Exploding head
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For the non-fatal medical condition, see exploding head syndrome.
An exploding head is a surreal, involuntary gesture in fiction. It is sometimes found in cartoons and comics, from South Park to Dilbert. Its graphicality ranges from the comically distorted to a "blood, gore and eyes" look.
The phenomenon is triggered by extreme cognitive "overload" — the incoming stimuli far outstripping the capacity of processing them — typically of utter nonsense, but anger and various other causes are not unknown. The implication is that the unfortunate sufferer placed too much pressure on his brain, trying to figure out something unsolvable or otherwise overexerting it.
A prominent example is in the Chappelle's Show skit "Frontline: Blind Supremacy", which tells the story of a blind black man who is raised without knowledge of his race, and becomes a white supremacist author. He appears at a book-signing event, wearing a KKK robe and hood, with gloves covering his hands. A member of the audience asks him to take off the hood; the rest of the crowd eggs him on, and when he complies, the person who asked for the hood to be removed begins to shake for a few seconds, after which his head explodes. Another example occurs in the series Red Dwarf, where Kryten's head explodes after crewmate David Lister presents food that does not compute, although this is explained as a fault in one of Kryten's components.
The loss of one's head is, naturally, a non-survivable injury, though some stories depict its swift reappearance or replacement (as with The Cheat); if the victim is not alive to begin with, replacement is possible, as with Kryten mentioned above. As such, exploding heads are typically restricted to minor and insignificant characters, in addition to those whose authors have very little regard for continuity (as with the creators of South Park, who have repeatedly killed Kenny McCormick).
While non-fictional head explosions are not possible without the aid of advanced weaponry or demolition tools, a persistent urban legend tells of a condition known as Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis which essentially has the same effect. Claims of the condition are known to have been made by the less-than-scrupulous Weekly World News in the 1990s. In 1996 the Secret Service paid a visit to Daniel Burford, the creator of a website that animated exploding heads of several politicians, including Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole.
See also
- Cognitive dissonance
- Does not compute, the robotic version; this in an android may result in an exploding head as mentioned above
- Scanners
- Fist of the North Star - Japanese anime featuring fights with exploding body parts, especially heads
- Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, which features a Heaven whose denizens have powers of unlimited, reversible "head-explody".
- Mars Attacks!, in which the Martian invaders are finally defeated with a song which causes their heads to explode.