Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Toys

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

new edits
page history
related to...
edit page
discuss
view source
forum

Sealed Evil In A Can
"Ah, after 10,000 years I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!"
Seals are meant to be broken.
-Final Fantasy V, Sage Ghido

A real long time ago, a great evil was beaten. However, it was beaten in such a way that meant it was imprisoned as opposed to killed. Said prison usually ends up preserving said evil so well that 100/1000/5000 years later when it escapes, the civilization that imprisoned it, and their abilities to do so, are long gone.

Now it's the current-day good guy's problem. Sometimes they can just kill the Sealed Evil In A Can, making one wonder why the Ancients went to such trouble. Occasionally it is explained that the Sealing weakened the Evil, but not always.

Other times the Balance Between Good And Evil demands that Sealing is the only effective way to deal with the matter, as the Big Bad would just resurrect itself anyways.

Sealed Evil In A Can, as the name suggests, is a way to introduce a villain suddenly, especially one that is legendary and powerful. It also explains why the villain hasn't done anything up to that point. (It just escaped recently.)

This is very common in Japanese works, as Japanese demons are traditionally immortal. A standard Japanese seal is marked by a large boulder with a shirukume rope (rice straw rope hung with paper ties) tied around it.

Sometimes, the Big Bad's plan is to unseal the can, gaining them the power of the ancient evil; if they succeed, it almost always turns out that the Sealed Evil was manipulating them into freeing them, making the Big Bad a Fake Boss and the Sealed Evil the true Big Bad. Sealed Evil almost never rewards those who release it. In fact, they usually kill their releaser. Or use him. Alternately, they may act as the malevolent flavor of Literal Genie, and twist their releaser's wish(es) back on them. Remember, Evil Is Not A Toy.

Some of the more epic instances of sealed evil involve heroes themselves releasing it, either by curiosity, accident, or trickery, making every evil deed they do "their responsibility" and turning the quest to stop it personal.

Occasionally, a prequel will be set around the original sealing. Or, a freshly Sealed Evil might be thrown Out Of Sight Out Of Mind to set up a sequel.

Since this trope can be traced back to Greek mythology, it's Older Than Dirt.

Polar opposite of Sealed Good In A Can. Sometimes requires Sisyphus Vs Rock.

Examples

Anime And Manga
  • 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.
  • 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 Dragonball Z, the five-million-year-old sorceror 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.
  • The Decepticon army that Crosswise was jailor of in Transformers: Cybertron, until Starscream freed them. Well, Destron army, Autovolt, and Galaxy Force, before dubbing. But that's just to head off nitpick at the pass.
  • 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 (Metallia) 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.
  • Preventing the Sealed Evil In A Can from breaking free is the main reason Soul Reapers in Soul Eater exist.
  • 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 I Am Not Making This Up.
  • 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 abovementioned demon god is released, the protagonists defeat it by breaking the seal on Evangeline and letting her deal with it.

Comic Books
  • 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 Seņor 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.

Film
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • In Clive Barker's Hellraiser, the Cenobytes 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 recieves 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.

Literature
  • 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".
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 willfull 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, birthes thousands of tiny spiders that start killing lifestock 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 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 in 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 havok 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.
  • According to Scientology's OT III, Xenu is apparently still locked up in a mountain somewhere.
  • Something Bad is waiting in Charles Stross' The Jennifer Morgue....
  • 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.

Live Action TV
  • 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.
    • It was done in the The Movie of the MMPR, Ivan Ooze. Sealed inside an egg that was inside a lidded chamber. The chamber was opened by construction workers, then Ooze himself was released by Zedd and Rita. Ooze later stuck them in a snow globe. I Am Not Making This Up.
    • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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 ep. "Beyond the Farthest Star", an ancient evil entity is tricked by Kirk 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.
  • 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.
  • 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...
    • Actually, it's established in the first movie that Immortals don't drown. It's never covered explicitly in the series, but is implied several times. However, 40 years of being chained on the bottom of the river can't be much fun either.
      • Not quite. The first movie establishes that, after their first death, Immortals don't die at all. Notice how Connor doesn't go down even after being stabbed repeatedly. Later movies (and the series) have the Immortals die and come back, so they most likely drown as well.
      • 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.
      • Although, as a counter-example, Duncan washed up dead on the shores of Japan and woke up later. It's possible that something else was the cause of his death though, not drowning.
      • 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.
    • 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.
  • In The Twilight Zone TOS episode "The Howling Man", the evil sealed in a cell was the Devil himself.

Music
  • 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.

Mythology
  • 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.
  • Fenris the giant wolf of Norse myth is kept bound by unbreakable magic chains, 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 Ragnarok 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.

Tabletop Games
  • In the collectable 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.

Video Games
  • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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, which was sealed by 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. Something of a subversion in that the angelic forces who created the soulstones knew that they would eventually fail and the demons break free again, but couldn't think of a better idea. Further subverting it is that the angel who made the suggestion, Izuel, was under demonic influence at the time — in other words, the demons wanted to be sealed this way, likely because they knew it would fail in time.
    • As well, at the end of the final act of Diablo II, the titular demon himself can only be summoned and thus fought by activating five seals found in his fortress, releasing several other demons in the process. Why Diablo chose to lock himself away in his own home is not confronted.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 its implied later on 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...
  • 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.
    • I'm pretty sure he was, since when you get a chance to actually talk to a Reaper, it spends much of the conversation on how utterly incapable you are of comprehending their true motives or natures.
    • This troper believes the AI simply felt that urgency demanded a shelving of investigative thought; while Shepard would have almost no chance of winning without the AI's information, the AI's act of giving this information takes precious minutes during a point well after Sovereign's endgame has been set in motion.
  • 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 does this a lot - in every game after the first, in fact:
    • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • 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...
  • 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.
  • 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 RP Gs, 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 embodies this trope. Subverted since he's harmless unless the player asks for his help. Hilarity Ensues during the game.
  • 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.
  • 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'owons 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 Jjarro space station that is able to turn the sun into a black hole, thus trapping W'rk before it (them?) escapes.

Web Comics
  • Order of the Stick features The Snarl, a monster formed from tangles in the fabric of reality, and sealed within the world itself.
  • 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 Eight 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.

Western Animation