Companion Cube / Video Games

• Ace Attorney:
  • Trilo from case 3 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All is a ventriloquist's dummy who serves as an emotional crutch for his handler Ben and a close friend to Regina. There's at least one instance where you can hear Ben arguing with Trilo when there's nobody around to see him putting on his act. He may have been derived from the Batman character The Ventriloquist, as he also abuses his handler.
  • "Charley", a potted slender palm lily in the Phoenix Wright's office. It's one of the few characters from the original series to show up in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and subsequent games. "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.
• Some Angband players treat slime molds as pets rather than as food items.
• In Animal Crossing: Wild World, the Normal villagers all love to talk to their mop, which they call Moppina. Word of God states that this reflects their slightly obsessive nature and their strong dislike for germs.
• In BioShock 2, 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.
• 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 at one point alludes to killing Carl's sister and using her soul to power the automaton.
• The Borderlands franchise:
  • Borderlands has Tannis becoming attached to her tape recorder as she descends further into madness. In the sequel, she fell in love with two ceiling chairs and opposes Handsome Jack because Hyperion destroyed one of them while they were torturing her.
  • Borderlands 2:
    • Tiny Tina has two stuffed bunnies rigged with explosives whom she affectionately refers to as Mushy Snugglebites and Felicity Sexopants. Her comments regarding them are disturbingly, explicitly sexual. Also, two of the guests for her tea party sidequest are Sir Reginald, a jar with a varkid in it wearing a top hat with a monocle and mustache taped to the front, and Princess Fluffybutt, a doll with a grenade for a head.
    • Axton the Commando is in love with his Sabre Turret. He calls it "honey" and variously refers to it as his wife or girlfriend. Gaige offers to give it a proper personality at one point, a sexy action girl, but we don't know if she went through with it.
    • Shotgun-wielding bandit Marauders are best pals with their big, powerful shotguns, which they call "Shotty" or "Bucky". When injured they'll even assure the gun that they're alright.
• The Male Undead Merchant in Dark Souls has a wooden basket named Yulia, which he constantly pets and talks to like it was a cat or lover. His uchigatana may be in the basket.
• Devil May Cry 4: Downplayed with the Red Queen. It's still primarily treated as Nero's sword, but in the ending cutscene of Mission 1, he calls it a "battle companion" and Kyrie refers to it using a feminine pronoun.
  Kyrie: She yearns for your touch.
• In Disco Elysium, it is possible to have conversations with several different inanimate objects, provided that your Inland Empire skill is high enough, but the one that sticks out the most is your Horrific Necktie. The description treats it as an old friend, and it acts like one through the game, often urging you to stand up for yourself (sometimes at inopportune moments), expressing camaraderie, and sometimes having useful advice. It can even pull a Heroic Sacrifice as part of an improvised Molotov cocktail.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins' "Feastday Gifts" and "Feastday Pranks" DLCs add special gifts and pranks to give to your companions. 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.
• Ensemble Stars!:
  • Souma has his sword. Sharpening it is one of his favourite activities, he refers to it in the same breath as his pet turtle Kamegorou at one point, and he takes it everywhere with him, becoming very upset when he is asked not to take it out. Luckily, he does have a government permit (somehow) to take it to school and in public, so it's not quite as inconvenient as you'd logically think, but he does notice with disappointment that others around him often seem scared of him as a result.
  • For a more extreme example, there's Shu's doll Mademoiselle, whom he treats as a totally separate identity from himself, speaking through it as though she's a separate person.
• 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".
• In the description of the "Water, Talk to Me" quest in Farmington Tales, the quest-giver states that she gets so lonely while jogging that she drew a face on her water bottle and called it Bob.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Cloud becomes this for Zack in Crisis Core post-Nibelheim, partly because Zack needs to care for a living comatose Cloud and partly because Zack needs to stay sane.
  • In Final Fantasy X-2, Shuyin treats the machina superweapon Vegnagun like this. In the sphere depicting his attempt to hijack it, Shuyin speaks to Vegnagun as if it were a person, musing on how it is the only chance he has to save Lenne. It's a little disturbing how attached Shuyin has become to Vegnagun and its destructive power.
• Catherine, a Magical Computer in a briefcase, is treated this way by the protagonist of Flower, Sun and Rain. He refers to it as a person, much to Edo and Sue's confusion, 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.
• In The Force Unleashed, former Jedi Master Kazdan Paratus went mad from isolation and Survivor Guilt following the fall of The Republic and hid on a secluded planet where he built a replica of the Jedi Temple out of junk. His Boss Room is a Room Full of Crazy with puppets of each member of the Jedi High Council that he's convinced are real and screams he'll protect.
• Milla of Freedom Planet has a tree stump she named Mr. Stumpy as her only companion for much of her life (as in, from the time she lost her parents to the time she saved Carol from a cave-in). Even in the sequel, she still values it to the point that she dug it up and planted it outside her laboratory.
• Sisyphus in Hades has gone a little nutty spending eternity in Tartarus, and he's named the rock he's been forced to push "Bouldy", treating it as his best friend and closest confidante. Zagreus can also talk to Bouldy, but unsurprisingly, Bouldy doesn't reciprocate. Gifting Bouldy some Nectar on the other hand...
• Not a companion per se, but Tenma from Inazuma Eleven GO is so much of a soccer freak (even more than his predecessor Endou) that he treats it like a person. In his mind, it can cry or be happy.
• In Jolly Rover, James goes a bit mad after three weeks in a locked room and has conversations with a painting of a woman, which he names Beatrice.
• In Killzone Shadow Fall, although it is not mentioned outright, the Assault Class has an automaton combat assistant named the "Buddy Drone". In addition, in the previous installments, some other automatons, particularly the Air Support Drone (especially the Helghast variant) have designs somewhat similar to faces (as in cars, in real life). In Shadow Fall's campaign mode, the OWL also has many "pet" characteristics, with some forums on Reddit dedicated to fandom of it.
• The Janitor from Kindergarten calls his mop "Mr. Sweepy" and is implied to consider it a close friend. In the secret ending, he has his final words with it before he's obliterated by lightning like the other characters.
• Kingdom of Loathing has familiars that the player can name and take into battle with them, some of which are inanimate objects:
  • Earlier Crimbo seasons offered the Pet Rock and the (non)functionally identical Toothsome Rock.
  • The 2007 Crimbo season had the Bulky Buddy Box as a prize for fighting the Crimborg Elves — a reference to the Weighted Companion Cube. If you have it as your active familiar, it won't do anything in battle, but it will whisper ominous messages like "You've wanted to rob that bank for a long time. Why don't you do it?" or "The next time you're not looking, I'm going to shank you." while you're in the chat.
  • The Hovering Sombrero is a sombrero being moved around by a chicken's ghost. One of its constituent items, the irate sombrero, is also assigned some degree of sentience.
    This sombrero seems awfully upset about something, especially for an inanimate object. It seethes at you, as if it's daring you to even try to dance around it.
• League of Legends: Jinx has some sort of relationship with Fishbones the rocket launcher. Her jokes involve her talking to it and it "talking back".
  Jinx: Hey Fishbones, should we blow something up? [as Fishbones] You might inconvenience people and hurt their feelings. [normal] You're the worst weapon ever!
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there's a girl named Loone who has adopted an ancient-looking metal ball which she calls Roscoe. The ball happens to be a key to open a nearby Sheikah shrine, but she refuses to part with it unless the player brings her pictures of three different varieties of a particular enemy.
  Loone: So smooth and ancient...
• Mad Max (2015) plays this for comedy and then for drama with Chumbucket's love for the Magnum Opus, the car he builds and maintains for Max. He speaks of it like a treasured friend, always referring to it as "she", and makes a few sexually charged allusions to working on it when Max isn't around. One character lampshades how he talks about the car like a girlfriend. Ultimately, Max reveals that he doesn't care at all about Chumbucket and plans to destroy the Magnum Opus to kill his nemesis Scrotus. Chumbucket sits on the hood, pleading with Max not to kill his precious Magnum Opus, but Max ignores him.
• Tali from the Mass Effect series talks to her combat drone as if it's a loyal pet.
• The cardboard box from Metal Gear 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 Guinness team as a character.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, 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".
• Some NetHack players treat the custom-named —-Bane items or random artifact items of popular use like a pet in the same manner as in Angband above.
• 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". 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 endure 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...)
• Nintendo Wars: 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!
• Kel in OMORI has a pet rock called Hector. Partway through the game he realizes that he has dropped Hector, and panics. Later you can find Hector, who has started a family of rocks, and Kel can take not only Hector, but his son, Hector Jr.
• In Paradigm "superhero" The Cone (TM) has a wife who's just a mannequin in a wig. He even talks for her.
• 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.
• The Portal series has the Trope Namer, the Weighted Companion Cube, an inanimate block with hearts printed on it. GLaDOS's comments in Portal indirectly invite the player to see it as a living thing and empathize with it, up to the point where she requires the player to "euthanize" it. She later tries to guilt-trip you for killing the Companion Cube. Doug Rattmann's graffiti seen scribbled in behind-the-scenes sections of the testing facility show that he mourns the loss of his Companion Cube. The Lab Rat comic reveals the cube actually talked to Rattmann due to his schizophrenia, and it gave surprisingly helpful advice. The whole thing is a humorous way to teach players that they'll need to carry the cube through several puzzles in order to complete them. One of the developers has stated that he based the use of the trope on a declassified CIA document which stated that people in isolation would bond with inanimate objects.
  
  Portal 2 carries on the tradition by including several other Companion Cubes with updated designs, first in the early test chambers, where GLaDOS taunts you by destroying one, then reveals that she has "entire warehouses full of them", and then destroys another when you try to smuggle it out of the test chamber, which you would never think to do if she wasn't giving you hints about it. 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 alone for a while, the cube actually starts to "sing" to Chell.
• In Roots of Pacha, Acre's youngest daughter Ata plays with one of her hammers and imagines that it's her best friend. She even calls it "Hammer".
• Murasaki from Senran Kagura has her stuffed-bear-thing Bebeby. This is Played for Drama, as a traumatic childhood means that Bebeby is pretty much the only person who she trusts not to betray her and isn't ashamed to show her face to. She sees Bebeby as a very close surrogate sister, and attempting to harm it will almost certainly lead to a Freak Out, followed by Murasaki's Root of Calamity activating, which is an excellent way to get yourself killed.
• Silent Hill 4: Serial killer Walter believes that Apartment 302, where Henry lives, is his mother, and that he has to kill 21 people to "wake" her.
• 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 a three-second window of opportunity for in the beginning when 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.
• In The Sims 2, several of the aspiration desperation animations seem to involve your Sim talking to an inanimate object when their aspiration meter gets too low. For example, a Knowledge Sim will start taking lectures from a volleyball wearing a mortarboard hat, while a Romance Sim will try to dance with a mop.
• The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe introduces the Stanley Parable Reassurance Bucket as one of the new features the Narrator comes up with for The Stanley Parable 2. It's a seemingly ordinary bucket that the Narrator assures us introduces a soothing feeling in Stanley no matter what bizarre things happen. He describes Stanley as being somewhat obsessed with the Bucket, and bringing it along alters several endings, including making other characters (including the Narrator himself) fall under the Bucket's sway as well.
• Subnautica: The player's PDA will eventually suggest deliberately creating a companion cube as a method of combatting insanity caused by isolation.
• Sunset Overdrive: The Shout-Out to Portal that talks about its companion cubes in the "Smash Crates" challenge:
  Player: Lotta crate killing. This isn't the game if you want cubes to be companions.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • Sasha, the Heavy Weapons Guy's minigun in, 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!". One Valve-made comic has a photo of the Heavy sleeping in his forest cabin, with Sasha lying 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.

    There is also a similar unlockable gun, Natascha. It is heavily implied that the Heavy is having an affair with this gun. Seriously.

  • The Sandvich, which comes from the same update as Natascha, appears to be getting the same attention as well, with lines such as, "What's that, Sandvich? KILL THEM ALL!? GOOD IDEA!"
  • The Scout himself has this affinity with the Haunted Hat. Which he dubs "Scary Hat".
    Scout: We did it, Scary Hat. You're my best friend.
  • 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.
  • "Meet the Soldier" depicts the Soldier giving a mostly-unseen group of privates a lecture about his unique interpretation of Sun Tzu. At the end of the video, it's revealed that the "soldiers" he's been talking to are actually all decapitated heads that he's slapped helmets on.
  • According to supplementary comics, the Soldier also thinks he's part of a regiment where the other members are just bits of painted wood, but he's assigned them all distinctive personalities and talks to them as if they're real.
• 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. ?-Block won. ?-Block is also the highest rank a GameFAQs user can achieve, other than that of a mod or admin.
• Sweet Tooth's motivation for entering the first Twisted Metal tournament is 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.

---