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Because "Brain in a Zip-Loc Baggie" lacks a certain tension.
We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism
The Wonders of Science can keep a human brain alive in a plastic fishbowl with a few wires and doo-dads running into it. Sometimes this is benevolent, but usually it's nefarious. Occasionally, an underachiever Mad Scientist may need to keep the whole head alive, not just the brain. Sometimes the spinal cord and/or eyeballs are also there.
Sometimes it is presented as the end result of natural evolutionary processes. One day, we may find the rest of our bodies superfluous and exist simply as disembodied brains.
Occasionally with this trope, a virtual reality is put into the brain so that it thinks it's a regular person with a body, making it a sort of Lotus Eater Machine. See The Other Wiki's "brain in a vat" article for further discussion of this idea.
It seems that in about one in five examples of this trope the brain will always be Hitler's. Walt Disney (or, more likely a No Celebrities Were Harmed Expy of him) is also popular.
Compare with People Jars; pretty much the same thing, but with complete bodies instead of just a brain. Compare also Soul Jar, in which the more immaterial essence of one's self, is preserved.
Compare to Losing Your Head when the whole head is preserved and capable of independent movement. This may or may not lead to And I Must Scream.
Examples:
Anime
- The founders of the Time-Space Administration Bureau in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha turn out to have been reduced to these.
- Many, many characters in the Ghost In The Shell series. Those who haven't disposed of their organic bodies entirely (Major Kusanagi, Bateau, Kuze, etc) are equipped with cyberbrain implants (everyone else).
- Part of Araya's "Spiral Paradox" in Kara No Kyoukai relied on these.
- Briareos from Appleseed also has a cyberbrain within a robotic body.
- The Magi computers in Neon Genesis Evangelion are powered by human brains.
- One of the protagonists of the Captain Future anime is a brain-in-a-hovering-machine, with a mouth-like array of Blinkenlights.
- In Akira, this is the current state of Akira, together with the rest of his nervous system...until he comes back, that is.
- Lord Genome was brought back as this in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to serve as a living computer and Mr Exposition.
- Dragonball Z's 2nd movie, World's Strongest, features Dr. Wheelo, who seems to be a brain in a jar. But then turns out to be a brain in a jar in a massive mecha. With guns. And lasers.
- Despite being an Anime-version of a Western pulp series, Simon Wright fom Captain Future should be mentioned here. He is an archetypical brain in a (highly mobie) jar, with tractor beam and other appendages.
Card Games
- A longtime Running Gag on Magic The Gathering's website is that Magic's Research And Development department is run by Gleemax, a literal Brain In A Jar.
- Which even has its own (not tournament-legal) card. The gag, by the way, dates back to at least the February 1998 issue of the long-defunct Duelist magazine, in which Mark Rosewater explains the 'Top Ten Myths About Magic R&D' — the myth about Gleemax is listed as #1, and it's not quite clear from context whether MaRo refers to an actual earlier myth or is just throwing in a red herring on the fly.
- The Brain In A Jar is an enemy in Star Munchkin.
Comic Books
- The 2000 AD (addendum: it's a UK Comic Book) futuristic sports team The Harlem Heroes suffered a crash in their first adventure. One member became a brain in a jar as a result.
- Another 2000 AD strip, Bad Company, featured Kano, a patched-together half-mad soldier who believes he carries the human part of his brain in a box. It's really just some random corpse's grey matter to keep him docile; he tends to go a little (more) crazy when he thinks he's lost it.
- Doom Patrol villain the Brain in The DCU. In one continuity he finally does manage to get a body—only to die in an explosion a few minutes later, moments before kissing his long-time boyfriend Mallah.
- Who's a talking French Gorilla. You had a Brain in a jar in a robot being in love with a talking French Gorilla. I fucking love comics!
- In the Marvel Universe, Invaders and Alpha Flight villain Brain Drain.
- Also in the Marvel Universe, the Eternal Brain, a Golden Age hero later revamped as a member of the Ret Con-riffic superhero team the First Line from the Marvel: The Lost Generation series.
- Also in the Marvel Universe we have Non-Girl, a mutant kept alive as a brain in a jar to be used as a telepathic weapon before the X-men rescued her.
- The Kree Supreme Intelligence is combination of their world's greatest mind, all in one big jar.
- And Doctor Sun, a Chinese enemy of Dracula in Marvel Comics (We know he's Chinese because we are told).
- One of Hellboy's enemies is Professor Doctor Herman Von Klempt, the Nazi head-in-a-jar.
- More literally in the spinoff oneshot "The Iron Prometheus" starring Badass Normal Lobster Johnson. In order to extract the secrets of the Vril Energy Suit from Professor Gallaragas the villains literally do this to him. Then the villain shoots him. He comes back later as a the Ghostly Advisor to the guy wearing the VES suit.
- Atomic Robo has the crazy scientist who isn't just a brain in a jar. He is several brains in several jars, pparently having cloned himself to immortality. Every time his currently active brain dies, a new one "wakes up".
Film
- The Brain that Wouldn't Die (Actually a head in a pan, but close enough)
- They Saved Hitler's Brain
- The Brain From Planet Arous
- Invaders From Mars
- Donovan's Brain
- Fiend Without a Face
- The Atomic Brain
- The Man With Two Brains
- Mars Attacks!
- In Young Frankenstein Igor was sent to retrieve the brilliant Hans Delbruck's brain from the Brain Depository. Igor drops the jar containing the scientist's brain, and instead takes a different jar marked "ABNORMAL - DO NOT USE". After the monster reveals its true nature, Dr. Frankenstein asks Igor whose brain he put in the body. "Abby someone." "Abby who?" "Abby Normal."
- Robocop 2 (even after it's put inside the titular robot)
- Uncle Irvin in The City Of Lost Children A Deadpan Snarker Brain In A Jar. With migraines.
- X-Files: I Want To Believe
Literature
- Mayflies by Kevin O'Donnell
- Plus by Joseph Mc Elroy
- William and Mary by Roald Dahl
- The Whisperer in Darkness by H.P.Lovecraft, in which the Alien Mi-Go plant living Human brains in cylinders to transport them to other planets, which the human body apparently cannot withstand. One of the earliest appearances of this trope.
- That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis. A whole head this time, with an overgrown brain, plus air tubes to pass "breath" through the vocal cords and mouth allowing it to speak. And artificial drool.
- A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, in which an oversized brain referred to as IT has gained complete telepathic control of an entire planet. IT runs the planet on a heartbeat which controls the life of everyone. Despite being in a novel, so great is the influence of IT that the characters ''know'' how to capitalize the name.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe, specifically the short story anthology Tales from Jabba's Palace, reveals that the spiderlike droids seen in Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi are mechanisms used for getting around by a group of monks who have chosen life as brains-in-jars. (You can actually see the jars on the undersides in the film if you know to look for them.)
- Bib Fortuna, when a fellow Twi'lek and associate of his was slated to be fed to the Rancor, had the man's brain removed and stuck in one of the spider droids, leaving the brainstem in so that the body would still spasm appropriately. Nat Secura did not appreciate this, and Bib believed that without a body Nat was going insane. The epilogue of that anthology reveals that Bib Fortuna and a number of the other characters who didn't get out eventually joined him. The X-Wing comics reveal that Bib was still able to plot and get messages out; eventually yet another Twi'lek came to look for Jabba's treasures and carry Bib off, making him use computer skills in some gambit against Rogue Squadron, heaping a lot of verbal abuse and using electric torture on the brain walker in the process. The gambit failed, naturally, and the other Twi'lek tried to ditch the walker and head back to Tatooine alone. But Bib stowed away and, after the other Twi'lek was stabbed, managed to drag him back to the palace and the monks. Cut to the Twi'lek rising out of a bacta tank, and the attendant droid remarking on the loyalty of the brain droid, how it had insisted on having a restraining bolt fitted to it, and that the scars on the Twi'lek's head seemed to indicate a brain transfer. Devious, Bib. For someone with a "weak will", that's rather Magnificent.
- Part of a Twi'lek's brain is in his or her headtails, so a Twi'lek brain in a jar looks rather odd.
- Also in Star Wars Expanded Universe: In the Tales of the Jedi series, a Jedi Master by the name of Ooroo is a brain-like, methane-breathing alien who must stay in his fishbowl as oxygen is lethal to him. His species, the Celegians, was given a name and some background for RPG; authors never saw a great use for them.
- The prequels of Dune have brainjar villains riding around in giant war machines (just because they can), who cause the Butlerian Jihad through poor programming of their computerized inside "man" and wind up as minions/slaves themselves. Besides the Titans (giant war machines ), are the Cogitors, humans who gave up their bodies to spend millennia contemplating the mysteries of the universe. As a group they have declared themselves neutral in the war where humanity is being exterminated like rats. In the end, those mysteries slap them in the face, karma is a bitch.
- The Ships series of Anne McCaffrey have the brains of people with serious physical birth defects and sharp minds built into starships, usually from just after birth or a few years old. The blurb on the back of the first one, "The Ship Who Sang", implied that the brainships were the brains of people who had been severely injured, but whole bodies were used, suspended in metal "shells" that could be installed and hooked up in the ships. Brainships are said to have their own strange culture, and they get paired with "brawns", humans who do all the physical stuff like fending off hostile takeovers. It's never explained why there are no, say, robotic arms inside of the ships. Codes are used by the brawns to override or shut down the brains should they go insane, which happens rarely. Brains and brawns falling in love inevitably becomes a disaster.
- The ships do tend to have some remotes, but not much in the way of highly-capable utility bots like you'd think they'd want. And the romance is more inevitable than inevitably disastrous. The problem arises if they lose it badly enough to think a physical relationship is a good idea when one of them is congenitally unable to live outside of a sealed life support pod. Eventually technology to get around this becomes available.
- The novel Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak.
- Larry Niven's short story "Becalmed In Hell" has a sans corpus fellow running a probe to the surface of Venus, and contains a Shout Out to the above book by naming the bodiless chap Donovan.
- The first novel based on the Doom videogames had the Legions Of Hell actually Hand Waved as genetically engineered scare-tactic bioweapons created by aliens who consist of huge brains in Giant Spider-like mobile carriers.
- Neil R. Jones is credited with inventing this trope in 1931, making it Older Than Television.
- In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the gang runs into a room with several brains in jars while fighting their way through the Hall of Mysteries. Ron (who's punch drunk at the time) starts playing with them and they begin to attack everyone.
- Orson Scott Card's Wyrms features talking disembodied heads kept alive by some kind of leech.
- Occasionally seen in the Perry Rhodan universe, with both disembodied human brains (though usually those are given robot bodies at the very least) and alien ones — the 'Central Plasma' that governs the mostly-robotic Posbi species is basically one giant protoplasmic brain in a jar. One arc of the series even dealt with the abduction of the titular protagonist's brain into a distant galaxy; an android brain was substituted and operated his body for nefarious purposes while he tried to find his way back. (Good thing the civilizations of said galaxy had their own brain transplant technology as part of their quest to extend life, even if it did contribute to their acute overpopulation issues; so, plenty of disembodied donor brains around there, too.)
- Nightwings by Robert Silverberg. Brain jars effectivly serve as information storage systems.
- The Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K. Morgan features another twist on the cyberbrain sub-variant of this trope, in the form of "cortical stacks" implanted in every person's brain that basically serve as a mirror backup of the brain in question. Stacks can be transferred to other bodies ("sleeves") at will, transmitted across networks, mounted within VR constructs or simply stored to disk.
- Keith Laumer's A Plague of Demons, in which human brains are installed in alien war machines.
- Daniel Dennett's short story "Where am I" about a man being separated from his brain, which explores relevant philosophical ideas.
- Orson Scott Card once jokingly referred to this as a possible solution to Bean's condition. He also expressed serious revulsion at the idea, so we probably don't have to worry about him following through with it.
- Averted in Mary Roach's Stiff. Investigating the various fates which await deceased human bodies, Roach looked into the possibility of donating her own to Harvard's medical school, in hopes of becoming a brain in a jar. To her disappointment, she learned that human brains preserved there for medical and scientific research are kept in plastic food containers, which didn't seem worth it.
- (Edmond Hamiton / Mort Weisinger / Oscar J. Friend)'s Simmon Wright of the Captain Future universe almost is an archetypical brain in a jar.
Live Action TV
- Star Trek: "The Gamesters of Triskelion", "Spock's Brain"
- Doctor Who: "The Keys of Marinus", "The Brain of Morbius", "Last of the Time Lords". Cassandra from "The End of the World" and "New Earth" almost counts: she's a brain in a jar connected to a piece of skin stretched on a frame.
- The Outer Limits: "The Brain of Colonel Barham"
- Tales Of The Unexpected: "William and Mary"
- Bionic Woman: The 1970s version had one brain in jar villain with floating eyeballs and telekinesis.
- Lister's "future self" (one of them, anyway) in Red Dwarf
- "Mr. Newman" of the short-lived series Now and Again spent some time as a brain in a jar after getting hit by a train but before getting his new Super Soldier body.
- Lexx. Slightly subverted in that the brains of the former His Divine Shadows somehow don't need jars in order to survive.
- They may be sustained with protoblood. Though given how easily they're destroyed, maybe not - protoblood would make them invulnerable. Possibly a weaker derivative. Or maybe having housed the essence of His Divine Shadow makes them this tough as a side effect.
- In Mystery Science Theater 3000, Brain Guy had his brain in a dish...that his body was carrying.
- A body he persistently insisted to be nonexistant, no less.
- In the Wizard of Oz pastiche Tin Man, the brain in a jar turned out to be the brain of the Scarecrow counterpart, used to construct and power a Doomsday Device.
- It's not a brain, but according to The Colbert Report, doctors can now keep a pair of lungs alive and breathing in a glass dome. Creepy!
Music
- Country music singer James Bonamy had a song called "Brain in a Jar".
New Media
- This set of emails between a 419 scammer and a wise guy.
- The late Usenet personality Gharlane of Eddore always depicted himself as being a brain in a jar.
- According to Marshall Brain, we'll likely all choose to be this way in a few decades.
Newspaper Comics
- Several Far Side cartoons played with this trope, including one where a Jan in the Pan-esque severed head begins screaming in horror at its circumstances, only to receive a anti-insanity slap from the mad scientist who created it. "Thanks, Professor, I needed that."
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons and Dragons has the Mind Flayers, the Illithid race, their leaders are Elder Brains. Gigantic Brains in Jars. With Psionic powers.
- Various undead supplements have provided more normal-sized brains in jars.
- A brain in a jar, salvaged alive from an accident victim by Ravenloft's Dr. Frankenstein Expy, is a mind-controlling criminal mastermind in Dementlieu.
- Mutants And Masterminds had one as a sample villain.
- Second edition had it as a potential villain archetype. First edition, using the META-4 universe, had the Atomic Brain who was a former Manhattan Project researcher whose brain survived the explosion of an experiment. A combination of resentment at Oppenheimer taking credit for the atomic bomb and frustration over a lack of limbs led to the Atomic Brain becoming a supervillain.
Video Games
- In the Metroid video game series, Mother Brain, a re-occurring final boss, is just a brain in a tank, guarded by various gun turrets and organic barriers. It is supposedly a biological supercomputer.
- In Super Metroid, once it is defeated, it rises up again attached to an insanely powerful T-rex-like robot body.
- There's also the Aurora Units in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, 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.
- You mean the teaser trailer showing an Aurora facility exactly like Tourian, the fact the first Mother Brain was built by Chozo and Federation scientists in an effort to link Chozo and Fedreation databases (much like the Aurora units' function) the fact a second Aurora was stolen by space pirates at the beginning of Prime 3, just before Metroid 2 and Super Metroid (where Mother Brain returns), and the reaction Samus had to meeting the GF Aurora unit as looking pretty much the same as Mother Brain... No, you think there's a connection? Really?
- The security robot B.O.X. in Metroid Fusion contains a brain in its cybermechanical spider-like body. Granted, the point is more the robot than the brain...
- The brain thing is just an attempt at justification. Otherwise there would be possible outrage over the biological X parasites taking over a completely mechanical robot. But with a brain, well then, it all makes sense!
- The Clockwork King in City Of Heroes is a Brain In A Jar mounted on a mechanical frame he operates telekinetically.
- The Clinical Immortality secret project from Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri. Though this technically included the spinal column
- ... and eyes. The movie gets its Nightmare Fuel from the eyes just staring at you.
- The Bioenhancement Center facility, when constructed, gives you the page quote.
- In Fallout Tactics, Vault 0 is run by the Calculator combined with a series of if 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 if you take up the offer, or if you just refuse it and let the counter run down, the game ending changes.
- Not to mention Skynet from Fallout 2. Although he's technically an AI that wants to conquer the world, you bring him out into the world through an cybernetic brain inside a Brain Bot. You can also end up bringing an Chimp or normal human brain instead, but isn't quite as good.
- Fallout 3 or rather 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.
- 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.
- In Brain Dead 13, the Mad Scientist villain is one of these.
- The Bio-Drones of X-COM: Terror from the Deep, 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.
- Doctor Brackman of Supreme Commander 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.
- In No More Heroes, the #5 ranked Letz Shake controls what looks like a Super Collider powered by a brain in a jar.
- Psychonauts. You collect about 30 of these as a sidequest, and the evil villain uses them to power tanks. The sneezing scene and Raz's scene still are Nightmare Fuel for this troper.
- Several enemies in the Quake series, notably the Parasites, the Fliers, and the Technician, which is a literal brain-in-a-jar controlling a flying-saucer-like machine.
- In Red Alert 2, Yuri keeps several brains in jars to research psychic technology. And in the expansion there is a very literal think tank...
- The protagonist of Dead Head Fred 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.
- This is practically what they did to Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 4, they severed his head above the jaw and grafted it onto a totally cybernetic body. A fate worse than Gray Fox.
- The Sims: Busting Out had a brain in a jar as furniture. In fact, said furniture is involved in one of the challenges.
- 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.
- The Bio Derm (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.
- Red Falcon can be reduced to this in Contra III: The Alien Wars. 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The second Freedom Force game has 'Eyes of the Reich', which are (you guessed it) Nazi Brains in Jars with Frickin Laser Beams.
- Joe Musashi from the Shinobi games had to deal with B.I.A.Js quite a few times in his missions. In 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.
- Ghost Master features a ghost of a brain in a jar.
- In House Of The Dead: Overkill, this is the final fate of Faux Action Girl Varla Guns.
- I can't resist this one..an Animaniacs spin-off game for PC has this as a final boss: the Brain mounted in a jar and controlling 'the Think Tank!'. Notably, this wasn't his idea.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- The Dexters Laboratory Made For TV Movie "Ego Trip" has Mandark turned into a brain in a jar following his defeat by 4 Dexters from different ages... and Dee Dee's intervention.
- Hector Con Carne's Brain in Evil Con Carne. Variation in that his stomach also is in a jar...and developed its own sentience.
- Futurama had the heads of various 19th-21st century personalities preserved in jars, including Richard Nixon, who eventually became president again. Used more for comedy and satire than creepiness. It was never explained exactly how, say, George Washington's head could have been preserved in the first place. Also, the main antagonists of Futurama are flying brains outside of their jars.
- The preserved, animate heads in jars motif is used in Orson Scott Card's book Wyrms.
- C.S. Lewis did it first, in That Hideous Strength.
- After starting out as a human, Baxter Stockman eventually becomes one of these in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.
- Krang in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series is, admittedly, an alien brain, but he travels around in a Cyborg body and finds it hard to function without it.
- In the Fast Forward episode "The Journal", the turtles read about future events in their lives, including Donatello being reduced to a brain in a jar...with a mask on. The journal is then revealed to be a hoax.
- The Fairly OddParents: In "Future Lost", the evil brain that aspired to take over had a strange weakness—put juice pills in its tank, and it would get a brain freeze.
- Not just that. They also dumped some ice into it, making a giant slushie.
- Also, every Yugopotamian has their brain clearly visable in a glass dome on their heads.
- Team Galaxy: "Brett's Brain"
- In Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, while the Star Command employs the Little Green Men seen in Toy Story, Zurg's minions are brains in jars (who frequently mention this situation when the boss complains).
- The GoBots in Challenge Of The Gobots are brains in cyborg bodies.
- Mok's supercomputer in Rock And Rule looks like one of these, although not quite as easy on the eyes.
Other
- Parodied by this shirt.
- Animats or Cultured Neuronal Networks are almost a Real Life version of this trope, almost being that they aren't complete brains (and usually animal neurons).
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