"The target is just a-head!"
A fictional character or creature that is just a head (as opposed to a Waddling Head or someone who's recently lost their head) that can also fly, hover, or just get around under its own power.
Comes in a few artistic styles:
- Flying skull or Robot: usually some form of Attack Drone but occasionally more powerful than a similar character with a full body.
- Floating Mask: sometimes causes Demonic Possession.
- Skull or Core with a less real body: such as a ghost, slime, or fish with an ectoplasmic body and a bony skull or a robot with a mechanical core and a bunch of wires.
- Winged: a head that flies by means of wings or similar structures, typically replacing the ears.
Sometimes these Flying Faces are nice, sometimes noisy Cloudcuckoolanders, often intelligent, and sometimes they don't talk.
Not to be confused with Floating Head Syndrome.
See Also: Cephalothorax, Oracular Head, and Oculothorax.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Black★Rock Shooter, Dead Master fights using flying skulls.
- Gate Keepers 21: Yuurei Shoujo with her "pretty" skull-in-a-ball.
- In Hell Teacher Nube, one of the Obake the eponymous Nube runs into is a human head with bat wings.
- Mazinger Z villain Count Broken is a flying head with a headless android body... that just follows it around. He never attaches the head to his body; in fact, he sometimes carries his head under his arm.
- Ushio and Tora: The Gamin-sama are a family of five Youkai (Grandfather, father, mother, son and daughter) taking the form of huge floating heads. According to Tora, they come from China and their clan is Hitoban.
Asian Animation
- ViR: The Robot Boy has the floating green alien heads in "Vir Vs Bodyless Aliens", who try to give themselves a body by latching on to the other characters.
Comic Books
- Doom Patrol: Part of the iconography of government agent Yankee Doodle is an aureole of floating faces around him all having different expressions. He can weaponize them if needed to terrifying effect.
- Madballs depicts the titular Madballs as heads that can get around by flying.
Fan Works
- Pokémon Untamed:
- Xibalbat is essentially a flying statue head, with no body besides its batlike face and dangling "blade" earrings.
- Noseponch is a flying, vaguely birdlike stone head with a pair of hands floating nearby.
- Melumyst's design is evocative of this, even though it's an anatomically complete being in itself. Its long cranial casque resembles a curving skull, with projections on its leading edge resembling a set of sharp teeth and two large blue growths resembling eyes. Its tail meanwhile curves forward and up and ends in another jagged fringe. The result is that its overall shape resembles the giant, swimming head of a monstrous deep-sea fish.
Films — Animation
- Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers: The pirate skull and crossbones are a variant of this with Offscreen Teleportation.
Films — Live-Action
- The Boxer's Omen features the penanggalan cryptid from South-East Asian folklore (see Mythology folder) as one of the demons summoned by a witch doctor.
- In Bride of Re-Animator, the already body-deprived Dr. Carl Hill gets bat wings grafted to his head, allowing him to personify this trope.
- Mystery Men: The Bowler has her father's skull embedded in her weapon, a bowling ball. She talks to it, and it, apparently, to her. It saves the day.
- The climax of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier involves the huge, floating head of the "God" character chasing Kirk up a mountainside while howling "YOOOUUUU!" at him.
- Zardoz: The eponymous Zardoz is an enormous flying head which is actually a vehicle.
Literature
- In The Art of Arrow Cutting, Mage is attacked by a Japanese bakemono, which consists of a disembodied head and set of hands. He defeats it by pinning the head to the floor through its ears with a knife.
- Book of Imaginary Beings: The Chonchón is a Chilean creature resembling a disembodied head that flies with its prodigiously large ears.
- Dinotopia: Fritz the robot is an hoverhead, a model whose head can detach from his body and fly around on its own.
- Dr. Greta Helsing: Shrieking skulls are a relatively common presence in old manor homes with supernatural residents. They're a distinct species and are benign when not bothered; Varney finds a walnut-sized hatchling playing with his drapes and squeaking.
- Max & the Midknights: Battle of the Bodkins: Late in the book, Mumblin' the Wizard appears to Max as just his floating head. He has Max toss a pill into his mouth to get the rest of his body to appear.
Live-Action TV
- Super Sentai and its adaptation Power Rangers have some of these:
- Dai-Satan of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, who is essentially Satan himself appearing as a giant blue floating head with large spines as hair. This being also appeared in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers adapted as the Monster of the Week Lokar.
- Daimaoh, the Big Bad of Ninja Sentai Kakuranger has a flying base in the form of of demonic skull, called the Skeleton Skull. This flying base also appears in the third season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers under the name Space Skull.
Manhwa
- Jack Frost features Arvid, the Blood Pirate, a vampire that sprouted leathery wings from his Eyepatch of Power and flew away when all that was left from him was his head.
Music
- The Aquabats!: Space Monster M, traditional enemy of the Bats in the band's mythos, is typically depicted as a white bald floating head with no eyes.
- Avenged Sevenfold's mascot, the Deathbat, is a skull with bat wings.
- Overkill's winged skull mascot Chaly.
Mythology & Folklore
- In Japanese folklore, Ōkubi are Yōkai that appear as giant flying human heads. Their appearances are an omen of impending disaster, which may be a typhoon, earthquake, tsunami, or fire. Despite that, they are otherwise harmless and will disappear soon after the first sighting.
- The Penanggalan is a type of vampire from Southeast Asian folklore that appears as a floating disembodied woman's head with its trailing organs still attached. Certain witches develop the ability to become one at night in order to drink blood and terrorize people.
- The Chonchon from Chilean folk myth is a flying human head with feathers and talons, as well as extremely large ears that serve as wings. They are created kalkus (Mapuche sorcerers) from decapitated heads and used by them to perform evil deeds and attack their enemies.
- In Brazilian Folklore, the Cumacangas are floating woman heads engulfed in fire that scare travellers in Friday nights. A Cumacanga comes to be when a girl is born after six boys or, in some versions, as a punishment for women who had intercourse with a priest. Their head disattaches during their sleep in Thursday to Friday nights and only goes back at dawn, and the curse may be lifted by making the previous son be the godfather of the girl.
- Native American Mythology: Iroquoian mythology has the Flying Head (Kanontsistóntie's in Mohawk, Ganoñ’waeñ•dye's in Onondaga, etc.), a man-eating spirit that takes the form of a giant head with bird or bat wings on its cheeks, a mouth full of sharp fangs, and impenetrable skin. According to one myth, it originated from a dispute that led to a group of young men murdering their elders, then sinking their severed heads into Sacandaga Lake as a sacrifice to try to expiate the crime. This did not work, and the Flying Head rose from the lake to torment them.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Beholderkin resemble floating heads with a single eye and fang-lined maws, and topped by a varying number of eyestalks. There is considerable speculation in-universe as to how they make this body shape work, and they have some interesting organ placement to compensate — their stomachs are in their lower jaws, for instance.
- Demiliches, liches who have over time decayed into nothing more than a mad, flying skull studded with gems.
- Vargouilles resemble heads flying around with bat's wings where their ears should be, and their "kiss" can turn you into one of them by making your own head sprout wings and fly away.
- In adventure OA6, Ronin Challenge, the last manifestation of General Goyat is a 50-foot-tall floating head. Once the Player Characters do enough damage to it, the flesh flakes away, leaving a giant flying skull.
- Forgotten Realms:
- Skullport is an underground city ruled by flying, spellcasting skulls that order the inhabitants to perform bizarre actions (and punish them if they don't).
- Miirym, a spectral silver dragon, appears as a bodyless set of floating jaws.
- Munchkin: One of the monsters has a Mortal Kom Bat, a flaming skull with bat wings.
- Warhammer 40,000: Servo-skulls are human craniums embedded with machinery and turned into floating recording devices, light sources, projectors and communication terminals.
Video Games
- 77p egg: Eggwife have the giant yellow faces that flies everywhere, popular enough to show up on most of the game's promotional materials.
- AMID EVIL has two of these. Fire Visages are fire-breathing statue heads that fly around the Sacred Path. Umbers are skull-faced spheres that float around in the Void and bombard you with Magic Missile Storm attacks.
- The Battle Cats features The Face, a floating head, as its Warm-Up Boss, along with other floating variants like Shy Boy and I.M. Phace. His other variants don't play this straight, however; Dashing Face and Dead Donny Dash run on normal human legs connected to their lower jaws, while Hannya and Black Okame simply drag themselves along the ground.
- CarnEvil: Umlaut is a floating Villainous Harlequin head that appears between levels and later serves as the penultimate boss.
- Castlevania:
- The recurring villainess Carmilla's One-Winged Angel form is that of a gigantic, naked woman riding an equally oversized skull that cries bloody tears (as a Visual Pun for her theme, "Bloody Tears"). Other examples periodically show up in this series, such as Death's OWA in the third game.
- Flying Medusa Heads are common enemies.
- Chrono Cross: Skelly, one of the many optional party members, starts out as this. You have to find and assemble the rest of him to recruit him.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The Giga-Fortress is built as a floating pile of laser cannons and missiles, but transforms into a giant floating head with a ridiculously overpowered laser that outranges Anti-Air defenses, kills most ground units in one or two shots, does Splash Damage, and self-heals, so that the only reliable way of killing it involves lots of fighters as it can't attack air. Unless it's over water, in which case it just needs to land to take out the fighters and take off again.
- Devil May Cry: The Sargassoes are flying skulls, appearing in the first two games as recurring enemies.
- Distorted Travesty 3 has flying Skull Balls
as an homage to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
- Doom has Lost Souls (flying flaming skulls which home in on you like missiles), Cacodemons (big red faces that belch ball-lightning), and Pain Elementals (giant brown faces with stubby arms that would cough up a potentially endless crowd of the aforementioned Lost Souls).
- Dragon Blaze 2000 have a giant floating horned skull as a sub-boss.
- Second boss of Dynamite Bomber is a giant mechanical head on jetpacks... based on Hitler. Who lose his hair after taking damage, launches blades from his forehead and can vomit a thick energy blast. No explanation on why, the whole game's pretty nuts just like that. No, really.
- Eyes - The Horror Game has your protagonist being constantly stalked by a floating, pale white, female ghost head.
- Face Raiders involves being attacked by a number of flying heads with the faces of anyone you've photographed.
- Fairune 2 has the Water Sphere, resembling a skull floating inside a bubble of water.
- Ghostlore, being based on South-East Asian mythology, naturally features the Indonesian penanggalan cryptid as a recurring enemy, dangling entrails included.
- The Architect from Ghostrunner appears as a floating blue face projected by holograms. Since you don't know he's an AI when he starts calling you, its a shock to free him from his "cell" to find a gigantic digital head instead of a person.
- Great Dungeon In The Sky has tons of characters to choose from, including several varieties of floating skull.
- Hades has the floating gorgon heads that haunt Asphodel. There is also a Mini-Boss variant, and a friendly variant in Dusa, the maid of the House of Hades (she uses the snakes in her hair to operate objects). Speaking to Dusa implies she may be the Medusa and thus the Monster Progenitor of all the floating gorgon heads, but either way they're a touchy subject to her.
- Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.²: Gith the Spoiler is nothing more than giant floating gas mask.
- Holy Diver has the zigzagging flying head Lyer. Besides being annoying, it's one of the most common enemies in the game.
- Hong Kong '97: Tong Shau Ping, the Big Bad, is a giant disembodied head dripping with blood.
- Inkulinati: In contrast to their more complete counterparts, Head Exploders are simplistic floating heads, while Trumpet-Playing Skeletons are nothing more than a floating skull and hand. They're counted as flying units as a result.
- Jitsu Squad: Possessed samurai heads are a recurring enemy, who attacks the players with a supernaturally-charged headbutt owing to the sharp ornament on their helms.
- Keith Courage in Alpha Zones has two types of flying skull enemies.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Several games from the series have flying skulls as enemies called... Bubbles.
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link:
- Bubbles are flying skulls that that take multiple hits to kill, but are worth such good experience that people would spend hours grinding on them.
- Maus are wolf and dragon heads that fly around without the rest of the body attached.
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games:
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages: The boss Smog resembles a flying head made out of clouds.
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons: The second part of the penultimate dungeon boss fight is against his giant flying skull, which spits fireballs at you.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Cursed enemies are variants of the skeletal stal — foes that consist of nothing but the flying skull of a Bokoblin, Moblin or Lizalfos animated by Ganon's power and dregs of its former personality.
- The Night Of The Penanggalan is a horror game set in Indonesia where you're a reporter investigating a penanggalan — an Indonesian cryptid resembling a flying decapitated head (see the Mythology folder) — allegedly haunting a Jakarta apartment. After spending most of the game interviewing residents and searching for clues only to come up empty-handed, you're ready to dismiss the penanggalan as a hoax until it suddenly reveals itself at you near the end in a Jump Scare.
- Path of Exile has an ability called Summon Raging Spirits which are ghostly skulls that attack your enemies until they expire after a short time.
- Planescape: Torment: Morte and the mimirs. Both are ambulatory (or perhaps 'free floating' might be a better term) human skulls, but the big difference is that Morte is a goofy, horny, lovable loudmouth who seems to have kept his eyeballs for the sole purpose of rolling them at everything when he observes the ludicrousness of the people he's stuck with, while the mimirs are magical artifacts more like an encylcopedia-on-tape that just so happens to look like a skull.
- Pokémon: Glalie resembles a floating skull, and is even classified as the "Face Pokémon".
- Prince of Persia 2: The ever-annoying flying heads in The Shadow and the Flame.
- R.E.P.O. gives us Headmen, floating faces that like to idly pop their lips when they don't realize there's Semibots around to try and chomp down.
- Septerra Core: Ghosts are huge, ghostly floating skulls. Their damage reduction and magic attacks make them Demonic Spiders
- Shin Megami Tensei:
- Some demons, such as Chatterskulls and Loas, are usually depicted as floating skulls.
- YHVH normally appears as a floating, golden head.
- In Shin Megami Tensei NINE, Yaldabaoth's head detaches from its body and floats freely after taking enough damage.
- Sinistar: The titular Sinistar may be the earliest Video Game example.
- Skylanders: Dreamcatcher in Skylanders: Trap Team.
- Something: The Yukkuri head appears as the main adversary of Yukkuri Take in Something Else. It's a sprite-swap of the Angry Sun, so it can fly and mercilessly pursue Luigi.
- Sonic Adventure: Chaos is a character of the third type, with a liquid like main body and core organs.
- Space Bomber gives nearly all the bosses, and some of the higher-level mooks this design. For starters, the first boss is a dustbin-shaped robot who, upon receiving enough damage, transforms into a huge robotic head to continue the battle. There's also a comedic-looking cartoon skull and a clockwork elephant head as bosses.
- Spelunky: The final boss, Olmec, is an enormous golden head that tries to crush the spelunker.
- Star Fox: Andross, the Big Bad of most games, usually appears as a flying primate head paired with disembodied hands. In Adventures, his natural face is fused with the face of a Krazoa Statue, meaning that both sides of his body (front and back) have a face each.
- Twisted-Wonderland: Chenya's unnamed unique magic allows him to render himself partially invisible, which he uses to appear as a floating head.
- Undead Line have those spooky blue glowing ectoplasmic skulls which shows up in the graveyard stages. They can drain your life with a single touch.
- World of Warcraft: There's a floating ghostly skull available as a non-combat pet. Floating ghostly skulls also appear during the fight against Yogg-Saron. Looking at them makes you lose sanity.
- Yokai Hunter Shintaro have a Sōgenbi, a Yokai resembling a floating, gigantic severed head surrounded by flames as one of it's bosses.
Web Animation
- Cat Face: Cat Face is essentially a giant floating cat head. He has a body but it is extremely small and atrophied and just hangs underneath limply.
- DSBT InsaniT: Balloon and Evil Balloon, the sentient balloons.
- Strong Bad Email: Strong Bad considers becoming one of these in "disconnected", on top of having an autonomous headless body.
Webcomics
- Cassiopeia Quinn: Averted by Motor Minx — her (robotic) body is stolen, and the remaining detached head can't move by itself, but is carried about by Penny.
- Schlock Mercenary:
- Ennesby the robot, whose physical body is a spherical computer core outfitted with a face and an antigravity system.
- Averted by the various AI characters, who (mostly) appear as flying heads but are actually holographic projections.
- Unsounded: Khert fires cause all kinds of temporary anomalies, including at one point a bunch of flying haunted skulls wreathed in cold blue fire.
Websites
- Goodbye Strangers: The lume generates a floating human head when it is born which orbits around it. The lume dies if the head is destroyed or is taken away from it. The lume itself is blind but the head is able to see and seems to have a mind of its own (or at least as much as strangers have minds). Sometimes a lume will collect extra human heads from actual humans, but it is still dependent on the original head.
Web Videos
- THE MONUMENT MYTHOS: Normally, Giza Glass severing a limb or fragment of the body just lets it remain alive while separate, controlled by the person it belonged to but still entirely affected by gravity. Cutting off someone's head with it has entirely different effects, leading to a body that is ambiguously alive and a mute, but living floating head that slowly bloats and gets bigger and bigger, more so if not supplied with vinegar. These are known as Canyon Crowns, due to their abundance around the Grand Canyon thanks to political dissidents regularly getting decapitated by Giza Glass in the area, and being lured by the heads. Their permanent levitation is strong and controlled enough that multiple war zeppelins during WWI were lifted and powered by Crowns alone, showing superior speed and maneuverability.
- RetroShock: Isaac is a floating robot head, justified in the Isaac, a robot (Isaac the robot) short where he mentions his creator died before (s)he could have finished him.
Western Animation
- Beast Machines: Megatron spends most of the second season as an absolutely enormous airborne head-fortress.
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: One episode has the smuggling of very literal Warhead Attack Drones.
- Inspector Gadget (2015): Talon becomes this in some scenes of the episode What Is... The MADtrix?
- Metalocalypse: Dethklok's mascot, Facebones.
- Phineas and Ferb: The Giant Floating Baby Head, which is more of a recurring background gag than a character.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: The season 2 premiere, "Strange Energies", has Commander Ransom get hit with "strange energies" and declares himself a god; he eventually gets so pissed off at Mariner and Captain Freeman that he turns into a giant floating head and attacks the Cerritos in orbit, even biting it! He's only thwarted when Mariner repeatedly subjects him to a Groin Attack and Dr. T'ana squashes his body under a large boulder.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Flying Princess Pony Head is... a flying unicorn head who happens to be a princess.
- Sym-Bionic Titan: Octus, the mighty robot core of a force-field body. However, his most used forms sprouts arms and legs, turning him into a Cephalothorax.
- Wander Over Yonder: Dr. Screwball Jones is basically a clownish face with a prehensile mustache attached to a flying banana.
Real Life
- The CIMON2 robot onboard the international space station floats around in microgravity gently and for extra points is a TV Head Robot.
