The Puppet Masters - Television Tropes & Idioms

Subtrope of Body Snatcher.

A form of Body Horror common in alien-invasion plots. Aliens, rather than invading in their own form, insert themselves into (usually) unwilling humans, whereupon they completely take over the host's body, suppress their will, and generally make them not themselves. They generally do this because their natural form is some kind of grub or other not-very-formidable state.

They may have limited or total access to the host's memory, but can generally fool casual observers. A possessed host typically gains increased strength, and sometimes additional wacky powers. They may also be able to affect a Voice of Evil or glowing eyes, to let the audience know what's up.

This will fool everyone until the critical moment, even though a possessed host usually starts exhibiting really strange symptoms such as a lack of emotion, a surplus of emotion, violent rampages, festering sores, a flue gill, or a penchant for ketchup.

Sometimes, the possession process actually kills the host, turning them into an animated cadaver. Even when this isn't the case, it generally takes a Deus Ex Machina to remove the parasite without killing the host.

The method by which the parasite enters the host body varies; it might be injected, it may latch on to the host's back, or it may enter as some kind of Energy Being. Crawling in through the mouth or ears is also very popular. This trope may also be used as a Anvilicious metaphor for venereal disease.

Also, for some reason, possessed bodies often melt when killed.

Very popular in films during the cold war era, as it made such a handy parallel for communism. One of the most recent (and most self-aware) film examples is The Faculty.

While the notion is rooted in myths of demonic possession as old as mankind, the Sci Fi version is named for the Heinlein novella which pretty much every instance of this trope is directly ripping off. In the Book and movie of Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters this is exactly what happens; the aliens take over the host bodies and control them.

Examples:

The whole premise of War of the Worlds (television show ONLY) in its first season.
Occasional MO of the Gua in First Wave (though they more frequently used artificial hosts).
Perpetual MO of the Goa'uld in Stargate SG-1.
Star Trek The Original Series used this trope twice. In "Operation: Annihilate!", parastic creatures that resemble flying pancakes attack planetary colonists--and eventually Spock. In "Wolf in the Fold", the Enterprise crew encounter "Redjac", a noncorporeal parasite responsible for numerous serial killings throughout the centuries. One of the humans it possessed was Jack The Ripper.
- In later incarnations of the Trek Verse, the Trill might be an intentional subversion, as they only join with consenting hosts, with the goal of merging their respective consciousnesses.
  - In fact there seems to be competition among the humanoid population of the Trill planet to become hosts; Ezri Tigan (later Ezri Dax) is considered slightly odd for not wanting to be joined.
- Star Trek The Next Generation: "Conspiracy" also had the Federation nearly conquered by Goa'uld-like creatures who possessed the top Starfleet brass. For that matter, there were a lot of possessing aliens in the Trek Verse.
Lexx did this at least twice. In one instance, the preferred method of insertion was rectally.
Babylon 5 had some kind of weird eye creatures with a fondness for Centauri rulers.
- Another Babylon 5 example: "Exogenesis", which subverts the trope. The Vindrizi symbiotes are assumed to be evil, until it's revealed that they're actually benevolent "recorders" who use their willing hosts to witness history, hoping to prevent that knowledge from being lost in "the next dark age" they anticipate.
Doctor Who featured such creatures in "The Invisible Enemy", "The Unquiet Dead", the two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", and elsewhere. Doctor Who frequently has the "possession kills" version; even if you're sure you can see some of your friend/spouse/etc. in there under the evil alien whatever, if the Doctor says "s/he's already dead," not believing him will relegate you to Redshirt status. (Perhaps this is why The Virus was used in the Everybody Lives story: The Virus is never reversible... except just this once.)
The book and TV series Animorphs had the Yeerks, brain-controlling slugs. In a partial subversion, there was one pretty easy (at least, to the right and clever opponent, say Those Meddling Kids) way to remove a Yeerk from its host. They are also a bit more sympathetic, due to their not having evolved on a Planet Of Hats-As it turns out, most of them simply don't know any better.
Video game example: The original Zerg, from Starcraft did this, according to the background. In the game, they can still "infest" people, though the victim's appearance changes drastically, except in one occasion in the Brood War extension. (Possibly explained by the possibility that the character wasn't really human, since he broke off from Zerg control when his own goals were completed.)
- Not to mention the fact that said character claimed to have been around since the Xel'Naga fell, which means that he's had an awful lot of time to practice adjusting his appearance... not to mention the fact that everyone needs a hobby.
The Strangers in Dark City were squid-like aliens driving around human corpses. "You've seen what we are. We use your dead as vessels."
Parodied on Futurama, wherein the efforts of the "brain slugs" to acquire new hosts are always blatantly transparent, as in one episode where a controlled Hermes Conrad informs the crew that their next delivery is to the Brain Slug Homeworld, where their orders are to "just stand around not wearing a helmet". The Brain Slugs themselves are pretty obvious too, being weirdly cute green blobs with big eyes attached to the head of the controlled individual.
- It is implied that the brain slugs not only control but slowly digest the host's brain too. (Or at least feed on the host's brain waves) One of the brain slugs tried to infest Fry's brain, but died of starvation.
Video game example: Resident Evil 4 introduces zombies who are not in fact undead; instead of being traditional Hollywood zombies, they're effectively brainwashed slaves -- thanks to an injection of The Puppet Masters.
- There are some research notes left behind by Luis which talk about some real life parasites that do this.
The aliens did this in the second Starship Troopers movie.
The Bug from the first Men In Black movie did this.
- ... it was a giant space cockroach wearing an "Edgar costume".
Music example: Bob Drake's "The Persecuting Engine" deals with a protagonist that falls victim to "The Thing" which uses the aforementioned Engine "which, from afar / can influence your actions as we wish, distort your perceptions into indecipherable alien ones, [and] replace your will with ours" on him.
In the sci-fi book Radiant, the lead character Youn Suu is inhabited by a non-communicative, red, moss-like alien called the Balrog, and is given evidence on both angles to whether it is malevolent or benign.
In both Half Life games, the iconic headcrabs kill people by jumping at them and then latch onto their heads to turn them into much stronger zombies; every zombie in both games is dressed as a character who would not normally be armed because otherwise they'd have beaten the headcrabs. In the second game, bombs full of the headcrabs are actually used as artillery by the villains.
- Zombies include security guards, soldiers, black ops operators, resistance fighters and combine soldiers. So Yeah... not really big on the whole "non-armed" thing.
The Dungeons And Dragons supplement "Lords of Madness" details a race called the tsochari, aka "the wearers of flesh," a tentacled alien that replaces its victim's brain and masquerades in its corpse. Or, if they want to, they can also just ride in a living host, tell him what to do, and hurt him if he doesn't do it.
The Hat, an ugly parasitic hat from Stickman And Cube. It eats people's heads, too.
The Yithians are revealed to do this to the protagonist in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow out of Time," a story that combines this trope with Mind Rape.
In Girl Genius, the slaver wasps are themselves tools of a malevolent Spark known as the Other. Also notable in that no Deus Ex Machina has surfaced; death is still the only cure for the slaver-infected.
- Well, probably. Agatha's locket is suppressing her psychic possession by The Other; it might work against the Slaver Wasps, as well. Of course, since there's only one of it...
The original Outer Limits did two vaguely similar alien parasite episodes.
- In "Corpus Earthling", a race of sentient alien rocks are quietly taking over humans--until they're accidentally discovered by the main character, who has a metal plate in his head that allows him to overhear their telepathic conversations. (Yes, the creatures apparently think in English.) Things get interesting when the aliens respond by possessing the hero's wife and best friend...
- "The Invisibles" combines The Puppet Masters premise with Spy Fiction. An agent of the "General Intelligence Agency" (a Fictional Counterpart of the CIA) investigates alien parasites who have infiltrated humanity by joining with willing, power-hungry humans at both extremes of society: some of the Invisibles are homeless misfits, while others are political leaders, industrialists and military brass.
In Mass Effect a colony is taken over by the Thorian, a giant plant controls unsuspecting victims with spores and forces them to do as they wish or suffer extreme pain. This gives the Thorian so much power over its subjects that they will fight to the death rather than disobey - except for the colony's leader, Fai Dan, who resists it's order to kill Shepard long enough to commit suicide. Nice work.
The German space epic series Perry Rhodan featured a race of alien beings, the "Element of War", in a story arc during the mid-1980s. The aliens, who looked like silvery crabs, telepathically controlled people while sitting on their shoulders (although they could technically cling anywhere to the person's body). They were infamous for increasing the host's agressions and xenophobia and brainwashing him with their constant telepathic whispers until he shared their warlike social-darwinist ideology. Interestingly, the Element of War was itself an artificially created slave race that served an ascended cosmic entity called the Master of the Elements as part of his army, the Decalog of Elements. It multiplied by fissure.
The bonethieves from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem are a particularly nasty example. First they burrow into their victims' chest, then guide them around like puppets. Then, when the host body takes enough damage, the bonethief burst through in a shadow of gore, which isn't exactly healthy to your sanity, and tries to burrow into your chest.
Tabletop RPG example: Roach Thralls from the Urban Arcana supplement for the d20 Modern game. The species reproduces by laying eggs inside a living human body, and their larval forms consume said human's brain and internal organs while leaving a sufficiently human-looking carcass to disguise their (somewhat compressed) cockroach form. After 6 months to 2 years, the creature still looks human but can produce and implant eggs of their own into human hosts. The Roach Thrall can shed their human skin if necessary, but this one-way process also renders them unable to reproduce, even with other unmasked Roach Thralls. In the wrong game master's hands, this creature could scare players off of sex for life.
Another Tabletop Games example: The Kyriotates from In Nomine are a benevolent version of this. They're angels who can control mortal vessels, but they usually use willing ones, and do so in the name of good. Their evil counterparts, the Shedim, are a straight example, though.
Another classic movie example, and perhaps the source of the overall Body Snatcher trope's title, is the 1956 film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Also the source of the common slang term "pod people" and a definite case of The Stoic writ large. It also is a signficant source of remakes.
- Note that all the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers films are based on Jack Kinney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers.
Apparently the premise behind ABC's short-lived series Invasion.
- The show was canceled before it could be made clear, but it appeared to be more a case of "replacement" than "control".
Radam in Tekkaman Blade are tiny arachnids that inhabit and subvert the will of human hosts, who have also been upgraded with the ability to manifest super-armor and summon giant beams and dual-headed spears - the titular Tekkamen. The title character in particular has been upgraded to a Tekkaman but escaped before being infected with a Radam parasite. Too bad the rest of his family and friends have been infected, a fact which powers the angst of the latter half of the show.
The Souls in Stephenie Meyer's novel The Host are a mostly kind, benevolent race of silvery centipedes that infest through the neck and take over the host's mind and body, rendering the host unaware of its surroundings in most cases. On the bright side they cure cancer and keep on making potato chips. Besides their overpowering niceness, the lack of crime and the downfall of good TV acting, the only thing giving the Souls away is a faint neck wound and silver reflective eyes, only visible when bright light is shone at the host's face.
His true body blown up in the first ten minutes, Jason does this in Jason Goes to Hell. The host bodies die after Jason leaves them (oddly enough, NOT from the damage they take while he possesses them).
The creature in the movie Proteus absorbs bodies throughout the movie and is able to assume their form from then on. The minds of the victims continue to exist within it and are able to surface when it naps after a meal.
In the movie The Kiss, a worm-like voodoo parasite jumps from the body of a young girl's aunt into her via a kiss. Years later, the parasite strives to take over the body of its current host's niece. The possession allows the host body to grow up, but eventually causes it to rot rapidly, leaving behind a particularly gruesome shell after it leaves.
Done in two different forms in SLiTHER. Grant Grant gets infected by a queen bee alien which retains his memories, and its implied that the two of them are merging personalities, although the alien is clearly dominant. Although he is physically mutating, he is able to convince his wife that it is just a bee sting at first. The rest of the aliens infect people and retain their memories, but the people are completely under their control. They talk and move jerkily and don't even try being stealthy, so it's only natural they don't fool anyone for long.
This is the overlying threat you're trying to defend against in X-COM: Apocalypse, as the aliens use aptly-named creatures called Brainsuckers to give people a Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong and put them under alien control. If a Brainsucker converts one of your soldiers in this manner, they're dead as far as the game is concerned.
Bog Hags in the Oriental Adventures supplement for Dungeons and Dragons steal the skin of their victims and use it and their limited shapeshifting abilities to impersonate mortals.
The entity Tak in Desperation does this as well - but the process of riding along changes the body and causes it to decay if the host's mind isn't strong enough.
In the She-Hulk graphic novel (this was before she turned to surreal meta-comedy) the Cockroach Horde gets around by infesting human bodies.

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