'''Brain Slug''' launched as ThePuppetMasters: [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=1lb69t2jfbpbddf0uhy0ev4n&trope=ThePuppetMasters From YKTTW]]

Inyssius: I don't see how the Zerg count here...

LooneyToons: If I remember ''Starcraft'' correctly, they could take over humans and turn them into weapons or agents or something -- and one of the Zerg Big Bads was former human.

Firvulag: After having dug my old manual out, yes you could infest a human town hall and produce infected humans. Also all of the Zerg units were species they'd taken over and modified for their own use. The closest things to the original Zerg were the larvae that the town hall produced and the big worms that were the brains of the operation.

Inyssius: Infested Kerrigan was indeed formerly human, but she was the only Zerg who had any sort of personality or recognizable resemblance to the original person. There was no Puppetmastery there, either; she was not Not Herself. She was {{Brainwashed}}, though. The other humanoid Zerg, Duran, was revealed to actually not be Zerg at all in a bonus level. As for the Infested Terran units, well, do a Google Image search for Infested Terran and try mistaking one of them for a normal person. (for the lazy: Normal Terran Marines don't have tentacles, or glowing red eyes, or ''elephant trunks protruding from their faces'', or huge colorful tumors on their backs, and they usually have some shred of consciousness or individuality, and they don't explode.) I was thinking that ThePuppetmasters was a very specific subset of BodyHorror which centered around the alien taking over minds; the Zerg never did any of that (more or less; when the Zerg took over your mind, basically everyone could tell.)

{{Robert}}: The body snatchers were something different. They didn't take over human bodies; they created doppelgangers which replaced the original -- a different horror.

{{TJDevil02}}: I already see a bunch of StarTrek up here, so I didn't add it, but whoever the Treksters are, could you tell me why the Borg does/doesn't count as ThePuppetMasters? They seem like the canonical definition to me...

{{TravisWells}}: I think the distinction is that Puppet Masters take over humans and can still pass as human. (So all the humans go into trust-no-one mode). The Borg are visibly different, so they don't try to pass as humans.

RedShoe: Incidentally, five house points, ten cool points, and a cookie to whoever gets the "penchant for ketchup" reference.

Sniffnoy: So how does this differ from TheVirus, exactly?

Semi-known Troper: It can be a form of TheVirus, but not nessaserily, this article is about villains that possess a victuims body, to infect another person they need to get a whole separate villain. If there is only one Puppet Master s/he cannot be TheVirus.

{{Shazzbaa}}: I'd think the big difference between this and TheVirus is something like this:
TheVirus : One Nasty-thing "gets" your friends, and they all transform into nasty-things, too.
ThePuppetMasters : One Nasty-thing "gets" one of your friends and possesses him, making him NotHimself.
It's not necessarily whether or not ThePuppetMasters can pass as humans, but how, exactly, they're taking over. Thus, the Borg don't count because you don't become possessed by a borg, you become assimilated and transformed into a Borg yourself -- it's TheVirus. The Zerg (with which I'm not familiar) count if each unit is actually a Zerg that has taken over a human (or whatever) body; I'd say they ''don't'' count if they're simply transforming humans (or whatever) to look like them. It sounds to me like it's close enough to list as an example.
As always, correct me if I'm wrong.

MajorMajor: I took out the "Ark in Space" Dr. Who reference. That fits better as BodyHorror--people can get turned into slimy insect larvae, then eventually space insects.
----
Is there a page for the general "trust no one" trope that covers doppelgangers, shape-changers and puppetmasters? --DocumentN
----
{{Medinoc}}: I guess Reynardine from ''GunnerkriggCourt'' does not count because he's alone ?

{{Meta4}}: ThePuppetmasters is when a physical being possesses you, and Rey's a spirit. I'd say he's more a case of [[strike:GrandTheftMe]] DemonicPossession (and [[strike:possibly]] BodySurf), [[strike:seeing as he causes the host soul to depart permanently (hence why their body dies when he leaves).]] Someone else already listed him there so I'm not going to argue.