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Cephalothorax
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Cephalothorax (trope)
If you ask us, Pac-Man's sorta big-headed.

"Hey guys, whaddya call a big head with tiny arms and legs?"
— Jamie, Megas XLR

A Cephalothorax is a type of critter which, rather than having a head and a torso, are basically heads with limbs. This usually takes the form of a cartoony simplification, though there are also creatures whose "heads" are essentially faces on a humanoid torso, and Spider Limbed heads sometimes appear in horror movies and the like.

The term is borrowed from arachnid and crustacean anatomy, which features a body part combining head and thorax originally called the cephalothorax, with crabs and the extinct thylacocephalans taking it further and having their much-reduced abdomen wholly or mostly encased inside the fused head/thorax carapace. (While it does technically fit the trope, this is the natural state of such creatures, and as such they should not be listed as examples here.)

If you're not sure whether a creature has a head-torso or just a particularly thick neck, check how much their mouth can open. If it goes all the way to the groin, you've got a winner. Another good way to check is the position of their arms. Generally a Cephalothorax's arms will be at the same height as their eyes, placed approximately where the ears would be on a normal person—of course, Cephalothoraxes almost never have visible ears.

An ancient Greek legend described a race of Cephalothoraxes called "Blemmyae" living in north Africa, which are of the "face on torso" type and make this trope Older Than Feudalism. You probably shouldn't think too hard about where the digestive tract or heart/lungs are located.

If they are video game characters with really stubby legs and arms (or no arms at all), they are Waddling Heads.

A specific subtrope is Oculothorax, where the "head" is mostly just one big eyeball.

Compare My Brain Is Big, where the brain and head are enlarged enough to dwarf the rest of the body.

Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • Honey-Comb cereal's Craver, which appears in ads and on most boxes and is a furry bipedal creature whose body is mostly face.
  • Many of the Hostess mascots, such as King Ding Dong on the packages of Hostess Ding Dongs.
  • The Kool-Aid Man, who is a jug with arms and legs famous for his wall-breaking entrances.
  • The M&M's spokes-candies are all sentient M&M's with arms and legs.
  • Cool Spot, the mascot for 7up from 1987 to 1997.
  • Parodied in Sprite's "Obey Your Thirst" ad with the Sun Fizz, a cartoon mascot who's basically an anthropomorphic Sun with legs. Its appearance freaks out the mother, two children and family dog in the commercial.
  • The Weight Watchers "Hungry Monster".
  • This billboard advertisement◊ ends up being an example by accident.

    Art 
  • Creepazoids:
    • Series 6 (Trick or Treat) has The Cruzzle, a spherical fuzzy creature with one eye, horns, wings, and arm-like limbs.
    • Yuk-Yuk from Series 65 ("Send In The Clowns") is pretty much a Monster Clown head using three hands as legs.

    Asian Animation 
  • Motu Patlu (2012): The titular monsters of "Fire Ball Aliens" are heads with arms, legs, and a flame on top.
  • Oddbods has the titular creatures, round jumpsuit-wearing creatures that have faces poking out of a hole on their jumpsuits.
  • In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Paddi's pet fried egg, Eggy, has his arms and legs directly connected to his midsectionless head.
  • In Simple Samosa, all of the characters are Anthropomorphic Food, mostly snack foods that are popular in India. While certain characters have more humanoid appearances, quite a few of the characters are nearly unchanged from the appearances of the original food items except with human appendages attached to them, giving the impression that they're just a head with arms and legs. Of the show's four main characters, Samosa, Dhokla, Vada, and Jalebi, the former three fall under this category.

    Anime and Manga 
  • Psycho Jenny, one of Satan's second in commands from Devilman, is depicted as a head full of hair with her arms and legs growing directly from under the hair
  • Many Digimon fit the bill:
    • Nanimon is essentially a hairy bearded head with arms and legs, to the point of even having armpit hair.
  • King Nikochan and his alien race from Dr. Slump are green creatures with stubby arms and legs growing from their head-shaped body.
  • Happens in Franken Fran when a guy brings Fran his girlfriend's severed head. Although he's not actually her boyfriend, and is responsible for decapitating her in the first place. Fran manages to keep her alive by removing some of the brain and using the space to install a small system of vital organs, including a digestive tract. Later Fran attaches a hand so the head can move around. After that, she gives the victim a full, monstrous body, and she takes revenge on her "boyfriend", who discovered too late that her memory of him wasn't removed with those pieces of brain.
  • One Piece villain Buggy the Clown resembles one of these when he tries to assemble himself after his torso and limbs are tied up (leaving only the head, hands, and feet). He ends up stuck that way for quite a while after Luffy gives him a Megaton Punch, until Alvida finally brings him back to his crew (who held onto his torso).
  • Taken to an extreme with the Yamata no Orochi from Ranma ½, a legendary dragon whose "body" is just one massive, mountain-sized head, with the remaining seven heads sprouting from the back of the main head.
  • The Lagann, the Gurren, and several other Ganmen from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which are also Combining Mecha that can take a normal humanoid shape. Lagann's identified at one point as a 'core mech', so it seems that the various Ganmen were designed as headless to accommodate Lagann-types, which in turn were designed without heads because they become the heads upon combining with the Ganmen.

    Comic Books 
  • Bone has Kingdok, whose eyes and mouth seem to grow out of his torso. Notably this wasn't the case in his first few appearances, and it might be a result of being controlled by the Locust.
  • The DCU:
    • Several species of aliens featuring the various Green Lantern comics count.
      • Green Lanterns Chaselon and Diamalon, natives of the planet Barrio III, resemble Disco Balls with metallic tentacle limbs.
      • Green Lantern Galius Zed and his Evil Counterpart Zilius Zox of the Red Lantern Corps are near-spherical heads with small limbs coming out of them.
      • Blume of the Orange Lantern Corps has no limbs to speak of, and is basically just a giant flying head with a prehensile mustache.
    • Superman:
      • The Unknown Supergirl has an unnamed alien race whose bodies are spherical, spiky, orange heads with tiny tentacles. Given that they only appear when the main character is experiencing hallucinations, it is uncertain whether they are real or a nightmare.
      • The Battle of the Super-Pets!: Supergirl, Krypto and Streaky visit a distant planetoid and run into an alien species which slightly resembles an orange rabbit, except that his eyes, nose, mouth, ears and legs are attached to its huge, round, bodiless head.
      • The Condemned Legionnaires: Supergirl introduces the Legion of Super-Heroes to a friendly alien species whose bodies are weirdly colored, furry spheres with two eyes, one nose and one mouth.
  • Marvel Universe:
  • Tales of the Beanworld: Beans are literal sentient beans with eyes, mouth and limbs.
  • The Ultraverse: The mutated Fire People inhabiting the city that Freex come across resemble huge grey heads with arms sprouting from their temples and legs on their undersides.

    Films — Animation 
  • In the Despicable Me franchise, the minions' heads are part of their pill-shaped bodies.
  • Maxum from Gandahar/Light Years lacks a distinct head, but has a face on the front of his torso similar to a Blemmye.
  • In Happy Heroes 2, the Supermen of Planet Qiyuan are cube-shaped aliens with this kind of body structure.
  • The Goblins from the Rankin-Bass Animated The Hobbit edge into this when they open their mouths fully.
  • In the Monsters, Inc. movies, Mike Wazowski is a giant eye creature with a small mouth and spindly arms and legs. His one eye, while big, isn't quite big enough to push him into Oculothorax territory.
  • Humpty Dumpty from Puss in Boots (2011), who is an egg with limbs as in his original fairy tale.
  • Toy Story:
    • One of the deformed toys from the first film is a bald doll's head with mechanical spider legs made from an Erector set. Like all the other "monster" toys, though, it turned out to be good-hearted and kind.
    • Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head have potato-shaped bodies with limbs.
  • Treasure Planet has Torrance, who resembles a Blemmye, and Hedley, whos spider-like limbs resemble dreadlocks, first introduced with the latter sitting on top of the former.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Fairy Tales 
  • The Blemmyes were supposedly a race of people with faces on their chests that were rumored to live in unexplored parts of the world, though this was later changed to mean "India".
  • "Kolobok" is a popular Russian fairy tale that features the titular character as a sentient, singing runaway round bread—though he is described as moving by rolling around, he is usually drawn as a yellow spherical head with limbs in popular culture.

    Literature 
  • Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland is essentially an egg "head" with limbs. Lampshaded by Alice, who cannot tell whether the garment wrapped around his middle is a cravat or a belt.
  • In Animorphs #20, Visser Three morphs an alien creature called the Dule Fansa, which looks like this. A fanartist's depiction.
  • The Kaldanes in Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Chessmen of Mars.
  • Codex Seraphinianus has a creature that's just a chicken head with some tiny legs.
  • The cast of Roger Hargreaves' Mr. Men and Little Misses series of children's books are mostly examples of this, with simple-shaped bodies that also double as their heads. Exceptions include Mr. Snow and Mr. Dizzy, who both have an "8" shape with a distinct head and body, and Mr. Greedy, whose bulging tummy similarly makes it clear where his head is. Less certain examples are Mr. Skinny, Mr. Busy, Mr. Mean and Little Miss Neat, whose faces are in the top halves of their ovular/rectangular bodies.
  • In Edmond Hamilton's The Man Who Evolved (1931), a scientist evolves himself with a machine of his own invention, his brain growing larger and larger in the process while his body shrinks to nothingness. At a certain point, he's nothing but a huge head with hands and feet sprouting just below his chin.
  • The Blemmyes of legend inhabit one of the alternate Earths in A Tale of the Unwithering Realm. They have a tough skin, are immensely strong, and have a taste for human meat. They have somewhat bizarre anatomy with ears under their armpits, their nose-holes on the top of their shoulders, and a mouth and stomach which seem to have more room than the Blemmyes' size would indicate.
  • The "sort of animals" in Roger Hargreaves' Timbuctoo series are FunnyAnimal heads that have limbs (with the exception of Honk, a "sort of seal" with a distinct head atop a round body), and similarly-cartoony Living Polyhedron people that resemble the Mr. Men and Little Misses (also designed by Hargreaves) inhabit the world as well.
  • The Martians of The War of the Worlds (1898) are described as blubbery heads with tentacles.

    Live-Action TV 

    Myths & Religion 

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Awful Green Things From Outer Space: The eponymous monsters are blobs with legs and one large eye.
  • BattleTech: In spite of having distinct body parts to damage, several Mechs look like this, most notably the UrbanMech and the Imp, though it's hard not to get this feeling off the Ursus and its skull-bodied, Gurren-like appearance.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Beholders are giant floating heads with one large eye and several eyestalks that can fire various deadly gaze attacks in multiple directions.
    • Modrons consist of a geometric solid dominated by a large face, from which sprout spindly arms, legs and wings.
    • Vargouilles are Body Horror heads resembling flying heads with wings instead of ears and a "beard" of tentacles.
    • Eyewings are abyssal creatures that appear as roughly spherical blobs of flesh covered in black hair with leathery batlike wings and a ratlike tail. They leak a disgusting fluid from their one large eye, which they can actually shoot at opponents with their near-prehensile eyelid, and their stench is so terrible it can scorch victims' eyes and mucus membranes.
    • The volt is an obscure monster resembling a ball of tangled bristly fur with large eyes and a maw full of hollow blood-draining fangs. A hairless, whip-like, electrified tail sprouts from the back side of the fur ball, and lashes at anyone trying to free the victim it's sucking the blood out of.
    • Eberron: Tsucora quori don't really have a distinct "head", so much as they have a blobby upper torso covered in eyes that the primary claw arms jut out from.
  • The Others (2015): Greed abominations are blobs of flesh with a gaping maw, four stumpy arms, and two stumpy legs.
  • Warhammer:
    • Squigs are essentially heads with legs and a little tail. And lots of teeth.
    • The bodies of Horrors of Tzeentch consist primarily of giant heads, dominated by huge toothy mouths, attached to a variable number of stubby limbs.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Kuriboh, one of Yugi's favorite monsters, is basically a ball of fluff with eyes, hands, and feet.

    Theatre 
  • In Hercules: The Muse-ical, Zeus and Hera are portrayed as giant statue heads-and-shoulders that the cast talks through.
  • Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors qualifies in almost all productions.
  • In Shakespeare's Othello, while describing the stories of adventure he told to woo Desdemona, Othello mentions "Men whose heads beneath their shoulders grow," likely a reference to Blemmyae. The text does not clarify whether he means it seriously; some performances have Othello indicate that this is a tall tale.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE: One of the franchise's most uniquely designed "Titan"-priced sets, Gadunka had a body that was just one big (glow in the dark) head, complete with an opening jaw, More Teeth than the Osmond Family, and a minimally posable tongue.
  • A majority of the characters in SuperThings are built with this design concept in mind. Due to the Animate Inanimate Object nature of the brand, most of the characters are their object representation with a face on the object and limbs on the sides. Most iterations of the artwork don't even have true legs, just the feet on the bottom of the object. A few characters take the Non-Human Head aspect in their design instead, however.
  • In the Tamagotchi digital pet toy series (and by extension the rest of the franchise), certain characters resemble heads with arms and legs. Ringotchi, the apple-shaped Tamagotchi, and Akaspetchi and Pipospetchi, the villainous Spacytchi's brothers, are two examples.

    Video Games 
  • 3D Frog Man is a Pac-Man clone whose titular character is basically a frog head with legs.
  • The player characters of Among Us are space-faring astronauts depicted as squat humanoids with stubby legs, floating hands and no distinct neck separating their body from their head—their "skeleton" consists of a singular vertical bone in the middle of the body. All of this is implied by some of the tasks the crew performs (with floating hands appearing as necessary) and by the various death animations that occur when an impostor kills a crewmate (such as being subjected to a Neck Snap).
  • The ginormous dragon angel Fortitudo from Bayonetta combines this trope with being a Multiple Head Case.
  • From Cave Story, there are the critters and Balrog. The formers consist almost entirely of heads (their legs are barely visible), while the latter is a soap-bar with only a face and stubby limbs.
  • The Nu species from the game Chrono Trigger are (usually) blue creatures like this, with (usually) moss-green mohawks on their head/body.
  • Cobb Can Move has Cobb, a giant head with a pair of arms attached that the player character must avoid as it moves around the stage and through the walls—it's also a Sense-Impaired Monster that is only randomly granted certain senses or abilities such as sight when starting each level, with those chosen senses being quite strong.
  • Custom Robo has the aptly-named "Funky Big Head" (or "Big Boys", depending on the game) line of robos.
  • In Dead Space, there are enemies that amount to little more than a grotesque head with a couple of arms and legs. If they kill you, they hijack your body in a rather squicky death sequence.
  • Chuck D. Head from Decap Attack appears to be a headless mummy at first glance, but is really one of these. He can pick up a skull to sit on top between his shoulders, giving the appearance of having a normal head.
  • Dig Dug has their Mascot Mook Pooka, a Waddling Head with legs that appears in every game of the series.
  • Some common enemies in Don't Starve have no differentiation between their head and their body, such as hounds and spiders. A few friendly mobs fit this trope as well, like Chester.
  • Doom:
    • The Cacodemons and Pain elementals from Doom (1993) and Doom II respectively. While both are sturdy, Pain Elementals are worse because they can take a beating and spawn Lost Souls on death (along with the ones they spawn as an attack). Brutal Doom and Project Brutality also add variants that are meaner and stronger. Fortunately, the brutal finishers you can do on them are satisfying: Doomguy rips a Cacodemon in half by tearing apart by the jaws, or rips out their eye in the case of both. The latter actually prevents Pain Elementals from spawning Lost Souls because they don't pop.
    • The Spiderdemon and the Arachnatrons both take the form of a giant brain with a face on the front and tiny spindly arms carried about on a multi-legged combat chassis.
  • At least one monster in Dwarf Fortress. Unusually for this trope, all vital organs are still present, so you can hit the monster in the head and bruise its lung.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • The recurring Bomb enemies and its variations (Grenade, Balloon, Purobolos, etc.) are spheres that are occasionally depicted with arms or stubby hands.
    • In most appearances, the Ahriman and its relatives are a single-eyed Oculothorax variation, with legs and bat-like wings as well as a toothy maw.
  • Grow games:
    • Pierre is a recurring creature that looks like a flying ball with a face, two little bat wings, two tiny hands and two horns.
    • As seen in Grow Ver 1 and Grow Valley, Tontie queens are giant white Tontie heads with 2 horns, a single eye (that takes up most of the head), and angel wings—their bodies were crushed by the weight of their head and crowns.
    • In Grow Clay, a group of colorful engineers builds a giant robot that have a big round head for a body.
  • In the Jumper series, the body of Ogmo consists entirely of a rectangular head and two tiny legs.
  • The Gnomes in Kingdom of Loathing are basically heads with arms and legs. They're visibly shorter than other humanoids in the kingdom, and some of the Gnomes in the The Gnomish Gnomads' Camp even refer to you as a "Tall One". Even though they lack torsos, Gnomes can still teach you about your torso, as your character is not aware of it by default.
  • Many of the Kirby franchise's recurring characters and enemies such as Kirby, Meta Knight and Waddle Dee qualify as this. For the examples that aren't Waddling Heads:
    • Cappy is a haniwa-like enemy with an elongated body, stubby 'arms' and a mushroom cap that it hides its face under.
    • Knuckle Joe is a pointy-eared humanoid that seems to lack a distinct body behind his face, with his limbs extending from his head and his arms being eye-level—this tends to vary slightly across media, depending on the artwork or model.
    • Gryll, the Final Boss of Kirby's Star Stacker, is an onion-like being of Ambiguous Gender whose arms and legs sprout from their body.
  • The four Giants from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask each have a head-shaped body the size of what a giant's head would normally be, and otherwise only count as giants thanks to their incredibly long and spindly arms and legs.
  • In LSD: Dream Emulator, there is an NPC that is a cephalothorax in the courtyard outside of the hotel/apartment building.
  • The titular Meat Boy is a cube of meat with limbs, as is his lover Bandage Girl.
  • A recurring Robot Master design in the Mega Man (Classic) series is to have the eyes and optionally the mouth (if any) be displayed on its main body, and some enemies use similar designs as well.
    • Mega Man 2 has Air Man, a somewhat Blemmye-style robot with arms, legs and a headless torso.
    • Mega Man 3 has Needle Man, who has a similar body type to Air Man with spikes where the head would be on a normal torso.
    • Mega Man 4 has Toad Man, who also has a similar body type to Air Man, though with a body designed to resemble a frog.
    • Mega Man 5 has Napalm Man, who has yet another similar build with a cannon atop his "head". From the same game, Charge Man is not an example, despite what his in-game sprite suggests: he has a head that's shaped somewhat like a locomotive atop his humanoid torso.
    • Mega Man 6 has Blizzard Man, a Robot Master that resembles a snowball with arms, legs and a snow cap, and Colton, a minor enemy from Tomohawk Man's stage that has a torso with arms, legs and a hat where the head would be.
    • Mega Man 7 has Cloud Man, a Robot Master with a rotund body, arms, and no head or legs.
    • Mega Man 9 has Magma Man, whose Air Man-like build makes him resemble a volcano.
    • Mega Man 10 has two examples:
      • Sheep Man is a Robot Master that resmbles a cloud with arms and legs—his 'face' is so low in his torso that it's barely above his pelvis.
      • Strike Man is closer to Air Man in appearance, with his headless upper torso essentially being a baseball with eyes and arms.
    • Venus from Mega Man V for the Game Boy has a round and headless body with arms and legs, vaguely similar to Toad Man.
    • Konro Man from the obscure Wonderswan-exclusive Rockman & Forte: Challenger from the Future is a bipedal stove heating unit with a lower torso, legs and arms.
    • Volt Man from the DOS Mega Man game is a "headless torso" variant, with blue arms and legs extending from a red central body.
    • Wave Man (no relation to the one from 5) from the DOS Mega Man 3 game is nearly-identical to Air Man in appearance.
    • Arcade Man, Daruman◊, Tablet Man◊, and Udon Man◊ are contest-winning designs that were added to Rockman X Over, and are each of the "merged head and torso" variety.
  • Mighty No. 9: Battalion looks like a giant revolver barrel with a face that also makes up his whole body.
  • The classic 8-bit game M.U.L.E. has Packer, a big walking mouth with two stubby legs and a pair of eyes which is an obvious Shout-Out to Pac Man, as one of several alien races that can serve as a player avatar.
  • Neopets:
    • Jubjubs are an entire species of these, as they are just creatures with head, and feet. They are often the subjects of lampshades, on how they can hold things, despite having no hands.
    • Another species, Kikos, only have heads and arms instead.
  • Hansel and Gretel from NieR are giant Gunmen-like helmets with limbs.
  • The Old Tree has this tiny baby creature which you must guide through the game—it doesn't even have proper limbs, just four small tentacles on its head/body.
  • Flumpty Bumpty of One Night at Flumpty's is a psychotic egg-based abomination with arms, legs, and a face that takes up the whole front of his ovoid body. The same is true of the equally-nightmarish Golden Flumpty.
  • Pac-Man:
    • Pac-Man himself is depicted this way in cartoons, as well as in various video games in the franchise such as Pac-Land and Pac-Man World (the latter of which serves as his standard design during the '00s and post-reboot era). Many Pac-Man (1980) cabinets also depict Pac-Man this way, and the same is true of Ms. Pac-Man.
    • The monsters/ghosts are depicted as floating bodies with arms, and their faces usually take up most of said body.
    • The Pac-People that appear in some of the games (such as Pac-Man's family in the Pac-Man World games) look much the same as Pac-Man does.
    • Pooka, an example from Dig Dug, also appears in the Pac-Man World series and other games.
  • The many Pokémon examples have been put into lists. See the lists of Pokémon species that consist entirely of a head, that have a base but are otherwise just a head, that have arms but are otherwise just a head, and that have legs but are otherwise just a head.
    • Snorunt, Budew, Nosepass, Chingling, Trubbish, and Darumaka are basically heads with arms and legs.
    • Jigglypuff and its baby form Igglybuff are spheres with stubby limbs, as is Jigglypuff's Paradox counterpart Scream Tail. Its evolution Wigglytuff is close to this as well, though it has somewhat distinct face and belly regions.
    • Mankey and Primeape have fuzzy, rounded head-like bodies which their limbs extend from, as does their third stage Annihilape.
    • Poliwag is close to a Waddling Head example: most of its round body is taken up by the central swirl, and it has a small face, tiny legs and a tail. Two of its evolutions Poliwhirl and Poliwrath are more traditional examples, with distinct limbs as well as eyes situated atop their round body.
    • Geodude is essentially a spherical rock head with arms, and Graveler is a boulder with a face and six stubby limbs (two legs and four arms).
    • Hitmonlee is close to a Blemmye in appearance, with a merged head and torso as well as its eyes being at roughly the same height as its arms—a Hitmonlee's eyes are the only facial features they have present, though Giovanni's Hitmonlee in Pocket Monsters is often seen with a mouth as well.
    • Elekid has an oval-shaped body with arms and legs, and no distinct neck separating the head and torso.
    • Chimecho is a floating sphere with stubby arms, a "bell" and a tail reminiscent of a chime. Its baby form Chingling is a spherical bell-like creature with stubby arms and legs.
  • Ristar has the titular protagonist, a star-shaped creature with arms and legs.
  • Gnaars from Serious Sam.
  • The titular Sneakers are half-circles with faces that have legs extending from the flat end, and they also appear in Fast Eddie—both are early 1980s games written by Mark Turnell and published by Sirius Software.
  • Some creatures in Spore. An example is seen here with this creation. This creature has mouths and faces all over its body (tail, belly, legs, etc...), including on its belly. Although the belly faces could have been once considered a Belly Mouth, the small human head was crushed by the feet, making these belly faces the highest faces on the body, therefore a face that was once located on the belly was now the creature's head. However, after some time the creature could be considered a Belly Mouth again since faces formed on its belly mouth's belly.
  • Starfy is essentially a five-pointed star with a face that uses four of the 'points' as arms and legs.
  • Super Mario Bros. has many examples:
    • Boos are spherical ghosts with stubby arms and a "tail" of sorts.
    • Whomps have short arms, legless feet and faces that take up the entire front of the large, rectangular body they use to try and flatten Mario.
    • Broozers debut in New Super Mario Bros. 1 and somewhat resemble bedsheet ghosts that have stubby legs, boxing glove-clad arms, and a body mostly taken up by their Nightmare Face.
    • Many of the enemies inside Boswer's body qualify in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: examples include the Peps (spheres that have arms in their POW form and small triangular "legs" in their SPEED form), the Kretin boss (a sphere with eyes, arms and legs), and even the final boss Dark Star Core (which is composed of Dark Fawful's "bug" form, basically his head with three or four insectoid "legs" and spindly arms, fused with the Dark Star that serves as his "antenna").
    • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team has a few examples as well:
      • Grobot is a blue robot with a ball-shaped body where its face sits, metallic pipe-like arms, and a spinning lower segment that has wheels attached to the bottom.
      • Mount Pajamaja boss Mammoshka (and its X form by extension) is a mammoth-like creature with four stubby feet underneath an oval body that is covered by an igloo shell—its eyes, trunk and tusks protrude from the front of the body.
      • Mount Pajamaja itself is the boss of Dreamy Mount Pajamaja, and appears as a large volcano that has a round-nosed face, arms and feet.
  • Super Smash Bros.: Pac-Man debuts in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U as one of the many DLC characters, using his Pac-Man World-era design. Rosalina's Luma partner also counts as this, being a rotund star with eyes and pointed limbs, and both Pac-Man and Rosalina also return in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as part of the base roster. Counting the Waddling Heads such as the playable Kirby, Jigglypuff and Meta Knight makes the example list much longer.
  • In Titanfall, this primarily applies to the Atlas-Class of Titans, with their singular eye placed roughly where their chest should be. Titanfall 2 extends this to most of the Titans that appear.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Battle for Dream Island has every character in season 1, except for Flower and David.
  • Bravest Warriors: Robo-Chris is essentially a head with arms and legs.
  • Homestar Runner
    • The Cheat is little more than a squat head with stubby arms and legs.
    • Strong Mad has a broad-shouldered, boxy body without a head to speak of.
  • Demivolute polar bears in Humans-B-Gone! are just huge heads with two legs and no arms.

    Web Comics 
  • The frogs in Blue Moon Blossom are simply heads without any limbs or appendages, implying that they have to hop to get anywhere. The frog that joins the protagonist's traveling party is shown using its tongue on occasion to grab things, however.
  • Pussy from Island by Arialbold has had her head surgically removed, and her face grafted onto her pubic area.
  • Gobules in The Mansion of E are an Armless Biped variation.

    Western Animation 
  • Krumm from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters has a stubby body with no head, a mouth in the middle of his chest, and disembodied eyes that he has to carry around in his hands.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
    • Gumball's best friend Darwin is essentially a fish in body plan, but he also has long legs—Darwin's seat in class has a stack of books that lets his face reach above his desk, and it's twice as high as Gumball's despite them being the same height.
      • Lampshaded when Masami describes that "he's got legs and, you know... a head."
      • Lampshaded again in "The Dream", as Gumball dreams Darwin kissed Penny, wakes up, then shakes Darwin by the knees.
      Darwin: What are you doing?
      Gumball: Trying to throttle you, but you don't have a neck!
      • Darwin even mentions in "The Kids" that he's "hopin' that there's still a chance to grow a chest!"—the screen then shows a version of Darwin with a flabby chest and manboobs.
    • Masami herself is a cloud that has retractable limbs, with "The Gift" revealing that she has legs.
  • Among Us (2026) has the crewmates: like in the game, they're depicted as squat humanoids with stubby legs, floating hands and no distinct neck separating their body from their head—their "skeleton" consists of a singular vertical bone in the middle of the body. Black in particular has a choker where the "neck" would roughly be on their body; a brief gag involves them placing the choker back on the neck of their suddenly-more-humanlike body after having undressed previously.
  • Amphibia: Pollywogs are presented as this, especially once their legs come in.
  • The titular trio of Aqua Teen Hunger Force count, as they have their faces centered on their bodies and none of them have actual heads.
  • An episode of Beetlejuice has "headhunters", which are literally heads with arms and legs that separate the title character's head from his body.
  • Cannonbolt from Ben 10. His face is where his torso would be. He does actually appear to have shoulders, but they're above his eyes. It's fitting considering that his ability is curling up into a ball.
  • The Justice Friends segments of Dexter's Laboratory have Mental Mouse, a M.O.D.O.K Expy that has the look of one due to his massive head and brain combined with a small body and stubby limbs.
  • The Dorbees are just balls with faces and limbs.
  • Baby Poof from The Fairly OddParents! is a spherical baby fairy with stubby limbs whose face is on the upper part of his body.
  • All the characters in The Flumps are fuzzy lumps with faces on the front, and hairless arms and legs.
  • Carb from God Rocks! is a short rock with floating limbs.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Taz the Tasmanian Devil is mostly oval-shaped with shorter-than-average limbs and no apparent neck.
    • Gossamer resembles an example of this, with legs and arms extending from a body covered entirely by (or made entirely of) red hair.
  • Murun Buchstansangur was a tiny cephalothorax who lived in a human-sized house and had lots of human-shaped (but Muran-sized) friends. Please don't ask why they chose that name for him.
  • The Owl House: The Bat Queen's body is a human head with claws and batwings extending from it.
  • ReBoot has Mike the TV and the "1" and "zero" binomes, whose number-shaped bodies (or TV-shaped for Mike) function as their heads and have limbs attached to them.
  • Regular Show:
    • Garrett Bobby Ferguson from the episode "High Score" appears as a Floating Face, but reveals himself to have functional limbs hidden inside his body (which squicks out the crowd when he "grows" them into place). Coincidentally, his initials also fit the phrase "Giant Bearded Face", which Mordecai and Rigby call him when they finally meet him.
    • The main villain of "Exit 9" is revealed to not only be this, but he's also Garrett Bobby Ferguson's son and thus looks nearly identical, piloting a mechanical body to disguise himself.
  • Stimpy from The Ren & Stimpy Show is a big, round cat with short limbs and no distinct neck.
  • Smiling Friends: Mr. Frog. Contrary to his name, he instead more closely resembles a green humanoid without a head, and a face where his torso should be.
  • South Park: The "girl born without a midsection" on the Maury Povich show.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • SpongeBob himself. Lampshaded in "Walking Small" when someone sits on him: "Excuse me sir, but you're sitting on my body, which is also my face."
    • Some of the incidentals (recurring background characters) are essentially people with fish bodies that have legs attached.
  • Squidbillies: Dan Halen, the always-naked and always-greedy CEO of Dan Halen Sheetrock International, has a rotund body that his head merges seamlessly into with stubby hands and feet attached.
  • Dizzy Devil from Tiny Toon Adventures is a smaller Tasmanian Devil with the same barrel-chested build and short limbs as Taz.
  • The Sharkticons of Transformers, most notable for their role in The Transformers: The Movie, are basically a sphere with arms, legs, and a big chompy mouth in their "shark" modes.
  • Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, after being stripped of his body when he was banished from Dimension X. Shredder designed and built a humanoid exo-suit for him when they teamed up.
    • The Utroms only look like brains.
  • The Eggpos from Two More Eggs are Goomba-style enemies in Dooble's video game that have one-eyed purple heads with feet.
  • A few characters on VeggieTales are these, most notably the peas. This gets a Lampshade Hanging in "Babysitter in De-Nile", where the Egyptian Princess finds Baby Moses adorable, and threatens to behead her royal subjects if any of them try to harm him—one of the peas says "I'm not sure how that would work."

    Real Life 
  • Cephalopods are a class of mollusks consisting of the octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautilus, whose name means "head foot". As such, they are recognized by essentially being heads with tentacles attached.
  • This is a standard way that toddler-aged children draw human figures. (source)
  • The giant ocean sunfish is anatomically a complete fish, but it looks like a gigantic fish head with fins and a fringe of tail protruding from it.
  • Pac-Man frogs of the genus ''Ceratophrys'' are essentially frog heads with four legs, with the limberness of a usual frog's body having become unnecessary due to its sedentary lifestyle.
  • A puffer fish appears to be a spherical head with fins when it is inflated.
  • For years, it was unclear what starfish were and why they apparently had no head. More recent research indicates the question is backwards: They're pretty much entirely head.
  • The evolutionary origin of water bears (tardigrades) was long disputed. The latest research shows that they are probably closely related to arthropods, i.e., their ancestors looked like primitive myriapodi, but during their evolution they lost all body segments except the head one, which now contains all their organs.

 
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Video Example(s):

Pac Van Winkle

After unknowingly drinking a sleeping potion made by a witch, Pac-Man takes a nap that lasts for several decades before waking up and discovering ghosts in his house.

Example of:
Rip Van Winkle

★★★★★ 5 (10 votes)
(Leave a comment)

Shroomboom

Darren Is Not a...

Tinella Nosa

Prison Keeper

Alternative Title(s): Head With Limbs

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Pac Van Winkle

After unknowingly drinking a sleeping potion made by a witch, Pac-Man takes a nap that lasts for several decades before waking up and discovering ghosts in his house.

(Leave a comment)

How well does it match the trope?

5 (10 votes)

Example of:

Main / RipVanWinkle

Media sources:

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1:33

Pac Van Winkle

 0:11

Shroomboom

 1:51

Darren Is Not a...

 0:10

Tinella Nosa

 2:13

Prison Keeper