Evil has been defeated and Sealed in a Can. Centuries or even millennia later, someone finds it and lets it out. Maybe intentionally, maybe accidentally.
But something has happened. Our supposed Greater-Scope Villain isn't attacking. They're not plotting or planning.
Turns out that Being Evil Sucks (for one thing, it gets you sealed in cans for eons) and the formerly sealed evil force has had time, a lot of time, to reflect on who they are and why they were imprisoned — and they've decided that they don't want to be that way any longer.
They have been Redeemed in the can.
A subtrope of Heel–Face Turn. A sealed evil who has spent time in the can and reformed is generally able to avoid Redemption Equals Death, as they've been punished for a long time already, although they do sometimes choose to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Compare Bored with Insanity, for the Order Versus Chaos equivalent.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Crayon Shin Chan: Pursuit of the Balls of Darkness: Devil jack is a malicious and powerful demon dangerous enough to cause the end of the world, being sealed inside a vessel. At the end of the movie, he is released by Shinnosuke and Himawari, and is revealed that not only his powers have expired since 12/31/1996 and wasted all his remaining power to escape the vessel, but he isn't longer interested in destroying the world or helping bad guys who want to rule it like Hecson, quickly joining the heroes' side.
- Dog Days: Most demons are gods and spirits who have been corrupted, and the only way to turn them back is to seal them up and wait for the corruption to dissipate.
- The Witch and the Beast: Ashgan the Demon Sword has been sealed by the Velvette witch clan for centuries. The sealing granted the otherwise feral being intelligence and an understanding of the emotion it felt for humanity: Hate. However, the witch Helga took pity on Ashgan due to his reduced state and treated him more like an annoying friend than a threat. While not fully redeemed, it's enough that Ashgan would prefer to stay by Helga's side since he feels something other than hate for her.
Comic Books
- Empowered: Caged Demonwolf hasn't been in the can all that long, but he can still communicate from within the can, and he's become very supportive of Emp, who captured him in the first place, giving her the occasional You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech.
Fan Works
- Better Bones AU: After her tyrannical rule over the ancient lake cats, Sol takes over Hollyleaf's body and her spirit is trapped in the tunnels for a hundred years. When she finally gets her body back, she has a better perspective over how wrong her actions were and how pointless her ambitions and obsession with the code were, and is a much more benevolent figure.
- Transition
: Played with in two ways. Firstly, Jinx pulls a Heel–Face Turn during the six months she and Raven go missing, but the police finds her in a coma and her power levels are off the scale so they lock her in a Cryo-Prison without letting her wake up to explain. Secondly, due to the power boost, the pod isn't working as the police intended — it was supposed to keep her in a coma with her powers off, but her powers now essentially have an autopilot function, trying to get her out of the pod without her mind to tell right from wrong or consider collateral damage, causing Disaster Dominoes around the pod and inadvertently turning her into a Leaking Can of Evil.
Literature
- Doctor Who Expanded Universe:
- In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel Blood Harvest, the villain of the week rescues Borusa from the petrifaction he suffered at the end of The Five Doctors. Borusa promptly informs him that he's had ample time to reflect on the mistakes that led him to be trapped there, and certainly isn't going to repeat them by helping with someone else's evil plan.
- In the New Series Adventures novel At Childhood's End, the backstory involves an implacable galaxy-threatening army that were defeated by trapping them outside of time and space. The villain of the novel is trying to bring them back into reality and set them loose on the galaxy to wreak havoc. In the end, when Ace establishes contact with their leader, it turns out that they're no longer interested in wreaking havoc; being trapped outside time meant that they could see every possible future, and they learned that every scenario where they went back to their old ways ended badly for everyone, so now they're committed to turning over a new leaf and helping their former enemies rebuild from the devastation they caused.
- Neverwhere: After the destruction of Atlantis, this was Heaven's plan with the Angel Islington, to lock him up in London Below to reflect and repent, and when he had learned his lesson, he would be released. Unfortunately, Islington decided he didn't deserve his punishment, and tried to arrange for an early release. It did not go as planned, though.
- Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms: In "Fortune's Fool" Katya attempts to Invoke this on the Jinn as they reseal him into his bottle, as Curse Escape Clauses are mandatory in this universe:
"Iblis Afrit En Kalael, we command thee in the name of the Law, in the name of Justice, in the name of Compassion and in the name of Peace, to be bound into this vessel until you repent and reform, and join the ranks of the Lawful Jinn of the City of Brass."
- The Silmarillion: Defied by Morgoth. After his first defeat by the Valar, he was chained in the Halls of Mandos for thousands of years to reflect on his actions, in an attempt to pull this off. Unfortunately, it didn't take, but his faked repentance was accepted because the Valar (or at least their leader) couldn't understand that Morgoth was irredeemably and permanently evil.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who: During Series 10, The Doctor attempts to invoke this with Missy/The Master. Keeping her in a vault beneath the university where he works, he visits her from time to time, telling her about his latest adventures. It begins to have an effect, too, as at one point, Missy laments tearfully that she now knows that she remembers the names of all her victims, even though she would have sworn But for Me, It Was Tuesday prior to that.
- Supernatural: In contrast to how Lucifer grew worse after his first re-imprisonment in the Cage, Season 15 reveals that Michael's decade of imprisonment down there has actually done him a lot of good. By the time he's escaped the Cage, Michael's gone from being the most apocalyptically extreme "Well Done, Son" Guy in the universe to a celestial drifter, he's formed a genuine friendship with his vessel Adam (who he originally regarded as nothing more than a necessary meatsuit), and he's notably less callous to the value of human life now than he was before.
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder: The Wrath of the Righteous adventure path gives this as a possibility regarding the Runelord Alderpash, who is currently imprisoned in the demon lord Baphomet's domain in the Abyss. In his day, Alderpash was a textbook Evil Sorcerer, a ruthless tyrant, a gleeful backstabber, an open demon-worshipper, and generally a very, very evil man. However, he's been trapped in Baphomet's Ineluctable Prison for millennia — far longer than he ever was free, in fact — has had plenty of time to reflect on his mistakes, and most importantly is desperate to get out. If the player characters request that he stick to the straight and narrow in exchange for his freedom, he will give it an honest try.
Video Games
- Arcanum: The elf wizard Arronax was an arrogant, dogmatic bigot whose belief in elves superiority over other races and magic's superiority over technology led to him singlehandedly committing genocide against a city-state and being banished to the Void during the Age of Legends. When confronted by The Living One several thousand years later, he's had time to reflect on how evil his actions were, mellowed by a surprising amount and is willing to become The Atoner if The Living One is prepared to trust him.
- Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: The "dark god" Yune, who had been sealed away in the eponymous Fire Emblem turns out to be caring and reasonable in part because she's actually the Goddess of Chaos, not a dark or evil god as centuries of propaganda to keep people from releasing her after she had an emotional outburst that caused global devastation. In that time, she'd heard the Galdr of Slumber, a magically calming song that helped prevent her escape from the Fire Emblem in situations with intense chaotic energy many times from many mortals and it mellowed her out. Yune then helps the party stop Ashera, her other half and the Goddess of Order who has Gone Mad From the Isolation and decided to wipe out all life.
- Halo: The Forerunners lost their war with the Flood partially because the Artificial Intelligence they built to help combat it, Mendicant Bias, joined the Flood after being corrupted by the Logic Plague. The Forerunners only just managed to delay the traitorous AI long enough to pull a Mutual Kill on the Flood, with the survivors capturing Bias and imprisoning him in the Ark. After 100,000 years, Bias awakens and reveals himself to the Master Chief via Terminals, admitting his wrongdoing and now committed to helping Humanity as penance to the Forerunners. Though in an ironic twist, Halo: Contact Harvest reveals Bias' first attempt to help humanity ended up making things worse by accidentally inciting war between them and the Covenant.note
Visual Novels
- Juniper's Knot: For all the claims the Fiend makes about her crimes, and her plans of revenge upon the human race, her only action, upon being freed, is to cry in the boy's arms
Web Comics
- The Great Raven of Archipelago, having spent a considerable amount of time sealed and actually unable to order his servants about (they just acted on the last orders given, which were to cause destruction and try to free their boss). When finally released, he turns out to be on his last legs and very repentant.
- Cucumber Quest: The Dreaded Nightmare Knight is the creator and master of the Disaster Masters and an Ancient Evil that has been repeatedly sealed away by chosen heroes and subsequently released by would-be conquerors. Initially a genuinely evil Omnicidal Maniac, the countless centuries of conflict and witnessing the celebration of his defeats have caused the Nightmare Knight to reflect on how meaningless this Vicious Cycle is. Unfortunately for him, his reputation both means that few are willing to trust his attempts to offer peace and is necessary for him to keep his immense power, as he cannot keep the Disaster Masters alive without it.
Web Animation
- Transformers: War for Cybertron: Sky Lynx turns out to be this. A very long time ago, he tried to seize the Matrix of Leadership for himself, believing that his power meant that he was more deserving of it than any other Transformer. This got him banished to the Dead Universe, and by the time the Autobots encounter him he's had so long to think about how pointless his actions were that he's become somber, humble, and apologetic about his past behavior and becomes The Mentor to Optimus Prime.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: After Marceline's vampiric powers have been drained, and the efluvium spilled, releasing the various vampires whom she had killed and absorbed, most of them take up their old ways, except for the Vampire King, who decides that he's tired of the repetitive cycles. When he encounters the heroes, after his comrades have fallen again, in the same way they'd been defeated before, proving his point, he simply surrenders, offering to have his vampiric essence drained.
- The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest: "The Mummies of the Malenque" has a descendant of the Malenque try and revive a plague that the Malenque had supposedly engineered as part of a plot to rule the world. Unfortunately for him, his deceased ancestors woke up and had a few strong opinions on the subject.
Malenque Mummy: It was our own evil that wiped us out. We will not let you do it again!
- Scooby-Doo! and the Curse of the 13th Ghost where Asomad van Ghoul had spent so long imprisoned in the Chest of Demons that he reformed, and disippated peacefully after aiding Vincent van Ghoul, his descendant, keep the Chest out of evil hands.
