Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear

Rebecca: Say "hello" to all the nice people, Teddy!
Teddy Bear: I'll swallow your souls!

— Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, "Marik's Evil Council #2"

Sometimes, Evil is, in fact, a toy.

In this case, an otherwise fearsome character gets trapped in a cutesy body. This reduces him to the status of Cuddly Mascot or (for more literal cases) Companion Cube. But there are times when he'll be able to break out the fearsomeness again — most obviously in service to his mistress/master because that's when the seal is most likely to be loosened.

See Fluffy the Terrible and Deathbringer the Adorable; see also Sleep-Mode Size. Is almost always also a case of Leaking Can of Evil. May cause Killer Teddy Bear. Happy Fun Ball is the inanimate equivalent.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Boogie-Kun from Karin is the spirit of a serial killer trapped in the body of a doll.
• Ioryogi from Kobato. We don't know exactly what he is unsealed, but he caused a lot of trouble in Heaven, where he is hoping to return.
• In Cardcaptor Sakura, Cerberus dozes off while guarding the Clow Cards. This causes the cards to escape, and Cerberus ends up looking like a soft toy. He eventually manages to get his proper winged lion form back.
• In Chainsaw Man, the Chainsaw Devil is left weakened after a big battle against the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, transforming into a cute dog-like creature the protagonist Denji adopts and names "Pochita".
• In Dragon Ball Z, during the Frieza Saga, this is Captain Ginyu's ultimate fate. While using his body-swapping technique, a frog is thrown in his way, causing his own consciousness to become sealed within the frog (and the frog's mind to enter his body). Notably, he cannot swap bodies if he cannot say the word, and since frogs can't talk, he's stuck. Anime filler has him swap with Bulma when she made a device that allows frogs to talk, but he's defeated again when Frog!Bulma is thrown in the way of his bodyswap beam. In the Dragon Ball Super adaptation of Resurrection F, Ginyu figures out that he can activate it by writing the activation phrase "change" on the ground...but only so long as the victim can actually understand the alien script he uses. He winds up possessing Tagoma... for all of an episode or so before Vegeta shows up. Tagoma then becomes the one trapped in the frog's body (for good because he can't use the technique himself), which still counts as he was another of Freeza's lieutenants.
• Pokota◊ of Slayers is a Sealed Good in a Can example. Though, even in plush form, is still a fully capable Person of Mass Destruction.
• Ghost Stories (or Gakkō no Kaidan), has the powerful entity, Amanojaku, who was released from his sealed prison (courtesy of the main character's mother)due to urbanization. His freedom didn't last long as he was sealed again by accident in the body of the main character's pet cat. Most of the series has him being their snarky, initially mean spirited pet mascot.
• A literal example in Pluto. Dr Roosevelt is the smartest AI in a world full of robots, but because he was made by the less advanced nation of Thracia, he exists as an inanimate teddy bear sitting on a chair. The series has several villains and he is the one manipulating them all.
• In Mugen Spiral, Ura, all-powerful thunder wielding son of the Demon King, is sealed by Yayoi, a mystic, into the form of an adorable black cat when he wears the Cat's God Rosary. When Yayoi breaks one of the rosary beads, he can return to his full demon form, then he reverts almost right back to a cat afterwards.
• Ayakashi Triangle: Shirogane's smaller form looks like an overweight Scottish Fold, and was originally a voluntarily means to conceal his strength. After most of his power is sealed away in the first chapter, he can no longer take his enormous true shape or cast most of his many magic spells, though he still has some shapeshifting powers. A short time after the scroll is released, Shirogane's power is taken away even more permanently via Vampiric Draining. Now, his only chance of regaining his original form is if Suzu's Ki Manipulation grows strong enough to Re-Power him.
• Magu-chan: God of Destruction is about a Lovecraftian Destroyer Deity who was sealed away for hundreds of years and awoke in a small form resembling a one-eyed squid. He can still use some of his destructive powers, but it's quite exhausting. The same fate is revealed to have happened to his fellow chaos gods, though since Uneras sided with the humans who sealed the others away, she appears smaller because she's using a Remote Body.
• In Dandadan, Turbo Granny barely manages to escape being destroyed alongside the crab spirit and possesses Okarun, but Ayase's grandma slaps her spirit out of Okarun and into a maneki neko figurine. She isn't able to grab her powers on the way, so now she's inhabiting a five-inch-tall doll until Ayase's grandma gives her back her powers.

Comic Books

• In Marvel Comics' Great Lakes Avengers, Deathurge got trapped in the body of a squirrel.
• Similar to the above example, one Marvel Adventures comic, Dread Dormammu, by order of a magical contract with the Ancient One, could only return to this dimension if he took the form of a rodent. Cue Dormammu returning to Earth in the form of a squirrel and attacking the current Sorcerer Supreme by dropping acorns on his head until Strange finally frees him from this restriction by demanding that Dormammu reveals his true form.
• In Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl there is Ragamuffin, a vampire cursed by the witch sister of his victim, who turned him into a rag-doll.
  • He wasn't even animate until Lenore bleeds on the doll. The drop of blood was supposed to break his curse, but since she's been embalmed, he awakens but is stuck in doll form.
• Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: The Doughboys. Not to mention Shmee. In Squee, Shmee is revealed to be quite literally "sealed evil in a teddy bear" - he's a creature that absorbs little Todd Casil's considerable trauma and impending insanity.
• In the Hack/Slash story line "Slice Hard", the slasher Ashley Guthrie came back as a small animated teddy bear.
• One of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics had a plot involving a demon of some kind possessing a teddy bear in an attempt to get Dawn.

Fan Works

• In The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, the part of Lord Voldemort that was originally inside Slytherin's Locket ends up transferred into an animated statue of… a chimp. He is not amused.
• In Rise of the Minisukas, one of the students of Shinji Ikari's classroom named Nene Matsuzake has an Angel infesting her teddy bear. "Sandy" keeps trying to order her to do evil deeds and release him, but she is too much of a Cloud Cuckoolander to obey him (said aloofness is also why nobody believes her when she says "Sandy" talks to her).
• Oswald the Ottoman is a Harry Potter fanfic that starts after Harry uses a "living furniture curse" to transfigure Voldemort into an animated piece of furniture, in this case a small leather ottoman, which he winds up keeping as a pet and naming it Oswald. He thinks it's cute. Hermione, Ginny and a few others disagree and try to make him get rid of it.
• Like its source material, Dragon Ball Z Abridged sees Captain Ginyu trapped in a frog's body...only for Vegeta to stomp him to death. And as is revealed in HFIL, you keep the body you die in, so Ginyu was mistaken for a simple frog and put through the Soul Scrubber, while the frog in Ginyu's body was sent to HFIL in his place.

Films — Animation

• In The Emperor's New Groove, the villainess, Yzma, drinks one of her own shapeshifting potions near the very end of the movie and is turned into a cute little kitty cat with an adorable squeaky voice. Quite fitting, really. Doubles as a Stealth Pun Actor Allusion considering one of her voice actress' most famous roles was Catwoman.

Films — Live-Action

• Ghostbusters (1984): Ray, forced to choose the ultimate destructive form for the evil entity Gozer, thinks of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, the most harmless thing he could imagine. It turns out to be far from harmless.
• Child's Play:
  • The serial killer Charles Lee Ray is trapped by Hollywood Voodoo into a "good guy" doll called Chucky. Though he's far from helpless.
  • And then there's his girlfriend Tiffany about ten years later...
• Volkonir was essentially about Sealed Good In A Teddy Bear.
• There's the So Bad, It's Good horror film The Gingerdead Man: basically a Child's Play knockoff of a serial killer (played by Gary Busey) whose soul gets trapped in a gingerman cookie.
• The Jack Frost series about a serial killer who gets doused in toxic waste and snow and becomes a killer mutant snowman.
• For a brief period during the second season of Danger Five, Hitler possesses a teddy bear.

Literature

• The Dresden Files book Death Masks had Harry summoning a Loa to gain some information. Part of this ritual requires Harry giving the Loa a physical body to inhabit during the interview. The only usable vessel Harry has on hand, much to the Loa's dismay, is a Cabbage Patch Doll. Harry, naturally, thinks it's hilarious.
• In Gardens of the Moon, the first book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, the morally dubious mage Hairlock has his soul shifted into a puppet after he is cut in half during a battle. In this form he plots revenge against High Mage Tayschrenn for some kind of perceived slight.
• Mogget from the Old Kingdom books is sealed into the form of a cat. He is in fact an incredibly powerful Free Magic spirit. When freed he turns from a snarky animal sidekick to a murderous creature hell-bent of getting revenge on the heroes who imprisoned him. This is also what they do to Kerrigor at the end of the first book.
  • This becomes important in the sequels as it's increasingly implied that Mogget is more than 'just' an incredibly powerful Free Magic spirit. It is eventually revealed that he is Yrael, the 8th Bright Shiner, along with Orannis the Destroyer and the Seven who founded the Charter, whose names survive in the bells of a necromancer, and who mostly put themselves in the bloodlines — and in the case of Kibeth, the Disreputable Dog, as well as some strange echo of Astarael under Abhorsen's house. The reason for his sealing was essentially a Neutrality Backlash, for which he is bitterly — and not unjustifiably — resentful. When he is finally freed and given his own choice to stand against the Destroyer or not, he chooses to do so, and never bothers the heroes again — though he does occasionally turn up to mooch fish off of Sam and is moderately helpful in the climax of Goldenhand.
• One children's horror novel had an evil demon possessing the body of a parrot and attempting to make the owner as miserable as he can. After a botched exorcism attempt, it possesses his dog.
• Bone Chillers
  • In one book of the children's horror series, the main character discovers that his new pet parrot has the power to predict doom and was responsible for the death of his grandfather. In the end the parrot is eaten by a vulture, but the vulture starts to talk, squawk and grow bright blue feathers before dying mysteriously.
  • And also in Bone Chillers, "Scare Bear" - a literal sealed evil in a teddy bear.
• The Professor's Teddy Bear, a horror story by Theodore Sturgeon, in which a monster shaped like a teddy bear helps a four-year-old named Jeremy make terrible things happen, both in the present and the future.
• In the Harry Potter series Peter Pettigrew, a dark wizard who works for Voldemort, spent about 13 years masquerading as the Weasley's pet rat Scabbers. See also Shapeshifting.
• Strange Attractors by William Sleator has an example involving a literal teddy bear; a character is hiding a time machine inside her teddy bear while she sleeps, and this is an important plot point. The time machine may not be "evil" in the strictest sense, but it is certainly an inherently dangerous technology.
• Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony: Leon Abbott, a demon warlord, has his consciousness transferred into the body of a guinea pig against his will.
• In Monster, each of the cats in Lotus's house casts the shadow and has the voice of whatever creature it was before she turned it into a cat. Including one that breathes fire, casts a winged reptilian shadow, and ate the neighbors' St. Bernard.

Live-Action TV

• The demon hunter trapped in the ventriloquist's dummy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer qualifies, though he isn't restricted with a Restraining Bolt.
• Angel's Wesley once summoned a Loa that took the form of a fast-food restaurant's burger-shaped drive-thru speaker.
  • And Angel himself was turned into a muppet in one episode. Complete with Cute Little Fangs.
• Salem in Sabrina the Teenage Witch was originally a human Napoleon-style dictator. After his world domination plot ultimately failed, some good witches magically trapped him in the physical form of a cat.
• Robin Williams, in A Night at the Met, claims that Teddy Ruxpin dolls are all about this trope.
  Robin Williams: You start to think that late at night the doll will go, "You must kill mommy and daddy!"
• In The Outer Limits (1995) episode "Under the Bed", there's a rather literal example in the opening when a Teddy Bear (actually a child-eating monster in disguise) underneath the bed lures a kid by having it claim that he's scared of the dark and wants him to pull it out. The boy is then sucked under the bed to his sister's horror. Foreshadowing this, the bear starts ominously stating "little boy" and has its eyes open to reveal them to be red.
• Another literal example in Space Cases. A teddy bear is found floating through space. Radu performs an unauthorized extravehicular maneuver to bring it to Rosie as a present. It turns out to be contaminated with a deadly pathogen. The aliens who put it there defend their territory by scattering contaminated toys and valuables around to kill off any interlopers dumb enough to try looting them. It gets more hilarious. They's the Straczynskians... and it's the same Teddy Bear from Babylon 5!
• Supernatural:
  • Lilith, the first demon and Queen of Hell, frequently possesses little girls, though she's not trapped in them.
  • The Darkness, The Anti-God of the Supernatural verse, possesses a human baby soon after being freed. She quickly ages to adulthood, however, after a couple bouts of Soul Eating.
• Legends of Tomorrow
  • The Legends' Shrink Ray (used to help contain their Monster of the Week) turned a normally-vicious sabretooth tiger into an adorable kitten. Even Gorilla Grodd of all creatures when shrunk becomes seemingly harmless that he can be imprisoned in a mere glass jar. The effects can be reversed, however (and in the case of the tiger, because it was the first to be used on, temporary).
  • Serial killer named Mike the Spike, whose spirit possesses dolls.
• In Danger 5, a teddy is briefly possessed by the ghost of Hitler. It spontaneously grows his mustache and begins screaming in German.
• The Thundermans has Dr. Colosso, formerly an infamous supervillain, now trapped in the form of a rabbit and kept by the titular family. Not unlike Salem to be honest.

Tabletop Games

• Deadlands had Clovis the Devil Bunny, favored toy and bodyguard of little Lucifer Whateley. Lucifer is a meaner expy of Damien from The Omen and Clovis in its true form can wipe out parties of player characters without breaking a sweat.
• The Baleful Polymorph spell in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder can result in this; while if the target badly fails their saving throw they will lose their intelligence and be no different than a regular frog or whatever, a partial success changes their body but not their mind. The party may find themselves in possession of a cute lil' lizard with the personality of the Dark Lord of Doomshire.

Video Games

• Tibbers, Annie's teddy from League of Legends, is actually a demonic bear-thing that used to be an attack dog for Mordekaiser, the games Necromantic Overlord, later sealed into various hosts before coming to posess her. When needed, she can summon him forth in the form of a giant flaming grizzly, while his true form is a gigantic many-limbed fire spirit. While he usually consumes his hosts quickly, her immense magical power has kept him at bay.
• Tales of Symphonia:
  • There is a small, weak summon spirit named Corrine who dies and later, in an optional sidequest, returns to reveal that he was the very powerful Verius, Summon Spirit of Heart. Not exactly evil, but neutral.
  • There's also the Evil Teddy enemies that count.
• Count Veger in Jak 3: Wastelander, when the Precursors turn him into an ottsel. Of course, it's towards the end, so he doesn't do much evil afterwards, but still.
• A terrifyingly literal example appears as the third level's boss in Splatterhouse 3. See for yourself.
• From AdventureQuest Worlds is Deady, Volatire's cuddly, demonic, wise-cracking, undead teddy-bear who is capable of slashing and blasting his way through entire armies of skeletal minions. The reason why this isn't played straight is because he chooses to appear in the form of an extremely creepy living teddy bear. The one time he is called out for it, he decides to switch into his real form...which can be pretty much summed up as an Eldritch Abomination.
• In the Gamecube version of Custom Robo, an intangible force of destruction called "Rahu" somehow got itself trapped inside a futuristic customizable virtual reality Rock-em Sock-em Robots toy (the titular Custom Robos) while in the process of causing cataclysmic ruin to Earth, finally being rendered tangible and thus vulnerable. It's not cutesy in the slightest as Rahu is still a force to be reckoned with, but it's a force of destruction hobbled by being trapped in a child's toy.
• In Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, Pamela's ever-present teddy bear is posessed by the Mana of Life (seen during her Limit Break) and does most of the fighting for her with claws, tremendous growth, and "kisses". It's not exactly evil, but it's master is a bit off.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • A colorful and fun band of Chuck E. Cheese-style animatronics from a children's pizza restaurant, who just so happen to try and horribly kill anyone who stays at the place after hours. The "sealed" part of this trope is also very literal here: they are possessed by the spirits of children who were murdered and had their corpses stuffed inside the animatronic suits, where they apparently remain to this day.
  • Taken to further extremes in the third game with Springtrap, who holds the body and spirit of the murderer after the children's restless souls got their revenge.
  • The sixth game gives us Lefty, a mysterious bear-like animatronic who functions as a capture unit for The Marionette so that the soul within it can burn and find peace as well.
• If you choose to arrest The Crooked Man at the end of The Wolf Among Us, Auntie Greenleaf will transform him into a bird and lock him in a cage for the rest of his life.
• In Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, Mr. Dinkles, Croid's childhood pet and muse, turns out to be the host of the Loki Master and the true villain of the story, making Nevo a Decoy Antagonist.
• In Ghostbusters (1990), the Castle level has what appear to be exploding teddy bears.

Webcomics

• Reynardine from Gunnerkrigg Court is trapped in one of Antimony's stuffed animals after a botched attempt to steal her body. Because the stuffed animal was explicitly Antimony's property, he finds that he can't jump to another body without her permission. And since possessing any living animal is invariably fatal to the host, Antimony isn't likely to grant that permission any time soon.
  • Though he can apparently cause the toy to shapeshift, periodically turning it into a wolf.
• Loki from Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki. But while he may look similar to Reynardine, he has no leash. He is, however, still technically trapped in a cave underground chained to a rock with snakes dripping venom into his eyes. He's merely controlling the doll remotely and experiencing life vicariously.
• In the (now-discontinued) webcomic Lowroad, Natasha is dabbling in the occult and accidentally summons an evil spirit... which possesses one of her stuffed toys. Doom-Piggy!!
• Blair of Eerie Cuties is an adorable little blonde doll, with a grown perverted man inside. It hasn't been explained yet who or what Blair was, and how he ended up as Nina's favorite dollie. And he took the trope to its literal meaning when he disguised himself as a teddy bear so that he could take pictures of the girls during a Slumber Party. He's also prepared to stake Nina if she ever develops a taste for blood.
• Savestate:
  • While Harvey isn't exactly the traditional "teddy bear" type of cute, he possesses a certain kind of creepy cuteness. Kade initially thinks he's adorable, and even though he is some sort of Elder God, he is easily held at bay and rendered harmless by Rick's tail.
  • Once the demon possessing Nicole is exorcised, it finds its way into a small plush toy. Both Kade and Rick immediately find it "D'aw-worthy".
• Used to the advantage of one of the villains in Sue And Kathryn: "Mister Fluffy", a flame wizard whose soul is trapped in a teddy bear. He uses his teddy bear form to get the trust of children so he can use their energy to power his magic.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • In the season two finale, the Lich body surfs to the Snail after his defeat.
  • According to "Into the Nightosphere", the most evil soul in the land of Ooo is Gunter, one of the Ice King's penguin minions. Take a moment to process that. More specifically the episode "Orgalorg" reveals that Gunter is/was an eldritch god older than all of reality with the power to wipe out worlds on a whim, but Earth's gravity keeps him trapped in his current form with his memories and mind mostly suppressed.
• During the season one finale of Jackie Chan Adventures, Jackie uses the shapeshifting power of the Monkey Talisman to turn Shendu into a bunny rabbit. Unfortunately Shendu still has his powers even as a rabbit so he uses invisibility on Jackie and turns himself back into a demonic dragon when he retrieves the Monkey Talisman.
• In the first few seasons of Xiaolin Showdown, Wuya is in "spirit form", which basically looks like a mask with tentacles. She's a brilliant evildoer, but since she can't do anything for herself, she has to act as sidekick and mentor for whoever's willing to work with her, even an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain like Jack Spicer.
• Several episodes of The Real Ghostbusters deal with this concept:
  • "Janine's Genie": A demon passing for a genie is freed from a lamp.
  • "Lost and Foundry": A ghost is accidentally mixed in melted metal and possesses several metallic objects spread around the city.
  • "A Ghost Grows in Brooklyn": A ghost hides in Janine's geranium.
  • "Rollerghoster": A rollercoaster is possessed by the angry spirits of animals killed in a fire.
• In Steven Universe, Peridot eventually loses her "limb enhancers", reducing her to the size of a human child and the most threatening thing she can do is slap people. This sets her up for her eventual Heel–Face Turn.
• In The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Operation Lunacorn", an ancient Destroyer of Worlds possesses Private's toy unicorn doll, swiftly establishing itself as a twisted threat despite its cute appearance; this Destroyer is noted as having destroyed six worlds when it possessed a cheeseloaf for two weeks during a past attack.
• Operation: Z.E.R.O. reveals that the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire Codename: Kids Next Door series is a powerful Reality Warper called Grandfather...who is a harmless, senile old man, but only because his memories were erased. Once Father restores his memories did he come back to full power instantly.
• In the Wander over Yonder episode "The Fancy Party", it turns out the extremely elderly Queen Entozoa is actually the host for an alien parasite that possesses a new host once every one thousand years. While trying to possess Lord Hater, Wander thinks he's choking and gives him the Heimlich maneuver, which expels the parasite right into the direction of a sandwich. Thus, the parasite is stuck as a sandwich for a thousand years. It later appears again as Sourdough the Evil Sandwich, who has gotten used to the role of an evil sandwich.

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"Your mother plays card games in hell!"

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