Many beings, such as demons, ghosts, Eldritch Abominations, and even some A.I.s need to possess a host body in order to meaningfully interact with the world and accomplish their goals. Sometimes however, no adequate host exists. Maybe there's no one strong enough to survive the possession, or no one with the right genetics or bloodline, or maybe the guest needs a type of body that just doesn't exist anywhere in nature in order to access their true powers. Heck, maybe they're just a showoff who would rather inhabit a Kaiju than a mere human, but for whatever reason, they can't just possess someone.
In ancient times, these factors can be a complete deal breaker, but in works set in the present or future, these problems may be solved through technology, with genetics and robotics being the two main fields used. In minor cases this will be merely the modification of a normal human, or creation of Designer Babies, while more extreme cases can involve the creation of entirely new lifeforms.
Sister trope to Raised as a Host, with the crucial distinctions being that someone Raised as a Host need not be in any way actually modified, and these need not be raised at all, with many simply being Empty Shells grown in People Jars until ready, though the two can easily overlap. Big Dumb Bodies, and Soulless Shells are also likely. If this is not possible then the host will often Escape From The Lab.
Also a Sister Trope to Self-Constructed Being, when a being makes its own body, and they can overlap, but not always, especially since such a being may already be present in some part of the body and simply adding to it and expanding it, and since this is often not done by the being itself.
If it's an AI in a biological body, it's a Wetware Body, and a spiritual entity in a mechanical body is Haunted Technology and possibly a Mechanical Abomination. An AI in a mechanical body is just a Robot.
Super-trope to Body Backup Drive, in which the host body is simply a copy of the guest's original body. Inverse of Transformation of the Possessed, in which the act of possession transform the host. LEGO Genetics may be involved in its creation, especially with Mix-and-Match Critters, and it is very high on the Scale of Scientific Sins. Human Resources are often involved in the process.
Examples:
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Audio Plays
- One Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama features a body-snatching alien Hive Queen who wants to make these for her people by making the Doctor impregnate her human host, to start with, with plans to obtain additional parent stock later. Humans are apparently are too fragile, but she thinks human-Time Lord hybrids will be able to take the strain for longer, saving them the trouble of having to switch hosts so often.
Comic Books
- Hellboy: Several 19th-century scientists managed to grow giant human bodies in vats, which they use as remote-controlled drones. Johann (a disembodied spirit in a special ectoplasm containment suit) manages to possess one, which leads to problems as he veers straight into The Hedonist and isn't on-site when there's trouble.
- Invincible: Robot, who is actually a 30-year-old Grotesque Genius Cripple, convinces the Mauler Twins to make him a less horrible new body.
- Iron Man:
- The Mandarin forces Tony Stark and Ezekiel Stane to build giant many tentacled bodies for the alien intelligences that exist in the Mandarin's rings.
- In a different story, cultists use Extremis to genetically modify some women to be strong enough to contain the child of an Eldritch Abomination. It works.
- In RoboCop: Mortal Coils, Murphy and his head technician go to Colorado chasing a lead, when she gets kidnapped by the local robber baron who wants to use her expertise in cybernetics to transfer his brain from his frail older body into a robotic body he had commissioned in the hopes of becoming eternal.
Fan Fiction
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: The Ice Golems are made by Ami specifically to host imp spirits.
Film — Live-Action
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ultron forces Dr. Helen Cho to create a new, invincible body for him, using her synthetic-tissue technology, some vibranium and the Mind Stone. The heroes manages to stop him from inhabiting the synthetic body, and Tony and Bruce secretly upload J.A.R.V.I.S. into it, thus creating Vision.
- Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance: The devil needs to possess a human body to walk the earth, but they quickly burn out from trying to contain him, especially if he uses any of his infernal powers thus limiting his overall influence and forcing him to rely upon deals. As such he fathers Danny Ketch (through making a deal to save his mother) specifically so that the boy can exist as the perfect vessel, capable of allowing him to walk the earth with no restrictions.
Literature
- In Animorphs, the Iskoort are a symbiotic species made up of the Yoort and the Isk, which were genetically engineered as hosts for the Yoort. The Yoort took this a step further by modifying themselves so that they cannot survive with any host other than an Isk to make a complete break from their previous parasitic ways.
- The Machineries of Empire: After centuries of Body Surfing as a Virtual Ghost, the Immortal Ruler Nirai Kujen succeeds in bioengineering a body he can inhabit indefinitely — a human-shaped Voidmoth with Complete Immortality. He's destroyed for good before he can inhabit it.
Live-Action TV
- Charmed (1998): Cryto, the Demon of Vanity, was skinned alive to prevent his spirit from possibly returning; though not vanquished, he was reduced to a powerless ghost. Three witches that tried summoning him to become young and beautiful again had to create a new body for him first by Grave Robbing, skinning the corpses, and sewing the various patches of skin together into a human-shaped quilt, then putting that on a mannequin and letting their magic do the rest.
- First Wave: The Gua started their covert infiltration of Earth by sending spheres containing their minds that would hijack any curious humans who picked them up, but they quickly started cloning Half-Human Hybrid bodies to use instead.
- Red Dwarf: The unfinished episode "Bodysnatcher" (which has a reconstructed version of it using storyboards available on the Blu-Ray release) has Rimmer shave off Lister's hair so that he can try to clone himself a new body for his consciousness to reside in. Unfortunately for him, Lister puts a stop to this before he can attempt to do so.
- Supernatural: Angels require vessels to be able to walk the earth, as their true forms are too eldritch, but not all humans are capable of acting as vessels for them (with unsuitable ones literally exploding upon attempting it). As such Angels have long practiced using Cherubs to ensure certain bloodlines continue or combine, so they have more hosts. One specifically brought John and Mary together, to ensure Sam and Dean were born to act as Michael and Lucifer's one true hosts.
Tabletop Games
- Eberron: The Chosen are a Human Subspecies bred specifically to serve as Willing Channelers for the quori nightmare spirits. They are taught that the quori are in fact benevolent spirits of their ancestors come to guide the world, but it doesn't actually matter what they believe; each Chosen is bred to be the perfect vessel for a specific quori, and the Chosen can't resist that quori's possession. Chosen who are possessed are known as "Inspired," and the longer the quori spends possessing them, the closer the vessel begins to resemble them in personality. This allows the quori to have perfectly loyal subordinates who they know will always act in their best interests, and who they can possess at any time.
- Pathfinder: The archdevil Mammon lost his original body and now haunts all the treasure in the vaults of Hell. For special occasions or to fight, he possesses the Argent Prince, a unique, custom-designed statue of his ideal form.
- Transhuman Space: Artificial Intelligences and Brain Upload "ghosts" sometimes use "cybershell" bodies; they are software, and computer hardware in the setting is sufficiently standardised. Most occupy standard off-the-shelf cybershells, but a wealthy AI or ghost, or one with a very specialized job, may well have a custom shell. At the very least, human-like "cyberdolls" often have bespoke appearance, and ghosts often occupy "bioshells" based on clones of their old human bodies.
Toys
- In BIONICLE, the Makuta are all Energy Beings inhabiting Powered Armor specially designed to hold their essence and utilize their full powers. They can technically possess any living (but spiritless) body or robotic construct, but some of their Combo Platter Powers might be weakened or outright inaccessible depending on the host.
Video Games
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Calixto Corrium was using the flesh of the women he murdered to make a new body to house his dead sister's soul.
- In Final Fantasy IX, this is the purpose of the aptly named Genomes: serve as host bodies for the souls of the Terran race to reincarnate. Three Genomes were inhabited by Terran souls before all others; one of them is the Big Bad, and another is the protagonist.
- In the Mega Man X series, the regular Big Bad Sigma tends to face off against X and Zero as the Final Boss in a different body each time. He usually upgrades to a much bigger and deadlier body after the first form goes down. About the only explanation for why he can't seem to actually kill them with them comes to either the hunters arriving before it's finished, or it's substantially cumbersome and vulnerable.
- In StarCraft II, Amon created the Hybrid to serve him, with one particularly huge body being his to use personally. Fortunately, you are able to destroy it just after he is unleashed by bombing the general area back to the stoneage.
- Undertale: Mettaton is a performing robot built by Alphys, but is actually a ghost-like monster, implied to be a cousin to Napstablook and Mad Dummy, possessing a mechanical body Alphys built for them so they could live out their dreams of being a star to monster-kind.
- In XCOM 2, the Avatar project is an attempt to comb through the DNA of millions of captured humans in order to create the perfect host bodies for the now-dying Ethereals.
Webcomics
- One arc of Exterminatus Now centers on a secret arctic installation trying to use genetic engineering to breed daemon hosts that can be possessed for extended periods without burning out. Notably, this results in the first, and as of the indefinite hiatus only, actual use of an Exterminatus in the comic.
Western Animation
- Danny Phantom: Obsessed with being young, powerful and beautiful and needing to regularly feed off misery to maintain her own, Penelope Spectra attempts to cut out the middle man in "Doctors Disorders" infecting the Casper High students with Ghost Mosquitos so that she can isolate them and harvest their DNA to create herself the perfect host body, planning to use Danny's unique hybrid DNA to stabilise it. Danny manages to sabotage her plans by instead tricking her machines into extracting the DNA from his father's snot covered handkerchief instead of his own, causing her new body to fall apart.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: The TV movie Destination: Imagination introduces an imaginary friend named World, who is a floating face and mouth that possesses and brings to life whatever he rests on. At the end, Frankie sews together a stuffed patchwork body for him to call his own.
- Justice League: In "Panic in the Sky", Lex Luthor builds a nigh-invincible robotic body based on Amazo into which he plans to place his own mind. It turns out that this wasn't exactly his plan to begin with...
- Transformers: Animated: Megatron is reduced to just his head at the start of the series and convinces Isaac Sumdac, who thinks he is an Autobot, to rebuild him. Isaac finds he cannot build servos for Megatron's new body without a material rare on Earth that will become unstable in the time needed to transport it to the lab, so Megatron tries to take advantage of Sari's careless nature with her Allspark Key by designing a robot toy called Soundwave for her that will become more powerful each time the key is inserted until it can serve as his new body, but it gains sentience and its own agenda instead. Eventually, Isaac finds the remains of Megatron's original body and the plan to build him a new body is scrapped in favor of restoring his old one.
