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Brain Monster
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Brain Monster (trope)
I can has Metal Slug?

Andross: Only I have the brains to rule Lylat!
Fox McCloud: So, Andross, you show your true form.
— Star Fox 64

The brain. A big, juicy, wrinkled organ on our head that is protected by the skull for a good reason. Now, imagine when it's not...

There are two types of monstrous brains:

  • Just Brain: The brain moves around by itself. It might have some bits attached, but its main "body" is a brain. Alternatively, it is stationary and attached to something. If these brain monsters have other body parts — most commonly tentacles, eyes, or a partial spinal column or nerve cord — they will be attached directly to their brain. These are the likeliest autonomous organs to serve as the boss enemy of a Womb Level alongside the Cardiac Boss.
  • Acranial Monster: A monster that has an incomplete skull, thus exposing their brain.

A sister-trope of Brain in a Jar, although a lot of these brains don't really need the jar life-support system, as well as the furthest extension of My Brain Is Big.

Sub-Trope of Evil Is Visceral and Body Horror, and thusly, is always played for Nausea Fuel. Compare with Oculothorax, where the monster is a giant eye, and Horrifying Heart for when it's a different but equally vital and iconic organ.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Berserk: Void, the oldest member and nominal leader of the God Hand, is a looming figure in a high-collared cape topped by ghastly head which is mostly bulging, exposed brain.
  • Digimon Adventure: Vademon has a huge exposed brain, seeing that he's an alien Digimon.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency: The Pillar Man Esidisi's superhuman physiology allowed him to survive as just a disembodied brain and nerves after the rest of his body was destroyed by Joseph's Hamon.
  • My Hero Academia: The Nomus are former humans who have been bioengineered by the Big Bad so that their bodies can support multiple Quirks. They all look almost completely different, but the one feature that ties them all together is their exposed brains. Characters who are unfamiliar with the term "Nomu"note  refer to them as "brain guy" or some variation thereof.
  • Space Family Carlvinson: Tak is a brain with a spinal column, plus arms and legs to move around and interact with stuff. For a brain creature, he's also pretty ditzy and goofy, though by no means the dumbest in the cast.

    Comic Books 
  • B.P.R.D.: The short comic that introduced Lobster Johnson involves a scientist who gained Psychic Powers in an experiment, then used those powers to kill his colleagues. When the Lobster shoots the psychic in the head, his brain crawls out of the bullet hole, grows several times larger, then flies around the room. The Lobster barely kills the mutant brain before it strangles him with its spinal cord.
  • The DCU:
    • Doom Patrol: Several incarnations of the Brain — as the disembodied, preserved, sentient Brain in a Jar of a Mad Scientist. Together with his sentient gorilla servant/boyfriend Mallah, the two of them would go on to gather the Brotherhood of Evil.
    • The Earthwar Saga: The leader of the Resource Raiders, one of the enemies of the Legion of Super-Heroes, is a huge floating brain with a pair of bulging eyes and four prehensile tentacles.
    • The Gil'Dishpan or Gil'Dan, who have fought Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and were part of the Alien Alliance in Invasion, look like misshapen brain-tubeworm things in tentacle-covered bubbles.
    • Superman: Some incarnations of the villain Brainiac have an exposed brain beneath his skull-diodes. The heroic Brainiac 417 of DC One Million is a disembodied brain encased in a humanoid force-field.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • Amadeus Cho's subplot in The Incredible Hercules pits him against Boltzmann Brains; disembodied brains that are hypercomputer quantum constructs capable of creating virtual scenarios in pocket dimensions at will. They also shoot bolts of electricity.
    • One arc of Thunderbolts has the titular team stuck in hell due to the machinations of Blackheart. There, they encounter a Magic Mirror that conjures the antithesis of whoever is reflected in it to fight them. The Red Hulk gets Encephalon, pretty much a Hulk in stature but made entirely out of brain.

    Comic Strips 

    Film — Animation 

    Film — Live-Action 
  • The Brain (1988) features an alien that resembles a gigantic brain with a face as the titular monster.
  • Gor and Vol from The Brain from Planet Arous are aliens that resemble giant disembodied floating brains. The former wants to take over the universe, the latter wants to stop him.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Intellect Devourers, brains on four legs that only sense and attack intelligent beings, appear in the Underdark and scoot past our heroes without attacking them. Edgin finds the fact that they held no interest in the team kind of insulting.
  • Fiend Without a Face features Invisible Monsters that, when revealed, are actually slimy crawling human brains. Said brains strangle victims with their spinal cords.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Ego's truest form, which also seems to function as his core, is a gigantic brain that glows with energy. Interestingly enough, this incarnation of him seems to be a literal Boltzmann brain.
  • The Supreme Martian Intelligence in Invaders from Mars (1986) looks like a brain with two vestigial limbs and a face (his eyes also have two pupils each), attached to an appendage that comes out of a sphincter-like opening in its organic-looking underground spaceship.
  • The invading Martians from Mars Attacks! are the acranial type. Their brains visibly pulsate and explode inside their clear helmets when exposed to their Weaksauce Weakness — really bad singing.
  • The Time Machine (2002): The Morlock leader is of a caste in which the brain has become so enlarged that it's not only visibly exposed on the back of his head, but its lobes extend halfway down his back as well.
  • A Wrinkle in Time (2018): When Meg and Charles Wallace are taken into the IT's presence near the end, it manifests as an enormous brain so large that they stand inside it, on its neurons.

    Literature 
  • Dungeon Crawler Carl Book One: Mind Horrors are floating brains with jellyfish-like tentacles. They have a psionic attack that causes severe headaches but are physically weak.
  • Earth's Scariest Monsters!: In her Samhain Form, the Friendly Zombie Lauren has most of her brain exposed.
  • The Grand Lunar from The First Men in the Moon is the ruler of the "Moonies", and rests in the throne room with his exposed brain taking up most of the cathedral-like ceiling space. There are lesser Moonies that hover around moistening this huge brain. The Grand Lunar is Lawful Neutral but takes Doctor Cavor prisoner on the belief that humans are intelligent anarchists.
  • Galactic Milieu: Jack Remillard's unique genetic makeup leads to cancer destroying his entire body except his brain, but he stays alive and aware throughout the entire process. His metapsychic abilities are so powerful that he can create a perfect illusion of having a body, but it's only an illusion. When he drops the illusion, he's just a disembodied brain - hence his epithet of "Jack the Bodiless".
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Ron gets attacked by tentacled brains in the Department of Mysteries that Mind Rape and leave gouges behind when they touch someone.
  • In the Lensman series novel Galactic Patrol, Mentor of Arisia is revealed to Kimball Kinnison to be (barring a few minor bits and appendages) "simply and solely a brain". Then, in Second Stage Lensmen, the Boskonian Prime Minister Fossten is revealed to be a nearly identical brain, explained by his being a renegade Arisian, except that this was a false appearance in both cases, arranged by Mentor to hide from Kinnison that Fossten was really Gharlane of Eddore.
  • The Man Who Evolved: The protagonist evolves (after several intermediate passages) into a giant brain with tentacles, and then into a giant brain with Psychic Powers that no longer even needs tentacles.
  • In Rudy Rucker's Master of Space and Time, a giant brain becomes the messiah of a Religion of Evil in an alternate dimension, spawning regular-sized brains that can move around by crawling, attach to people's backs and mind-control them.
  • The New Jedi Order: The Yuuzhan Vong use a semi-telepathic creature called a yammosk to coordinate their forces. (Yammosk actually communicates through gravity pulses.) A massive yammosk, the World Brain, is introduced to manage the Vong-forming of Coruscant.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers: Freddy Krueger possesses a man's brain and causes it to burst out of the victim's head as a monster which gradually metamorphoses into Freddy.
  • Possible Tomorrows: The 1973 Coronet cover seems to be a brain (with human-like eyes open in fear) as part of a radio tower. No, it doesn't show up in any of the stories.
  • The War of the Worlds (1898): The Martians, to the human eye, appear as huge brains with tentacles, having pared their bodies down to just the vital organs (brain, heart, lungs, and hands, "the agent and educator of the brain"). Their Tripod Terror giant robots are "bodies" built for the needs of the moment, and they "eat" by draining the nutrient-rich blood of lesser animals, including people.
  • Way of the Tiger: The Brain Maggot at first resembles a giant human brain before uncoiling itself in a giant snake-like form.
  • A Wrinkle in Time: The Big Bad IT is a huge, disembodied brain with mind-control abilities that involve making the victim think in repetitive patterns.

    Live-Action TV 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons: This is a general theme of the illithid-aligned creatures (although illithids merely exhibit My Brain Is Big, perhaps because their octopoid heads are stretchy enough to contain them).
    • Their rulers, Elder brains, are giant brains floating in large brine pools in illithid cities. They are made up of the combined brains of old illithids that sacrificed themselves to join it.
    • The Intellect Devourer is basically a brain running around on four little legs. Its modus operandi is to approach its victim, (after they are incapacitated, usually by an illithid's Mind Blast), magically consume their brain and then teleport into their empty skull, taking over the body and killing the victim simultaneously. Where intellect devourers come from depends on the edition. In some sources, illithids create them by transforming a humanoid's brain, while in others, the intellect devourer is an alien species that starts life as a smaller, less intelligent brain creature that also has tentacles called an ustilagor which loses the tentacles when they become an adult.
    • Grells resemble giant floating brains, except with squid-like beaks and ten tentacles that inject paralyzing venom into their prey. They are technically not a true brain monster, as their bodies only happen to look like brains.
    • Cranium Rats are super-intelligent rats whose oversized brains are exposed. They have telepathic abilities that allow them to become smarter when large groups of them are close together.
    • An Elder Brain Dragon is created when an Elder Brain takes over the body of a living dragon, attaching itself to its back. They retain the host's physical prowess which complements their powerful tentacles and psionic abilities, and can breathe streams of brine filled with illithid tadpoles that can easily turn most humanoids into more illithids over time.
    • A Brain in a Jar is classified as a type of undead and they have psychic powers.
  • Eclipse Phase: One of the usual adversaries are the Exhumans, a rather diverse group of radical body modificationists, Evilutionary Biologists, and wannabe evil overlords, having very little in common besides all agreeing that (trans-) humanity has run its course and will be replaced by them. "Diabolical Mastermind brain on spider legs with a God complex" is common enough to be an in-universe category in itself.
  • Genius: The Transgression throws in its own version of Boltzmann Brains; this time, as super-intelligent and super-insane giant floating brains that, due to how Boltzmann Brains come into being, remember things that never happened, including massive crimes that the targets of their aggression never committed — and being geniuses of their own, and quite insane at that, they tend to superimpose their own version of events over nearby reality. Notably, the thought experiment about them existing was what actually caused them to exist; disproven theories always leave a Mania-infused trace.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Several Tyranid creatures, especially those with strong psychic powers, have partially exposed brains.
  • The Yellow King: Brainbats consist of a body mass about the size of a couch, covered in a ridged gray material resembling the surface of a human brain.

    Toys 
  • The venerable Fisher Price Adventure People line of action figures – one of the first lines to come out in 3 3/4" size – included a cyborg creature called the Brainoid that appeared to be a translucent orange alien brain piloting a mechanical body.
  • Infaceables included Brainor as one of its villains. He was a cyborg with his brain visible on the top of his head.
  • The Micronauts introduced a trio of "alien" figures that each had a glow-in-the-dark exposed brain. One of them, Membros, appeared to have a whole body made of brain matter.
  • The Wheeled Warriors' villains were the Monster Minds. While in the cartoon, they were semi-humanoid, the toyline had them as simply moss-green disembodied brains that could fit in the pilot seat of their vehicles.

    Video Games 
  • Alien Syndrome's level 1 boss is a big brain with a bonus supplemental brain attached.
  • Ashes 2063: Haunts, hostile ghost-like entities, are actually a somehow-living brain and spine disguised behind a projection of a corpse, as can be seen when you kill one. Presumably, they're a type of mutant like the Cannibals.
  • Atomic Robo-Kid: The second "governor" boss is a gigantic floating brain enhanced with assorted cybernetic parts.
  • The final boss of Beast Busters looks like a human scientist, but it's only the disguise of a floating one-eyed alien brain creature that phases through the wall. After you defeat it, however, the battle is not yet over — its remains crawl into a massive contraption, powering it for the real final battle.
  • The Binding of Isaac:
  • Blasphemous has Our Lady of the Charred Visage, whose pulsating brain is also her weak point.
  • In Blaster Master and its remake, Blaster Master Zero, the boss of the Forest Area is a floating brain monster called Mother Brain. In the original, it's a standard Warm-Up Boss with indestructible orbiting brain satellites. It loses those in Zero in exchange for gaining some plant monster traits.
  • Bloodborne has Amygdala and its brethren, whose head consists of a mostly exposed brain occasionally covered in eyes. In addition, the Brain of Mensis is a giant brain covered in eyes.
  • Chaos Heat has a massive brain monster as a boss in the lab, as large as the pool it's spawned from with neural veins sticking out the pool's edges and its sole facial features being a single protruding eye. It's a difficult Sequential Boss that needs to be killed thrice, to boot.
  • Contra III: The Alien Wars: The penultimate boss is a disembodied brain with one eye. Its Japanese name is "Brain Organism Searle".
  • Cyberbots: G.O.D. is this combined with Brain in a Jar and Body Horror. Their appearance is a horrific amalgamation of several human-like heads and faces combined into a fleshy, brain-like being floating in a jar full of liquids.
  • Dawn of War II: The Weirdboy has an upgrade called Bigger Brains, the icon for which shows his brain swelling out of his skull.
  • Deadly Rooms of Death has the brain enemy. It just sits there and doesn't attack. The problem is that it gives all other enemies much-improved pathfinding, greatly complicating avoiding being overrun by them.
  • Doom:
    • Doom (1993): The final boss of the third and fourth episodes — the Spider Mastermind — is essentially a giant brain carried by a robot body.
    • Doom II:
      • The Spider Mastermind's children, the Arachnotrons, are smaller versions with automatic plasma guns.
      • The final boss is the Icon of Sin, a giant skeletal goat face with an exposed brain as a weak point. It is only vulnerable to rockets fired into it from a certain angle, however.
    • Legacy of Rust: The Mindweavers are Arachnotrons with chainguns.
    • Doom³: It's not immediately noticeable, but the Cacodemon design has an exposed brain on top of its head.
  • The final form of Neibiros, the Final Boss of Dragon Blaze 2000 (it's a Sequential Boss, you'll need to defeat his draconic, behemoth and monster form first) is a massive brain-like form with Neibiros' head growing out from its side. Said giant brain also has horns, a giant central eye, and the ability to spam fireballs all over the screen. Upon defeat, it turns into a smaller, winged brain and continues fighting before finally going down for good.
  • One of Duke Nukem 3D's monsters is Octobrain, a large floating brain-like creature (although it at least looks like it's covered with skin rather than a bare brain) with tentacles hanging down beneath, 3 red eyes and a large mandibled mouth.
  • EarthBound Beginnings has the Cerebrum, which looks like a Brain in a Jar on two legs. It can cast just about any high-level PSI ability, which with its high speed and HP makes it a formidable late-game enemy, but a successful PSI Block will render it all but harmless and a ripe target for Mana Drain.
  • Gradius:
    • These are featured in the first, third and fifth games. Many final bosses of the series are usually giant, brain-like beings. As a Running Gag through the series, they are often ridiculously easy to defeat.
    • The Spin-Off Salamander (1986) has the Brain Golem, a giant brain with an eye attached to the end.
    • A frozen-over version of Brain Golem appears in the Game Boy version of Parodius, another Spin-Off.
  • One boss in Iron Meat is a tank coated with meat from the mutant spread; besides having flesh-like organs growing on its sides, it also has a gigantic, exposed brain growing out of the cockpit, which controls it into attacking the players.
  • Isolated Warrior has a giant, throbbing, floating brain as the third boss, who managed to construct a gigantic mechanical head for itself. It automatically encasing a shell around it as soon as you enter, and you'll need to bypass its defenses to shoot the brain until it blows up.
  • I Was An Atomic Mutant: The Brain From Beyond Infinity, one of the player mutant monsters, is a massive, floating brain with psychic powers.
  • Look Outside: Played for Laughs with Norm, a guy who was mutated into a large ambulatory nervous system. His transformation hasn't given him any new abilities or supernatural intelligence, but everyone assumes he knows more about brains now, so he'll help you out with identifying mental Status Effects by just looking them up on his phone.
  • Metal Slug:
    • In Metal Slug 3, Rootmars, the leader of the Mars People and the Final Boss, has a big, exposed brain that serves as his weak point. Said brain can occasionally emit a screen-wide shockwave that is hard to dodge, and in the fight preceding the escape sequence, produce slow-moving giant energy balls that further increase in size once he is sufficiently damaged enough. In Metal Slug 6, taking the secret route in Mission 4 lets you pilot him instead of the aircrafts in the halfway point of the stage. Along with a shielded dome over his brain, he comes with a vulcan gun mounted on his head, and the aforementioned shockwave can be used as a Smart Bomb to clear all of the Invaders on screen.
    • Metal Slug 6 has the Brain Robot, a giant mecha Brain in a Jar and an Advancing Boss of Doom that pursues the players relentlessly in the Beijing sewer system.
  • Metroid:
    • Metroid 1: The final boss, Mother Brain, is a massive brain in a tank, with a laser-shooting eye. It's stated that she started off as a Wetware CPU built by the Chozo, who took command of the Space Pirates.
    • Super Metroid: Mother Brain reappears as the final boss, this time as an "acranial" example, having gained a massive, mechanized body.
  • Monster Maulers has Brain Golem from Salamander (1986) appear, now equipped with Eye Beams.
  • My Singing Monsters has an example for both variations of the trope:
    • The Reebro is essentially just a brain with face piloting a mechanized quadrupedal body.
    • The Theremind is a pink humanoid monster with a giant exposed brain, blacked-out swirly eyes, and the ability to summon floating mouths at will.
  • Mystic Guardian: The "Mortcore" enemies are floating, limbless mechanical drones with a brain encased inside. The "Mano Core" enemies are spiky balls of tissue with brains encased inside them.
  • Dr. Brain's penultimate form in Not Dying Today. At the first phase of the boss fight, he assumes a humanoid form, save for his gigantic pulsating brain under a glass dome, but once you defeat him the brain then supersizes and consumes him, turning into a gigantic floating brain controlling a hovering platform to attack.
  • Operation: GunBuster inexplicably has a human-sized brain in a cylindrical tube as the mastermind of the cyborg villains and the game's last boss. The brain even taunts you verbally as you approach it.
  • Quake IV: The final boss of the game is The Nexus, a brain and spinal cord located deep inside Stroggos that is only available after the Makron has been killed. The boss battle itself has said Nexus spawn lots of enemies of all classes barring Harvesters and sub-bosses, and the idea is to first deplete the regenerating shield protecting the Nexus and then damage it in the short time between the shield's destruction and its regeneration. Rinse and repeat until it explodes.
  • The Lickers of Resident Evil are T-Virus zombies which have mutated further and have had their brain extend out of their cranium. Despite the (relative) boost in intelligence, they also become more bestial, crawling on all fours and attacking based on sound with an elongated tongue. Contrary to its previous forms, the brain of a Licker is not a particularly weak spot; supplemental materials suggest the Licker's brain doesn't grow so much as it develops a thick, hardened carapace, giving the icky appearance of an exposed brain while not actually providing such an obvious Achilles' Heel.
  • Shade: Wrath of Angels contains floating, deformed brains in the Otherworld, who can blast you from afar with mental energy bolts.
  • The demon Omoikane from Shin Megami Tensei series isn't evil, but is a floating brain with tentacles nevertheless.
  • Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer: The Jezta enemy type consist of mostly-exposed brains.
  • Spider: The Video Game ends with its last boss being a gigantic, floating brain with two eyes and a metallic spine resembling a tail. The subsequent boss battle has the giant brain alternating between using Eye Beams and Tail Slap on you.
  • StarCraft: The Overmind is a gigantic brain with a thick carapace and some tentacles. It is immobile and only relocates by teleporting itself into a planet's orbit and crashing onto the surface. To a lesser extent, Cerebrates are overgrown Zerg larvae which root themselves in place and only exist as giant brains. When the Overmind is killed, several Cerebrates merge to form a new one.
  • In Star Fox 64, the Final Boss, Andross, is said to be a Mad Scientist, but the only thing left of him appears to be his (possibly robotic?) giant monkey head with unattached hands that attacks the player's Arwing Space Fighter with telekinesis. After taking a certain amount of damage, the surface layer of the... thing explodes to reveal an equally giant brain with attached eyeballs. No in-game explanation is given for how his brain got so large or why it can operate without a body.
  • The first boss of Stinkoman 20X6 is the brain of the Humongous Mecha Stinkoman defeated in the opening cutscene.
  • Terraria:
    • The boss of the Crimson is the Brain of Cthulhu, a giant demon brain with some tentacles and a few vertebrae sticking out of the bottom. It begins battle surrounded by a cloud of eyeballs; when these are killed, the two hemispheres open up, revealing a beating heart with an eye on it.
    • The Nebula Pillar, one of the four Celestial boss themed around the game's four damage categories, is associated with magical attacks, and as such its accompanying Alien Invasion consists of creatures, usually with Psychic Powers, that either consist mainly of brain or have giant brains extending out of their craniums. Brain Sucklers are flying jellyfish-like creatures with a brain dominating their central body, which latch onto the player's head to attack them; Nebula Floaters are floating brains with a single eye that spawn smaller eyeballs as remote drones, fire lasers from their eye, and teleport; Evolution Beasts are apelike creatures with hugely swollen brains that fire energy orbs from their heads; and Predictors are eyeless humanoids with huge brains that fire bursts of energy projectiles.
  • The Mind Cripplers in Underworld Ascendant are floating humanoid brains that aggressively attack the unwary with psychic powers.
  • The fourth guardian in Unepic, the aptly-named Neuron, is a giant floating brain with a single eye which lives in the castle's library. It has an ungodly amount of Psychic Powers — up to an including mind-controlling your character or causing an Interface Screw — that make it one of the trickiest (and most annoying) enemies in the game.
  • The final boss of Vectorman 2 is a giant black widow spider with an exposed brain in her thorax. Sure enough, that exposed brain is her weak point.
  • X-COM:
    • X-COM: UFO Defense features the Alien Brain on Mars as the Big Bad.
    • X-COM: Terror from the Deep has the Tentaculats, each of which appears as a floating brain with a beak in the front and tentacles beneath them. They swim fast in the ocean and with a single melee attack can infect one of your soldiers into shambling zombie that then spawns another Tentaculat upon dying. They serve as the aquatic equivalent to UFO Defense's Chrysalids.
  • Wall of Insanity 2 has one of the more surreal monster types (absent in Wall of Insanity) a giant head carrying a bulging oversized brain roughly four times it's size, on two spindly legs.

    Webcomics 
  • Dungeons & Doodles: Tales from the Tables: Intellect Devourers, psionic abberations that look like brains with four legs appear at least once in the comic to menace the adventurers.
    • Episodes 20 to 24 see the party encounter a small intellect devourer in the streets of Waterdeep, who turns out to be docile and harmless. They then bring it to a wizard who would pay them handsomely for the specimen, but Angela realizes the brain monster was recently transformed from a missing child, whom said wizard had conducted an experiment on. The party slays the wizard and helps the intellect devourer regain his humanity.
    • In episode 60, the party gets ambushed by two bugbears while in the Undermountain but handily defeats them. While Eriawynn notes something off about their lack of battle cries, Redwen tells her to get away from their corpses, as intellect devourers emerge from their skulls to assail them, before Rudolph and Rumples swiftly kill said monsters as well.
  • Good Show Sir: In Plynth, one of the artist's works is a massive brain that shoots out some kind of spike into the head of one of the researchers. Their brain later bursts out of their skull, grows limbs, and runs around killing the other researchers.
  • The seerabellums from Marble Gate Dungeon are brains protected by a gelatinous membrane, with eyes and some rudimentary limbs. They possess formidable telekinetic abilities, and often animate stone statues to act as their "bodies".
  • Violet's monster in Monster Pulse. It's literally her brain pulled out of her body and given monster form, like other monsters in the comic. Unlike other monsters, it's also where her personality now resides, remote-controlling her human body.
  • Oglaf: Played for Laughs in "Hot Buttons". The Mindmass is a giant flying mass of brains, running for election in the district council. Its platform: absorbing its voters' brains so that they may "cease to feel the caustic sting of individuality".
  • Paranatural: Hijack, the arc villain of chapter 5, is a spirit who has the appearance of a floating brain with a face and arms.
  • Gestaltians from Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger are a non-villainous example. They are born as just a brain with eyes and rudimentary limbs, and assemble a body out of various symbiotes.
  • Parodied in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, where a Mad Scientist discovers that his creation, a T-Rex with its brain in a giant jar, is anything but terrifying.
  • In a Sequential Art arc parodying Fallout, Pip is mistaken for an agent of Vault One Eleven and is brought to Spankaton Academy in a post-apocalypse London. There, he's brought before its administrator — a Butter Face with a shapely body, one eye, and a huge, exposed brain. Her name is Dot, according to strip #964. In a world of barbaric moo-tants (sic) and Action Girls with Multiboobage, Dot fits right in. Fortunately for Pip, it's all a Dream Apocalypse.

    Websites 
  • A few stranger strains from Goodbye Strangers, such as the Condroni, have bodies that appear to be completely filled with human brain tissue when cut open. This does not make them smart however, as like most strangers, their insides don't appear to have any function besides being creepy.
  • Mortasheen has many, many monsters based on brains, or just brain-like in appearance. They are often — but not always — associated with Psychic Powers of some kind.
    • Encephalobe is the result of a zombie's brain becoming an independent monster of its own — although they start trapped in their parent body.
    • Drainwave is a brain/balloon hybrid that feeds on other beings' minds.
    • Abcoulix is best described as a toad with a brain for a body, but the brain is for electricity generation rather than for intelligence.
    • Corpusite is not normally this trope, but its brain can "escape" and take residence into another body (at least some Mortasheen citizens consider this a mutually beneficial relationship rather than pure body theft).
    • Scumbat looks like this trope (at least in the mature phase), but it is actually a parasitic fungus with a brain-shaped "fruit".
    • Necromon is a monster that evolved from a homunculoid, the Mortasheen equivalent of Nanomachines. For some reason, it looks like a brain perched atop a tiny body.
    • Several "garbage" monsters (leftovers from monster creation, useless and generally pitiful) are made of brain tissue. These include the unintelligent huhhk and ekeblange, as well as the massive bleevus which has a powerful mind but whose thoughts are entirely incoherent.
  • Neopets:
    • The Brain Tree◊, which gives out quests in the form of questions you must answer. The rationale behind this behavior is that the Brain Tree loves knowledge, but being rooted to the spot, it must rely on others to find information.
    • Mutant pets were subjected to a Painful Transformation by the site's Big Bad. As their name implies, their main trait is Body Horror of all sorts, and two of them have their brain exposed, in different ways. Mutant Kacheeks have theirs so swollen that it melds through the top of their heads. Mutant Draiks have it showing through a visible skull fracture.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • The Brains from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, contestants in the Galactic Showdown game. They bragged on how they evolved to not need bodies anymore, as they consisted of nothing but floating brains.
  • Gunter briefly becomes this leading up to the sixth season finale of Adventure Time, after a head injury literally splits his head open, and Gunter remembers that he is in fact Orgalorg, an ancient Eldritch Abomination from space, prompting his brain to hijack Princess Bubblegum's spaceship.
  • Ben's alien transformation Brainstorm, from Ben 10: Alien Force, can open his head to reveal his oversized brain and shoot electricity from it. He also has very high intellect, what with how he constantly speaks with big words, with a British accent to boot.
  • Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot: Dr. Neugog transforms into a Giant Spider monster with an exposed brain that drains other people's intelligence to make himself smarter.
  • The Darkwing Duck episode "Heavy Mental" revolves around a machine that gives the user Psychic Powers and enlarges their brain as a side effect. At the episode's climax, the villain cranks the machine up and turns himself into a truck-sized, floating brain. Darkwing and his friends beat him by making him think too much during the power-up process, which blows him up, making this one of the Squickiest episodes of the series.
  • The orange dragons of Dragon Booster resemble tyrannosaurs with large, exposed brains. Fittingly, they have Psychic Powers which they use to enslave humans.
  • The evil disembodied brain of Hector Con Carne is main character of Evil Con Carne.
  • Big Brain is an evil disembodied brain who serves as the antagonist in The Fairly OddParents! episode "Future Lost".
  • The Brain Spawn of Futurama are a race of giant, flying, telekinetic brains with the ability to telepathically drain the intelligence of animals, robots, and some plants. Their goal is to store all knowledge in the universe in a giant database, then destroy the universe so that no new knowledge will be generated because apparently that's less work than making continual updates for all eternity.
  • Lloyd in Space: The Cerebellians are a race of highly intelligent aliens who resemble walking, talking brains.
  • Mojo Jojo from The Powerpuff Girls (1998) has his enlarged brain protected by (and visible under) a helmet.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show: The episode "Ren's Brain" has Stimpy remove Ren's brain from his body, with Ren's brain unaware of the removal from his body and able to move on his own when he wakes up.
  • Krang, as seen in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), has been reduced to a brain thanks to a judgment in his home dimension of Dimension X. He went through several iterations of armor to protect this squishy body until he reached a full robotic suit of armor.
  • Tigtone: The villainous Brainbow, who is a former human whose brain and nervous system were magically separated and act independently. He has an enmity with his other half, a rainbow-colored skeleton named Rainbone.

    Real Life 
  • The Barreleyes are a family of deep-sea fish that have evolved transparent heads so that their large, tube-shaped eyes can look straight up through their skulls to see potential prey imposed upon the light filtering down through the water above. This has the side effect of making it look like their brains are exposed.

 
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Video Example(s):

The Earthmover

The entirety of 7-4 "...LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN" consists of V1 scaling a 1000-THR Earthmover and destroying it from the inside out.

Example of:
Battleship Raid

★★★★★ 4.91 (11 votes)
(Leave a comment)

Electrochemical...

Intellect Devourer

What Killed the...

Psychic Death T...

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The Earthmover

The entirety of 7-4 "...LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN" consists of V1 scaling a 1000-THR Earthmover and destroying it from the inside out.

(Leave a comment)

How well does it match the trope?

4.91 (11 votes)

Example of:

Main / BattleshipRaid

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2:13

The Earthmover

 1:14

Electrochemical...

 2:12

Intellect Devourer

 0:06

What Killed the...

 0:40

Psychic Death T...