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One BIG team pet, one little one.
The default mascot of the party and usually the most outlandish of the bunch. Can be a robot, magic animal, or in a more realistic setting, a little girl much younger than everyone else. Often a Small Annoying Creature.
Most of the time, the Team Pet is comic relief. For obvious reasons their mere presence can ruin a dramatic scene most of the time. More seriously, their motivations for fighting may seem kinda vague, especially when they are Optional Party Members. You wish more of them were. This doesn't stop some of them being a member of the Five-Man Band.
If the Team Pet is an otherworldly being, it may end up as an Amusing Alien. It may also be a Pet Monstrosity. In some cases of this, the Team Pet is a unique, "tame," example of a type of creature which the heroes usually fight.
Team Pets do have their other uses, however. We hear lots of stories of dogs pulling people from burning buildings or otherwise saving their lives, for example. Also, the Team Pet can go get help if its master (or someone else on the team) gets in trouble. And a Team Pet can act as an adorable scene partner for a heartfelt Surrogate Soliloquy. It can be a Sealed Evil In A Teddybear if it is a Not-So-Harmless Villain once it's Restraining Bolt is loosened.
Gratuitous Animal Sidekick is a special category of this, often used in an Animated Adaptation of a live-action show. See also Intellectual Animal, Nearly Normal Animal, Talking Animal, and Timmy in a Well.
Tagalong Kid is the human equivalent to this, Robot Buddy the artificial version.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Comics
- In Cable & Deadpool, Bob, Agent of HYDRA, is either Deadpool's Team Pet, best friend, or hostage. No-one is really clear on this, not even Bob or Deadpool. Since Bob's attitude towards Deadpool seems to have moved from fearful to appreciative (if not outright adoring in some places), the last one seems to be discounted. And since his reappearance in Deadpool has him being quite happy to see the merc with a mouth, it's definitely not hostage anymore. The clearest indication that Bob might no longer be considered a hostage is really that he and Deadpool don't appear to have seen each other in some time. During Cable & Deadpool, Bob seems quite happy at Agency X, running around on adventures with Deadpool and referring to his capture as a liberation when all the while Deadpool has been trying to get HYDRA to pay a ransom for him (the mention of which doesn't faze Bob in the slightest, suggesting that he realizes that he's still ostensibly being held hostage). To be fair, Deadpool has never been au fait on the distinction between "friendship" and "Stockholm Syndrome". See Weasel, Blind Al, etc.
- X-Men have Lockheed, when Kitty Pryde is on the team, most of the time. Lockheed isn't harmless, though — when roused to fighting fury, he's single-handedly routed Brood hunter packs and utterly annihilated an entire squad of alien Sidri hunters. Both have given respectable fights to experienced X-Men. He can also speak and has actually been spying on the X-Men, albeit benevolently, for quite some time.
- Great Lakes Avengers have Squirrel Girl as their Team Pet, being the youngest, goofiest and least experienced member who has a tail and talks to squirrels. But if you want to get technical, it's really Squirrel Girl's sidekick
Monkey Joe Tippy-Toe, who's a full member of the group, despite being a squirrel. Yes, that kind of squirrel .
- Bamse has Katten Jansson and Husmusen, a cat and a mouse who really belong to the main character's grandmother but often sneak along on adventures. Some Furry Confusion is involved here, as the cast of the comic are Funny Animals, but Katten Jansson and Husmusen (as well as other pets and wild animals) are portrayed more like Talking Animals who only talk among themselves. Katten Jansson and Husmusen are also usually Those Two Guys when they do not star in the story.
- Back in the Silver Age, Superman and Batman both got a Gratuitous Animal Sidekick, Krypto the Superdog and Ace the Bat-Hound respectively... who ended part of the "Legion of Super-Pets". Both were retconned out eventually for the obvious reasons, but Krypto has later returned, and so has Ace - in the 90s run as a seeing eye dog Batman inherits from a blind Native American medicine man, and in Batman Beyond. Krypto's actually a subversion of sorts as he has all the powers of Superman but little of the human restraint, making him a very dangerous combatant who can fight Superman's foes on even ground.
- Batman gets a Great Dane puppy in The New 52 version of Batman and Robin named Titus
- Glomulus the Cleaner Slug for the Orange Lantern Corps.
- Vincent Van Goat (codenamed HAEDUS) from Quantum And Woody went from a one-shot gag character to an Ensemble Dark Horse.
- Bob the Insecticon is the Autobots' team pet in IDW's Transformers Ongoing comics. Unlike most examples he's actually able to fight and at one point he takes on [[Badass Ravage]] and wins.
- Algy the dog, in Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman. He lives at the dairy, and all the milkman get upset if Mr. Crabbe doesn't include him in roll call, which Crabbe finds infuriating.
Fanfiction
Literature
- In Steven King's b one of the protagonists, Jake Chambers, has a pet billy-bumbler named "Oy".
- Related to that continuity, Kojak probably counts in The Stand. Glen found him, then he was with Glen and Stu until they had to leave him. Later, he makes it to Boulder, goes with the final four to face Flagg, and ends up helping Stu by bringing food until Tom arrives.
- The Famous Five have a dog, Timmy.
- Subverted at least twice in the Discworld series, once with the Luggage (an Amusing Alien which actually hates its companions and every other life form, aside from its owner and an occasional Love Interest), and again with Quoth the Raven and the Death of Rats, who tend to constitute a Tag-Team Pet between the pair of them.
- Villainous example- Nagini from Harry Potter, the giant snake who is almost always in the company of her master, Lord Voldemort, and his Death Eaters. Nagini is, however, very dangerous in her own right (being, after all, a huge and very venemous snake), and she's also a living Soul Jar for Voldemort.
- For the good guys, Hedwig the owl (and to a lesser extent Hermione's cat Crookshanks) are more ordinary examples.
- Malevil has Craa, a raven spotted raiding the castle's wheat fields. Though a pest, they name and feed him as he's the only wild animal they've seen since World War III.
- Trapped on Draconica: Specifically Ritchie is Kalak's pet but he's mostly there for comic relief.
- Desra the mouse in the Mediochre Q Seth Series could be considered this. She doesn't really do much, except hide in Mediochre's coat and occasionally serve as a Chekhov's Gun for her Crazy-Prepared master.
Films — Live Action
- The Beastmaster has a tiger and an eagle at his command, but he also has his iconic ferrets, Kodo and Podo.
- In Clash of the Titans, Bubo the mechanical owl regularly acted goofy, including flying into things and making crash-landings. However, it also led Perseus to the Stygian Witches, grabbed the Witches' Eye for him, single-handedly freed Pegasus from captivity in Calibos' camp, distracted the Kraken long enough for Perseus to arrive, and carried the bag containing Medusa's head to Perseus, allowing him to petrify the Kraken and save the day.
- Dark Star: Pinback thought the ship needed a mascot. Pinback was wrong.
- Star Wars: R2-D2 could be considered a Team Pet. An especially useful Team Pet, though.
Live Action TV
- Super Sentai has a few of these, most notably IC the cyborg dog from Denshi Sentai Denziman who dies by using himself as a power circuit for the Humongous Mecha, but gives the team one final Tear Jerker message.
- Classic Doctor Who had K-9.
- In Firefly, River and Kaylee double for this spot. Although Kaylee is also the Wrench Wench and Mr. Fixit. In the Big Damn Movie, River Takes About Six Levels In Badass to the point where even Jayne can't keep up with her.
- Human Target has Carmine the Rottweiler.
- Imagination Movers has Warehouse Mouse, a Team Pet that gets actual plot within the show.
- Lexx had 790 the robot head (and briefly, Squish the cluster lizard).
- Lost has Vincent, the clever Labrador who tends to lead the characters into trouble.
- In Primeval we get Rex, a Coelurosauravus from the Permian anomaly. He doesn't serve much purpose, except to hang out and look cute, possibly to counter all of the Nightmare Fuel.
- In the later seasons we also meet Sid and Nancy, a pair of mischievous Diictodon who were kept by Connor after their home anomaly closed. Despite being less important as characters, they seem to serve more purpose, as in one episode Sid escapes into the ARC and becomes trapped in a lab containing the Future Fungus, leading Connor to have to retrieve him and nearly freezing to death in the proces.
- Top Gear Dog, a Labradoodle bitch belonging to Richard Hammond who occasionally features on the show. Since she throws up whenever she gets in a car (which they discovered after taking her on a caravan holiday) her job is mainly to get in the way and sleep on the studio floor.
- Torchwood has Myfanwy the pterodactyl.
Music
- Snot had Dobbs, who appeared on the band's only completed studio album, Get Some. Sadly, Dobbs, along with his owner, Lynn Strait, the vocalist for the band, died in a car crash in 1998.
- Sublime had Louie Dog, the beloved Dalmatian of the late Bradley Nowell, who frequently joined the band on stage.
Real Life
- The Other Wiki refers to many military mascots, including goats, rams, antelope, ferrets, and even penguins. Maybe a penguin can be quite sensible, but the idea of having them as a pet isn't...
- Since ancient Egypt, war dogs have been used by the military even today.
Video Games
- ChuChu in Xenogears. There's a scene late in the game where your party gets captured by Krelian and used as bait to draw Elly out. The Big Bad has the party's Gears crucified in a field, which is meant to be somber and reflect on their possible fate. But if you have ChuChu in your party, that giant plush toy will be up there with the crucified giant robots, turning "Chu-Chu died for your sins!" into a meme among Xenogears fans.
- MOMO in Xenosaga.
- Riki in Video Game/Xenoblade.
- Mog, and to a lesser extent Relm, in Final Fantasy VI (although the team has an actual pet in Interceptor, Shadow's canine partner).
- Cait Sith in Final Fantasy VII (Fits more than one stereotype, as the character is actually a robot cat working for the bad guys.)
- Sazh's Chocobo chick in Final Fantasy XIII.
- Swiss Army Weapon Jack in Gears of War.
- Meemai in the first Baten Kaitos game isn't a party member — she's a little seal-like creature that rides in the neck of Xelha's shirt. And is used in several of her super moves.
- And happens to be the mind of the fragmented Whale, ancient god of the Lost Ocean
- Boo in both the Baldur's Gate games was something of a pet if Minsc was in your group, though he was little more than an annoyance to many players as he took up a valuable quick item slot.
- In Megatokyo, a hamster is named Boo in honour of Minsc's pet.
- Team Pets are common in the Tales Series: Quickie, Meredy's pet, in Tales Of Eternia; Noishe, Lloyd's Arshis companion, and Corrine, Sheena's manmade Summon Spirit, in Tales Of Symphonia; Zapie, Claire's pet, in Tales Of Rebirth; Giet, Moses's pet Galf, in Tales Of Legendia (the Oresoren may also count somewhat); and Mieu,
Luke's stress ball a young cheagle, in Tales Of The Abyss.
- Repede in Tales Of Vesperia is... a dog. That fights with a knife, but still a dog. Gameplay-wise he's a Fragile Speedster.
- In Chrono Cross, the first recruitable character in the game is the Team Pet Poshul, a pink, unnervingly cutesy talking dog. (Sample dialog: "Me will use my Pretty-Miracle-Power-X! Me will do it, Thergiepoo!")
- Koromaru from Persona 3: a highly intelligent dog who can summon the spirit of Cerberus to strike your foes with fire and darkness. And invoke hilariousness when he refuses to eat Yukari's cooking.
- Don't forget he also saves the team when Ikutsuki tries to force Aegis to kill them.
- From Persona 4, Teddie, a life-sized teddy bear from the TV world, fills this role. He later becomes human, and a Bishōnen at that.
- Cupil from Skies Of Arcadia fills this role, but doubles as Fina's weapon. To a lesser extent, the "Jester" Pow, who's Vyse's
dog huskra.
- Hans in Valkyria Chronicles, a (vestigially) winged pig. Exists mostly to look embarrassed when the protagonist flubs romantic moments in cut scenes.
- Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis gives us Muppy, a slug-like alien floating in a pot-shaped UFO. No one except Nikki can see that he was actually an alien invader. The Smart Guy/The Rival thinks he's handicapped, and the principal who admitted him to the school? Transfer student from "Waii'ha". Everyone else? Hoo-boy...
- And, apart from being the McGuffin at the end of one chapter, he doesn't have any impact on the story at all. And, the best that the main character can get out of his Relationship Values with Muppy? A pinky swear. No, really.
- Similarly to R2-D2 in the movie example, T3-M4 from Knights of the Old Republic is essentially a very useful team pet.
- Dragon Age: Origins has a Mabari Hound that the player names themselves. All the characters that join you like the dog, even the less pleasant characters like Morrigan, Sten or Loghain.
- OTOH, Oghren seems to dislike him (becomes more obvious when he's drunk). Alistair, of all people, also has a knack for pissing off Dog. Getting too close to his food, teasing him about eating human flesh, etc. At one point, the Grey Warden can remind him that Dog is a warhound and not a puppy to be teased. The "dialogue" Alistair has with Dog also doesn't seem terribly friendly either.
- Oghren's just annoyed that Dog doesn't agree that his wearing a saddle and serving as Oghren's personal cavalry mount is a good idea.
- The entire Mabari breed are the Team Pet of Ferelden. Dragon Age II reveals that other nations refer to Fereldans as "The Dog-Lords".
- Nall and Ruby of the Lunar series.
- Ricky the monkey from Dubloon.
- In Mother 3, one of the party members is the main character's dog, Boney, who is also the only character besides main character Lucas to appear in every chapter.
- Dragon Quest V's Borongo/Saber is a sabrecat served as The Hero and Bianca's Team Pet. Though in the later of the game, Borongo has no more importance to the plot, and you can develop your own army of monster Team Pet.
- Dragon Quest VIII has Munchie, The Hero's rat pet that is very smart. It can be used to clear curtain puzzles in a dungeon. It turns out very latter that Munchie is The Hero's ancestor in disguise.
- Pochi, the family's pet monster from Legacy Of The Wizard.
- Jet Force Gemini has Lupus, an alien dog-like creature who has jet thrusters on his paws, which he uses to hover, and a gun turret on his back that is replaced with the weapon the player selects somehow.
Web Comics
- Parodied in the hiatused webcomic RPG World by the character Dragobo, a portmaneau character based on a dragon and a chocobo.
- Parodied in Those Destined, where the Team Pet is also the party thief. Another adventurers party was less lucky, and their Team Pet is a Small Annoying Creature.
- The May 28, 2004 strip of Exterminatus Now sees Virus bring a Chao to the team, lampshading its role in the process, which is soon followed with a discussion on what to name it. Seven strips after its introduction, it meets a demon, undergoes a radical transformation, and becomes a bite-sized killing machine. In the following strip, it is christened "Blasphemy."
- In Sluggy Freelance, the non-human members of the main cast (Bun-Bun, Kiki, and Aylee) tend to fill this role, each in varying degrees (though not so much Aylee now that she's taken a mostly human form).
- Bun-Bun is actually a pardoy of this trope as he was specifically bought by Torg so the strip could have a cute animal...said cute animal is a murderous criminal that can take care of himself and seemingly only hangs around Torg for free food and lodging and whom orginially Torg wanted dead and/or gone (although it IS later revealed he has grown to actually really care about the main cast much later in the strip and fairly early on Torg was shown to clearly miss Bun-Bun when he was AWOL for a while). Kiki on the other hand plays this trope very straight.
- Davan's hairless, amorphous cat Choo-Choo Bear in Something Positive, odd for an otherwise (usually) non-fantastic Life Embellished webcomic. Sometimes seen seeping out of box, popping out of a toaster or acting as Davan's scarf or somesuch.
- Adventurers! has Chookie, some sort of Smurfing pink thing. Karn has a... violent reaction during their first encounter, but he's shown to be part of the party later anyway.
- Snookums the tentacle bunny in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, although he's mainly Molly's pet. It's notable that Molly herself started out as Bob's pet, before she turned out to be sentient and grew to human size.
- In The Order of the Stick, Mr. Scruffy the cat becomes the Team Pet once adopted by Belkar. It could be argued that Blackwing, Vaarsuvius' raven familiar, occupied the role before, but he's more of an Intellectual Animal, and now a full character in his own right.
- Fontes' Rants: Tanooki.
Web Original
- Tennyo's stuffed cabbit, which is animated anytime Generator wants. It Makes Sense in Context. While cute and silly and usually played for laughs, the cabbit can alert Generator instanteously, and in "Christmas Crisis" demonstrated that it can be horrifically effective.
- In the Flash web browser game Epic Battle Fantasy your team has Nolegs the Cat, who occasionall gives a random team member a random item. Sadly, Nolegs fits into the worthless pet category as it is rarely the item you need nor the team member who needs it.
Western Animation
- Snarf from Thundercats is pretty well the epitome of this trope. Utterly useless in a fight except against the weakest of minions, and tends to serve as weak comedy relief. Subverted only slightly in that Snarf is actually the nanny for Lion-O before he wakes up all growed-up on Third Earth. Occasionally subverted.note But those occasions also meant that Cats who should have known better -didn't.
- Momo in Avatar The Last Airbender is a flying bat-like lemur. In contrast, Appa is a 10-ton flying bison who has been subject to serious personalized stories and has a strong century-long bond with the titular character, making him more of a life-long companion than a Team Pet. Momo's presence or absence is a firm indicator to how light-hearted and whimsical or serious and edgy the current story is. To compound to it all, his character was originally designed to be a little robot named "MOMO 3" (when the original draft set the series in a futuristic environment) and Co-creator Bryan Konietzko has admitted that he based him on his childhood cat Buddy.
- In the Sequel Series, The Legend of Korra, the two team pets tradition continues with Pabu, the fire ferret (red panda/ferret hybrid) and Korra's polarbear-dog, Naga.
- Radarr is just another element of the Cliché Storm that is Storm Hawks. Pun unintended.
- Inverted in Transformers, where the main characters are robots, and the team pet is usually a human.
- Spike and Daniel are the most blatant examples. Apparently, this trope is genetic.
- In Transformers Animated, Sari is a debatable example for her first two seasons, then gets upgraded to Sixth Ranger after her Robotic Reveal.
- In Transformers Super God Masterforce, Cab's parrot and armadillo are definite examples.
- In Transformers Prime, most of the team gets their own individual pet. Bulkhead has Miko, Arcee has Jack, and Bumblebee has Rafael, and Optimus has a feral-cat-that-you-sometimes-leave-food-outside-for relationship with Agent Fowler. When Wheeljack arrives, Miko comments that "he'll need his own [pet] human".
- Faffy from Dave The Barbarian is a spoof of these type of creatures.
- To a lesser extent, Twinkle The Marvel Horse.
- Elvis from Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kids, whose major plot purpose is to cause Mr. Socrates to sneeze.
- Uni the baby unicorn from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.
- Lily and Sparkles from Barbie & The Diamond Castle.
- It would really be a disservice to call Godzilla a team pet in Godzilla The Series; the crew prefer "The Big Guy". They have N.I.G.E.L for that.
- Slimer in The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters. Also in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, but since it's based purely on the film continuity, there he's an incorrigible mischievous glutton who has to be kept in a terrarium so he won't wreak comedic and comparatively harmless havoc — one of the first major tasks in the game is to recapture him after he escapes.
- Scooby-Doo could very well have been the Trope Maker.
- Rufus the naked mole rat in Kim Possible.
- Kiwi, Odd's pet dog in Code Lyoko, fits the role, although he's not very often involved in the Five-Man Band's adventures.
- Az the Tofu, a Ridiculously Cute Critter from Wakfu.
- Chuchu, the family dog on The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan.
- Kuma in Pole Position.
- Tally-Hawk is the Silverhawks' mascot.
- Bandit in ANY incarnation of Jonny Quest.
- In Futurama Nibbler is the Team Pet, even if he is an Amusing Alien and Intellectual Animal.
- Bubble Guppies has one in the form of Bubble Puppy.
- Sebastian is Alexandra's smartass cat on Josie and the Pussycats, but he'll usually pitch in to help the others when needed.
- Elmo, Augie's bulldog on The Funky Phantom, is usually engaged in a battle of wits with Mudsy's cat Boo.
- Braveheart, the misnamed St. Bernard on Inch High Private Eye.
- Clue Club team pets Woofer (a vainglorious bloodhound) and Wimper (a basset).
- The parody series The Adventures of Mr. Incredible had Mr. Skipperdoo, a mostly useless, bespectacled rabbit.
- Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II in The Simpsons. The former is generally more useful.
- The Secret Saturdays: Zak has three Team Pets, all of them cryptids, including a 7-foot tall "gorilla-cat" named Fisk, a komodo dragon (named, you guessed it, Komodo), and a pterosaur named Zon. Unlike most team pets, Zak treats them like their part of his family, including Fisk, whom he likens to an adopted brother
- Bronx in Gargoyles is the pet of the gargoyle team, and their equivalent of a dog.
- Young Justice has both Sphere the supercycle and Wolf the um, Big Badass Wolf. They both help in missions.
- Mr Cool, Fonzie's dog in The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.
- The Winx Club has Kiko the bunny. In season 1, the Trix had Pepe the duck, but he disappeared after season 2.
- R.O.T.H. in Motorcity, who's a Cute Machine / Robot Buddy. He makes these shrill, quiet shrieking noises instead of talking.
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