Remove the Head or Destroy the Brain

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If you kill the brain (Bang!) then you kill the ghoul (Bang!) and its motor functions! Aim for the head. —Creature Feature

Cut it out! Stop wasting your damn bullets, you jerks! You need to hit their heads! I told you! See, like this! (shoots zombie in the head) —Hell Of The Living Dead

To put down an undead creature for good, or else render it far more vulnerable, you usually have to Remove the Head or Destroy the Brain.

This is a trope commonly associated with (most) zombies and other forms of undead, much as a good stab in the heart is associated with (many) vampires. Fortunately, this also works on people who are not the walking dead, so you don't have to worry about it going out of fashion as a killing method - but it's the implication that nothing else will do the job that makes this different from Attack Its Weak Point (its subtrope/sister trope) and Boom! Headshot! (its other sister trope).

Take off a zombie's legs, and it'll drag its torso after you; take off the arms, and it'll still try to worm its way in your direction. Even dismemberment may not cut it completely - as long as the head's still around, that undead monster will still be moaning and groaning as it hops or rolls towards you. (And it may or may not be joined by the rest of its body parts! But once you pulp that noggin, its remains will promptly go inert and wither away... hopefully. Most songs about zombies tend to Lampshade this trope.

Skeletons generally subvert or avert this, as they lack a brain to destroy and are at the point where head removal wouldn't bother them short of a shattered skull - and sometimes not even then! Robots with a Cranial Processing Unit will have this as a weakness - those without (e.g., Starfish Robots) may still be able to function Depending on the Writer. There's also plenty of Non-Human Undead to confuse the issue further.

Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain mostly concerns undead. For non-undead targets, see Off with His Head - if you're considering this because there isn't any other way, see Decapitation Required. Using Your Head Asplode to kill undead foes technically fulfills the conditions.

Examples of Remove the Head or Destroy the Brain include:

Anime and Manga

• While the Namekians of the Dragon Ball series can be killed like any other being, they possess a highly potent regeneration factor that lets them regrow lost limbs; Piccolo in particular states during the Buu Saga that he can regenerate from nearly anything as long as his head isn't damaged, which presumably applies to the rest of his people.
• The cores of the Angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion may not function neurologically as brains, but are effectively so for the purposes of this trope -- until the core is destroyed, an Angel has effectively unlimited regeneration and can come back from almost any damage.

Film

• Evil Dead: After Linda becomes a zombie, the only way Ash can put her to rest is to destroy her brain.

Video Games

• Fallout New Vegas has an interesting variation of this trope. While practically anything can die if their head is destroyed, the Ghost People of the Dead Money DLC are a special case. While they die (by game engine standards) if any limb is blown off, they still breathe and are alive to some extent, according to the unique mutation they have - unless their head is explicitly destroyed, which prevents them from breathing and thus keeping their bodies in motion.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Stalfos of The Wind Waker will crumble if struck enough times, leaving their head to hop around until their body either regenerates or the player hits it enough times; smashing their head with the Skull Hammer will defeat them instantly.
  • Stalfos Knights in Cadence of Hyrule function similarly, though destroying the body's remains after collapsing them also works.

Western Animation

<--Move to Cranial Processing Unit

• In the final season of Samurai Jack, Scaramouche manages to survive his defeat at Jack's hands as a head, and just barely manages to make it back to his master Aku in time with news that the samurai had lost his sword, which was enough to earn Scaramouche his body back. Unfortunately for him, by the time they next encounter Jack, he's long recovered his sword - Aku's punishment is... rather apt.-->