Morality Pet / Webcomics

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• Subverted, or even averted, for Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater. Though he has an humongous crush on White Mage, her presence isn't enough to prevent him from being evil. At most, he tries to be evil without her noticing.
• In Accursed Dragon!, Wizard has Humpbrett, a strangely pet-like boy who has been referred to as a "stray" Wizard picked up.
• Bastard: Kyun is this to Jin, being the deciding factor in him turning against his serial killer father, and is also his Morality Chain, keeping him from slipping back into that life.
• Bomango: Didi, Pablo, and Andy act as Morality Pets for Gogo. Gogo is violent, impulsive, and socially inept to the point where she comes off more as immoral than awkward. However she is very protective of the people she likes. Andy tries to help her out when he can even if it means Brutal Honesty.
• Buck Godot has the Beemahs become this for the Klegdixal, starting in this comic.
  • Prior to, and unbeknownst to anyone else, the Beemahs were sort of the Morality Pet the Klegs wished they had-the meeting between the Beemah and the Kleg ambassador is kind of sweet, as the usually rude and self-serving Klegdixal pours his heart out with gratitude to Buck for reuniting the two species, as the Klegs had apparently been the original creators of the Beemahs and their one selfless urge as a species was to fix all the things that had gone wrong in the process (many of them flaws which are used to exploit the Beemahs by another party).
• Teeko from Chirault has proved that Kiran is not as much of a stoic loner as he thinks he is.
• Collar 6 gives antagonist Mistress Butterfly three personal slaves (somewhere between pet and spouse) who love her and know her to be a good person, though one of them is surprised at her changed personality and calls her on it, getting kicked for his trouble.
• As the story progresses in Cobweb and Stripes, Lydia is growing into either this or Morality Chain for Betelgeuse.

• In Dr. Frost, Pavlov could be a literal morality pet, as he's a puppy who seems to help Frost in some ways. But in a straighter example, Professor Song says that she thinks his assistant, Seonga, is a reason, if not entirely responsible, for Frost becoming more human.
• Jon Stewart seems to be this for a vampire Stephen Colbert in The Eagle of Hermes.
• In El Goonish Shive Lord Tedd tried to wipe out his alternates and sometimes looks batshit insane. Then we see him looking much like Tedd we know, not just sane, but downright nice and caring as far as his "voluntary servant" Nioi is concerned. In turn, she claims he's not a bad guy.
  • Another side of it approaches Morality Chain, as all known Alternate Universe variants of Tedd got a good friend Elliot and at least once the female counterpart Ellen is his girlfriend; the only exclusion is Lord Tedd's world — and instead of Grace there's a big ill-mannered Blood Knight.
• Calixta serves as a morality pet to Max Pritchard in Ennui GO!. Max generally acts like a snarky, foul-mouthed, occasionally violent douche toward everyone (including his friends and, to a lesser extent, his family). However, when he's around Calixta, he drops his nastier quirks, treats her (relatively) kindly and genuinely tries to be a good boyfriend to her. This is especially true in the "How Do I" mini-arc, where he asked her to be his date for the prom and was determined to not stand her up, not even letting kidnappers and a cougar get in his way.
  • Likewise, Izzy and her twin sister Adelie were almost these for Florida Man, who genuinely tried to help the girls escape their mother and began to bond with them. Of course, they soon broke ties with him when he causally reveals that he was the one who introduced their mother to drugs. By the present, the sisters, mainly Izzy, clearly hate his guts.
• Erika and the Princes in Distress : Pita acts as one for Erika. Despite her strong "everyone for themselves" mentality, Erika does look out for her squire, and tries to protect her from danger, even if it means involving herself in fights she'd rather ignore altogether. In fact, the very first time Erika brings herself to ask someone for help (which by the standards of her people would be seen as a very dishonorable sign of weakness) is when Pita is about to die from a barley sugar overdose. It's also the influence of Pita that makes her spare Glucose at the very last moment.
• Subverted in Furmentation — Alexi goes into a violent, psychopathic rage when his teddy bear is stolen, but having it doesn't seem to make him any nicer than usual.
• In Friendship Is Magic , Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie are mutual ones. It was Twilight's cry of anguish that stopped Pinkamena from killing Haze, and Pinkie was the one who helped Twilight fight off the Tantabus and (mostly) purged her of it's Black Magic.
• Built in to troll psychology/romance on a fundamental level in Homestuck. MOIRALLEGIANCE pairs are basically this trope, where a calmer troll keeps a more hot-tempered or violent troll's dangerous tendencies in check and they balance and complement each other's personalities. Three examples exist at the beginning of the troll arc: Kanaya for Vriska, Feferi for Eridan, and Nepeta for Equius. Subverted in that Vriska is still a HUGE BITCH BLUH BLUH even with Kanaya's help, since Kanaya has less-platonic feelings for Vriska and therefore fails to exercise any real control over her, and Feferi broke up with Eridan early on because of the emotional toll of keeping him constantly in check. Nepeta plays it straight except for the fact that on closer examination Equius might not have been that bad a person without her anyways. (He says he might have been.)
  • The Equius <> Nepeta dynamic is also interesting as Equius believes that he is the one protecting Nepeta; later on, he admits conversely that, without Nepeta's support, he believes he would probably be violently unstable. And since they represent the zodiac, it isn't a very big surprise that Sagittarius and Leo are a dreampair.
  • John became one for Vriska.
  • Kanaya also finds herself accidentally slipping into this role for Rose, but when Rose mentions it she tries to backpedal because she doesn't want a repeat of her relationship with Vriska.
  • As of late, Feferi dumping Eridan has had bad consequences for the team. On the flipside, Karkat became one of these for the psychotic Gamzee, successfully ending his murder spree without any further bloodshed. Though he stays evil afterwards, acting as a Manipulative Bastard to Terezi and later raising Lord English.
  • Draconion Dignitary tries to be this to Jack Noir after he's prototyped with Becquerel and becomes crazy but fails since Jack's too far gone. Interestingly played with in that DD isn't a nice guy like this trope usually requires; he's just in favor of Pragmatic Villainy and thinks that Jack is going to ruin everything with his behavior (though there may be some Even Evil Has Standards going on as well). Also subverted with Courtyard Droll who has a lot of traits in common with this trope but is to weak and easily manipulated to be an effective Morality Pet for Jack, and is hated by him anyways.
• Richard from Looking for Group may be a cold blooded (literally, he's undead), Chaotic Evil, Omnicidal Maniac, but no one messes with his Felbunny.
• In Misfile Eponine appears to be the only creature Cassiel genuinely cares about. It even trumps her desire to spite Rumisiel.
• The Ax-Crazy Red of No Rest for the Wicked takes this attitude toward November.
• While technically human, Piffany from Nodwick is the only reason Artax and Yeager actually display any kind of heroism ever. There's a reason A World Without Piffany is so crapsacky it makes even the normal Nodwick world seem pleasant.
• In The Order of the Stick:
  • Mr. Scruffy the cat is probably the only living thing Belkar genuinely cares for besides himself. While Belkar starts out appreciating what a vicious little bastard the cat can be, this eases him into the foreign idea of having loved ones.
    Elan: I can't tell if the cat is a good influence on Belkar, or Belkar is a bad influence on the cat.
    Haley: Both, I think, but it probably still averages out somewhere south of Neutral.
  • Played straight with Blackwing the raven: as the wizard Vaarsuvius' familiar, he gets to mitigate Vaarsuvius' anger issues and remind them of problem-solving strategies that don't involve large explosions.
• Pixie and Brutus: As tough and scary-looking as he is, Brutus' immediate thought process upon meeting Pixie is, "She doesn't stand a chance against attackers. Well, looks like I have to protect her, then."
• Criminy to Fuchsia in Sinfest.
• Played with early in Sluggy Freelance, when Kiki the ferret's Catchphrase was "Stay good, [name]! Stay good!"
• While he's antisocial rather than villainous, Davan Macintire and his relationship with Rory fit this trope. He's still grouchy and sarcastic around Rory, but he seems to give more of a damn about the kid than he does about most people even upon learning that Rory isn't actually his son.
• Used unusually in Tower of God, where The Hero Bam is kind of a Magnetic Hero because of his Morality Pet like tendencies. The amoral characters Rak and Khun become functionally heroic due to their affection for him, and the in principle quite evil character Ha Jinsung is only introduced after he's been softened up by mentoring Bam.
• Unsounded: Quigley is a pretty immoral person, who hates himself and has only been prevented from killing himself by his young son's intervention. With the death of his wife the only thing he really cares about is his son Matty.
• Villains Are Destined to Die: Penelope is the reason why Crown Prince Callisto Regulus works to control his Hair-Trigger Temper and Blood Knight tendencies. She is the reason he becomes a good ruler.
• In Wilde Life, Zulime deliberated started The Virus that permanently turns people into bloodthirsty monsters, uses Mind Control and was planning to engage in Superhuman Trafficking...but also took in several runaway teenagers who, unaware of her other activities, were crushed when the White-Faced Bear killed her.

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