Brain In A Jar / Video Games

• The last boss of Andro Dunos is a giant brain in a dome piloting a massive alien battleship.
• Bot Gaiden: One of Giorquo's hench-bots, Ratbot, has a large brain in a jar full of green liquid on top of his head.
• Brain Dead 13: Dr. Nero Neurosis is a disembodied Mad Scientist brain in a tube, which is one of the many cliches Lance mocks him for.
• Cel Damage has Brian, a brain and spinal cord stored inside a jar. He also wears glasses and has robotic arms.
• Champions Online has the villain "The Overbrain", which floats around in his jar with telekinesis, and attacks the player with psychic blasts. There are also clones of it made by another villain that serve as small mooks. The goal of the mission that pits the player against The Overbrain is to release yet another, larger brain that's being kept prisoner in a jar by the villain. Of note is that The Overbrain is an obvious parody of Doom Patrol's villain "The Brain", complete with second-in-command talking ape.
• Cosmic Star Heroine has a Unique Enemy that is a brain in a dome controlling a vehicle that shoots missiles. Interestingly, the brain is robotic too.
• In Creature Crunch, Wesley's main ally is a floating brain in a jar named Brian.
• City of Heroes: The Clockwork King is a Brain in a Jar mounted on a mechanical frame he operates telekinetically.
• In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Yuri keeps several brains in jars to research psychic technology. In the Soviet campaign, he uses them to cheat death by uploading his mind into one of them. Then in the Expansion Pack there is a very literal think tank aptly called "Mastermind", which is a big Brain in a Jar (or maybe multiple brains smashed together) and can mind control a theoretically unlimited number of enemy units, but after a certain amount it overloads and starts ripping itself apart.
• In Contra III: The Alien Wars, Red Falcon can be reduced to this. Of course, being a disembodied, floating brain only makes him deadlier, as he can then use a variety of psychic weapons and (in Hard mode) a metallic, armored sheath with octopus-like tentacles.
• A brain in a jar is the whole point of the game Cortex Command. Sometimes, it's hanging in a bunker, and sometimes it's on a robotic exoskeleton and can move, though it's fragile and if it dies, you fail. In fact, the introduction video implies that most if not all space-dwelling humans have become brains in jars; the fact that they're brains is what allowed them to travel through space, not needing things like "beds" or "solid food". The only visibly human mercenaries (Ronin) are known to be clones, with botched clones becoming zombies.
• The BioDerm (artificially cloned/grown human pilot) "Mentor" in MissionForce: Cyberstorm is one of these, an experiment meant to test the feasibility of direct neural link to a HERC. It works — Mentor is scarily competent — but the tradeoff is a very short lifespan.
• The Daedalus Encounter: The protagonist is grievously wounded in the intro cutscene, and revived as a "brain in a box" remote-controling a flying probe with a manipulator arm.
• Dead Head Fred: The protagonist is killed and reanimated in this form at the beginning of the game, though he is at least attached to his original body. His... predicament lets him switch his head with other things, each with their own gameplay uses.
• Edna & Harvey: The Breakout: Bobo, who gets stored in a shelf in a psychiatric clinic.
• The Neural Network Computer in Elemental Gearbolt is a group of interconnected brains in tall glass tubes. It doesn't like brain-in-a-jar life, and creates weapons as a means of self-destruction — the titular Elementals.
• The Evil Within: Ruvik was reduced to this at the hands of Mobius. It's explained that he had rigged STEM to only activate when his brain was connected to it and destroyed the notes that would let them rebuild it otherwise, so he could keep his private fantasy world generator all to himself. Mobius instead went, "Hey, we just need your brain" and ripped it out and attached it. Unfortunately, Ruvik's brain is more conscious and in control of the dream world than they thought it would be, so STEM is still nothing but a useless reality-warping nightmare-generator.
• Fallout:
  • Across all Fallout games is the Robobrain, a robot that has an organic brain as a CPU. This is notable in the fact that none of the brain's original thoughts are present (it is said that the brains used range from chimpanzees to humans).
  • Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel: Vault 0 is run by the Calculator combined with a series of brains in jars, supposedly from the best and brightest, though as a joke the brains seem rather shallow—the politician, for example, is clearly modeled on Bill Clinton, and there's a porn star brain. In order to win the game you have to destroy all the brains and then confront the Calculator, who offers you the chance to join your own brain to it and thereby bring order to the chaos of the Calculator's damaged mind. General Barnaky, already a brain in a jar on top of a robot, also offers himself. Depending on what kind of game you played, or whether you take up one or other offer or refuse it and just let the counter run down, the game ending changes.
  • Fallout 2: Although Skynet is technically an AI that wants to conquer the world, you bring him out into the world through a cybernetic brain inside a Brain Bot. You can also end up bringing a chimp or normal human brain instead, but that isn't quite as good. Or you can use an abnormal brain, which will render him The Load, too stupid to do anything but carry items (including comprehending that it's been fired). The only way to get this version of Skynet out of your party (thus making room for someone actually useful) is to kill it.
  • Fallout 3:
    • Point Lookout features Professor Calvert, who uses telepathy to set himself up as the god of a group of Tribals and plans to turn all of the Point's residents into his slaves. The end of the DLC's main questline presents a literal example of this trope since you are able to obtain a piece of your own brain in a jar which had been removed by the ferryman who brought you to Point Lookout, on behalf of the tribals, during ritual lobotomy.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • The Fetch Quest "Nothin' but a Hound Dog" involves help The King get medical help for his pet cyberdog, Rex. You find out that the life support for his brain has been damaged, and while it can be repaired, his brain was permanently damaged and has to be replaced. Successfully completing the mission getting a new brain for Rex from one of three dog trainers.
    • The Think Tank, who are a group of Pre-War Mad Scientists who put their brains in floating robots with monitors for eyes and mouths, in the Old World Blues DLC.
    • This also happens to the Player Character in the Old World Blues DLC as well. When you first arrive at the Think Tank, your brain is extracted and replaced with cybernetic parts intended to allow your body to continue to function for simple slave labor. Somehow, as a result of a combination of an old head wound and a freak scientific accident, you retain coherent thought, even though your brain is elsewhere, allowing your "mind" to be in two places at once, with your brain being treated as a separate entity. Yeah, Old World Blues is weird.
      Your brain in Old World Blues can also be considered an entirely separate character, as it's floating in mentats, and therefore has gained separate thought from the player character, meaning you can have a conversation with it. Due to the mentat saturation, it's incredibly intelligent, usually more so than the PC. It finds your quest for vengeance against Benny ill-advised and constantly berates you, despite technically being you, especially with low INT. You can flirt with it using certain perks, which it is disgusted by.
    • There's also the K9000, a minigun powered by the brain of a dog. It'll even bark, whine and growl and includes cybernetic ears and noses.
  • Fallout 4:
    • The Automatron DLC introduces Robobrains to the game, as well as a more in-depth look into their creation- Robobrains were originally created by General Atomics for both military and civilian use, but many of the brains were taken from death row criminals. Those who survived went insane from complete sensory deprivation, whereas those who had all their memories and personality wiped became coldly logical, believing the best way to "save" people was to kill them.
    • The Nuka-World DLC has John-Caleb Bradberton, the creator of Nuka Cola and the titular theme park, whose cryogenically-preserved head can be found in a secret chamber underneath the park. After 200+ years of being isolated, he wishes only for someone to deactivate his life support so he can finally die.
• The second Freedom Force game has 'Eyes of the Reich', which are (you guessed it) Nazi Brains in Jars with Frickin' Laser Beams.
• F-Zero has Deathborn. It's the only part of his body still remaining after being reconstructed 3 times.That includes his Soul.
• The Reveal at the climax of Ghost 1.0 is that the Nakamura "server room" is actually the room where millions of human brains are kept as Wetware CPUs for the Nakas down on Earth, supplied with sugar, oxygen, and a mix of substances designed to keep them submissive and obedient - and the brain of the Player Character is also there, as Brain #17823.
• Ghost Master features a ghost of a brain in a jar.
• The Big Bad of Gotcha Force, the Galactic Emperor. Not so much a "in a jar" as "in an energy field"... mounted on a spaceship the size of a continent; the brain itself is about the size of a country.
• In The House of the Dead: OVERKILL, this is the final fate of Faux Action Girl Varla Guns.
• Kingdom of Loathing allows you to fight the Brainsweeper, a Brain In A Jar that is powering a set of brooms. (For Science!) It Randomly Drops a Disembodied Brain in a jar, which you can use to Frankenstein together a chef, bartender, maid, or a few other things.
• Mechanized Attack: The True Final Boss of the game, a terrorist mastermind, is revealed to be a brain in a stasis tank controlling the core of the terrorist base, where from its position it can summon mechanical tentacles and missile launchers on you.
• In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Desperado Enforcement takes kidnapped children and harvests their brains, with the eyes and spinal column attached, as a first step in their Unwilling Roboticisation. One of the rooms in the game is a huge foyer covered in pods with these brains. Probably gives Raiden some bad memories, seeing as he's really just a brain attached to a spine himself...
• One of the bosses of Metal Slug 6 is a humongous brain with eyeballs in a jar... on top of an equally huge alien mecha. It's one of the hardest boss fights in the game.
  • Rootmars, the leader of the alien invasion, appears to be a brain contained within a gigantic facsimile of a Mars people's body. When first encountered by the player, the brain isn't visible, hidden behind an elaborate metal apparatus.
• Metroid:
  • Mother Brain, a re-occurring final boss, is just a brain in a tank in Metroid, guarded by various gun turrets and organic barriers. She is supposedly a biological supercomputer. In Super Metroid, once defeated, she rises up again attached to an insanely powerful T-rex-like robot body.
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption features the Aurora Units, which are also brain-like organic supercomputers in large tanks. There's even been some theories on how they may be related to Mother Brain in some way, fueled by the very large number of Mother Brain references made both in-game and in supplementary material but never fully elaborated upon as far as direct connections go.
  • The security robot B.O.X. in Metroid Fusion contains a brain in its cybermechanical spider-like body. This happens to open it up to X Parasite infection.
  • Metroid Dread: The Central Units are biomechanical brains in glass containers that give Samus access to the Omega Cannon. Adam describes them as the "mother computers" managing their respective E.M.M.I. Zones. Their similarities to Mother Brain are noted when compared to "similar units in previous Metroid games" in the E3 2021 Treehouse footage. Central Units even defend themselves from Samus with turrets and Rinkas just like Mother Brain.
• Miasma Chronicles: The Mayor is a disembodied head in a jar.
• In Mission Impossible (1990), the second-to-last room in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon has its walls lined with brains and hearts in life-support tanks. It's even scarier when you realize how much effort it took to get there, and that nothing else in the game hints that the Sinister 7 were creating bioweapons.
• Muv-Luv: in Unlimited, there is a human brain and spinal column kept in a tube in a secret lab in the military base. Almost nothing is revealed about it in that game however. In Alternative, it's revealed that it was recovered from a BETA Hive along with several others. Why the BETA were removing human brains and hooking them up to organic life support systems is unknown. However, what's more relevant to Takeru is that the brain in the lab is in fact all that remains of that world's Sumika. It's eventually placed in a robot body, allowing Sumika to live again... though she has extensive trauma to overcome first (turns out those people were conscious when their brains were removed and while sitting in the jars).
• No More Heroes: The #5 ranked Letz Shake controls what looks like a super collider powered by a brain in a jar.
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: When Dr. Letz Shake comes back for the 10th ranked battle, it is revealed that he is the brain-powered earthquake generator. It's hinted that this is the same Letz Shake from the first game after an Emergency Transformation.
• Not Dying Today have a Mad Scientist boss, Dr. Brain, who starts off as a human with an oversized brain encased in a dome. Inflict enough damage on Dr. Brain however and he will inject another potion into himself, turning into a massive brain monster in a round forcefield who then floats all over the place to attack.
• Operator's Side: Also known as Lifeline: Rio's father, whom she had thought dead, has become this. His brain was recovered and was being used to further research into the Philosopher's Stone. Major, major tearjerker moment when Rio finds out and he asks to be shut down.
• The first Pajama Sam game has one in the laboratory. Clicking it causes it to take out a sheet of paper and read a poem:
  "I float and I think
  and I think and I think
  About walking or driving a car
  Or riding a bike
  And I think and I float
  Because I'm just a brain in a jar"
• Psychonauts. Later in the game, the campers and teachers of a summer camp for psychics have their brains stolen by the Big Bad, who puts them into jars and uses them to make an army of deadly psychic tanks. Collecting all these 19 or so brains is a sidequest, which will reward you with increased maximum HP.
• In Psychonauts 2, Otto Mentalis's Brainframe is filled with preserved brains in jars, many of which represent the backers of the game, and one of which is entered as a level. There are also a couple of mobile brains in hamster balls that wander around the Motherlobe.
• Quake: Several enemies in the series, notably the Parasites, the Flyers, and the Technicians, the latter who is a literal brain-in-a-jar controlling a flying-saucer-like machine.
• In the first episode of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, the titular duo encounter a disembodied alien brain named Gordon on General Skun-ka'pe's ship. As suggested by the title of episode three, "They Stole Max's Brain!", Max ends up spending some time as one of these.
• In the Ratchet & Clank franchise, the B2 Brawler and Scorpio are giant robots with giant organic brains inside them.
• The Mad Scientist Dr. NoBody from Secret Agent is one of these, on top of a robotic body.
• Shin Megami Tensei's interpretation of Omoikane, Shinto goddess of wisdom and intelligence, depicts "her" as a disembodied brain with eyes and several dozen feelers.
• Joe Musashi from the Shinobi games had to deal with B.I.A.Js quite a few times in his missions. In The Revenge of Shinobi a stage taking place aboard a huge military transport ended with a Boss Battle against a Brain in a Jar that actually controlled the transport. In Shinobi 3 one of the missions takes place in a biowarfare lab where he would deal with Brains that broke out of their jars, Brains with Wings, and at the end, a Brain in a Dalek-esque battle machine.
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: The Clinical Immortality secret project. Though this technically included the spinal column, and eyes. The movie gets its chills from the eyes just staring at you. The Bioenhancement Center facility, when constructed, gives you the page quote.
• The Sims: Busting Out had a brain in a jar as furniture. In fact, said furniture is involved in one of the challenges.
• The Big Bad of Space Station Silicon Valley turns out to be a Brain in a Jar called... the Evil Brain. It taunts EVO while spraying the Earth with the Doomsday-O-Matic Shrinky Ray, but is easily destroyed with EVO's laser. However, it turns out that the Evil Brain was driving the space station, which subsequently crashes into the now-shrunken Earth, and the REAL final battle is a search-and-destroy mission in which you must exterminate all of the robotic animals that escaped from the station before they destroy the miniaturized city, and then the world.
• One of the randomly generated rooms in Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion has a brain floating in a jar. Initially, this was just an aesthetic until one of the later updates has the brain give you a code you can use on the out of order arcade cabinet that would play a small clip revealing Spooky's past.
• Steel Force have it's Final Boss, the Space Pirates' leader, being revealed to be a gigantic brain (larger than your characters) inside a glass dome, who attacks by controlling a pair of turrets to fire at you.
• Streets of Rage 3 has the recurring villain, Mr. X, show up as a brain in a tube. He still wishes to rule the city.
  Zan: Face it, Mr. X. Dr. Dahm is no longer with you. Do you expect to run the city from a glass vial?
  Mr. X: Of course, traitor. Let me show you how! (Robo-Y flies into the room)
• Tampo, the first boss of Stinkoman 20X6, is first seen as a mechanized Brain in a Jar that was destroyed by Stinkoman prior to the game's first level. The level ends with Tampo's brain coming back to get Stinkoman for revenge.
• The final trial of Super Danganronpa Another 2 reveals that Yuki Maeda has been reduced to such a state in the real world. The Yuki we interact with is a VR replication of him made from it.
• Supreme Commander: Doctor Brackman made himself into a brain in a jar to stay alive after his nominal death. One thousand years of constant warfare later, and he's still going strong as the leader and father of the Cybran Nation.
• The scientists in Tasty Planet: Back For Seconds become brain-jars in the far future levels.
• Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys: All the alien brain thingys are contained in jars that they use for mobility.
• X-COM: Terror from the Deep: The Bio-Drones, only their jars can hover anywhere it wants, are hard to hit, can take quite a bit of damage, come equipped with highly accurate weapons, and explode with a huge radius upon death. Oh, and if you research them, you find out that some of them are human brains that have been butchered to obedience by the aliens.

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