Flying Heads

Posted by brilokuloj on Jan 20, 2025

It’s become a bit of a running gag among my friends that I am afraid of disembodied heads of all sorts. This is apparently not a common fear, so I’ve been trying to make a real effort to investigate where this preposterous phobia started.

I am no closer to the root of this. But what I have found is that there are a lot of flying heads in video games. I even asked our forums about it and here’s what I’ve managed to get together.

Ape Escape: Snatchers

Ape Escape is a silly game about capturing errant cartoon monkeys. How was I supposed to know that it would be the game to give me a brand-new, inexplicable fear?

This is the Snatcher. All it does is fly around in a circle, and then if you enter its range, it will fly and attack you. And that’s it.

The Snatcher has everything I love in a good critter design - it’s spherical, it’s birdlike, it looks like a stupid puppet. But I was TERRIFIED of these things as a kid. They only appeared in 3 levels: Dark Ruins, Coral Cave, and Dexter’s Island; all three of these gave me terror as soon as I saw this stupid bird come into draw distance.

The Legend of Zelda: Bubbles

I’ve been playing the Zelda 64 games recently, and I’ve been forced to confront Bubbles. I really honestly thought they weren’t that bad at first, despite being a combination of two things I hate (skeletons AND flying heads), but then I found the Giant Green Bubble in the Bottom of the Well.

Yes, that bottom of the well, with the Dead Hands. And here I am stressed out about the skull.

Look, the other Bubbles stick to a small area. This one flies around in a circle around the entire dungeon. I don’t like it. That’s all I can say.

The Legend of Zelda: Peahats

Peahats are just giant vegetables, but I’m including them due to their relation to Seahats, and also because they hit the same fear response in my brain for some fucking reason. I don’t know - just look at them, alright?

In Ocarina of Time, Peahats are found exclusively in Hyrule Field and don’t really bother you unless you’re a 10 year old playing the game for the first time. Not too bad, but what really got me was their appearance in Wind Waker… and their demonic aquatic cousin, the Seahats.

Yes, Seahats made me cry. They can appear seemingly at random while traversing the overworld, summoning Jaws music that doesn’t leave until you’ve booked it into another acre of ocean.

Tail Concerto: Gubgub

It’s nearly impossible to find any information about this game beyond the surface-level plot beats. What gives? It’s not even a particularly rare game and the story isn’t super deep either.

According to a Korean-language pop culture wiki, this is Gubgub. Gubgub can be found in the game’s forest maze, where all it does is chase you and try to bite you. It really isn’t that hard to dodge, but it’s totally invulnerable and also as a kid I thought it was really loud.

Castlevania: Medusa Heads

This one was suggested by my wife. I admittedly haven’t played any Castlevania, but I’ve absorbed some secondhand knowledge through YouTube, and I know that Medusa Heads are one of the most detested video game enemies.

The only problem here is that I don’t actually think I’ve ever heard of someone being scared of them. It has to have happened, right?

Doom: Lost Souls

Another suggestion from my wife.

It’s a skull. It flies around. Not only that, but it’s the bullet of an even bigger head that flies around. What is there to say?

Modded Doom: Jitterskull

From the same world comes my own nightmare, Jitterskull is an enemy from the popular Ghoul’s Forest horror series. All it really does is fly around - I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a reskinned Lost Soul - but it makes terrible, terrible noises while it does so. The Jitterskull is the basis of my fear of screaming skulls, and you may recognize it as the image I’ve used on this blog to represent my episodes of unmedicated anxiety.

Pokemon Snakewood: Severed Heads

Cheet was the one to inform me that the infamous Pokemon Snakewood (a zombie apocalypse ROM hack of Pokemon Ruby) has a Severed Head trainer class.

What the fuck.

Face Raiders

Lucas reminded me of Face Raiders. This was, as far as I know, one of the earliest mass-available AR games before Nintendo took to mobile apps.

I’m just gonna quote Wikipedia on this one:

After taking pictures of people’s faces, the game creates enemies for the player, who must shoot them.

Turn your friends into scary flying heads! Brilliant!

Super Mario Bros. 2: Phanto

Huckleton mentioned these as a source of frustration for them, but I’m putting them on here because these scared the shit out of me. There really isn’t much more to say than that - they fly and chase you around - but they’re iconic, so here they are.

If you give us $5 a month on Patreon, maybe I can finally outrun these heads.

Categories: life