Imagine an object, say, an inanimate object. Any inanimate object. Got that? Good.
Now, imagine the characters in a show
interacting with the object as if it were another character. That shouldn't be too hard to picture, should it? Good.
Now, imagine that object answers back.
And it is snarky as all hell.
This can be any object, but it often takes the form of a
Magic 8 Ball. Things that specifically are
Artificial Intelligence in canon do not count.
Related tropes include
Animate Inanimate Object,
Companion Cube, and
The Man in the Mirror Talks Back. See also
Talking Appliance Sidekick.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- In the Pokémon anime, the PokeDex is canonically just a database. However, Dexter (Ash's PokeDex) had shades of this in the first episode of the series, notably calling Ash "stupid."
Fairytales
- In some variations of "Snow White", the Magic Mirror is a smart aleck backtalker.
Film
Literature
- Bob in the book of The Dresden Files was never a real person. He's an air spirit of intellect which occupies the skull unless Harry explicitly gives him permission to come out and possess his cat or otherwise travel freely.
Live-Action TV
- The Muppets would often have ordinary-seeming objects such as vegetables suddenly sprout faces and start singing.
Tabletop RPG
- Dungeons & Dragons solo adventure Knight of the Living Dead. After becoming an undead creature, the protagonist has a weasel skull that acts as his companion, including snarky dialogue. It's implied that the conversations are his mind talking to itself.
Newspaper Comics
- Oliver Wendell Jones' Banana 2000 computer from Bloom County. Not intended to be an animate object, it frequently was sentient.
- On occasion Garfield will use a talking scale, which will naturally make a fat joke.
- The ifruit computer in FoxTrot.
- While we won't get into a debate over whether Hobbes counts, Calvin's TV got in a few good ones, always quietly to itself:
Calvin: What does this mean, "religion is the opiate of the masses"?
TV: It means Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet.
Video Games
- There are a whole lot of inanimate-object-based characters in Banjo-Kazooie, but even the immobile ones who can only blink may still snark at you.
- Lilacor from Baldur's Gate 2 is not this - intelligent weapons are far from unprecedented in Dungeons & Dragons - but the Morrowind mod of the same name veers closer to this by it being unique for the The Elder Scrolls.
Webcomics
Web Original
Western Animation
