Wow! His head does look big.
The Head is a animated series that aired on MTV from 1994-1996 about a young man named Jim, who wakes up one day to find his head enlarged thanks to a purple alien named Roy residing in it. Roy enlists Jim in finding a machine that will save Earth from being invaded by a race of evil head-inflating aliens.
The Head provides tropes of:
- Animation Bump: The first three and a half minutes of the first episode looks crude compared to the rest of the series.
- Anti-Mutiny: Smithee and Marshall turn on Dr. Elliot when they realize he has finally lost his mind.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Dr. Elliot in the opening Alien Invasion arc. He had more screen time than the alien villains, but the invasion was always the real threat.
- Bond Creatures: Roy is able to communicate with Jim when they're far apart.
- The Cameo: In the first episode, Butthead gives Smithee and Marshall a tape recording of a eye witness news report involving Roy's attack from earlier in the episode, then he gets kicked out.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: In 1996, Pocket Books released a 96-page graphic novel entitled The Head: A Legend Is Born, which was based on an unproduced episode. The story takes place after the events in season 2. Roy and Jim have parted ways but reunite to save Mark, Roy's younger brother.
- Deal with the Devil: One episode has Jim unwittingly selling his soul to the Devil.
- Evil Counterpart: Gork to Roy, Dr. Elliot to Dr. Axel.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The normally screechy Gork affects a deep psuedo-British hypnotic baritone when he is confident and sure of himself (or if he's feeling snarky).note His Evil Overlord boss also has deep, gravelly voice.
- Expy: Dr. Axel looks pretty much like a middle-aged Beavis.
- Gotta Catch Them All: Finding all the pieces of Roy's device to save the world.
- Hypocritical Humor: There's an early episode that has Ray going to the Statue of Liberty where a tour guide's talking about how great diversity is. Then immediately Roy gets recognized as an alien and spends the whole next episode being chased by a literal torch-wielding mob of tourists trying to kill him.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: "Take me to your leader." It's one of the first things Roy says to Jim in the first episode, and Roy immediately follows up by laughing and admitting, "You don't know how long I've been waiting to say that!"
- Mad Scientist: Not how the trope usually plays out, as he's a Punch-Clock Villain rather than a Diabolical Mastermind, but Dr. Elliot starts out as a Cloudcuckoolander and just gets worse from there, to the point that his mooks eventually mutiny against him.
- The Men in Black: Dr. Elliot has two working for him, Agents Smithee and Marshall. Though they're called "Feds" and don't actually wear black, they fit the rest of the trope to a tee.
- Mundane Utility: The indigenous South Americans who find a part of the anti-invasion machine use it to mill grain by smashing them with it. They think it's more fun than doing it the old fashioned way.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: In the episode where Jim sells his soul to the Devil, Old Scratch's human form looks a bit like Conan O'Brien.
- Noodle People: Chen, a Chinese man who was born with extremely long arms and legs.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Roy, due to his name being unpronounceable in human speech (actually "I'm from outer space" backwards).
- Paper-Thin Disguise:
- Roy's idea of fitting in with humans was just him wearing shades. It worked well at first, until he took them off.
- Dicussed and averted when Jim and his friends rescue Dr. Axel. Ivan, whose anomaly can easily be hidden, suggests the four of them dress up as G-men and break him out themselves. Jim, Chen, and Ray know very well they'd stick out like a sore thumb and veto the idea, instead having Dr. Axel break himself out and then using Ivan's van as a getaway vehicle.
- Psychic Powers: Gork has telekinetic powers and Roy is telepathic.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Madelyne and Dr. Axel aside, Jim's friends are an alien, a guy with a propeller blade stuck in his face, a guy with a fishbowl stuck in his mouth, a guy with a extra mouth on his stomach, a guy with long arms and legs, a lady with a large nose and a lady with shiny hair (and a tail).
- Recursive Canon: Has this relationship with Beavis and Butt-Head. Butt-Head makes a cameo in the first episode, implying a Shared Universe. But a background character in the Beavis and Butt-Head spin-off, Daria wears a The Head T-shirt.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: The alien's language, with some words being forwards.
- Squashed Flat: In one episode on a ranch a presumable ranch hand gets squashed flat into the ground by Jim's head after provoking him with a gun. Not that anyone seemed to care because he was an asshole victim and the witnesses promptly turned his death site into a tourist attraction ironically enough.
- Took a Level in Badass: At the start of the series, Jim didn't have any confidence in himself. But with Roy's help, he was able to gain his confidence, make friends, get a girlfriend and save the world.
- Unreliable Narrator: In the first episode, a thug who was spared from the attack by Roy, tells his own story of the attack on the news, which depicts the thugs as innocent and Jim as the thug.