Sealed Evil In A Can - Television Tropes & Idioms

Ryoko, from Tenchi Muyo!, was sealed away as a traditional demon in the OVAs; however, after calming down by dueling Tenchi for an episode, she joined the cast as a protagonist and suitor for Tenchi's hand. Washuu was in a similar situation in the TV series.
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pharaoh Atem took the contingency plan of sealing both the Big Bad and himself 3000 years ago, until both resurfaced roughly simultaneously when their respective containers were found by archaeologists.
- Despite his good intentions, his less than polite hosting methods and outdated ideas of justice made Atem himself a close case of Sealed Evil In A Can in the early manga – until Yugi got hold of The Leash.
In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, the Book of Darkness regenerates every ten years, sealing its programs (the Wolkenritter) inside of itself until then. Also, Gil Graham plots against both the heroes and Wolkenritter to allow for the Book, Wolkenritter and their innocent mistress to be sealed in the space between dimensions forever, because the Book would just keep regenerating. Of course, he is stopped and regrets ever deciding to put these lives at risk.
The Panthalassa and the real Michel in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch.
In Dragonball, the current Big Bad, Emperor Pilaf, uncorks Piccolo Daimao ("Piccolo, King Of The Demons"), the Sealed Evil In A Can who had previously been trapped in a Denshi Jar by Mutaito-sama centuries before the start of the series. (The Denshi Jar gets bonus points for strangeness; it is, in fact, an electric rice cooker with a holy seal glued to it.) Piccolo is revealed to be basically a Gnostic version of Satan, being the pure evil that the current God expelled to get "pure" enough to get his position in the first place (oh, and God is a Sufficiently Advanced Alien). The trope is somewhat subverted, however, in that, one Cloning Blues and one Heel Face Turn later, Piccolo joins the good guys.
- Later, in Dragon Ball Z, the five-million-year-old sorcerer Babidi comes to Earth seeking energy to power Buu, the Sealed Evil In A Can that ate God's superiors. Originally, Toriyama wanted to finish the series after the defeat of Frieza, the ruler of the galaxy and the most powerful being in the universe. When the series' success made this impossible, he was forced to invent ever more implausible reasons why the ever more powerful villains hadn't shown up before and kicked Frieza's rear end. Androids, super-clones made from our heroes' DNA... by the time Babidi came to Earth, the current villain (Dabura) was the evil God of a Bizarro Universe. When he couldn't top that, Toriyama simply pulled Buu out of a Can.
- Toriyama acknowledges his reliance on the Sealed Evil In A Can formula in the Neko Majin Z parody comic, in which the titular "hero" keeps a powerful demon sealed in a small rock balanced on top of a boulder by the side of a road. If anyone picks up the rock, the demon is released, requiring Neko Majin to step in and re-seal the demon... for a fee.
In Naruto, the titular character is the seal that holds the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox.
- There were also eight other such characters, each with their own tailed beast.
- Also, Shukaku was actually sealed in a tea kettle before being sealed into Gaara.
- It's worth noting that being sealed in a human makes them potentially more powerful, as when they are free they're feral and unintelligent, but being sealed gives them the intelligence of their host (though it's unknown if they regain this intelligence if they manage to break the seal and kill their host).
The Decepticon army that Crosswise was jailer of in Transformers: Cybertron, until Starscream freed them.
The Slayers has Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo, which was broken into seven pieces and sealed in humans (and gets out every now and then), Zanafar, and for good measure Shabranigdo's lieutenant Chaos Dragon Gaav.
In Princess Tutu the evil raven was sealed away by a prince who broke his heart into shards; the raven gradually gains power through the series and is fully freed when the prince's heart is returned to him.
After "Him" in Powerpuff Girls Z is defeated horribly by a bunch of girls, he is contained in a tomb in an abandoned museum until the present day at which point he sends out a mummy to find the means to release him from his prison. His main goal is to conquer the world and destroy the Powerpuff Girls for their resemblance to the Ōedo Chakichaki Musume, the first three to defeat him.
Soushu in Kyou Kara Maou.
The title character of Inu Yasha is a half-demon who was sealed to a tree by the priestess Kikyo's arrow for 50 years, until Kikyo's reincarnation Kagome freed him out of necessity. Of course, his apparent "evilness" didn't last long.
Also from Inu Yasha, the Shinkon no Tama. Unique in that it is both Sealed Evil In A Can and Sealed Good In A Can. It contains the spirits of many demons that were once one entity and a powerful priestess locked in battle. Thanks to the efforts of Naraku, it gradually becomes wholly Sealed Evil In A Can.
The anime version of Pretear starts with the villain breaking free after sixteen years of being sealed away.
Most of the villains in Sailor Moon were sealed until recently, except for the last season. In the first season, inside the can (the Dark Kingdom) was another can, with another, bigger Sealed Evil (Metaria) inside it; the forces of the Dark Kingdom spent most of their time draining energy from people in order to charge the metaphorical can opener needed to release her.
In the Gonzo version of Hellsing, the final episode reveals that Incognito plans to release the Egyptian god Set in order to destroy the world. Of course, Alucard defeats the released Set, it is left ambiguous if Set was really destroyed or just resealed.
In Soul Eater, the Sealed Evil In A Can is the Kishin, an insane creature who, basically, wreaked havoc upon the world until being sealed. The people working for the Shinigami do so to prevent the creation of another Kishin, which would occur if someone consumed a large number of human souls. It is not until half-way through the series that the main characters discover that the "original" Kishin is still alive, and imprisoned underneath their city.
- In a bag made out of his own skin. Ew.
In Deadman Wonderland the "evil" are people affected by the "Branch of Sin" dangerous blood-manipulating powers who are secretly hidden deep in the "can", a maximum security prison/publicly open amusement park
Mahou Sensei Negima features two examples, one completely straight and the other a little bizarre. First, as the straight example we have Ryomen Sukuna no Kami, a gigantic four-armed two-faced demon god sealed in the Kansai region of Japan; releasing and controlling him was the motivation for the villains of the Kyoto arc. Second, and rather more unusual, we have the ancient and legendary vampire sorceress Evangeline A.K. McDowell. While she was a wanted magical criminal, responsible for multiple heinous crimes and with a huge bounty on her head, her sealing was based less on her evil and more on her obsession with the main character's father. And, once you get to know her, she's not really as evil as she liked to claim... to the point that when the aforementioned demon god is released, the protagonists defeat it by breaking the seal on Evangeline and letting her deal with it.
Hell Teacher Nube has a demon who tried to kill him in his childhood sealed into his left hand by his mentor Minako.
The three big bad Tayutai in Tayutama are strong, but their method of sealing might have needed to be reinforced. They were freed by, of all things, a runaway moped. On the other hand, it let Mashiro out into the world, so it all balances out.
In the manga My Balls, there is a powerful demon sealed in the main character's umm... left testicle. So Yeah.

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In the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, there is a card called Dark Depths, which, after certain conditions are met, i.e. the costly "unsealing" process of removing ice counters from it for three mana a pop, (TEN TIMES) creates a large and damn near unkillable monster.
- For a much older example, consider the Bottle of Suleiman, which upon being sacrificed has a 50/50 chance of either releasing a fairly powerful djinn that joins your forces or else simply blowing up in your face.
- And then there's the Tomb of Urami...okay, that's enough examples for now.
- Yawgmoth, the guy who makes planeswalkers look like muggles and Dominaria's version of the Devil, was sealed in a whole other plane back when he was a mortal. He wanted back in of course and spent thousands of years in a battle of wits with Urza with his freedom as the stakes.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has several monsters like this, the most memorable being Exodia (who is split up into five pieces and allows you to win the game should you have all five in your hand; in the anime, it did take a huge ritual to unseal it) and all versions of the three God Cards (Egyptian, Sacred Beasts, and "Wicked Gods", all of which need three sacrifices to bring out and have devastating power, and two of which have fusions of themselves that are even more powerful). In the anime, they are so damn powerful and vicious, that most of them are sealed up themselves, and it's considered madness for anyone to try and duel with them in their deck.

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In The DCU, the Phantom Zone is essentially an other-dimensional prison that holds numerous Kryptonian criminals. As such, there many stories where the prisoners escape and the heroes have to fight to throw them back into the Zone.
In Hsu and Chan, the Tanaka brothers fight off a demon invasion by sealing them in various trinkets and keepsakes.
In Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, Johnny's constant murders are (partially) motivated by the need for fresh blood to paint on one of the walls in his house, which keeps the monster trapped behind it from physically getting out. After Johnny's accidental suicide, the creature breaks free and is revealed to be a horrible, bloodthirsty mass of tentacles and faces; Johnny's conversation with Señor Diablo implies that it was made up of all the evil emanated by humanity, and its escape was serious enough to require the universe to be rebooted.
In Lucifer, the seraph Meleos long ago created the Basanos, a living, extremely powerful living tarot deck as both a complement to Destiny's book (which contains nearly everything that will ever happen) and a means of recording and preserving humanity's thoughts. The latter function, however, corrupted the Basanos and turned them into beings of pure evil, so Meleos has since locked them in a box. However, when Lucifer demands the use of the Basanos for divination, Meleos resolves to destroy them and opens the box, whereupon the cards overpower him and escape.
The Lord of Locusts from Bone?
- Yes, definitely. Also has shades of Ultimate Evil, even after being released.
Green Lantern: Rebirth revealed that the long-established "yellow impurity" in the Central Power Battery was actually Parallax, the "yellow fear entity," an insectile manifestation of that emotion, released when Hal "Greatest GL of them All" Jordan entered the Central Battery years before.
Justice League of America comics occasionally feature early JLA enemies the Three Demons (Abnegazar, Ghast, and Rath), evil beings who ruled the Earth a billion years ago until being imprisoned in crypts by mysterious powerful entities called the Timeless Ones. The Three Demons were eventually summoned/released in the present by Felix Faust, with occasional other escapes from imprisonment since then.
Parodied in a 1983 nine-page story in Love And Rockets by Jamie Hernandez called Maggie vs Maniakk. Maggie plays with a "Mayamese mini transporter" and accidentally frees Maniakk, a costumed super evil trapped in limbo/the ninth dimension by Ultimax, a superhero now down on his luck.
In "The Garden" segment of Garfield: His 9 Lives, Garfield (who is a kitten here) and Cloey (his owner in this life) are given a magical garden by Uncle Tod when he joins the circus, under the condition that they never open the crystal box on the checkered toadstool. The trope is subverted here because, out of loyalty to Uncle Tod, they decide not to open it.
Fables' second Big Bad came out of his can due to the effects of the heroes saving the world.

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The films Superman and Superman II both feature the Phantom Zone, but make it out to be a one-time prison for a specific set of three villains.
In the movie The Ruins, as well as in the book, the protagonists are attacked by a sentient, carnivorous, and parasitic vine living on an ancient pyramid (or in a mine shaft, in the book). The vine is kept on the pyramid by a ring of deforested and salted land carved out of the jungle around it, and is effectively sealed up by a very stringent quarantine set up by the villagers living nearby. In the end of The Movie, one woman manages to escape, but it is hinted that the vine is living inside of her, and in one alternate ending, it is directly shown that she has taken the vine with her back to civilization, unsealing the evil and letting it go free.
John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness literally had Sealed Evil In A Can — Satan, in fact, sealed in a giant glass and metal container in the basement of a church. Of course, he manages to escape.
- And then there's The Thing, sealed in a block of ice until some ill-advised Norwegians dig it out.
Most Egregious Example Of All Time: In the 1999 version of The Mummy, it is the very act of Sealing Imhotep In A Can that bestows the apocalyptic abilities that he displays in the movie. Moral: Never Punish Your Enemy in a Way That Will Grant Him More Power.
- 2001's sequel, The Mummy Returns, opens up another can of evil in the form of The Rock's CGI-animated appearance as The Scorpion King — which in turn opened the door for one of those prequels mentioned in the main text.
- The new Mummy movie is slated to have a Chinese mummy of this kind, also Cursed With Awesome by a sorceress with shapeshifting powers.
The Van Helsing movie has Dracula sealed inside his own part of the world, but circumventing it by developing wings, which he passed on to his other kin.
In the 2007 Transformers movie, Megatron is kept on ice inside the Hoover Dam, and is pretty angry upon thawing out.
The comic books as well as the movie adaption of Hellboy feature several such sealed-away monstrosities. In the movie, one demon was literally sealed in a consecrated urn, and of course the Ogdru Jahad, the Lovecraftian chaos gods of the Hellboy universe, lie imprisoned and waiting in the Void beyond the stars.
In the first Ghostbusters movie, the Ghostbusters seal all of their captured ghosts in a large containment unit that can only stay locked through the help of a power grid. When they capture an individual ghost, they suck it into a smaller container. And of course, it then gets unlocked.
In Clive Barker's Hellraiser, the Cenobites will not come after you unless you solve the puzzle of the Lament Configuration.
In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Billy traps the Electric Gremlin in the Clamp Corp. phone system, where the villain suffers the torture of being on-hold.
In the first Power Rangers movie, the shapeshifting Ivan Ooze had been trapped underground for 6,000 years until his containment chamber was accidentally unearthed by a construction crew and later opened by Lord Zedd.
The titular monster of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, while more predatory and aggressive than actually evil, is certainly an example of this. The rhedosaurus was frozen in Arctic ice since the early Cretaceous, and is thawed out by nuclear testing. Somehow, it is still alive.
Time Bandits: "Don't touch it — it's concentrated evil!"
Played with in the film adaptation of The Shadow. A museum receives a silver sarcophagus from a mysterious source, with an inscription on it saying it's the coffin of Genghis Khan. When the security guard is left alone with it the coffin starts to shake around and eventually opens up to reveal a man in the dress of a Mongol warrior, who telepathically forces the security guard to shoot himself. However, it turns out it's not actually Genghis Khan, but a modern-day descendant.
Living Hell, a recent horror movie has sublevel 4, vault 12, on a military base, which the protagonist doesn't want disturbed. Of course, the military had completely missed the hidden door in the vault 'til the protagonist waltzed in and told them there was something there... and we all know what to do with hidden doors, right? So, nice job there, hero.
Played with and subverted in Kung Fu Hustle. The Beast is locked up in an insane asylum — but only because he was bored from the lack of worthy opponents to duel and so checked himself in. When Sing is snuck in by the Axe Gang to break out the Beast for recruitment and picks his cell door open, the audience sees the Beast as a bald old man with a pair of spectacles in wifebeaters and boxers sitting on the john reading a newspaper. Which makes the Beast Sealed Evil On the Can.
The Blob has the heroes create a sealed evil in a can out of the titular menace by freezing the monster and transporting it to the north pole. And now we have Global Warming...
- The sequel Beware The Blob plays the trope much more literally: a oil worker brings home a frozen chunk of the Blob, sealed in a thermos. But not sealed too tightly, of course, or else we wouldn't have a movie.
Another candidate for Most Egregious Example of All Time is the movie Hobgoblins, where a group of mischievous, killer, evil, mind-controlling, rapidly-nodding hobgoblin puppets are "sealed" inside a large, vault door, behind a barred gate, neither of which are, you know... locked. Worse yet, the man who's spent thirty years "guarding" these "sealed" horrors is a demolitions expert and always was. He ends up blowing them up. Too bad that didn't occur to him, you know... sometime during the last thirty years?

Close Films

A ridiculous number of these show up as non-Darklord threats to harass poor Lone Wolf. In a slight subversion, one of these sealed evils, namely Darklord Vashna, the most powerful Darklord of them all, who even tried to play The Starscream to Big Bad Naar in the Back Story, is already dead. Not sealed alive in a prison somewhere, but dead. The goal of two of the books in the series (The Chasm of Doom and The Legacy of Vashna) is to prevent him from coming back.

Close Gamebooks

Cthulhu. Indeed, most Cosmic Horror uses a can of some sort to explain why the super-powerful beings haven't already destroyed humanity. In this case, however, nobody appears to have done the actual sealing or unsealing; the elder gods are just "sleeping", and will awaken "when the stars are right."
- Let's not forget that he almost gets out in Call of Cthulhu, he only gets stuffed back in the can because he was wounded by a propeller and distracts him long enough that he gets dragged back down to the bottom of the sea.
- Another example in Lovecraft's work is The Haunter of the Dark, an avatar of the god Nyarlatotep who is sealed inside the shining trapezohedron and can be summoned by gazing into it. Unlike the Great Old Ones, summoning him doesn't result in the end of the world, but he most likely wants some human sacrifices in exchange for secret knowledge or wants to possess you in order to get mankind to blow itself up.
In the series The Wheel Of Time, the Dark One is making good progress in eroding the makeshift seal on the hole in the Creator-made prison that's kept it imprisoned for thousands of years. Being as it is the God of Evil, existing outside reality, sealing and resealing really is the only option. During his resealing, his 13 highest-ranking disciples were sealed (mostly) outside of time as well, they ended up being freed first to pave the way for his return.
- Stasis Boxes pretty much fit this trope when used for preserving the Gholams, not-quite-undead super assassins from the War of Power, beyond time and space.
In Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy, the latter two books lead up to the release of Orannis the Destroyer, the Big Bad, from his "can".
The Silmarillion ends with the sealing of Evil Overlord Morgoth in the void beyond the boundaries of Middle-Earth. He never escapes, though it is implied that Sauron was trying to find some way to release him during the Second Age.
- One of the entries in Tolkien's Unfinished Tales mentions a battle called Dagor Dagorath, in which Morgoth does escape. Ostensibly, the Armageddon of Middle Earth.
19th century example: The famous German novella Die schwarze Spinne (The Black Spider) by Jeremias Gotthelf was written in 1842 (with a Swiss movie adaption in 1983). Heavily steeped in Christian-conservative symbolism, the story contrasts peaceful pastoral life with satanic influences, based on old folktales. The titular black spider (a metaphor for the Black Plague) is created when a ruthless knight baron forces the peasants of a remote valley in the Alps to work themselves nearly to death, far beyond feudal obligations. The devil in the form of a wild huntsman offers the desperate peasants his help, in exchange for a yet unborn unchristened child. The only person who is willing to strike such a pact is a willful farmer's wife (and originally a foreigner from outside the village to boot, adding a touch of misogyny and xenophobia to the tale). The devil kisses her cheek, and from this kiss grows an evil tumor that takes the form of a black spider. Twice, when the devil comes to collect a newborn child, the local priest baptizes the child in the nick of time, but as punishment for breaking the pact, the monstrous spider, now fully formed, births thousands of tiny spiders that start killing livestock and people all over the valley and then finally breaks free from the face of the farmer's wife (who dies) and kills the priest and the baby with its poisonous bite.
- After a period of terror, the spider is finally sealed away when a brave mother, to protect her own newborn child, grabs the spider and, dying, imprisons it in a hole in a wooden beam of her house, into which she hammers a wooden peg to seal away the spider forever. Generations later, when people have stopped believing in the tale and become "sinful", a bragging servant pulls out the peg on a drunken bet and releases the devil spider, until it can again be sealed away by a pious woman who remembers the old tales and sacrifices her life for her child. So it's not that misogynistic.
In The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, the Creator sealed his Evil Counterpart Lord Foul the Despiser in The Land in order to keep the rest of the universe safe. Unfortunately, the Creator didn't really think it through very well, as Lord Foul can now wreak havoc within The Land freely, and if the Creator tries to interfere directly, it'll let Lord Foul out and destroy the Arch of Time (basically, the universe).
The Dark Ones in The Wizard of 4th Street were sealed with the accumulated Life Energy of a massive Heroic Sacrifice.
In the Stephen King novel Duma Key, the villain, Perse, is an evil doll/creature who is literally sealed in a keg which was dropped down a well. Unfortunately, the keg had been leaking for some time and by the time the main character finds it, it's almost empty. He eventually ends up sealing Perse in a flashlight filled with water (her weakness) and eventually creates a tight, silver container to hold that it and throws it into a lake.
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the titular chamber contains Slytherin's monster, an enormous basilisk.
In Deep Wizardry, the second Young Wizards novel, the seal on the Lone Power's can is weakening and needs to be recharged. However, what is sealed is only one aspect out of many that the Lone Power possesses, so It can be safely sealed away in one place while simultaneously being an active menace somewhere else.
- Then in A Wizard's Holiday, the protagonists have to, among other things, open the seal and let the Lone Power out.
In Gerald Brom's Plucker, the titular monster is sealed within a voodoo spirit doll. It's up to regular dolls to stop it when it is accidentally freed.
Peter F. Hamilton does this in at least two series: in the Night's Dawn Series, a wandering alien accidentally opens a portal to Hell, and in Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, an alien menace is released (and previously imprisoned) by its own hidden enemy (who's no friend to humanity, either).
Raymond E. Feist starts with a scenario similar to Jordan's, where The God of Evil was imprisoned by the other surviving gods, but is now reaching out to influence things. Later books introduce successive complications, but those drift rapidly away from this trope.
Larry Niven's World of Ptavvs has a scientific team releasing an ancient alien, who has large-scale mind-control powers and a major attitude problem.
Similarly, Daniel Keys Moran's The Last Dancer has a scientific team releasing an ancient human, whose physical conditioning and skills approach Badass Normal from the other side and a major attitude problem. He proceeds to spend the rest of the book mainly kicking the other Big Bad's ass, making him not so much Evil, just Sealed Badass In A Can.
Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon The Deep starts off with a cosmic menace called the Blight being woken by insufficiently paranoid humans.
Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires has a space mission to find a derelict ship drifting in the solar system. The astronauts board it and retrieve what they believe to be several human-like alien bodies. It turns out they're possessed by evil energy beings that live off the life energies of others. The very pulpy movie adaptation (called Lifeforce) has a similar initial situation, though it diverges pretty massively after that (the aliens turn their victims into zombies).
F. Paul Wilson's The Keep has Molasar, advance man for The Otherness, sealed in a castle in Romania until Those Wacky Nazis let him out.
Using the Greek Titans myth cited above as a jumping-off point, the main plot arc of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series involves the Titan lord Kronos attempting to escape his can.
The Pilo Family Circus is built on the prison for a race of gigantic reptiles -- all of whom possess godlike power and all of whom are hungry for tender human flesh. The circus' managers, Kurt and George Pilo, do their bidding by causing as much havoc on Earth as possible — in the hope that whoever jailed them will be forced to negotiate their sentence. However, their attempts at escape are temporarily foiled when the circus is closed down and most of its staff killed at the end of the novel — though the main character's dreams suggest that it will return one day.
Gonko: You come get your chuckles whenever you're ready, 'cause if they ain't lettin' me go, they ain't lettin' you go. Best believe that. Show's down but not out, mark my words. We'll be back in town, my pretty, and I don't recall offering you a severance package.
Something Bad is waiting in Charles Stross's The Jennifer Morgue....
In John C Wright's Chronicles of Chaos, children being held hostage by Greek gods are nevertheless not sure that their own parents are entirely in the right; they find out, in due course, that they are hostage to prevent the forces of Chaos from moving against the universe and destroying it. They set up themselves to live safely and free in the universe until the gods could stand against the forces, without going home and so triggering such a war.
In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000 novel The Brothers Of The Snake, the Requisite Royal Regalia were keeping a Chaos force in check. When they were removed for a coronation, Weather Dissonance broke out, and an Inquisitor and a squad of Space Marines had to return the regalia to stop it.
In William King's Warhammer 40000 Space Wolf novel Ragnor's Claw, Botchulaz.
Quite a few of John Connolly's short stories involve Sealed Evil In A Can: the Daemon buried under the church in Mr Pettinger's Daemon; the Fairies trapped inside their fort in The New Daughter; the monster chained up at the bottom of the lake in Deep Dark Green; the nest of hibernating giant spiders in The Wakeford Abyss...
- Also, in his novel, The Black Angel, the fallen angel Immael is plunged into a vat of molten silver during the Back Story and the resulting statue becomes the angel's prison for several centuries. Naturally, the novel itself is all about Immael's twin brother and his followers attempting to free him.
Subverted in MT Anderson's book Thirsty, in which a group of vampires are trying to free the Sealed Evil, the god of vampires, and one character pretends to be trying to kill the vampire god in order to protect humanity, but in reality is assisting the god in committing suicide.
In Who Censored Roger Rabbit, it turns out that the titular murderer is a genie imprisoned in a Persian teapot that can only be released by a bonafide toon, who is sick of taking orders from self-centered people and starts deliberately spoiling the toons' wishes, until finally he just flat-out starts murdering them.
The Black Company starts out with the can already having been opened but not all of the way in a bit of evil on evil backstabbery. Their employer was sealed away by the White Rose who was unleashed by a group of sorcerers called the Resurrectionists. As thanks the Lady, a powerful sorceress who was sealed in there, kills them and then prevents her husband from getting out so she can keep the power to herself. Needless to say, he is not pleased and it's implied the world is doomed if he ever does get out.
While not a single character, the Mijaki were confined to the borders of their lands in Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy because they made the world evil. Hekat then decides to change things.

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Power Rangers repeatedly uses this trope:
- As the opening quote points out, Rita Repulsa from the first season was originally trapped in a "dumpster" on the moon for 10,000 years until astronauts accidentally released her.
  - To a lesser extent, in the episode "Final Face-Off," Rita opens an urn which imprisoned the legendary Face Stealer. The Rangers lock him back in the urn upon his defeat at the end of the episode.
- It was done in the The Movie of the MMPR, Ivan Ooze. Sealed inside an egg that was inside a lidded chamber. The "hyperlock chamber" was opened by construction workers, then Ooze himself was released by Zedd and Rita. Ooze later stuck them in a snow globe.
- The same basic setup would be repeated in Lightspeed Rescue when that season's villains are released by an unwitting Egyptologist. The villains then go about trying to free their still-sealed Queen.
- While not applying to the main villains of Power Rangers Time Force, the individual monsters fit this trope, being cryoginically ~~turned into action figures~~ frozen and sealed inside small containers.
- The Orgs of Wild Force were sealed in the earth 3,000 years ago - most notably the Brainwashed And Crazy Sixth Ranger - and freed due to pollution and the appearance of a successor to their Big Bad.
- The very line is echoed by the Wolf Knight's first line in Power Rangers Mystic Force (He actually says "After all these years, I'm free," but the similarity was close enough that many fans were confused into thinking the Backstory was set ten thousand years previous, when it actually appears to have been more like 20).
- In Operation Overdrive, Moltor and Flurrious were sealed when they tried to grab the season's Mac Guffin, and freed when said Mac Guffin was discovered on Earth. In a later episode, Thrax, the son of Rita and Zedd, repeats the same line when released, after what could not have been more than two or three years.
- Jungle Fury has Dai Shi, who has been stuck in an (unlocked!) box for 10,000 years. The box was kept by a secret order, but opened when a disgruntled student barged in and attacked the order's master, knocking the box out of his hands.
  - Unusually, however, Dai Shi is significantly weaker than he was, and has to struggle to regain his powers before the rangers become strong enough to destroy him.
Star Trek used this a few times.
- Khan Noonien Singh and his cryogenically frozen followers, in the TOS episode Space Seed. And again in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, when he's abandoned on Ceti Alpha V (which the crew of the Reliant mistake for Ceti Alpha VI after a natural disaster alters its orbit and destroys its environment).
- Data's evil "brother" Lore. He's found disassembled in Dr. Soong's lab and the Enterprise crew make the mistake of putting him back together.
- "God" in Star Trek V. He claimed to have been imprisoned on the planet in the center of the galaxy and wanted to "join" with the Enterprise so he could escape.
- The psychotic animate oil slick Armus, in TNG Skin of Evil. He claimed his creators abandoned him on an uninhabited planet, and at the end of the episode the Enterprise crew leave him on the planet with a warning beacon in orbit telling other ships to stay away. Personally, I wonder why they stuck him on a planet with breathable air. You'd think an airless moon or something would be safer.
- Well, in the animated version episode "Beyond the Farthest Star," Kirk tricked an ancient evil entity onto a black dwarf star, where it moans about how lonely it is as the credits roll.
- This was supposedly the plot behind the Star Trek Voyager episode "Dragon's Teeth," when Seven of Nine releases an alien race from a 900-year stasis…only for them to turn out to be your bog-standard Villains Of The Week piloting obsolete spaceships. Disappointing.
- In the classic series episode The Alternative Factor, if Lazarus and his insane counterpart from the antimatter dimension were ever to meet in the same universe, that universe would be destroyed. Both of them are sent into an intermediate dimension so that this can never happen, and where the two of them will be locked in combat for all eternity. (If that's not a trope itself, it should be.)
  - Ding!
Many, many examples in Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the Judge, Acathla, others) and Angel (Illyria, Pavayne). In fact, the Angel example showed us a veritable warehouse of sealed demon gods like Illyria, which (as of the end of the series) is left unguarded.
- It's left unguarded because they're fated to come back at specific times and there's no way to stop or accelerate the process.
The aliens of War of the Worlds were literally sealed in cans at the opening of the series.
Despite the frequent use of the "Pandora's box" analogy, it was really Earth that was sealed in a can at the beginning of Stargate SG-1. On the other hand, there are several examples of villains being effectively sealed in cans, such as Osiris (who was in a canopic jar), Anubis's son (in a stasis chamber), the Wraith (hibernating), and the Ori (in a distant galaxy blissfully unaware that free humans existed).
- One of the most literal Stargate SG-1 examples would be Hathor, who had been sealed in her sarcophagus for 4,000 years, only for some unwitting archaeologist to open it.
One episode of Highlander featured a Nazi Immortal who had been chained and thrown into a river by a young boy. How do you make a Nazi cross? Forty years of drowning and reviving every few minutes ought to do it...
- There is at least one story of an Immortal being on a sunken ship and having to walk back - Kit O'Brady was on a boat to Alaska when it sank, and said it took him months to walk back.
- And then there's the example of the Immortal stranded on a deserted island for years, dying of starvation and thirst every so often, just to wake up and do it again. For some reason he held a grudge...
In the Doctor Who episode "The Satan Pit," a being known only as "the Beast" (who claims to be Satan) is revealed to be at the core of a planet perilously held inside of a black hole's event horizon. Any attempt to escape would wreck the system that kept the planet out of the black hole's gravity, thus sucking it and the Beast into the black hole.
- Makes you wonder why they didn't just throw him in the black hole in the first place.
- The first Torchwood season finale features Abaddon, son of The Beast who was sealed within the Cardiff Rift.
- The earlier incarnation of Doctor Who (1963-1989) often used examples of this trope. Particularly notable ones include Sutekh The Destroyer in "Pyramids of Mars" and Omega in "The Three Doctors" and "Arc of Infinity," but these are just a few of a great many. The Ice Warriors, the mutagen under the Earth crust in Inferno, and many more.
  - A slight variation happened in "The Stones of Blood," where the Doctor releases a pair of biomechanical judges from a ship stranded in hyperspace and the judges promptly sentence him to death for letting them free without the proper legal authorization.
- "Doomsday" features the Genesis Ark: a Time Lord device imprisoning millions of Daleks.
- In the new series episode "The Runaway Bride," it is revealed that the centre of the Earth contains hundreds — possibly thousands — of man-eating intelligent alien spiders. Then the Doctor drowns them all.
- In The Sarah Jane Adventures, the race of supercomputers that Mr. Smith belongs to.
Heroes: the immortal, self-regenerating Adam Monroe was imprisoned for thirty years after he tried to release a virus that would have killed most of mankind. Then, after being released (and having done plenty of damage in the meantime, including a second attempt at the virus thing) he was sealed in a coffin deep beneath a cemetery. One can only hope that no enterprising real-estate companies try to use that land for any other purposes... But think of the surprise a future archaeologist will get!
- According to the online comic, his latest "bride" is going to rescue him. Dun Dun Dun! (Elan!)
  - Also, in Season 3, this happened; however, in a slight subversion, daddy Petrelli appeared to be far more powerful than Adam and took his power, killing him instantly.
- Arthur Petrelli himself has elements of this, starting off the series on life support and only able to communicate through telepathy.
- As of Volume 4's finale Sylar's brainwashing into believing himself to be Nathan Petrelli certainly qualifies. Wonder how long that will last...
  - This troper gives it 3 episodes of Volume 5 before Sylar realizes what's really going on.
In The Twilight Zone TOS episode "The Howling Man," the evil sealed in a cell was the Devil himself.
In Babylon Five,both the Shadows and the Drakh were sleeping evils in a self unsealing can.
One episode from Los Luchadores dealt with a plot to awaken a demon in a ritual involving three descendants of the people responsible for originally sealing it. In this case, the ritual is successfully interrupted just before its completion, denying the audience the spectacle of watching an ancient evil being defeated by a masked professional wrestler.

Close Live Action TV

Pretty much every Bal Sagoth song starts with "Oh shit, we just woke up Cthulhu." This is all the more impressive considering that (actually) awakening an elder god would crush the mind of anyone near it, then plunge the Earth into a never ending night.

Close Music

This trope hearkens back to the Greek myth of Pandora's Box.
Likewise, in the Greek myths, the Titans were locked inside the Tartaros, a dank, gloomy prison, "as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth", guarded by guards with 50 heads and 100 arms, the Hecatoncheires.
Unbreakable magic chains kept Fenris, the giant wolf of Norse, bound, until he eventually breaks them. Ironically, it is implied that binding him is what made him so pissed off at the Gods in the first place. (Well, that's the trouble with prophecies... and he is a child of Loki, God of betrayal, mischief, and "evil" — this is before the idea of absolute evil was introduced by Christianity).
- That kind of thing happens a lot in Norse mythology — the Gods were so afraid that Loki and his monstrous children might turn against them that they imprisoned them all in various unpleasant ways, thus ensuring their pissed off-ness and guaranteeing Ragnarök when they eventually get out.
The legends of genies often fall under this trope. Not all genies are good, ya see, and even the good ones will interpret wishes literally.

Close Mythology

In The Bible, specifically in the revelation of John, Satan is going to be bound in hell for 1,000 years, then after 1,000 years of peace and prosperity, Satan is released to wreak havok upon the world one last time.
According to Scientology's OT III, Xenu is apparently still locked up in a mountain somewhere.
- Someone care to elaborate? Scientology ain't exactly known for openness, and I'm pretty sure few people have any clue what OT III or Xenu are... This information junkie certainly doesn't know.
  - This troper believes Xenu is a Devil equivalent (actually, she got this information from Jean-Claude Magnum.) Perhaps the OT III is a book of some sort?
  - OT III is a Power Level (or more precisely, a Stupidity level), whereby it stands for (IIRC) Operational Thetan Level 3. The more money you give the L. Ron. Hubbard Estate (aka the Church of Scientology), the higher up the hierarchy you get. Think of it as a web forum donation rank. Scientologists are of course welcome to correct this entry.
  - Xenu is a galactic overlord, and not really a Satan equivalent. The idea is that he dumped and incinerated his surplus constituencies on Earth after brainwashing them into believing they were Satan... and God or Jesus... and each other... and all sorts of other contradictory and random things. (There's no real explanation about why he felt like doing this.) Their lobotomized spirits (called thetans) are still hanging around here, confusedly infesting humans. Their influence is why we aren't perfect beings, and why we aren't all devout Scientologists. Most of the stuff you pay the church money for is supposed to help you recognize and remove the thetans within you.

Close Religion

In Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, the entire plane of Baator is like this, being created by a divine curse to imprison the Magnificent Bastard Asmodeus and the devils. Unfortunately, said can is rather flimsy, and while it does a good job of holding Asmodeus, any infernalist worth his salt can create a temporary portal to it, allowing the devils to stream through and wreak havoc and contracts.
- Of course, the seal wasn't made to save mortals from Asmodeus and his devils — but to save the other gods from him. Hence why mortals are free to poke holes at the seal and let devils come and do Faustian pacts. Of course, if you are dumb enough to do it, you deserve what's coming to you.
  - You have grasped the entire concept wonderfully. Asmodeus will be pleased.
- Another D&D example: in the Scarred Lands setting, in the backstory the current gods sealed the evil gods that ruled before them, each in a different way befitting them and tailored so that their powers couldn't get them out. This editor's personal favorite: Thulkas, the Iron Lord, was so strong that he couldn't be moved, so he was hammered into an arrow and shot into the sun.
Many examples from Warhammer 40000, such as daemon weapons that contain bound daemons.
- Both literal and metaphorical in the case of the Necrons.
- Ditto their C'Tan gods.
- The Emperor himself might count.

Close Tabletop Games

Every game in the main Tengai Makyou series.
- Ziria has the Daimon Cult trying to revive Masakado.
- Manjimaru has the Root Clan trying to revive Yomi.
- Fuun Kabuki Den has the Daimon Cult trying to revive Garp.
- Fourth Apocalpyse has the Dark Society trying to revive their Absolute God.
In Tomb Raider and the remake, Tomb Raider Anniversary, Natla was locked in limbo for thousands of years after using her powers for evil.
In Okage: Shadow King, King Stan has been (purportedly) stuck in a bottle for the last 300 years, waiting for someone wimpy enough to let them possess his shadow. Additionally, while he was stuck in the bottle, a number of monsters stole portions of his evil power and became "Fake Evil Kings." He then drags the main character around to defeat them and get his powers back so he can take over the world.
In many of the Legend Of Zelda games, Ganon is a sealed evil. Link must either re-seal him or stop him from fully unsealing himself or his power.
- So is Vaati, the baddie from the Four Swords games. In The Legend Of Zelda: The Minish Cap, he starts wrecking havoc as a sorcerer and is sealed for the first time at the end of the game.
- This troper recalls being annoyed, even as a kid, that at least once the only way to defeat or reseal Ganon was to draw and use the Master Sword. Of course, this was the only thing keeping Ganon sealed in the first place.
- In Ocarina of Time, Volvagia was a dragon from Goron myths who had been sealed in the Fire Temple by the Goron hero. Ganondorf reawakened him as part of his efforts to take over Hyrule.
  - And there was also Bongo Bongo, the Evil Shadow Spirit that was sealed in the Well.
- In Majora's Mask, there was Goht, the boss of the Snowhead Temple. He was frozen in a block of ice, which you had to shoot with a fire arrow to thaw him out — and then you fight him. Why Link couldn't have just chiseled the darn mask off of him and saved himself the trouble, I don't know; the official Brady Games guide even hung a lampshade on that particular point.
- Majora itself was an evil entity sealed within the mask. When the entity was defeated by Link the mask became a normal mask.
Subversion: In Evil Zone, the inhabitants of an island dimension sealed away an incarnation of a cosmic destroyer, but couldn't finish the job themselves, so they had to hire out heroes to finish the Big Bad off.
In Dark Cloud, the general of an expansionist empire frees the Dark Genie from its place of captivity. At first, it seems to grant his wish by destroying every other nation on the face of the planet, but in the end, it takes over his body to progress towards its final goal - the complete destruction of everything.
Orochi, from The King Of Fighters '97.
The Dark One of SRMTHFG has nothing on the Profound Darkness in Phantasy Star IV; the Precursors sealed it with an entire solar system.
Diablo and his brothers Baal and Mephisto, in the Diablo series from Blizzard, are imprisoned in "soulstones" after being unleashed on Earth when a rebellion kicks them out of Hell. Retconned that they WANTED to be sealed, and then eventually break free and use the soulstones' power to their own end.
Illidan Stormrage in Warcraft III, another Blizzard production, is imprisoned in a cage for 10,000 years for continuing to research arcane magic after the night elves had banned its use. Also a subversion in that Illidan is not evil at the time of his imprisonment, but has become obsessed with power and revenge by the time he is freed.
- In a continuation of this universe, a majority of raid bosses in World of Warcraft are sealed evils. The quests to kill them generally go something like Go beat up these mildly bad dudes who have this Big Ancient Evil imprisoned, so that you can kill him too. One wonders why the player doesn't just say But, they're doing a fine job keeping him imprisoned! What happens if I manage to kill them but the Big Ancient Evil kills me? A variation goes Go beat up these mildly bad dudes who are trying to unseal this Big Ancient Evil before they succeed, then kill the half-unsealed form of the Big Ancient Evil, which makes a little more sense.
- Warcraft's universe also has the Old Gods, very similar to Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, sealed beneath the world and waiting to be freed. For the longest time, it was a total mystery why the god-esque Titans didn't just kill them all, considering they'd managed to off one. Recently it was revealed that the Old Gods are parasites who have bonded with the planet of Azeroth so that killing them will cause untold damage to it. And yet, the players continue killing them for loot...
The main storyline of The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind focuses around preventing Dagoth Ur, a godlike being imprisoned for 3500 years, from fully regaining his sealed powers.(though he wasn't imprisoned but passed out)
- Likewise, in its followup, Oblivion, the player must prevent Mehrunes Dagon, lord of the titular realm, from unleashing his forces upon the world.
Dracula in the Castlevania series is eventually sealed this way, but since The Balance Between Good And Evil demands that a Dark Lord remains present in the world, a number of candidates for his power and legacy pop up after the sealing, with Aria and Dawn of Sorrow's protagonist Soma Cruz being the lucky winner.
- Dracula, and Castlevania itself, were also sealed in the underworld throughout most of the series, both of them reappearing on Earth only once every hundred years. But Dracula found so many ways to circumvent that rule that it became more of a "sealed evil in a sieve".
In the Expansion Pack of Baldur's Gate 2, the Bonus Boss is the avatar of a very powerful demon lord. You are asked to reseal him in his prison as he's about to break free. Alternatively, you can fight him in an epic battle. However, if you win, you realize that demon lords in Dungeons And Dragons come Back From The Dead very, very quickly by definition. So it will happen, though not for the rest of the game. Good going.
- Kangaxx the demi-lich is another example. He dies very permanently after underestimating you, however.
Doctor Robotnik/Eggman of the Sonic The Hedgehog series has unsealed so many evils from their cans in attempts to achieve world domination, and ended up in so many Enemy Mines, that you wonder why he doesn't just go back to trying to take over the world in the old-fashioned way: i.e. by imprisoning all the animals in robots (Sealed Good In A Can?).
- In a case entirely unrelated to Eggman (and despite how people are trying so goddamn hard to forget about the sucky game connected to it), Princess Elise served as Iblis' can, with her control over her sorrow being the lid — if she cries, the can is opened and Iblis is unleashed upon the world once more. This is a double seal, as Iblis is but one half of Solaris, and Mephiles is the other. Three guesses to how Mephiles plans to reunite with Iblis; all guesses after the first don't count.
- Of course this becomes extremely retarded when you stop and think for a second. Her dying father (I believe her mother was already dead) sealed Iblis in Elise, a child, just before dying. "Where are Mommy and Daddy?" "Um... I'm sorry but they're dead..." "Waaaah..." "Ohsh—" And it gets worse, when it's implied later on that if the one Iblis is sealed in dies (as happened with Blaze), Iblis itself dies as well. So if the Duke had just sealed it in himself, Iblis would have been taken care of for good.
- Sonic Unleashed has Dark Gaia who was sealed within the planet by his light counterpart (read: CHIP) in a neverending cycle of planetary death and rebirth. Like any Cosmic Horror worth its salt, the mere act of Dark Gaia waking up spells The End Of The World As We Know It, which thankfully didn't happen this time around. You can blame Eggman for opening the pl- er, can ahead of schedule for THAT.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the plan of the antagonists is to summon the Shadow Queen, who can only be summoned into a princess (read Peach). Upon release, the Queen promptly reduces the head of the antagonists to, well, a head and plans to conquer. Unluckily for her, Mario arrived at the same time.
The Shadow Demons in Medievil were sealed in the heart of the Enchanted Forest under an iron dome, locked with the Shadow Artifact. In order to get through the forest and to his next destination, Sir Dan Fortesque is forced to free them; he later makes up for it by trapping them in an abandoned castle and dropping it into lava, destroying them.
In the Halo series, the bad guys accidentally release the Flood, a race of alien parasites that were sealed in special facilities all over the galaxy at the end of a cataclysmic war between them and the Forerunners 100,000 years ago. This war ended with the extinction of all sentient life in the galaxy, so it's a wonder why the Forerunners left little pockets of Flood spores for nosey aliens to stumble across. The AI monitor of one of these facilities comments on this (while you're in the middle of fending off a large wave of rotting space-zombies), saying that specimens were kept over after the last outbreak "for study," and remarks that "this decision may have been in error." No shit...
Pokemon has an entire species of them, the Spiritomb. Sure, sealing One Hundred And Eight souls into a single keystone makes economic sense, but by the time they get out, they've merged into a single, massively pissed off Pokemon who's Ghost-Dark type means it has no natural weaknesses, and is pretty powerful to boot. You can catch one, though to unseal it so you can fight it takes a somewhat occluded Side Quest, and the place you release them is a bit intentionally creepy.
The Reapers in Mass Effect. They are a slight subversion in that they actually seal themselves after their habitual galactic genocides in order to conserve energy. The only hand the Protheans had in dealing with them was tampering with the Citadel's mass relay after they'd already receeded so that they couldn't get back out so easily.
- You are pretty much specifically told not to wonder why they might do something which makes so little sense like that, which may or may not be Lampshade Hanging; this troper couldn't tell whether the Prothean AI was being serious or not.
- Lampshade or not, it makes for a pretty interesting piece of Fridge Brilliance when you realize their original plan to eliminate all advanced life in the galaxy couldn't be permanent unless they stuck around to let it regrow, feeding off the energy produced by the civilizations they enable, destroying not just their own creators but all possible future civilizations.
The Grotesqueries in Drakengard, with a twist. Also, no one knows the Sealed Evil In A Can exists except possibly the Big Bad. They're concerned about some other thing that comes out when those seals are broken.
In Guild Wars, Palawa Joko suffers this fate. Then there's Abaddon and everyone else locked in the Realm of Torment, including the Titans from the first game. Ultimately, in an attempt to stop Varesh Ossa from opening a gate to the Realm of Torment, you have to let Palawa Joko out of his prison.
In Shadow Of The Colossus, except there are sixteen cans wandering throughout the area. And when you think about it, Dormin isn't that evil.
Quest For Glory is fond of this one. In fact, every game following So You Want to Be a Hero centers around such a plot.
- Toward the end of Trial by Fire, it is revealed that Ad Avis is trying to summon Iblis, a powerful and evil djinn.
- In Wages of War, the Demon Sorcerer attempts to free the Demon Lord. (If he succeeds, the Demon Lord's first act is to cast Thermonuclear Blast on the immediate area. As it turns out, this is a legitimate spell, and can be learned in the fifth game.)
- In a minor twist, in Shadows of Darkness, Avoozl, the Dark One, wasn't quite sealed properly, and the surrounding countryside has suffered for it. Even as the two antagonists (one new, one old) try to release it, it is only through their actions that it can be put away for good.
- Dragon Fire has a twist of its own - there is a villain working behind the scenes and trying to unleash the Dragon of Doom, but by this point in the series, the hero (under extenuating circumstances) has become strong enough at this point to just kill the thing.
A Mess O' Trouble (an excellent Mac WorldBuilder shareware Adventure Game) has two godlike creatures trapped inside time dilation bubbles in some ruins. You know from local historians (and abominations lying around in the ruins) that their civilization was practically constructed by a good creature and then fooled into nearly destroying itself by a bad creature. One is a beautiful Energy Being, the other a dull-looking lizard man. Guess which is which?
Final Fantasy III gives us the Cloud of Darkness, the living essence of the power of the Dark (as opposed to the Light of the heroes' world.) The game implies that Xande's machinations allowed it to take form, but it would have remained sealed away in the Dark World had it not been for him opening a portal leading straight into it.
- Not to nitpick, but it's Light and Dark. The Dark Warriors imply that they fought the Cloud 1000 years ago, when it was Light surrounding Darkness, and got it Canned within the Dark World. Xande was nothing but a can-opener.
Most Final Fantasy games feature a Sealed Evil in a can. Perhaps the most notorious is Zeromus in Final Fantasy IV, who, despite being sealed in a Moon was still able to influence events in the world in order to bring about its release.
Final Fantasy V's previous generation of heroes, the Braves of Dawn, used the power of the Crystals to seal away Exdeath, who then surreptitiously began to drain the power of the Crystals (either personally or through manipulation.) Additionally, the player learns that, prior to Exdeath, the sorcerer Enuo was the first to harness the power of the Void, and waged war with it until he and all his obscenely powerful demons were thrown into the Dimensional Rift. The Advance version expands upon this by letting the player explore Enuo's prison and vanquish him for good.
The Warring Triad of Final Fantasy VI, who started the War of the Magi, sealed themselves away after realizing the destruction they had wrought upon the world, and the Espers hid them away in their own underground kingdom. Then Kefka came and released them, destroying the balance of magic and devastating the world.
Jenova of Final Fantasy VII is a basic example of the trope. In the sequel movie Advent Children, what's left of her is stored in a literal can.
In Persona 3, the "sealed evil" is Nyx, a Cosmic Horror and Anthropomorphic Personification of death — while the "can" just so happens to be the main character.
- In Persona 3: FES, we find out that said main character has become the seal. And it's in place not to seal Nyx from attacking Earth. It's for sealing Earth from summoning Nyx itself.
Kirby Squeak Squad plays with this one a little. What started as a hunt for stolen strawberry shortcake leads to Dedede getting smacked down on false suspicions, Kirby chasing all over the world to get his snack back from the titular menace only for the chest allegedly supposed to hold the shortcake stolen away by Meta-Knight, and when HE gets smacked down, the Squeaks grab the chest and let loose Dark Nebula. For such a simple protagonist the plot for these can get quite complex, especially given Meta-Knight grabbed the chest away just to prevent Dark Nebula from being released. The best part is that through all of this, you get the feeling that Kirby is still being motivated only to retrieve the cake.
- Possibly the only case in the Kirby series where opening the can isn't a case of Nice Job Breaking It Hero takes place in the Meta Knightmare Ultra mode of Kirby Super Star Ultra where Meta Knight questions NOVA, a mechanical, wish granting comet, about an extremely powerful warrior who was safely sealed away because of how powerful he was. Immediately after this he orders NOVA to break the seal on this extremely powerful evil just so he can kick its ass.
The overlooked Playstation game Tomba (Tombi in Europe) has the titular main character being given the task of sealing away seven Evil Pigs (eight including "The Real Evil Pig" who is their leader behind the scenes) in colour-coordinated "Evil Pig Bags."
In Shining Force, Darksol's evil plan is to unseal Dark Dragon.
Turok 2: the objective is to stop the Cosmic Horror Primagen from being unsealed from his can.
Dhaos, the villain of Tales of Phantasia, was sealed away by the protagonist's parents, but was released early on in the game by a minor villain he had been manipulating.
Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django has a textbook example in its Big Bad, Jormungandr.
- The Japan only sequel has a similar deal, except its cosmic horror, Vanargand, was sealed on the frickin' MOON.
The world of The Magic Candle was narrowly saved from the immortal demon lord Dreax when a few heroes managed to trap him in a candle flame. Keeping him there is the daily task of 44 mages... who have just disappeared. The seal is now critically weakened, leaving the player a set number of days to find out how to fix it.
- Somewhat unique in that the point of the game is to reactivate the seal, not simply to grind yourself to the point where you can just kill the damn thing (because doing so is impossible, at least by the terms of the game world).
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance alone uses the trope straight, with the characters believing that the Lehran's Medallion contained an evil god that flooded the entire world save Tellius. So at the end they not only the heroes fight Ashnard in order to liberate Crimea, but also to prevent him from unleashing a dark god. However the true nature of the relic is revealed in the sequel Radiant Dawn, and the heroes are the ones who free Yune, the Goddess of Chaos.
- Genealogy of the Holy War wins "strangest method of resurrecting", with 2 half siblings being brainwashed in order to breed a vassal for the dark god they are descended from.
Dwarf Fortress has what is popularly referred to in the community as "Hidden Fun Stuff." If your dwarves tunnel far down enough, they may breach a secret chamber containing demons which are powerful enough to bring the fortress to its knees. It's possible to kill them, though.
In Age of Mythology the cyclops Gargarensis is on a mission to free Kronos from Tartarus in return for godhood. He fails. Kronos gets out in the expansion, but gets killed by Gaia.
In Metroid Prime: Hunters, "the ultimate power" broadcast in a telepathic message throughout the galaxy is actually the sealed evil Gorea, a bioweapon run amok and the presumed source of the message. Despite learning this, you unseal Gorea for no adequately explained reason anyway, pretty much because there's nothing else left to do in the game but go kick its ass.
- The titular creature from the first Metroid Prime game was sealed within he impact crater. In the original version, the Space Pirates managed to free it by digging under the seal, although it later escaped from them and returned to the crater, and you have to open the seal to fight it. In the European release/Player's Choise version, it was never released.
Legend of Kyrandia III: Malcolm's Revenge has the player play as a Sealed Evil In A Can, who is rather dismayed to discover that being unsealed does not include getting his awesome magical powers of doom back, leaving him running around with no powers in a fantasy kingdom where pretty much everyone hates his guts.
Averted and parodied in Septerra Core. The game's intro movie and backstory tell about a great battle in which Marduk (the world's Crystal Dragon Jesus) defeated Gemma (the local Satan equivalent). In most RPGs, at some point towards the end Gemma would be resurrected and become the final boss. The main character even speculates that this is going to happen after hearing the tale about the battle between Marduk and Gemma. In response, The Obi Wan remarks that such a plot twist would be rather silly, and only happens in stories. Sure enough, Gemma never comes back, and the final boss of the game is the character who's been the main villain from start to finish, the Knight Templar Evil Overlord Lord Doskias.
Gig from Soul Nomad And The World Eaters starts the game as an example of this... And in a subversion of this trope, unless you actively start asking for his 'help', he's rather harmless, if a bit foul-mouthed.
Parodied in Makai Kingdom as Zetta seals himself in a book after he destroys his own netherworld. Hilarity Ensues as he tries to get his body back.
Kirby Super Star Ultra: In the Meta Knightmare Ultra mode, at the end of Level 5 (Milky Way Wishes), Meta Knight summons the comet Galactic NOVA to grant his wish of "fighting the most powerful warrior in the universe." As it turns out, "the most powerful warrior in the universe" had to be freed by NOVA after it had been sealed away because of its excessive power. This warrior, Galacta Knight, just happens to look almost exactly like Meta Knight, and can even summon some of Meta Knight's lesser cronies into battle.
- Interesting in that it's never made clear what he was sealed in. He just kinda... appears.
All games in the Ys series use this trope, e.g. Darm in I and II (who was disguised as the Black Pearl, also an Artifact of Doom), Galbalan in III, the Ancient City and Arrem in IV, the lost city of Kefin and its king, Jabir, in V, and the Ark of Napishtim in VI.
In the Infocom text game Enchanter, your job is to defeat the evil enchanter Krill without disturbing the Cosmic Horror that's sealed below his castle. The tie-in novel by Robin Bailey takes the tack that your character accidentally did release the thing, and now it's up to the book's protagonist to stop it.
The City Of Villains is practically filled with these: Bat'Zul under Cap Au Diable, the Leviathan under Sharkhead Isle, Shiva in Bloody Bay... and the City Of Heroes isn't lacking in them either, as Dark Astoria apparently houses the sleeping dread god of the Banished Pantheon, and the Kaiju that may still be in battle with Talos underneath Talos Island...
How did this article get this far without mentioning Marathon Infinity? The game starts out with a grim message from Durandal about the W'rkcacnter getting loose from Lh'owon's sun, due to the Pfhor using the trih xeem on it. The W'rkcacnter cannot be fought directly, and is only defeated by the player jumping between different places and timelines, before the player reaches a Jjaro space station that is able to turn the sun into a black hole, thus trapping W'rk before it (them?) escapes.
In Dead Space, the Marker seals the infection that turns corpses into horrific alien monsters (it was actually a manmade knockoff of the real marker). Anyways, the Marker-Worshipping Scientologists discover the Marker in the midst of mining Aegis VII and move it off its pedestal. Bad things occur.
The hook and most the line of Arcanum's plot involved the player character being a Chosen One prophecied to defeat a Big Bad, last known to be sealed in a can. Later it's revealed that many evils are sealed in that can, and by the time you finally wormhole your way inside, the Big Bad has done a Heel Face Turn long ago, after having been overshadowed by an Evil Overlord you must defeat instead.
Maverick Zero of Mega Man X, with The Virus originally coming from him. He spends the rest of his life/lives atoning for it.
- The "can" in question is in itself a Sealed Evil, although, becoming a hero, this was obviously subverted.
Wario Land games have had a few cases of this, with Wario Land 3 having Wario spend half the game trying to 'help' a mysterious figure trapped in the music box, who turns out to be Rudy the Clown, which then tries to take over the world. Wario World had him accidentally unleash the sealed evil in a can at the very beginning, aka the Black Jewel, which was taken from some kind of treasure chest by Wario and his obsession with treasure, and that then turned his entire castle into a parallel dimension of sorts and what not.
Jedi Academy: The sealed evil takes the form of an ancient Sith Lord, whom the game's big bad is naturally trying to resurrect, thinking she will be rewarded. The Sith Lord has other ideas.
EarthBound: Giygas is first encountered in the Devil's Machine, which seals away his warped consciousness. Subverted in that Giygas can still damage Ness and his friends while sealed away, but played straight when Pokey unleashes Giygas' true form by turning the machine off.
Mother3: When his mech runs out of power, Pokey/Porky retreats into his Absolutely Safe Capsule — which can't be opened from the inside or outside.
In what is possibly the worst-sealed can ever, Pac-Man. He kills the ghost, sealing it in the little box in the center of the screen. Three minutes later, it escapes again, and poor Pac must kill it over again. Perhaps he'd have better luck if he gave his little ghostbox a lid.
Well before the start of the Geneforge series, the Shapers discovered a startling new technology that could imbue ordinary humans with incredible magical powers. When they discovered some of the side effects involved (such as Suicidal Overconfidence, a violent temper, and in extreme cases, outright Body Horror), rather than take any steps to destroy this technology, they simply abandoned the remote island outpost where it was discovered, and declared it off limits under penalty of death. Fast forward a few hundred years: A band of explorers from across the seas happens upon the abandoned outpost and all its forbidden goods. Things go downhill from there.
- In fact, the Shapers do this constantly. Their laboratories, workshops, and schools are designed to be sealed up quickly should anything Go Horribly Wrong.
- Not just should. It's said at one point that more often than not something does go wrong.
In Final Fantasy VIII, Laguna Loire tricks evil sorceress Adel into walking into a specially-prepared technological "tomb" in which he is able to seal her considerable powers. Then he launches it into space and spends the next seventeen years making regular trips to monitor the seal. Predictably enough, catastrophe eventually lets her loose again, but by that point Laguna's son is well-equipped to kill her off for good.
in Planescape: Torment, the literal Sealed-Evil-In-A-Box.
In Romancing Sa Ga: Minstrel Song, the god Saruin was sealed away via the Fatestones; naturally, his minions are trying to 'correct' this. However, an even better example is the Jewel Beast: a monster poised to destroy a whole country if awakened. Even if the player manages to delay its awakening — no easy feat by itself, given the precise timing and difficult sequence of events that involves — they can't stop it unless they enter its lair while it's still sleeping. And even then it's one of the harder fights in the game.
Orochi in Okami is a definite example of this trope.
Big Bad of Super Robot Wars K, Lu Cobol was defeated by the Crusian. They decide to hid Lu Cobol's fragments in planets across galaxy. 2,000 years has pass and now bodiless Lu Cobol seek to reform itself, by destroy whatever planet that hold its fragments.
In Phantasy Star 1, 2, -and- 3, you find the big bad end boss Dark Force/Dark Falz/Dark Phallus (depending on translation) in a literal Pandora's Box in the final dungeon.
Earth 2160 has the traditional sealed-ancient-evil-alien-race-beneath-the-surface-of-Mars for the first half of the game. Then some Dutch nerd learns to control them, and it all ends badly(-er).

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The Order of the Stick features The Snarl, a monster formed from tangles in the fabric of reality, and sealed within the world itself.
- Also subverted with The Creature in the Darkness, who Xykon and Redcloak think should be evil and scary (and accordingly, they keep it locked in a box), but for the most part is just hungry and clueless, verging at times on too dumb to live.
Charby the Vampirate had a big old can of evil, slightly subverted since it had originally been sealed by an amaturish effort to defeat it, only to reseal it with a tighter lid later after it got loose. Of course we didn't learn that evil came in cans until after the fact.
Subverted in 8-Bit Theater. Red Mage places the fire demon Kary in a Bag of Holding and freezes it with a powerful Ice spell, with the idea that she will remain sealed until they are powerful enough to defeat her. White Mage simply smashes the frozen bag in revenge for the death of Black Belt.
In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, space villain Fructose Riboflavin gets turned into Pure Energy and stuffed into a battery. He doesn't stay there for long, though.
Mr Goh has rather a... literal... approach to this trope.
In Girl Genius, the Other is a being of such extreme evil that it wants to enslave the world... and doesn't really care who dies in the process. It was eventually defeated, but nobody knows HOW... except maybe the parents and uncle of the protagonist. It left a machine behind with a copy of itself, which it then imprinted on the protagonist (unsealing it), who is the daughter of the Other, or rather, taking into account certain implications and statements that lend themselves towards it having been an actually ancient evil, it simply possessed the protagonists mother, and hundreds of other people through time, before finally taking possession of the protagonist, temporarily.

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Many, many things contained by the SCP Foundation. One, SCP-076-2, had the particularity of coming with his own (leaky) can, SCP-076-1.
Neopets now has its very own Sealed Evil In A Can, as of the end of the Return of Dr. Sloth plot event that happened January 29 - March 15, 2008. The comic is here, and spoilers are here: Dr. Frank Sloth is the sealed evil. The can is the Space Faerie's token. Roll your mouse over the very last panel of the last chapter, and you'll see the token, which was not destroyed in the explosion of the ship, floating through space. When it gets most of the way across the panel, a pair of red eyes glow from within...

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Trigon in season four of Teen Titans, where his daughter Raven becomes his portal into the world, allowing him to turn every creature in the biosphere into stone and cover the planet in lava.
- Also, the dragon Malchior in an earlier episode qualifies, sealed in one of Raven's spellbooks.
Most seasons of Jackie Chan Adventures involved the cast attempting to reseal escaped Sealed Evil In A Can once using a jar-like object. In the series, this is Justified by the fact that destroying evil will only allow a different (and probably stronger) evil to take its place. Better than, to keep around the devil you already know how to deal with, than risk leaving the way open for something far worse to come up that you may not know how to deal with in time.
A film example is the villain Hexxus in Fern Gully, who for ages was sealed into a tree, and was released when the tree was cut down.
Wu-Ya from Xiaolin Showdown was trapped in a puzzle box for 1,500 years until Jack Spicer freed her unwittingly.
- Likewise, Hannibal Roy Bean was trapped in the Yin-Yang world for nearly as long until Omi freed him unwittingly.
Danny Phantom has both Pariah Dark and the future self of the titular character.
The Dark One from Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go, who is so large he requires an entire planet for a functioning seal.
Legion Of Super Heroes, "Phantoms": Due to Time Travel, Superman accidentally unseals an evil that, it's implied, he sealed a thousand years ago — before he does so.
Vilgax, from Ben 10, tends to be put in a can of whatever sort between appearances, be it a healing chamber, a block of ice, or a pocket dimension. He's slightly unusual in that we see him out of the can first.
- And in the same show, Ghostfreak is an odd example of evil that got sealed in a can accidentally, his DNA sampled for the show's Clingy Mac Guffin so that the wearer can turn into him, and the personalities of his species being encoded in their genes somehow. Eventually, he gets loose and becomes Ben's Enemy Without.
Jafar in Disney's Aladdin and (of course) The Return of Jafar.
Aku in Samurai Jack.
Hades, Greek God of the Underworld, in Justice League. Released by Felix Faust in the hopes that Hades will grant him "ultimate knowledge" in return. Hades naturally betrays Faust by causing him to instantly age to an old man since "Ultimately, pain and suffering are all humans will ever know."
The 13 Ghosts from the Chest of Demons in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo.
In the prequel episode of Code Lyoko, we discover that the dormant Supercomputer was basically sealing XANA for ten years. It is Jérémie, by turning it back on, who unleashed the malevolent program on the world.
The Care Bears Movie had the Evil Spirit, whose can was a locked book of magic spells a young boy, Nicholas, opened. The spirit is powerful but, since it's confined to the book, needs Nicholas to cast its spells; he becomes progressively more evil in the process. The Care Bear Stare helps him come to his senses and he helps close and relock the book, ending the threat.
In Animaniacs, the Warner Brothers (and their sister Dot) were Sealed Zany in a Water Tower. In this case, it was more Sealed Chaos in a Can.
Kim Possible had some sort of a sealed evil monkey man who petrified people in one episode.
Transformers had a lot of these.
- For 4 million years, the Ark held the Decepticons and Autobots in stasis, under a volcano... until volcanic activity shook things up and woke up the evil Decepticons.
- In Cosmic Rust, there's a dead planet with radio beacons warning travelers to stay away or die horribly. The Decepticons plunder it, and in the process, catch the metal-eating plague called Cosmic Rust.
  - Starscream shows signs of Tabletop RPG Genre Savvy in this episode: when confronted with a sealed crypt with a curse warning on it, he proclaims that "a curse on the door means treasure behind the door" and breaks in. Unfortunately, he's in a Transformers cartoon, not a D&D game, making it a case of Wrong Genre Savvy
- In Return of Optimus Prime, the Hate Plague spores were sealed inside a star after their last outbreak. Unfortunately the star went nova.
- Starscream himself could be considered Sealed Evil In A Can in the episode Starscream's Ghost; his ghost first appears after Octane tumbles into the Decepticon crypt and knocks over the ruins of Starscream's grave marker.

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Yucca Mountain Repository. It's going to be a giant storage facility for nuclear waste. As much of the waste has half-lives long enough to still be pretty dangerous after 10,000 years, a lot of research has been done into the subject of how to do Sealed Evil In A Can correctly. For example, in 10,000 years will this part of Nevada still be a desert? If it's not, the water table will be higher and the waste could leak. What language do we write the "Warning: horrible death lies within" signs in? English is probably not going to last 10,000 years. For that matter, should we write them at all? (You're an archaeologist, you come across a big structure of a dead civilization. It looks like a tomb, and it's got "Warning: Horrible curse on all who enter!" written on it. What do you do?)
- Write it in Hebrew and Chinese as well. Doubt these two stubborn nations and their languages are going anywhere. Spanish, considering the demographic with population growth on the continent, might be a good bet. And add a Cthulhu pictogram for the illiterate and/or incredibly daft!
  - Languages evolve! Do you speak Indo-European?
- It's a stupid concern, all said and done. No language has been lost since the Middle Ages, and the chances now in the friggin electronic age is zero.
  - Um, tons of languages have been lost since the Middle Ages. Notably, many Native American languages. There's a whole subset of linguists dedicated to documenting languages that are about to be lost. Here's a link to a BBC article about how one language is lost every 2 weeks on average.
- While most languages get lost or destroyed, several languages have stood the test of time, and should be usable for such purposes, including; Traditional Chinese, Latin, Hebrew, Attic Greek. Bonus points for using dead languages — because they are no longer in widespread use, the languages have essentially settled in their final form and will not change.
- What about post nuclear holocaust or similar world wide catastrophe? Won't likely be an electronics age after that. This Troper go with the languages most likely to survive in a given area, and the languages most likely to survive overall. Also, the universal greeting should be added... actually, they need to make a universal WARNING...
Supermax prisons, built to house the worst criminals known to man, most notably:
- Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber;
- Terry Nicholes, Oklahoma City Bomber co-conspiritor;
- Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber;
- Eric Rudolf, the Olympic Park Bomber;
- Ramzi Usef, the World Trade Center Bomber;
Napoleon, first on Elba and then on St. Helena.
- More St. Helena than Elba... a theory is that they actually wanted to keep Napoleon close just in case they needed to call on his talents in the event of another potential world-conquerer starting trouble. He just didn't like being the pet general in a box and decided to retake France. So Yeah...
Just saw this in the opening of an article about the third Guitar Hero game:
As is the case with all ancient evils, 80's rock music was never sealed away in a very permanent fashion.
Sealed Potential Armageddon In A Tube: The Large Hadron Collider. The initial activation was delayed due to concerns about the integrity of the seal. Considering the fact that worst-case scenario, this thing is creating a black hole, a leaky seal is definitely something they wanted to fix before turning the damn thing on.
- We might as well add in the planet Earth then as well then. The kind of high energy reactions that will take place in the LHC that lead to the doom day scenarios happen billions of times per seconds in our upper atmosphere already. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons the LHC is considered safe since such reactions take place all over the observable universe and we haven't witnessed a big blob of strangelet shaped suspiciously like a planet.
The location where Hitler's ashes were buried is kept unknown lest it become a Neo-Nazi pilgrimage site.
- Lenin, though, is a mummy that looks very creepily asleep, in a museum in the middle of Red Square in Moscow. And every year or so, some loonie or other will try to destroy and/or STEAL him. Subverted by Stalin, however, who got himself mummified and put next to Lenin in the Mausoleum... and subsequently kicked out of it, several years later, when the public figured out that that Sealed Evil In A Can is dead for good, and can easily be discarded, sans consequence.
  - "Must... Crush... CAPITALISM!! URRRRGH... ARRRGHH..."
  - Let's not forget Mao, whose preserved corpse is ironically a major tourist stop and revenue generator in mainland China.

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