Basic Trope: A character inexplicably survives having their head cut off.
- Straight:
- Alice ends up decapitated by accident, but her head is inexplicably still alive afterward.
- Alice accidentally gets her head chopped off, and her still-alive body carries on like nothing happened.
- Alice can detach and reattach her head easily with no ill effects.
- Alice's head and body both survive.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice gets caught in an explosion that completely destroys her body but throws her head clear of the blast. When it lands (after a fifty-foot drop!), it turns out that Alice's head is not only still intact, but alive as well.
- The ability to survive being decapitated is common enough that most people use guns instead of swords.
- Alice is immortal as long as she's headless, which is useful because she's suffering from a terminal illness — reattaching her head would kill her.
- Downplayed:
- Alice's head can only survive without her body for a short while.
- Alice is frequently decapitated in a show with Negative Continuity; her head sometimes survives afterwards, but not always.
- Alice survives getting her neck broken, being crippled for a few days before her spine heals and she regains her ability to walk.
- Justified: Alice is a robot, undead, or some kind of creature that can survive decapitation.
- Inverted:
- Alice is normally headless, but occasionally has a functional head sewn on.
- Alice has her rear end removed with no ill effects.
- Subverted: Alice can survive being beheaded, but her head can only survive for a short while without her body.
- Double Subverted: Bob (who is indisputably a human) can also survive being beheaded.
- Parodied: Alice's head can regenerate, and the severed head and regrown head end up as an odd instance of Multiple Head Case.
- Zig Zagged: Alice's head can only survive without her body for a short while, but an Applied Phlebotinum exists that will let her survive like that indefinitely.
- Averted:
- Decapitation is lethal, pure and simple. Alice gets her head chopped off and dies.
- No one gets decapitated.
- Enforced: Alice is a character in a show meant to sell a line of toys with detachable, swappable heads.
- Lampshaded:
- "Wow! And I thought 'losing your head' was just a figure of speech!"
- "So you can survive having your head cut off? You can stick it back on afterward, right?"
- Invoked:
- Alice is scheduled to be executed by guillotine, but with some magical help, she comes up with an unorthodox escape plan: the execution is carried out and Alice is beheaded, but her head is left alive and is easily smuggled to safety.
- Alice is non-lethally decapitated in a failed attempt to render her helpless.
- Exploited: Alice and the rest of the group take advantage of her ability to allow her to spy on people who wouldn't look somewhere that a whole human body can't fit in.
- Alice considers the rest of her body expendable in an emergency as long as her head survives.
- Defied: Alice avoids being decapitated.
- Discussed: "You think my head would survive if it were chopped off?" "I doubt it. This isn't some lame TV show!"
- Conversed: "I don't care if it's magic keeping her severed head alive or not! Her head's got no lungs, so how the heck is she talking?"
- Implied:
- Alice's head is only ever shown on her body, but in one episode, Charles tells Bob, "Alice's head sure had a lot to say today." The fact that he referred to Alice's head implies that it is detachable.
- Alice's head appears to be held on by a very tight collar for the sake of maintaining appearances.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice can survive being decapitated, but it's a traumatic experience, especially since it leaves her stuck as a severed head.
- Alice's head is surgically reattached but it she is incapable of walking or coordinating herself for a long time due to all of the nerves being severed.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice's head can be reattached to her body.
- Alice has a cybernetic body built for herself, allowing her to easily shrug off future decapitations.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice's head gets chopped off Once an Episode, and Hilarity Ensues as her severed head ends up in one sticky situation after another, possibly with her headless body in hot pursuit.
- Alice, as a head, is somehow still mobile, and relies on increasingly amusing or unexplained means of transport.
- Alice's head is cut off after an improbable series of events, and then launches into a lengthy musical number showing off just how alive she really is.
- Alice's body acts independently from her head. Sometimes her body will run off, and the head yells at it to come back.
- In the setting it's perfectly normal for people to decapitate each other and swap bodies.
- Alice has no other reaction to being beheaded besides a bored "Oh, I hate when that happens..."
- Played For Drama:
- Alice's seemingly throwaway ability to survive decapitation on a regular basis leads to a source of existential angst for her as she's forced to confront the question of whether she's really human or not.
- A magical spell allows Alice to shrug off being beheaded, but when her head is stolen before it can be reattached to her body, then it becomes a quest to reunite her head and body before the spell wears off and Alice dies for real.
- Having a brain outside of the head means decapitation is nonlethal, but renders the person blind, deaf, mute, eat solid food, or breath unassisted. To most people, living without a head is a Fate Worse than Death.
- Alice is alive as a head, but is rendered entirely helpless, with her lack of a body played as a straight-up disability.
- Played For Horror:
- Alice is a zombie that gets her head chopped off, but neither her head or body die. Instead, her body continues attacking.
- Alice is beheaded by someone with a cursed sword, and she is forced to look at her headless body as it's being used in a cruel science experiment.
- Alice is possessed by a demon who can still use her severed head as a vessel.
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