If you have something like <div data-controller="foo"> <div data-controller="bar"></div> </div> ips.controller.register("foo", { initialize: function() { ips.controller.cleanContentsOf(this.scope); } }); The controller on bar will be initialized on the dead element, and never cleaned up: ips.controller.register("bar", { initialize: function() { console.log(document.contains(this.scope[0])); // => false }, destroy: function() { consol