History Main / ThreeWishes

** In the season 2 finale, the genie grants the sisters a wish each. Piper vaguely wishes for Dan to move on with his life (as in stop pining over her and Leo) which backfires and he ages rapidly. Prue wishes for love to feel "like it used to" and she ends up transformed into a 16-year-old. Phoebe wishes for an active power but hers gets stolen from a Dragon demon (which becomes HilariousInHindsight as she gains the exact same power naturally in the next episode). When the Dragon demon kills Prue the Genie voluntarily returns to his bottle so he can give them a new set of wishes. Phoebe wishes for Prue's resurrection, Piper wishes on Dan's behalf for him to forget about magic and for their final wish the sisters [[FreeingTheGenie turn the Genie into a human]] as a thank you.
** "I Dream of Phoebe": Phoebe accidentally wishes that Chris wouldn't leave and that ends up stopping him from being able to orb. So her second wish is for him to be able to orb again. Her third wish sets the genie free...and traps her in the bottle instead. Chris becomes her master and accidentally wishes for Leo to get over his prejudice towards him. He then wishes for Piper and Leo to sleep together ([[KidFromTheFuture long story]]) but Phoebe makes them fall asleep next to each other. He doesn't get his third wish however as the original genie steals the bottle. Her three wishes are to kill the sister, raise a lost city and (through some heavy trickery) wish the new genie free which imprisons her again.

[[folder:Fanfics]]

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "The Man in the Bottle". The genie actually granted ''four'' wishes; with the first wish being used solely to test the genie, the second being "one million dollars" (which they give away to friends, before federal and state income tax claim the rest), the third being a clear Type 2, and the fourth to return everything to normal. A closing KarmicTwistEnding ultimately undoes their first wish as well, leaving them with nothing but some wisdom learned from the experience.

* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'':

** In "The Leprechaun-Artist", the {{Leprechaun}} Shawn [=McGool=] grants Buddy, J.P. and Richie three wishes - one a piece - after they capture him. However, [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor none of them turn out according to plan]]. Buddy wishes for XRayVision so that he can see girls' underwear but he can't control his new power and sees internal organs and skulls. [=McGool=] reverses the wish after he determines that Buddy has learned his lesson. J.P. wishes for all of their parents to do exactly what they tell them. The boys soon learn that [=McGool=] has once again tricked them by granting their wish too literally. When J.P. orders his mother to make pizza for the three of them, he has to tell her to perform every step in the preparation from taking the pizza out of the box. [=McGool=] likewise reverses this wish. Richie wishes for a "really hot" car with a driver with a mind of his own. While they are enjoying their new stretch limo, they are chased by the police. The driver, given that he has a mind of his own, refuses their instructions to stop and gets into a car chase. When the police catch up with them, the three boys are arrested as the limo was hot as in stolen. [=McGool=] again reverses the wish and the police have no memory of the car theft.

* ''WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers'', episode ''A Lad in the Lamp'', where there was three wishes per customer. The genie tricked Monterey with the third wish to free him from the lamp, but forgot to mention that the wisher would take the genie's place. In the second half of the episode, Monterey is captured by the Fat Cat's gang and made to do wishes for the gang. When he's finally rescued, the last wish was that none of it ever happened (which alters a minor event in the past to prevent the artifact from being stolen).

* A DiscussedTrope on ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' (see Three Good Wishes). According to Norm The Genie, the typical structure is thus: Something stupid like "I want a sandwich"; something world changing ("I want to be Mayor of the World!"); and then when that blows up in their face, "I wish I had never met you!", returning the status quo. Interestingly, Timmy also uses a variant of this when he meets Norm (before this pattern was brought up). He decides, since Norm can grant him three RULE FREE wishes (as opposed to Cosmo and Wanda, who can grant unlimited wishes but have a ridiculously long book of rules to go along with it), to test them out with a simple rule free wish: "I wish I had an omelet (after 10 am)!" (Of course, Norm, being TheTrickster, gives him an omelet that was too hot without a plate). This is followed by, "I wish Trixie Tang was in love with me, Timmy Turner!" (actually in love with everyone named Timmy Turner on the planet), and "I wish I had One Billion Dollars!" (it's counterfeit). The reset button is pressed by him more or less blackmailing Norm into more wishes, and then wishing for a lawyer (the only thing that can defeat Genies besides Smoof).

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' episode "The Magical Meanie", when Papa Smurf gets a hold of being master of the JerkassGenie by saying the magical word "pumpernickel pickle", his second wish was to undo all the things the genie did with his magic. This also undid the first wish of Gargamel and Azrael being shrunk to Smurf-size as they were floating down the river on a small raft, causing them to start swimming from [[InevitableWaterfall the waterfall that they were approaching]].

[[folder:Fanfics]]

* Genies in Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' movies must give whomever hold their lamps three wishes, with three restrictions: they can't kill anybody (but, as the sequel ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheReturnOfJafar'' made clear, "[[JerkassGenie you'd be surprised]] [[FateWorseThanDeath what you can live through]]"), they can't make anybody fall in love with anybody else (there's a moment when Jafar wishes for Jasmine to fall in love with him; Jasmine fakes it, much to Genie's surprise), and they can't bring people back from the dead ([[CameBackWrong it's not a pretty picture...]] ''[[CameBackWrong they don't like doing it!]])''. And of course, wishing for more wishes is strictly forbidden (but, as Aladdin proved, genies can apparently be tricked into using their powers without making an official wish, when he doubts whether Genie can even free them from the Cave of Wonders and Genie takes the dare, freeing them without realizing Aladdin never actually ''wished'' for it).

* In WesternAnimation/WishDragon, [[OurDragonsAreDifferent the titular character Long]] can grant three wishes to any master who possesses the [[GenieInABottle tea pot]] he's bound to and he can only be freed once he fully grants three wishes to ten different masters.

%% [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
%% [[/folder]]

* In one of the [[Creator/SpiderRobinson Callahan's]] stories, an alcoholic Irish spirit known as a clurichaun is captured before he can drink Mary's Place out of business and is forced to grant three wishes. The bartender, Jake, sees the potential disaster looming and uses his first wish to summon his mentor for help; the second wish is granted out of [[LiteralGenie sheer mischief]] when the Irish spirit interprets a casual remark as a wish to fix a broken table. Wish three ''should'' be used to banish him, but Jake realizes just how ''fun'' the clurichaun has made the place -- so he uses the third wish to [[spoiler: make the clurichaun pay for every drink he takes, in honest money. Since Jake had been running the bar at a loss, the clurichaun's patronage is the financial saving of the place]].

* In ''Series/TheXFiles'' genie episode "Je Souhaite", Mulder skipped the simple test wish, having already seen the effects of some of the genie's wishes. So his first wish was for "peace on Earth", which the genie granted by getting rid of everyone except him (which, she explained, was ''much'' easier than making people actually love their fellow man). He used his second wish to undo the first. His third wish was to [[FreeingTheGenie free the genie]].
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' had an episode, "I Dream of Genie", where the Genie only gave one wish, saying there'd been cutbacks, so the man delayed making his wish and dreamed three possible scenarios (the classics: love, money, and power). Finding them all to be unsatisfying, he wished to be a genie himself, who granted three wishes. However, the condition was that his every recipient had to return his lamp to the alley, so that he'd only be found by (and thus help) people who were down-on-their-luck.

--> ''In a flower there was a fairy''
--> ''And the fairy said: "3 Wishes!"''
--> ''Mother got a pool''
--> ''Daddy got a horse''
--> ''And I got a dress''
--> ''Sailing in the blue ocean''

-->"I saw [[{{Necromancer}} Milenko]], he gave me three wishes\\
That night, I fucked three [[ChubbyChaser fat bitches"]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' episode "The Secret Origin of Darkwing Duck", while travelling through a desert, the future Darkwing discovers a genie in a lamp and wishes for a drink, new clothes, and the secret to the genie's dramatic entrance.

* When ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' go to Tokyo they wind up gutting fish to earn enough money to go home. Bart guts fish rhythmically chanting "Knife goes in, guts come out. Knife goes in, guts come out." He then picks up a talking fish that says if his life is spared he'll give Bart three wishes ... "Knife goes in, guts come out."

[[folder:Web Video]]

[[folder:Videogames]]

* In ''Webcomic/TalesOfTheQuestor'', Quentyn wins a wild hunt and earns a boon, but due to circumstances, the debt is tripled, giving him (what else?) three wishes. [[spoiler: The first two are used to reduce the Unseelie Prince who called the hunt to utter destitution, to said Prince's quivering rage, but the third wish banishes him from the plane, "never to trouble this world again." ]]

* In ''Fanfic/TheMermaidAndTheGenie'', when Ursula steals the Genie's lamp from Ariel when Ariel has only used one wish to become human, Ariel is able to retrieve the lamp from Ursula and use her ''second'' wish to undo all of Ursula's wishes. In the same fic, Ursula is able to basically 'draw out' her third wish by wishing that Genie has to obey her so long as she's holding the lamp in one of her tentacles.

* In a (non-canon) strip of ''DeepFried'', Beepo discovers a genie but, having heard all of these stories, he's too terrified to make any wishes. Roadkill grabs the genie prison and wishes for 1) future wishes to have no ironic or negative consequences, 2) for wish 1 to apply to itself, and 3) to rule the universe. It works.

* Subversion: In ''The Old Genie Hottabych'' by Lazar Lagin, the genies are not required to fulfill ''any'' wishes for those who free them but the titular Hottabych feels so grateful to TheProtagonist that he decides to become his lifetime servant, i.e. granting him unlimited wishes for the duration of his life (which is, needless to say, thousands of times shorter than Hottabych's own, so it's a pretty good deal). Another genie [[spoiler:(Hottabych's brother)]] appears later in the novel who has to be coerced into serving his rescuer but also grants unlimited wishes.

* A rare inversion of this trope is Barry Longyear's fantasy novel "The God Box". The protagonist receives a magic box that can give you anything; the catch is that it will always give you what (in the gods estimation) you truly ''need'', not what you want. The consequences are usually as unexpected as the Three Wishes version, except that the results are (ultimately) to the good.

* ''Literature/OddlyEnough'': Vincent, the main character of "Am I Blue?" gets three wishes from his [[FairyGodmother Fairy Godfather]]. The first gets him a Swiss double mocha at a coffee shop. The second turns every gay person, coast to coast, blue for twenty-four hours. Vincent's final wish is for a homophobic bully to be turned blue as well... only for his fairy godfather to return smirking that [[ArmoredClosetGay that wish is still available]].

Related to the RuleOfThree. For this to work, the person with the wishes has to not be GenreSavvy enough to know to use the first wish to wish for the knowledge and wisdom to know what to use the last two wishes for. Kind of a DeadUnicornTrope, as the origin of the rule is not from the original Aladdin story in ''Literature/ArabianNights'', the genie does not have a limit on wishes; he just only got to three before the lamp was stolen, nor do Djinns in Arab mythology have a limited number of wishes in folklore. The oldest known movie in having the "three wishes" rule is probably ''Film/TheThiefOfBagdad1940'' making this trope NewerThanTheyThink.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* One strip of ''The Bash Street Kids'' in ''ComicStrip/TheBeano'' has the teacher discovering a Genie. He blows his first wish on wishing he wasn't so freaked out. He then wishes for all the kids to be smart. It happens, and teacher hears he's going to be out of job, so he wishes for all the kids to be stupid again.
[[/folder]]

* One short story written by Creator/ShelSilverstein takes the old "greed is bad" aesop UpToEleven. The story goes that a boy finds a small elf in the woods, so the elf grants the boy one wish. Being greedy, the boy wishes for two wishes, which he then gets, surprisingly enough. With each of those wishes, he then wishes for two more wishes, creating four wishes. Then eight wishes, sixteen wishes, thirty-two wishes, and so on, until the boy dies, presumably from old age, leaving behind an ''enormous'' pile of unused wishes. The narrator then invites the reader to take a few, and warns him or her not to "waste your wishes on wishing".

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/HeathcliffAndTheCatillacCats'' has a cat genie granting wishes to Mungo who, because is kind of dumb, wast them all.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DucktalesTheMovieTreasureOfTheLostLamp'', the villainous sorcerer has [[AmplifierArtifact a talisman that allows him to override the three wish rule]]. And unfortunately, wishing for possession of the talisman is the one wish beyond the genie's power.

Related to the RuleOfThree. For this to work, the person with the wishes has to not be GenreSavvy enough to know to use the first wish to wish for the knowledge and wisdom to know what to use the last two wishes for. Kind of a DeadUnicornTrope, as the origin of the rule is not from the original Aladdin story in ''Literature/ArabianNights'', the genie does not have a limit on wishes he just only got to three before the lamp was stolen, nor Djinns in Arab mythology have a limited number of wishes in folklore. The oldest known movie in having the "three wishes" rule is probably ''Film/TheThiefOfBagdad1940'' making this trope NewerThanTheyThink.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DucktalesTheMovieTreasureOfTheLostLamp'', the villainous sorceror has [[AmplifierArtifact a talisman that allows him to override the three wish rule]]. And unfortunately, wishing for possession of the talisman is the one wish beyond the genie's power.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9759619/1/Gaz-Dreams-of-Genie Gaz Dreams of Genie]]'', Gaz shatters a genie bottle that Dib found just to spite him, which counts as opening it and frees the genie Azie to serve her. When Dib tries to warn her about using genie wishes, Gaz [[FreudianSlip impulsively]] wishes he had never been born, [[RetGone erasing him]] and creating a reality where [[VillainWorld Zim has conquered Earth]] and she's a slave. She then uses her ''second'' wish to hit the ResetButton and undo this, before trying to figure out how to properly use her last wish. [[spoiler: She attempts to [[LoopholeAbuse get the ability to grant wishes herself]], [[ExactWords only for Azie]] [[BecomingTheGenie to make them switch lives]], leaving Gaz trapped in the restored bottle.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9759619/1/Gaz-Dreams-of-Genie Gaz Dreams of Genie]]'', Gaz shatters a genie lamp that Dib found just to spite him, which counts as opening it and frees the genie Azie to serve her. When Dib tries to warn her about using genie wishes, Gaz [[FreudianSlip impulsively]] wishes he had never been born, [[RetGone erasing him]] and creating a reality where [[VillainWorld Zim has conquered Earth]] and she's a slave. She then uses her ''second'' wish to hit the ResetButton and undo this, before trying to figure out how to properly use her last wish. [[spoiler: She attempts to [[LoopholeAbuse get the ability to grant wishes herself]], [[ExactWords only for Azie]] [[BecomingTheGenie to make them switch lives]], leaving Gaz trapped in the restored lamp.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' fanfic ''Gaz Dreams of Genie'', Gaz shatters a genie lamp that Dib found just to spite him, which counts as opening it and frees the genie Azie to serve her. When Dib tries to warn her about using genie wishes, Gaz [[FreudianSlip impulsively]] wishes he had never been born, [[RetGone erasing him]] and creating a reality where [[VillainWorld Zim has conquered Earth]] and she's a slave. She then uses her ''second'' wish to hit the ResetButton and undo this, before trying to figure out how to properly use her last wish. [[spoiler: She attempts to [[LoopholeAbuse get the ability to grant wishes herself]], [[ExactWords only for Azie]] [[BecomingTheGenie to make them switch lives]], leaving Gaz trapped in the restored lamp.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' episode "The Secret Origin of Darkwing Duck", while travelling through a desert, the future Darkwing discovers a genie in a lamp and wishes for a drink, new clothes, and the secret to the genie's dramatic entrance.

* In ''WesternAnimation/DuckTalesTheMovieTreasureOfTheLostLamp'' (see the entry in the other category), there are at least three examples of a ResetButton, though none are made by the original wisher. The first two are made by the nephews to undo the chaos caused by Webby's wishes (or at least the two of hers that are seen onscreen). The third is Scrooge's second wish, done to reverse the work of the BigBad (and then his third wish is used for FreeingTheGenie).

** In the season 2 finale, the genie grants the sisters a wish each. Piper vaguely wishes for Dan to move on with his life (as in stop pining over her and Leo) which backfires and he ages rapidly. Prue wishes for love to feel "like it used to" and she ends up transformed into a 16-year-old. Phoebe wishes for an active power but hers gets stolen from a Dragon demon (which becomes HilariousInHindsight as she gains the exact same power naturally in the next episode).

* Subverted in the ''Manga/AsatteNoHoukou'' manga; a sign by the shrine the wishing stone is in says each stone will grant three wishes, but in truth, each one only grants one wish.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' episode "The Secret Origin of Darkwing Duck", while travelling through a desert, the futur eDarkwing discovers a genie and wishes for a drink, new clothes, and the secret to the genie's dramatic entrance.