Wolf Gnards

A nice disembodied head represent all that mankind hopes to aspire to. This is life everlasting. For a head. A giant head harkens back to birth as in an oversized baby’s head—big and full of life—but simultaneously it represents all that can be known for surely a living head is filled with knowledge. Innocence and wisdom, magic and science. And severed heads are just fun for the whole family.

Here are some the top disembodied heads, be they floating or giant or both.

Chesire Cat

Alice in Wonderland’s Chesire Cat possesses undefined and potentially unlimited powers that include invisibility, transmogrification, and teleportation. He’s kind of like Firestorm or Houdini, but more kittenish. In fact, like most kittens the Chesire Cat has evil running through his veins, but the adorable kind of evil. Chesire Cat’s greatest ability though is his complete immunity to head offing, because how can you off with his head someone without a body?

King of the Moon

Combine Terry Gilliam’s native strangeness with an unlimited bloated budget and Robin Williams with an unlimited supply of cocaine and what you have is the King of the Moon. The King of the Moon from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a gigantic head that attaches to a body through matching plates and can fly off into space like a pop top. The King of the Moon separated himself from his body to keep his intellect away from the body’s baser more sexual needs.

Wilson

Wilson is perhaps the greatest actor of our time. Wilson is one of the biggest grossing volleyballs of all time. I liked that Wilson had actual lines written for him in the script fro Cast Away, but I hated hearing that Robert Zemeckis read the lines out as they shot. Can’t you just let Wilson do it himself? I think it takes away from what Wilson was able to do on screen. That’s like hearing that Gollum or Yoda wasn’t real.

The Head of Richard Nixon

Of all of Futurama’s heads in jars (God bless you Ron Popeil), Nixon is perhaps the greatest head of all. Not only had Nixon not been in office for 40 plus years when Fururama was made, but he had been dead for nearly 10 years when it first ran. Originally just another head in the illustrious Hall of Presidents, Nixon’s head would go on to become President of the Earth and start intergalactic wars with just about every alien race available. Billy West described the voice he used as not an imitation of Nixon, but of Anthony Hopkins’s imitation of Nixon with “a little bit of werewolf,” thrown in.

Sinistar

Tons of video games have featured various floating heads in space be it floating Medusa head or some sort of alien zombie super being. Perhaps, heads in video games started with the classic goomba, which are little more than walking mushroom heads just waiting to be stomped on by Mario’s heavy work boots. Or way back to Pac-man himself—a pizza shaped head that eats cherries and ghosts. Sinistar, though, is the standard in video game heads. Sinistar is a giant robot skeleton head that eats spaceships and shouts about Ron Howard. Beware, I live!

Follow up:

Holly

Holly is the gigantic super computer that controls the spaceship Red Dwarf. Holly’s user interface is a big face that floats across a black screen. Holly has an IQ of 6000 but after 3 million years of being alone has grown quite senile. Holly is one of the few floating heads to successfully under go a sex change and back again.

The Wizard/Mombi

As disembodied heads go it’s a tie between the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz himself and Return to Oz’s Mombi. In turns of iconic status, the disembodied nod has to go to the Wizard, but for creep appeal, Mombi definitely wins. The Wizards big green head was created by smoke and mirrors, and presumably some kind of pulley system or whatever a turn of the century conman could produce. While, Mombi had a series of beautiful heads with the a little help the Powder of Life. How multiple heads can share one consciousness though is yet to be determined.

Max Headroom

Max Headroom was a digital copy of a reporter’s mind and part-time Coke pitchman. Max Headroom was created to expose and make fun of corporate greed and somewhat ironically ended up being best remembered as a corporate spokesman. Technically speaking Headroom is not a severed head at all, as we can see his neck and shoulders, but that’s also all we can see. For all we know, he stops shortly after the knot in his tie. And technically on the technically, Headroom is a computer program and doesn’t have any body at all. Or head at that matter.

Jambi the Genie

Jambi was Pee-Wee Herman’s magical genie trapped in a box. A slave to Pee-Wee’s every perverted whim. He popped up about once an episode to grant Pee-Wee a wish, mostly involving wacky results. Not much is known about Jambi or the earlier days of him and Pee-Wee, but we can imagine rubbing was involved. And Jambi might have lived in a box, but it was a very nice box: jewel encrusted. I’m also Jambi went on a couple of vacations, but where a blue/green floating head goes is anyone’s guess. Jombi is also slang for weed… coincidence? Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho!

Brain

There have been countless living brains: Mother Brain, TMNT’s Krang, Hellboy’s Professor Doctor Herman Von Klempt (as well as various Hitler brains), Steve Martin’s the Man with Two Brains. What is it about a brain in a jar that we keep retuning to? A fear of being trapped forever in a Formaldehyde jar perhaps? But the greatest living brain and perhaps the greatest disembodied head is the lesser known Brain, enemy of one of DC’s lesser superhero teams, Doom Patrol. What separates Brain from other jar brains? He’s a genius for one. Well, that’s actually pretty common for evil isolated brains. He wants to take over the world. Also, pretty common. Leader of a secret fascist organization. Just about every brain is (most are Nazis, Brain is leader of the Brotherhood of Evil, not to be confused with Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants—p.s. if I wanted to create a secret evil organization, I’d probably name it something inconspicuous like the Kitten Society of America… of Evil). The thing that separates Brain from all other evil heads is that he’s partnered with a sentient gorilla named Monsieur Mallah, and they’re gay together. Nothing about that isn’t awesome.

Other notable heads:
Data (his head was severed whenever possible on TNG), 790 from Lexx (which also featured a room of brains), The Head Detective, The Headless Horseman (his head had to be someplace, right?), Zordon from Power Rangers, 3rd Rock from the Sun’s Big Giant Head (never seen as such, but presumably big and giant), Mr. Sparkle (a conglomeration of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern), Modok (he had arms and legs but he was at least 95% giant head), and Mr. Freeze (just a frozen head by the end of Batman: The Animated Series)