Head on a Pike: The Illustrated Lyrics of Matt Pike

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The Vow: When Lady Lianne tells Lord Shen that he's becoming like her father, he becomes enraged at being compared to the old noble he hates vehemently and threatens to begin his conquest of China with Lianne's father's lands and bring her his head on a silver platter. Fortunately neither of those threats get a chance to be carried out. Conan does the same thing with the head of King Bajujah, as promised... sort of, in " The Vale of Lost Women". Unfortunately, Livia, the captive who he was going to rescue, has already bolted in terror from the general slaughter. The symbolic value of the head changed over time. Originally, it was displayed on a pole as an act of revenge by the monarchy and a warning to all who saw it, but by the 18th century it had become a historical curiosity and a relic. The head has long been admired, reviled and dismissed as a fake. Thomas Carlyle dismissed it as "fraudulent moonshine", [6] and scientific and archaeological analysis was carried out to test the identity after the emergence of a rival claimant to be the true head of Oliver Cromwell. Inconclusive tests culminated in a detailed scientific study by Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant, which concluded that there was a " moral certainty" [7] that the head was Oliver Cromwell's, based on a study of the head and other evidence. Basically, a scene where, after killing someone, the victim's beheaded and their head is held up to demonstrate it.

In the Highlander novel The Path, after Duncan kills the Big Bad Immortal, he tosses his head to his army, asking who will be next to face him. In the McAuslan short story "The Gordon Woman", a tale is told of a legendary woman of that clan who, upon being presented with the head of her husband, kept up her Dissonant Serenity to the confusion of his killers, delaying their departure until her own men turned up to slit their throats. Pushed up a notch by Leo Bonhart in Tower of the Swallow, who forces Ciri to watch as he saws off her True Companions' (whom he previously slaughtered) heads off, leaving her First Love ( a girl, to boot) for last, and then presents them proudly to her. Ciri doesn't take it very well, to say the least. In one Predator comic, one of the characters held the titular Predator's head as a trophy at the end.One event in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind has a neighboring chieftain show up brandishing the head of a third clan's chief, to propose a game of Severed Head Sports. And when Beren courts Redalda, one of the things her chieftain demands is the head of an enemy to prove his might and that of his clan. The history writer Simon Schama describes de Launay as a "reasonably conscientious if somewhat dour" [14] Famously, Pompey Magnus' head was delivered to Julius Caesar as a gift from the Egyptians. Caesar was furious that his allies had treacherously murdered his honoured enemy and old friend. Captive Prince: The Regent has Nicaise's head delivered to Laurent as a threat, claiming he was Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves. Laurent snarks that murdering a helpless child isn't much of a show of force, but is privately extremely distraught at the boy's death.

In the aftermath of the Italian Wars, from the late 15th century to the late 16th century, most European armies adopted the use of the pike, often in conjunction with primitive firearms such as the arquebus and caliver, to form large pike and shot formations. [ citation needed] After the fall of the last successor of Macedon, the pike largely fell out of use for the next 1,000 or so years. The one exception to this appears to have been in Germany, where Tacitus recorded Germanic tribesmen in the 2nd century AD as using "over-long spears". He consistently refers to the spears used by the Germans as being "massive" and "very long" suggesting that he is describing in essence a pike. Julius Caesar, in his De Bello Gallico, describes the Helvetii as fighting in a tight, phalanx-like formation with spears jutting out over their shields. Caesar was probably describing an early form of the shieldwall so popular in later times. The Sano Ichiro mystery Bundori revolves around the Samurai tradition of turning the heads of conquered enemies into war trophies.Wonder Woman (1987): When Barbara Minerva takes off Mr. Urquiza's head on her way to his boss Sebastian Ballesteros she brings it along and dangles the lifeless head from her claws as she taunts the man who tried to take Cheetah from her.