History Main / SeveredHeadSports

Related to OffWithHisHead. See also DecapitationPresentation for another fate of the severed head. Not to be confused with VideoGame/HeadSports. Can cross over with LosingYourHead if said head is somehow still alive and is being humiliated/harrassed in their helpless state.

Related to OffWithHisHead. See also DecapitationPresentation for another fate of the severed head. Not to be confused with VideoGame/HeadSports.

** In the story [[http://cacb.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/ec-comics-foul-play "Foul Play,"]] an evil baseball player is murdered by the members of the opposing team. After killing him, they play a game where they use his head for as the ball, his leg as the bat, his intestines to mark the base liner and his organs to mark the bases. They even use his scalp to dust off home plate.

* ''Film/TalesOfTerror'': In "The Black Cat", Montressor has a nightmare where Isabel and Fortunato rip his head off and then toss it back forth between themselves.
* ''Film/VarsityBlood'': When the lingerie clad Diane is attempting to flee the killer through the gymnasium, she sees that they have tossed someone's severed head into the basketball net.

** Earlier, in ''Literature/SoulMusic'', Jade says the troll sport of ''aargrooha'' is played by kicking a human head with obsidian boots until one side scores a goal or the head bursts. In modern, civilized times, this game is not played (because no-one remembers how to make the boots).

* In ''[[Literature/LockIn Head On]]'', the new popular team sport of Hilketa is played using threeps (robots remotely controlled by people with lock-in syndrome using brain implants). The way to score is to rip off the head of one of the opponent team's threeps and bring in it for a touchdown. The heads are designed to be reattachable.

* ''Series/GhostsUK'': Headless ghost Humphrey is quite relaxed about having his head used as a volleyball by the other ghosts, since it means he gets to be part of a game for once.
* John Leguizamo's short-lived ''Series/{{House of Buggin}}'' has a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GIyXx5ZCtk skit]] about a soccer team using severed heads instead of balls to honor their Mayan ancestors, grossing out the rival American team. They have a witch doctor whose job is to find perfect heads, and the unfortunate news reporter commentating on the sport [[OhCrap happens to have the right-sized head...]]

** One of Larson's childhood cartoons was published which depicted a group of stick men playing volleyball. One the the stick men is holding the severed head of a nearby teammate while screaming "Aaaaaa! This isn't the ball!"

* ''VideoGame/{{Blood}}'' lets you kick zombie heads until they [[MadeOfExplodium explode harmlessly into droplets of gore]]. That, combined with Caleb having quite a kicking foot, was one of the game's big selling points. The carnival level even included a minigame where you could win a power-up by managing to kick three heads into a specific place. The sequel tried it, even adding a separate head model for each gibbed humanoid enemy, but the lack of flair to it (like long trajectory arcs, a large blood trail and sound effects, all of which were present in the first game) didn't make it very noticeable. There's even a deathmatch map dedicated to head football.

* In ''VideoGame/SixAges: Ride Like the Wind'', the Riders play the game of chadash on horseback and usually the severed head of a foe as the ball (a dead goat may be used if no head is available). Usually they use the preserved heads of old enemies, but occasionally they'll celebrate a victory by playing a game the head of the defeated warleader.

-->'''Moe:''' Wow. Even for the ''ball,'' soccer is boring.

* The Romans had [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirria Equus October]], a festival of the god Mars, in which the right hand horse of the winning ChariotRace team was sacrificed and the inhabitants of two competing neighborhoods would fight over possession of the severed horse head.

* The cover of the Music/{{Genesis}} album ''Music/NurseryCryme'' features a girl playing croquet with severed heads instead of balls. This doubles as a reference to "The Musical Box", the album's opening track; the story for that song (as featured in the liner notes) opens with a girl knocking a boy's head off during a game of croquet.

* ''Series/{{Ghosts}}'': Headless ghost Humphrey is quite relaxed about having his head used as a volleyball by the other ghosts, since it means he gets to be part of a game for once.

** In the story "[[http://cacb.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/ec-comics-foul-play/ Foul Play]]", an evil baseball player is murdered by the members of the opposing team. After killing him, they play a game where they use his head for as the ball, his leg as the bat, his intestines to mark the base liner and his organs to mark the bases. They even use his scalp to dust off home plate.

* The cover of the "[[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/GutterBalls2008.jpg Balls Out Bootleg Edition]]" of ''Film/{{Gutterballs}}'' shows a head being used a bowling ball. This doesn't occur in the actual film, which instead has the victim's head get shot out of a ball return.

[[folder:Literature ]]

[[folder:Web Comics ]]

[[folder:Real Life ]]

* In ''Series/RulesOfEngagement'', Jeff and Adam play hockey with a mannequin head: inventing a complete set of rules for the '[[Officesorts sport]]'.

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[[quoteright:350:[[TabletopGame/HunterTheVigil https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_golf_4417.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Do they yell "Forehead!" before the swing?]]

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[[folder:Anime and Manga ]]

-->"[[MemeticMutation "BROCKEN BALL! The game where everyone wins. Save for the ball. WHICH IS BROCKEN!]]"
* Played seriously in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'': After kicking the severed head of a titan, [[MadScientist Hange]] discovers that they weigh next to nothing.
* A ''Manga/JujutsuKaisen'' omake has the villains playing soccer with [[{{Cyclops}} Jogo's]] severed [[LosingYourHead (but still living)]] head.

[[folder:Comic Books ]]
* Creator/ECComics:
** In the story "[[http://cacb.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/ec-comics-foul-play/ Foul Play]]", an evil baseball player is murdered by the members of the opposing team. After killing him, they play a game where they use his head for as the ball, his leg as the bat, his intestines to mark the base liner and his organs to mark the bases. They even use his scalp to dust off home plate.
** In another story, this happens with a bigamist who is found out by his golf and bowling-playing wives.

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/HostelPartII'' ends with [[spoiler:a group of juvenile delinquents playing soccer with the head of the woman that betrayed the protagonist and her friends to an organization of serial killers.]]
* ''Film/NightOfTheDemons2'' has a scene where a character runs into a possessed guy playing basketball with his own severed head.
* In ''Film/TheManWhoWouldBeKing'', people in Kaffiristan are shown playing polo with the head in a bag of a chieftain who was deposed. [[spoiler:Part of the reason the narrator takes his friend's severed head with him, is so that he avoids this dishonor.]]
* Although the heads aren't severed, ''Film/{{Labyrinth}}'' has the fire-starters who remove their heads and use them to play something akin to volleyball. While singing. Naturally, this concerns the protagonist. She gets even more concerned when they try to remove ''her'' head.
* A deleted scene from ''Film/FullMetalJacket'' showed soldiers playing soccer with a severed head.
* The cover of the "[[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/GutterBalls2008.jpg Balls Out Bootleg Edition]]" of ''Film/{{Gutterballs}}'' shows a head being used a bowling ball. This doesn't occur in the actual film, which instead has the victim's head get shot out of a ball return.

* In ''Film/MenInBlack3'', Jay and young Kay are questioning an alien who runs a bowling alley. They wind up using his head as a bowling ball to get him to answer their questions (don't worry, he's fine afterward, just annoyed).
* Creator/RutgerHauer vehicle ''The Blood Of Heroes'' features a game of what is essentially Medieval (American) football, but with the severed head of a dog used as the ball, which can only be touched by a player designated as the "quick." This in turn inspired the common {{LARP}} game of Daneball (with some enterprising groups actually making fake skulls rather than just using a conventional ball for the dog skull).

* When the ancestor ghosts are celebrating at the end of ''WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'', the headless one gets his thrown around like a beach ball.
* In ''Film/SnuffMovie'', the three murder groupies play catch with Jack's severed head.
* ''Film/VarsityBlood'': When the lingerie clad Diane is attempting to flee the killer through the gymnasium, she sees that they have tossed someone's severed head in to the basketball net.

* According to Creator/JRRTolkien, the game of golf got its name from Goblin commander Golfimbul, who got clubbed by Hobbit Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took. The blow was so severe that Golfimbul was decapitated and his head flew into a rabbit hole. The game of golf was invented.
* ''Literature/{{Grunts}}'' has [[BloodSport Orcball]], a game played by victorious orcs after a battle using the heads of their enemies. And if there's a shortage of heads, they can always volunteer an orc for the role.
-->'''Guzrak''': ''[[GoodNewsBadNews The good news is, you made the Orcball team! The bad news is...as the ball.]]''l
* In the ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'' novel ''Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen'', the game of boot polo ({{Calvinball}} by way of the RugbyIsSlaughter trope) is traditionally played with a ball painted to look like the head of an enemy warrior. It's implied that during the relevant war they used to use the real thing.

* In ''[[Literature/LockIn Head On]]'', the new popular team sport of Hilketa is played using threeps (robots remotely controlled by people with lock-in syndrome using brain implants). The way to score is to rip off the head of one of the opponent team's threeps and bring in it for a touchdown. The heads are designed to be reattachable.

* Vyvian from ''Series/TheYoungOnes'' does this with his own severed head after it talks back to his body.
* One episode of ''Series/BigWolfOnCampus'' had Tommy, Merton, and Lori play "Keep Away" with the head of a crazed robotic school counselor (ItMakesSenseInContext).

* In ''Series/RulesOfEngagement'', Jeff and Adam play hockey with a mannequin head.
* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': In "Shiny Happy People" a vampire is holding up a head in an apparent DecapitationPresentation, only to throw the head down a bowling alley.

[[folder:Music ]]

* The cover of the Music/{{Genesis}} album ''Music/NurseryCryme'' features a girl playing croquet with severed heads instead of balls. This doubles as a reference to "The Musical Box", the album's opening track; the story for that song (as featured in the liner notes) opens with a girl knocking a boy's head off during a game of croquet.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics ]]

[[folder:Pinball ]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games ]]
* Trolls in the TabletopGame/{{Mystara}} setting, which are easily entertained and endowed with HealingFactor, actually do practice a variety of such simple sports among themselves. Presumably the loser gets to provide the ball for the next round of play.

[[folder:Video Games ]]
* ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'': An easter egg is to be found by picking up the severed head of a serial killer's victim and throwing it through a nearby basketball hoop.
* At the end of ''VideoGame/BanjoTooie'', Banjo and Kazooie, along with Mumbo, Humba, and Jamjars, go back to the scene of the final battle, and play with Grunty's skeletal head (which has been detached from her body) like it was a ball. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3U0puptTKU#t=1m30s See for yourself]].

* The lesser-known game ''Hyperblade'' featured this as one of its selling points: the main game was a sport that was some kind of mix of hockey, jai-alai and half-pipe trick skating, using a magnetic "rok" for a puck. Of course, if one or another player ended up decapitated, their head ''immediately became the rok'', including passing and scoring with it. And yes even by the deceased's teammates.
* The Windows 3.1 era puzzler ''Amazon Skulls'', which used severed heads as playing pieces. According to the (almost certainly apocryphal and definitely [[ExcusePlot totally irrelevant]]) backstory, the loser had to donate their own head to the collection.

[[folder:Web Video ]]

[[folder:Western Animation ]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas'', the vampires are seen playing hockey with a jack-o-lantern. This was {{bowdlerized}} from the original, deleted version, in which they used the severed head of Creator/TimBurton.
** "There's children throwing snowballs instead of throwing heads."
* The end of a ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Simpsons]]'' episode which was spoofing {{MMORPG}}s shows Marge's player character playing with the head of Moe's.

* Several ''Castlevania'' games have a skeleton enemy named Soccer Boy that forever kicks its own head while trying to pick it up. If you destroy the head, the poor guy panics and begins fumbling around. The western localizations made an amusing Shakespeare reference by changing its name to "Yorick".

-->-- ''Film/SpiesLikeUs''

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

[[folder: Film]]
* ''Film/HostelPartII'' ends with [[spoiler: a group of juvenile delinquents playing soccer with the head of the woman that betrayed the protagonist and her friends to an organization of serial killers.]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live-Action TV ]]

[[folder: Music ]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]

[[folder: Pinball ]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

[[folder: Web Video ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas'', the vampires are seen playing hockey with a jack-o-lantern. This was {{bowdlerized}} from the original, deleted version, in which they used the decapitated head of Creator/TimBurton.

[[folder: Real Life ]]

** Earlier, in ''Literature/SoulMusic'', Jade says the troll sport of ''aargrooha'' is played by kicking a human head with obsidian boots until one side scores a goal or the head bursts. In modern, civilised times, this game is not played (because no-one remembers how to make the boots).

After violence, either to emphasise how much one character glorifies in it, or to lighten the mood, one or more characters will kick around a severed head as if it were a soccer ball. Alternatively, if there's a hoop conveniently nearby they may try to throw it in like a basketball. Other options are only limited by the number of ball games requiring something close to the size of a head.

Reality check: A human head weighs around 7 kg (or for those living in the US, 15.4 lbs., which is as heavy as a bowling ball gets); however, few shows manage to portray this [[RealityEnsues realistically]].

** Also happens on one of the "Treehouse of Terror" episodes, again with Moe as the victim of a Mayan sacrifice. His head rolls down the stairs and is used by kids as a soccer ball.

* The cover of the Music/{{Genesis}} album ''Nursery Cryme'' features a girl playing croquet with severed heads instead of balls. This doubles as a reference to "The Musical Box", the album's opening track; the story for that song (as featured in the liner notes) opens with a girl knocking a boy's head off during a game of croquet.

* John Leguizamo's short-lived ''Series/{{House of Buggin}}'' has a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GIyXx5ZCtk skit]] about a soccer team using severed heads instead of balls to honor their Mayan ancestors, grossing out the rival American team. They have a witch doctor who's job is to find perfect heads, and the unfortunate news reporter commentating on the sport [[OhCrap happens to have the right-sized head...]]

* In ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', Calvin builds a snowman that plays ten-pin bowling with another snowman's head.

** One of Larson's childhood cartoons was published which depicted a group of stick men playing volleyball. One the the stick men is holding the severed head of a nearby teammate whilst screaming "Aaaaaa! This isn't the ball!"

* In the original Anime/MazingerZ manmga and in ''Anime/ShinMazinger'', [[{{Gonk}} Boss,]] [[ThoseTwoGuys Macha and Nuke]] play a round of soccer with Count Brocken's head. It was played for laughs since Brocken is [[LosingYourHead still alive despite this]], and was not happy about it.

* ''Series/{{Angel}}''. In "Shiny Happy People" a vampire is holding up a head in an apparent DecapitationPresentation, only to throw the head down a bowling alley.
* John Lequizamo's short-lived ''Series/{{House of Buggin}}'' has a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GIyXx5ZCtk skit]] about a soccer team using severed heads instead of balls to honor their Mayan ancestors, grossing out the rival American team. They have a witch doctor who's job is to find perfect heads, and the unfortunate news reporter commentating on the sport [[OhCrap happens to have the right-sized head...]]

* John Lequizamo's short-lived ''Series/{{House of Buggin}}'' has a skit about a soccer team using severed heads instead of balls, grossing out their rival team. They have a witch doctor who's job is to find perfect heads, and the unfortunate news reporter commentating on the sport [[OhCrap happens to have the right-sized head...]]