History Main / BecomingTheGenie

* ''WesternAnimation/NateIsLate'' episode, "The Genie", involved a Genie tricking Nate into taking his place as he was tired of being trapped in the lamp. And indeed when Nate finds himself in the lamp, the opening is blocked by cell bars till someone wishes for something and the only thing to keep Nate occupied till then is books.

* Mr. Mxyzptlk is essentially a genie-like being from the fifth dimension (in one issue it was explained that Genies like Johnny Thunder's lightning bolt come from the same dimension as Mxyzptlk). In the ComicBook/EmperorJoker story arc, the Joker turns the tables on Mxy, taking 99% of his {{Reality Warp|er}}ing powers for himself.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* Timmy gets turned into a reality warping fairy at the end of the ''WesternAnimation/FairlyOddParents'' movie, ''Film/AFairlyOddSummer''. It's not clear if he got his own godchild.

* This is the curse of the Lamp of Lakash in Creator/JackChalker's "[[Literature/RiverOfDancingGods Dancing Gods]]" series. People assume they can get three wishes, but in fact the lamp only grants two, and only the first is free; the second will replace the current genie with the wisher automatically (although the wish must still be fulfilled).
* Creator/ShelSilverstein's poem "Jimmy Jet" entails a boy watching TV and becoming a TV set.
* Creator/RoaldDahl also used this as a happy ending in the retelling of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" that appears in ''Rhyme Stew''; when Aladdin realizes that he'd have the power to make worthy people happy, he decides he'd like to be a genie himself and takes the original genie's place. Every few decades or so, he grants a wish, usually to someone who needs artistic inspiration -- Mozart and Shakespeare are cited as examples -- and the narrator notes that ''the reader'' might just be the next person to find themselves with the lamp...
* ''The Art of Wishing'' by Lindsay Ribar is a ParanormalRomance story about a girl named Margo and her genie, Oliver. [[OurGeniesAreDifferent In this world]], you get free three wishes from a genie, but a fourth will turn you into a genie yourself. Margo is forced to do this at the end to save Oliver's life. The sequel, ''The Fourth Wish,'' depicts her trying to get used to her situation.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'': The episode "[[Recap/TheXFilesS07E21JeSouhaite Je Souhaite]]" features a genie. Mulder asks her how she got involved in all this, and she explains that her third wish was "great power and long life". She's more snarky than outright malicious because she knows it's her own fault she got stuck as a genie. Also, [[spoiler:inverted at the end of the same episode, when Mulder uses his own last wish to revert the genie back to her human state]].
* In the ''Series/Charmed1998'' episode "[[Recap/CharmedS6E15IDreamOfPhoebe I Dream of Phoebe]]", the sisters came across a genie named Jinny in a bottle. [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished Wishing the genie free would replace the genie with the one who wished her free,]] turning the wisher into a genie. It also turns out that Jinny was actually a vicious demon; she had been cursed into being a genie and trapped in the lamp by a sorcerer she refused to marry. To add further insult to Phoebe, the lamp came with a written warning that freeing Jinny would result in this trope. When Phoebe points out it was written in Arabic and that there's no way she could've known, Leo and Chris effortlessly read it (which still isn't fair since as whitelighters they're both [[{{Omniglot}} omniglots]]). The sisters spend the rest of the episode working to put Jinny back in the bottle.

* In ''Series/GenieInTheHouse'', in one episode Emma becomes frustrated with the aforementioned Genie Adil and wishes her Sister was a Genie through a slip of phrase. Sophie becomes a Genie, but with an entirely different far more subservient personality and no memory of her previous life. Eventually the process is reversed and she becomes human again, not after having the hot nerd of the group as her Master.

* Fafner, one of the Wizard-faction heroes in ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'', has a backstory in which he became a genie this way. Over a thousand years before the main plot, he found a genie bottle and made a wish to become as powerful as the genie granting the wish, which seems to have worked out for him in the long run. [[spoiler:Especially since he successfully escaped from Enroth to Axeoth when the former exploded.]]

* In ''Held Within'' while playing with a strange gem Jenny teases her girlfriend Susie into making a wish. Susie doesn't like the idea of only having one wish, and since Jenny is so eager for wishes Susie mockingly wishes she were her personal vagenie. Jenny starts changing pretty quick.
* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', this is downplayed when Ashley [[https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/2018-03-26 requests]] to be transformed into a genie form near the end of the "Goonmanji 2" storyline. The form is temporary, doesn't bind her to a container and is restricted to the power to transform others into forms from the board game she just played including the genie form itself.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'' featured a magical jewel-eyed skull that was bound to grant a wish to whoever found it. At the end of the episode, Grim found it and wished that both of them could be free of their curses, which the skull did by ''swapping'' their curses--Grim is now a wish-granting skull, and the jewel-eyed skull is now the Grim Reaper. [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Who has to live with Billy and Mandy.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheSeries'' episode "Power to the Parrot": This is subverted. Genie gave Iago his power for a day. However, by that point, he was already free, so Iago wasn't burdened by the lamp.

* WesternAnimation/ThePinkPanther becomes a genie (of sorts) in the short "Genie With the Light Pink Fur" when an Aladdin's Lamp-type lamp goes on a promotional spiel about being a genie. Pink's stint at being a genie results in hijinks.

* [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Bugs Bunny]] pretends to be a genie to fool Hassan, the guard of Ali Baba's cave in "Ali Baba Bunny."

* ''Fanfic/GazDreamsOfGenie'' has this happen to [[AssholeVictim Gaz]] in the end [[spoiler: with her wish for the ability to grant wishes herself resulting in her and the genie Azie switching lives. But Azie explains that even if she hadn't mad such a wish, Gaz would become the genie for breaking Azie's lamp, which Dib had been ''trying'' to tell Gaz earlier.]]

* ''Fanfic/GazDreamsOfGenie'' has this happen to [[AssholeVictim Gaz]] in the end [[spoiler: with her wish for the ability to grant wishes herself resulting in her and the genie Azie switching lives.]]

* ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'': In the episode "The Tale of the Time Trap", Sardo, the storekeeper who sold the box to the protagonist, accidentally frees the current genies of the lamp and becomes a genie himself when he wishes for a million more wishes (the same wish the other genie used when she became trapped in the box as well, and so must grant them to others).

** ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E114IDreamOfGenie I Dream of Genie]]" has a nebbish man offered [[OurGeniesAreDifferent just one wish]] and [[ImagineSpot imagining what he would get]] if he asked for money, fame, or power. Realizing any of these would be a catastrophic failure for him, he eventually decides that he would rather be a genie himself: he doesn't like his old life, and he enjoys being nice to people. [[spoiler: He also gets to wear some sweet Middle Eastern clothes, speak in a cool authoritarian voice, and hang out with his dog. Since it's his wish, he decides he wants to be an old-school genie. The dog also gets a turban.]]
** ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': A non-genie example in "Rendezvous in a Dark Place". After she dies, Barbara [=LeMay=] becomes an [[TheGrimReaper agent of death]]. She is very happy that she can share the beauty and peace of death with others.

* WesternAnimation/ThePinkPanther becomes a genie (of sorts) in the short "Genie With the Light Pink Fur" when an Aladdin's Lamp-type lamp goes on a promotional spiel about being a genie. Pink's stint at being a genie results in HilarityEnsues.

* One episode of ''Series/TheXFiles'' features a genie. Mulder asks her how she got involved in all this, and she explains that her third wish was "great power and long life". She's more snarky than outright malicious because she knows it's her own fault she got stuck as a genie. Also, [[spoiler:inverted at the end of the same episode, when Mulder uses his own last wish to revert the genie back to her human state]].
* In the ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' episode "I Dream of Phoebe" (Season 6 episode 15), the sisters came across a genie named Jinny in a bottle. [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished Wishing the genie free would replace the genie with the one who wished her free,]] turning the wisher into a genie. It also turns out that Jinny was actually a vicious demon; she had been cursed into being a genie and trapped in the lamp by a sorcerer she refused to marry. To add further insult to Phoebe, the lamp came with a written warning that freeing Jinny would result in this trope. When Phoebe points out it was written in Arabic and that there's no way she could've known, Leo and Chris effortlessly read it (which still isn't fair since as whitelighters they're both [[{{Omniglot}} omniglots]]). The sisters spend the rest of the episode working to put Jinny back in the bottle.
* ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'': In the episode, "The Tale of the Time Trap", Sardo, the store keeper who sold the box to the protagonist, accidentally frees the current genies of the lamp and becomes a genie himself when he wishes for a million more wishes (the same wish the other genie used when she became trapped in the box as well, and so must grant them to others).

** ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': "I Dream of Genie" has a nebbish man offered [[OurGeniesAreDifferent just one wish]] and [[ImagineSpot imagining what he would get]] if he asked for money, fame, or power. Realizing any of these would be a catastrophic failure for him, he eventually decides that he would rather be a genie himself: he doesn't like his old life, and he enjoys being nice to people. [[spoiler: He also gets to wear some sweet Middle Eastern clothes, speak in a cool authoritarian voice, and hang out with his dog. Since it's his wish, he decides he wants to be an old-school genie. The dog also gets a turban.]]

->''"Slave! I make my third wish, and I wish to be '''an all-powerful genie!'''"''

[[folder: Films -- Live-Action]]

* ''[[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/46620/II II]]'': [[spoiler: Eden Aspect's last act is to pretty much do this to Twilight.]]

* In [[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/46620/II II]], [[spoiler: Eden Aspect's last act is to pretty much do this to Twilight.]]
* Twilight, as an alicorn, doesn't suffer very much of the genie curse when she deliberately does this to herself in [[http://www.fimfiction.net/story/236453/1/a-wish-for-the-ages/ A Wish for the Ages]] [[spoiler: to stop Rarity from having to continue a millennia-long time loop caused by the unavoidable distortion in every genie wish]].
* The ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' oneshot ''Fanfic/GazDreamsOfGenie'' has this happen to [[AssholeVictim Gaz]] in the end [[spoiler: with her wish for the ability to grant wishes herself resulting in her and the genie Azie switching lives.]]

-->'''Aladdin:''' [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor You wanted to be a genie? You got it...]] [[RestrainingBolt and everything that goes with it.]] [[CallBack PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS... Itty-bitty living space!]]