The description primarily emphasizes the concept of each head having its own distinct personality — the main definition at the start is given as "Whenever a creature has two (or more) heads and the ability to talk (or at least displays sapience to some degree), each head will have its own distinct personality." The bulk of the description is given over to how these personalities might interact with one another, what sorts of personalities they might have, and how shared body control works out.
There is some ambiguity in the description, laconic, playing with page, and index entries about whether this is supposed to be "heads with distinct personalities" period, "heads with distinct personalities that don't get along and bicker", or "heads with distinct personalities that each have/embody a distinct personality trait". In the interest of analysis, I'm going to group explicit examples of the latter two in their own categories.
One two-sentence paragraph at the end brings up the possibility of each had having "a distinct power or attribute", such as specific keen senses or different Breath Weapons.
Before checking through examples, I'm going to establish two methodological guidelines:
- Firstly, I'm assessing each example in a vacuum — that is, I'm not strictly concerned with what the subject of an example is actually like assuming complete knowledge of them. I'm only going to consider what each specific write-up says or emphasizes, because I'm not trying to find all valid examples of a theoretic trope, I'm trying to find out how this one is used in practice.
- Second, I'm assuming that, without further context being provided, the ability for one head to perform one action while another head performs another is not inherently a sign of distinct minds existing — not any more than, say, being able to do different things with each hand means having two minds in control of them. Multitasking is a thing. There aren't a lot of examples where this is a relevant concern — most either clearly establish the existence of multiple personalities or don't have anything like this happen — but it does come up a few times. I will mark these examples with three asterisks at the end if people want to double-check them themselves.
The example list breaks down as such, checking fifty examples:
- King Ghidorah's three heads in Godzilland sometimes bicker, such as in the episode where they fight over a cake at Godzilla's birthday party.
- Duran And Kiyohime's Omake Theater: Kiyohime has six heads. They all have different personalities. Head #4 is noted as being the daredevil of the group. Also, each head insists on its own food bowl, which Natsuki complains about, pointing out they all share one stomach. And each has its own taste in music, as they have separate headphones and players for each one.
- Star Wars: This trope is deconstructed in a HoloNet News story in Legends. Said story features a Troig named Dwuir and Tabb, with the former wanting them to be surgically separated due to his "brother", according to him, being mentally ill and suicidal. Unfortunately, the process is complicated by the fact that the separation could kill Tabb, and Troig medical technology has not advanced far enough to do that safely, but at the same time, not separating them could endanger both of them. This ethical dilemma sparked controversy that lasted all the way from the Clone Wars into the New Republic.
- John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme: The fifth series features a song by Cerberus himself, voiced by all three of the male cast (Finnemore himself, Simon Kane, and Lawrie Llewyn), each head with its own personality, so Cerberus addresses itself as "we". The song is basically a Sympathy for the Devil song (though Cerberus is not exactly a "Devil" except to people who don't portray him correctly) in which Cerberus laments that people don't show the Big Friendly Dog some kindness and affection instead of just fighting him all the time.
- PokƩmon: Exeggutor's three heads all think independently, though they never argue due to their psychic powers. Alolan Exeggutor has four heads due to the dopey looking one on its tail.
- Stonekeep: The Ettin has two heads with very distinct personalities.
- Warcraft: Blizzard actually had an April Fools joke about the ogres, claiming that two-headed ogres would be playable in World of Warcraft as a sort of cooperative character. That is to say, two players each control a head, and both control movement. This being an April Fools joke, they of course emphasized all the features that made this playstyle incredibly inconvenient. This actually becomes a Brick Joke in Heroes of the Storm, as described below.
- The Jetsons: In one episode, Elroy's scout troop has a camp-out on the moon and briefly encounters what seem to be a troop of aliens with two heads each. And the heads of one of the aliens talk to each other about having only one head being strange and scary.
- Transformers: Cyberverse: The conjoined Autobot twins Rack'n'Ruin come off as this. Another two-headed Cybertronian named Doublecrosser is introduced in the post-series movie The Immobilizers, whose heads aren't above blaming one another when their actions incite the ire of their fellow Mercenaries.
- Blood Bowl: The Two Heads mutation is a physical ability available to any player on a Chaos, Nurgle and Skaven team that gives them a bonus to their Dodge rolls. The Skaven are particularly fond of this mutation with their most famous Star Player, Tarsh Surehands, having a pair of heads. Unfortunately Tarsh strangled himself to death after his heads got into an argument about a missed pass during an important game.
- Toxic Crusaders: Headbanger is a mutated freak with two heads who each control their side of the body. One head belongs to Dr. Bender, a hideous Mad Scientist; the other belongs to Fender, an oafish Surfer Dude delivery boy. The body itself is kinda lopsided since the surfer's half of the body is rippling with muscle, whereas the scientist's is shriveled and emaciated.
- Dragon's Dogma has the Chimera, with its usual three heads of a lion, a goat and a snake. Each of the three heads can fight independently, with the Lion being a melee attacker, the Goat being a spellcaster and the Snake covering blind spots and using poison attacks. They can, however, be sent into a panic that causes the three heads to fight over control. If the Goat is killed before the Lion, the Chimera becomes more aggressive and starts pouncing aggressively around the battlefield, but if the Lion is killed before the Goat, the Chimera becomes more evasive, running away from the player and casting long-range spells.
- The☆Ultraman: Cho, Jin and San are a trio of Sea Monsters who, because of pollution, ends up being mutated into a single three-headed entity, all three of their heads capable of interacting independently.
- Hercules: The Hydra starts with a single head, but after Hercules decapitates it three more grow in its place. The heads glare at each other momentarily, and after Hercules keeps chopping off its heads the Hydra ends up with dozens of heads, wildly snapping and fighting each other over who gets to eat Hercules.
- Three Headed Monster: The titular villain. The middle head is the one's that's in charge, while the left and right heads spends most of the film arguing with each other. Fittingly enough, the middle head is its sole weak spot — removing it will kill the monster instantly.
- Music.Insane Clown Posse mention this in the song "Down with the Clown":What if I grew another fuckin' head?
And his name was violent... Ed?
And he'd headbutt me every time I cussed.
I would need two microphones when I bust.
Would you show me love even with another head?
Or would you be like: "FUCK YOU AND ED"! - Muertitos: DJ Tonja doesn't so much have two heads as a second mouth on the back of her head, but the second mouth has its own personality, and often argues with the front face.
- "Somepony to Watch over Me": The talking chimera has three heads, each with its own distinct personality: a tiger, a goat and a snake. They refer to one another as sisters, and spend much of their time arguing with one another. They can't ever agree on what to eat (besides pies) and the goat and tiger heads bicker about who's in charge.
- Mutant Football League: Brickhead "Bricks" Mulligan, the color commentator, has a "mutant hobbit head" that lives on his shoulder: Bricks, Jr. Junior hates Bricks. Eerily, it's strongly implied he can somehow separate from Bricks's body and move around on his own; sometimes he asks Bricks to provide an alibi as to his whereabouts last night if his parole officer calls. At the absolute minimum, Junior is fully formed enough to be capable of both vomiting and urinating of his own accord. Usually directly onto Bricks. (This feels like it should be on Conjoined Twins, if they physically separate some of the time.)
- The EC Comics story "The Basket" from The Haunt of Fear features a two headed man who always keeps one of his heads covered with a basket so he can go in public. While one head is friendly the other is cruel and a murderer.
- Supreme: In one issue, Suprema encounters a demon with seven heads, each embodying one of the Seven Deadly Sins. They don't get on with each other very well.
- Kaiju Revolution: Each of King Ghidorah's three heads have an independent personality, the center head is dominant and the most well-coordinated, the right head is a Blood Knight who will lash out even against the center's wishes, the left head seems to be self-loathing due to its tendency to nip at his body in disgust.
- Journey to Chaos: The true form of Kallen Selios is that of a four-headed chimera. Three of them (goat, lion and dragon) emerge from her neck and the fourth one (snake) comes out of her posterior as a tail. All of them represent different aspects of her personality and so they present different viewpoints. Thus they argue.
- Deltarune: Clover, being based on the clubs playing card suit, is a three-headed... quadruped of some kind. One head is friendly, one is cranky and self-centered, and one is a Shrinking Violet. They do agree on some things, though, and the trick to ending the fight with them is to get them talking about those subjects.
- Dexter's Laboratory: During Dee Dee's Derailed Fairy Tale in "Deedeelocks and the Ness Monster", the three heads of the Ness Monster are the happy-go-lucky Silly Ness, the surly Grumpy Ness, and the narcoleptic Sleepy Ness.
- Family Guy: In "Road to the Multiverse", one of the Alternate Universes is a world where all the characters have two heads, one happy and one sad. Stewie's two-headed counterpart has no problems kissing himself.
- Spinnerette: Minerva the Cerberus has three heads, each one with its own look and personality. The left head is the cute one, the right head is the brash, feisty one, and the middle head is the mature, moderate one. Interestingly, rather than being presented as three individuals sharing one body, it's more like Minerva is a single person who's thoughts are the same for all three heads, just filtered through different personality traits. According to her later on in the issue, the heads do not share thoughts (they have different personalities) but instead synchronize their memories during sleep. We see her heads talking to one another a few times in the book-only Issue #9. They also wind up a bit distracted thanks to a Hate Plague in Issue #13. (Note: the description really goes back and forth over how distinct the minds are here.)
- Mega Man Zero: As a Mechaniloid based on the Orochi, the guard Orotic has eight heads, a pair each for Fire, Ice, Lightning and Non-Elemental.
- Slay the Princess: Tampering with the story causes A Glitch in the Matrix to merge five different princesses together into a horrid mess. In their ending, they've gotten their act together and are considerably prettier, and choose to forgive you for turning them into this, since they no longer had to be alone.
- "Treehouse of Horror II": At the very end of "Homer's Nightmare", Mr. Burns' body is crushed, so he has his head surgically grafted to Homer's ample frame. Parodied in The Stinger with Homer complaining that this means he often has to cancel favorite activities in order to meet Mr. Burns' business obligations.
- Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic: The villains Janna and Jason can perform a Fusion Dance into a two-headed dragon, with each of them in control of one head.
- Tales of MU: Sara and Tara Leighton were fused together in a teleportation accident and now have their heads on one shared body.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: When Consuls O and P fail to have the heroes killed, they Interlink into a single, hideous, two-headed Moebius. While both heads have minds of their own, they seem to be coordinated and use a Stance System based on which one is calling the shots. Unfortunately for them, one of the things they agree on, staying Interlinked for too long, results in their death via a localized Annihilation event, as O and P are both Stupid Evil.
- Carnival in a Fix: The Haunted House attraction is run by a two-headed alien. Both heads are named Stan, so that is what they're collectively called.
- PokƩmon: Girafarig has a second head on its tail. Downplayed in its case, since the tail-head has no higher brain functions, but it is stimulated by smell and is able to alert the other head and bite on its own. When it evolves into Farigiraf, the tail-head surrounds the main head and acts both as a helmet and for increased intelligence, as there are now neurons connecting their brains. Both Farigiraf's outer head and inner head cooperate perfectly.
- Angel: A demon in Lorne's bar sings a duet of "Bye Bye Love", which you can do if you've got a second head in your chest. (***)
- The poem "Us" by Shel Silverstein; something of an extreme example, as the accompanying drawing shows two faces stuck onto the same head.
- Dungeons & Dragons: In the template-heavy days of 3.5, there's "Multiheaded Creature", although it does put a reasonable limit on how many heads were added.
- Pathfinder: Magdh of the fae has three faces, mother, maiden, and crone. She is attended by a hierarchy of faerie dragons, amongst whom seniority is determined by the number of heads they have.
- In Flush Force, there is the Gruesome Twosome team, made up of two-headed animals.
- Island Saver: The Mythic Wolf, Funny Flamingo and Mythic Turtle of Fantasy Island each have two heads.
- Ninja Clowns: Twisto is a three-headed hydra clown.
- Dreamscape: In the flashback in "A Curse or a Blessing", Melinda's curse's dog form has two heads.
- Beany and Cecil: In one episode, the duo goes on the search for the Three-Headed Threep. The original series and the 1988 reboot feature an episode about the Threep.
- Futurama: We also see a dog with heads at both ends. The vet mentions that one needs to take pills, the other needs a suppository. A goat with heads at both ends appears in another episode.
- The Order of the Stick: In Funny Background Event, the succubus secretary of the three fiends tells them Miss Tiamat is holding on lines 2, 3, 5, 8 and 11. In this case, all five heads seem to be equally angry, given that all five roars are coming in through the phone. As do each of her five elemental breath weapons. (Note: Tiamat happens to be a valid example in-canon, but this specific write-up does not describe her as such.)
- Slavic Mythology: The war and divination god of the island of RĆ¼gen, Svetovid, has four heads that represent the cardinal directions or the seasons. There is also the three-headed god Triglavnote , whose heads represent heaven, earth, and the underworld.
- Mega Man 8 has Search Man and his two heads. Wily thought that a two-headed robot master would be better for searching than a single-headed one.
- Viva PiƱata has the Twingersnap, a version of the Syrupent with A Head at Each End, acquired by whacking a Syrupent egg with the shovel the moment before it hatches; its waking animation has one head get up first and nudge the other awake. Doing the same thing to a Twingersnap egg gets you a Fourheads, which has, well, four heads — three in front and one on the tail.
- In the fairy tale episode of Scrubs, an inseparable couple is described as a two-headed monster. (Not actually two-headed.)
- Multiple people on one body = 12/50 = 24%
- Multiple heads that argue and bicker = 7/50 = 14%
- One personality trait per head = 8/50 = 16%
- One power per head = 1/50 = 2%
- Distinct entities are fused together = 5/50 = 10%
- The heads explicitly do not have distinct wills or personalities = 2/50 = 4%
- Unclear or not sufficient context = 14/50 = 28%
- Other = 1/50 = 2%
Crosswicks:
- Equippable Ally: Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic: A peculiar case with the Chimera, who is technically a single creature but also a Multiple Head Case. The dragon head is the one in control of the Breath Weapon, but being a drooling idiot with no clue as to when, what or who he should incinerate, it is common for the lion head, in control of the body, to grab the dragon head and point him in the correct direction to use like a flamethrower.
- Hydra Problem: King Ghidorah from Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) has an amazingly rapid healing factor, able to regenerate his severed left head in less than a minute, with that head's individual personality intact, no less. While he regrows only one head, fortunately, it's theorized that he can eventually regenerate from any severed piece of his body, with his severed head being recovered in The Stinger implying he's not gone for good. (Not explict, but the fact that the head's personality being maintained is considered important does strongly suggest that this is the case.)
- Moral Luck: Castle, Forest, Island, Sea, being about philosophy, discusses this trope, especially in conjunction with the three-headed monster whose heads think independently. If two of them eat people and the third won't, is the third head as guilty as the others? It's connected to the same stomach!
- Reformed, but Not Tamed: San, formerly one of the three heads of King Ghidorah who has since been separated from Ghidorah's body and has merged with Dr. Graham to form a new two-headed creature in Abraxas (Hrodvitnon). Although Vivienne's positive influence and being cut off from the other Ghidorah heads' evil influence leads San to switch his moral alignment to fighting for Godzilla and humanity, San still retains a cruel streak towards anyone who personally hurts him and the ones he cares about past his patience threshold, and he still finds the thought of fighting with other monsters alluring.
- Villainous Incest: Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Both Ghidorah's regenerating body and the autonomous MaNi version of Ghidorah's right head are perfectly happy to use Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil among other Cold-Blooded Torture on Monster X to torment Vivienne into Ax-Crazy insanity, and are planning to use her as a monster Baby Factory. Although Vivienne was born a human, Ghidorah's heads do still think that her transformation into Monster X by San's severed head makes her both their sister and their daughter, and the fact she has a "shed skin" version of San as her transformed body's second head doesn't deter MaNi at all from performing a subtextual violation of Monster X's body.
- BigBrotherInstinct.Fan Works: Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): This runs both ways with Monster X's two heads, San and Vivienne Graham, who consider each-other siblings due to Multiple Head Case being Ghidorah's definition of siblinghood and due to bonding closely with each other, respectively. Anyone who actively and seriously messes with one of the two beings who compose Monster X is in for a world of agony and likely death from the other half. Eventually, Vivienne somewhat extends her protectiveness of her San to his separate clone, San-2/Youngest Brother.
- Characters.A Shadow Of The Titans: [Asuka-Tammy] two heads each with their own name and mind. Also upper bodies with extra arms. They are the same arachnid lower body.
- Characters.Hearthstone Heroes Of Warcraft Alternate Heroes: Omen has two heads, each with a distinct voice. They get along well for the most part, but the right head is more cunning and the left head is more aggressive.
- Characters.Nickelodeon All Star Brawl: Unlike Smash's transforming duo characters, Cat and Dog are conjoined twins connected via a long, stretchy body who simply swap positions rather than transforming in any capacity.
- Characters.Pokemon Generation II Chikorita To Granbull: Girafarig has an extra head on its tail, which has its own simple brain and can act, perceive and attack separately from the main one. When it evolves, its two heads fuse together, and their brains are now directly connected through thick nerves.
- Characters.Rolling With Difficulty: HE-11 and Vice each have a distinct head, which switch out depending on who is in control.
- Characters.Shattered Glass Prime Others: As is traditional for Quintesson Judges, Aquarius has five different faces, each with its own personality. Downplayed in that the faces usually agree on what to do, just not how or why they want to do it.
- Characters.Star Vs The Forces Of Evil The Magic High Commission: Rhombulus' snake hands have a mind of their own. In "Crystal Clear" they try to convince him that abducting Star isn't a good idea. Their origins are explained in Star and Marco's Guide to Mastering Every Dimension wherein Glossaryck turned Rhombulus' original limbs into "thoughtful alligators" in an effort to counteract the bruiser's innate savagery. It didn't quite take and the snakes grew to hate Glossaryck as much as Rhombulus did. When magic disappears, the snakes outlived Rhombulus, but seem to have been reduced to regular snakes intellect-wise.
- Characters.The Aquabats: Briefly dated one head of a man eating Siren.
- Characters.Ultraman Eighty: Each of Fire-Draco's three heads has its own personality, appearance, and powers. In fact, when the monster was originally defeated long ago, the heads' souls reincarnated as three separate humans.
- Characters.Viva Pinata TV Show Main Characters: Teddington is a snob who likes opera (he also likes singing it, unfortunately) and sad, melodramatic movies while Tina is a snarky, more fun-loving but still hot-headed Tomboy type. The two don't get along at all and barely ever go a minute without arguing.
- ComicBook.Babe Darling Of The Hills: Oliver and Boliver, a two-headed member of the freakshow. They haven't spoken for a month after having an argument, to which Babe laments they "were such good friends".
- ComicBook.Top Ten: Dispatcher Linda "Janus" Burnett, like the Roman god, has a face on the back of her head. "Front-Jan" and "Back-Jan" are distinct individuals (even with their own boyfriends) and spend a decent amount of the first series bickering and competing with each other. The events in Beyond get her to Resign in Protest and go back to her parents (who are two-faced like her) and she's replaced with a three-faced woman named Tara.
- DarkAndTroubledPast.Fan Works: Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): San, the former left head of Ghidorah. Ghidorah as a whole is just as violent, depraved and sadistic in this story as it's ever been, but it has a pretty compelling Freudian Excuse which also applies to San: San and his brothers were originally just wild animals on some long-gone alien world fighting for survival, until they were captured by the Makers, systematically tortured into evil, and transformed into a Bioweapon Beast. Ghidorah turned against and exterminated the Makers in revenge, but the Old Noise which the Makers had programmed into Ghidorah's heads as a "standing order" continued tormenting the three heads ceaselessly, constantly and insatiably demanding endless bloodshed and destruction, until any trace of goodness in Ichi/Eldest Brother and Ni/Elder Brother was irreversibly "torn apart and forgotten" and Ghidorah's three minds were moulded into the Ax-Crazy interstellar Omnicidal Maniac we all know it as. What's more, before and after the three heads' corruption, San was and always remained the least actively malicious and hateful of the three, and the most curious about humanity and the other "little" lifeforms his brothers so hated, for which Ichi and Ni were very physically, verbally and emotionally abusive towards San, treating him like little more than dirt.
- Film.Three Headed Monster: The titular monster, of course. The middle head appears to be the one who's in charge, while the left and right head would spend times bickering when things doesn't go their way.
- MeaningfulName.Live Action Films: In his MonsterVerse continuity incarnation, his Multiple Head Case three heads are named Ichi, Ni and San, meaning One, Two and Three in Japanese and denoting the order of most to least intelligent head. The "King" in his name also carries special relevance with this incarnation, as he's initially only referred to as Ghidorah, the implication being that he only gains the name King Ghidorah when he successfully usurps Godzilla's kingship over the other Titans for a time.
- RedemptionEqualsDeath.Fan Works: Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In the finale, King Ghidorah's left head goes rogue against the other two, eviler heads, and he dies helping the heroes to kill the three-headed dragon and put an end to their menace once more.
- WesternAnimation.Dragon Tales: But they're two entirely different individuals. Of two entirely different sexes...
- WesternAnimation.Monsters Inc 1: Very briefly seen, after Sulley and Mike expose Randall and Mr. Waternoose's plan to the CDA. A two-headed monster can be seen, the two heads exchanging glances with each other.
- Stay Ahead of This Index: Multiple Head Case: A being with more than one head whose different heads don't get along well.
- AdaptationalSympathy.Fan Works: The expansion on San's (Ghidorah's left head's) and Ghidorah's general characterization and backstory gives the former even more sympathetic traits and redeeming qualities than he was presented with in canon, and the physical and auditory abuse he suffers from Ghidorah's other two heads is not Played for Laughs here. The San head has been under chronic physical and verbal abuse from his brother heads whilst having absolutely no-one else to turn to for billions of years, which has in turn made San dependent, severely love-starved, and prone to self-blame and self-loathing; to say nothing of what he went through before all that with the Makers. San also truly likes and cares for his Morality Pet Vivienne Graham, taking his new responsibilities as her brother head to heart after their fusion.
- Anime.Chibi Godzilla Raids Again: Each of Chibi Ghidorah's heads often contradicts the other and can erupts into fights (usually over food).
- Characters.Digimon Ghost Game Supporting Cast: Like other Reppamon, his tail is completely sapient, and the two are constantly at odds with one another. In this one's case, the tail wants to prove its strength by attacking things and doesn't care for civilian casualties, while the main body is constantly fighting it to prevent people from getting hurt.
- Characters.Goosebumps Horror Land: [The Menace] has a second head that he constantly argues with.
- Characters.Warhammer Warriors Of Chaos: When he consumed and was consumed by the Daemon, his head split into two down its length and transformed into two independent heads atop two long, snaking necks. His original personality occasionally takes control of one of these, leading to his two heads fighting with one another until the daemon resumes control.
- Podcast.The Fallen Gods: Tuatha has a pet Cerberus-Yorkie whose three names (Susienka, Binggan, Keksi) all mean "biscuit" in Slovak, Mandarin, and Finnish respectively. They also disagree often, with one having opposite opinions from another and the third acting as a neutral party.
- TooDumbToLive.Animated Films: In Hercules (Pure Magic), Hercules mentions that the Hydra's middle head is immortal. The other heads immediately become so jealous that they jump into a volcano to test this immortality, even though that would also kill them (and the immortal head is the only one who can ressurrect the other heads when they're destroyed).
- Fractured Fairy Tale: Dexter's Laboratory has "DeeDee-Locks and the Ness Monster"; Dexter's mom convinces (read: forces) him to read DeeDee a story because she's sick, which leads to Dexter reading her from a complicated science textbook. Bored to sleep, DeeDee takes over and makes up her own story, taking a bit of everything from old fairy tales with her own twists; such as three pigs made of Straw, Sticks, and Bricks, a Big Bad Wolf with the stature of Napoleon, and a three-headed bag-pipe monster named the Ness Monster (each head with its own personality and Punny Name: Silly Ness, Grumpy Ness, and Sleepy Ness). Dexter interrupts halfway and lampshades the lack of story structure, but was ignored.
- WesternAnimation.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003: Triple Threat from Fast Forward has three heads: a red brutish one, a yellow crazy one, and a methodical blue one
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The two-headed Kaiju formed of San (Ghidorah's left head) and Vivienne Graham merging together has a spar with Godzilla, during which Godzilla at one point propels them into the sky. The San half of them takes control of their arms and spreads them out wide on instinct, on account of him being formerly part of a flying dragon that had wings in place of arms (and likely also on account of the fact that the feelings of power and freedom that came with being able to fly are one of the only things about being part of Ghidorah that San misses). (Bit of a weird case, in that the example generally describes a valid case but the pothole is a ZCE/misuse.)
- Characters.Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Moebius: When O and P Interlink, rather than one member dominating, the resulting fusion has two heads (one for O and one for P) and uses a Stance System to switch between a more bestial and a more humanoid stance where O or P is in control, respectively. As they're the only multi-headed Interlink in the whole game, this is played for Body Horror and implies that their fusion isn't as "perfect" as they repeatedly claim it to be.
- Obsessed with Food: Monster Hunter Generations: The Nakarkos is a cuttlefish-like Elder Dragon that's responsible for entire ecosystems disappearing into its beaked maw. However, unlike other Hungry Menace cases such as the Deviljho, whose metabolism is so intense that it's constantly starving, the Nakarkos is different. It does use a few bones from its prey to cover its arms with, giving it the initial appearance of a Multiple Head Case Elder Dragon, but mostly, it just doesn't have anything better to do than eat everything. (Not actual heads but fakes, so it goes here.)
- The Queenpin: Kid Cosmic has Boss Fiosa, the two-headed alien crime lady of the Bagai Crime League. She was once the moll of the previous boss of the League, who was given two of the Cosmic Stones of Power by him as a gift. But she then used their power to kill him and take control of the organization for herself. (Putting this here because of the consistent use of single-person pronouns.)
- Characters.Future Card Buddyfight Disaster: Actually averted. The heads don't act independently of each other. They even speak in unison.
- Cannibalism Superpower: Dungeons & Dragons: Dire trolls are a mutated form of troll that comes into being when a troll starts eating other trolls. This causes them to grow much larger and develop mutations such as extra limbs, eyes, mouths, and sometimes even entire heads growing from random places around their body. To further add on to this, they can graft parts from other trolls to themselves thanks to their regeneration. Each dire troll is thus a unique collection of grotesque horror. And, of course, they're much stronger and tougher than normal trolls, as well.
- Leaking Can of Evil: Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): While Ghidorah was still frozen in Antarctica, its heads were partly conscious and aware of what was happening around their icy prison, and they were still able to exert a limited psychic and electromagnetic interference.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In Chapter 13, when an enraged Vivienne and San rip the Many's Skullcrawler host to shreds, they're unnerved by hearing Ghidorah's voices whisper "YESSSSSSSSssssss" through the Psychic Link at their violent display in a soft, sensual tone that is uncharacteristic of them. It's an early warning that Ghidorah has started to find Vivienne's episodes of temporary psychosis arousing, and has accordingly changed their plans for Vivienne to forcibly making her a monster Baby Factory.
- Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Used by the kaiju themselves in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Ghidorahās gravity beams are already an absolutely devastating long-rage Breath Weapon, capable of disintegrating humans and other non-kaiju targets to ash. During his aerial fight with Rodan, Ghidorahās right and left heads restrain the Terror-dactyl while the middle head fires his gravity beam straight into Rodanās chest at point-blank range. Rodan is taken out for the remainder of the fight. (***)
- Characters.Bakugan Battle Brawlers Bakugan: [Hydranoid] grows one additional head and tail with each evolution.
- Characters.Bloodstained Ritual Of The Night: Demon, horse, and snake heads.
- Characters.Carn Evil: Cyclops: Of the two-headed variety.
- Characters.Codex Equus Draconic Pantheon: Like her D&D portrayal, she has five heads.
- Characters.Cry Of Fear: Unique Enemy: There's a Slower with three heads that can only be found in the TL Trading Company building.
- Characters.Dragon Ball Fused Zamasu: His final form is basically millions of heads filling the sky and universe. Each head seems capable of expression and firing a Mouth Beam.
- Characters.Dungeons And Dragons Creatures U To Z: 3rd and 5th edition anathemas have six heads, allowing them to savage their enemies with a flurry of bites.
- Characters.Etrian Odyssey III: A three-headed dragon, like the Blizzard King. Except each of his heads is a separate target.
- Characters.I Dont Run An Orphanage The Midoriya Household: [Kai Midoriya] has three serpentine heads, even though he can only talk through one head.
- Characters.Jump Force: The Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, being a Fusion of the three normal Blue-Eyes White Dragons, has three heads.
- Characters.Kingdom Hearts Disney Villains Maleficents Council And Allies: [The Hydra] eventually sprouts into a total of seven heads during the second part of its boss fight.
- Characters.Lilo And Stitch Experiments 6 Series: He has a retractable second head.
- Characters.Marvel Comics Cosmic Entities: He has three heads, or technically a single head with three faces.
- Characters.Metroid Space Pirates: They have no less than three visible heads in their sprites.
- Characters.Monster Rancher Species: While they only have one mouth on their abdomens, the original depictions of Plants have their triad of flowers act as heads and imitating facial expressions much like eyes do at time. Nowadays, it's just one cartoonish flower with massive petals in contrast to the more intricate design of the older flowers.
- Characters.Otherworldly Ravenous Beast: Be the Ball: Besides the obvious, they use an extra head as a bowling ball against Bones.
- Characters.Persona 3 Antagonists: Erebus is made of two torsos stuck together at the waist. One head has horns protruding forward, the other has horns projecting backwards.
- Characters.Power Rangers Beast Morphers: It has seven dinosaur heads, six of them surrounding the central one.
- Characters.Smite Greek Pantheon: [Cerberus'] three dog heads must be made "Alert" by landing attacks or using Ghastly Breath, otherwise his snake tail will be the only head spewing venom with Paralyzing Spit.
- Characters.Super Smash Bros Bosses: One head on both sides of its body, and they both have weapons.
- Characters.The Evil Within 2: It has multiple women's heads on its body.
- Characters.The Pathless: She has two heads after being turned into a corrupted spirit.
- Fanfic.Post MU Life Scream: Terri and Terry. Subverted, as they're two different characters and now no longer sharing a body. (Not super clear what exactly is going on here.)
- Fanfic.A Red Rose In The Blue Wind: In this story, the mutated Beowulves have three heads, and unless they're cut off, they'll continue to regenerate until their bodies are completely destroyed.
- Film.Evil Dead 2: The demon at the end has the heads of all its previous victims.
- Literature.Dragonlance Chronicles: Takhisis has five heads in her dragon form.
- Literature.Ology Series: Hydras typically have three heads, but can have more. Monsterology includes chimeras, with the usual snake, goat and lion heads, and a prehistoric phoenix parasite preserved in amber, which appears to be an insect with two heads.
- Literature.Zapped In Space: The Vega aliens have two heads and four arms, as seen on the front cover.
- Music.Professor Elemental: Eldritch Location: The attic from the song of the same name changes with each visit, is ruled by King Rat and populated by a range of strange and malevolent beings. The only safe way out is to be lead back by Lord Owl. The professor uses it to store his abandoned experiments and various other curiosities, such as a malfunctioning robot butler, a two-headed toad that he adopted, and a unicorn's horn.
- NightmareFuel.Immortal Hulk: Then there's the monstrosity that Hulk promptly turns into, which can be best described as a Hulk-sized tumor made up of swollen green muscles dotted with a random assortment of too many mismatched arms and myriad raging Hulk faces.
- Pantheon.Legendary Beings: Portfolio: Hydra (duh), Multiple Heads Which Can Multiply if Cut Off, Dragon-like Creature, Poisonous Blood And Breath, Can't Grow Back Its Heads If The Wound Is Cauterized, The Last Head Was Buried Under a Rock
- Recap.Infinity Train Knight Of The Orange Lily The 400 Rabbits Car: Sooty, the canine guardian of the Charcoal Car, has two heads. This is to be expected, since he's an Orthos.
- Recap.Power Rangers Dino Fury Episode Twenty Nine New Leaf: Squashblight literally has jack-o-lantern faces for eyes and nose.
- Recap.The Legend Of Vox Machina S 01 E 05 Fates Journey: Coitus Uninterruptus: Scanlan tells how he still finished inside a woman who tried to kill him and grew a grotesque second head. The rest of the party is disgusted.
- ScrewedByTheNetwork.Live Action TV: In 1996, MTV created a sister network called M2. Later known as MTV2, it was dedicated entirely to music to answer concerns over the main network's shift in programming. After introducing the "two-headed dog" logo in 2005, hip-hop became the dominant genre and the channel more or less became "MTV with Hip-Hop and Rock videos". When Viacom's 2017 restructuring plan went into effect, the network scrapped its remaining original programming, and eventually stopped airing its early morning music video blocks, leaving it with nothing but rerun fare.
- ShoutOut.Voltes V: Episode 16's Suneizaa serves as a shout-out to King Ghidora of Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster fame from the Godzilla franchise, complete with his electrical Breath Weapon and multiple snake heads.
- TabletopGame.Necromunda: Having two heads was one of the options for mutant Scavvies in the 1st and 2nd Edition versions of the game. The mutation gave the model a 180 degree field of vision and allowed them to fire two pistols at the same time as each head is able to aim and fire one of the guns independently. (***)
- VideoGame.Blue Dragon: Marumira's shadow is Cerebus, a three headed dog. Balaur also has three heads.
- VideoGame.Dragon Gun: One of the stronger enemies, a two-headed aquatic monster several times larger than lesser mooks who can shoot projectiles from both its heads.
- VideoGame.Guilty Gear: Kaiju: Megadeth-class Gears are utterly titanic creatures that wouldn't look out of place tussling with Godzilla. Like with any other Gear, they range from "(vaguely) humanoid" to "hideous monstrosity." One of them, Hydra, was responsible for nearly destroying London; it was stopped by the efforts of Kliff, who halted the beast's advance for an entire week, and even then was he unable to completely finish it off before the Sacred Order rolled out Last Resort—a magic-based satellite laser with a several kilometer-wide blast radius—and sealed Hydra away. (He did manage to sever three of its five heads and four limbs, though.)
- VideoGame.Ninja Clowns: Monster Clown: Some of the bosses are this, like a giant clown spider, and a three-headed clown hydra, aka, Twisto.
- VideoGame.Putt Putt: The alien selling the rocket in Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon has two heads.
- VideoGame.The Clue Finders6th Grade Adventures The Empire Of The Plant People: You have to knock out a three-headed plant in the "Recipe for Disaster" activity.
- VideoGame.We Happy Restaurant: The chicken served gets more and more heads with every upgrade of the machine.
- Webcomic.Ship War AU: Future Glossaryck has two heads as a result of the timeline splitting.note
- WesternAnimation.Trolls World Tour: All Trolls Are Different/Gang of Hats: Discussed when Peppy tells Poppy about the other troll tribes that are different from them, she asks if she means different like the trolls in their village; Legsly, who can stretch her legs instead of her hair, Fuzzbert who's covered entirely in hair, or Skyscraper whose multiple troll heads and arms stacked on top of a single body. What he means by different are how trolls from the other tribes center their culture around a different genres of music and don't understand or like that of the Pop trolls. The trolls of the other tribes have physical differences that allude to other mythical creatures.
- OnePiece.Tropes K To M: Judge Baskerville subverts this trope, as it turns out he's actually two shorter guys sitting on the legs of one really tall guy in the middle.
- Attack of the Monster Appendage: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Multiple Head Case Hellmouth Demon seen in "Prophecy Girl" and "The Zeppo".
- Characters.Deltarune: Used to pothole a character name in a character index ("Clover"), no context provided beyond the one word.
- Characters.Final Fantasy IX: Tiamat has three heads.
- Characters.Total War Warhammer The Skaven: Old Soldier: Throt is the second-oldest Skaven in Clan Moulder next to his master Lord Verminkin, who is even more mutated than Throt. He is still able to lead armies and snap necks with ease. (Pothole in text that does not reference the trope.)
- Funny.Heroes Of The Storm: Lunara and Cho'gall.Lunara: How dare you show your face here?! Uh... faces.
Gall: Ahahahaha!
Cho: Don't laugh at that, you idiot! - HarryPotter.Tropes A To I: Philosopher's Stone: Professor Quirrell, who is revealed to be quite literally working directly for Voldemort to get the Philosopher's stone and was the one trying to kill Harry throughout the story. (Pothole in text that does not reference the trope.)
- JustForFun.Super Weight Video Games A To M: Super Weight: Twinbellows, Hewdraw, Gaol, Great Reaper, Pandora, Kraken, Pit with the Three Sacred Treasures, Ornes, The Phoenix, Cragalanche, Arlon. (ZCE pothole.)
- Recap.Buffy The Vampire Slayer S 1 E 12 Prophecy Girl: More Teeth than the Osmond Family/Multiple Head Case: The Hellmouth beast.
- Object Overload: From left to right: [[...]] Boombox, Casey, Cherry, Masky, Television [...] (ZCE pothole.)
- Multiple people on one body = 24%
- Multiple heads that argue and bicker = 8%
- One personality trait per head = 2%
- Distinct entities are fused together = 2%
- The heads explicitly do not have distinct wills or personalities = 3%
- Unclear or not sufficient context = 51%
- Other = 1%
- ZCE = 9%
As an overall analysis:
- Insofar as the main definition requires that each had have a distinct personality and will, it's not being used like that. The largest category in both checks — about half of the second — is just "multiple heads are present" without any commentary one way or the other on their independence.
- The boundaries between "heads with distinct personalities" period, "heads with distinct personalities that don't get along and bicker", and "heads with distinct personalities that each have/embody a distinct personality trait" were rather fuzzy and required a number of arbitrary judgement calls. I am not confident about how well they work as trope distinctions. The third one might have potential if defined more strictly, but I'd be inclined to leave that on the maybe pile for some future day.
- The "one power per head" concept is useable, I think. It doesn't turn up a lot in these checks, but in a general reading of the main page a number of entries to that effect turn up.
My inclination is to cut and dismabiguate the main page, and then split off a new trope for "multiple heads have each their own personality and may or may not get along with each other" with a clearer name, another one for "each had has a distinct unique power", and a Useful Notes page for polycephaly.