History Main / SurrealSymbolicHeads

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail'' "crazy cartoon". Strong Bad's AuthorAvatar in "Sweet Cuppin' Cakes" is a version of himself with a Casio keyboard for a head for no reason other than [[SurrealHumor he's in a cuh-RAZY cartoon]]. Keyboard Strong Bad tends to play "Unterlanders Heimweih" whenever he gets mad.

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail'' "crazy cartoon". Strong Bad's AuthorAvatar in "Sweet Cuppin' Cakes" is a version of himself with a Casio keyboard for a head for no reason other than [[SurrealHumor he's in a cuh-RAZY cartoon]].

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQKGUgOfD8U PV]] for the {{Vocaloid}} song Echo features a schoolgirl with multiple limbs and a TV for a head as symbolism.

* Chaosium's supplement ''All the Worlds' Monsters''. The wind witch monster has a human body but the head of a crocodile.

* MarvelComics have a group of villains called The Headmen who have interchangeable heads and odd bodies. They're mostly joke characters but are every bit as surreal.

* The infamous Pyramid Head from ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' can be argued if they're a human or not, but it certainly has the body of a man with, well, a large pyramid for a head.

* The Keeper from ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin'' has a safe for a head. Not only that, it can regenerate itself from other safes scattered throughout the game.

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* "The Pleasure Principle" by René Magritte is a portrait of a business man with a glowing ball of light in place of his head.

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* The cover of Music/MinorThreat's ''Bottled Violence'' single depicts a man with the top of a beer bottle for a head, who is clad in a leather jacket and SexPistols shirt, and is also holding a beer in one hand and making a raised fist with the other. It MakesSenseInContext because the title song is an OdeToSobriety dealing with those who get drunk as an excuse to pick fights.

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* The syringe-headed [[http://www.bogleech.com/awfulhospital/075 Dr. Phleboto Mizer]] in Webcomic/AwfulHospital.
* [[MeaningfulName RGB]] from ''Webcomic/ThePropertyofHate'' has a TV displaying a dripping test bar for a head. The test bar curves to represent the line of his mouth, and each color represents an emotion, although it's uncertain what color represents what; the more a color drips, the more prominent the emotion is. His antennae also quirk and shift as he emotes. He can also change the color and pattern of his clothes at will, as well as activate a stealth mode.

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* The Keeper from ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin'' has a safe for a head.

* ''ComicBook/{{Prez}}'':
** In the original series, Prez Rickard, teen president of the United States, had a few run-ins with Boss Smiley, the physical embodiment of political corruption, whose head was a bald sphere with BlackBeadEyes, a tiny nose, a broad smiling mouth -- basically, a flesh-toned version of the classic yellow smiley face emblem.
** The character is given [[CorruptCorporateExecutive a disturbing twist]] in the 2015 reboot, where -- due to corporations achieving full personhood under the law -- all [=CEOs=] have become ''de facto'' mascots, disguising their true faces behind holographic "masks" and being referred to by their company names; Smiley, befitting his origins, has established himself as the most powerful simply because, by getting everything to the consumer as quickly and cheaply as possible, he sells the most valuable commodity of all: ''time''.

* Human characters with various objects for heads is a recurring setup in ''Webcomic/ThePerryBibleFellowship''. [[http://pbfcomics.com/203/ Here's one example]].

* Subverted in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAdH7RhqNMk this Pepsi Max advert]]; towards the end, the boss sees one of the office workers with a horse's head and assumes that he's hallucinating. But that's just what the workers want him to think; the horse's head is fake and the workers are looking for an excuse to goof off.

Compare MalevolentMaskedMen, which plays on much of the same imagery in a way compatible with a more mundane setting or situation. Compare ''and'' contrast AnthropomorphicPersonification and PhysicalGod - many take the form of a person with the head of something else, but unless they are used for surreality and metaphor they are ''not'' this trope. Also, not to be unnecessarily confused with TVHeadRobot or PettingZooPeople.

* Several of reknown surrealist painter Salvador Dali's pieces show people who have things other than human heads. These include "Printemps Necrophilique", "Three Women With Heads of Roses Finding the Skin of a Grand Piano", and "Woman With Head of Flowers".

* The cover of MinorThreat's ''Bottled Violence'' single depicts a man with the top of a beer bottle for a head, who is clad in a leather jacket and SexPistols shirt, and is also holding a beer in one hand and making a raised fist with the other. It MakesSenseInContext because the title song is an OdeToSobriety dealing with those who get drunk as an excuse to pick fights.

* While DC's "Prez" was not usually that surreal, beyond the notion of a teenager (whose mother named him "President") being elected president, he had a few run-ins with Boss Smiley, the physical embodiment of political corruption, who had a smiley-face for a head. While there have occasionally been attempts at retconning Prez Rickard into the mainstream DC universe (at one point he was an AI Lex Luthor came up with to run the country), no explanation has ever been given for Smiley. The closest being a ''Comicbook/TheSandman'' story that suggested he was a supernatural being, possibly the [[GodIsEvil God]] of Prez's world. But that was a StoryWithinAStory, and explicitly took place in an AlternateUniverse anyway.
** The character is later given [[CorruptCorporateExecutive a disturbing twist]] in the 2015 series, where -- due to corporations achieving full personhood under the law -- all [=CEOs=] have become ''de facto'' mascots, disguising their true faces behind holographic "masks" and being referred to by their company names; Smiley, befitting his origins, has established himself as the most powerful simply because, by getting everything to the consumer as quickly and cheaply as possible, he sells the most valuable commodity of all: ''time''.

* Part of the mythos in ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'' revolves around visions of strange creatures who are humanoid in shape, but have strange symbols for heads. Their presence and origin is as of yet unexplained.
** It is revealed in ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'' that these are the Cryptics, essentially the idea of lying given sentience.

* In ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'', the protagonist is visited by three strangers in animal masks, in dreamlike settings. (It was produced by {{cactus}}, who also made the aforementioned Mondo games.)

** The character is later given [[CorruptCorporateExecutive a disturbing twist]] in the 2015 series, where -- due to corporations achieving full personhood under the law -- all CEOs have become ''de facto'' mascots, disguising their true faces behind holographic "masks" and being referred to by their company names; Smiley, befitting his origins, has established himself as the most powerful simply because, by getting everything to the consumer as quickly and cheaply as possible, he sells the most valuable commodity of all: ''time''.

A recurring motif in SurrealHorror, SurrealHumour, and, really, surreality in general, is an apparently human being whose head is something else entirely. In some cases, it's simply been replaced with the head of some species of animal; in others, it's actually an inanimate object walking about on an human body; in still others, it's neither a human with a strange head nor an object piloting a human body, but rather some other entity that looks ''mostly'' human. Whatever the reason, the result is often referred to as an "object head".