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A pairing that will set your heart aflame… along with the rest of you.

"You already have a pet. He's an Arco-flagellant combat cyborg. He's seven feet tall, and eats 30 pounds of raw flesh a day. You named him 'Skippy'."

A character keeps as a pet what would normally be considered (and the same species may be in every other instance) a bloodthirsty monster. Such a creature may be given a deceptive name. A person with such a pet may be a Fluffy Tamer, if not The Beast Master. May be a Team Pet. Extremely prone to Fluffy the Terrible naming conventions.

See also Mons and Unusual Pets for Unusual People. Compare Monster Roommate and Monster Allies. When the monster is much more human-like, see Supporting the Monster Loved One.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

    Comedy 
  • There's a Marty Feldman sketch in which he visits the vet with a large creature in a basket. Of course it ends up eating everyone and their pets in the waiting room.

    Comic Books 
  • The Transformers (IDW) have featured Sunstreaker's pet Insecticon, Bob.
    • Later on there's an inversion with Thundercracker (Ex-Decepticon gone native) and Buster (an ordinary puppy).
  • Bone: Smiley Bone adopts a Rat Creature and names him Bartleby.
  • Black Moon Chronicles: Pilou takes a dragon egg and decides to hatch it so he can raise the baby dragon. This makes sense, since his origin story shows that he himself was raised by dragons.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • Stitch from Lilo & Stitch, who is actually supposed to be one of the most dangerous alien experiments created by Dr. Jumba Jookiba.
  • Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. Despite his name, Toothless actually does have teeth. Retractable ones.
    • By the end of the film, just about everyone on Berk has a dragon as a pet.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Return of the Jedi, the Rancor Keeper sobs over the corpse of the Rancor that Luke killed in self-defense. And Jabba the Hutt, the creature's owner, was also rather upset about it.
  • In Adele Hasn't Had Her Dinner Yet, Baron von Kratzmar grew a huge carnivorous plant Adele. He treats her as his pet, calling her very affectionately "Adelka" and speaking very softly with her. He grew her with one purpose only, though — to get revenge on his former biology professor.
  • Lake Placid: It turns out that the old lady living on the lake has been keeping the giant crocodile as a pet for years, occasionally feeding it her livestock. And by the end she's still looking after the baby crocodiles left behind after mama croc has been captured.

    Literature 
  • Robin Goodfellow in the Cal Leandros series is followed home from the Metropolitan Museum by an undead, mummified cat. He decides to keep her, and names her Salome. While this may not seem the most horrifying of pets, she does manage to kill his neighbor's Great Dane and leave it on Robin's pillow as a gift.
  • In the Harry Potter series, Hagrid kept a pet Acromantula as a student, and hasn't really broken out of the habit by the time of the books (and likely, never will). He seems to have an innate natural rapport with such creatures, and always seems surprised that other people have trouble dealing with them.
  • In InCryptid, Alex keeps a breeding pair of basilisks — but he's a cryptozoologist, and keeps them at the zoo where he works rather than at his house. He also once tried to hug a manticore when he was six, but it's unknown if it ended up being a pet. Some gorgons keep basilisks or cockatrices as livestock, like we would chickens (since they're immune to the petrifying gaze).
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians Quintus AKA Daedalus has a hellhound, a hummer sized shaggy killing machine that appear to mortals as poodles (miniature or full sized is unsaid), named Mrs. O'Leary. She is actually quite nice. Quintus later gives her to Percy.
  • The Reynard Cycle: Tiecelin's flock of Shrike Chimera. They're utterly loyal to him, and generally leave his allies be, but they are unsettling bird creatures with human faces, and they feed primarily on human corpses. Understandably, most people are uncomfortable around them.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • The Stark children, including Jon Snow, each get a direwolf pup, who — while they quickly become capable of tearing out throats — are very loyal to their master and family and generally don't attack people unless they're a threat, with the exception of Shaggydog, who is extremely vicious and feral.
    • Daenerys Targaryen has three dragons who hatched from petrified eggs. They grow fast and soon begin to terrify even her because she is unable to tame them completely. Dragons were thought to be extinct and she doesn't know how to train them properly.
  • Mouse from The Dresden Files is a dog that can take on a van, or The Fair Folk, or he gets shot, and shakes it off. He's great with kids. When Harry's daughter Maggie says that there used to be a monster under her bed until Mouse slayerized it, Harry isn't sure whether she's joking or not.
  • Boojumverse. The protagonist of "Mongoose" has a pet 'cheshire', a small friendly Eldritch Abomination with More Teeth than the Osmond Family used for hunting inter-dimensional horrors. At the end of the story, someone speculates that a cheshire is a tamed and artificially-stunted Bandersnatch, the unstoppable Eldritch Abomination that's at the top of the food chain.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Addams Family has a pet carnivorous plant named Cleopatra, which is a bit different than your normal Venus Flytrap. There's also Morticia's pet lion, Kitty Kat.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • The Stark children each get a direwolf pup that is soon capable of ripping out throats, as warned by Lord Eddard. Robb even becomes infamous among his enemies for taking his into battle. Fortunately, the wolves are very loyal to their masters and family and generally don't attack without good reason. They do become aggressive if there really is a good reason, but their owners tend to ignore these warnings. Shaggydog is the wildest of the litter and really doesn't like being chained in a kennel, justified in that his owner and trainer is a six-year-old boy who has been rendered slightly unstable due to his entire life collapsing around him.
    • Daenerys' dragons are also this, as they grow fast and they begin to frighten even her.
    • Played with, with the Bastard's Girls. They're all regular domestic dogs, but they've been bred to be vicious and have a taste for human flesh.
  • The Munsters has Spot, a pet dragon that lives in a secret room under the staircase.
  • The Walking Dead (2010):
    • In season two, Michonne has two pet zombies.
    • Later, King Ezekiel has a pet tiger.

    Mythology 
  • In Greek Mythology, Hades had Cerberus, a massive, three-headed dog with a serpent tail and a mane of snakes.

    Podcasts 
  • Cool Kids Table: The trio in Bloody Mooney realize that Mooney is this when they discover Keri's mother torn aport and Mooney eating her corpse.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons: This often happens to druids and, to a lesser extent, rangers. At higher levels, you can keep huge and dangerous beasts such as dire bears, tigers, or sharks as your animal companion.
  • Exalted: Hran-Tzu, the god of decay, owns what is far and away the most unusual pet in Creation or, at least, in Yu-Shan — the Ur-Snake, a quarter-mile-long fifty-headed serpent that was created by the Primordials to be the template on which all snakes, worms and slithering things would be based on, and which the god now keeps as a very effective watchdog for his mansion. Getting the beast into Yu-Shan at all required both considerable work and research into whether this was even permissible, and it's a testament to Hran-Tzu's influence that he was able to achieve it all and keep it despite ongoing attempts to rid Yu-Shan of the creature.

    Video Games 
  • A crazy man you meet in the sewers in Baldur's Gate II has a carrion crawler, a seven-foot long flesh-eating grub, as a pet. Or friend. Hard to tell.
  • Shayne from Battleborn treats Aurox like he's some sort of pet much to the djinn's chagrin.
  • It's eventually revealed at the end of Borderlands 2's DLC Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty that Roscoe, Scarlett's missing mascot, was a Rakk Hive, a monstruous mammoth-like creature with a hideous face, able to spawn Rakks, which the player previously fought near the climax of Borderlands.
  • In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness one demon child has zombies as pets. Etna apparently had pet zombies as a child as well. The child's zombie was one of his own creation, complete with one of the most potent ingredients possible... a horse weiner. That you can steal for yourself.
  • In Dragon Quest Monsters (Pokemon game play with the Dragon Quest bestiary), your main character allies himself with all of the monsters who you fought in all of the Dragon Quest RPGs, from little Drakee to huge Dragons.
  • Dwarf Fortress allows for pet dragons, hydras and sea serpents, amongst other things.
  • The Dark Brotherhood in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has a pet frostbite spider named Lis; killing it earns you the same penalty as attacking one of the other members (i.e., being suspended from the group). You also fight a crazy mage named Hamelyn who has a bunch of pet skeevers during a Thieves Guild mission.
  • Fallout:
    • Fallout 3:
      • A few Yao Guai (Lightning Bruiser mutant black bears) are tamed by scavengers.
      • Moira's computer records mention her experiments with domesticating mole rats, and according to her they made good pets, as long as they were declawed, defanged, and lobotomized. (A couple of pet mole rats can be found in a shack in Fallout: New Vegas.)
    • Fallout 4 comes up with several options:
      • Two perks (Wasteland Whisperer and Animal Friend) allow the player character to tame any hostile creature or animal below their own level. The beast will then follow the Sole Survivor around until killed or left behind during an area transit. Higher perk levels unlock additional abilities like inciting the target to attack or giving it specific commands. The list of tamable critters includes pretty much everything the Wasteland has to offer, up to and including Yao Guai, Radscorpions and, yes, Deathclaws.
      • The Wasteland Workshop DLC allows for the construction of a wide variety of cages to catch an equally wide variety of monsters, including the ones mentioned above. Combined with a Beta Wave Emitter they can be turned docile and used as a potentially extremely powerful defence force for player-owned settlements.
      • Played with when it comes to Kat and Gus, a young girl and her huge sentry bot who can be met roaming the Commonwealth in a random encounter. Sentry bots may not be monsters in the traditional sense, but since every single one of them is basically a Boss in Mook Clothing, the trope applies regardless.
  • Guild Wars allows Rangers to tame a number of dangerous beasts, ranging from tigers to bears to spiders the size of a large dog.
  • Half-Life 2 has Lamarr, a debeaked headcrab named after Hedy Lamarr.
  • In Kero Blaster, Nanao's office pet is a Negativus Legatia, a dark blob monster that grows massive and glitchy over the course of the story. It eventually swallows up your coworkers and Nanao before becoming the final boss of Normal Mode.
  • Olaf, one of the vikings from The Lost Vikings suggest keeping as a pet one of the dinosaurs found in Prehistoria, as he thinks they are "kinda cute".
  • Mabinogi has a wide assortment of buyable pets, some of them things like venomous snakes or giant spiders.
  • Ragnarok Online has several tameable monsters. They don't do anything but hop around and talk when their intimacy reaches 'Loyal'. Besides the cute Mascot monsters like Poring, Drops, and Poporing you can also befriend the suicidal undead ghosts of virgins and other undead monsters, demons, orcs, and half-human creatures. Another odd pet is Alice, a humanoid maid with a broom that doesn't seem to mind being nothing more than the player character's eye candy.
  • Scooby-Doo! and the Spooky Swamp: Lila's pet giant alligator, Suji.
  • In Skies of Arcadia, Alfonso calls Antonio 1 and 2 his pets. Since they resemble armored bulls, he probably doesn't pet them.
  • Torchlight and the Fate series have ordinary pets, but they turn into powerful monsters when fed fish.
  • Muffet of Undertale has a pet giant, freakish spider/cupcake fusion with a voracious appetite, which seems appropriate given her love for her fellow spiders and for baking.
  • Vindictus's Tieve was friends with the giant spider that climbed the bell tower and was killed by the heroes in the prologue. While not technically a pet, it was kept to protect the town, and Tieve could talk to and understand the beast.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Hunter class allows the player to tame a beast mob and keep them as a pet. This can include anything from cats and wolves to the Warcraft equivalents of crocodiles, zombie bears, and tyrannosaurus rexes. And that's just for starters. With the appropriate talents, you can tame even more interesting creatures.
    • The Forsaken domesticate massive spiders.

    Visual Novels 
  • Deus Machina Demonbane: Al Azif keeps a freaking shoggoth as a pet. Its name is Dunsany, and she primarily uses it as a water bed. The fact that she can call upon the powers of the Great Old Ones probably goes a long way toward explaining why it never rebels.
  • The It Lives series offers these as premium choices that can be paid for with diamonds. For "Woods," you get a vine monster with the default name of Maurice who helps fight off against other monsters that's loyal to you and your party. In "Beneath," you can adopt a jackalope that looks more like something fused dead animal parts together into a misshapen bunny with the default name of Thumper.

    Web Animation 
  • A Day With Bowser Jr: Iggy Koopa owns a pet Chain Chomp, who is as tender as he is deadly. Just ask some of the members of the Mario Fan Club.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation:
    • SCP-040 ("Evolution's Child"). Instances of SCP-040-1 are essentially this trope. They are created by SCP-040, a little girl that can cause mutations in animals to the point of creating entire new species, all of which behave like domestic house pets and are completely loyal to her.
    • SCP-1550 ("Dr. Wondertainment's Custom-Pets™"). They were designed to live in any environment that normal animals can live in and be pets to the children who live there.
  • In Void Domain, Arachne in her spider form is one of these. Out of her spider form, she's just a regular monstrosity.
  • In The Jenkinsverse, Grickas are a race of feral, savage predators from an unknown deathworld, kept by militaries as biological weapons or by foolhardy individuals looking to prove their bravery by attempting to tame and cohabitate with them. Humans know them as domestic cats, and have been keeping them as pets since time immemorial.

    Western Animation 
  • In Brady's Beasts, monsters are kept as pets.
  • In Superman: The Animated Series, Bizarro gets a horrifying three-mouthed beast as a pet, which bites him constantly. Of course, being an imperfect clone of Superman, he can't be hurt by it and is in fact amused by its attempts, and he treats the monster like a dog (even calls it "Krypto").
  • Joker gets a pair of hyenas in Batman: The Animated Series. They seem perfectly tame except for one occasion where they hadn't been fed recently.
    • The Batman introduces the hyenas again and gives them an origin story (an Egomaniac Hunter gave them to Joker as payment for a job). Egregiously, he intended them to be attack animals, but not only do they immediately cuddle up to him, they love Catwoman and take commands from Harley Quinn.
  • The Legend of Korra features Naga, Korra's tame polar bear dog. The only tame polar bear dog.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Puffy Fluffy. When SpongeBob leaves it alone, it transforms into an Eldritch Abomination and tries to eat him and Gary.
  • Animaniacs: Dot's 'pet' is kept in a tiny box that grows three times larger into some horrendous abomination. Rarely the same creature twice.
  • Teen Titans (2003): Beast Boy adopts one of Killer Moth's monster moth larvae as a pet, and names it Silky. Ownership switches to Starfire after she had to take care of it for awhile.
  • In The Smurfs episode "Reckless Smurfs", Sassette brings home an oversized frog called a grumper to be her pet while she was under the influence of Gargamel's Daredevil Dust.
  • In the Wander over Yonder episode "The Pet", Wander discovers a black spider-like monster with a pair of large red lips on an abandoned ship in space, where it's implied to have killed the crew. Wander doesn't realize its desire to do the same to him until the end, then when he does he anonymously gives it to Lord Hater.
  • The HEAT team from Godzilla: The Series essentially have a pet Godzilla, although for Nick he's more of an adopted son.
  • Lord of Destruction Skeletor, of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe fame, has as his answer to Battle Cat, Panthor, his giant pet panther. Unlike most of his team, Skeletor actually seems fond of Panthor, and has been known to scratch his ear. This actually carried over to the 2002 reboot, with a Skeletor that was much more ruthless and cruel but still loved his big, purple kitty.
  • Not to be outdone, Hordak from She-Ra: Princess of Power has Mantisaur, a gigantic cyber-mantis with slashing blades on its forelimbs he occasionally rides into battle.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: "Lair of Grievous" Grievous has a pet roggwart, a large horned lizard-like monster, named Gor. He is very obviously quite fond of Gor, and he's the first thing Grievous wants to see when he gets home and he's very upset when Kit Fisto and Nahdar Vebb kill Gor.
  • In the Wishfart episode "Ciao, Bright Eyes", we see that many characters have pet monsters - Akiko has a cockatrice and Ammit, Lemonhead owns a manticore, Dusty keeps a dragon, and Leslie has a huge Hell Hound. Dez, seeing owning monsters as pets as oppressive, frees them all, with exactly the kind of results you'd expect.

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