History Main / BecomingTheGenie

* {{Akinator}}, a genie who loves to play "twenty questions" games, threatens that anyone who plays the game dishonestly will take his place in his lamp.

* A non-genie example occurs in ''DannyPhantom'' with Freakshow, one of the few human villains. Freakshow finds a magic gauntlet and gains the power to [[RealityWarper warp reality]]. Danny exploits Freakshow's envy of ghosts and tricks him into using the gauntlet to become one. Predictably, Freakshow is promptly captured with the Fenton thermos.
* In one episode of ''TheFairlyOddparents'', Timmy wishes Crocker to be a fairy to humiliate him in front of a packed auditorium. The audience tries to attack him, capture him, and bring him to scientists to be examined. He escapes and flies away. It seems to be an actually happy ending in the end for Crocker, as he realizes just how great it is to be a fairy, until the last second, when Timmy remembers to unwish the wish, causing Crocker to fall out of the stratosphere and into the Turners' trashcan.

* ''CodeGeass'' has an interesting variation: Geass itself does this. C.C. was once a normal human and had a Geass power like the other characters we see throughout the series. It turns out that in the final stage of Geass, the user can steal the "code" of the one who granted their power and become immortal. [[spoiler: The reason people are granted Geass in the first place is to create this outcome. After all, WhoWantsToLiveForever? This is the only way to kill someone with Code]].

* A particularly JackassGenie in ''KingsQuestV'' exclaims "Aaah! Freedom at last! Now YOU spend the next 500 years in the bottle!" upon being freed, and promptly traps the person who freed him in his former prison. Including the player. HaveANiceDeath!

* In the ''{{Charmed}}'' episode "I Dream of Phoebe" (Season 6 episode 15), the sisters came across a genie in a bottle. [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished Wishing the genie free would replace the genie with the one who wished her free,]] turning the wisher into a genie.

* One of the vignettes of ''AmericanGods'' (After a fashion): A beleaguered businessman sleeps with a cab driver who turns out to be a djinni, and awakens to find that the djinn has left and taken with him all the businessman's clothes, identification and money. The djinn left behind his own drivers license, clothing and keys to the cab and his apartment. After a brief consideration, the businessman sees this as an improvement over the miserable life he had been living. [[spoiler:He gets killed when [[DroppedABridgeOnHim bridges start getting dropped]] on all the supernatural creatures.]]

* One hour long episode of ''TheTwilightZone'' has a nebbish man hypothesize over what he would get if he wanted money, fame, or power, being careful since his genie says that he only gets [[OurGeniesAreDifferent one wish]]. Realizing he would be a catastrophic failure with any of these wishes, he eventually decides that he would rather be a genie himself: he doesn't like his old life, and he enjoys being nice to people. [[spoiler: He also gets to wear some sweet Middle Eastern clothes, speak in a cool authoritarian voice, and hang out with his dog. Since it's his wish, he decides he wants to be an old-school genie.]]

* A non-genie example occurs in ''DannyPhantom'' with Freakshow, one of the few human villains. Freakshow gets a hold of a glove that makes you able to alter reality and Danny can't figure out how to defeat him, until he remembers that Freakshow is really jealous of ghosts and tricks Freakshow into turning himself into one. Danny is ready with the Fenton thermos and promptly traps Freakshow inside.

* In {{Disney/Aladdin}}, Aladdin [[BatmanGambit tricks Jafar into wishing to become a genie]]. Jafar only realizes the downside when it's too late.
** Aladdin: [[CallBack PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS... Iiitty-bitty living space!]]

* There's one episode of ''RescueRangers'' where Fat Cat tries to get his hands on a lamp with a genie in it, but Monterey Jack gets the lamp instead. The genie tricks him into wishing him free, which in this case results in them swapping places: the genie is freed (and gets Monterey Jack's outfit in the deal), while Monterey Jack ends up a genie. It's not long before Fat Cat gets the lamp back, and mayhem ensues: only a ResetButton {{Wishplosion}} (''"We wish none of this ever happened!"'') puts everything back to normal.

* An episode of ''TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'' featured a magical jewel-eyed skull that was bound to grant a wish to whoever found it. At the end of the episode, Grim found it and wished to be free of his curse, which the skull did by ''swapping'' their curses - Grim is now a wish-granting skull, and the jewel-eyed skull is now the Grim Reaper.

As mentioned, this is almost always an ending to a genie story, so spoilers ahoy.

* Used as the happy ending (!) in a short story published way back in ''{{Dragon}} Magazine''. The genie in question is found by a scribe, who uses his second wish (the first was to visit a place no human had ever seen before) to make her tell him all the stories she knows so he may record them. By the time she finally runs out of material, he is an old man and they are long-time friends, so his third wish is to become a djinn himself and join her in her bottle forever.

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* A particularly JackassGenie in ''[[KingsQuest King's Quest V]]'' exclaims "Aaah! Freedom at last! Now YOU spend the next 500 years in the bottle!" upon being freed, and promptly traps the person who freed him in his former prison. Including the player. HaveANiceDeath!

* One of the vignettes of ''AmericanGods'': a beleaguered businessman sleeps with a cab driver who turns out to be a djinni, and awakens to find himself a djinni. He sees this as an improvement. [[spoiler:He gets killed when [[DroppedABridgeOnHim bridges start getting dropped]] on all the supernatural creatures, though, so maybe not in the long run.]]

* Another "happy ending" example, albeit a variation: ''WinniAllfours'' wants a pony more than anything. When her parents won't give her one, she eats all her vegetables to turn into a horse herself.

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* ''IDreamOfAJeanieBottle'' uses this trope as the basic premise - two friends find an empty genie bottle, and when one of them--ironically named Jean--opens it, he becomes the bottle's new (biologically female) genie. Jean is initially very resistant to the requirements of geniedom (since Jean is now more or less a slave), which tends to get him in trouble with higher-ranking genies that enforce the rules.

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* Are You Afraid of The Dark: In the episode, "The Tale of the Time Trap", Sardo, the store keeper who sold the box to the protagonist, accidentally frees the current genies of the lamp and becomes a genie himself when he wishes for a million more wishes (the same wish the other genie used when she became trapped in the box as well, and so must grant them to others).

*** It also works well as a sequel hook: apparently those restrictions don't mean a lot when the person who has found your lamp is ALSO a villain, and you're willing to take being a JackassGenie to the max.
*** And that [[MeaningfulName Abis Mal is an idiot]], making it very easy for Jafar to manipulate him.

** The dog is also [[spoiler: dressed in Middle Eastern clothing, turban and all. Yeah.]]

* Are You Afraid of The Dark: In the episode, "The Tale of the Time Trap", Sardo, the store keeper who sold the box to the protagonist, accidently frees the current genies of the lamp and becomes a genie himself when he wishes for a million more wishes (the same wish the other genie used when she became trapped in the box as well, and so must grant them to others).

** Of course, [[spoiler: this effect can be weaponized...]]

* ''IDreamOfAJeanieBottle'' uses this trope as the basic premise - two friends find an empty genie bottle, and when one of them--ironically named Jean--opens it becomes the bottle's new (female) genie. Jean is initially very resistant to the requirements of geniedom(Since Jean is now more or less a slave) , which tends to get him/her in trouble with higher-ranking genies that enforce the rules.

* One hour long episode of ''TheTwilightZone'' has a nebbish man hypothesize over what he would get if he wanted money, fame, or power, being careful since his genie says that he only gets [[OurGeniesAreDifferent one wish]]. Realizing he would be a catastrophic failure with any of these wishes, he eventually decides that he would rather be a genie himself: he doesn't like his old life, and he enjoys being nice to people. [[spoiler: He also gets to wear some whack Middle Eastern clothes, speak in a cool authoritarian voice, and hang out with his dog. Since it's his wish, he decides he wants to be an old-school genie.]]

* One of the vignettes of ''AmericanGods'': a beleaguered man sleeps with a cab driver who turns out to be a djinni. He sees this as an improvement. [[spoiler:He gets killed when [[DroppedABridgeOnHim bridges start getting dropped]] on all the supernatural creatures, though, so maybe not in the long run.]]

** In the AlternateContinuity manga ''Suzaku of the Counterattack'', [[spoiler:Suzaku manifests his own Code as he botches Schneizel's attempt to claim C.C.'s.]]. In ''Nightmare of Nunnally'', [[spoiler:Lelouch gains C.C.'s as a result of their SharingABody, and after her death he takes up the name C.C. and begins WanderingTheEarth.]]

*''IDreamOfAJeanieBottle'' uses this trope as the basic premise - two friends find an empty genie bottle, and when one of them--ironically named Jean--opens it becomes the bottle's new (female) genie. Jean is initially very resistant to the requirements of geniedom, which tends to get him/her in trouble with higher-ranking genies that enforce the rules.