History Main / BodySurf

* Anime/{{K}}: The [[spoiler:Real Coloress King]] is revealed to have done this to multiple people, including [[spoiler: [[AmnesiacDissonance the original owner of Shiro's body, the Silver King,]] [[GrandTheftMe and two of Shiro's classmates]]]]. Said person is fully aware of his presence and he either ABSORBS the personalities afterwards or just flat out destroys them. [[spoiler:And we never learn who "Shiro" really was before all that...]]

* In the ''Literature/{{Patternist}}'' series, this is how the immortal Doro survives. His power is completely instinctive, he always jumps when frightened or badly injured. He cannot choose the target; it is always the nearest human being, even if he cannot see them. Once inside the victim he literally devours their soul and the host body starts to deteriorate, so he has to jump fairly often. If the host possessed any psychic powers Doro does not gain the use of these.

[[folder: Visual Novels]]
* [[spoiler:Matou Zouken]] from ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight.''
* [[BigBad Roa]] from ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}''.
[[/folder]]

* In ''[[Manga/PandoraHearts]]'', [[spoiler:the main character, Oz]] was originally an AnimateInanimateObject that came to life due to the powers of the Abyss. He had two rabbit bodies that he bounced back and forth from -- when one was destroyed, the other became a chain -- and then when Alice took his own body, his soul went into his CONTRACTOR'S body, so when his contractor de-aged again (REALLY long story) he had his fourth body. He even tells Echo it could happen again if Jack's body dies. Alice also seems to be capable of this, considering she hijacked Oz's rabbit body from him when her own was dying.

* [[spoiler:Matou Zouken]] from ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight.''
* [[BigBad Roa]] from ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}''.

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* Multiple examples in ''Franchise/MassEffect'': The [[MechanicalLifeforms Geth]] are in fact an entire race of computer programs, who can transfer themselves from one platform to another, either to escape danger or simply to take control of a more appropriate platform (a Geth Trooper as opposed to a [[SpiderTank Colossus]] or a [[CoolStarship Dreadnought]]). As a tradeoff, Geth typically have to operate in networked groups.

* In the 2013 remake of ''Franchise/TombRaider'' this was how [[spoiler:Queen Himiko stayed alive for hundreds of years. Whenever her body becomes too old for her she chooses a successor among her handmaidens. Then she transfers her soul into the girls body, [[AFateWorseThanDeath destroying the original soul in the process]].]] However the cycle was broken, [[spoiler: when the latest handmaiden [[HeroicSacrifice comitted suicide]] during the transfer ritual. As a result Himiko was trapped in her previous body which quickly decayed into a [[AndIMustScream horrifying corpse]]]]. Now very pissed off [[spoiler: Himiko causes the storms that keep people trapped on the island, while the solarii cult searches for a new host body.]] As it turns out the perfect replacement happens to be [[spoiler: Lara's best friend Alex]]

* In [[Manga/PandoraHearts]] this is a trope played straight for the [[spoiler:main character, Oz. He was originally an AnimateInanimateObject that came to life due to the powers of the Abyss and he had two rabbit bodies that he bounced back and forth from-when one was destroyed, the other became a chain-and then when Alice took his own body-his soul went into his CONTRACTOR'S body-so when his contractor de-aged again (REALLY long story) he had his fourth body. He even tells Echo it could happen again if Jack's body dies. Alice also seems to be capable of this, considering she hijacked Oz's rabbit body from him when her own was dying.]]
* In [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist the 2003 anime adaptation of]] ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', [[spoiler:the Philosopher's Stone can be used to Body Surf by transferring someone's soul and mind into a new body. The series BigBad has this technique repeatedly and is over 400 years old. Unfortunately the amount of time she can spend in each body lessens each time she does it, meaning she requires more and more Philosopher's Stones to keep going.]]
* In the second season of ''Anime/CodeGeass'', [[spoiler: there is Marianne, Lelouch's mother, who reveals that she is [[NotQuiteDead alive and kicking]], despite her apparent assassination prior to the series. She body-hopped into a nearby Noble child. This is said to be the power of her Geass.]]
* Anime/{{K}}: The [[spoiler:Real Coloress King]] is revealed to have done this to multiple people, including [[spoiler: [[AmnesiacDissonance the original owner of Shiro's body, the Silver King,]] [[GrandTheftMe and two of Shiro's classmates]]]]. It's also strongly hinted (then revealed) that [[spoiler:[[AndIMustScream said person is fully aware of his presence]] and he either ABSORBS the personalities afterwards or just flat out destroys them. [[FridgeHorror and we never learn who "Shiro" really was before all that...]]]]

* [[Manga/{{Kekkaishi}} The Sousui and Tsukihasa]], both are capable of this as a form of ''immortality.''

* In ''Good Omens'', angel Aziraphale does this after accidentally losing his own body.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': Voldemort, after being almost destroyed by baby Harry, only retained the ability to possess bodies, and he jumped from animal to animal ([[PossessionBurnout severely cutting their lifespan]]) until he was able to get his new body.

* Absolutely ''everyone'' in Creator/RogerZelazny's ''Lord of Light''. Yes, even the protagonist.
* In ''Literature/TheWarAgainstTheChtorr'' books by David Gerrold, members of the Telepathy Corps are fitted with brain implants that allow them to "switch minds" with others with a similar implant through radio transmission. The implants are supposed to be used only for military intelligence-gathering, but some agents (nicknamed "carpetbaggers") like to jump from body to body just for fun, which rather annoys the telepath who has to inhabit the body after a night of debauchery.

* In P.C. Hodgell's ''Literature/ChroniclesOfTheKencyrath'' series, [[spoiler: Bane]], an undead spirit, travels in this way, moving from host to host and sucking the life out of each in turn.
* Done in a deliberately de-MindRape-ified fashion in ''[[Literature/AWrinkleInTime A Swiftly Tilting Planet]]'' -- Charles Wallace has to Body Surf throughout history to prevent TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. Notable as a rare example of the ''hero'' doing this.
* Major plot points in several of the ''Literature/WildCards'' novels. One character is able to make others into "Jumpers" who body-surf by swapping meatbags with another. Meaning a single one of them can cause an entire room of people to switch bodies. When the Jumpers form an army bad things happen.
** The Jumper "Prime" is revealed to be [[spoiler:Edward St. John Latham, aka "Loophole", an AmoralAttorney who many believed owed his lack of a conscience - and resultant skills as a lawyer - to the wild card. It turned out he's honestly the best lawyer in the world - when his card finally turns, he gains the ability to body surf and create other body surfers via anal rape.]]

* The Sea Hag in the ''Literature/{{Xanth}}'' novel ''Golem in the Gears'', much to the consternation of the protagonists.

* Sario from ''Literature/TheGoldenKey'' does this a number of times throughout the book. Unusually, the reason he switches is because the body he is currently inhabiting is usually too old, Sario having taken the then-young body and lived the life of the person he switched with into old age.
* In ''Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes'', the mutineer's inner council managed their constant manipulation of the human race without going into stasis by transplanting their brains as necessary into the bodies of lesser mutineers who had obediently gone into stasis. Less important mutineers have to make do with regular human bodies.
* The antagonist of Stephen Gallegher's ValleyOfLights can jump from body to body.

* Daedalus from ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' does this, except instead of possessing innocent people, he transfers his soul from robot to robot as he builds more advanced bodies.

* Creator/RayBradbury's short story ''The One who Waits'' (1949).
* The Marra of ''Literature/TheMadnessSeason'' are capable of doing so, as long as they remember that they can. One manages to survive this way when she first encounters the Tyr.
* In Literature/KnownSpace, Jan Corben essentially Body Surfed through a series of clone daughters, via brain transplant. Each time she would assume the clone's identity, "inherit" all her stuff, and the identity attached to the old body would "die in a tragic accident". She survived for a timespan of 20, maybe 30 generations that way before suffering a genuine tragic accident.
* The mage Ma'ar in Creator/MercedesLackey's ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series magically overwrites the soul of any person who is a direct descendant of his original body as soon as that person displays mage-talent. The only way to kill him for good is to kill his host and then [[spoiler:follow him into the netherworld and destroy his SoulJar]].
* The villain in Creator/MercedesLackey's novel ''Jinx High'' does this with her own daughter every time she feels like she's getting too old, transferring herself to her daughter's body and her daughter to her old one. She pulls a KarmaHoudini at the end of the novel by jumping back to her original body, leaving her daughter back in her body to die in her place.
* In the novel ''Fifth Quarter'' by TanyaHuff, one character keeps himself alive this way by jumping to the body of his killer just before he dies. After figuring it out, he makes a habit of it and lives for several centuries jumping from body to body.
* In the world of Corona, the setting of the DemonWarsSaga, any sufficiently skilled user of magic gemstones can do this to an unborn child with a good magical hematite. In ''Mortalis'', Abbot Je'howith is tempted to pull this on the child of the king when he suffers a heart attack after using magic to verify the pregnancy, but eventually resists and accepts his fate. In ''Transcendence'', it is revealed that the long line of miraculous prodigies leading the theocracy of Behren have secretly all been one despicable old man's soul doing this over and over again.
* In Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's short story "The Glass Flower", this method of immortality is achieved by way of a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind. In the story, there are three "contestants", three "prizes", and a controller that take part in what is referred to as the "game of mind", where they enter a virtual world and battle one another, with weapons or psychologically. The contestants try to take over the bodies of the prizes, though the prizes can fight back and retain their bodies if they win, and the controller creates the world in which they fight.
* In ''Every Day'' by David Levithan, the main character A wakes up every day in a new body. He has no body of his own and barely manages to scrape out a personality of his own. In fact, he may not even have a gender -- the novel is in [[TheAllConcealingI first person]] so the only indication of his gender is in the book summary. A is content with his life, never getting too attached, until he wakes up in the body of Justin and falls in love with his girlfriend Rhiannon.
* In ''Good Omens'', angel Aziraphale does this after accidentally losing his own body.
* Constant Literature/{{Drachenfels}}, Genevieve Dieudonné's first BigBad uses this method to keep him going past his "death". It reached the point when he was [[TimeAbyss older than virtually every other species on the planet]]
* ''Literature/LegacyOfTheDragokin'': Mordak he has always survived this way but now he can plan for it. [[spoiler: He offered Zarracka power because it would allow him to make her his backup body. He hoped to do this to the Big Bad but the heroes anticipated that it and prevented it.]]
* In the ''Literature/{{Patternist}}'' series, this is how the immortal Doro survives. His power is completely instinctive, he always jumps when frightened or badly injured. He cannot choose the target; it is always the nearest human being, even if he cannot see them. Once inside the victim he literally devours their soul and the host body starts to deteriorate, so he has to jump fairly often. If the host possessed any psychic powers Doro does not gain the use of these.
* In ''Literature/TheHost'' [[spoiler: Wanda ends up doing this when her friends swap her into another vacated body.]]

* Anime/TheKProject: The [[spoiler:Real Coloress King]] is revealed to have done this to multiple people, including [[spoiler: [[AmnesiacDissonance the original owner of Shiro's body, the Silver King,]] [[GrandTheftMe and two of Shiro's classmates]]]]. It's also strongly hinted (then revealed) that [[spoiler:[[AndIMustScream said person is fully aware of his presence]] and he either ABSORBS the personalities afterwards or just flat out destroys them. [[FridgeHorror and we never learn who "Shiro" really was before all that...]]]]

* In the second season of ''CodeGeass'', [[spoiler: there is Marianne, Lelouch's mother, who reveals that she is [[NotQuiteDead alive and kicking]], despite her apparent assassination prior to the series. She body-hopped into a nearby Noble child. This is said to be the power of her Geass.]]

* Captain Ginyu in ''DragonballZ''. Started out by snatching Goku's body, but when he realized that because [[HowDoIShotWeb he didn't know Goku's special fighting techniques]], he had only a fraction of Goku's original power, he took a beating. Later, he decided to snatch Vegeta's body, as Vegeta was so powerful at the time that Ginyu wouldn't need to know very much about him to still be more powerful than any of the heroes at the time. He ended up inside the body of a frog and thus couldn't use his body-swapping technique because it required speaking, but later ended up stealing Bulma's body when she makes a device that allows him to communicate and almost managed to body-snatch Piccolo before being returned to the frog's body for good.

* This is the entire concept of DC Comics superhero ComicBook/{{Deadman}}, whose sole power is the ability to effortlessly possess ''anybody'', from children to Comicbook/{{Superman}}.
** He was brought back to life at the end of ''Comicbook/BlackestNight'', and in ''BrightestDay'' he appeared to be capable of restoring things to life. Then [[StatusQuoIsGod he died again]].

* In the DC {{Elseworld}}s book ''{{Justice League|OfAmerica}}: [[TheNail Another Nail]]'', [[Comicbook/NewGods Scott Free (Mr. Miracle)]] is killed by [=DeSaad=], but before dying he transfers his mind into Big Barda's Mother Box circuitry, allowing him to "possess" his wife long enough to use his escape-artist skills to release her from Darkseid's shackles. Barda then acquires a Franchise/GreenLantern power ring, allowing Scott Free the ability to manifest himself as a green energy construct.

* [[spoiler:Palpatine]] in ''DarkEmpire'' was forced to do this as one clone body after another was rotted by TheDarkSide, culminating in an attempt to possess newborn Anakin Solo, a desperation plan necessitated by [[spoiler:the fact that all of his remaining clone bodies had been sabotaged by traitorous elements in the Empire]].

* In ''{{Flare}}'', the Tigress claims to have done this periodically over thousands of years. Her latest victim is [[http://heroicmultiverse.com/flareonline/?id=171 prison psychiatrist Katherine Kaat]].

* In ''Film/{{Xchange}}'', the titular company allows people who can afford it to swap minds for a short period of time as a form of instant travel (or just plain entertainment). The protagonist, Stuart Toffler, is a company's PR guy who is told by his boss to go to a city on the opposite coast via Xchange to attend a funeral. Unfortunately, he finds out too late that the guy he swapped with is a contract killer running from the law by constantly stealing bodies and running away with them. Stuart is required to "vacate" his temporary body for its rightful owner. Unfortunately, the only available body is that of a 4-day clone, and body swaps are forbidden more than twice in that time period. The film is (very) loosely based on RobertSheckley's novel ''Mindswap''.

** In ''Ghost Story'', [[spoiler: Corpsetaker is back as a ghost. S/he steals Butters' body and attempts to BodySurf into Molly, but is repelled.]]

* In ''TheWarAgainstTheChtorr'' books by David Gerrold, members of the Telepathy Corps are fitted with brain implants that allow them to "switch minds" with others with a similar implant through radio transmission. The implants are supposed to be used only for military intelligence-gathering, but some agents (nicknamed "carpetbaggers") like to jump from body to body just for fun, which rather annoys the telepath who has to inhabit the body after a night of debauchery.

* This happens in ''Literature/{{Transition}}'' by IainBanks.

** In [[NeverwinterNights the original]], the Intellect Devourer has taken over [[spoiler:the prison warden]] and brainwashed several guards. If you're stealthy and you want some positive karma, you can snap the guards out of it and get them to flee. Otherwise, once you kill the first body . . . "Heeheehee, I'm HERE, foes!"

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** [[spoiler: Flemeth]] from ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'', who does this after her body succumbs to the ravages of age.

* Orochimaru from ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' plans to live forever in order to learn all the world's jutsu. That is impossible since new jutsus are made everyday, and some are handed down from family to family and kept a secret, AND some require years and years to master, whether you're a prodigy or not. To this end he developed his ''Living Corpse Reincarnation'' jutsu, which allowed him to be able to transfer his soul into another person's body, and the perks include acquiring any special abilities that the meat puppet may have. He can only perform this jutsu once every three years. In theory this could be the closest thing to immortality, but the reality is the host body will eventually weaken and reject Orochimaru's invading soul, so he will have to find a new host before it is too late. How long it takes for the host to reject him depends on how powerful the host is to begin with and that powerful hosts like Sasuke or Itachi could serve him a reasonable term, if not a whole lifetime.

* The second episode of ''Series/{{Angel}}'', "Lonely Hearts," dealt with a demon who jumped from body to body in search of the one it could live in permanently. It was a metaphor for searching for the perfect mate and, indeed, most of the episode took place in a nightclub.

* In ''FanFic/KyonBigDamnHero'' The SOS Brigade [[FridgeHorror determines]] [[spoiler: Kanae's backstory]] had this. [[spoiler: As Kanae was escaping the AlienInvasion who was right behind her she jumped [[AlternateUniverse through worlds]], in every world she had an identity but has never considered what happened to her "local" copy, who she had never met]].

* In ''Comicbook/FinalCrisis'', {{Darkseid}} (and possibly the other Comicbook/NewGods) are able to do this, as Darkseid is able to jump from "Boss Dark Side" to [[spoiler: Dan Turpin]].

* The ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}'' villain [[Characters/{{X-MenVillains}} Proteus]] [[PossessionBurnout burns through the bodies he possesses as he uses his mutant powers]]. However, assuming he doesn't ever use his reality-warping powers, he can stay in a single body for an extended period.

* The ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}'' villain [[Characters/{{X-MenVillains}} Proteus]] burns through the bodies he possesses as he uses his mutant powers. However, assuming he doesn't ever use his reality-warping powers, he can stay in a single body for an extended period.

-->'''{{Nightwing}}:''' Joey, [[AccidentalInnuendo get inside me!]]"

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* Captain Ginyu in ''DragonballZ''. Started out by snatching Goku's body, but when he realized that because [[HowDoIShotWeb he didn't know Goku's special fighting techniques]], he had only a fraction of Goku's original power, he took a beating. Later, he decided to snatch Vegeta's body, as Vegeta was so powerful at the time that Ginyu wouldn't need to know very much about him to still be more powerful than any of the heroes at the time. He ended up inside the body of a frog and thus couldn't use his attack because it required speaking, but later ended up stealing Bulma's body when she makes a device that allows him to communicate and almost managed to body-snatch Piccolo before being returned to the frog's body for good.

** Before him there was Captain Ginyu, whose liberal use of his ability to [[FreakyFridayFlip swap bodies]] puts him somewhere between that trope and this one. First he swaps bodies with Goku, then they swap back, then a botched attempt to swap bodies with Vegeta ends with Ginyu swapping bodies with a frog. And it's implied that Ginyu has used this ability several times in the past.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Geist}}'' the player takes the role of John Raimi, a scientist separated from his body by an experiment by terrorists. Raimi cannot do anything outside his body, but luckily can possess and control anything he can frighten from animals to armed guards, and can even possess objects ranging from mop buckets and cans, to Gun Emplacements and Bombs. Unfortunately for you, some of the later enemies in the game can Body Surf you as well.