Companion Cube

"The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak.... In the event that the Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice."

—GLaDOS, Portal

"Treat your cardboard box with care. Take care of the box and it'll take care of you. Don't think of it as just another box. Treat it with love... Don't be rough, okay?"

—Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Take an otherwise uninteresting object, and have the other characters (or at least one character) interact with it as if it is a real character, and you have a Companion Cube. Sometimes, the object blurs the line between real and imaginary by apparently doing things which would be hard for an inanimate object to do or telling people things they shouldn't have been able to already know, but the defining characteristic is that we the audience never, ever see it move of its own volition on camera, even if it clearly must've done something.

For some reason, Companion Cubes tend to become very popular with the audience. Something to do with the Uncanny Valley, probably. Or simply because the idea of having an inanimate object being a character is funny. Or maybe because it's easy to project the best traits you can think of onto the object. Or because you can make yourself a replica at home ...

Dolls and teddy bears are especially common examples, probably because they're humanoid, friendly looking, and meant to be bonded with. Typically the owner will treat it as their Confidant. Security Blankets are also common in this regard.

If a character gives a weapon this treatment, expect him or her to give it a name. The opposite is Living Toys.

This can go wrong in fandom. Horribly, horribly wrong.

As a frightening and interesting aside, it has been demonstrated in US Army experiments that people kept in isolation have a tendency to form attachments to inanimate objects (this is why this tends to show up in Speculative Fiction a lot, where the crew personifies their starships and other objects). Sweet dreams!

If an inanimate object does move onscreen, it slides from this trope to Through the Eyes of Madness or Magic Realism in general. (Unless it's designed to move, like a Roomba or something.)

Examples of Companion Cube include:

Advertising

  • This IKEA commercial, by Spike Jonze, makes fun of the phenomenon.
  • Geico's "money you saved from using Geico" which is a stack of money with eyes. They have been known to do things off camera like texting.

Anime and Manga

  • Seems to be quite common in the Gundam series. Particularly, in Gundam Wing, all of the characters who pilot Gundams will talk to their machines at least once every couple of fights. In an early episode, when Quatre´s about to blow up his own Gundam, Sandrock, the cockpit opens by itself, causing Quatre to wonder: "Are you telling me to get down, Sandrock?" A few of the suits also have the ZERO system, which tends to inspire insanity in the pilots who use it. That sure doesn't help.
  • The Angels in Angelic Layer. If you hear "it's just a doll/toy/robot", you know that person needs a dose of The Power of Friendship, despite your parents probably thinking they have a valid point.
  • Mazinger Z: Several times the characters talk to or about Mazinger-Z and FemBot Aphrodite A like if they were sentient beings. Sayaka actually had a Heroic BSOD when Aphrodite A was destroyed. She even hallucinated Aphrodite was calling her. And then you have Minerva-X, an actual sentient FemBot and Humongous Mecha could act, think and feel on her own and was programmed to be Mazinger-Z's Battle Couple, and considered Mazinger was meant to be HER Companion Cube (as Sayaka protested only Aphrodite was allowed to be Mazinger's partner).
  • Rebecca's Teddy Bear in Yu-Gi-Oh!, who she called Teddy-chan, despite being American. It was actually a possessed bear in Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series.
  • The doll Emily from Soukou no Strain at first heads in this direction, being Sara's only confidante. Then you find out she's alive -- she's Powered by a Forsaken Child's still-living brain.
  • Yamada the rock in Minami-ke has gained a lot of respect for a small stone.
    • Also, Chiaki's teddy bear Fujioka (at least in the first season). She talks to it quite often and viewers can only hazard a guess as to whether its reactions are real or all in Chiaki's Ahoge.
  • The lizard Ellis picks up in episode 3 of El Cazador de la Bruja is hardly an inanimate object, but the only thing it does in the entire series, aside from belch in Nadie's face, is crawl away in the end of the said episode. Nevertheless, it immediately became target of wildest Epileptic Trees and gained an affectionate Fan Nickname "Squenchy". And there is also another matter with the Sniper Cat in the ED video, too...
  • Played for horror in Neon Genesis Evangelion, with Asuka's mother having an Asuka doll that she cradles and talks to, to the exclusion of her own daughter, because she thinks the doll is her real daughter and doesn't recognize Asuka as being her child thanks to having half of her soul torn from her body to make the second EVA. She then asks the doll to commit suicide with her, despite Asuka begging her mother to let her die with her instead of the doll. Later Asuka walks in to find both her mother and the doll dangling from the ceiling.
  • Then there's the Vulcan 300, a "toy robot" made from a pocky box, in Konjiki no Gash Bell!! Then again, only Gash considers it an actual person...
    • Or maybe not. Tio has her own pocky box toy, named "Valunlun". In some endings, Kanchome and Umagon are shown with green and orange pocky box toys as well, although God only knows how Umagon made his....
  • The houseplant in Noir (which may be a reference to Leon below).
  • Nekozawa's hand-puppet Beelzeneff, Tamaki's teddy, and Honey's stuffed pink rabbit in Ouran High School Host Club.
  • Crona of Soul Eater refers to the corner that s/he hides in as Mr. Corner.
  • Strawberry Panic's Kagome has a teddy bear named Percival that she treats like it's alive. Being very shy, she tends to channel her feelings through the bear. After a random act of kindness from Nagisa, Kagome asks Percival "Was that a friend of yours?" (Side note: You may know the bear as something like "Oshibaru", as it was a hard name for the subbers to make out.)
  • In one episode Full Metal Panic!, Sosuke was coaching the lousy school rugby team. He made them go through physical and mental training from hell. At the end of the training, he gave each of them a football and made them assign female names to them. Cut to one of the football players caressing his ball saying, "Don't worry, baby. I won't be rough. I won't hurt you" with a mentally disturbing smile and crazy eyes.
  • Berserk
    • In the earlier parts of the Golden Age Arc, we see Guts as a child being taught how to use a sword. He uses a two handed blade which is considerably oversized for a kid. We later see him hugging that sword like a teddy bear while he's going to sleep. Considering that he was raised in a mercenary band, blamed for the death of the only mother figure he ever had, and the abuse he suffered from the guy he considered a father figure, it's not too far fetched to believe that for Guts the sword was his only friend at that time.

Guts is often visibly shown having trouble sleeping without a sword and claims he can't relax without it on hand. Considering the dangers he faces this concern is probably for more practical reasons, but who's to say whether the possible emotional and practical reasons can't complement each other?

    • Played for laughs with Puck and the Behelit Guts carries around. Despite being an Artifact of Doom, he affectionately calls it "Betchi."
  • For as much as she treats it like an actual guitar, Yui in K-On!! treats her guitar more like a pet dog. She gives it a name, sleeps with it, and dresses it up. The only reason she went with it was because it was "cute". Yui's never been totally right in the head to begin with.
  • In Sumomomo Momomo, Tenka has a soccer ball that he named Becky. She talks to him, and he often asks her for advice. She actually gives pretty good advice, too, considering she's a soccer ball...
  • In Historys Strongest Disciple Kenichi, Kenishi's father owns a double-barreled rifle named Sebastian, which he treats more like a pet than an object. He also at one point has a heartfelt conversation with a jar of tomato sauce.
  • Bleach
    • Something of a subversion with the Soul Reapers' Zanpaku-to swords. Each sword is part of the Soul Reaper's being, but also has its own spirit and name. We rarely see a Zanpaku-to's spirit (Ichigo's Zangetsu usually only speaks to him in his own mindscape, and Renji's Zabimaru only appears a couple times), but all the principle Soul Reapers have learned their swords' names. While the swords are rarely treated as characters, in one episode Yumichika gets so mad at his he beats it against a rock. Rangiku's sword kind of rubs her the wrong way, too.
    • Any remaining elements of this are thoroughly thrown out the window in one the anime's filler arcs, where all the zanpakutou spirits are materialized in human forms and wreaking havoc.
    • Played straight in a newer arc in which having a companion cube causes it to have certain powers. Such as a dollhouse which lets you trap people inside of it or boots that make your kicks increasingly lethal as they get dirty.
  • Seravy from Akazukin Chacha has a ventriloquist doll named Elizabeth. They're a couple.
  • Ikaros and her watermelons in Sora no Otoshimono. She is fascinated by watermelons and tends to carry one around with her. It's gotten to the point where she is growing a watermelon patch in her backyard and taking care of it like one would take care of a litter of puppies or kittens.
  • Done very creepily in Saiyuki with Dr Nii's rabbit toy.
  • Rurouni Kenshin: Saitou, during his (manga) fight with Kenshin, evades Kenshin's attempt to break his sword, stating that his sword had kept him safe since the revolution, and that he wasn't about to let anyone break it. Later in the fight, Kenshin tries again, and lops it in half.
  • The mascot of the Pokémon anime, Ash's Pikachu, loves his...ketchup bottle. No, really. This seems to be taken to an extreme by fans, though, since Pikachu only demonstrated a love for ketchup in one episode, "Showdown at Dark City".
  • In Gravitation, there's Ryuichi's Kumagoro, a stuffed pink rabbit that he treats like a person, and even provides a voice for. There's some speculation, though, as to whether this is real or simply an act put on by Ryuichi.
  • One Piece,
    • Luffy's straw hat is a prime example.
    • The sword Wado seems to fill this role for Zoro. It used to belong to his childhood friend Kuina—she died very young, so he carries it for both of them.
    • And for Nami, her adoptive mother's orange trees. Also notable that all three objects/types of objects are important because they were left behind by loved ones.
  • In Carnival Phantasm during the Grand Prix episode, Assassin displays extreme affection for the shrine, even towards jumping out of the truck in a vain attempt to save it when Berscar knocked it over the cliff.
  • Herr Schtick in Axis Powers Hetalia

Comics

  • The Doomguy in the Doom comic treats his BFG-9000 as a Companion Cube.
  • The Mother Box is a series of devices used by the characters of Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" comic books. Each Mother Box is actually sentient and super-powered; the Forever People share one (and use it to merge into the Infinity Man when things get desperate), and another is built into the costume of Mister Miracle, who often has conversations with "her".
    • Orion the Dog of War has an even closer connection with his Mother Box. Its been shown that without the calming influence of the Mother Box not only does Orion's physical appearance start to deteriorate to match his father's looks but he also loses the ability to control his inner rage. In the Bad Future series Kingdom Come Orion has usurped his father's throne and has managed to keep his temper down even without the Mother Box. But he is by no means doing well. [dead link]
    • In Seven Soldiers, Shiloh Norman reveals that he can't actually understand what his Mother Box says, but he tries to talk to it anyway to keep himself calm.
  • Shmee, the creepy teddy bear carried by perpetual victim Squee in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Both Johnny and Squee refer to the toy speaking to them, and the things it tells them are rather disturbing (enough to get Johnny to take a knife to the toy at one point). In the follow up comic, there is a dream sequence where Shmee reveals that he is Squee's own personal trauma sponge, possibly an analog to the thing behind Johnny's wall, but this is open for interpretation since this IS All Just a Dream, Or Was It a Dream?
  • Cheeks, The Toy Wonder, Ambush Bug's trusty young ward is... a stuffed animal. Even when turned into an OMAC, all he does is sit there. This is made especially clear when he's cast in the role of "Sgt. Cheeks, Frontline Medic." Yeah, that was a dark time for everyone involved.
  • Though perhaps a marginal example, given the object in question acts as the face of the character's split personality, just try to tell Batman villain the Ventriloquist that Scarface is just a puppet.
    • Actually, Batman once defeated him by telling the puppet that the Ventriloquist had betrayed him. Cue the guy attacking himself.
    • It has been suggested however that Scarface houses a demonic power and really is alive. This is typically considered even sillier than the alternative and tends to not be depicted as the case these days, though.
  • In Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem briefly but memorably made use of the "wise and terrible" Chair Leg of Truth while interviewing Fred Christ (with extreme prejudice). The Chair Leg was quite a fan favorite.
    • Also, Bucky and his little toy bear, Smacky.
  • World manga Hollow Fields has Lucy's stuffed dinosaur (later converted into a grappling hook) Dino.
  • Spider-Man villain the Looter thinks the meteor that gave him his powers is alive and can talk to him; According to Spidey, he even watches TV with it.
  • Deadpool has the same one that every comic book character has: his text boxes. The differences are 1. Deadpool's are yellow and 2. Deadpool often references, and occasionally speaks to these boxes as though they were not, by default, a part of him.
    • This has further evolved - there are now two differently colored text boxes which converse with Deadpool. And occasionally refuse to speak to him.
  • X-Statix's El Guapo was a mutant with the power to telekinetically control his skateboard. But when nobody else is around, he talks to it and it appears to move of its own volition; at one point they get into an argument and the board beats him. Whether the board is actually semi-sentient or he's a lunatic and doing it himself is never established.
  • In a bizarre variation on the typical usage of this trope, Sykes from The Intimates is actually a living human being... but one who's never heard to speak and shows no real signs of consciousness ever. His fellow Seminary students theorize his mental powers may be at the root of this, that he's so advanced he operates at a different level that they can't understand. In any case, he's in a permanent state of catatonia.
  • Mafalda often makes sarcastic comments to her terrestrial globe - once even tucking it in bed and acting as if it's sick! It's a tad deeper than most examples seeing as she talks to it as a stand in for the world. It can get quite Anvilicious sometimes, such as in the "sick" example.
    • The poor thing has frequent sharp pains in its democracy.
  • Hobbes of Calvin and Hobbes, depending on your interpretation. Aside from Calvin, the characters treat Hobbes as inanimate (though Susie has occasionally interacted with Hobbes similar to how Calvin does). When Calvin's mom laundered Hobbes, he stumbled around a bit after coming out of the drier.
    • On occasion, Susie treats Mr. Bun, who is always depicted as a stuffed rabbit, as real.
      • And Hobbes is at one point disturbed by the fact that Mr. Bun appears to be in a coma.
      • Susie plays with toys like a normal child. Calvin brings the nature of reality in the comic into question. (Not an exaggeration. Word of God states there will never be an official explanation regarding Hobbes's nature.)
    • Calvin's evil bicycle ambushed and assaulted him several times.
    • The television in Calvin's house has occasionally had thought bubbles of its own, which no one else seems to notice.
    • There was a storyline where Calvin took a series of pictures of Hobbes making faces. He laughs at the developed pictures and shows them to his dad. Calvin's dad sees only the same shot of the motionless Hobbes, over and over again.
    • But in one comic on transmogrification, Hobbes claims himself to be Calvin, or so we thought.
  • Quincy from FoxTrot, despite being a live iguana, fits this trope perfectly. When Jason uses Quincy (and some old clothes) as part of a "Lone Iguana" persona, the effect is that of a guest character.
  • In one storyline of My Cage, Norm, the main character spent a week out sick, but no one noticed, as his secretary placed a potted plant with a face and the word "Norm" drawn on the pot at his desk instead. The plant later showed up as a member of the company's softball team.
  • In Peanuts, Linus has his security blanket.
    • Which really is more of a Number One Dime, as Linus never actually goes as far as to talk to it. However, in one week-long sequence, Lucy became convinced The Blanket had sentience and was out to get her, refusing to be in the house alone with it. One strip even shows The Blanket leaping from Linus' hands to pounce on Lucy. No one else witnessed anything of the sort; as Charlie Brown commented during the riff, "I never thought she would be the first of us to crack." (Interestingly, this was the only sequence of Schulz's strips ever to be rejected by his syndicate. They have turned up in collections, but never had a newspaper "first run.")
    • Don't forget the Kite-Eating Tree!
    • Sally used to have conversations with the school building (or at least one wall of it). Eventually, the wall began to produce thought balloons expressing opinions and making observations on life and its philosophical approach to wall-ness. (When the building collapsed, Sally interpreted this as the school "committing suicide.") Occasionally Charlie Brown's pitcher's mound would have thoughts and opinions as well.
  • Funky Winkerbean, in the days before Cerebus Syndrome took over, would often have various inanimate objects in and around the school (desks, computers, a pair of leaves on a tree, even the school rock) making comments via thought balloons.
  • Garfield's teddy bear, Pooky.
    • In Pet Force, Pooky's alternate universe incarnation was extremely intelligent...although still perhaps not quite "alive", as he became "Compooky".
    • Garfield himself is either holding a conversation with John, thinking quietly, or else behaving like a normal cat and John is just imagining the whole thing, depending on your interpretation. (Word of God is notoriously inconsistent about this point.)
      • Even more disturbing is a set of three strips that have lead many to believe that the entire series are the fevered hallucinations of a housecat as it starves to death in an abandoned house. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW ALONE YOU ARE.
  • The brick in Krazy Kat was, at times, presented as a character with a mind of its own; this was not unexpected in such a surreal series.
  • Get Fuzzy's Satchel has taken time to name just about everything in the apartment, though usually Mr. Hands (his wristwatch) and Mr. Bones (chewtoy) appear most often.
  • Beetle Bailey has an odd example: Sarge's stomach. When it's growling, Sarge often treats this as a verbal demand for food, sometimes talking to it as if it were his best buddy and sometimes arguing with it.
  • Mr. Mello Monkey from Empowered. Emp claims that he protects her from bad dreams.
  • Marv has his colt 45 which he names Gladys in Sin City. When "she" first appears, Marv talks to her and we get a full backstory about the gun.
  • An obscure British comics hero named Dolman fought crime using remote controlled mechanical puppets. The puppets had no minds or autonomy of their own whatsoever, but Dolman would frequently use his ventriloquism skills to throw his voice and hold conversations with them, even when no-one else was present.
  • In one Dilbert strip, a woman had a baby that looked like a loaf of bread, which turned out to be an actual loaf of bread.
  • In the Danish comic Valhalla, Thor has a tendency to treat Mjolnir as a pet rather than a weapon; this is most evident in the second album, when the hammer is stolen by Thrym, and Thor is close to panic because the hammer "isn't used to being alone." Of course, Mjolnir is a magical hammer, and on one or two occasions does display something resembling sentience (like when Thor tries to throw it at the Fenris Wolf, and the hammer turns around in mid-air and flies back to Thor rather than face the open jaws of the wolf).


Fan Works

  • Naruto the Abridged Series has "The Log" as Sasuke's invincible rival. In fact, the only creature who might have a shot at beating him is Clucky... who is a chicken! Also the "One-Foot-Tall Brick Wall" which was Naruto's response to The Log, though not a bitter rival so much as an occasional cameo sidekick and a way to keep Konohamaru and his tag-along buddies out of the story as much as possible.
    • And Kakashi has his milk carton from time to time. "Heh-heh...moo."
    • Ren and Stimpy had a commercial for "Log, from Whammo!"
      • Which is parodied in AMV Hell Championship Edition. With a Naruto connection, no less!
  • Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series: "The Ocean and I are getting married."
    • May not count anymore, after all it forgave him.
    • Ishizu has the giant rock. It's the only one who understands her.
  • Kyon: Big Damn Hero: Kyon has his PDA, which can learn. He calls it Skynet and talks to it more than once.
  • Aside from Shinji himself, the first recurring characters in Shinji and Warhammer 40 K were the four miniatures with whom Shinji has several character-building conversations (a Space Marine Captain, an Eldar Farseer, an Ork Warboss, and a Chaos Lord). Then they develop their own personalities against Shinji's will. Then he starts having conversations with them entirely in his mind. Then they develop their own independant existences, to the point where other characters have conversations with them (granted, those characters are Rei and Kaworu, who aren't exactly normal to begin with).
  • In The Official Fanfiction University of Middle-Earth, we have Toey the toe ring, BreadLegs and RollFeet.
  • In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fanfic Progress, Princess Luna is rather attached to an antique abacus; in one chapter, her maid Sundance claims that Luna made pajamas for it and reads it bedtime stories. It became popular for a while for writers of other fanfics, especially (but not limited to) more light-hearted ones, to depict Luna with an abacus companion.
    • Another fanfic had Applejack comment that accidentally tearing her Nice Hat felt like injuring a close friend.
  • In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Harry doesn't want an owl, because of his past traumatic experience with pets, namely that his Pet Rock died.


Films -- Animation

  • Toy Story is essentially what would happen if Companions Cubes were actually self-aware.
  • Madagascar parodies Cast Away's Wilson with "Spaulding", another volleyball from a different manufacturer.
  • Penny's teddy bear, Teddy, in The Rescuers. It even becomes a plot point in the climax.
  • The Brave Little Toaster is based around this trope.
  • In Monsters vs. Aliens, B.O.B. and the plate of Jello.
  • Scrat's acorn gets this treatment in the third Ice Age movie. When he drops it in favor of Scratte, it "sings" a sad ballad as if it has just been dumped. At the end, Scrat leaves Scratte and runs back to his beloved nut.
  • Subverting this is the entire point of Pinocchio// The title character is a wooden marionette that can walk and talk.
  • In The Princess and the Frog, Ray the Firefly has fallen in love with the Evening Star, whom he calls Evangeline.
  • At the start of Rango, the main character, a pet chameleon, treats the toys, fake palm, and dead bug in his cage as his friends and fellow actors.


Films -- Live Action

  • In Cast Away, the stranded Tom Hanks finds a Wilson volleyball and draws a face on it to give himself a companion, which he calls "Wilson." The ball was inspired by the screenwriter's experience stranding himself on a beach and discovering a volleyball that washed ashore. Wilson is basically the only justification for the main character's dialogue through most of the film.
  • The 2007 film Lars and the Real Girl is about a man who treats a RealDoll as a real woman.
    • This also happened in Pushing Daisies (the episode "Bitter Sweets").
    • ... Not unlike Mr. Universe and his LoveBot companion, Lenore, from Serenity.
  • In Léon: The Professional, Léon's only friend has been a small houseplant, which he carefully waters with a squirt bottle and sets outside his windowsill each day. He says he likes the plant because it has "no roots," like him.
    • It's a vinyl plant.
  • In the film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Natalie Portman's character is presented with a literal block of polished wood that her mysterious, eccentric employer calls the "Congreve Cube", which he indicates is extremely significant and powerful, although we're not sure how seriously to take anything he says. In at least one scene, we see her (skeptically) trying to talk to it as though it could understand her. It may or may not be a Magic Feather.
  • In 1959's The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, with Harry Belafonte's character acquiring a mannequin and dubbing it "Snodgrass".
  • In the 2007 film I Am Legend, Robert Neville sets up several department-store mannequins around the video-rental shop and talks to them as if they were people to maintain some semblance of human interaction. As a sign of his degrading sanity, he begins begging a mannequin to answer him back.

Fred, if you're real, you'd better tell me right now! If you're real, you'd better tell me RIGHT NOW! (gunshots) ...Damn it, Fred! DAMN IT!

  • The Omega Man, an earlier adaptation of I Am Legend, Charlton Heston speaks to mannequins as well.
  • Darkly subverted in Childs Play. Nobody but Andy believes that Chucky the doll is alive... at first.
  • Otto, the automatic pilot—who happens to be an inflatable doll—in Airplane!! However, Otto seems to be capable of some independent action.
  • Blazing Saddles. Arch villain Hedley Lamarr has a small blue rubber frog [dead link] .

Hedley Lamarr: Daddy love Froggy. Froggy love Daddy?
(squeak squeak)
Hedley Lamarr: Aaaaaahhh.... ribbit... ribbit... ribbit...

  • In Full Metal Jacket, Gunnery Sgt. Hartman orders all of the Marines to personify their rifles with a girl's name. The rifle creed is "My rifle is my best friend. It is my life." Pvt. Lawrence/Pyle takes this a little too far and is later seen whispering to it like a lover... before he snaps and kills the Gunny and himself.
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Sweeney Todd and his razors, as demonstrated in the song "My Friends"—just about the only Companion Cube trait they don't have is individual names.

Speak to me, friend
Whisper, I'll listen

  • The Really Useful Book from Mirror Mask. Whether it's actually alive or not is left a little bit vague, but it's really useful.
    • There's also Valentine's flying tower, with which he apparently had an argument.
  • Billy Madison: "Stop looking at me, Swan!"
  • The new Star Trek movie has Scotty refer to the Enterprise as a woman.

Scotty: I'd like to get my hands on her ample nacelles, if you'll forgive the engineering parlance!

    • That should be an example of different trope altogether. Ships were regarded as female for centuries, a usage that has only faded out in the last twenty years. The Enterprise was referred to as "she" in the original series.
      • Wait, ships aren't referred to as "she" anymore?
  • Rosebud in Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane.
  • Stranger Than Fiction. Harold Crick's wristwatch.
  • In The Pink Panther, a really drunk princess talks with the tiger carpet on which she's lying.
  • In Scavenger Hunt, the servants' first item retrieved is a toilet from a fancy hotel. The ditzy maid nicknames the toilet after the hotel, and makes such a fuss over it that the team adopt the thing as their "mascot".
  • A rather sad example in May. May's only friend is a china doll called Suzy, in a little glass display case. She talks to Suzy, gets advice from Suzy, tries to surprise Suzy when she gets contacts to fix her lazy eye... As the movie goes on and the already unstable May's attempts to find a real friend fail miserably, she starts to genuinely think Suzy is actually alive, and starts to hate her sometimes, blaming Suzy for her own social mishaps. Eventually May, otherwise completely alone again, decides to make it up with Suzy and be best friends again... Only for Suzy to get accidentally broken by some blind kids the next day.
  • The title object in Albert Lamorisse's 1956 short film The Red Balloon sort of combines this with Magic Realism, in that it does seem to have a definite mind and will of its own.
  • The Maiden Heist, being about three art museum security guards who have over the years fallen in love with one particular art piece each, brings this trope to mind.
  • The dancing hula girl toy is the good luck charm of the Space Cowboys. Shown at the beginning during the failed test flight, then in a church, and finally in the shuttle.
  • Gone in Sixty Seconds - in at least the 2000 version, Memphis treats one of the cars he's stealing (a make and model he has a previous history with, and has the reputation of being finicky) as a Tsundere woman, addressing her as "Eleanor".
  • Tony Stark has "dummy," a bumbling robot arm that he constantly scolds and threatens to give away to local colleges, and then it saves his life by getting his arc reactor to him in time to which he says, "Good boy."
  • While Han and co. stop in The Empire Strikes Back to repair the Millennium Falcon, C-3PO actually interfaces with the Falcon to diagnose its problem, and reports back to Han that "I don't know where your ship learned to communicate, but it has the most peculiar dialect."


Literature

  • Another example from Discworld, and probably one of the weirdest ones. Hex the calculating machine has a Teddy Bear after the events in Hogfather. Any attempts to remove the teddy bear results in Hex refusing to work.
    • Which leads to the wizards saying that one of the requirements for Hex to work is that it is FTB Enabled, which stands for Fluffy Teddy Bear.

"I don't actually think," Ponder Stibbons said gloomily, "that I want to tell the Archchancellor that this machine stops working if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don't think I want to live in that kind of world."
"Er, you could always, you know, sort of say it needs to work with the FTB enabled."

    • Anytime the question of why Ankh-Morpork doesn't have a king anymore comes up, it's likely that a past monarch's habit of appointing trees, flowerpots, and decapitated bodies as Privy Councilors will be cited as a reason.
    • Of the various troll street gangs from which Brick (from Thud!) has been excluded, the most abysmally stupid is Tenth Egg Street's Can't-Think-Of-A-Name gang. Allegedly, they consider a lump of concrete on a piece of string to be a gang member.
  • The Thing in The Bromeliad Trilogy. It reveals itself early in the first book to in fact be a sentient supercomputer, but the nomes had it for centuries before that.
  • Mason & Dixon has a scene in which a pair of clocks have a conversation, although it could just be the narrator (who is a weirdo) speculating on what they would be saying. Somewhat more notably, there is Robert Jenkins' Ear, which, although severed and pickled in a jar, is still alive and has magical powers derived from its enormous historical significance. Did I mention that Thomas Pynchon wrote this book?
  • In the Norwegian children's series Knerten by Anne Cath Westly, one of the main characters is a stick that looks like a human. The other main character, a little boy, treats him like his best friend and has apparently not realised that he's inanimate. Sort of like Calvin and Hobbes, although this one is older.
  • The Velveteen Rabbit. Subverted in that the eponymous rabbit becomes real at the end of the story.
  • The very first Winnie-the-Pooh story makes it quite evident that Edward Bear (aka Pooh) and all of his friends are actually Christopher Robin's stuffed animals. (Entirely justified since A.A. Milne invented the stories for his son, who had a teddy bear named Winnie, who was—incidentally—named after a real (female) bear at the zoo.)
  • By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz has Jilly and her potted plant, Fred. Fred is a stalwart, if silent, companion on whom Jilly practices her stand-up comedy routines.
  • In Virtual Mode by Piers Anthony, Colene has a stuffed horse from her childhood named Maresy Doats, named after a misheard song lyric.
  • Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls by Jane Lindskold has an interesting twist—inanimate objects constantly talk telepathically to the autistic main character, Sarah. And no, she's not imagining it: they sometimes tell her useful things, like the combinations to locks and safes, or the location of hidden items.
  • As mentioned in the main article, this happens to starships a lot, often to the point where the ship itself is a main character (sometimes literally). Larry Niven invokes this trope a lot, such as with the battlecrusier INSS MacArthur in The Mote in God's Eye. A non-Speculative Fiction example would be the eponymous submarine in The Hunt for Red October, arguably the main character.
  • In Etgar Keret's short story Breaking the Pig, a boy becomes emotionally attached to his piggy-bank. When the bank gets full, he "sets it free" in the field so he won't have to break it.
  • Warrior Cats: Jayfeather and his stick. To the point where he always looks for the stick when he needs answers, and was horrified when he almost lost it in the lake. Feeling it also seems to calm him down (Is anyone thinking what I'm thinking?). JayxStick is also a very popular Cargo Ship within the fandom.
    • The authors took notice of the Cargo Ship and killed it dead: the stick is broken in The Fourth Apprentice, by Jayfeather himself.
  • In the Star Wars anthology Tales From Jabba's Palace, Dumb Muscle Gartogg hauls around and talks to the dead bodies of the cook's assistant and a B'Omarr monk after stumbling onto the mystery of their murder and being tasked with solving it. Even though he did solve it eventually, he kept hauling the bodies everywhere he went because he'd gotten attached to them; they were the only people who didn't seem to mind his company.
  • Anne McCaffrey's book The Rowan has the title character treating her Pukha this way. The Pukha is essentially a child monitor and stuffed toy in one, but Rowan has one-sided conversations with it, even as she's clearly aware that it's an inanimate object.

"You'd scorch your fur and blow your circuits!"

  • In the original novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Sara gets a doll named Emily from her father. Sara conceives of Emily as a listening companion, even a protective good witch, who moves around and does things when no one's looking. In the original novel, Sara's father dies in India, and Sara's attachment to Emily becomes one of her few escapes from her horrible situation. Until she breaks down and screams at it "You're just a doll!" and slaps it out of its chair. Later movie adaptations cut that scene out allowing Emily to be an expression of Sarah's imagination throughout.
    • The girl in Enid Bagnold's National Velvet wants to own a stableful of horses, so she has a boxful of cutouts from magazines. She pastes them to heavy cardboard, makes saddles and bridles for them out of embroidery thread, and "rides" them on back country roads, then carefully rubs them down and puts them away. They all have names and histories.
  • In Robert A. Heinlein's Juvenile novel Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel, the main character names his eponymous suit Oscar and has conversations with it. In one particular case, it even gives him a pep talk as he lays dying on the surface of Pluto. Note that though it's never mentioned outright, there's no indication that he actually believes he's talking to his suit.
  • Mercy Thompson is shadowed by an ancient magical walking stick whose initial purpose was to keep sheep healthy and ensure that all expectant sheep produced twins. Having developed a will of its own it tends to vanish and appear in places important to Mercy such as her home, office, car, and even in her hand when she really needs to hit something.
  • Older Than Radio: A Tale of Two Cities: A somber example Played for Drama: The shoemaker's bench and tools are this for Doctor Mannete, having being incarcerated alone by the Evremondes for 18 years, he begged for something to do, when he received it, he was so grateful he form an attachment with him. Years later, Mannete’s daughter Lucy marries Darnay who is an Evremond and the doctor feels the compulsion to work with the shoemaker’s bench. When Mr. Lorry talks about destroying it, Mannete refers to him as a friend but it accedes. And in the last chapters of the books, Manettes will ask for his friend again when he crosses the Despair Event Horizon. When Lorry and Miss Prost destroy the shoemakers’s bench, they also treat him like something alive:

On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder -- for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.

Live Action TV

  • Mrs. Beasley in Family Affair.
  • Radar's teddy bear in Mash.
    • "My bear went off!"
  • Mr. Bear in Full House.
  • Scrubs has Rowdy (and, in the later series, Stephen), the stuffed yellow labradors owned by JD and Turk.
    • Also, the Janitor's "squirrel army".
  • Abby from NCIS has her mass spectrometry machine ("Major Mass-Spec") and Burt the Farting Stuffed Hippo.
  • MythBusters gives us Buster, an oft-destroyed and rebuilt crash test dummy that the crew uses in most of their experiments. Most of the cast (and quite a few of the show's fans) jokingly treat him like a real person.
    • Including when he takes more damage than they intended. In "Escape Slide Parachute" Buster was reduced to little more than scrap metal and flesh-colored chunks when a quick release failed and he fell the full distance without his safety equipment. The reaction of the crew (especially Adam and Grant) was one of abject horror, as if a flesh and blood crew member had been severely injured.
      • It gets worse for the myth where they needed to test possible brain injuries to Buster and added a destructible blood packet inside his cranial cavity to simulate lethal brain hemorrage if the damage was too great.
    • Not to mention Earl, the car they dropped from a crane to test "Buster 2.0". And several one-time ballistics gel dummies they named.
    • It also doesn't help that almost all of the ballistics gel busts they use in experiments are molds of Grant.
      • Or that they devote entire montages to lovingly dressing the busts up in a wig, glasses, bandana, whatever's in-character for the myth's scenario.
    • And let's not forget (or maybe we should) Kari's ballistics gel "Zombie Dogs." Which she was actually baby-talking to. "Aw, whosa sweet widdle doggy? Mwa!" *kisses nose*
    • In the Dynamite Surfing episode, Kari wonders if anyone else has noticed the disturbing amount of Grant robots that have been built over the course of the series.
    • During the Supersized Myths Jet Taxi segment, to make him even more animate than usual, they added a voiceover of Buster's thoughts just before they pulled his taxi behind the jumbo jet's engine exhaust: "I wonder if Mike Rowe is hiring."
    • And then there was Lucy the Moose, a 600 lb rubber moose that they crashed cars into (To test the myth that speeding up before hitting a large animal will reduce the damage done to the car and driver. Busted).
  • In the short-lived cult TV show Sledge Hammer!, Sledge has a habit of talking to his gun.
  • In an unusual Panel Show example, after the third time Roy Hattersley MP cancelled his appearance as a guest on Have I Got News for You at short notice, his place on Paul Merton's team was filled by "The Rt. Hon. Tub of Lard MP" "imbued with much the same qualities and liable to give a similar performance", which Merton would confer with during the show. They won, in spite of the Tub being unable to confer with Merton for any questions aimed at it, and all of their team's questions in the final 'missing words' round being in foreign languages, and, in the last case, with the entire headline blanked out.]]

Ian Hislop: It is getting rather sad that I can't win against Paul when he's accompanied by a tub of lard and his questions are in a foreign language.

  • In a parody of Cast Away, an episode of Being Ian has Ian trapped on a sandbar and talking to polystyrene coffee cup.
  • While a semi-intelligent killing machine and thus not very inanimate, Rover from The Prisoner is a large, white bouncing ball. Needless to say, he is a favorite among fans and a common icon of the series.
  • Firefly's Jayne Cobb treats his very favorite gun, Vera, as if its a real person—so much so that he's willing to trade it for Mal's Accidental Wife.
    • And telling Vera that getting dressed up means she gets taken out special-like - while putting her in a spacesuit to fire at a target in hard vacuum.
    • Also, the ship's mechanic, Kaylee, often talks about the ship Serenity as if its a real person. In the pilot movie she strokes the inside wall of the engine room and coos, "That's my good girl" after a jury-rig allowed Serenity to pull off a difficult maneuver. Mal treats her like a person occasionally, as well.
  • Oliver, Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond's beloved 1963 Opel Kadett. Despite his age and third-hand ownership, Oliver survived a one-thousand mile cross-country trip straight across the spine of Botswana, including the entirety of the Makgadikgadi Pan, the largest salt flat in the world. Hammond loved the car so much that he bought it with his own money and paid to have it shipped to Britain.
    • To prepare to cross the Makgadikgadi Pan, the presenters were advised to remove as much weight as possible from their cars. May and Clarkson undertook the task with relish, but Hammond refused to remove anything from Oliver. After a while, May and Clarkson joked that it would be like asking him to cut pieces off his wife. (It should be noted that Oliver had almost no problems the entire trip, compared to the other two presenters vehicles, which sank in the mud on the Makgadikgadi Pan even after removing practically everything but the frame and engine.)
    • Oliver was endangered again in the first episode of Season 12, in which the presenters did challenges in transport trucks (obUK/Commonwealth: "lorries"). One of the last ones was a hill start—starting the trucks (with their cargo in tow) on a hill without rolling backward. To inspire each other to do well, their most prized items were placed behind them. Richard's was...Oliver (with a smashing new "OLI V3R" Vanity License Plate). Hammond forfeited the challenge rather than risk his precious car.
    • Oliver is now a supporting character in the children's science programme Richard Hammond's Blast Lab, where 'he' has a Herbie-esque personality.
  • Mr. Bean's Teddy, and to some extent his car. Much of the humour comes from the inconsistent way in how he treats them—one minute gently lowering Teddy into his own miniature bed, the next absent-mindedly ripping his head off so he'll fit in the drawer. Then when his car gets run over by a tank, he kneels down in front of the wreckage as sad music plays—only to retrieve the lock and seem perfectly happy with this.
  • Captain Oats and Princess Sparkles of The OC fame. When you start warning your plastic horse of possible overtures to rape, you know you've got yourself a Companion Cube.
  • The Impala (known to fans as Metallicar) in Supernatural is considered by some to be the third main character. It features prominently throughout the series, and Dean is occasionally found to be whispering sweet nothings to it.
  • One episode of The Mighty Boosh has them stranded on an island, talking to women they've made out of coconuts.
  • Margaret Lanterman (aka "The Log Lady") on Twin Peaks always carried around a small log in her arms. She seemed to share a psychic connection with it, sometimes dispensing advice and visions which she claimed came from the log itself.
    • Parodied in the "Twin Beaks" episode of Darkwing Duck, with Launchpad talking to a log-reduced Bushroot.
  • "Mr. Flibble is very cross...."
  • Similar to the above, "No... no, Sweetness... these people understand." Made worse because Sweetness is not a stuffed penguin—she's a gun.
  • In Farscape, John Crichton's favourite weapon is a Peacekeeper standard issue pulse pistol, he will risk his life to retrieve the weapon he calls Winona: "Winona would never have let me down". Similarly, when D'Argo gets a ship, he names her Lo'la in memory of his wife and becomes quite fond of her. Moya is a subversion, as she's an actual living organism.
  • Doctor Who, The Chase: companion Steven Taylor goes back into a burning city/building to rescue Hifi, the stuffed panda ("my mascot") which has been his only company for two years of captivity.
    • The Doctor himself is very closely attached to his sonic screwdriver. When it was destroyed in a 1982 episode, he remarked "I feel as if I've lost an old friend." The Tenth Doctor reacts similarly when his sonic screwdriver gets destroyed in the episode "Smith and Jones". Martha is trying to tell him the identity of the evil old alien woman they are looking for, and the Doctor totally ignores her, aghast at the death of his sonic screwdriver.
      • Immediately subverted when she gets his attention and he tosses the "dead" -- and therefore useless -- screwdriver carelessly over his shoulder.
    • Subverted with the TARDIS. Its just an old ship, right? Sure, the Doctor calls it 'dear' and 'sexy', and companions joke that he likes to stroke it, but that's just a laugh, right? Wrong. The TARDIS is alive, and its a she, thank you very much. She even became a human for the episode "The Doctor's Wife". See here. She even said that he can call her "Sexy".
    • In "The Girl Who Waited", Amy, who has been alone for 36 years, disarms (literally) one of the hand robots, painting a smiley face on it and calling it Rory. While it's initially taken as a sign of how distant she has become to Rory, a younger version of herself is able to remind her that it's actually because Rory is the love of her life.
  • A lot of TV spaceships have this trope evoked upon them; perhaps the most famous being the USS Enterprise and Millenium Falcon.
    • Both the Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon are known to have computers capable of interacting with people but of course, none of them are sophisticated enough for you to hold a conversation with. When it comes to Star Trek ships, though, Fridge Logic or even Fridge Brilliance applies: we know from holodecks, and fully sentient mechanical characters such as Data and the Doctor, that a computer with much more personality is not hard to create in the Trek Verse. If, in a world where any AI-run hologram left running long enough becomes a real person, the best the ship's operating system can do is "* Beep!* Unable to comply. Applied Phlebotinum conveniently offline," it's by design—possibly to keep it out of the Uncanny Valley.
      • In Th Ultimate Computer they tried to automate the Enterprise using AI. The developer who designed the computer treated in like it was his kid. Of course, it went insane and Kirk had to talk it to death, because A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
    • Captain Janeway sometimes talks directly to her ship in Star Trek: Voyager.
    • Scotty is mentioned above in films, but don't forget that The Original Series, he's been known to lament about the engine as if it were his child. And one episode has Kirk tell him to do anything to keep an air filter running, including coddling it and talking to it, if need be.
  • Dr. Bashir's teddy bear Kukalaka in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus: "And, on my right, putting the case against the government, is a small patch of brown liquid."
    • "Good evening."
    • Another (not completely different) sketch had a round-table discussion on customs enforcement with a duck, a cat and a lizard. The duck, cat and lizard were obviously played by wooden models, so their inability to respond to questions is unsurprising.
    • And another sketch had a panel discussion with various pieces of wood. Oddly, they could talk.
  • Drusilla's dolls in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including Miss Edith.
    • And then there's Spike's Buffy dummy, shortly replaced by the Buffybot.
    • Kendra has her favorite stake, Mr. Pointy.

Kendra: Here...In case the curse does not succeed, this is my lucky stake. I have killed many vampires with it. I call it Mr. Pointy.
Buffy: You named your stake?
Kendra: Yes.
Buffy: Remind me to get you a stuffed animal.

  • One of Mad TV's sketches includes a fake commercial about a woman in an abusive relationship with a bottle of shampoo.
  • An odd variation appears in Soap with Bob, Chuck's ventriloquist dummy. Originally Chuck was only supposed to be a temporary character but he and Bob were so popular that the writers had to keep them. It gets to the point where all but a few of the characters forget Bob isn't a separate person, the audience will always refer to Bob as a separate character as well. All of the characters dislike Bob because of his rude behaivour but like Chuck because he's very well-mannered.
  • Another panel show example: Billy the Answer Head of Figure It Out.
  • All That: Lori Beth Denberg's lifelong companion "The Big Ear of Corn".
  • Father Jack and his Brick.
  • My Name Is Earl has a HUMAN EAR fill this role for a soldier in Korea.
  • In Lost, John Locke, in no uncertain terms, talks with the island and believes it has a will. Though, depending on further reveals, there may be a significant element of truth to this.
    • Claire's Squirrel Baby was outright conceived as a Take That to Wilson from Castaway.
  • Arkwright's till from Open All Hours is an inversion. Arkwright and Granville treat it as though it's alive, but it's a malevolent being that does its best to trap your fingers every time you use it.
  • There is an episode in Malcolm in the Middle when Malcolm's mom has a mental breakdown and starts making little pigs out of balloons and paper-mache. Dozens of them. And she gives each and every one a name and background.
  • In Deadwood, Al Swearengen receives an Indian man's head in a box, which he doesn't want. He first makes use of the box as a prop in a ploy, describing his plan to the head beforehand. Subsequently, he takes to delivering Surrogate Soliloquys to the head, and addresses it as "Chief." As time goes on, he treats it more and more like a friend and confidant, and at one point brings it out onto the balcony and opens the box so it can "watch" the events on the street. Eventually Al's dragon Dan Dority confronts him about the issue, and Al has to assure him that he's not going crazy.
  • Arguably, House's red ball. When Cuddy complains of all the time he spends in his office playing with it instead of working, Wilson argues:

Wilson: It's part of his process. That ball saves lives.

  • Sir Monksalot
  • Ashes to Ashes had Gene's Audi Quattro. It even got its own He's Back moment in season 3 opening and the scene when it was destroyed in the last episode in a hail of gunfire it arguably had more emotional depth than Viv's death in a previous episode.
  • Rex from Victorious is Robbie's ventriloquist dummy. Despite Robbie controlling him, he seems to have a mind of his own, and the other characters, while at first humoring Robbie by pretending he was a real person, eventually start believing it themselves. If Rex says or does something rude, they get mad at him and not Robbie. And the reactions they all give when he is sucked into the Turblow Jet were as if one of their closest friends was being maimed.
  • On Fist of Fun "Lifestyle Expert" Peter's only friend was a small green toy called Donny Oddlegs. Unfortunately after Peter accidently ate the remains of Rich's father, Donny ended up in a bin and on fire.
  • Sherlock's skull. Case in point:

John: Have you talked to the police?
Sherlock: Four people are dead. There isn't time to talk to the police.
John: So why are you talking to me!?
Sherlock: Mrs. Hudson took my skull.
John: ...So I'm supposed to be filling in for your skull?
Sherlock: Relax, you're doing fine.

  • In Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Jonny has an Action Man that he named Corinthian (and later named his son after it). It is later destroyed in a fire.
    • Also, Janet has a mannequin named Jonny 2, which she has dressed exactly like Jonny. This is only featured in one episode, in which she uses it as a source of comfort when she's in labour.
  • An unsettling number of grieving pet-lovers on American Stuffers commence petting and fussing over their preserved pets when they collect them from the taxidermists'. Granted, this trope is the whole point of that side of the business.
  • Parks and Recreation: DJ Roomba, Tom's combination of an mp3 player and a Roomba. At one point it's destroyed when Jerry steps on it causing Tom to expel grief stating that DJ Roomba was like a son to him.
  • Pixelface: In "Out of Sight", a glitch in the system renders Claireparker unable to be detected by the rest of the occupants of the console. Starting to crack up, she begins talking to the rubber duck she picked up in the last session of her game.
  • In the first Halloween episode of The Office, Michael jokingly pretends to start taking advice from his fake second head on who should be fired. Dwight starts arguing with the fake head because it is suggesting maybe Dwight should be let go.


Music

  • Neil Diamond's "I Am...I Said" has in its chorus the line And no one heard at all / Not even the chair. While this is usually dismissed as being just an incredibly Painful Rhyme, Diamond himself has stated that the song was written at a time when he was in a hotel room feeling incredibly lonely, to the point where he really did regard said chair as his sole companion.
  • Yelle's "Best Friend" in the song "Mon meilleur ami". Her vibrator.


Pro Wrestling

  • In the Japanese professional wrestling promotion Dramatic Dream Team (DDT), several inanimate objects have held the promotion's "Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship" (a joke title defended any time at any place during any match against anyone or anything, in a parody of WWE's retired Hardcore Title and its infamous "24/7 Rule"). Several of these inanimate "performers" include Kitty-Chan (a Hello Kitty plushie), a wooden baseball bat, and—most memorably—Ladder. All of these "wrestlers" were treated by actual wrestlers and DDT performers/crew as if they were any other human competitor.
    • In fact, not one, not two, but three different Ladders have held the belt. And the baseball bat lost the title by a "KO" decision after being broken in half.
    • Note that the WWE's Hardcore Title received this treatment at least once itself—one of the most prominent members of the Hardcore division was Al Snow, a Cloudcuckoolander who carried around a mannequin head and treated it as if it was alive, and, in Al's mind at least, Head once held the Hardcore Title after she turned on Al.
    • Perhaps the ultimate version came with Internet wrestling parody Brawlers on a Budget, where the You Gotta Be Kidding I Ain't Doing That Are You Out Of Your Fricking Mind title belt won itself on three separate occasions. On one occasion winning it from another title belt.
      • Wouldn't that have been a Head Heel Turn?
      • If we're bringing up e-Wrestling in any form, Premier WC deserves a mention. The first tag team champions were a 6'8" powerhouse and his faithful colleague and tag partner, a common wrench known as Wrenchie (who could pull off a mean 630 Phoenix Splash if given the right push).
  • Of course, the WWF of the 90's and early 2000's loved this trope, too. Several wrestlers utilized Companion Cubes, such as Mankind (Socko!), Al Snow (Head!), and Perry Saturn (uh... mop with a wig!).
    • Steve Austin's watch, which, I guess, was broken because it was always the same time.
  • Let's not forget Chavo and Pepe!
  • Rick Stenier often talked and listened to his own hand for awhile. If I remember correctly, he also had a bulldog that he talked to as well.


Puppet Shows/Ventriloquist Acts

  • The entire premise behind ventriloquist acts.
  • Jeff Dunham frequently lampshades it during his routines. In "Arguing With Myself", he relates a story of taking his "helpers" through airport security:

"He could've swabbed Peanut on the head, on the foot... no. In front of God and everybody, he swabs his butt, just like that! I know it's only a puppet, but... I work with the guy! There's a relationship there!"

  • Zoe of Sesame Street has a pet rock named Rocco, which she treats as alive. It is often scorned by Elmo, though he sometimes goes along with the charade just to get it over with.
    • Big Bird had his teddy bear, Radar (a Shout-Out to the Mash character).
    • Ernie had his rubber duckie.
  • Amy, The Dancing Brick in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. In theory, not totally dissimilar from Gonzo's usual acts (Yollanda, The Dancing Cheese, for example), except that "she's" not a Muppet brick; she's just a brick.
  • In Muppet Treasure Island, Squire Trelawney (Fozzy Bear) has an imaginary friend who lives inside his finger.

"Your finger hired the crew?"
"No, that's silly: The man who LIVES inside my finger hired the crew."

    • Not to mention Dead Tom.


Tabletop Games

  • The Adeptus Mechanicus "Machine Cult" of Warhammer 40,000 treat all machines as if they contain sentient "machine spirits". Interestingly, actual artificial intelligences are considered anathema by the Cult Mechanicus, as it's believed that "thinking machines" nearly destroyed humanity at one point.
    • Though, it is notable that Titans, The Giant Mecha of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe, are Semi-sentient, with each having its own mind. On one occasion, the mind of a Titan commander is also resident inside the machine, after he dies while still linked up to it.
    • It should also be noted that Machine Spirits seem to be real, particularly in more advanced machines; Land Raider tanks in particular have a reputation for continuing fighting long after their crew has been killed. Either the vehicles genuinely are possessed, quite possible in the demon and god filled setting, or the Techpriests are building AIs into their machines without realising it, since many machines are made by creating exact copies of ancient designs that nobody really understands anymore.
      • Some 40k media state that instead of AIs the Adeptus uses the brains of large, predatory animals as organic computers, which explains why a tank can go "feral".
    • The closest things to being "cute" in a non-ugly way in that world are the drones the Tau use.
  • In GURPS handbooks, the example given for Delusion is "all purple things are alive." How big the Delusion is (how many points it's worth) depends not on the nature of the Delusion, but on how much it affects your character's behavior. In practical terms, this Delusion could range from saying hello to purple objects and patting them (Quirk or Minor Delusion) all the way up to attacking purple things on sight (Major Delusion) and refusing to talk until all of them are taken from the room.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has a feat named Familiar Item. The Item actually can be alive and have personality and ego only for the owner... and just because the owner likes it so much.
    • The Prestige Class Kensai forms a bond with a specific weapon strong enough to imbue it with magical powers. There are also ceremonies that most any character can undergo to magically/spiritually bond with the weapon of their choice. Not to mention Intelligent Items, which, being sentient, can actually form friendships with characters.
    • Occasionally subverted in that the owners find the intelligent items so annoying, given that they do not need to sleep, eat or take breath to continue talking, that they tend to be found in unfortunate places like sewers or active volcanoes.
  • Promethean: The Created has a power that allows the Promethean to create an intelligence in any inanimate object. It's mentioned that the intelligence can survive indefinitely as long as the Promethean keeps funneling a single point of Pyros into it, and that Prometheans will sometimes do this so that they don't have to be alone. Only rarely does any of their kind deride this. (In situations where loneliness isn't a concern, Prometheans sometimes use the power to create subtle spies.)


Theater

  • Several characters in Sunday in The Park With George are played by cardboard cutouts. Most seem to be products of George's imagination, though other characters seem to interact with them. In particular, one of a pair of soldiers:

Celeste #1: He's very quiet.
Soldier: Yes. Actually he is. He lost his hearing during combat exercises.
Celeste #1: What a shame.
Soldier: He can't speak either.
Celeste #2: Oh. How dreadful.
Soldier: We have become very close, though.
Celeste #1: So I see.

  • Paul Hindemith's opera Cardillac is about a goldsmith who treats his creations like his own children: he sings to them, swears to protect them—and murders his customers to regain them. Indeed, he treasures his handiwork more than his life-and-blood daughter: his dying glance falls not on his heartbroken daughter, but on the beautiful gold chain hanging on her neck.
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: "These are my friends, see how they glisten..."
  • The famous scene in which Hamlet picks up a skull and laments about the friend it used to belong to ("Alas poor Yorick...") can border on this trope, depending on the performance.
    • As written, it does not fall under the trope. Hamlet is talking to Horatio, not the skull. This monologue is frequently taken out of context and turned into a soliloquy that is performed on its own. Since the soliloquy version usually does not have Horatio present, it comes off as Hamlet talking to the skull, which is a borderline invocation of the trope.


Toys

  • The Pet Rock, and Chia Pets.
  • The Ball Jointed Dolls fandom.
  • The RealDoll.
    • A man in England took the Hans Bellmer route with his RealDolls and actually gave them fully fleshed-out personalities, occupations, and histories. A photo of one such doll named "Rebecca" by Bay Area photographer Elena Dorfman was featured in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
      • Since RealDoll's invention in the early 90's, this obsession has been more common than you'd think. There have been full webrings dedicated to the fictionalized characters the owners have written for their dolls, with extensive bios, journals of their lives, and galleries featuring the dolls in a variety of fashions.
  • This custom made figure.
  • Furbies - Designed to emulate a plush pet with a personality, they were in fact popular enough to warrant a revival after disappearing from the market. And though they've never threatened to stab anyone (AFAIK) others find them horrifically repulsive, even to the point of reacting to them with violence. Like this.
  • Let's face it- most toys in general, even if they're not in the shape of a living creature. Dolls and stuffed animals especially.


Video Games

  • The Trope Namer, the Weighted Companion Cube from Portal; while the player doesn't treat the Cube as a real person, GLaDOS and the unseen previous escapee certainly do. Which makes the cruelty of GLaDOS forcing you to "euthanize" it all the more bizarre, doubly so when she later guilt-trips you over it during the final battle.
    • In the commentary, the developers explain that, by making GLaDOS talk about the cube as if it were alive, players went from abandoning the cube and trying to solve the puzzles without it to always keeping it by their side. One of the developers has stated that this was based on a declassified CIA document which stated that people in isolation would bond with inanimate objects.
    • In the "Lab Rat" tie-in comic to the sequel, the Cube serves as the schizophrenic Doug Rattmann's spiritual advisor of sorts, giving him advice and moral support.
    • The cube makes a couple of reappearances in Portal 2 itself, first in the early test chambers, where GLaDOS taunts you by fizzling it, then reveals that she has "entire warehouses full of them", and then fizzles it yet again when you try to smuggle it out of the test chamber, which you would never think to do if she weren't giving you hints about it. Oh, and she again claims that it's sentient. Yank the Dog's Chain indeed. And lastly, at the very end, she gives you back the original Cube, charred from its trip to the incinerator but otherwise apparently intact. Likewise, the Cube has several less noticeable cameos, including the occasional cube flying through pipes and one falling into the incinerator after GLaDOS's reactivation. You can't save it.
      • If left to its own devices in the second game, the cube actually starts to "sing" to Chell, putting weight behind the sentient theory (developers said it's because all of Aperture is glad to have Chell back)
  • In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, in the Laboratory Room (Door 8), examining the testing dummy enough times will result in Junpei feeling sorry for it, and giving it the name 'Science Boy'.
    • Similar to the Portal example, to solve the room you have to burn the mannequin. Examining it again before letting Clover out of the room (which is pouring with smoke from the burning dummy) will result in Junpei caring more about Science Boy.
      • And upon leaving, you have to enure another of Junpei's puns:

Junpei: (So long, mannequin... You may not have been a real man, but I always thought of you as kin...)

  • The L-Block from Tetris won the November 2007 GameFAQs character battle.
    • And the day after its victory, the site's daily poll was a "bonus" battle between the L-Block, the Companion Cube, the Paddle from Pong, and the [?] block from Super Mario Bros. Question Mark Block won.
    • For the 2008 contest, the Weighted Companion Cube itself is an entrant in the main battle, along with L-Block aiming to retain its title. There was a rally for the Surveillance Camera from Shadow Moses heliport in Metal Gear Solid, but it didn't get enough nominations.
  • Mr. Bear, Penny's teddy bear, from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Since Penny is utterly, utterly Ax Crazy, Mr. Bear comes off as rather... sinister in the process.

Penny: Penny likes you... but Mr. Bear HATES YOU!

  • The 2007 Crimbo season of Kingdom of Loathing had the Bulky Buddy Box as a prize for fighting the Crimborg Elves—a reference to the Weighted Companion Cube.
    • Earlier Crimbo seasons offered the Pet Rock and the (non)functionally identical Toothsome Rock.
      • The Sombrero and Bloodfaced Volleyball as well, though they do do things...somehow. (though at least Sombrero is partially justified by being combined with a chicken's ghost.)
        • The Blood-Faced Volleyball is a direct Shout-Out to Cast Away. Though the game will reject any attempt to name your volleyball companion any form of "Wilson".
      • The various incarnations of Teddy Bears may qualify for this, since they don't actually do anything except block hits and get the stuffing knocked out of them. And you can name them endearing names.
  • Sasha, the Heavy Weapons Guy's minigun in Team Fortress 2, as seen in the Meet The Heavy video. The ingame taunts involve him hugging the gun saying things like "Kiss me!" and "You did well!". There is also a similar unlockable gun, Natasha. It is heavily implied that the Heavy is having an affair with this gun. Seriously.
    • The Sandvich, which comes from the same update as Natasha, appears to be getting the same attention as well, with lines such as; "What's that, Sandvich? KILL THEM ALL!? GOOD IDEA!" It even got its own video.
    • Meta-example and not to the same degree, but frequent Engineer players will often grow attached to buildings that manage to survive multiple player deaths.
    • It is also revealed that the Heads in meet the Soldier are the Soldier's companion cubes.
    • One Valve-made comic has a photo of the Heavy sleeping in his forest cabin, with Sasha layng next to him on a smaller bed. The Scout lampshades this odd situation.

Scout: That's your gun there?
Heavy: Yes.
Scout: In a tiny bed. Beside your bed.
Heavy: Yes.
Scout: That's pretty embarrassin'.
Heavy: I know. I must buy Sasha bigger bed.

--

  • Trilo from case 3 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All is a ventriloquist's dummy who seems to have a mind of his own. He may have been derived from the Batman character The Ventriloquist, as he also abuses his handler.
    • The Ace Attorney series also has "Charley", a potted plant in the main character's office. It's one of the few characters from the original series to show up in the fourth game.
      • "Charley" could also be a reference to "Chuck the plant," from Maniac Mansion, which became a running in-joke and appears in many adventure games afterwards, such as Day of the Tentacle and Enclosure.
  • This shows up in Devil May Cry fanfiction with the Devil Arms, but since those bear the sentient souls of the defeated demon in question, it's something of a Justified Trope. More straightforwardly, in an early scene of the fourth game, Nero and Kyrie talk about Nero's "Red Queen" sword as if discussing a female.
    • Two of the Devil Arms, Agni and Rudra, can even talk, although Dante would only take them with him if they kept silent. They start laughing during one of Dante's flashier combos with them, forcing Dante to yell "SILENCE!" as a reminder of their agreement.
    • In the first game, Alastor and Ifrit also speak to Dante (via text, no words are heard on the player's end)... before respectively impaling him and trying to toast him alive. If Viewtiful Joe is any indication, recurring character Blade Master Alastor is the spirit of the same blade Dante obtained in DMC1.
  • The cardboard box from Metal Gear Solid is referred to repeatedly as if it were a person.
    • "Take care of your cardboard box, and it'll take care of you."
    • In the world record attempt on the largest number of video game cosplayers in one area, at London Expo 2008, the Box (brought along by a Metal Gear cosplay group) was counted by the Guiness team as a character.
      • I think it's because cosplaying cardboard box is quite popular on conventions. Also people tend to bring along Companion Cubes with 'Portal' music inside or they even wear one on head !!
    • In the fourth game hiding in the box increases the rate at which Snake's psyche meter refills, implying that he finds it comforting to be in there. The trophy for it in Super Smash Bros. Brawl even notes that Solid and Liquid Snake have "a deep affection for cardboard".
  • Boo, the Miniature Giant Space Hamster of Baldur's Gate fame, served as a biological version of this trope for the brain-addled Minsc. Although it's also entirely possible Minsc was right. It has been implied by what may count as Word of God that Boo was bought from Elminster himself.
    • It's also worth noting that canonically, Giant Space Hamsters do exist in the Forgotten Realms Settings at that point.
  • The Modron toy in Planescape: Torment. Initially you just start playing with it, but then you can talk to it, much to Morte's irritation. It gets better from there, to the point where Morte's final irritation is actually worth a voiced line. Also makes your character alignment more Chaotic.
  • Some Angband players treat slime molds as pets rather than as food items.
    • Likewise some nethack players and the custom-named ---Bane items, or random artifact items of popular use.
  • Sweet Tooth's motivation for entering the first Twisted Metal tournament was to find his lost best friend, Crazy Harold the Wacky Lunch Sack. Yes, it's just a paper bag.
    • Somewhat lampshaded by Calypso, even. The sheer ridiculousness of the wish completely blows his mind.
  • Fallout:
    • Harold the Ghoul has the plant atop his head, Bob.
    • Vault 77, Inhabited by one man and hundreds of puppets. Hilarity Ensues.
    • Fallout: New Vegas has Davison and his long-dead bull's skull called "Antler".
    • New Vegas also gives us ED-E for the player. It's a floating robot ball that doesn't talk or have personal problems to solve like the other companions. But it has a fun nickname, plays a jingle to alert you to enemy presence, increases your detection range, has a zappy laser weapon that sets enemies on fire, and is generally adorable to watch just floating around. If you complete ED-E's sidequest, his slide in the ending notes that it stays with the Courier as a loyal companion.
  • Cute little boy Carl Clover from BlazBlue has an automaton named Nirvana that he talks to and treats like his older sister, Ada. It's animate, and is implied to be sapient... but isn't actually capable of talking. He acts like it is, anyway. Various characters can't decide if Carl's just crazy. Well, he is probably crazy, but, as it turns out, the automaton IS his sister. His father finally alluded to killing Carl's sister and using her soul to power the automaton.
  • The enchanted pyrite parrot in Tales of Monkey Island is getting this treatment.
  • Marky Dubois's (of Backyard Sports) frog, whose name is Frog. Also, Luanne's teddy bear.
  • Aida, of Unreal II the Awakening fame, has a magnum pistol which she calls Grace. She's even more emotionally attached to the ammunition, judging by how few bullets the game gives you for the damn thing.
  • Catherine, a Magical Computer in a briefcase, is treated this way by the protagonist of Flower, Sun, and Rain, and it never leaves his side if he can help it. Although given the setting's peculiarities, it's anyone's guess whether or not it's actually sentient.
  • League of Legends: Have you seen my bear, Tibbers?
    • Come on, that thing is a 10 foot tall flaming demon bear for christ's sake!
    • Oriana's ball is the closest thing to a companion cube on Runeterra.
    • Another example is Tristy.
  • In the second BioShock (series) you can get the Handyman Gene Tonic, which lets you spend EVE to repair friendly bots and turrets. In true mechanic fashion, it also gives names to the bots you've hacked to fight alongside you. It kind of gives you an incentive to keep those bots active given that it's you versus a city full of Splicers.
  • Bionic Commando 2009. Man... Okay, so, pretty much, his arm is his wife. Good lord, what else is there to say? Near the end of the game, it is revealed that Spencer's missing wife was killed and her brain was integrated into his one companion for the whole game, his bionic arm. He is in severe denial after this reveal, probably because he sees it as ridiculous as it is. The twist was severely criticized by multiple reviewers, and thus is a perfect example of handling a Companion Cube poorly.
  • In Silent Scope EX, one of the bosses is piloting a helicopter with a human-sized stuffed bear in the gunner's seat (named Teddy). The game gives you an obvious weak spot, the boss's head. However if you get a headshot on the bear instead, which you have 3 second window of opportunity in the beginning and the bear's head is a bigger target than the boss's, the boss instantly dies. Also instead of the shot-through-the-skull image, the image is of the bear's head.
  • Left 4 Dead 2, this is Ellis's relationship with Jimmy Gibbs Junior's stock car.
  • Borderlands has Tannis becoming attached to her tape recorder as she descends further into madness.
  • Dragon Age's 'feast day' DLCs adds special gifts to give to your companions, more specifically 'special gifts' and pranks. Shale's special gift is a pet rock called "Herbert". The insulting one? An uncrushable pigeon.
    • Bianca of Dragon Age II is an even more apparent instance of this trope. Varric actually holds conversations with Bianca. Bianca is a crossbow, by the way.
  • Zaeed flat out loves "Jessie".
  • The Touhou character Alice Margatroid and her army of dolls. She is even attempting to make them sentient, though hasn't had much success so far.
    • Though fandom sometimes makes her Shanghai doll and less often Hourai doll somewhat sentient. And then there's Medicine Melancholy, a sentient doll youkai. She and Alice have yet to meet in canon, but fanon has them meet a lot.
  • The Male Undead Merchant in Dark Souls has a wooden basket named Yulia, which he constantly pets and talks to.

Web Comics

"Stones are an adventurer's best friend."

  • Butch R. Mann's knife as evidenced by this episode of Chopping Block.
  • Fluffy, Roger's pet rock (not the sort described below, but a rather large rock specimen from a museum) in CRFH!!! The weird part is that while Fluffy is never shown to move, Roger claims he followed him home, and Mike later complains that Fluffy had tried humping his leg. Occasionally, Roger claims that Fluffy wants a hump massage, and describes violence as 'erosive behavior'.
  • Gordon Frohman of Concerned gets a little too attached to the gravity gun, which he calls "the claw"
  • Cwen's Quest Introduced the companion cubes more sinister cousins the Companion Pyramid and the Nemesis Cube [dead link] .
  • Luna, Colin's life companion in Dragon Tails.
  • Poodle the Beating Stick, weapon of convenience wielded by Nanashi in Earthsong.
  • So far, the taxidermied corpse of Jade Harley's grandfather fits this trope in Homestuck. Lil' Cal also fits to some extent, although it now appears that Dave's bro was just moving him around all the time.
    • Homestuck also gives us the "scalemates": stuffed animals that Terezi treats as alive. Of course, she then proceeds to pass judgement on them, and her home is littered with their "corpses."
  • Man-Man featured a log as a detective on TV show "Log And Order". It was a loose cannon whose implacable manner would break the most uncooperative suspects.
  • This is how Aiden treats all cars in Misfile, whether he is right to do so is left unclear. Emily seems to have absorbed some of those qualities too judging by a recent strip.
  • Lucile the Gnarled Staff of Ass Whoop and (to a lesser extent) Escape Dummy, from A Modest Destiny.
    • And after Hubert asks for his cloak back from Hechter, Hechter mourns the loss of "Steve", who was "the best pet cloak I've ever had".
  • Amed, The Hero's pet rock from My Middle Name's Adventure, who seems to move about and do amazing things [dead link] when his owner is not looking.
  • Banjo the Clown, Elan's beloved Handpuppet "God" from Order of the Stick.
  • A storyline in Sequential Art features the Buddy Brick, a Companion Cube Expy... that apparently contains electronics that force people into having this sort of reaction to it, to the point of near-Instant Sedation.
  • Thadius, Buwaro's pet rock from Slightly Damned.
  • Sluggy Freelance: Torg has been known to start referring to things like a glow necklace and a serving tray as if they were persons, though those occasions did not last long. And we musn't forget Bert's crotch. Or perhaps it more that we can't no matter how much we'd like to.
    • How could you forget Spuddy Buddy? Aylee would be so upset.
    • Zombie Head on a stick might be a subervison, Torg loves it like a pet and others use it as an object, but it is actually alive (just not cable of complex thought or free will unless fed).
  • Plant from Station V3 is a character in his own - he comments on stuff, people know he's there and he has his own thought bubbles. But he's just a potted plant. Besides getting watered, cynically thinking about things (and talking whenever it would creep members of station v3 out), he's just a part of the scenery.
  • And let's not forget the mysterious Walkyverse psuseudocharacter known only as the refrigerator skull.
  • The eponymous Moo from The Wisdom Of Moo is a cow hand puppet which character Emm speaks through. The human characters understand what's going on... but the toys treat Moo as if he's his own character, even when Emm is clearly visible—or even actively brought to their attention.
  • In this strip of Loserz, Jodie does this with two dolls representing her friends who have been absent. It's somewhat disturbing...
  • From Tales From the Pit:

Mark: (To copier) So we meet again, my nemesis. Today I shall make copies.
Copier: (Thought Bubble) Not only am I out of toner. My toner register is broken as well. Bwah, ha, ha!


Web Original

  • JesuOtaku and her subtitles. Until they have a falling out about their use in the Now and Then, Here and There review.
  • There are a lot of examples in Lonelygirl15, most notably the purple monkey puppet, P. Monkey.
  • Subverted in the Whateley Universe, where Generator (Jade Sinclair) has a toy rabbit, a stuffed toy lion, and what looks like a Hello Kitty compact. But Jade's superpower is the ability to cast a psychokinetic copy of herself into objects, so they really are temporarily alive, and intelligent, and often very dangerous.
  • Perfect Jones, the sanest double Darkwell in Star Harbor Nights, confides in her stuffed bunny Mr. Buttons, occasionally taking him on patrol. He also doubles as her Berserk Button.
  • Survival of the Fittest has this with Hannah Rose and her "magic hat". Alice Jones and her stuffed rabbit (complete with a Shout-Out to Paranoia Agent) could have been counted as a borderline example, too, until she discarded it in favour of Guy Rapide's head.
    • Back in v1, we also had Cody Jenson and Loretta, a motorcycle.
  • In Overthegun's Let's Play of Half Life 2, he befriends a circular blade named "Sharpy" during the Ravenholm section. He carries it around with the gravity gun for at least half an hour, eschewing (the faster, easier) explosive barrels littered around, in favour of bisecting every zombie individually. He even has a brief panic attack when he thinks he's lost Sharpy.

Sharpy's just an all-round really cool fella. You can either shoot him, like that... or stuff'll jump at you, and he'll absorb a hit for ya. How great of a guy is he, really? These fuckin' washing machines wish I'd carry them around for three loads in a row.

  • In Baman Piderman, Baman and Piderman's friends Pumpkin and Tuba... except they appear to actually be alive and at least as intelligent and Baman and Piderman themselves.
  • Ramirez the Gnome in Episode 6 of Profound Moments in Left 4 Dead 2.
  • Actor and blogger Wil Wheaton frequently posts conversations with iTunes on his Twitter feed
  • Several inanimate objects from Homestar Runner are treated as characters, like The Stick. Some of them, like Strong Bad's computers, seem to actually have minds of their own!
    • Paper actually "talks" to Strong Bad. Once, it admitted that it liked hushpuppies.
    • This was also parodied in the Strong Bad Email "Original", in which Strong Bad tells the tale of "Original Bubs", who supposedly left the series on unfriendly terms and whose absence was excused through a series of increasingly ridiculous tricks and guest stars, the most popular of which was "Onion Bubs" (just an onion with Bubs' face drawn on it).
    • Hell, even the sound made by Strong Bad's chair when he gets up has been turned into a character. Two characters, actually (The Geddup Noise and "his cousin, Chairscoot").
    • A list can be found here.
  • Hubert Cumberdale from Salad Fingers. In fact, it's used an awful lot to emphasize just how messed up Salad Fingers really is.
  • Subverted in Red vs. Blue since, though characters interact with Andy the Bomb, who is an actual bomb, he is given a voice (and quite a nasty personality).
  • Happy Tree Friends: In "Sucker for Love", Nutty's obsession with a heart-shaped box of chocolates on display in a candy store window causes him to imagine himself marrying the box, making it breakfast, riding with it in an ambulance as it breaks water during its pregnancy (implied by the bulge in its center), and having three small boxes of chocolates as his children. Then he finds the box cheated on him, discovering the affair after seeing Lumpy (who's now a milkman) leaving their house with chocolate smeared on his lips. A quick scene shifts to Nutty in jail, where it's implied he killed Lumpy out of jealousy. When he walks in the visiting area, he meets the box of chocolates (now sporting a scarf and pair of glasses) with a dent on its side (which he may have caused after beating it in his rage from its affair with Lumpy), and expresses to it his regret for treating it. After his release from prison, they both live happily together until their old age, when the elderly box of chocolates dies by falling over and spilling its contents. Before returning to reality, the elderly Nutty stands in the rain, mourning over the box of chocolates' grave.
  • One Film Cow short features John McCain and his Vegetable Friends. Also has nice doses of Lyrical Dissonance, Nightmare Fuel and Let's Meet the Meat if the title didn't seem creepy enough.
  • Ol' Lynchy in Comic Fury Werewolf is this. The villagers are very affectionate of it, and there were riots when it was replaced with a typical lynching platform in Game 11. It was brought back as of Game 12
  • A strange justification in the second episode of "Perverts On The Internet:" After raiding large amounts of Mike Gibbons' booze, Kunt winds up believing that a Girl's World doll is possessed by the spirit of his dead ex-girlfriend.


Western Animation

  • In an incredibly literal case of this trope, the Eliacube in Wakfu is this for Nox, who is heartbroken and obssessive enough to hear it talk back. In the end, this relationship turns ugly.
    • Though at this point its rather ambiguous whether the cube spoke to Nox, or whether he was just that insane. It's possible that Quilby whose was actually inside the cube was speaking to Nox.
  • Thirty-Thirty's BFG Sarah Jane, on Bravestarr.
  • The Simpsons once had Mr. Burns give an employee of the month award to... an inanimate carbon rod. Later in the same episode, a second inanimate carbon rod is hailed as the one who saved a space mission from disaster, and said rod ends up on the cover of Time, with the title "In Rod We Trust!" Homer is not happy.
    • In a Continuity Nod, a much later glimpse at the nuclear plant employee chart gives us just enough time to see that Homer is right at the bottom... and the rod is his immediate superior.
    • Let's not forget Bobo Sheriff Lobo. Okay, okay, Bobo.
  • Mr. Hat and Mr. Twig on South Park. At least, Mr. Garrison treats them as real characters. To the point of rushing Mr. Twig to the hospital and accusing Mr. Hat of trying to kill him. It doesn't make things much clearer when Mr. Hat, despite being an inanimate doll who never moves onscreen at all, manages to drive a truck into the side of the jail to break Mr. Garrison out.
    • "How the hell did he reach the pedals?!?!?"
    • Mr. Hat also manages to vanish from Mr. Garrison's hand when Garrison refuses to take him to a Klan meeting. Mr. Hat is then seen sitting on the ground of the meeting later in the episode, though he doesn't do anything.
    • Somewhat subverted by a single instance of seeing him move by himself; his eyes turn in "Summer Sucks."
      • If you pay attention to Mr. Hat, the pupils in his eyes do change position fairly frequently.
    • Mr. Hat also managed to beat up Mr. Mackey whilst removed from Mr. Garrison's hand in "Worldwide Recorder Concert". Not bad for a hand puppet.
    • Mr. Hat is also a boss in the South Park video game, seen piloting a Giant Robot.
      • Mr. Hat is a two-timing whore.
  • Johnny Two-By-Four's best buddy Plank in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, a wooden board with painted eyes and a smile.
    • Kevin's treatment of his bike is sometimes shown as this. The Movie takes it to the point of being a Cargo Ship, with him repeatedly showing more concern for it than his sort-of-girlfriend Nazz.
  • Rupert, Stewie's teddy bear, from Family Guy. Stewie evidently views him as... a big, muscular thong-clad man with a teddy bear head.
    • Although only shown for a few seconds in a flashback vignette, Chris' Christmas present from Brian, namely a long-dead cat, buzzing insects and all. "I'm gonna call you Sticky Head. I love you Sticky Head."
    • "More tea, Mr. Bike?"
  • In the The Venture Brothers episode "The Revenge Society", the villain Revenge AKA Phantom Limb is completely insane, and the rest of his organization consists of various inanimate objects that he believes are people: Lady Nightshade, a woman's shoe, Chuck, a toaster, and a coffee mug named Wisdom, who he believes is a traitor and executes.
    • There is a spark of sanity to his assumption as the Sovereign is a shapeshifter who has shown the ability to impersonate inanimate objects much smaller than himself (a single cigarette to be exact). He apologizes to the mug's broken shards when he later confronts Sovereign and realizes his mistake.
  • Cynthia, Angelica's tattered fashion doll, from Rugrats.
  • In Phineas and Ferb Dr. Doofenshmirtz's only childhood friend was a balloon with a face drawn onto it, which he talks to and calls "Balloony." In a later episode, he gets another one he names "Balloony 2."
    • In "Meapless In Seattle", Baloony returns. Apparently, he really is sentient and cares for Doofenshmirtz. Or maybe it's just his super-suit.
    • In "No More Bunny Business", Doofenshmirtz is upset when Perry the Platypus doesn't show up on schedule, and creates a new nemesis by putting a hat on a potted plant, which he dubs "Planty the Potted Plant". It defeats him.
  • One of Darkwing Duck's Rogues Gallery, Quackerjack, had Mr. Banana Brain, a doll which he treated as completely real, despite speaking the doll's side of the conversation also.
    • This reached a particularly strange point in the episode The Haunting of Mr. Banana Brain in which Mr. BB becomes possessed by a demonic spirit. Even though the doll was actually moving and talking on its own for once, Quackerjack never seemed to notice much difference besides commenting on how Banana Brain's voice was deeper than usual.
    • Another villain, Megavolt, is either insane or an electrical empath (both have been implied). He considers all electrical devices to be sentient beings, and many of his crimes revolve around "rescuing" or "freeing" his electrical brethren. He also gets rather upset when he goes through all the effort of setting them free and they just sit there doing nothing.

Megavolt: (to light bulbs) Run away! Runawayrunaway! Oh no, they can't move! They've been weakened by the long servitude!

  • Slightly weird preschool TV example: Little Bear has a human friend named Emily, who in turn has a doll named Lucy, which she treats as sentient. Her intelligent talking bear friend and his likewise chatty forest buddies think talking to a doll is hilarious.
  • Phillip, Cosmo's (female) nickel in The Fairly OddParents.
    • Also, Trixie is paired with a rock for a class project when her and Timmy are the only living beings in the room without partners.
    • Recurring villain Dark Laser (a parody of Darth Vader) has Flipsie, the flipping toy dog. Every single episode he's in, he spends at least one scene talking to Flipsie, and actually seems to take advice from him. In a recent episode, Foop told him to seek help - and since Foop himself isn't exactly the poster boy for sanity...
  • A spool of thread, which was said to be Pinky's sister in Pinky and The Brain.
    • In another episode, Pinky's actor is "married" to a sock puppet. When Brain's actor's wife kicks him out, Pinky said that his "wife" did the same... "or maybe she just fell behind the dryer."
  • A variant in the crime "duo" of Scarface (a ventriloquist's dummy) and Arnold "The Ventriloquist" Wesker in Batman: The Animated Series. Wesker suffers from multiple-personality disorder, but Scarface comes up with all the evil schemes, and ruthlessly bullies his alter ego (whom he calls "Dummy", just to hammer home the point of who is really in charge). Even the other members of the gang fear and respect Scarface.
    • When the Scarface doll is destroyed, Wesker uses a sockpuppet that he called Socko in his therapy. Socko is a lot nicer.
    • In Justice League, there's a quick, creepy visual gag that implies giving the puppet a lobotomy with heat vision is all it takes to cure Wesker.
  • One episode of Gargoyles features an Unknown Rival of Goliath's who wanted revenge. He was a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of John Travolta, and talked to his bazooka, naming it "Mr. Kotter". He spends the entire episode talking about how Goliath is going to "get creamed". The bazooka? Shot pies.
    • Actually it was scripted as "Mr. Carter," but because of the character's accent, it sounded identical to "Kotter."
    • Over the course of the episode, the character flashes back to other episodes when Goliath inadvertently cost him a string of jobs, and he appears at least once more as a Quarryman (his work with Mr. Carter evidently made him feel better at the time but in the long run didn't help his grudge), but he doesn't seem to have bonded with his hammer the way he did Mr. Carter, and he does a Heel Face Turn after Goliath saves his life. He eventually decides to go to Japan, where he thinks he can get away from Gargoyles.
      • He can't.
  • Several times in SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • Patrick enters a rock in the snail race. Somehow, "Rocky" wins.
    • SpongeBob's "Bubble Buddy", though he turns out to be animate after all.
      • Don't forget Nickel Buddy "I'll never spend you"!
      • Funny Muffler
      • Jerky Pal
      • Boo-boo keys
      • Snake Eyes
      • "We love you!!!!"
      • ...POP THE BUBBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • Also Spat from "All That Glitters", thought it also seems to be sentient.
    • In the episode "I Had an Accident", SpongeBob shuts himself in his house with his three "new friends" Penny (a copper one-cent piece), Chip (a potato chip), and Used Napkin (take a wild guess). He acts as though they can speak, and carries on one-sided conversations. ("I could do without your sarcasm, Used Napkin!")
      • Patrick at least also treats them as being real, tearfully commenting on Penny's beautiful singing voice, as well as thanking Chip when he 'showed them the door', an act apparently done by Spongebob tossing it at the door.
  • Stump from The Angry Beavers. Stump is clearly a sentient being. He just never shows any signs of life onscreen.
  • The Tick (animation) once created his own Companion Cube sidekick, Little Wooden Boy.
    • And unfortunately was forced to burn him in order to escape the belly of a whale.
    • There was also Arthur's nemesis Handy, a hand puppet belonging to The Human Ton.
    • In the live action adaptation, The Tick converses and attempts to reason with a clogged toilet.
  • Tire and Feather Duster from Ellen's Acres.
  • Although he's capable of creating other sentient robot minions, Grizzle from Adventures in Care-a-lot prefers the company of Mr. Beaks, a completely inanimate bird made from scrap metal that he treats as a living being.
  • Lampy, Awful Alvin's "sidekick" on Larry-boy: The Animated Series.
  • To an extent, Sokka's boomerang in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
    • But he really does always come back!
      • Except the last time :(
  • In Get Ed, Loogie has a sock puppet named Dr. Pinch who is a good deal saner than the hand that he sits on. The other characters treat him as if he's perfectly normal (Dr. Pinch, not Loogie - they know Loogie's insane). He's also capable of carrying on a full conversation while Loogie is soundly asleep, and will even maintain his voice and personality if one of the other characters picks him up... In fact he was once able to enter a computer simulation when the mind scanner was on his head.
  • Mister Pück is Aelita's doll in Code Lyoko, first introduced as a living elf in her dreams. It is also the basis for her Lyoko Avatar.
    • The teddy bear from the first episode, "TeddyGozilla", might also count... until it is possessed by XANA.
  • Code Monkeys has this with Todd's on again, off again girlfriend, a doll named Tiffany, who in recent episodes comes off as rather abusive.
  • Mr. Buns from Ruby Gloom is a weird sort of cross between this and a Living Toy; when he's on-screen, he seems totally inanimate, and just to be treated as though he's a character by the other characters. But the moment he's off-screen, he seems to be genuinely animate, doing things like stealing buns or, in one case, fencing with Poe.
    • This is highlighted in "Missing Buns", when Misery shocks everyone else by claiming that Mr. Buns is just a stuffed sock and therefore irrelevant to their game of hide-and-seek. By the next morning, she concedes defeat to Mr. Buns and goes to bed.
  • In Moral Orel, Nurse Bendy has a teddy bear family at home she treats as actual family figures, up to making meals and talking broken child-talk with them. This is due to her loneliness and her feeling that men only want her for sex. Later on she is reunited with her real son and chooses to abandon the fake teddy-son for the real thing.
  • Let's not forget Megatron's rubber duck in Beast Wars.
  • In one episode of Total Drama Island, Owen has a very intense emotional bonding experience with a coconut. Later, the other campers vote it off the island. The last scene of the episode shows Mr. Coconut floating out to sea.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Meatwad's best friend is a Blaxploitation hero named Boxy Brown. You figure it out.

Boxy Brown: I'm just a what, bitch?

  • In one episode of The Brak Show, Zorak finds Brak talking to a lobster doll named Hippo ("He's a hell of a guy!") and throws it away because he's just mean. Brak gets a replacement, Dr. Grumbles, who actually can talk, but in something of a subversion, only Zorak and Thundercleese can hear him.
  • Sammy, a dead rat, in Wayside. Miss Mush seems to be able to interact with him with no problem, and he routinely beats her at cards. "How you do that? You dead!"
  • Dexter's Laboratory has a Suck E. Cheese's episode featuring a stuffed Monkey doll that DeeDee believes she could talk to her. Their conversations are surprisingly dark, almost veering into The Shining territory.

DeeDee: What was that, Monkey? (listens intently) Yes, Monkey! I too can see into the future!
Mom: DeeDee! Time to go! Have you seen your brother?
DeeDee: What was that Monkey? (listens intently) Monkey says that Chubby Cheeses took him into the deepest, darkest shadows!

    • Naturally, this is completely accurate.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: Lolly Poopdeck is a recurring minor character on the show who is always seen carrying two buckets. Originally being his ongoing job on the harbor, each new episode has him acting as if his buckets are his best pals. Ironically, he is one of the residents who appears to regard candy wife as an inanimate object when hanging with Knuckles in the episode, "Candy Cassinova": "Hanging out with inanimate objects is ridiculous and embarrasing. Right bucket?"
  • There are times in Danny Phantom when Tucker shares special bonding moments with his PDA, sometimes with the former treating the latter like a lover.

Tucker: If I don't make it, tell my PDA I love her. The cell phone meant nothing to me.

    • Other technology, too.

Tucker (Talking to a security camera in a loving voice): Hello special new friend.

  • Ivan Dobsky from Monkey Dust has his space hopper which he calls Mr Hoppy. It was implied that Mr Hoppy was the force behind some of Ivan's crimes; having said that, the results when the prison staff took Mr Hoppy from Ivan definitely count as Squick and probably count as pure terror: Ivan fashioned a new space hopper out of some dead guards. Needless to say, people weren't laughing at him then
  • Timon and Pumbaa: In one episode, Pumbaa ditches Timon in favor of a meteorite that fell from the sky. It ends up becoming a better friend for Pumbaa (despite being a space rock) and this causes Timon to get jealous and find a new friend. The friendship is only temporary, since Timon and Pumbaa reunite again and the meteor strikes a new relationship with a cheetah.
  • Freakazoid!: Freakazoid once had his own sidekick named Handman in "The Sidekick Chronicles", which happened to be his own hand with eyes drawn on it, and a voice provided by his ventriloquism. What's more, Handman then had an affair with Freakazoid's other hand, who both shared a long, kissing sequence (which was graphic even for a kids show) and married among a wedding made up of the cheering, dressed hands of the guests. Despite losing his sidekick, Freakazoid hopes to gain a daughter... or an upper hand. Unlike his hand couple, however, his feet are in a very rocky relationship.
  • While martial arts training, Johnny Bravo befriended a pebble. It was surprisingly touching.
  • Computer from Courage the Cowardly Dog. While he, if his speaking isn't just Courage's delusion, may be treated as a living character, it's still a computer.
    • I'll go against this. Unless you have ever watched the episode "Mega Muriel the Magnificent", then you should now that the Computer is treated as a living computer; since a lightning storm made him a sentient being, and he took over Muriel's body. Muriel and Eustace even acknowledge his existence.
  • A Jimmy Two-Shoes short had Beezy making friends with a sandwich. Naturally, it doesn't last long.
  • In Transformers Cybertron, Decepticon loner Lugnutz' only true friend is his trusty rifle, Dutch.
  • Rico from The Penguins of Madagascar has an amorous relationship with a doll.
  • Stan from American Dad seems to have a rather intimate relationship with his gun. It "laughs" by shooting.
    • In an episode of American Dad featured Steve dating a girl who had a doll as a companion whom she believed was alive and could talk to her, she sets up a date with the doll and Steve's friend Snot who is not amused, angered by this he tosses the doll on the bed and uses the restroom and the girl seeing the doll with her legs spread apart and him emerging from the bathroom believes that he raped her, she goes as far as taking the doll to a hospital because she believes that it's "pregnant", eventually Steve and Snot write a suicide note and hang the doll from the ceiling fan, but she thinks the doll was "murdered" because it wasn't "her handwriting".
  • Fanboy and Chum Chum has a lot of these:
    • Fanboy went to the school dance with a sentient mop, Moppy.
    • Boog treats the Chimp Chomp arcade game as if it's his girlfriend. He does the same thing with his car, Sandy.
    • Lenny acts similiarly, though to a much lesser extent, with his bike, Bikey.
    • Janitor Poopatine appears to have a personal relationship with his mechanized chair, Brenda.
    • Yo's best friend is a pine cone named Ingrid. She also has a digital cat named Scampers.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: ** "Over a Barrel": Applejack's apple tree Bloomburg gets this treatment. She buys it a private sleeping car in a train and reads it bedtime stories. Spike gets into the act when he bunks with Bloomberg to get away from the girls' night-time chatter, and apologizes in advance to the tree if he starts snoring. (This may be justified if he snores fire, however.)
    • "Party of One": Pinkie Pie thinks her friends don't want to come to her parties anymore and completely flips out. She sets up a pile of rocks ("Rocky"), a sack of flour ("Madame LeFlour"), a bucket of turnips ("Mr. Turnip"), and a piece of lint ("Sir Lints-a-lot") as her new friends, and tries to throw a party with them.
      • Pinkie Pie does their voices so well that she even gets Rainbow Dash to argue with the rocks.
    • In "The Return of Harmony", Rarity is brainwashed by Discord into thinking a boulder is actually a giant diamond. She becomes increasingly obsessed with and protective of it, and starts calling it "Tom".
    • In "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle introduces her cherished childhood toy "Smarty Pants": a raggedy old stuffed pony doll with a notebook and quill. Twilight casts an enchantment spell that makes everypony in town to be attracted to the doll, leading to a large fight between all of them over it. After the spell is lifted, every pony loses interest and leaves the doll behind, except for Big Macintosh who is (for some unexplained reason) still attracted to it and ends up running away with it.
  • Adventure Time Almost all of the residents of Ooo are composed of sentient candy, mountains, teddy bears, etc. However, in the beginning of 'The Jiggler', Finn and Jake are rescuing a 'family' consisting of seemingly random food, although one, a watermelon, is named Stanley. None of them are sentient, and yet they have a house and apparently they get into danger constantly.
  • Spliced: Boosty the jetpack.


Real Life

  • The Pet Rock, a 1970s phenomenon, was based around this idea.
  • As people who have witnessed isolated orphans with stuffed animals (or any object they can personify) or even grown people in some pretty tough circumstances can tell you, the declassified CIA study referred to in the trope namer's entry is pretty much valid.
    • Tough circumstances? Thanks to the Internet, entire social groups have formed around what basically amount to people talking about their pets... or their children. Calvin and Hobbes planted a seed in a lot of people's minds.
  • In 2000, a ficus tree ran against incumbent Rodney P. Frelinghuysen for the 11th district New Jersey house seat... and won the election by a 4:1 ratio before being disqualified. The Ficus campaign was masterminded by Michael Moore for his TV show The Awful Truth.

Campaign ad: Rodney wouldn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, Ficus' ass IS a hole in the ground.

  • A New Scientist article on human interactions with robotics and attempts to bridge the Uncanny Valley notes incidents of US troops in Afghanistan seeking counseling after their bomb disposal robot was destroyed by an I.E.D. Other incidences include a report that an bomb disposal robot had been stolen, in Helmand, only to find the Commonwealth solders had taken advantage of its dexterous remote control arm to take it fishing with them.
    • The internet demands a link!
      • Here is Washington Post article covering human-robot interactions in military, really interesting stuff. Also it covers aforementioned incidents.
  • This is basically why ships and other craft are always referred to as "she" and why men are compelled to paint naked ladies onto warplanes. The practice of personifying ships goes back so far it's very deeply rooted in tradition, and has since spread to other forms of transportation.
    • Figureheads and eyes painted on the front of ships.
  • US Marines are made to memorize an oath that basically personifies their rifle. Presumably so that they remember to take care of the firearm and have it at their side whenever possible.
  • Utada Hikaru owns a plush bear, which she named Kuma Chan. Kuma was issued a staff pass at one of her concerts.
  • It is very common for tabletop RPG players to attribute personality traits to their dice and give them names.
  • In software development, when trying to fix a stubborn bug, it is sometimes considered helpful to discuss the bug with another developer. The practice is considered useful even when the other person is completely unfamiliar with the code, perhaps not even a developer at all. The reasoning is that the act of having to explain it to another person forces you to step back from the problem a bit and challenge some of your assumptions. Lone developers will sometimes resort to discussing the problem with an inanimate object, a practice which has come to be called "talking to the Furby."
  • One university's engineering department has a teddy bear sitting in the dean's office. If a student comes in with an engineering problem that they can't handle, they are first urged to "talk to the bear". Often, after they go over the problem with the bear, they do actually come up with a solution.
  • A number of people name their cars and talk to them. There's even a service to register your car's name and get it a birth certificate.
    • Computers too. Especially, but not exclusively by geeks.
      • This can also apply to electronics like external hard drives and MP3 players or things like bicycles- basically anything that can "exhibit a personality" regarding its performance. Note that naming computers can be really helpful when you have a lot of them hooked up to a network, and making those names somewhat specific to the machine in question helps the users keep track of which one is which.
      • It doesn't help that Windows XP and later (and most Linux, while we're at it) force you to fill in a name for your computer as a part of the installation process. The intention was probably to give the computer a meaningful hostname for private networks (e.g. home LAN), but that's not the way it comes off to even experienced home users.
        • You're also supposed to name iPods in a similar vein. By default their name is "[your name]'s iPod", but you can change it to whatever you want.
      • To say nothing of the action figures, character models, statuettes and transformer figures the owner of the computer keeps around them...
  • In a similar vein, Serge Kahili King in his book Urban Shaman explains that he named his personal computer and speaks to it. "All things have their own spirit. They cooperate better if you can relate to them well."
  • It's not entirely uncommon for musicians to name their instruments, especially adolescents in high school band. Girls almost always give the instrument a male name and boys give them a female name.
    • B.B. King's guitar Lucille may be the most famous example.
    • Willie Nelson's guitar Trigger is at least a close second.
    • Andres Segovia at times ended up with rumors of a woman in his life after booking transit tickets for his guitar—by name.
    • Stevie Ray Vaughan played a Strat which he named "Lenny" after his wife Lenora.
    • The Sisters of Mercy has only two regular members left: Andrew Eldritch and Doktor Avalanche. Doktor runs the online advice column on the Sisters' website. He's also a drum machine.
    • Often professional musicians who play a large instrument (cello, double bass etc.) travelling by plane will book a separate seat for the instrument (mainly to avoid it getting damaged in the hold). Owing to one or other of many absurd airplane regulations, they are consequently obliged to give the instrument a name so that all seats have a corresponding name on the flight manifesto. Most just name it "Mr. Cello" or "Ms. Bassoon" or what have you, though some are inclined to have a little fun with the concept and put down the instrument's name as "Dr. Stratovarius Cello" or something.
  • Steam Locomotives are always refered to as she, even if they have a male name. This often causes... confusion to the punters.
    • Some drivers go even further. Joe Duddington apparently gently encouraged Mallard to help her break the World Steam Speed record.
  • Champion Detroit Tigers pitcher Mark Fidrych talked to the ball before throwing it, among other eccentricities. Proof that the Bunny Ears Lawyer exists in Real Life.
    • In a related example, hockey goaltender Patrick Roy was famous during his active career for naming his goalposts and talking to them, thanking them when a shot bounced off one of them instead of going in. Considering his highly successful career, he was probably on to something.
  • Build-A-Bear Workshop is a company that basically caters to this trope, where children (or even grown-ups) go to the workshop and pick the skins of their stuffed animal, fluff it up themselves, put a goddamned heart in it, and proceed to give it a birth certificate and even enter it in a system quite like Amber Alert.
    • This was done to a lesser extent previously with adopting Cabbage Patch Kids.
      • It's played out completely at the official Cabbage Patch Museum. Hundreds of dolls are arranged in theme rooms. The main room is the actual cabbage patch, where several times a day visitors can witness the labor and birth of a real doll out of one of the cabbages. The audience is then asked to help name the new "baby" and she is immediately put up for adoption in the gift shop.
  • Who hasn't gotten angry at and started screaming at, calling names or even threatening their television, car, computer or any machine that suddenly refused to work, as if it was sentient and was doing it on purpose? There's a theory that machines, or generally all inanimate objects, are all out to get you.
    • This was made into a hilarious (pre-Cleese) Compaq Deskpro commercial.
      • And every once in a while, the threats seem to cause the machine to work...
  • Some people who own robotic vacuum cleaners such as Roombas get very attached to them, to the point of treating them like pets.
  • Pretty much every single person alive has had an emotional attatchment to a stuffed toy, household appliance, inanimate object, or imaginary friend at some point in their life.
    • Some point nothing, some people grow so attached to their stuffed toy/inanimate object they would never get rid of it, even including the object in question in their last will.. sometimes even requesting it following them to the grave.
  • In a crossover with Cargo Ship, assigning names and personalities to sexual aides is incredibly common. Even on this very wiki the term Battery Operated Companion has been used.
  • The Inanimate Object's Party, a joke political party at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that has an inflatable whale run for the position of Grand Marshall (read: Student Counsel President) every year.
  • Many smokers will name their pipes and paraphernalia, even going so far as calling the first time the piece is used as its "christening."
    • Not *tobacco* smokers, mind you.
      • Well, not cigarette smokers, tobacco smokers who use a pipe sometimes name it.
  • A more serious example would be the Holy Crown of Hungary, which was assigned legal personhood and is considered the sole holder of all state powers of the Monarch.
  • Delusional Misidentification Syndrome is a series of mental delusions where the identity of a person, place or thing is different or has been altered. One such delusion is called "Delusional Companions Syndrome", a condition that mostly affects Alzheimer's patients where inanimate objects are thought to actually be sentient.
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