On 30 Rock, James Franco enters into a fake relationship with Jenna to cover up his actual relationship with a body pillow.
In Airwolf, Dom Santini treats the titular helicopter this way, referring to it as "Lady" and actually having conversations with it from time to time. Although Airwolf does have a rudimentary A.I., it is not (as far as we know) actually intelligent.
All That: Lori Beth Denberg's lifelong companion "The Big Ear of Corn".
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.
The A-Team: In the episode "There's Always a Catch", Murdock carries around a mounted (and possibly fake) lobster, to which he talks. He calls it "Thermadore", and when Therm is broken by one of Garber's men during a fight, Murdock punches out the man who did it.
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.
Buffy apparently holds onto Mr. Pointy for some time, name-dropping "him" occasionally over the next couple of seasons.
On Card Sharks, host Jim Perry refers to the prop that holds the question cards as "G2-T2", both in reference to Mark Goodson-Bill Todman productions and R2-D2. The prop is often treated as if it's a living thing.
The series finale of Cheers, "One for the Road", appears to suggest that the reason Sam Malone will never be happy with any woman is because his One True Love is the Cheers bar itself.
Class of '07: Saskia, who'd been in therapy, dresses up a mop as her therapist to vent about her issues.
The Colbert Report: As befitting his crazed, right-wing persona, Colbert has a snub-nosed revolver he calls "Sweetness" that he talks to and seems to be in love with.
The trope is discussed in Community, where Jeff gives a pencil a name before breaking it in two and shocking the study group as a result to show that people make bonds with inanimate objects too easily.
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, addressing 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.
In "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's destroyed in a 1982 episode, he remarks, "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.
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.
"The Return of Doctor Mysterio" introduces Mr. Huffle, a squeeze toy that "feels pain", or so Lucy Fletcher claims, when she uses it to interrogate the Doctor. Later, she gifts Mr. Huffle to the Doctor.
A sixth season episode of Drop Dead Diva has Kim representing a ventriloquist whose puppet is banned from flying.
Jayne Cobb treats his very favorite gun, Vera, as if it's a real person — so much so that he's willing to trade it for Mal's Accidental Wife. Jayne even talks to Vera, telling her that getting dressed up means she gets taken out somewhere special — in this case, she's put in a spacesuit to fire at a target through space.
The ship's mechanic, Kaylee, often talks about the ship Serenity as if it's 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 allows Serenity to pull off a difficult maneuver. Mal treats her like a person occasionally, as well. In the commentary to the Big Damn Movie, Joss Whedon claims that Serenity is the tenth character. And River's feet are collectively the eleventh.
On Fist of Fun, "Lifestyle Expert" Peter's only friend was a small green toy called Donny Oddlegs. Unfortunately, after Peter accidentally ate the remains of Rich's father, Donny ended up in a bin and on fire.
In Flashpoint, Spike is known to treat the team's bomb robot more like a pet than a piece of equipment, frequently talking to and about it as though it were a sentient creature. He even named it Babycakes.
On Friends, Joey and Chandler have named all the foosball players on their foosball table. Joey also personally named his television and chair "Stevie" and "Rosita", and Chandler even personally asks the former not to tell Joey when he mistakenly believes that he's broken the latter. Phoebe has created 3D paintings which terrify everyone else and named them as well. Rachel convinces Joey that the paintings are haunted.
Ghosts (UK): When she was alive, Kitty's best friend was a statue in the garden.
On Glee, Kurt has a "boyfriend pillow" named Bruce. When Rachel and Santana find out, he gets one for each of them (giving Santana's a sex change).
In 1993 after the third time Roy Hattersley MP cancelled his appearance as a guest on short notice, his place on Paul Merton's team was filled by a tub of lard, "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 at all, 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.
Over two decades later in 2016 there would be a similar incident, with the (former) Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. She had criticized then-Prime Minister Theresa May's choice of £1000 brown trousers, only to come under heavy criticism herself for being photographed with a £1000 brown handbag. Seeking to keep a low profile, she dropped out of the show on short notice, leading to her place being taken by (what else) a brown handbag. The handbag was wired for mic, but refused to answer any questions put to it.
When Marshall stays in Minnesota to take care of his mother after his father dies, Lily dresses up a pillow to look like Marshall and named it "Marshpillow".
When Ted was 7 years old, his best friend was a balloon. This would also be his Freudian Excuse of why he is so attached to Robin or any other girlfriend he has had.
Jessie: Bertram gives names to all of his kitchen appliances and treats them as his "friends".
After mocking this trope while watching Cast Away, Phil winds up with a whole crew of Companion Cube balls with drawn-on faces, keeping him company. He always goes to them for advice whenever something doesn't go his way, which is to say, at least Once per Episode. In "30 Years of Science Down the Tubes", he bequeaths the balls to Mike so that, if Mike dies of the virus, he won't die alone. Then, in "The Open-Ended Nature of Unwitnessed Deaths", when Phil almost checks to see if Mike is alive, he chooses not to enter Mike's childhood bedroom and takes his volleyball friend "Gary" with him back to California.
Gail has taken to talking to a CPR dummy that she dresses up in Gordon's old clothes.
In Season 4, Tandy sticks a toy dog head onto a remote control robot, and finds joy in treating it like it was real. When its batteries die, he even starts to dig a proper grave. However, he does know that it's just a toy.
LazyTown: Stingy frequently converses with his piggy bank named "Piggy".
In The League of Gentlemen, the only friends Pauline has are pens. She is quite proud of this, because she is a saddo.
Lost: John Locke, in no uncertain terms, talks with the island and believes that it has a will. Though, depending on further reveals, there may be a significant element of truth to this.
One of Mad TV's sketches includes a fake commercial about a woman in an abusive relationship with a bottle of shampoo.
There is an episode in Malcolm in the Middle when Lois has a mental breakdown and starts crafting little pigs out of bleach bottles. Dozens of them. And she gives each and every one a name and background.
The Mighty Boosh has the boys stranded on an island, and they start to make crude companions out of coconuts. As the boys devolve into madness, the coconut people start to take increasingly human and terrifying characteristics.
"And, on my right, putting the case against the government, is a small patch of brown liquid."
Another (not completely different) sketch has a round-table discussion on customs enforcement with a duck, a cat, and a lizard. The duck, cat, and lizard are obviously played by wooden models, so their inability to respond to questions is unsurprising.
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.
Mr. Young has Mrs. Strawperson, a scarecrow, to the point where she has a family (who are also inanimate) and a job as a teacher. In "Mr. Elf", she claims not to have been able to walk or talk until Slabb gave her a brain as a Christmas present, but that was just Derby's dream and so it doesn't really prove anything.
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. They devote entire montages to lovingly dressing the busts up in a wig, glasses, bandanna, whatever's in-character for the myth's scenario. In "Escape Slide Parachute", Buster is reduced to little more than scrap metal and flesh-colored chunks when a quick release fails and he falls the full distance without his safety equipment. The reaction of the crew (especially Adam and Grant) is one of abject horror, as if a flesh-and-blood crew member had been severely injured. 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 pull his taxi behind the jumbo jet's engine exhaust:
NCIS: Ducky tends to talk to the corpses he is autopsying as a mechanism for trying to get into the heads of the people when they were alive. The only time one "talks back" is when it's a deceased member of the team, as he knows what she would've said.
Captain Oats and Princess Sparkles of The O.C. fame. When you start warning your plastic horse of possible overtures to rape, you know you've got yourself a Companion Cube.
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 that maybe Dwight should be let go.
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.
Red Dwarf: A running joke through the series is Rimmer's "relationship" with Rachel, an inflatable doll. It's been strained not only by Rimmer's inability to touch things, but also because Rachel's got a puncture. When Rimmer supposedly dies, Rachel actually "appears" at the funeral, since Lister figures that she's the closest thing he has to a widow. A much earlier episode says that Rimmer had previously been seeing "Inflatable Ingrid", until Lister reveals that he's been "seeing" her as well.
Rowdy, a stuffed dog JD and Turk treat as a real one. Note that "stuffed" does not mean "toy". It is an actual dead dog that has been stuffed. When a series of incidents see Rowdy temporarily go missing, Carla tries to replace him with yet another stuffed dead dog. Turk and JD find out but adopt the second dog and call him Steven. Turk ends up with Rowdy and JD keeps Steven.
The Janitor's squirrel army, a massive collection of stuffed squirrels that he holds meetings with. The Janitor is a skilled taxidermist and has other animals he talks to, including Bingo, a stuffed bunny who doubles as a salt and pepper shaker.
As a one-off gag, the Janitor calls the floors of Sacred Heart his children, and says that he's given them all names.
JD has also made a friendship bracelet that he wears for Sasha, his motor scooter.
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 the short-lived cult TV show Sledge Hammer!, Sledge has a habit of talking to his Hand Cannon. In one episode, he hallucinates that his gun is talking back to him.
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 that Bob isn't a separate person, and the audience will always refer to Bob as a separate character as well. All of the characters dislike Bob because of his rude behavior but like Chuck because he's very well-mannered (the except being Benson, as he's one of the few sane ones; Mary, while sane, just considers Chuck as troubled). When Danny hides Bob in the fridge in one episode, Chuck quickly converts nearby fruit into ventriloquist dummies. Hilarity Ensues.
In the Starsky & Hutch episode "The Committee", Huggy Bear sells Starsky a ridiculously overpriced pet rock, which he swears is much better than the ones sold in stores. Starsky names the rock Ignatius and carries it around for the rest of the episode. He throws it away during the climax to get one of the villains to fire in the wrong direction, but after everyone has been arrested, he runs back to look for it.
The Enterprise is like a wife to Kirk and a daughter to Scotty, but everyone on the crew seems to have a certain fondness for the old girl... even Spock. Kirk in particular is heartbroken when he has her self-destructed to keep Klingons from seizing her in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
In the episode "The Ultimate Computer", they try to automate the Enterprise using AI. The developer who designed the computer treats it like it's his kid. Of course, it goes insane and Kirk has to talk it to death, because A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
Captain Janeway sometimes talks directly to her ship in Star Trek: Voyager.
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. Chuck the prophet, who is heavily implied to actually be God, outright calls it the most important object in the universe.
Oliver, Top Gear (UK) 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, outside of a spare wheel. After a while, May and Clarkson joked that it would be like asking him to cut pieces off his wife. 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, especially when his truck had no crawler gear to start on the hill with. Oliver then became a supporting character in the children's science programme Richard Hammond's Blast Lab, where "he" has a Herbie-esque personality.
Senor Guapo to Gabe in Tower Prep, to the point that Gabe says that the toy monkey actually has spoken to him before.
Margaret Lanterman (aka "The Log Lady") on Twin Peaks always carries around a small log in her arms. She seems to share a psychic connection with it, sometimes dispensing advice and visions that she claims come from the log itself. At one point she insists that Agent Cooper direct a question to the log instead of her. It's left ambiguous as to whether the log has any intelligence, but the Log Lady seems to have some otherworldly insight, and Hawk states that it "holds many spirits." The log's size and shape subtly evoke a baby, with two small nubs on the upper section where the baby's arms would be.
Jonny has an Action Man that he named Corinthian (and later named his son after it). It is later destroyed in a fire.
Janet has a mannequin named Jonny 2, which she has dressed exactly like Jonny. It's only featured in one episode, in which she uses it as a source of comfort when she's in labour.
The Umbrella Academy: Number Five is in love with "Delores", a mannequin who was his only form of company in the post-apocalyptic wasteland for 40 years. Even after being forced to abandon her following his recruitment, he eventually goes on to reconnect with her in the past... namely by stealing her from her original department store.
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 that he's 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 are as if one of their closest friends was being maimed.
The Walking Dead (2010): Negan always carries a baseball bat covered in barbed wire that he calls Lucille. He constantly refers to the bat as a person and never goes anywhere without her. He eventually reveals that his late wife was also called Lucille, and the bat has become a surrogate for her.
, you know you've got yourself a Companion Cube.