Heads blowing up in Video Games.
- AI: The Somnium Files: How Saito meets his end in the true final chapter. Here's the breakdown: Having by this point switched himself and Date back into their original bodies with the Psync machine, Saito has taken Hitomi hostage in the control room of the abandoned factory in the restricted area. With Moma's shotgun tossed away per the order but Aiba (still in the eye socket of his previous body) there on Ota's phone, Date engages her self-destruct sequence per the codes they agreed on during a ride earlier on in the route. The result is a real eye-popper for Saito.
- In the Source Engine conversion game Age Of Chivalry, it's possible for Heavy Knights to cause this with their warhammers.
- In Alien vs. Predator (any of the PC games or the newish console game), alien's heads tend to explode if you aim for them. Their bodies are kind of fragile and chitinous, so this is somewhat more believable.
- In the second game, headbiting a human (or, far more rare, predator) caused the victim's head to completely shatter. Made of Plasticine, indeed. (The first game merely decapitated the victim).
- After you defeat the pepper grinder-wielding Duchess in American McGee's Alice, she has a sneezing fit, causing her head to explode.
- This happens to Alice herself if she is killed by an enemy with a firearm. In fact, there's a cheat code you can implement that will show you the death scene, but then allow you to continue playing the game — with Alice having no head.
- In Alice: Madness Returns, this happens to the White Rabbit within five minutes of starting the game. Seriously.
- Bionic Commando (1988), in the final battle against Cyborg Clone Hitler... err, Master-D. Somehow, the censors forgot to pick that one up. An image of this scene can be seen here
◊. This single moment is the only reason why the 2008 remake, Bionic Commando Rearmed, is rated M!- "Exploding Nazi Heads" seems to be a running gag in the series. In the 2009 sequel, after defeating the Big Bad, a grenade is placed in his mouth and he is kicked over the edge of the platform. Boom!
- Comes in several different varieties in BioShock Infinite. The shotgun, sniper rifle, and Hand Cannon can all blow enemies' heads off with a clean headshot, one of the possible Sky-Hook executions has Booker grind the victim's head into paste with its blades, and most spectacularly, shooting an enemy to death while they're being electrocuted by Shock Jockey causes their heads to burst into flames before their bodies burn up.
- Bishi Bashi Special, prefiguring the Trope Namer, had a Pong-like minigame called "Puck Attack" with round head icons which would go up in a fiery explosion if the puck went into the goal.
- In The Black Heart, if you're really low on health, one of Final's grabs will do this to you.
- Fatal headshots in Blacklight Retribution will not only cause the head to explode but will sometimes cause a sharp exploding sound to be heard across the map if the headshot deals enough damage.
- A method of execution in Bloody Battle is shooting someone's head, which will cause it to explode into pieces of flesh, brains and bone.
- Borderlands: In the grim future, all of our heads are apparently filled with nitroglycerin.
- In Borderlands 2, one particular boss fight ends with its head exploding after you retrieve a software upgrade from its collar. The boss, in question, had all five of the game's elemental damage abilities, which are fire, electricity, corrosion, slag, and explosive, and after Handsome Jack unveils it to you, he forgets its explosive capability right up until then.
- Score any kill on humans with electricity and see their heads go "pop" like a lightbulb.
- Brutal Doom and Project Brutality let the Doomguy blow the heads off of most foes with the vast arsenal he has ranging from a pistol to a rifle to a Gatling gun to a Revenant's rocket launcher's Railgun secondary fire. If their heads aren't blown clean off, it's turned into meat chunks plastered across the wall.
- This is possible in Call of Duty: World At War with a high caliber firearm headshot.
- In Charlie Murder, the default Coup de Grâce is a literal curb-stomp. The enemy's head will explode violently underfoot, but strangely their brain will remain intact and can be used as a projectile.
- In keeping with the ludicrous level of violence it displays, Condemned 2: Bloodshot allows players to explode enemies' heads in a number of ways, including industrial presses, and eventually by shouting at them.
- Dark Seed II had a particularly Narmful one involving the protagonist's mother that seemed more like a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment than anything else.
- In Dead Rising, break a jar containing a Queen bug in the vicinity of zombies, and their heads asplode.
- Dead Space: Researcher vs. freakishly grotesque space baby, yeah... You can also do this to other Necromorphs during regular gameplay. It doesn't do anything other than pissing them off some more.
- In the third game, any headshot to Unitologist soldiers, even ones with weapons that would normally cause their heads to fall off will make it explode. This applies to explosive weapons, though it's unclear how instantly severing their body parts with one single explosion would cause their head to disappear other than a logical headshot with an explosive.
- The Anal Probe in Destroy All Humans! kills by making the victim's head explode, and in the process extracts more Furon DNA (glowing brains) than killing by other methods. Try wrapping your brain around that, getting anally probed is so violating that your head explodes.
- Devil May Cry
- In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, this happens to Cerberus whenever you damage one of his heads enough; the death of a head prevents him from using a specific attack. He only has one head left after he's defeated by Dante.
- It's topped in glorious fashion in Devil May Cry 4 after the final battle with The False Savior, where Nero finishes it off by crushing its face in his hand. Head asplosion comes complete with city-rattling shockwave.
- Happens in Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerburus when you defeat a witch. (One of her eyes survives, and it can be used as an ingredient for a spell.)
- Doom:
- Doom: In the PS1 and Sega Saturn versions when you get gibbed, the status bar face explodes rather than being all caved in and dead like a normal death. The 3DO version explodes the face no matter how you die.
- Doom (2016): The Big Bad, Olivia Pierce, gets this treatment at the end of your final battle with her, with the Doom Slayer sticking the BFG into the maw of the Spider Mastermind that she has become, just before cutting loose and blowing her brains out.
- Doom Eternal has the Slayer executing the final Hell Priest Deag Grav in this fashion, by way of Boom, Headshot! with the Super Shotgun.
- Eternal Darkness: You can hallucinate this happening if you cast a spell with low sanity. Also, if Xel'lotath is your enemy, Paul Luther gets a good telekinetic head-bursting instead of the boss fight both he and The Dragon were expecting.
- Part of the Fallout experience. In Fallout 3, killing headshots with a rifle will cause this if the head is crippled, or decapitate if it isn't. After Frank Horrigan's body falls apart in Fallout 2, you can talk to him to hear some useless last words before his head pops off. Satisfying!
- In Fallout 3, using the Mesmetron to collect slaves has a random chance effect of pissing them off for a few seconds before their heads pop. Likewise, anyone successfully enslaved gets an Explosive Leash just to keep them in line.
- Also in Fallout 3, any Rock-It Launched junk aimed to the head could explode it (watch a teddy bear impact with critically explosive fun!). It was more common than with any other Big Gun, as the others would more often result in charred husk, complete dismemberment, or full body splatter.
- The Repellent Stick. Hit a mole rat with it, wait a few seconds, and its head will explode. As fun as this sounds, all the Mole Rats do is smoke for a bit before their heads burst in a rather underdramatic fashion. Moira's reaction is altogether more amusing.
- The Lone Wanderer's descriptions are hilarious:"Well, at least it's non-lethal for people. For Mole Rats... not so much."
"It repelled their limbs from their body. Can you make one that works on people?"
"It appears that Mole Rats have a most fatal allergy to it. Explosively so."
"It's like explosive whack-a-Mole Rat. Can I get it in bullet form? For people?"
"It gives them quite a kick, like too much Jet or something."
- The Lone Wanderer's descriptions are hilarious:
- The add-on Mothership Zeta will have your head explode if you don't put your spacesuit on before opening the room's bay doors. Explosive decompression for the win! Though that leaves one to wonder why you can open the bay doors when your hand, because of your Pip-Boy, is clearly exposed.
- Fallout: New Vegas also has the exploding slave collars. As a twist, a quest for the Brotherhood of Steel and the Dead Money DLC put the collar on you. And thanks to interference from the Sierra Madre's sound system, straying too close to active speakers or ham radios for too long leads to warning beeps that grow faster and faster until BOOM splat!
- The More Perks Mod adds the perk Superior Mind that allows the Courier, if they have an Intelligence score of 9 or the max 10, to make an opponent's head explode with a dialogue option. If it's used on an opponent whose Intelligence score is higher, however, then crippling damage is applied to the user's own head.
- Final Fantasy XIV gets this at the end of the Sorrow of Werlyt storyline after the player finally defeats Diamond Weapon. The Diamond Weapon, fueled by Alphonse, Gaius Belsar's adopted son, grabs the mastermind of the Weapon Project and the VIIth Legatus, Valens van Varro, and even with Gory Discretion Shot in effect, crushes him so hard his head is heard popping. The funny part is it sounds more like a balloon popping followed by water pouring down a sink.
- Various Fist of the North Star games, when an enemy is punched. Apparently a faithfully adapted trait of the anime. Heads comically bloating before they pop optional.
- Rion, main character from Galerians, often does this to all mooks around when his Psychic Powers spin out of control.
- In Gear Grinder, when Jack takes his devastating ride and tries to escape, his captors reveal that they implanted a bomb in his head and threaten to set it off if he doesn't return immediately.
- In Gears of War, headshots with a sniper rifle, or headshots when making a killing shot for pistols or shotguns do this. It's possible to purchase an action figure of a Locust Drone with his head asploding.
- In Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, and Vice City Stories, heads would always neatly pop when shot with a sniper rifle.
- Gore mode allows you to blow off heads and limbs with any gun.
- In the Grand Theft Auto V mission Friend Request, you do this with the phone bomb to Jay Norris. On live television.
- The result of a headshot in Gun.
- In almost every Halo game, there is an obtainable Skull called "Grunt Birthday Party" that, when picked up, made it so that when you scored a headshot on a Grunt, its head blew up. Into clouds of confetti. While little children cheer. And in Halo 3 the confetti actually causes, albeit small, damage to nearby enemies.
- Fun fact: Those cheering children are from Viva Piñata.
- The original version of this Skull appeared in Halo 2, where its effect is slightly different. There is no confetti or children — the enemy just blows up exactly like a plasma grenade. Also, the effect works on any enemy with a head, not just Grunts.
- In Infernal Runner, stepping into a certain wave field would cause your head to start bulging and after a few seconds explode messily.
- I Wanna Be the Guy hilariously subverts this. Instead of "Your Head Asplode," "Everything BUT Your Head Asplode." It doesn't matter what you touch, whether it be barely grazing a spike, getting hit by fruit falling up, or getting hit by Dracula's wineglass. Your body explodes violently in a shower of red pixels while your head just remains untouched.
- Jagged Alliance 2. If you manage to shoot somebody in the head in just the right way, their head will explode and their body will fall on the ground, blood squirting out of the neck. In fact, if you're lucky, you can save your game just before such a moment and replay it over and over.
- Scoring a headshot with a strong enough weapon in The Last of Us will result in this trope. Even better, instead of leaving a neck stump with a clean white bone sticking out like a blob of mozzarella on an incredibly poorly made margherita, the lower half of the victim's head will be left behind, which is Truth in Television for those killed by extremely high powered bullets to the head.
- Certain melee kills animations involve stomping on your enemy's head hard enough to shatter their skulls after you knock them to the ground.
- In The Last Stand, zombie heads occasionally explode when shot.
- In Left 4 Dead a headshot with any sufficiently powerful weapon (Any of the shotguns, the Assault Rifle or Hunting Rifle) will turn a normal infected's head into a brief cloud of red goo.
- In Lemmings, the bomber lemmings would hold their heads and quiver for a second or so before they blew up as if trying to contain the explosive force within their skulls.
- Let It Die: woe be to the young fighter who makes a snack of a Boomshroom. Eating one guarantees the player a one-way trip to death (and their head, a one-way trip to the ceiling).
- In Lugaru, if you enable debug mode, you can make enemy bunny and wolf heads explode with the tap of a key.
- In Manhunt, the trope was limited to a few executions and heavy firearms. Manhunt 2, on the other hand, has Mook head explosions in every other execution. Their heads will pop like a watermelon from weapons such as a sledgehammer, a baseball bat, a shovel, or even a flashlight!
- Headshots of various types in Mass Effect 2 (at least against human-sized organic targets) cause rather violent sprays of red, blue, purple, or orange.
- If you get a headshot on any mech, especially a YMIR mech, it will cause a large explosion.
- Mass Effect 3 headshots can now explode the heads of organic enemies. In multiplayer, krogan and batarian characters can do the same thing with headbutts/punches... as can any character equipped with a Batarian Gauntlet. This includes volus, which is a little strange given that volus characters are about three feet tall, meaning that a volus heavy melee attack with an omni-fist involves punching people in the crotch so hard their heads explode.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda continues it with some organic enemies (but not all - krogan heads won't explode). Kett heads tend to explode in a gooey green mess (which the Codex kindly justifies). And sometimes, possibly due to a bug or just 'cuz, it happens if you use a melee weapon, giving the impression Ryder has hit someone hard to enough to make their head explode.
- Celebrimbor the Wraith in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is especially fond of doing this to Uruks once you advance his skill tree. There are also weapon runes you can apply that utilize or improve your head-sploding powers. The Uruks find Talion's new talent kind of disturbing, judging by their banter.
- Midnight Fight Express: Babyface's more powerful strikes tend to obliterate the head of the unfortunate mook that crosses him.
- Featured in numerous fatalities across the Mortal Kombat franchise.
- The very first exploding head, in Mortal Kombat (1992), was courtesy of Raiden, although in the savagely Bowdlerised SNES version it reduced the enemy to ashes instead.
- Mortal Kombat X punishes rage quitters by making their character's head pop like an ugly zit."QUITALITY"
- Moshi Monsters has a whole species of creatures called Baby Boomers, whose heads explode randomly and they always grow back. Their eyes are also immune to this exploding.
- An Easter Egg at the museum in Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove lets you make the head of a stuffed sheep explode.
- In Escape To Ravenhearst, a mannequin's head explodes after you beat it at cards.
- In Naughty Bear, if a teddy is driven insane by naughtiness and scared one last time, he will kill himself. This trope is what happens when said teddy is unarmed.
- In the freeware platformer Ninja Senki, this happens when you finally kill the dragon at the end of Scene 8, followed by its entire neck gradually exploding.
- In No More Heroes, Travis defeats Holly. After losing, she tells him she has a thing for him, then takes one of her grenades, pulls the pin, and puts it in her mouth, with predictable results. Travis, desperately trying to pay respects, hugs her headless body. And buries her in a pit trap she dug.
- DJ Subatomic Supernova inverts this during the transition from his third phase to his final phase in No Straight Roads. Rather than exploding, the narcissic disc jockey's head implodes. This creates a black hole whose suction Mayday and Zuke must outrun for the rest of the fight.
- Parasite Eve 2 had one monster that had conjoined rolling heads! The monster would explode when its HP hit 0 or if you stepped on it.
- The Blood and Bone Suckler enemies hunt prey by diverting massive amounts of blood into their heads, creating explosive cranial pressure and turning their heads into fragmentation grenades, killing the prey item so that other Sucklers can eat it. They seem pretty volatile aside, though, since a single shot can set off a room full of them like a biological powder-keg.
- In Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, the Ultra Beast Blacephalon's Secret Art is Mind Blown, wherein it takes off its own head and blows it up to damage the target, at the cost of half of its own health. Because of its Bizarre Alien Biology, the loss of its head isn't terribly inconvenient and it simply grows another one.
- In Portal 2's Perpetual Testing Initiative, one of the worlds you visit is a world where Aperture Science made psychic beings; they turn out to be assholes who just like to make people's heads explode.
- Spend many a happy moment explodin' the heads of Faceless Goons in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. A favorite over sadistic tactic was using telekinesis to pull one towards the player, and "catch" him with Mind Drain, which upon fully draining their HP popped their heads while they screamed in anguish. Very stress relieving! Or you can mind-control those suckers into eating the business ends of their own firearms. Strangely enough, you seem in total control of every aspect of their bodies, except their mouths. They scream like banshees right up to the skull explosion.
- Psychonauts: Minor character Dogen Boole has the ability to make people's heads explode with his uncontrollable psychic powers. He wears a tinfoil skullcap to prevent any more accidents from happening further.
- Rage (2011) rewards shooting a bullet into an enemy's exposed brain with the whole head exploding. Doubles as Ludicrous Gibs, since a head explosion temporarily leaves behind the victim's brain, cranium, and jawbone in distinct, identifiable pieces.
- Resident Evil:
- Resident Evil 4:
- Apparently, the skulls of everyone are made of cheap plaster. Why else would they detonate when the enemy is killed with a headshot? Maybe Las Plagas soften up your skull. This doesn't even require a high-powered weapon like a shotgun or a magnum — Leon can elbow, kick, or punch suplex infected humans so hard that their heads burst.
- This game also features corpses that frequently melt after seconds on the ground, so it isn't just the heads that are soft. A few Ganados at the start don't fade but the point still stands.
- Ironically, when you start out, blasting them in the face causes an injury animation that makes it seem like someone punched them in the face. It takes anywhere from five to eight un-upgraded handgun shots to get them to explode.
- Resident Evil: Since this game, the best way to save ammo was the head-exploding shot, a single, well aimed, scarily-close-to-the-zombie shot.
- Resident Evil 4:
- In the computer game The 7th Guest, this happens to one of the other six guests during a cutscene. There is no discernible reason why, either. Ego, the game's narrator, is heard to inquire, "...what's wrong with her head?" It also happens in a cutscene in the sequel The 11th Hour.
- Shadow Complex has an achievement named after this, awarded to you if you get 50 headshots.
- In Shadow of the Wool Ball, this is what happens to the Big Bad once you as much as lay a finger on him. In the sequel, it turns out his underlings somehow managed to piece his head back together and he's alive, although with a disfigured face.
- Shadowrun: A cranial bomb is part of the plot of the game for the SNES. It gets activated ("Oops." "What do you mean, "Oops."?") during a surgical procedure, and you have a relatively short amount of time to get it deactivated. The surgeon does refund your money, though.
- In the original The Sims, one of the prank calls your sims can receive at night is "Your psychic adviser's head has just exploded, be forewarned."
- In his Mummy form, Skul from Skul: The Hero Slayer can combine this with Ballistic Bone.
- In the first two Soldier of Fortune games, the damage modeling was such that you could sever limbs or blow off pieces of an enemy's head, including their jaw, sometimes exposing their brain. In the third game, the head always completely exploded when shot, although enemies could now temporarily continue to fight after losing a limb.
- In SOMA, every member of personnel in Omicron Station mysteriously died of simultaneous head-explosions. At first, it appears that Dr. Ross is responsible, however, he eventually reveals that the WAU killed everyone there, in order to prevent them from utilizing a supply of poisoned structure-gel.
- This is how Dmitri dies in Space Ape.
- In Spec Ops: The Line, headshots usually cause Pink Mist but using a sufficiently powerful weapon such as a shotgun or the Desert Eagle will result in this trope.
- Spookys Jumpscare Mansion: This is how some "enemies" die in The Mall of the Spook.
- In Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, there are wizards made of fire in Skelos Badlands who can be defeated by charging into them. This will cause their head to fall off and explode about a second after hitting the ground, potentially damaging Spyro if he's close enough.
- In the Battle of the Amerigo cutscene in StarCraft, one of the marines' heads explodes when a Zerg claw gets put through his face. There's also the opening cutscene when the Protoss attack that salvage ship. Their beam vaporizes the ship from one end to the other, and somehow explodes the head of the guy on the bridge before his body just for good measure.
- Star Fox:
- Exaggerated with Krazoa God Andross in Star Fox Adventures. For those who don't know, Andross is basically a giant ape head with a pair of floating hands. When he's dispatched at the end of the game, his head goes out in a massive explosion comparable to when the Death Star blew up in Return of the Jedi. Fox and Falco even have to Outrun the Fireball generated by his head's explosion with their spaceships.
- Not as prominent as above, but the original Star Fox and Star Fox 64 end with Andross or his robot double getting blown up. 64 has you outrun the explosion through a narrow maze.
- This is what happens whenever Troy dies in Struggling. You can also invoke this to respawn at the nearest checkpoint.
- The Suffering: Ties That Bind has this as a Finishing Move of the Triggerman monster. They will simply hold Torque's body with one limb, then fire all five of their guns at his head point-blank, with predictably gory results.
- One of the attacks Stubbs the Zombie has involves pulling off his own head, rolling it like a remote-controlled bowling ball, then detonating it in an explosive blast of toxic gas. It grows back.
- In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Bombed enemy's one form of attack is throwing its explosive head at you, then running away as it regenerates so it can throw it again.
- In the Team Fortress 2 trailer "Meet the Spy", the BLU Spy gets his head blown off by the BLU Soldier after the latter mistakes the former for the RED Spy. To be fair, the BLU Spy had just warned the other people in the room that the RED Spy could disguise himself as one of them.BLU Spy: He could be in this very room! It could be you! It could be me! It could even be- *BLAM*
- Here's a GIF.◊ This one's messy too.
- An unused icon for the Ambassador suggests that at one point, it was supposed to do something like this when it scored a critical hit to the head and violently remove the victim's head, or pieces thereof, from the rest of them.
- While not a full-fledged head explosion, the Demoman's melee unlocks the Eyelander can and will decapitate foes in a fountain of High-Pressure Blood. The Scotsman's Skullcutter and the Sniper's Hitman's Heatmaker do much the same.
- In the Mann vs. Machine game mode, one of the upgrades for the Sniper's weapons makes the head of the enemies explode if he scores a headshot.
- Strongly implied by the Hollowhead cosmetic item for Pyro, featuring a blown-out mask with no head underneath, not even a hint of what was there. This is part of an ongoing Running Gag to keep them The Faceless.
- Here's a GIF.
- In Theme Hospital, the condition "Bloaty Head" is treated by popping the patient's head with a pin, and re-inflating it to normal pressure.
- Touhou Kenbun Roku: Dummied Out in the final version of the game; during the final chapter, when Marco is killed by gunfire from several planes, his head was intended to implode; in the final, he just blinks, and disappears, supposedly drowning after taking a fatal wound, from the massive array of gunfire. The graphics for the explosion are still in the ROM.
- Transformers: War for Cybertron: Achieving a headshot on a mook causes their head to explode, complete with a loud "clang" sound effect.
- It can be done in True Crime: New York City when aiming at a person's head with a high caliber weapon.
- The Turok games started doing with Seeds of Evil, the second in the series.
- The series' Cerebral Bore, which debuted in Seeds of Evil, makes the target's head explode after doing what its name implies: drilling into the skull and boring out their brains.
- Ditto for the explosive Tek Arrows.
- In fact, Seeds of Evil is enamored with exploding heads. Even a well-placed round from a mere 9mm pistol can leave baddies with a blood-spewing crater where its head used to be.
- In the intro of Vanquish, this happens to several victims of the microwave Kill Sat attack on San Francisco.
- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide:
- Powerful enough attacks can pop the heads of weaker enemies they hit, such as a Bolter's exploding rounds, a Plasma Gun's shots, or the Ogryn's Shotgun.
- The Psyker player character can use the brain-burst ability to do this to enemies, which can be done from behind cover since you only need to see said enemy briefly to target them. Due to The Perils of the Warp mechanics, a Magic Misfire can see a careless player blow themselves up in the process, delivering a Mutual Kill.
- Justified in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, considering that most of your ranged weapons are bolter variants. For those unfamiliar, picture a rocket-propelled grenade. Now picture a repeating RPG small enough to be fired one-handed, and you've got a basic bolt pistol.
- A number of the fatalities in Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style will cause this to happen, most notably Inspecta Deck's Finger Poke of Doom fatality.
