Gratuitous Animal Sidekick - Television Tropes & Idioms

The insertion of an animal sidekick into a property that normally wouldn't be expected to have one. Often an example of Executive Meddling, particularly on Animated Series.

May be a Heroic Dog as well. Compare with Cousin Oliver, Team Pet.

TV Tropes Wiki has Tropey the Wonder Dog.

Examples:

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Comic Books

Superboy had Krypto in his Silver Age comics, who also appeared in the 1960s Superman/Batman animated series. In 2005, the Last Dog of Krypton made his move to center stage on TV in Krypto The Superdog.
- Krypto also got a Shout Out in one episode of Justice League (though it was All Just a Dream). Krypto himself has recently been reintroduced to the comics, and it works.
Not to be outdone, Batman had Ace the Bathound back during the Silver Age.
- Subverted in Batman Beyond, where Bruce Wayne has a dog named Ace, but he's an Angry Guard Dog.
  - Nevertheless he made a pretty good sidekick in one episode. "Good bad dog."
  - The Fully Absorbed Finale of Batman Beyond in Justice League Unlimited gives us the possibility that Ace is named after a member of the Royal Flush Gang who died in Batman's arms. Of course, since the Justice League Unlimited episode was the last thing to ever be shown of the Batman Beyond universe, it's still definitely a nod to the old Bat-Hound.
- Ace is pretty badass in Batman The Brave And The Bold as well.
- A version of Ace appeared in the 90s Batman comics, this time as a seeing-eye dog Batman had inherited from a blind Native American medicine man. He mostly hung around the cave with Harold, Batman's mute hunchback assistant.
- The DCnU has introduced Titus and the Batcow.
DC Comics introduced two examples of the same basic concept in the post-World War II days the superhero genre's decline in popularity:
- In 1948, the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was suddenly given a canine sidekick in Streak, the Wonder Dog. Not only did Streak share GL's title, but the dog actually became the top-billed star of the series! Streak also served as the prototype for DC's other, subsequent wonder dog (Rex), who would operate without a superhero partner.

Literature

Thoroughly lampshaded, spoofed, gnawed on, buried and piddled on by Discworld's "Gaspode the Wonder Dog."

Live-Action TV

Punky Brewster got Glomer, a "magical friend from the end of the rainbow", in her Animated Adaptation. Never mind the fact that she already had her dog Brandon.

Western Animation

Formerly named after the original Wonder Dog in the first Super Friends.
- Gleek in the Zan and Jayna episodes of the Super Friends.
Spoofed mercilessly on The Incredibles DVD, in which a small rabbit named Mr. Skipperdoo is added to the badly-animated cast of the fake cartoon "Mr. Incredible and Pals". Even the supers hate the idea, as evidence in their commentary on the cartoon:
Frozone: And that rabbit is getting on my last nerve!
Mr. Incredible: The rabbit is cuddly! Kids like little cuddly sidekicks! I mean, the rabbit... it's a time-tested... okay, the rabbit bites.
In the Animated Adaptation of Happy Days, the Fonz had a dog called Mr Cool. Seriously.
- And in the Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/The Fonz Hour, Mork got this pink six-legged alien dog-thing, and Laverne and Shirley were in the army with a talking pig. (We only know this from Retrojunk.com.)
Gilligan got a monkey sidekick in his Animated Adaptation, and an alien one when the Animated Adaptation was Recycled In SPACE.
Nikko the Shar-Pei got shoehorned into this role for the New Kids on the Block cartoon.
The Brady Kids gave the kids a whole menagerie of sidekicks: a dog, a magical talking bird, and a pair of twin panda bears.
- They made a cameo appearance in A Very Brady Sequel as a hallucination, and then an encore appearance in the credits.
The first cartoon based on the Harlem Globetrotters features a Team Pet dog named Dribbles.