil dimension. A hand comes out of the wall and grabs him by the hair. His sister grabs his ankles and pulls to stop him from getting dragged in. The hand tugs hard enough that his head comes off and his headless body aimlessly wanders away until his sister stops him. She tries to pull his head free from the hand with no avail, so she tells his body to help her pull him free from the hand. The hand lets go and his head falls on the floor. His sister [[[Pulling Themselves Together]] reattaches his head to his body]], only she apparently put his head on backwards so he rotates his head back to normal.
  • Harris from Severance wonders what it is like to be beheaded. He gets his wish, and the last sight of his body stumbling around raises a smile.
  • In an old Three Stooges short, a Mad Scientist is looking for a human head for his monster. In one scene Larry pokes his head through the underside of an open-leaf table. Moe enters, sees just Larry's head poking through the hole, and assumes the worst. Cue scream and faint.
  • Nakano clings to life after being beheaded by Kane in Highlander III the Sorcerer long enough to trap him in the cave they are in.
  • In the first Scary Movie, a female victim is subjected to decapitation by Ghostface, but she keeps taunting him. Surprised to see that his victim is still alive, Ghostface just dumps his victim's head in a random dumper because she was just annoying.

Literature

  • Skulduggery Pleasant's real skull was stolen by goblins. The one on his neck now is an entirely different on, which he won in a poker game. After the third book, the original skull becomes the MacGuffin.
  • Princess Langwidere, a character in L. Frank Baum's Oz novel Ozma of Oz. She has 30 different heads that she can place on her neck.
    • The inspiration for Mombi in the adaptation (see Film), and given a chilling treatment in the Sissor Sisters song "Return to Oz," though Mombi and Langwidere were two separate villains in Baum.
  • Worzel Gummidge only has three heads—swede, mangel-wurzel, and turnip -- "for different occasions".
  • Ant heads remain alive for some time in Bernard Werber's Empire of the Ants novels (only the first was translated to English), and this is at times a crucial plot point.
  • The Headless Horseman.
    • And the Green Knight.
  • The Denizens of the House in Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series have the ability to survive being decapitated, so of course one bad guy announces himself by flinging talking severed heads at the main character's feet.
  • The heads in jars of Orson Scott Card's Wyrms. They are kept alive by bio-engineered alien worms, and are chemically conditioned to never lie. The king keeps them as advisors, and many of them openly hate him, and were his enemies in their former lives. They can't speak unless someone pumps the bellows that push air through their vocal cords.
  • In John C. Wright's The Orphans Of Chaos, Orpheus appears a headless man who carries about his head separately. On the other hand, he is dead and just coming from Hades, (and they are about to make him Psychopomp).
  • In many of Alastair Reynolds novels the technology exists to reattach severed heads or even regrow whole bodies. Spacesuits are equipped with built-in head-severing equipment as a last-resort survival mechanism, though in at least one novel a character opts for a prosthetic body instead.
  • Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks. Special Circumstances operative Cheradenine Zakalwe crash-lands on a primitive planet and is sacrificed by the natives through decapitation. Fortunately his colleages zoom in just in time to snatch back his head, but not before he's had a horrified moment to realise exactly what just happened. Later Zakalwe is in hospital waiting for a new body to be grown (they gave him the choice of remaining unconscious but he'd rather watch television) when the artificially-intelligent drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw (who doesn't like Zakalwe much, and has a twisted sense of humor) sends him a present. A hat.
  • Urza in the Magic: The Gathering tie-in novels to the "Invasion" block. Planeswalkers being energy beings, this is understandable.
  • Vampires in the Discworld have to be staked as well as decapitated to kill - Otto loses his head in The Truth and merely has to put it back on the stump. They find it embarrassing to reattach their heads in public (he compares it to using the facilities in front of people).
    • Likewise, zombies on the Discworld can survive almost any dismemberment.
    • Unseen Academicals mentions a long-ago game of street football in which a fallen player's severed head was mistaken for the ball, and wound up being used to score the winning goal. The victim was posthumously credited for the victory.
    • Invoking this trope on King Lorenzo the Kind (who wasn't) made "Old Stoneface" Vimes infamous in Anhk-Morpork's history. No one else would dare to wield the ax.
    • In The Last Continent, this is mentioned as an occasional side effect of the hangman's not adjusting the length of the rope properly.
  • Averted in Michael Slade's Headhunter. When the POV of a just-decapitated woman is shown, she can only think, not speak or breathe, and remains conscious only briefly.
  • In the Dragonlance novel The Legend of Huma, Huma has to fight the immortal warlord Crynus. After running him through the neck and the stomach barely slow him down, Huma gets his hands on Crynus' battle axe and knocks off his head with one blow. Then Crynus's body stands up again and starts to stumble single-mindedly towards his severed head. He almost reaches it before the silver dragon arrives and disintegrates him with dragonfire.
  • In That Hideous Strength, the title of Head of the N.I.C.E. turns out to be horribly literal. The villains are taking orders from a guillotined criminal's head, which they've kept alive by supplying it with artificial blood. And yes, Lewis was well aware that it wouldn't really work—that's a plot point.
  • Thalassa in the Warhammer 40,000 novel Dark Adeptus remains able to talk after decapitation due to Chaos sorcery.
  • In Stephen King's The Breathing Method, a woman who's about to give birth is decapitated in a car accident in front of the hospital. She remains alive and conscious for several minutes, from sheer willpower, until she gives birth to her son.
  • The baddies in Richard K. Morgan's The Steel Remains cut off their victims' heads and do really terrible things to them, by way of an object lesson to anyone who tries to work against them.
  • In A Spell for Chameleon, Trent beheads the mortally wounded Herman at his request. Herman's severed head thanks him for a quick and clean death.
  • Averted in Charles de Lint's Svaha: A minor character who's just been beheaded by a Ninja sent by the Yakuza maintains consciousness only long enough to see his body collapse.
  • The giant Bolloggs from Walter Moers Zamonia novels are unique in Zamonia in that they can survive without their heads; once they reach a certain height they tend to discard their heads—and then go off on wanderings looking for the same heads they just discarded. (Bolloggs aren't very bright, especially not after losing their heards.) In The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Bluebear, one of the many obstacles the titular character has to face is a huge, discarded Bollogg head.
  • In Larry Niven's Ringworld, Nessus, a Pierson's Puppeteer, is decapitated. Luckily, not only does his species have two heads, but neither of them are where Puppeteer's keep their brain.
  • In The Black Company this happens to The Dominator for a short time, The Limper for an entire book, and Soulcatcher was missing a head for half the series.
  • Early in Sandman Slim, Stark cuts off the head of Kasabian, the hardest-luck member of the circle that sent him to Hell. He did so with an enchanted knife that only kills when he orders it to, so Kasabian's head sits in his closet for most of the book, bitching about its state. Near the end, it dies outright, only to get sent back by Lucifer as part of a job deal. Between the first book and Kill The Dead, Stark gets it an animated table with articulated legs so that it can move by itself.
  • In the Conan the Barbarian story "Scarlet Citadel," Tsotha-lanti tells Conan that "if you hack me in pieces, the bits of flesh and bone will reunite and haunt you to your doom!" The next moment, Conan cuts off his head. The head remained alive, and the body attempted to recover it. Fortunately, a friendly sorcerer took away the head, the body ran after him, and the king was rid of the need to find a solution.
  • One of the historical stories from The Zombie Survival Guide had a tale told to a Jesuit Missionary in Feudal Japan. The story goes that Japan had a secret society whose function was to hunt down and eliminate zombies, and the finial initiation was for an acolyte to spend a full night sitting in a room full of moaning zombie heads that had been cut off and preserved in jars. The "editor" of these historical stories does note that this would be impossible because of the Fridge Logic about the zombies needing lungs to moan, thus either meaning the tale is false, exaggerated, or the moans are the product of the terror felt by the acolytes.
    • The book also contains several other cases of zombie heads kept in jars, either as part of ancient science experiments or as oddities in various courts.
  • In a poem by Shel Silverstein, the protagonist complained about losing their head and about the fact that they couldn't look for it ("'cause my eyes are on it"), call to it ("'cause my ears are on it") or even think about it ("'cause my brain is in it") - "so I guess I'll sit down on this rock/and rest for just a minute." (Three guesses what the "rock" was.)

Live-Action TV

  • JD in Scrubs has three odd daydreams of Head and Body Doctor where he imagines life as a floating head with his body doing something else. [1]
  • Power Rangers examples:
  • Rhonda Shear did this in wraparounds on USA Up All Night.
  • Orpheus spends most of the Xena: Warrior Princess episode Girls Just Wanna Have Fun without his body.
  • Reversed in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, in which Cromartie's body seeks out his head which does not appear to have any activity.
  • Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation in the Time Travel episode "Time's Arrow" wasn't active while his head was disconnected from his body, but it did survive under San Francisco for five hundred years, and when reconnected to his body (which didn't make the trip back in the first place), it worked fine.
    • In the Expanded Universe novel Imzadi, Data, decapitated, is still in control of his body.
    • In another episode of the TV series, Data stepped into a large electrical arc that was blocking a Jeffries tube; his body is non-conductive, so this broke the arc, but he was badly damaged. Riker detached his head, which was still functional, and kept going.
  • The Headless Horseman does this to Piper, Paige, and Phoebe in Charmed episode "The Legend of Sleepy Halliwell".
  • 790 in Lexx
  • S.T.A.N. in Aaron Stone
  • A duo known as "The Floating Heads" appear to startle LeVar Burton in an installment of Reading Rainbow.
  • The Young Ones, Vyvyan sticks his head out the train window and another train cuts it off. His head lies in the tracks calling out to his body, which stumbles around looking for him.
    • And then kicks it further along the track after the head insults it.
    • Another time, two head-carrying ghosts wander through the lads' flat and accidentally drop their heads, forcing the bodies to stumble around picking up round objects ("No, that's a grapefruit!") in search of them. Later, the ghostly heads are seen arguing about whose body is whose, and even forehead-butting one another over possession of the one with a nicer bottom.
  • Mickey's Auton Duplicate in the first episode of the Doctor Who Revival.

"Don't think that's going to stop me."

    • The Face of Boe qualifies. Given who he is (Captain Jack Harkness), one wonders what happened to all the other bits.
      • They got worn down from too much shagging.
    • The Pandorica Opens demonstrates Cybermen can survive decapitation, then reattach their heads.
    • The Headless Monks sometimes do this, keeping living heads around post-decapitation. Mostly, they prefer the inverse (bodies walking around without their heads).
      • The in-universe explanation is that, since the Monks behead you while you're alive, both the head and the body remain...active. The bodies seem to fall under the control of the other Monks (or possibly the papal mainframe) immediately after beheading. The heads apparently keep the same personality and are left to rot (or be preserved in boxes, if you're rich.)
  • Tom Servo's gumball machine head falls off a few times in Mystery Science Theater 3000. This happened quite often during shooting, as the Hilarious Outtakes show, and sometimes they decided to Throw It In.
    • On an episode where the movie involved a ghostly disembodied head, both bots remove their heads and speak in ghostly voices in an attempt to scare Joel. Unimpressed, he takes their inert bodies away and leaves them alone with the lights off.
  • Angel figures out that an overzealous cop is a zombie when he decapitates the cop and the cop keeps on talking for awhile.
    • Lorne gets his head sent to Cordelia on a platter in another episode. His people can survive this, however; as he explains, his species of demon only die if their body is mutilated too.
  • Red Dwarf. Kryten has multiple spare heads on a shelf that argue with one another.
  • The Amazing Stories episode "Go to the Head of the Class" has Sadist Teacher B.O. Beanes, after accidentally being killed by the hiccups spell, coming back to life with his head separated from his body because the picture used in the resurrection spell got torn in two.
  • In Living Color's segment "The Head Detective"
  • The comedy/documentary 50 Outrageous Animal Facts includes a clip of a CGI cockroach that loses its head. Its decapitated body taps the ground in front of it a few times, finds a tiny rock, sticks the rock where its head used to be, and scuttles off. Truth in Television, as roaches can live for days after decapitation.
  • Happens in the Good Luck Charlie episode Gabe Turns 12-½ when Bob Duncan goes to the fridge to get some cake in a platter only to find P.J.'s very much alive head instead, which then asks where his body is at (which is never directly explained). Bob then realizes his son's unable to stop him so he eats a cupcake in front of his face. Of course, since it's an end credits gag, this never really happened.
  • In the "Look at the Princess" trilogy of Farscape, John and his alien princess bride are turned into fully conscious statues so they can observe the workings of the Senate until it is time for them to begin their reign. The jealous prince chops Crichton's head off in an attempt to render him unable to rule. The head is still able to talk (via magic headsets) until it is successfully reattached.
  • Snick had a series of shorts called "Ted The Head", about a kid named Ted who's just a human head. Despite the lack of a human body, he's just like other kids, who often wonders how he is able to alive. Hilarity Ensues.
  • A one-shot character in Beetleborgs was a Headless Horseman type who initially lost his head after a bad case of hay fever, literally sneezing his head off. When he shows up to recover it, it seems Little Ghoul had found it and was using it as a bowling ball.

Music

  • The Arrogant Worms's "Johnny Came Home Headless", about a tall and forgetful man who walked into doorways so often that one time apparently knocked his head off—and his body didn't notice.
  • Basement Jaxx's Where's Your Head At. Although the song doesn't imply it, a lot of people seem to make fan videos associating with this trope.
  • Michael Jackson 's "Ghosts", Michael turns into a skeleton and proceeds to dance, removing his head in the process.
  • Warren Zevon's "Roland the Headless Tompson Gunner."
  • In the final verse of "Weird Al" Yankovic's "A Complicated Song", he sings about how he stood up while riding a roller coaster and got his head knocked off.
    • Happens to Al again in the "Right Round" part of the official music video of the medley song "Polka Face" where he spins his head around 360 degrees until it unscrews off of his body.
  • In Slipknot's "Wait and Bleed" music video, Clown has to put his head on because the doll-maker didn't finish him.
  • Happens to a Creepy Doll and Chibi in The Birthday Massacre's video for Blue
  • Missy Elliott does it to herself in the video to "One Minute Man."
  • In Insane Clown Posse's "Headless Boogie", Violent J jumps into a graveyard and witnesses headless bodies dancing. He gets his own head chopped off and joins in.

Newspaper Comics

  • Horace Graevsyte in Non Sequitur.
  • Jeremy's head has popped off his body and went about its own way as a part of many visual gags in Zits.
    • Connie's head also floats away like a balloon to depict her "airheaded-ness".

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

  • Older Than Feudalism: Orpheus, according to Roman writer Ovid: his severed head continued to sing for a while after his murder.
  • The Christian martyrology has Saint Denis (Bishop of Paris, executed by pagan Romans during the Imperial prosecutions) and Saint Solange (Mysterious Waif murdered by a nobleman who tried to abduct her). Both were beheaded, then their dead bodies just took their heads in their hands and walked away, praising the Lord until they reached the nearest towns and dropped dead there. In fact, Saint Denis is always represented in media with his severed head in his own hands.
  • The Welsh have Saint Winefride, who was decapitated by a jealous suitor when she announced her intention to become a nun. Her head is said to have rolled down a hill, with a healing spring bursting forth where it stopped. If that's not enough, Winefride's uncle, Saint Beuno, then picked up the head and attached it to the body, bringing her back to life.
  • Saint Quitteria was beheaded and thrown in the ocean. She is often depicted walking back out of the ocean with her head under her arm.
  • As for Hinduism and Buddhism, there's the deity Chhinnamasta who severed her own head with her own sword just to feed her two attendants with her blood. Now that's hardcore.
  • Brazilian folklore has the headless mule, which has fire coming out of the stump - though it's described as "coming out of its nose"... and that it has a bridle tied to its mouth. A few versions reduce the Fridge Logic by saying the fire covers its head, not replaces it.
  • The Arabian Nights story of King Yunan and Duban the Sage. Duban the Sage comes to the king's court when the king is very ill, and manages to save the king's life. However, an Evil Chancellor convinces the king to distrust the sage, and the sage is put to death. His head is able to speak after being cut off, reprimanding the king and eventually leading to the king's death also.
  • Mimir in Norse Mythology, as the wisest god. He was beheaded in the Aesir-Vanir War, but Odin used magic to preserve and revive the head, and it serves as his advisor.
  • From Egyptian Mythology, the sorcerer Naneferkaptah had to face a serpent both immune to magic and who had this ability as the Final Boss guarding the Book of Thoth. When standard freezing spells didn't work, Nefrekeptah went for the direct approach and cut off the serpent's head, and threw it far into the river. However, the head came back almost instantly and blocked his path again. Nefrekeptah again cut off its head, threw it into the river, and this time put sand on the neck before the head could come back. The head couldn't reattach, and though the serpent couldn't die, it just lay there, helpless.
  • In Japanese folklore there are monsters called Nukekubi; they seem like normal humans during the day, but in the night their head detaches from their bodies and starts to float around and search for a human victim to devour.
    • Similar monsters are recorded in a number of East Asian countries, with perhaps the best-known being the Malaysian penanggalan.
  • Baba Deep Singh. The legend says that his head was cut completely or almost completely off and still was able to fight.
  • The Arthurian story "Gawain and the Green Knight" starts with Gawain cutting off the Green Knight's head... which doesn't kill him. The Green Knight expects Gawain to present himself in a year's time to receive the same blow in return.

Tabletop Games

  • The Orks of Warhammer 40,000 are so tough that their decapitated heads can survive for up to an hour, more than enough time for a Mad Dok to easily attach it to a new body. (Then again, they are sapient fungi and thus hardier in many ways than meat-folk.)
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Trolls; anything cut off them, including heads, can live and will either reattach itself or regenerate.
    • In earlier editions iron golems could continue to function after losing their heads, including breathing out poison gas.
    • One of the Mystara supplements described trollish games, some of which involve using the head of one of the participants as a living football. Which tries to bite the feet that kick it.
  • Unsurprisingly, the Ravenloft setting plays with this trope:
    • Jacqueline Montarri is a headless NPC villain who steals the heads of women to wear, and has an enormous collection of decapitated and still conscious female heads in her basement. Supposedly, this curse can be broken if she ever finds her real head, and the only way she can be killed is if her real head is destroyed - nobody, much less Monrarri herself, knows where it is, the location intentionally left open for anyone who wants to use her in their game.
    • Lebendtod, a zombie-like undead template, can remove their heads and limbs at will.
    • In the 5th Edition, Viktra Mordenheim (Darklord of Lamordia, a Domain that now has a Steampunk setting) can remove the head or brain of a victim and transplant it onto a golem. This ability is a benefit she gets from being a Darklord. The guidebook even has a chilling illustration of her preparing to use the process on three decapitated mercenaries (their heads kept alive in jars of fluid) who tried - but failed - to take her down. She can also reverse the process, assuming she has incentive to and the victim's body is intact; the guidebook does suggest she might use this as a means of extortion.
  • The Deadlands incarnation of Joaquin Murrieta died. He came back. Then, he got beheaded. Now, his (understandably insane) body's looking for his head, and is more than happy to "borrow" yours until he finds it. The best part? Undead Joachin Murrieta can only be stopped if you destroy his head. Happy hunting!
  • Exalted has an odd version of this from the dangerously powerful Charcoal March of Spiders supernatural martial art. The user delivers a punch so ludicrously hard that the head not only explodes, but the person whose head did explode has several seconds thereafter to think and react because they, and reality itself, haven't caught up to the fact just yet.
  • In GURPS 3rd Edition, one of the supplements full of fantasy magic spells had a spell called Decapitate, which did exactly what its name says. Not only that, both the head and body were still alive, and since the head was still magically able to speak, if it knew any spells, it could still cast them! Of course, without the head, the body could not eat or drink, and would eventually die of dehydration or starvation. But this was not a problem either! Another spell allowed you to turn everything but the head into stone... and then you could decapitate him.
  • This trope appears in the diamond suit in John Littleboy's Bag of Bones playing cards, published in 2008.

Gamebooks

  • In the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Space Assassin, the protagonist finds the head of an android bartender who still believes it is doing its job, offering cocktails to anyone it sees. Giving it to a group of primitive aliens will get you the second half of the Pan Dimensional Homing Device.

Theatre

  • In a Ravenloft skit performed at GenCon 1999, "One Piece At A Time", a lady surgeon attempts to bring her fiance back to life after he dies in a tragic accident. The title says it all, but early scenes correspond to this trope. Became a Crowning Moment of Funny when Sean Reynolds, playing the fiance with his head stuck through a hole in a covered table, couldn't see the page of lines lying beside him. "I can't even hold a script!"
  • In Pippin, Pippin has a poignant conversation with the head of a fallen Visigoth soldier. In a later scene, after Pippin has been crowned king, a headless man comes up to him and asks for his head to be reattached.

Video Games

  • In Primal, the Wraith can apparently survive being decapitated. A group of severed heads in Raum's torture chamber (all of whom hate each other) eventually take time out from arguing to help the PCs. One, however, calls the guards, simply to antagonize the rest. Other severed heads are scattered almost randomly throughout the upper mansion, giving comments, advice, and encouragement. One somehow knows Scree's name.
  • In Chrono Cross one skeleton character, which you have to assemble, starts off as a talking skull.
  • In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, when you fight Nemesis in the Treatment Room. Douse him with a remarkable strong acid two times and his head will come off. But rather than die like the zombies, he continues attacking, albeit blind.
  • Killer7 has Susie, a severed head you tend to meet in very enclosed spaces (the first one being a washing machine). She always has a ring in her mouth when you find her. She's also a ghost. She's also completely loopy.
  • Murray the Talking Skull in The Curse of Monkey Island. Justified in that he was actually dead and re-animated by spooky voodoo magic well before he became a disembodied skull.
  • In Animamundi: Dark Alchemist: The hero's little sister was beheaded, but still survived. Granted, by the game's universe rules, it was part of a "Test" - only witches can survive beheading.
  • A head in a jar is a "work of art" that you can purchase in the console version of The Sims.
  • Boomer in 3D Ballz throws his head as a special attack.
  • Tekken 6 has Alisa Boskonovitch who can remove her head and have it explode in front of his opponent. Of course, a new one emerges shortly after.
  • Kangaxx from Baldur's Gate II, when you first meet him was just a skull. Helps he's a lich who had been disassembled and this game was based on Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Kratos in the God of War games not only is able to tear off the head of the Gorgons, but proceed to use their (apparently still living) heads as weapons, petrifying enemies with their eye-beams. In the third game he does the same for the god Helios, using him as a Lantern.
  • The Recapitator (skeleton enemies) in Wario Land The Shake Dimension have their sole attack being to detach and throw their head at Wario like a boomerang, catching it afterwards. They also come back to life when killed like the Dry Bones in the Super Mario Bros. series, and can only permanently be killed by destroying their body while their head is in mid air.Or, if you're feeling saucy, destroy the head and leave the body hanging for awhile before it collapses into a heap.
  • PS 1 RPG Shadow Madness had a disembodied telekinetic head by the name of Xero von Moon. He was kept alive (and presumably afloat and able to speak) by a thin metal ring at his neck, and fought primarily with kinetic bolts (though he could resort to a headbutt).
  • In the first episode of Xenosaga, the functionally immortal Dragon Albedo is left in charge of a young hostage. So he rips off his own head, throws it at her feet, then spends a while like that mocking her fear (and making creepily suggestive puns in French) before stomping it into paste. Just to pass the time.
  • Morte, a floating skull and the resident Deadpan Snarker of Planescape: Torment.
    • Morte didn't lose his head; it's right here. He also didn't lose his body, it's where he left it.
  • Serious Sam has beheaded rocketeers, beheaded bombers, beheaded firecrackers and beheaded kamikazes. Former three carry their head with one hand while the latter doesn't have a head at all.
    • Despite not having a head, the Beheaded Kamikazes can still scream. The scream of a kamikaze is one of the most recognizable (and feared) sounds in the game.
  • Dr Nefarious in robot mode gets his head knocked off by Qwark in one of the vid-comic sections in Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal. Horrible punning ensues.
  • Although very loosely, Dynamite Headdy surely counts as the main character throws his head around and switches it with power-ups. Not to mention it explodes when he dies and it gets replaced with a game over sign.
  • The main character of Never Dead, a game about an immortal gunslinger fighting a demonic invasion. Even if dismembered, he can put himself back together again. He loses his head (both figuratively and literally) in the first trailer. "My story was just getting interesting too!"
  • In Vampire Savior, Jedah has a move called "Spregio" that has him doing this to himself and blasting the opponent with the resulting rush of blood!
  • This is the entire plot and gameplay gimmick of Dead Head Fred.
  • Some enemies in Unreal will feel for their head for moment after decapitation.
  • Several enemies from Dead Space can remove Isaac's head, one will take over his body after his death. Instant decapitation results in Isaac feeling for his missing head for a second.
  • In Avernum 3, you can get a talking skull, which will shout random phrases at random times. One of the most hilarious ones is: "Aragorn! Boromir! Come quick... Oh, never mind."
  • RuneScape's "A Clockwork Syringe" quest features a severed zombie pirate head, which the Player Character has to torture for information.
  • The original Kung-Fu Master has the Black Magician: any mid/high attack would result in his head falling off, and he teleporting back to reappear complete and unharmed.
  • In Chariot: Adventures through the Sky, Final Boss Lar loses his entire body halfway through the Boss Fight, but he's got no problem keeping up with the Bullet Hell as a disemboweled head.
  • In the extremely bizarre Samurai Zombie Nation, you control the detached (and giant) head of the samurai Namakubi as you use Eye Beams and acid spit on zombies. Really.
  • Yet another Shoot'Em Up example: Tripod Sardine from G-Darius. Once he takes enough damage, its head gets blown off. It still survives, though.
    • A straighter example would be the Final Boss of Darius Force, Galst Vic (a Terminator-esque robot). When his first form is defeated, you have to escape the exploding base... and then his head comes to attack you! Strangely enough, his head can grow and shrink in size.
  • The player character in The Incredible Crash Dummies can lose his head, resulting in reversed controls until you find a spare head.
  • In Disney's Villains' Revenge, Alice actually gets beheaded and you have to travel a maze to find her head.
  • The boss Echizen in Death Crimson OX has a head that I can only describe as an egg with a pair of giant red lips. Part one of the boss fight is fighting his kung-fu kicking body as his head continuously inflates. Part two involves his head floating off of his body, then splitting into six individual floating heads that then proceed to ram into you and shoot lasers at you.
  • While inversions also more common, in The Binding of Isaac, Pestilence and sometimes gapers and mr Maws. continue moving after losing their head.
  • Pictured above is a scene from a Team Fortress 2 promotional video. The head of the BLU Spy, which the RED Medic keeps in his fridge, is being sustained by some eldritch and surely illegal medical technique involving dry-cell batteries.
  • Skullgirls has Ms. Fortune, an undead catgirl who was chopped up into pieces by the mob after stealing and swallowing a gem that made her body undying. Her fighting style revolves around extending, detaching, and reattaching her limbs—most notably her head, which functions not only as a weapon but is capable of propelling itself around and attacking independently of her body.
  • In the Best Friends Forever DLC of Shantae: Half Genie Hero, Rottytops does this as one of her attacks, hurling her own head. Being a zombie, she isn't harmed by this unless it hits a hazard like lava or spikes. After doing so, her entire body reforms where the head lands. While this can do moderate damage to an enemy, it is more useful for avoiding them or crossing barriers.

Web Comics

  • Happened in Bite Me via guillotine; her head was later located by the main character being asked to list head puns (in a room full of severed heads) until she groaned loudly enough to be found.
  • An entire storyline of Narbonic revolves around how Dave's disembodied head is forgotten on the bus.
  • Happens to Xykon in Order of the Stick.
    • And also to the Eye of Fear and Flame, which was kept by Belkar until it decided death was better than living (well, undying) as an immobile skull with Belkar as a master.
  • In No Rest for The Wicked, Red severs the witch's head. The witch sticks it back on, grumbling.
  • Daisy Is Dead has two instances.
  • Probably the single most infamous comic from Sexy Losers involved Shiunji, a necrophiliac, a corpse whose head fell off, and what he did to its neck. The comic's subtitle read "I am certain that at some point in the future, I will be prosecuted for this comic in a court of law."
  • In Sluggy Freelance, Torg invented the "Zombie-Head-On-A-Stick." It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • To say nothing of the time Riff managed to disconnect his own head (and trap Torg and Gwynn's upper halves in another dimension) by thinking with portals.
  • Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: "You would be amazed how difficult it is to aim when your head is in a box across the room."
  • In Looking for Group, one of the men in Richard's village. Justified because he's not exactly human...
    • Also, Richard is beheaded but still able to maintain his normal levels of awesome.
  • Stubble Trouble features the decapitated characters of Gynette the spidertaur and Lilith the Headless Goth Vixen. Gynette's boyfriend really seems to like her ability and her friends are unfazed as she often takes her head off. Lilith the Headless Goth Vixen was a former model who was famous for her decapitation.
  • Done in Fanboys in a very nightmarish fashion.
  • Done in Khatru, where Healing Factor powered Ranger unwittingly agrees to test one of Gadgeteer Genius Kira's medical scanning devices. She tries everything to fix him, but in the end, he recovers all on his own.
  • In Girl Genius, Tinka's head continues to talk after being sliced off.
    • Also, Castle Heterodyne while its mind was stored in the body of Otilia.
    • Rudolf Selnikov ended up, as Vole put it, "in need ov medical atttention".
  • In the Girls in Space storyline The Protoype, Fergus Macrumble punches the Henchbot's head off.
  • Runcible Spoon in Dominic Deegan is known for sending his own head flying. Also once happened to Quilt, including the "hey, body, over here" routine.
  • Nostrom in Jack.
  • Hector in No Songs for The Dead got his head punched off by Romeo, after which Hector taunted Romeo, saying "You punch like a girl."
  • Happened in Schlock Mercenary fairly often - for some characters repeatedly, since they can be revived and have the whole body regrown if the brain was put on lifesupport in time. Der Trihs have armored skull and bad luck, so with him it became sort of a running gag. Or in his words -

Tagon: I can't think of a worse way to wake up than discovering my head is in a jar.
Der Trihs: Try waking up with your head in a jar and having deja-vu.

Web Original

  • Strong Bad couldn't leave well enough alone. [2]
  • Lance M. Donavan display this characteristics in DC/Marvel Happy Hour
  • Lopez seems to handle life without a head quite well.
  • This video based on the catchy theme tune to Halloween. "They're decapitated so easily!"
  • Bjork in the video for "I Miss You."
  • Gary from Nintendo Week begins hosting one episode as a disembodied head, with his body stumbling into walls in the background. He promptly explains this is a nod to Face Raiders for the 3DS.
  • From the SCP Foundation, SCP 374 (the "Oracular Guillotine") Zigzags this Trope. An antique guillotine, if someone (always a D-Class) is beheaded by it, the head remains alive, aware, and able to talk for 35 minutes, but it has been possessed by the spirit of a man named Jean-Phillipe-Horace-Donatien, a criminal who was executed during the French Revolution; presumably, Donatien's soul was somehow trapped in the guillotine and remains there at other times. Donatien is required to answer any questions the SCP researchers have during the 35 minutes (exactly why, he will not say), but he's a nasty, foulmouthed jerk who always tries to Be as Unhelpful as Possible. He hates the Foundation, calling them slavers and murderers. He's not wrong; D-class personal are slaves, and the Foundation has to kill one simply to use the device.

Western Animation

  • Kevin Spencer fantazises about this in one episode: he imagines himself living in an old age home as a head, refusing to die. The staff decide to just run him over with a car. This trope is played with in the final episode, with Percy.
  • Futurama with The Heads in Jars.
    • Bender also suffered this, at least once as a Shout-Out to Star Trek: The Next Generation. In another instance, he purposely sells his body for lots of money (it was worth more due to supply and demand). He drove around in a little car until getting it back from President Nixon. He also uses his ability to detach his head to (what else?) rob people.
    • Zoidberg's head crawls on tentacles once it's been severed from his body.
      • That was only in the Bender's Game fantasy world. Whether it works in the regular crazy world is anyone's guess.
    • As well as Hermes in the Futurama movie, Bender's Big Score.
  • Grim from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is frequently hit with this trope.
    • There was an episode parodying "The Fly" in which Mandy unzips her head and accidentally zips onto a fly's body.
  • The Warners exhibit this ability in Animaniacs.
    • In one short, "Moon over Minerva," a smitten Minerva Mink's head turns into a balloon and starts to float away before she catches it and hastily reattaches it.
  • Mr. Freeze gains this gruesome ability in the final season of Batman the Animated Series.
    • In a Continuity Nod, when he first shows up in Batman Beyond, all that's left is his head. He's understandably not too happy about it.
      • Early drafts for Beyond played this for black humor, with Old Man Wayne keeping the head in his refrigerator. It curses him impotently whenever he opens the door.
  • Jet Headstrong had this power on Defenders of Dynatron City.
  • The animated series of Aladdin had a villain named Kapok where his evil head is separated from his kind body. Interestingly, his head thought with his mind, but his body thought with his heart. Aladdin even gets inflicted with the same curse during the episode. Don't worry, he gets better.
    • The Genie himself does this after explain how he can't kill anybody in the original movie.
  • The outlaws in the Metro Goldwyn Mayer short "Deputy Droopy".
  • Mr. Mxyzptlk in Superman: The Animated Series. Of course, he could do anything.
  • Megatron, Bulkhead, Sentinel Prime, Starscream and Waspinator have all suffered from this in Transformers Animated.
    • As did Optimus Prime in Transformers Generation 1.
    • And Waspinator in Beast Wars, several times. In fact, numerous characters, primarily Predacons, end up in pieces, including an intact head. Silverbolt is the only Maximal who suffered this indignity while serving as a Maximal.
  • In a particularly bizarre episode of Legion of Super Heroes, on their way to Find the Cure, Brainiac 5's head is separated from his body by a Portal Cut; the body then proceeds to run amok while the frustrated Legionnaires try to recapture it.
  • XR in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was prone to this.
  • Dr. Pretorius from the Animated Adaptation of The Mask.
  • Scared Stiff, the ghost robot in Filmations Ghostbusters, suffered from this.
  • Commander Bem from the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "Bem".
  • Ard of Heavy Metal chops off his own head in order to show Den that he can't be killed (at least through normal means).
  • In the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Leonardo cuts off the Shredder's head in a Single-Stroke Battle. This would have been more effective if the Shredder wasn't actually an alien inhabiting a much larger robot body.
  • The Incredible Crash Dummies seem to spend a lot of time without their heads (or arms or legs) attached.
  • Fidget in the Gadget and the Gadgetinis episode "Claw's Collection".
  • Arthur "Meek for A Week" Arthur and his friends imagine Francine, who has recently taken to bottling up her natural aggression, will build up enough pressure that her head will pop off. We then see an Imagine Spot of just such happening with Francine's disembodied head complimenting the beautiful lawn she just landed in.
    • Similarly, a different episode had Buster's head fly away instead, only his head broke into pieces upon landing.
  • The Batman "The Joining" Part 1, Batman and J'onn J'onzz are able to interrogate the decapitated head of Lucius Fox's robot duplicate. "In order to nod you need a neck"
  • Homer's costume (which becomes real) in The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror XVI."
    • In "Treehouse of Horror IV", he was decapitated while spending a day in Hell.
    • Scratchy from The Itchy and Scratchy Show loses his head tons of times thanks to Itchy. Whether he lives or dies from it seems to vary.
  • In a time-travel episode, The Tick (animation) has his head momentarily teleported, minus his body, onto a golf tee in the 1950s. He loudly declares "Men in plaid!!!" at the sight of the golfers.
  • Happened in one of Nightmare Ned's many Nightmare Sequences.
  • Oswald the Lucky Rabbit demonstrated the ability to attach and detach his head at will, with no justification other than the Rule of Funny. It is unclear how well he could function headless, as in two cases his head didn't get very far, and in the third he was reassembled by outside means. A post-Disney short indicated other characters in the setting could do this too.
  • Robots: Rodney Copperbottom's first meeting with Cloudcuckoolander and load, Fender, results in him temporarely losing his head. Much hilarity ensues:

Fender: [Lug is holding his head] Why, I'd, I'd smack you if I had a hand.
[his body comes bouncing off buildings]
Fender: Wow, speak of the devil... here I come.
[the body falls on the floor]
Fender: Owww! Daddy!

  • The Venture Brothers: Dean during "Escape to the House of Mummies".
  • Absorbing Man after his battle with the Hulk in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
  • Swat Kats had this in the episode "Metal Urgency": the Metallikats were reduced to heads scuttling around on spider legs after their bodies were crushed. This doesn't prevent them from driving the Metallikat Express or operating a pair of gigantic combat robots.
  • An episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes featured a gingerbread man that gets eaten within a few seconds of screentime. The consumer spits out the head, who warns Jimmy to stay away.
    • An earlier episode has Jimmy ending up like this thanks to some Hollywood Voodoo.
    • Happens to Heloise in the episode "Heads Will Roll."
  • The Canadian short La Salla. Of course, the main character losing his head isn't the only thing that makes this screwy.
  • Jenny on My Life as a Teenage Robot.
  • Drawn Together: Toot's body manages to flash her boobs at Xandir after she chops her head off in the first episode.
  • Cindy Vortex, Carl Wheezer, Sheen Estevez and Betty Quinlan in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron's magic themed episode "Vanishing Act" became floating heads once they entered a strange dimension and were looking for their headless bodies. Once they enter a picture of a desert they find their headless bodies are searching around the desert feeling the ground for them. They reattach their heads to their bodies and act like nothing happened (except Sheen, whose head is on backwards).
  • In the Larry episode of Teen Titans ("Fractured"), Starfire briefly gets little wings grown on her head, and she needs to hold onto her head to avoid it flying away.
  • Mega Man: At the beginning of "The Incredible Shrinking Mega Man", Mega says "don't lose your head" to a disassembled Roll.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog had, among its multiple ghosts, ghouls and monsters, a group of ghostly skeleton vandals who would try to lay waste to the couple and their dog whenever their windmill stopped turning. Hilarity Ensues when Courage, Eustace and Muriel have their heads chopped off by the Windmill Vandals' weapons (with their headless bodies frantically looking around for their lost heads) and end up on each other's bodies. Muriel's head (transplanted on Eustace's body) even uses Eustace's complaining head as a bowling ball to momentarily topple the marauders.
    • Moreover, this isn't the first time Eustace has lost his head. In an earlier episode, a space chicken that Courage defeated and left featherless and headless in the pilot episode returned to replace its missing head by using Courage's head as a replacement. It only partially succeeds with its plan, taking Eustace's head instead. Although defeated, the head never returns to its original body (at least until the next episode), culminating with the appearance of a headless walking Eustace that scares Courage.
  • The Canadian short Land of the Heads where a headless vampiress forces his husband to go out into the village and collect the heads of younger people to replace her old and wrinkled one.
  • It happened to Beetlejuice several times in the animated series, perhaps most unfortunately when he fell in with a group of headhunters.
  • An episode of the 1980s version of Flash Gordon featured a race of aliens that could remove their heads.
  • On an epsiode of The Owl House, Eda gets her head sliced off. Yet, Eda survives this, being a witch after all, and just complains on how her beheading is just annoying. This is later revealed to be a side effect of the curse that causes her to transform into the Owl Beast.

Real Life

  • A series of controversial experiments showed that it is possible to transplant a monkey's head onto a different monkey's body, although establishing spinal communication between the two was not possible. Originally proposed by the surgeon as a means of prolonging the lives of quadriplegics whose own bodies are failing, this technique has been soundly rejected by bioethicists... not because it's gruesome, but because donor organs can save more lives if they're distributed among many transplant patients, rather than the whole body being used to aid one.
  • Mike the headless chicken.
  • Cockroaches can live for weeks after decapitation.
  • Back in the days when "Losing Your Head" was a punny way of saying "capital punishment", some curious people did a series of experiments which basically consisted of waiting until the next execution, then shouting at the head to see whether and for how long they could keep its attention. The head can stay conscious for 10 seconds or so, though most lost consciousness instantly due to shock. We can thank the French for this information, since they kept using the guillotine for executions until the 20th century.
    • One such curious person was Dr Beaurieux, whose description of Monsieur Languille's post-chop responses became famous for a century or more. As the link explains, there is room for doubt: Beaurieux said the head landed on its neck stump so he didn't need to touch it, but those familiar with the time say the head should have dropped into a bucket and would have to be lifted out. Then again, the good doctor was there to experiment and considered Languille a good candidate, so who's to say what preparations he was allowed to make on the day?
  • Internal decapitation, in which the skull is forcibly separated from the spinal column but the soft tissues of the neck remain intact, can be survivable if the injured person receives artificial respiration and other care. If the spinal cord isn't broken, a full recovery is also possible.
  1. ↑ "Later!"
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