Brain Transplant - Brain Transplants in Popular Culture

Brain Transplants in Popular Culture

Transplantation of a human brain from one body into another has appeared on occasion in popular literature. The intended effect is most often either horrific or comedic, though many of these stories explore the medical, ethical, legal, and other issues that would surround the procedure.

• In his 1930 novel Hoiti-Toiti Alexander Belyayev writes how a scientist's brain has been transplanted in the body of an elephant.
• The transplant has been a common subject in horror films, most notably Frankenstein.
• The Ultra-Humanite, one of the main villains opposing the Golden Age Superman and Justice Society of America, often "died" at the end of an encounter, only to have his surviving brain transplanted into a new (not always human) body by robots and/or henchmen.
• The novel I Will Fear No Evil (1970) by Robert A. Heinlein features an elderly wealthy man who has his brain transplanted into the body of his deceased secretary.
• In the 1970s manga Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka, Black Jack performs several brain transplants.
• The movie The Thing with Two Heads (1972) featured a head transplant.
• The Iranian comedy movie The Changed Man (Persian: مرد عوضی ‎) (1998) featured a brain transplant.
• The comedy movie The Man with Two Brains (1983), starring Steve Martin, revolves around brain transplantation.
• Frederik Pohl's novel Black Star Rising (1985) features a character who has had parts of multiple brains grafted onto his, each conveying a separate personality.
• The TV movie Who Is Julia? (1986) revolves also around brain transplantation.
• In "The Defenseless Dead", a short story by Larry Niven, a criminal tries to hide by this means.
• The novel Eva by Peter Dickinson focuses on the eponymous 14-year-old girl whose brain is transplanted into the body of a chimpanzee.
• The premise for the TV series Now and Again (1999–2000) was the transplantation of lead character Michael Wiseman's brain into a genetically-engineered body to make him into a top-secret super-agent.
• On the fictionalized version of the TV program Days of our Lives as shown on Friends, the dead body of Dr. Drake Ramoray, the character played by Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc), has the brain of another character transplanted into it.
• The novel My Brother's Keeper by Charles Sheffield is based on a partial brain transplant. Identical twins suffer major injuries in a crash, including damage to one side of each of their heads. One twin is dying from the loss of vital organs, so a surgeon saves part of his brain by using it to replace part of his brother's.
• In the Cartoon Network movie Re-Animated (2006), the main character Jimmy Roberts (Dominic Janes) has to receive an emergency brain transplant because of a freak accident. He receives the brain of the late Milt Appleday (a parody of Walt Disney), and can see cartoon characters with his new brain.
• In the novel Airhead (2008) by Meg Cabot, a normal girl gets a whole body transplant and thereafter lives as a supermodel.
• In the film The Man with the Screaming Brain, a similar concept is explored by having two partial brains inhabiting the same body.
• Wes Craven's book Fountain Society (1999) deals with this subject.
• The Korean movie The Game (2007), directed by In-ho Yun, revolves around brain transplantation.
• In Starsiege (1999), a mecha-style vehicle simulation game, Harabec is dead, and the brain of Victor Petresun is occupying his body.
• In Skinned by Robin Wasserman, the protagonist, Lia, is fatally injured in a car accident, and "downloaded" into a new, synthetic body.