Desert Skull

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"(...I'm just a pile of bleached bones. I can't talk.)"

—A pile of bleached bones, Earthbound

Whenever a show features or references a desert, savannah or other barren land, odds are good that a bovine cranium will be involved to set the mood.

Often accompanied by cacti.

Compare Ribcage Ridge, a sister trope.

Examples of Desert Skull include:

Anime and Manga[]

Bleach has Neliel Tu Odelshvanck, who has part of such a skull attached to the top of her head. She lives roaming around the desert that is Hueco Mundo.
- The arrancar Rudbornn also has a more traditional-looking desert bovine skull around his head, like a helmet.
The opening scene of Gun X Sword has Van looking down at an animal skull in the desert and questioning why the creature isn't still alive for him to eat.

Three Garfield strips had Jon bring home one of these, which Garfield then put on Odie, while Jon was talking to his mother on the phone about it.
In the comic strip Beyond The Black Stump, two recurring characters are a pair of skulls out in the desert somewhere who pass the time having odd conversations.
The Far Side: One uncaptioned cartoon shows a pair of oxen pulling a covered wagon across the desert, turning their heads as they pass a bovine skull.

The owl mariachi band from Rango stood on one of these while singing about Rango's journey.
On An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Tiger runs into a buffalo skeleton that seems to come to life when he's not looking. Turns out it's being manipulated by native mice, who then capture Tiger.
The Lion King: As Simba returns to the Pridelands, he finds it riddled with wildebeest skeletons to show how Scar's rule has ruined the land. At the end, as Simba returns to power, there's a brief shot of a skull being washed away by the rain, to symbolize the end of the old regime.
Cars featured a variation of this: since all animals in their world are also vehicles, in the desert surrounding Radiator Springs, there appear to be rusted-up car parts lying among the rocks and cacti.

In Animal Crossing, this shows up as a furniture item in the "American West/frontier" set. Sometimes animals who are cows have them in their homes...
In Earthbound, you can actually have a conversation with a cattle skeleton in the Dusty Dunes Desert. It, of course, claims otherwise.
The original Starcraft had all sorts of bones and skulls in the randomly-generated desert terrain tiles.
Cave Story's Sand Zone is full of bones... including animated ones.
The standard Clonk desert scenarios contain, along with cacti, animal skulls as decoration.
Eets uses this as decoration for desert-themed levels.
These can be found in the desert levels of the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem games. Rare items can be dug up in the nearby sands.

In Pioneer Trail (formerly Frontier Ville), these keep popping up on disused parts of your homestead.

Bugs Bunny wears one in the Looney Tunes short "The Wacky Wabbit".
- In another Looney Tunes cartoon, Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, Bugs falls into a hole next to some cow bones, and he briefly thinks the bones are his. Later, he tricks Killer the Buzzard into thinking the same.
At the top of the Arthur episode "Feeling Flush," there's an Imagine Spot where the kids are walking through the desert. The very first shot we see is of a skull (pictured above).
There's one of these (with overly ornate horns) atop the sign for the Gold City Guest Ranch in the "Mine Your Own Business" episode of Scooby Doo.
Adventure Time has these, except some of them seem to be skulls of aquatic animals.