History Main / LosingYourHead

* Absorbing Man after his battle with the Hulk in ''AvengersEarthMightiestHeroes''.

** Wurzel Gummidge only has three - swede, mangel-wurzel, and turnip - "for different occasions".
* Ant heads remain alive for some time in Bernard Werber's ''EmpireOfTheAnts'' novels (only the first was translated to English), and this is at times a crucial plot point.

* The heads in jars of Orson Scott Card's ''{{Wyrms}}''. They are kept alive by bio-engineered alien worms, and are chemically conditioned to never lie. The king keeps them as advisors, and many of them openly hate him, and were his enemies in their former lives. They can't speak unless someone pumps the bellows that push air through their vocal cords.
* In JohnCWright's ''TheOrphansOfChaos'', [[spoiler: Orpheus]] appears a headless man who carries about his head separately. On the other hand, he is dead and just coming from Hades, (and they are about to make him Psychopomp).

* ''UseOfWeapons'' by IainMBanks. Special Circumstances operative Cheradenine Zakalwe crash-lands on a primitive planet and is sacrificed by the natives through decapitation. Fortunately his [[BigDamnHeroes colleages zoom in just in time]] to snatch back his head, but not before he's had a horrified moment to realise exactly what just happened. Later Zakalwe is in hospital waiting for a new body to be grown (they gave him the choice of remaining unconscious but he'd rather watch television) when the artificially-intelligent drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw (who doesn't like Zakalwe much, and has a twisted sense of humor) sends him a present. A hat.

** ''UnseenAcademicals'' mentions a long-ago game of street football in which a fallen player's severed head was mistaken for the ball, and wound up being used to score the winning goal. The victim was posthumously credited for the victory.

* A duo known as "The Floating Heads" appear to startle LeVar Burton in an installment of ''{{Reading Rainbow}}''.

* As for Hinduism and Buddhism, there's the deity [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhinnamasta Chhinnamasta]] who ''severed her own head with her own sword just to '''feed her two attendants with her blood.''''' Now that's hardcore.

* ''{{Exalted}}'' has an odd version of this from the dangerously powerful Charcoal March of Spiders supernatural martial art. The user delivers a punch so ludicrously hard that the head not only explodes, but the person who's head DID explode has several seconds thereafter to think and react because they, AND REALITY ITSELF, haven't caught up to the fact just yet.

* In a {{Ravenloft}} skit performed at [=GenCon=] 1999, "One Piece At A Time", a lady surgeon attempts to bring her fiancee back to life after he dies in a tragic accident. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin The title says it all]], but early scenes correspond to this trope.
** Became a CrowningMomentOfFunny when Sean Reynolds, playing the fiancee with his head stuck through a hole in a covered table, couldn't see the page of lines lying beside him. [[BreakingTheFourthWall "I can't even hold a script!"]]

* In ''{{Primal}}'', the Wraith can apparently survive being decapitated. A group of severed heads in Raum's torture chamber (all of whom hate each other) eventually take time out from arguing to help the [=PCs=]. One, however, calls the guards, simply to antagonize the rest.
** Other severed heads are scattered almost randomly throughout the upper mansion, giving comments, advice, and encouragement. One somehow knows Scree's name.

* In {{Resident Evil 3}}, [[spoiler:when you fight Nemesis in the Treatment Room. Douse him with a remarkable strong acid two times and his head will come off. But rather than die like the zombies, he continues attacking, albiet blind.]]

* Kangaxx from ''Baldur's Gate II'', when you first meet him was just a skull. Helps he's a Lich who had been disassembled and this game was based on DungeonsAndDragons.
* Kratos in the GodOfWar games not only is able to tear off the head of the Gorgons, but proceed to use their (apparently still living) heads as weapons, petrifying enemies with their eye-beams. In the third game he does the same for the god Helios, using him as a Lantern.

-> ''When I awoke, they were already dead\\
All that was left of me was my head...\\
No, not dead, just a head.
-->-- '''FlightOfTheConchords''', ("Petrov, Yelyena and Me")

->Sis: "Head!"
->Doc: "I said 'No more stories!'"
->Sis: "No, head."
->Lopez: "iHola!"
-->--RedVsBlue

* The giant Bolloggs from WalterMoers ''Zamonia'' novels are unique in Zamonia in that they can survive without their heads; once they reach a certain height they tend to discard their heads -- and then go off on wanderings looking for the same heads they just discarded. (Bolloggs aren't very bright, especially not after losing their heards.)

* The Host/Lorne gets his head sent to Cordelia on a platter in one episode of ''{{Angel}}''. His people can survive this, however; as he explains, Pylean demons have to have their bodies mutilated to actually die.

** [[spoiler: Lorne]] is decapitated, but it's mostly an inconvenience with him.

* Unsurprisingly, the {{Ravenloft}} setting plays with this trope. Jacqueline Montarri is a headless NPC villain who steals the heads of women to wear, and has an enormous collection of decapitated ''and still conscious'' female heads in her basement. Lebendtod, a zombie-like undead template, can remove their heads and limbs at will.

* The ending of Freddy Vs Jason. That was good example.

* The duel between Mai and Malik in the ''YuGiOh'' manga. Mai's monster manages to decapitate Malik's monster, which are both tied by lifelines to their respective duelists. Guess what happens to Malik...

* Robots: Rodney's Copperbottom first meeting with cloudcuckoolander and load, Fender, results in him temporarely losing his head. Much hilarity ensues:

* All too many [[{{Gorn}} guro]] manga have people who have [[{{squick}} unspeakable things]] happen to their heads after being decapitated.

* [[ElfenLied Poor Kisaragi...]]

** Not to worry, he's more than well enough to tell Mai that, yes, it hurts like a mother, just so he can freak her out even more.

** This also happens later on in the Boo Arc. Dabra turns Piccolo to stone and Trunks breaks his statue, smashing him into pieces. But when he gets turned back to normal, he's perfectly fine, and explains that he can regenerate his body so long as his head isn't damaged.

* ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' does this twice. The first is when Unit 02 gets beheaded during an angel attack, and a second time when [[spoiler: Shinji crushes Kaworu with Unit 01's hand, and his head pops off.]]

**Later still, [[spoiler:Kisame]] has this happen to him, and he is somehow able to get off a compliment on his opponents' abilities as his head ''flies through the air''.

* The Brazilian folklore has the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_Mule headless mule]], which has fire coming out of the stump - though it's descripted as "[[FridgeLogic coming out of its nose]]"... and that it has a bridle tied to its mouth. A few versions reduce the FridgeLogic by saying the fire covers its head, not replaces it.

* ''{{The Batman}}'' "The Joining" Part 1, Batman and J'Onn J'Onzz are able to interrogate the decapitated head of Lucius Fox's robot duplicate.

->''"Use your head...or I will! I need a new bowling ball..."''
-->--'''Alex''' (win quote), ''StreetFighter III''