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Sealed Good in a Bag.
"Unseal the Hushed Casket." — Cortana, Halo: Combat Evolved
"Wake me... When you need me."
—John-117: The Master Chief, Halo 3
The complete opposite of Sealed Evil In A Can. This entity is usually kind and gentle, and usually (if not always) rewards the one who releases it, if it can. In other cases, the wandering band of travelers are desperately trying to evade capture or being killed by the forces of darkness. They stumble upon the entity and, thanks to a can-opener (which can range from a trinket to a sacrifice), the only thing that can stop the great evil awakens, and prepares to open a can... of whoop-ass. Sometimes it's revealed that they had acted as some kind of Barrier Maiden or been still fighting the baddie, and that their release also releases the Sealed Evil In A Can. Oops.
Occasionally used as a more subtle form of Deus Ex Machina; may qualify as Holding Back The Phlebotinum. See Sealed Inside A Person Shaped Can for when the Good is imprisoned inside a living being, or Sealed Badass In A Can for a neutral variant. Compare Fling A Light Into The Future. Contrast King In The Mountain, who is usually not let out.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Zombie Fairy has the titular zombie fairy, bound in a coffin. This is also a case of sealed evil in a can, as she is under a curse that causes her to go into berserker rages.
- In Mamotte Shugogetten, Shaorin and other spirits were imprisoned in objects for several hundred years at a time, only coming out to serve a master who was pure of heart. Unlike with most cases, exactly why this is done and who does it are a mystery. (Especially since none of them seem to have done anything to deserve it.)
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Pharaoh Atem sealed himself along with the Big Bad so he would be around to defeat the Big Bad again when he was inevitably unsealed in the future.
- The original sealing away of Alexiel in Angel Sanctuary is a borderline example of this. True, she was captured trying to bring down Heaven's ruling class. On the other hand, the angels and demons vary so much between moralities that it's hard to say whether she's good or evil.
- Nuts from Yes! Precure 5 was trapped inside the Dream Collet after he let a Kowainaa into his kingdom by mistake.
- In the end of the first arc of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, the recently reformed Gackto, Sara and the Dark Lovers are sealed under the ocean forever for their crimes. Although she's not going to go and turn on Aqua Regina for it, Lucia mourns them as if they were dead and is surprised to see them astral project in the Pure arc.
- It's certainly very arguable as to how "good" Alucard of Hellsing is, but he does fit the sealed part, where he was kept in hibernation away from blood and accidentally released at the start of the series. He also does fit "good" to a limited extent, being the titular Organization's trump card against the creatures of the night.
- Gungrave: Before his death, Brandon Heat left a letter for Big Daddy, stating that in the event of his (Brandon's) death, and if Harry and the Millenion goes down the wrong path, Brandon would allow his body to undergo necrolization and become a Deadman. His last request was to remain locked away in the doctor's confinement chamber, in a state of hibernation, until the time he needs to be summoned. Brandon (better known as "Grave"), "sleeps" for thirteen years until Mika (Big Daddy's daughter) awakens/releases him because she was told to seek his protection.
- Can't believe that this has gone on so long before the Elder Kai from Dragonball Z was mentioned. He was sealed in the Z Sword a few billion years ago and when he comes out he provides lots of help in the effort against Buu.
- C.C. from Code Geass is almost literally Sealed Good In A Can, since she begins the series locked inside a mechanical capsule that supposedly contains poison gas.
- The protagonist of the Geass game Lost Colors put himself into a coma within a Geass ruin following the death of his friends and family, making him a rare case of self-sealing.
- Prince Mythos from Princess Tutu does not literally seal himself, but shatters his heart and seals the pieces in order to seal the Monster Raven. As Princess Tutu returns his heart shards and emotions, the seal on the Raven gets correspondingly weaker.
- An early chapter of Crimson Spell features Sealed Good In A Can in the form of the magical spirit-creature Lizregbel, released by Vald and Havi and promptly renamed "Ruruka" after Val's little brother's pet bunny.
- The Monster Rancher anime had both Sealed Good and Sealed Evil. The goal of the protagonists became to revive the Phoenix before Mu could fully revive his original body.
- The Record of Fallen Vampire / Vampire Juuji Kai: The vampire queen Adelheid was considered to be Sealed Evil In A Can and released only because her Chaotic Evil powers could stop alien invaders... and upon release she revealed the truth that she hadn't killed her husband's pregnant lover and confessed to it only to snap him out of him destroying himself with a suicidal Heroic Sacrifice.
- This is one of the many potential interpretations of the end of Revolutionary Girl Utena.
- Lucario in the Pokemon movie "Lucario and the Mystery of Mew."
Comics
- Let's not forget Captain America, frozen in 1944 and thawed out again in... well, whenever the current continuity says (roughly 12 years from whenever you're reading).
- And also Primus, god of the Transformers, who sealed himself away at the core of Cybertron itself in order to also seal off his opposite number, Unicron. He was also present in the Unicron Trilogy, but he was created in the comics.
- Though it's worth noting that Primus' sealing himself off less directly sealed Unicron and more caused Unicron to pick up a moon-sized Idiot Ball and do it himself just to prove he could.
- Well, whatever works. They never said Primus wasn't a sneaky bastard. They just said he wants the universe to keep on existing.
- In The Legion of Superheroes, M'Onel (Mon-El, Valor) was trapped in the Phantom Zone for 1,000 years before the Legionnaires freed him.
Films
Literature
- In the Back Story to Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero releases Ariel from the cloven pine where he had been imprisoned for twelve years by the evil witch Sycorax for refusing to do her bidding. Ariel is thus bound to serve Prospero for twelve years to repay his debt.
- In Terry Pratchett's Moving Pictures, there's a guardian sealed away under the Holy Wood hill, that the heroes need to awaken in order to banish the Things that come to life from movies.
- In Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth novel Bloodhype, the Tar-Aiym Guardian, Peot, was charged with containing and finding a way to destroy the Vom, a planet-scouring Eldritch Abomination. Half a million years later, Peot is dormant and must be awakened in order to counter the Vom's renewed threat. Flinx turns out to be the key to accomplishing this.
Live Action TV
- In I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie was sealed in a bottle for 2,000 years by the Blue Djinn as punishment for refusing to marry him.
- In Stargate SG-1, the progenitor of the Tokra, Egeria, was almost literally sealed in a can (a symbiont containment vessel) by her Goa'uld enemies. Egeria fared less well than usual — the humans who eventually found her were unable to tell her from any other queen Goa'uld and basically tortured her to death. Uhh... "Sorry"?
- Zordon in Power Rangers. Technically he was in a "time warp" and broadcasting his face into a tube, but they freed the man by making him actually trapped in the tube. To make matters worse, the poor guy was kidnapped as soon as he was "released", and when he was rescued, he promptly had to commit a Heroic Sacrifice to save the day. Shoulda stuck with the time warp.
Mythology
- Pandora's Box was mostly sealed evils in a can, although it had Hope at the bottom, making this Older Than Dirt.
- Some versions of the myth avert this, however. Instead of Hope, the last thing in the box was Despair which, if released, would have prevented people from having hope of any kind. Given the Fridge Logic of why trapping Hope is a good thing when letting the Evils out is what caused people to experience them, this troper is inclined to believe the Despair version.
- Considering most things in cans tend to be opened, having something good to counter sealed on the bottom after all the evils in case someone decides to open it is a good idea.
- Oh, Despair escaped... trust me. It haunts many people to this day.
- There's also a version of this where rather than the Sealed Good in a Can, Hope was the worst of the Sealed Evils — the world was ruined forever and would never go back to its golden age, but because of Deluded Hope, the people would keep on struggling through their endless misery and suffering.
- But then when would we get our always-in-high-demand Nietzsche Wannabe?
- Another version states that it was Forboding that remained in the box; if it had escaped, everyone would fully know exactly what was in store for them and thus have no hope to keep on going.
- Many, many variations of the Hero Under The Mountain myth, including King Arthur, Frederick Barbarossa and Bran the Blessed.
- Boy, does it ever explain his booming voice and overacting abilities. Oh, wait, that's not a typo...
- Of note, these Heroes are almost never sealed by an evil power; in fact they are generally sealed to "preserve" them to fight some coming evil or hardship. The promise that they will returning "at the time of their country's greatest need" is a key element of the myth in many cases.
- In Journey to the West, the Stone Monkey (later the Monkey King) first was birthed from a giant stone egg. After gaining power and immortal indestructibility, he caused such trouble in Heaven that the Buddha sealed him under a mountain. Just five hundred years later, he was freed by Kuan Yin (Avalokiteshvara, the boddhisatva of compassion turned Chinese Goddess) after he promised to Be Good and help the monk Tripitaka retrieve the Diamond Sutra from far in the West. This legend has been adapted many times in many ways, including Milo Manara's dark The Young Ape and Stephen Chow's disappointing A Chinese Odyssey films (Sai yau gei: Dai yat baak ling yat wui ji — Yut gwong bou haap and Xi you ji da jie ju zhi xian lu qi yuan'' according to imdb.com — this troper knows very little putanghua...).
- The first two titles sound more like Cantonese than Mandarin, which fits since Chow is from Hong Kong. English titles for the two parts are given as Pandora's Box and Cinderalla for some reason.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons examples:
- In module Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, one possible encounter in Lolth's Web is a chance to rescue a ki-rin (powerful Lawful Good unicorn-like creature) trapped in a transparent cube that keeps it in a state of suspended animation. If rescued, the ki-rin will offer its services to its rescuers.
- Module I12 Egg of the Phoenix. The ki-rin Da-weng allowed himself to be changed to stone so that at a future time he could be returned to normal and fight against Evil. If released, he gives the party an amulet that will allow them to summon him to aid them.
- The Emperor. As much as there IS good in 40k, of course.
Video Games
- In the early Sonic the Hedgehog games, Dr. Eggman's plans usually involved sealing innocent creatures into his robots as power sources. Recently, he seems to have found another source of energy for them (Chaos Drives?). Why he didn't just use batteries in the first place is anyone's guess.
- He might indeed use batteries, and the Small Furry Animals merely serve as the "intelligence" part of the robot. In other media, however, "Dr. Robotnik" relied upon the roboticization process. This other media includes Bioware's Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood.
- First major straight example in the series is Tikal in Sonic Adventure. Sealed up right alongside Chaos, she gets released at the same time as god of destruction, and spends the rest of the game playing Exposition Fairy in the form of a glowing ball, and occasionally causing visions of Chaos's origin and nature. At the end she helps Chaos Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence. Somehow.
- Sonic Unleashed has this as well in the form of Chip, aka Light Gaia, who voluntarily sealed himself within the planet to bind his counterpart, Dark Gaia, and both were released incomplete when Eggman blew the planet open ahead of schedule — one's an amnesiac Exposition Fairy and the other a physically-scattered Cosmic Horror.
- In Sonic and the Secret Rings the good genie, Shahra, is sealed inside a ring found by Sonic at the beginning of the game. Another cosmic being in the game, the evil Erazor Djinn, becomes Sealed Evil in a Can at the end of the game.
- In the NES game The Krion Conquest, a good witch is released from a magic staff to fight off an Alien Invasion. Why she was sealed in it in the first place is unknown.
- The hero Melvin in Dragon Quest VII put himself to sleep so he would be alive to fight should the demon lord rise again.
- In Super Mario World, the Yoshis are trapped inside eggs until Mario rescues them.
- Used in the SNES classic Act Raiser; at the beginning of the game the forces of evil control the world, and your character is the Sealed Good In A Can. The game was remarkably lacking in controversy, since said character is strongly implied to be the Judeo-Christian God, or at least the local equivalent.
- Holy, in Final Fantasy VII, is cosmically powerful Sealed Good In A Can, the opposite number to Sealed Evil In A Can Meteor. It takes a couple steps to successfully unseal it, mind.
- In Final Fantasy III, friendly and mighty Unne is trapped in the dream world (i.e.: asleep) until you grab the magic lute that awakens her.
- Bahamut and Leviathan in Final Fantasy V were sealed along with the twelve legendary weapons and the ultimate magic spells after a battle against an evil wizard.
- The finale of Halo 3 seals Master Chief in a can.
- It can also be said that Master Chief is sealed good in a can at the beginning of Halo: Combat Evolved.
- Likewise, the finale of Half Life seals Gordon Freeman in a can, to be reheated and served in the sequel.
- In The Legend Of Zelda Links Awakening, the benevolent Wind Fish is asleep in an egg until it is awoken by our hero. Zelda: Phantom Hourglass harkens back to this, with the mighty Sea King left powerless by the Big Bad.
- Also in Zelda, this time in Ocarina Of Time: The Master Sword (a universal Sealed Good in a Can device throughout the Zelda series) serves a double purpose — both as a Sealed good and a Sealed Evil, as it was holding Ganondorf's dark magic at bay as long as it was in place. Once removed, his powers are released. If this troper isn't mistaken, it's also used in a similar fashion in the Wind Waker.
- In Ocarina, the Master Sword was not holding Ganondorf's magic at bay; it was merely the final key needed to unlock the Sacred Realm, and Ganondorf was waiting for you to pull it out. In an interesting example, though, it turned Link into a Sealed Good In A Can for the time-skip.
- Amaterasu of Okami, who is awakened at the start of the game when after someone cracks open the Evil Sealed Can of Orochi.
- Sakuya, a wood sprite with trees extending all across Nippon, is also sealed away until you can awaken her. Reviving her various Guardian Saplings will break the curse over an area.
- For that matter, the brush gods as well, requiring you to free them and regain their powers
- The druids in Warcraft III, whom the player must wake up during the Night Elf campaign. Some of whom are really, really cranky.
- 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?
- Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door has sealed cans of good who seem to think they are Sealed Cans of Evil. They grant Mario new paper-based abilities.
- They're probably just really bored.
- Supposedly they're being magically forced to be evil, but they get around it by being really creative with "evil".
- Given that the last one thanks you for "letting me do my thing" and pretend to be evil (he even asks if the curse hurt too much and tells you how the curse isn't so bad) it's probably the "really bored" option.
- Actually, according to Ingame Myths the black boxes are actually the four heroes of a thousand years ago who sealed the Shadow Queen and were sealed as well. Because it is an evil curse, they may have to 'contracually' act evil, but really want to help Mario seal the Shadow Queen.
- In StarControl 2 / Ur-Quan Masters, races defeated by Ur-Quan Kzer-Za have choice between enrollment as battle thralls or imprisonment on their own homeworld under impenetrable slave shield. One of the latter must be fetched out of can by PC in order to win.
- The Biometal (or "Live Metal") from the Mega Man ZX series are the sealed memories of many past Mega Man characters. Namely, Model X is obviously X, Model Z is Zero, And Models H, L, F, and P are the Guardians From Mega Man Zero.
- Before that are X and Zero themselves, found in such a state at the beginning of their respective series.
- In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, the goddess Yune is sealed in a medallion, locked away by her twin sister/other half Ashera, who found her chaotic whims too dangerous. While neither goddess is actually good or evil, Yune is chaos and Ashera is order, and this, along with the fact that anyone who touches the medallion goes berserk, has given Yune somewhat of a bad reputation (as a "Dark God"). After her long sleep, Yune is warm and friendly to the humans, since she was always with them when in the medallion. Meanwhile, Ashera has become bitter after 780 years on the top of a inaccessible tower, and is portrayed closer to the Sealed Evil In A Can Yune was accused to be (particularly after passing judgment on all people when she realised they had been warring for all this time, where Yune decides to take the few remaining and defeat Ashera).
- In Quest for Glory 4, you finally learn the fate of the legendary mage and Friend To All Living Things, Erana. She attempted to seal a Cosmic Horror that was invading the land, but only partially succeeded, and got sealed with it as well rather than miss her chance to do so. She's since been tormented by it for all that time, until the very end of the game.
- In the second game of the original Bard's Tale series, the Zen Master Arkast qualifies. (He singlehandedly took on Lagoth Zanta and his mercenary army before you showed up, and only failed by lack of being an unkillable Destiny Knight.) You don't technically have to free him, but travel into his can to group with him (and would thus normally bring him out with you). The start of the relevant poem in the manual: "A tale once told of ages gone, which bards once sung in deep despair / of he who fought the evil one, and cast his fate within the Snare..."
- In Might & Magic V: Darkside of Xeen you later find a box and inside the box is a guy who will fight and kill the Big Bad for you when you enter his room.
- Touhou has Byakuren, who was sealed away after trying to establish equality between youkai and humans. Bizarrely enough, you fight her as the final boss, after unsealing her, on purpose. Of course, given how the heroines usually behave, that probably isn't too surprising.
- In Arcanum, the supposed Big Bad, Arronax, has been trapped in the Void repenting his crime for thousands of years; once found, he joins the party to take on the real Big Bad.
- In Shadow Hearts: From The New World, the light of Will (the good counterpart of the Malice animating the Big Bad and The Dragon) is sealed inside a big tower in a salt lake.
- Andraste's ashes from Dragon Age.
Web Comics
- The picture from Sluggy Freelance probably deserves some explanation. When the demons first conquered the world that became the Dimension of Pain, they sealed away all that world's goodness in a Zip-Lock bag and stored it in the Demon King's refrigerator.
Web Original
- The Web novel There features sealed good — the life force of the world, without which environmental decline happens at a rapid rate.
Western Animation
- In Animaniacs, the main characters (Yakko, Wakko, and Dot Warner) were locked in the water tower for 60 years and broke loose, and Hilarity Ensues. (They may or may not be good, but they're not really Sealed Evil In A Can since they never cause much harm, and generally only annoy those who do something to deserve it.)
- Human Popsicle Aang of Avatar the Last Airbender was sealed in an iceberg by accident or fate for a hundred years, and is awakened to find that The Empire has caused the genocide of his people and is about half a year away from absolute victory.
- In the prequel of Code Lyoko, Jérémie turned back on an abandoned Supercomputer inside which resides what he thinks at first is a benevolent A.I., Aelita. He will spend the next season trying to materialize her in the real world. This comes of course with its counterpart Sealed Evil In A Can.
- In Futurama, it's revealed that Human Popsicle Fry was deliberately frozen by Nibbler, a member of the Precursors because he's The Chosen One, the only being capable of defeating the Brain-Spawn and preventing them from destroying the universe. Although Fry's not so much good as he is the completely apathetic version of True Neutral.
- I wouldn't really say neutral; he does way too many heroic things to count.
- Stupid Good?
- In one episode of Justice League, Despero is leeching off a Sealed Good's energy gradually to fuel his powers. When it's completely freed, he's toast.
- In Barbie and the Diamond Castle, Melody accidentally traps herself in a mirror while fleeing from the Big Bad's (literal) dragon, and keeps herself hidden inside, effectively becoming sealed good in a mirror. Until she's coaxed out by the singing of the main characters, of course.
- In Beast Wars stasis pods were the writer's means of introducing new characters. Whenever they needed a new character the character would usually come from a stasis pod, a sort of cocoon that provides life support for a spark and basic body for a transformer until they can scan an alt mode and become a fully conscious character. All the stasis pods in the show were Maximal by default, but were occasionally altered to give birth to Predacons. So in almost all cases stasis pods were essentially Sealed Good in a Can until they were altered, with one exception (Rampage).
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