Losing Your Head: Difference between revisions
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[[File:TF2 head in fridge 3706.jpg|link=Team Fortress 2|frame|[[Fate Worse Than Death|"Kill me."]]<ref>''"Later!"''</ref>]]
{{quote|''"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'''
A [[Off with His Head|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. [[Science Marches On|It has been shown that random brain activity can continue for many minutes, ending in a flurry of activity reminiscent of a brain seizure]].
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{{examples}}
== [[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."
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** 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 [[Invisibility|invisible]] or gone [[Another Dimension|somewhere else]]. 'Cause, y'know, [[A Wizard Did It|it's magic.]]
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* Dio Brando decapitates himself to avoid being killed by the Ripple in the first part of ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|Jojo's Bizarre Adventure]]''. He later {{spoiler|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." {{spoiler|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]]''
**
** 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 {{spoiler|Doflamingo}}, but because he can use his [[Elemental Powers|Logia fruit's]] [[Pulling Themselves Together|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.
** In the Egghead Arc, Pythagoras (one of Dr. Vegatunk’s Satellites) is a robot who can detach his head from his body; it can then levitate and move independently of his body. This ability is useful in his role as an engineer and mechanic.
* ''[[Princess Mononoke]]'': "[[Chekhov's Gun|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 {{spoiler|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 [[And I Must Scream|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]]}}.
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* 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]] ==▼
▲== 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.
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* In the ''[[Robo-Hunter]]'' reboot, Sam has been reduced to this, forcing his granddaughter to take over running the business.
== [[Fan Works]] ==▼
▲== 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]] ''[http://www.genom-research.com/sfr/stories/drafts/SSMM Shin Silver Millennium Monogatari]'' by W. Suika Roberts, Ranma experiences a full-immersion [[Flashback (trope)|flashback]] to the death by beheading of her Silver Millennium incarnation.
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* [[Alternate Universe Fic]]/[[Real Person Fic]], ''[https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994830 Spice Force Logic: Mind Games]'' had both [[Spice Girls| 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. {{Spoiler|The operation was successful, but this results in them with [[Brain In a Jar| "cabinets"]] as substitutes until their bodies are rebuilt.}}
== [[Film]] ==
* [[Men in Black (film)|Agent Kay]] once [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|blasted off an alien gun-seller's head]] for attempting to obstruct him in his duty. The gun-seller immediately grew a new one, and started cursing him.
{{quote|'''Jeebs:''' You insensitive ''prick!'' Do you have any idea how much that ''stings''?"
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* 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 [[Be Careful What You Wish For|wish away everything around each other]] in an argument until they're both down to just their heads... [[The Power of Friendship|which they find they can't bring themselves to wish away because they still like each other after all]]. Awwwwww.
* [[
** In the movie Barbara decapitates Adam to scare the living folks out of their house - unfortunately the two of them are [[Invisible to Normals]] {{spoiler|except [[I See Dead People|Lydia]]}}.
* ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]'': And since I am dead, I can take off my head/To recite Shakespearean quotations!"
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* 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]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* ''[[Skulduggery Pleasant]]'''s real [[Dem Bones|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 [[Land of Oz|Oz novel]] ''Ozma of Oz''. She has 30 different heads that she can place on her neck.
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* 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.
** ''[[
** Invoking this trope on King Lorenzo the Kind ([[Moral Event Horizon|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.
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* 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]] ==▼
▲== 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. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw4lajMiMN4\]
* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' examples:
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* 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.
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* 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]] ==▼
▲== 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]]: [[Greek Mythology|Orpheus]], according to Roman writer Ovid: his severed head continued to sing for a while after his murder.
* The Christian martyrology has [[wikipedia:Denis|Saint Denis]] (Bishop of Paris, executed by pagan Romans during the Imperial prosecutions) and [[wikipedia:Solange|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 [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Saintdenis.gif his severed head in his own hands].
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** 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 [[King Arthur|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]] ==▼
▲== Tabletop Games ==
* The [[Our Orcs Are Different|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 [[Deadly Doctor|Mad Dok]] to easily attach it to a new body. (Then again, they are [[Plant Person|sapient fungi]] and thus hardier in many ways than meat-folk.)
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'':
** [[All Trolls Are Different|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.
** 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.
*** In the 5th Edition of Ravenloft, 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 [[Blessed With Suck| 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 [[An Offer You Can't Refuse| use this as a means of extortion.]] ▼
** Lebendtod, a zombie-like undead template, can remove their heads and limbs at will.
▲** In earlier editions iron golems could continue to function after losing their heads, including breathing out poison gas.
▲
* The ''[[Deadlands]]'' [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy|incarnation]] of [[wikipedia:Joaquin Murrieta|Joaquin Murrieta]] died. [[Back from the Dead|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. {{spoiler|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.
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* This trope appears in the diamond suit in John Littleboy's ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130528033752/http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/inky-dinky/bag-of-bones.html 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. {{spoiler|Giving it to a group of primitive aliens will get you the second half of the [[Dismantled MacGuffin|Pan Dimensional Homing Device]].}}
==
* 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. [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|"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]] ==▼
▲== 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.
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* Some enemies in ''[[Unreal]]'' will feel for their head for moment after decapitation.
* Several enemies from ''[[Dead Space (series)|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. [[Crowning Moment of Funny|One of the most hilarious ones is:]] [[The Lord of the Rings|"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 [[Evil Sorcerer|Black Magician]]: any mid/high attack would result in his head falling off, and he teleporting back to reappear complete and unharmed.
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* In the ''Best Friends Forever'' DLC of ''[[Shantae|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]] ==▼
▲== 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''.
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* ''Optipess'' has the superhero [http://www.optipess.com/2009/01/19/chickenman/ Chickenman].
== [[Web Original]] ==▼
▲== Web Original ==
* [[Homestar Runner|Strong Bad]] couldn't leave well enough alone. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180208202031/http://homestarrunner.com/sbemail148.html]
* Lance M. Donavan display this characteristics in [[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC|DC/Marvel Happy Hour]]
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* [http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/Bjork/bjorktubsmall.mov 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 [[Nintendo 3DS|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 [[And I Must Scream|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. [[Jerkass Has a Point| He's not wrong]]; D-class personal ''are'' slaves, and the Foundation has to kill one simply to use the device.
== [[Western Animation]] ==▼
▲== 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. {{spoiler|This trope is played with in the final episode, with Percy.}}
* ''[[Futurama]]'' with The Heads in Jars.
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*** 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
** There was an episode parodying "The Fly" in which Mandy unzips her head and accidentally zips onto a fly's body.
*** Grim inflicts this on Jack O'Lantern, a one-episode villain from the Halloween special. Justified in that he had wished for [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|immortality before he was decapitated.]]
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* It happened to ''[[Beetlejuice (animation)|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 (animation)|Flash Gordon]]'' featured a race of aliens that could remove their heads.
*On an epsiode of [[The Owl House|''The Owl House'']], Eda gets her head sliced off. Yet, Eda survives this, being a witch after all, and just complains on how her [[Major Injury Underreaction|beheading is just annoying]]. {{spoiler|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
▲== 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.
* [[wikipedia:Mike the Headless Chicken|Mike the headless chicken]].
* [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-cockroach-can-live-without-head 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 [https://guillotine.dk/pages/30sek.html 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. [[YMMV|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.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Death Tropes]]
[[Category:Autonomous and Artificial Appendage Index]]
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[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
▲[[Category:Losing Your Head]]
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