Meat Puppet - TV Tropes

"I'm not too fond of getting my hands dirty; instead, I take over the minds of others. They do everything I say, like good little puppets."

• The Immortal Hulk: The Leader gains the ability to hijack people thanks to his stay in the Below Place, including Rick Jones, then the Green Scar Hulk. Though after three bodies he starts to get distracted from splitting his attention four ways.
• Nova: The Eldritch Abomination Nightmare Rich encounters on his first visit to Knowhere likes to turn people into these, starting with an entire team of heroes called the Luminals. Side-effect, they tend to explode if grazed with a gravimetric beam.
• Wonder Woman (1987): For his final confrontation with Artemis and Diana the White, Magician uses magic to override and physically alter Cassie Arnold and Cheetah into his minions, who attack whomever he directs them at and seem to have no mental capacity of their own. Cassie is killed by the experience, though Cheetah survives.

• Pokémon: The First Movie. Mewtwo takes control of the local Nurse Joy's mind and uses her as the interface between it and the trainers invited to the island before it reveals itself.

• The avatar Na'vi bodies in Avatar.
• Being John Malkovich: John Malkovich is under control of the protagonist for much of the movie when he is inside Malkovich's head.
• Done rather disturbingly by Satan in The Dark Side of the Moon (1990) to the crew of a spaceship.
• In The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, Agent Smith overwrites Bane inside the Matrix and uses his body to escape into the real world.
• In Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, Control Bugs take over an entire outpost of Mobile Infantry soldiers and pit them against the main characters.

Examples by author:

• George R. R. Martin had a short story in which the corpses of executed criminals were implanted with control chips and sold as industrial equipment. They were only good for certain types of work, because they were somewhat clumsy and required human operators. Much of the plot revolved around the practical and financial issues facing the corpse-driver protagonists.

Examples by work:

• In Animorphs, people who have been infested by a Yeerk are known as Controllers. The host is fully conscious but unable to move, save for a few seconds of Fighting from the Inside if they're lucky. The Yeerk can read all of the host's thoughts and memories, and communicate them through thought-speak.
• Two very creepy examples in The Caster Chronicles — Sarafine inhabiting Mrs. Lincoln in Beautiful Creatures, and Mrs. English being possessed by the Lilum in Beautiful Chaos.
• In The Devils of D-Day by Graham Masterton, the demon Elmek possesses a local priest. When the protagonist demands to know what happened to the real Father Anton, Elmek points out he just stepped on his entrails. Turns out in this case Demonic Possession means ripping out the victim's insides and sitting inside the body, working it like a literal puppet.
• Imperial Radch: The ancillaries from Ancillary Justice. They're typically made using dissidents from conquered worlds, who have implants shoved into their brains that permanently render them extensions of a ship's AI, obliterating all previous identity. They're used as ground soldiers or anything else that needs a pair of hands. Most people call them corpse soldiers.
• Old Virginia by Laird Barron has a Humanoid Abomination sitting on the shoulders of various people and using them for transport (a case of being literally hagridden), controlling them through tendrils inserted into their spine. This ends up being the fate of the protagonist as well.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In volume 9, Ursule Valois's two teammates are revealed have been broken down by her family to serve as human familiars. When she activates her Mind Control spells, they act as extensions of her body. Unfortunately this also means they move exactly the same as her, so getting used to and beating one of them means that you get used to all three, and when Nanao knocks out Ursule herself, the other two drop unconscious on the spot.
• Torchwood (BBC Books): The Brudyac race seen in "Another Life" would invade planets by embedding control boxes in the brainstems of the local population and controlling them. Whilst some of the memories and the personalities of the host are retained, the control is otherwise complete. One Brudyac used this ability to control several people, including Owen, into finding materials to repair his ship.

• In an episode of Dead Gorgeous, Mr. Griffith is laid up with a kidney stone. To avoid having Miss Sinclaire expel the Ainsworth girls, their ghost guide Agatha possesses Mr. Griffith and forces him up out of bed.
• Doctor Who: In "Resolution", the villain controls archaeologist Lin in this fashion, forcing her to build it a new set of armour. After its casing is destroyed, the Dalek recon scout takes over Aaron, Ryan's estranged father.

  Lin: Who are... what are you?
  Creature: I am your pilot now.
  [Lin struggles to pull the creature off her back, only for her hand to be forced back down]
  Creature: Do not fight me. I have control of your body. All brain and motor functions are under my power.
  Lin: Please, no...
  Creature: Silence. See how I control you. Turn. [Lin jerks round to face the mirror] Look. [speaking through her mouth] You are my prisoner now. You are my... puppet.

• In The Flash (2014), Doctor Alchemy was created by Savitar taking over Julian Albert's mind with the Philosopher's Stone.
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: In "Centennial", the captain takes over Claymore's body so he can dance with Mrs. Muir.
• In Supernatural, demons and angels require vessels to walk the earth. The term "meat puppet" is often used.

  Meg: [possessing Sam] Sam's still my meat puppet. I'll make him bite his tongue off.

• Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution: Powerful psychokinetics can hijack people's bodies and remotely control them.

• The Krana in BIONICLE can control a being once attached to his or her face. If they possess a Matoran, it's a straight example of the trope, since Matoran lapse into unconsciousness when separated from their Mask of Power. However, if they possess a Toa, there will be a struggle for control between Krana and host. "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight ensues.

• Geist surrounds itself in having the player possess hosts both biological and machine to affect the living world and defeat the Big Bad. There's even a minigame devoted to Ghosts vs Hosts.
• Ghost Trick: Yomiel can possess and manipulate living creatures the way Sissel manipulates inanimate objects. Aside from his cat the hosts are either unknowing or unwilling, but he can also possess the Empty Shell of his own corpse.
• The Half-Life series features various types of headcrab creatures that overlap with Zombie Mooks. The headcrabs apparently latch onto the skull of the host, eat their way through it, and then control the new "corpse" while simultaneously mutating it to make it even nastier. The host remains alive and conscious the whole time, of course.
• The Flood parasites of Halo insert their tendrils into the nervous systems of their host subjects. Afterwards, they control and mutate the host in the same way that headcrabs do.
• This is the implied case with Millennia from Kagero: Deception II. She never speaks in cutscenes aside from nodding or shaking her head, but exactly how much control the Timemoids are exhibiting over her is up to the player via Dialogue Trees.
• In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, after defeating Cackletta, her defeated spirit takes over the beaten-up body of Bowser and becomes... Bowletta.
• Mass Effect 2: ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL. Really, Reaper Indoctrination in the ''Mass Effect' series is a mass (no pun intended) version of this.
• Meat Puppet: Yes, there is a game whose title is the same as this trope, and the game mostly follows the description at the top. Lotos/Lotus Abstraction answered a personal ad that said about "nocturnal missions". She is being controlled by the Puppet Master/Martinet. She is required to make Asshole Victims out of six leaders of the most profitable corporations (also known as ambassadors), and do this in one night, or else the suit that was put on her without her consent will self-destruct and kill her! This is what Martinet is trying to accomplish: the Puppet Master wants to use Lotos to reassemble the fractured genetic key to universal entropy and shut down the universe. That would make Lotos accomplice to the biggest murder of all time a prospect that displeases her greatly. She'd rather save the world instead. You can find out more here.
• In Oddworld, Abe possesses and controls his enemies in his efforts to save his species from extinction and free them from slavery. Ironically, in Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, secondary antagonist General Dripik refers to Abe as a 'Mudokon Meat-Puppet', without any correlation to the trope.
• Pain Killer also contains a character who uses mind control to manipulate potential enemy hosts, (and sometimes including allies).
• Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy refers to mind-controlled soldiers (under the terrorist group called the Movement) as Meat Puppets, and is the Trope Namer in this case.

• In Chapter Two of Antlers, Colorado, Austin is possessed and used as a vessel by an evil entity that has been bound to a lake for centuries. There's a chapter from Lake-Austin's point of view where it's obvious that the lake has no idea what the limitations of a human body are, or just doesn't care.
• In Fite!, the Mutali turn out to be just puppets of Skerry.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent gives us the unnerving possibility of this being the ultimate fate of victims of The Plague that resulted in the current After the End setting the characters find themselves in. Be they Beast (animal-based victims), Troll (human-based victims) or Giant (combo-platter critters). As if facing becoming a Body of Bodies and/or Meat Moss Body Horror wasn't enough, you could be trapped and watching yourself attack others for decades.

• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In the episode "Little Rock of Horrors", a singing meteor monster from outer space crashes in town. It feeds on brains, and convinces Billy to bring him his friends, family and neighbors to feed on. The monster feeds by taking out their brains from their ears, which instead of killing them turns the townspeople into green-eyed, tongue-lolling zombies vulnerable to control to its psychic powers (as pictured above). The more brains it eats, the more backup dancers it can add to the throng.
• This is an integral part of Irken biology when you delve deeper into the lore of Invader Zim, one that would have been explored in more detail had the show not been cancelled. The Irkens' bodies are just a vessel, their memories and personalities are all contained in the PAKS on their backs. In one episode where we see Zim's birth, at first, he lays on the ground motionless, but the instant the PAK is placed on him, he is able to move and speak. The cancelled episode "Ten Minutes to Doom" would have revealed that the body can only live ten minutes without their PAKS.
• Steven Universe: It's revealed in "Change Your Mind" that White Diamond has Eye Beams that can turn other Gems into these for her, turning them monochrome in the process. She also happens to think that Steven himself was created to serve as one for his Missing Mom Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond. White is proven wrong when pulling out Steven's gemstone creates a Literal Split Personality of him instead of his mother.

• Many parasitic organisms affect their host's behavior or movement in a way that favors their needs. One notable example is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the "zombie-ant fungus", which affects its ant hosts' body to make it move to a place with optimal conditions for the fungi's growth and attach itself to the underside of a leaf, where it stays until it either starves or the fungus' fruiting body ruptures its head and kills it. Since Ophiocordyceps doesn't actually affect the brain itself, the ant remains in control of its own mind but nothing else while it marches toward its inevitable doom. Other parasite species are a little less patient and will actively cause their hosts to commit Suicide By Predator for the sake of their reproductive cycle.