History Main / BrainInAJar

*** Thomas Roxborough, a major shareholder in Aztecnology, is currently a mass of undifferentiated protoplasm (including his brain). Sort of a "cancer in a jar".

** In the {{Elseworld}} ''ComicBook/SupermanAndBatmanGenerations'', Lex Luthor is reduced to a brain in a jar [[spoiler:after the Ultra-Humanite hijacks his body in the 1940s]]. He gets a robot suit powered by Kryptonite, becoming this universe's version of Superman villain Metallo. In ''Generations 3'', he causes even more trouble [[spoiler:by helping Darkseid's Parademons set off a bomb that shorts out modern technology, sending humanity into a dark age until they get back on their feet in the 23rd century.]]

* UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler is a brain in a jar in the Franchise/{{LEGO}} photocomic ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic''. At one point he builds a supercomputer out of a bunch of cloned Hitler jar-brains wired together.

* ''WesternAnimation/EekTheCat'': "Eek's International Adventures" is a spy film parody and features a villain named The Brain, made of a brain, eyes, teeth and an ear in different jars.
* ''WesternAnimation/EvilConCarne'': Hector Con Carne's Brain remained alive, preserved in a jar, after his body died. A variation occurs in that his ''stomach'' also is in a jar... and developed its own sentience. And both are occupying the body of a Russian circus bear named Boskov who can still act on his own despite his brain being replaced with Hector's.

* ''Webcomic/{{Spacetrawler}}'': They show up in the spacetrawler construction facility.

Keep [[AccidentalPun in mind]] that in real life, just pulling the brain out of a living person's head and plopping it in a tub of sterile saline would leave you with a starved, dead brain the next morning, so you'd need to hook the blood vessels up to some sort of fluid pump (ala the heart) to keep the brain supplied with oxygen and nutrients. But then you'd also need an air pump (ala the lungs) and nutrient intake device (ala the digestive tract) to keep ''that'' fluid pump supplied with that oxygen and nutrients. And then you'd need a regular filtration system (ala the urinary system) to keep the brain from dying of "blood" poisoning. But at this point it all amounts to basically a near-complete prosthetic body, so you might as well attach some limbs and call it a robot with a WetwareCPU, or a FullConversionCyborg.

** The show has the heads of various 19th-21st-century personalities preserved in jars, including UsefulNotes/RichardNixon, who eventually becomes president again through ExactWords (no''body'' can be President more than twice). Used more for comedy and satire than creepiness. This process is eventually explained as being a form of limited time travel; by incorporating some kind of powdered opal into the fluid that the heads are kept in, they create a tiny bubble in which the heads are perpetually in the time period during which they were alive. Presumably, a certain amount of cloning is involved for certain heads as well. This {{Hand Wave}}s exactly ''how'', say, UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington's head could have been "preserved" in the first place.

* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'': Anevka Sturmvoraus is basically one of these, although her container is much larger than a typical jar, and is attached via cables to a robot "clank" through which she can interact with the world. And it is eventually revealed [[spoiler: that the brain died long ago and the robot is unknowingly operating itself via the deceased's imprinted personality.]] Later, the "whole head in a jar" variant is done to a particularly high-ranking {{Mook}} so that he can be kept safely alive and in custody while being pumped for information, and references have been made to doing the same to other characters (or inability to do so, owing to the [[BoomHeadshot lack of a head]]). In general, it seems to be a well-known, if maybe not exactly common, practice.

* Conspiracy theorist Creator/FrancisEDec believed that our real brains are in "brain bank cities" on the dark side of the moon and our heads contain only a transmitting device connecting us with them. This is all to enable Gangster Computer God to control us, of course.