Genie in a Bottle

"Three things I can't escape from: magic lamps—the charms of Barbara Eden—and smoof stuff!"

"It's all part and parcel, the whole genie gig. PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS! Itty bitty living space."

— The Genie, Aladdin

In Middle Eastern folklore, the jinn are a species of spiritual beings with capabilities far surpassing that of humans. Some of the greatest magicians in Arabic lore were able to capture jinn to their service, and tied them to items such as lamps or rings. Jinn were not usually obligated to give wishes to whoever helped them; if they did, it would be out of gratitude or an incentive to open the bottle. Some jinn got impatient and settled for just leaving if freed, while others took revenge on humanity by killing/tormenting whatever unlucky human released them.

If they were bound to their prison, jinn were slaves to their owners but did not have any reality warping powers per se. After all, the "wish" was more like a command, and the jinn simply used their incredible powers to do their master's bidding. If their master wished for a castle, they built one (with varying levels of efficiency: a powerful jinni may do it in seconds whereas a weaker jinni may spend years on the task). If they wanted money, the jinni pulled it out of their own coffers (a human's mind being unable to comprehend how much they had). Nevertheless, a jinni was still allowed to refuse orders if their master asked for something beyond their abilities.

Notions of jinn, their ability to fulfill wishes, and their captivity in everyday objects reached the Western World largely through Tales of One Thousand and One Nights. In particular "Aladdin" followed at a distance by "The Fisherman and the Jinni" shaped Western perception with little regard for the greater cultural, let alone religious, context. As such, jinn in Western works are most often found within antiquated brass oil lamps. Most Western viewers (but not the characters), upon seeing this kind of lamp, immediately associate it with a jinni. Many depictions show them living in the lamp, rather than being trapped there against their will.

They are summoned from the lamp via rubbing and offer to grant wishes unto the person who freed them. These wishes can be anything (although some give rule-based limitations). A Benevolent Genie will attempt to fulfill the spirit of the master's wish. Less lucky characters may end up with a Literal Genie, who will follow your wish's Exact Words, which usually means that it will backfire if not worded carefully. A malevolent jinni is a Jackass Genie, and will fulfill the worst possible interpretation, no matter how carefully you attempt to word it. Your only hope with such a jinni is to either not make wishes at all or attempt to cause a Wishplosion, though this, too, can potentially backfire. Typically, jinn who do their best to follow their master's true wish will tend to fall into the hands of villains who will exploit them egregiously.

The wishes that jinn grant have become a kind of Reality Warper that requires a human master. A jinni can do basically anything, up to reshaping the world and rewriting history, but need a master figure to request this of them first. They may have powers they can use themselves, but nowhere near what they can do if a human says "I wish..." first. This often seems to be a function of the lamp, as a freed jinn may not be able to grant wishes even if they want to, or will only be able to grant lesser wishes.

Most modern depictions of jinn have a rule that they can only give their master Three Wishes (and ixnay on the wishing for more wishes!). If this is the case, expect a none-too-bright master to waste the first one or two on pointless fripperies before learning their lesson and using the third to make some meaningful change to their lives. Alternatively, their first two wishes may have Gone Horribly Wrong (whether from Exact Words, a Jackass Genie, or just poorly thought-out wishes), and the third will be used to undo them. The other common use for the third wish is Freeing the Genie, particularly if they are a Benevolent Genie.

This one is well enough known that Christina Aguilera's first song was called "Genie In A Bottle" and featured many (somewhat sexual) references to this trope. Do not confuse with Fairy in a Bottle.

Subtrope of Our Genies Are Different. May overlap with Sealed Good in a Can or Sealed Evil in a Can, depending on the genie's personality.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A Brazilian TV ad for an English course features a guy in the desert finding a bottle with a beautiful jinnīya inside. When he's about to pull the cork, she desperately says "Don't pull. Push." Unfortunately, the guy doesn't speak English and "push" sounds too much like a Brazilian word for "pull" and he ends up being trapped in the bottle.
• The Australian advertisements for Arnott's "Tim-Tams" chocolate biscuits:
  • A guy and girl stumble upon a magic lamp, releasing a jinni who grants them three wishes. The girl wishes for a packet of Tim-Tams that never runs out. The jinni informs them they have two wishes left, to which the guy responds, "Then we'll have two more of those."
  • In a later version, the guy immediately wishes for a hot blonde movie star, who promptly appears. Annoyed, his girlfriend suggests they take a hike. Both disappear — Oops! The handsome black male jinni suggestively tells the girl she has one wish left, and is rather disappointed when she wishes for the never-ending Tim-Tams.
  • A bunch of girls find a jinni who declares that he only grants "worthy" wishes. The girls wish for the never-ending Tim-Tams, then run off to enjoy them, completely ignoring the man who reminds them that they still have two more wishes.
  • A female Jerkass Genie is discovered by a dorky lad called Tim. He wants to be rich ( jinnīya rolls her eyes), irresistible (jinnīya smirks) and really, really cool! She turns him into a packet of Tim-Tams. Which then get eaten by his girlfriend.
• A '91 Nike's Air Jordans commercial done by Spike Lee featured a young man finding Aladdin's lamp and being offered one wish by the genie (Lil Richard). Unable to figure out what to wish for, the genie suggests a million dollars (no, tax problems) or a new car (no, can't drive). Finally the guy makes a wish to not only get a pair of Air Jordan's, but to become Michael Jordan himself, which is granted.
• A 2004 advert for Yazoo drinks features an Elvis Impersonator-esque genie who is summoned by licking a desk lamp.
• The 2024 radio ads for Tire Genie, a tire store in Indiana, feature a "Genie of the Lamp" who may not be as powerful as the typical example ("Do you grant wishes?" "Sure, Let's Go with That.") but is perfectly capable of transporting people to the advertised store so they can buy affordable wheels and tires — which is all they ever desire anyway.

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon: Nobita's Dorabian Nights: Doraemon and friends enter the world of Arabian Nights and encountering Sinbad, who lives in his magic palace with his treasures. One of them is a genie in a bottle who can turn kaiju-sized once uncorked and obey his master's bidding.
• Dragon Ball: Shen Long (Shenron in the dub), the Eternal Dragon, could be considered a variation on this. He "resides" in seven orange orbs, the Dragon Balls, that must be collected before he can be summoned, which scatter across the planet after the wish is made and turn to stone for a year before being usable again. Once he appears, he can grant his summoner one wish (Later expanded to two, and eventually three), so long as it does not exceed his own power (a concept which seems to grow more flexible as the series progresses). He is somewhat cranky, particularly to those who take a while to make their wish; it's mostly just talk, however if they take too long, he has to disperse even if no wish is granted. If the person who created the Dragon Balls dies, then so does the dragon.
  • During the Piccolo arc of Dragon Ball, King Piccolo makes a wish and then kills Shen Long, and thus renders the Dragon Balls inert, to thwart anyone trying to throw a wrench in his designs for world domination. Fortunately, after King Piccolo is defeated, his Good Counterpart Kami, who created the Dragon Balls, revives the dragon, and thus restores the Dragon Balls to working order.
  • In the Saiyan arc, after Piccolo Jr. (son/reincarnation of King Piccolo) is killed in the battle against the Saiyans, taking Kami and Shen Long with him, the heroes are forced to go to Namek, the home planet of Kami and Piccolo's race, to use the Namekian Dragon Balls to revive the casualties. Porunga, the Namekian Dragon, is capable of granting three wishes, though unlike Shenron who can resurrect multiple people with one wish, Porunga can only revive one person at a time (a limitation that is later removed). Conversely, Shen Long can only revive a specific person once, whereas Porunga has no such restriction. Though the heroes use their first wish to revive Piccolo, which also revives Kami and Shen Long. Hooray for Loophole Abuse!
  • Much later on, Shen Long ceases to exist when Kami re-merges with Piccolo Jr., since the Dragon Balls and Shen Long were created by Kami, not the Namekian he and Piccolo originally were before they split into two. Shen Long is revived again however, when Dende, another Namekian, takes over the position of Kami. When Dende did this, he also expanded the wish limit of the dragon to three, though it gets limited to two wishes per summoning if one of those wishes is to bring people back to life. This "Coming Back from the Dead costs two wishes" limit is still in effect by the Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' movie, but seemingly done away with in the Dragon Ball Super anime’s adaptation of the film with no onscreen explanation provided.
  • Dragon Ball GT starts with introducing the Black Star Dragon Balls, created by the nameless Namekian that later split into Kami and Piccolo. They're far more powerful than the normal Dragon Balls (and even summon a much bigger dragon, who's red), but they come with two big downsides: they scatter across the entire universe(Or the galaxy, in the Funimation dub) after a wish is made, and if they're not brought back to the planet the wish was made on in a year, that planet is destroyed.
  • Also in Dragon Ball GT, the Evil Dragons (Shadow Dragons in the Funimation dub) created by overuse of the Dragon Balls are decidedly not wish-granters. Unless your wish is for them to destroy the world, in which case most of them are more than happy to oblige.
  • There is also Majin Boo (Majin Buu in the dub, and Djinn-Boo in the Viz manga). A magical being summoned by the evil wizard Bibidi to wage war on the gods, and was trapped in smoke form and sealed in a ball. Bibidi's clone/"son" Babidi spends years trying to release him, in the hopes that Boo would use his immense strength and reality-warping powers to help him dominate the universe. This backfired on Babidi when Boo grew tired of Babidi ordering him around and killed him.
  • The Super Dragon Balls are introduced in Dragon Ball Super, being the Super Prototype of all previously mentioned Dragon Balls. Their Dragon, dubbed Super Shen Long in lieu of his true name, is about the size of the whole universe and only responds to the language of the gods (Which is actually just backwards speech). He grants one wish, but it is said to be without any restrictions whatsoever.
  • Mr. Popo strongly resembles a genie, but doesn't live in a bottle or have any wish-granting powers. He does fly on a magic carpet sometimes, though.
• Hakushon Daimaō: The Genie will grant wishes when someone sneezes, whereas his daughter will do it when someone yawns. The dad's clumsiness and the daughter's tendence to troll people will often mess things up.
• Cameo's Stand Judgement from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders takes the form of a genie in a bottle, and grants whoever rubs the lamp three wishes, forming their desires out of dirt. Just take caution if you want to wish someone back from the dead... not that Cameo had any intention of actually fulfilling it literally.
• Magi: Labyrinth of Magic, of course, since it's based on Aladdin. The genies really are different, though. Uugo is a giant blue muscleman who lives in a "lamp" (actually more of a flute) and helps him out in the same manner that a hypnotized Hulk would. They all used to be mortals too. Uugo was a former Magi and a good friend of King Solomon.
• One Piece: Charlotte Daifuku, thanks to his Devil Fruit, is the genie's bottle himself, summoning it by rubbing his body like it was the usual lamp. The genie itself doesn't grant wishes, but it does wield a halberd with tremendous strength (cutting entire ships in half) at Daifuku's command; however, it's not entirely easy to control, especially when it comes to collateral damage (the ships weren't the actual target and in fact belonged to Daifuku's own fleet).
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: Halil uses a deck full of genies and their lamps.
• Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad: The main characters bump into two: one inside a lamp and one inside a magic ring.
• Hakushon Daimaō: An enchanted bottle houses two to three djinni: Hakushon, who comes out upon a sneeze, his daughter Akubi, who comes out upon a yawn, and Shakkuri, who comes out upon a hiccup but may have passed away some time ago. All three have to grant the wishes of who summoned them until another sneeze or yawn or hiccup sends them back into the bottle. There is no limit to the wishes, but Hakushon is incompetent and Akubi likes to make the worst of any given situation, so often their summoners end up wishing they'd never wished at all.
• Soul Eater: Djinn Galland is the Death Scythe in charge of West Asia. His weapon form is a lamp that produces smoke he and his Meister Zubaidah can manipulate into forms useful for combat, such as a huge djinni or a humanoid tower.

Asian Animation

• Bread Barbershop: Wilk is offered a kettle that turns out to have a genie in it in "Magic Kettle", and gets 300 wishes from it (the usual Three Wishes is too few "in this digital age", according to the genie).
• Season 2 episode 20 of Happy Heroes references this trope by featuring a genie who is literally a bottle. Doctor H. comes across him and wishes to be married to his crush Miss Peach, only for the wish to go wrong. The English name of the episode is also "Genie in a Bottle" (its original Chinese name is "God of Desire").

Comic Books

• The Justice Society of America member Johnny Thunder, and later his Legacy Character successor, Jakeem Thunder, can summon and control a powerful genie named the Thunderbolt. After his death, Johnny actually merges with the Thunderbolt, becoming part of the genie himself.
• The Golden Age version of Green Lantern is actually this; a man who finds a magical lantern with a genie in it that gives him superpowers. Of course, this fantasy idea was completely abandoned for the sci-fi version we all know.
• Gold Digger: Madrid is the spoiled princess of the Djinn and her attempts to bypass the genie restriction on using magic for oneself led to the destruction of her kingdom. She became an Evil Twin of Gina, the super-genius explorer, when Gina was invited to examine the genies' power source. The mental and physical disguise turned out to be permanent. Over time her mind, overlaid with Gina's intelligence and moral compass, let her realize how she had always screwed herself over with her selfishness. Now human, she's kind of an alternate-universe Gina, exploring new worlds while the real Gina teaches at the university. It should be noted that Genies in Gold Digger evolved from the Pau, a series of fuzzy toys from an ancient and advanced civilization with minor reality-warping abilities. Some Pau had multiple arms/forelimbs, while others had their eyes on their bellies. When the genies evolved into their present humanoid forms, they kept those two features.
• Fables: The Djinn are a race of nigh-omnipotent super beings. They were forced into enchanted bottles due to their destructive natures. They are forced to grant three wishes to the wielder of their bottle, but with an added twist being that if the person doesn't use the third wish to put them back in the bottle the Djinn is free to do what ever it wants.
• The Gangreen Gang summons a genie and asks her to give them superpowers in The Powerpuff Girls story "I Green Of Genie" (issue #63).
• Iznogoud: The title character in "The Genie" lives in a pair of slippers, actually. And a pretty shoddy genie he is too.
• Red Ears: Parodied when a guy just walking down the street stumbles upon a genie in a bottle and wishes for the most erotically desirable woman imaginable. The genie conjures a stunning concubine, but after a prolonged bout of intense sex, the genie asks the guy for money, then punches him in the face when he can't pay up.
• Soulsearchers and Company: Baraka is a Arabic fire demon (also known as a djinn) who dwells in a bottle. However, he is also a slob and whenever his bottle gets too dirty, he moves into a new one.
• Laff-A-Lympics has "The Beef of Baghdad," in which Babu (of the Scooby Doobies) is tricked into releasing a genie with an attitude who punishes Babu for being disturbed by turning him into a snail. Snooper does some research and says the spell can be reversed with a special beef product from a cave in Baghdad. Scooby Doo and his Mystery Inc. pals jaunt there to retrieve the beef.
• In one Legion of Super-Heroes story the legionnaires accidentally release a malicious genie from a bottle. It's explained that a planet of genies once set out to conquer the universe with their vast powers. Fortunately, they were thwarted before they even started by the Guardians of the Universe, who trapped them in Green Lantern constructs of bottles with the compulsion to grant three wishes when released.

Comic Strips

• The Phantom: The Phantom (the third one) once encountered a Djinni that had been in service to king Solomon, who had been sealed in a wine bottle by a demon and thrown into the sea. Out of gratitude of being freed when The Phantom (inadvertently) opened the bottle, he offered The Phantom the typical three wishes, and even rescued The Phantom at the end of the story simply because The Phantom had (inadvertently) taken over his duty through an encounter with the demon.
• Dilbert: Dogbert rubs a lamp to see if there's a genie inside. He persists, and a genie eventually pops out:
  Dogbert: Yes!!! Ha, ha!! Now you must grant me three wishes!
  Genie: Get real, four-eyes. We don't have a binding contract here. I like living in a lamp. You disturbed me. I'm going to turn you into a wiener and go home.
• Garfield: Garfield comes across a genie in a cookie jar when he was going to get a cookie. When the genie was going to give him three wishes, the titular fat cat just walks away, muttering "Where's a cookie when you need one?"

Fan Works

• In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf series, Smurfette finds a girl genie named Ghinelle who lives inside a perfume bottle.
• In the Invader Zim fanfic Gaz Dreams of Genie, Dib finds a traditional genie bottle, which Gaz shatters in order to spite him. According to Azie, the genie living inside it, this counts as opening it, so she grants Gaz three wishes. She just leaves out that when a person breaks a genie bottle, they're cursed so that if they don't make at least one Selfless Wish, then after the third wish is granted they switch lives with the genie. This happens to Gaz in the end (though this is as much due to her attempt at Loophole Abuse by using her third wish to ask for the ability to grant wishes herself), and she finds herself trapped inside the bottle as it's restored.

Films — Animation

• Walt Disney's Aladdin:
  • The first movie is almost a Trope Codifier for the less-historical jinn. In the 2011 stage musical, he actually sings a Shout-Out to the Christina Aguilera song of this trope's name.
  • In the Direct to Video sequel/pilot to the series, The Return of Jafar, the evil Jafar who had turned into a genie proves that his lamp is both a prison and a Soul Jar, as he explodes into nothing when it is destroyed.
• DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp played around with this trope; when the Big Bad (who was also an Evil Sorcerer) put his talisman on the lamp he got unlimited wishes. Remove the talisman, everything done with those wishes goes poof.

Films — Live-Action

• Bernard and the Genie has one played by Lenny Henry, who was actually trapped in a lamp (rather than a bottle) as a result of annoying a magician back in his own time (c. 30 AD, going by the fact that he was friends with Jesus). Once Bernard rubs the lamp, the genie is very much out of the lamp and able to interact with everyone else in addition to granting Bernard as many wishes as he wants (with a few caveats), but as far as he's concerned, he is trapped in what to him is the far future. At the end, Bernard frees him by wishing for him to return to his own time.
• Wishmaster: The genie is in a jewel, and while it is explained that genies must grant wishes, they are then allowed to take your soul, and upon granting three wishes for the person who called them, the entire race of genies are free and can take over the world.
• The Outing: A genie from a lamp acts as the killer.
• Half Baked: In a music-video-within-a-movie, rapper Sir Smokalot rubs a lamp and summons an attractive female genie who resembles Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie. When she asks him for his wish, he replies, "Bitch! You know what I want!" It turns out what he wants is to talk to his drug dealer Samson, presumably about some weed.
• Kazaam: After his lamp is accidentally broken, a genie moves into a nearby boombox. He's capable of granting his master three wishes of their choosing but, as he's a genie not a djinni, he can only grant material things. This is a problem because what Kazaam's master really wants is a loving relationship with his absentee father.
• My Darling Genie: A genie lives in an umbrella. She gets released when the down-on-his-luck protagonist accidentally opens it. She tags along with him, but trouble occurs when news of the "magic umbrella" makes her target of loan sharks.
• In the 2023 comedy film Genie, the titular genie - played by Melissa McCartney - was trapped inside a box due to being cursed by a powerful warlock, only to be freed by the protagonist rubbing said box. Unlike other interpretations of a genie, she is able to give unlimited wishes, but said wishes can't change someone directly, not can it change the past. Or at least until her freedom is wished for - then, the genie gives the one who freed them three final wishes, plus she admitted that she didn't tell the truth about time travel - just that it's not recommended due to how it could break time if done wrong.

Gamebooks

• Fighting Fantasy occasionally gives you chances to pick up bottles containing magical genies to help you out. Although instead of granting wishes, most of the time they would restore your SKILL or STAMINA instead.
• Legend of Zagor has genies in bottles as an expensive weapon, at the cost of 10 Gold Pieces. Each purchased Genie can perform a One-Hit Kill on your enemies instantly (except boss enemies), but they can be used only once. You are actually given a choice to attack the merchant selling those genies, at which point the merchant will summon one of them to eliminate you for trying to rob him.
• In the Sorcery! subseries of books, the only way for players assuming the role of warriors to succeed the quest is to obtain a magic genie in a bottle from a tribe of Satyrs early in the adventure. It's a compulsory pickup and a Permanently Missable Content (since the story branches off rather early) and any warrior who missed it will never complete the adventure regardless what other choice they make.

Literature

• Interestingly, although this trope is strongly associated with the Arabian Nights, the Nights themselves don't play this trope straight. Jinn are found trapped in bottles and such from time to time, such as in "The Fisherman and the Jinni" (one of the first stories in the collection), but they aren't slaves to whoever frees them. In fact, they're often trouble to whoever frees them—in the aforementioned story, the jinni is bitter over being trapped for thousands of years, and decides he will kill the fisherman. When jinn are bound to masters, they're associated with a magic ring, not a bottle or lamp.
  • The real Trope Maker is probably "Aladdin", which never appeared in any edition of the Thousand and One Nights until Antoine Galland's 18th-century French translation. "Aladdin" features both a jinni tied to a ring and a second, more powerful jinni trapped inside a lamp, both of whom serve Aladdin. In neither case does the jinni 'live' in the object (it would be hard to live in a ring); rather, a spell has been placed on them that when a human rubs the object, the genie is summoned from wherever it is and has to obey the object's holder. "Aladdin" also does not have the idea that whoever possesses the lamp or ring is limited to only three wishes.
• American Gods: has a more traditional kind of jinni, an immortal man made of smokeless fire. He drives a cab for a living, and wears sunglasses so that people don't see the fire in his eyes. He does grant a wish, though, giving an unhappy passenger the chance to slide into his life. In return for some gratuitous fiery sex.
• Castle Hangnail: One of the servants in the Castle is Serenissima, whose father was a genie and whose mother was part-mermaid. She manifests as a cloud of steam and lives in a teakettle. She's employed on the same terms as the other minions and doesn't owe any special obedience to whoever possesses the teakettle.
• Castle in the Air, sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, has traditional-style jinn and a Genie in a Bottle. The genie is Wizard Howl under a spell, is very pissed off at being confined to the bottle, and takes malicious pleasure in granting each wish to the letter in a way that causes as much misery as possible.
• Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Book 1 (Dealing With Dragons) has a jinni stuck in a bottle as part of the dragon Kazul's hoard. What happens when it gets loose is far too neat to deserve being casually spoiled in a wiki bullet-point.
• This is what The Bartimaeus Trilogy is all about. It deals with the relationship between the magicians (masters) and the demons or spirits (slaves). They tend to be rather bitter and malicious, due to the fact they live in another dimension and are strictly bound as slaves whenever they are summoned to Earth. They are perfectly willing to kill someone trying to summon them if the magician messes it up.
  • Bartimaeus also mentions how being confined to a bottle via the spell of indefinite confinement is a relatively common punishment for spirits who give their masters too much lip, and one he has extensive experience with. Of course it's not always a bottle;
    "On one occasion I pushed my master too far during his breakfast and found myself imprisoned in a jar of raspberry jam."
  • Even without magic, if a spirit willingly enters a container like a bottle and is trapped inside, the person who trapped them will have power over them. When someone tries to fool him into doing it though, he notes that this is an ancient trick and only an incredibly stupid spirit would fall for it these days.
• Children of the Lamp pretty much sums this up.
• In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, Stephen and Virginia are sent on a mission to deal with the Genie in a Bottle that the Arab forces fighting them in World War II have. It does not, however, have to grant wishes; Virginia uses psychological tricks to persuade it it never wants to leave the bottle again.
• Jack Chalker 's River of Dancing Gods series featured the Lamp of Lakash, whose genie was the last person to make the mistake of making more than one wish. The wish would be granted, but the wisher would become an all-powerful genie bound to the Lamp, and the previous genie would revert to his original state. (Presumably the original genie was from the home dimension of the Djinn, to which the Lamp had a link.)
• Interestingly done in Robert Louis Stevenson's story The Bottle Imp. The titular creature resides in a magic bottle and will grant wishes. Unfortunately, the caveat is that if you die without having sold the bottle for less than you paid for it, you burn in hell for all eternity. There's also the problem that if you are dissatisfied after selling the bottle, the imp will do something nasty to you to pressure you into buying it back. Differing from a traditional genie, the imp only appears once, when the owner wishes to see it, and never speaks, and is otherwise a shadow occasionally seen floating in the bottle. Basically, the story has a genie which is combined with elements of both Deal with the Devil and Artifact of Doom.
• Skeeve of the Myth Adventures series meets a genie (Djin) from the dimension of Djinger. Djins in this Verse are only three inches tall, they hire themselves out for Bottle Duty because their dimension is severely in debt, and their powers aren't anywhere near as great as the salesmen claim.
• A hoary old Bar Joke involving a foot-tall piano player is predicated on a genie of a beer bottle who happens to be hard of hearing.
• One shows up in Discworld's Sourcery. It's not always present seeing as he has many lamps, including a summerlamp. It's also a yuppie.
• One of the Bailey School Kids books involved the four friends opening a bottle and supposedly freeing a genie who granted them three wishes each.
• Jim Knee in Septimus Heap was formerly a woman who opted to become a Jinnee.
• Titular story of The Last Wish was deconstructing the concept - Genie doesn't have to grant your wishes unless you hold the seal to his bottle. And genies hate being ordered and try to murder a potential master before he has a chance to speak. And once you manage to get a genie under your control, he will harass you until you'll use all wishes, so he can finally be free.
• Old Khottabych (or Starik Khottabych) is a Russian book by Lazar Lagin about a Young Pioneer named Volka who finds an amphora at the bottom of a river. Volka opens the vessel, and an old genie named Hassan Abdul-rahman ibn Khattab, whom Volka just calls Khottabych, pops out. The genie is friendly and offers to serve his savior in any capacity. This was later adapted into a children's film. The novel also features a friend of Volka's who finds another ancient vessel and releases a second genie, who turns out to be Khottabych's older brother. Unlike the benevolent Khottabych, his brother has grown bitter after spending countless years in the vessel. At first, he was quite willing to grant his savior three wishes but, as years went on and nobody released him, he has grown resentful towards humans and has decided to kill his savior in a manner of the latter's choosing. First, the boy tries the old "The Fisherman and the Genie" trick... doesn't work because Khottabych's brother ''was'' that genie. Then, the boy tries to outwit the genie and tells him he wants to die of old age. The Literal Genie obliges and turns him into an old man. Khottabych manages to calm his brother down, though.
• "The Butterfly That Stamped" (from Just So Stories) has a more traditional take on it. King Suleiman-bin-Daoud has a magic ring. "When he turned it once, Afrits and Djinns came out of the earth to do whatever he told them." He can use the ring whenever he likes, and the Afrits and Djinns seem to be eager to comply. (But Suleiman has learned not to use it to show off.)
• George Selden's The Genie of Sutton Place features a genie trapped in a carpet who can be released by reading the spell woven around the edge. Since the carpet is unable to be removed from the museum it's in without big problems, he takes the place of Tim's aunt's chauffeur and eventually falls in love with her maid.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid features a Genie too, and it wouldn't be Hofstadter if Achilles wouldn't try out what happens when he wishes that his wish wouldn't be granted.
• In the short story "Aladdin's Magic Lamp" (Aladins Wunderlampe) by German science-fiction pioneer Kurd Lasswitz, people in the present try to make the titular artifact — recently found in the bed of the Tigris — work. Unfortunately the genie cannot do anything they try to order him to do because he is always bound by the laws of man and of science as they are known at the time of a request. It was just Aladdin's dumb luck that in his day they didn't know about the laws of conservation of mass and of energy, for instance, which meant the genie still could provide him with heaps of gold etc.
• Declare. Djinn are Eldritch Abominations that can be bargained with or killed, but not controlled. For a djinn, shapes can be thoughts and thoughts can be actions, and an ellipsoid marked with perpendicular grooves means death. King Solomon learned how to trap a djinni in a jar using a string of incised beads; the djinni would not be able to escape without rotating the beads, and therefore assimilating the experience of death into itself.
• Asperger Adventures: In Blue Bottle Mystery, Ben and Andy find a corked blue bottle while digging in the garden. They make a series of wishes, not expecting any of them to come true. They start to come true anyway, and every time, a puff of smoke comes out of the bottle.
• A Master of Djinn: One appears at the beginning of the book, but the only wish it grants the humans who woke it is to choose how they will die.
• In The Daevabad Trilogy, this is a method of enslaving djinn, usually done by spiteful ifrit. It involves killing the djinn and resurrecting them in thrall to the holder of their slave vessel (usually a necklace or a ring) and it's considered a Fate Worse than Death—free djinn create relics containing a tooth or a lock of hair so that they can be killed and resurrected should they ever be enslaved. Ifrit especially like to grant slaves to humans who they think will sow chaos and destruction, and it always ends with the slave killing their master. Dara was a slave for centuries after his death and has blocked out most of his memories of that time. When he's re-enslaved by Manizheh in the third book, the first thing he does is try and kill himself. At the end, when he's freed again, he embarks on a quest to find every enslaved djinn in the world and free them, which he expects to take millennia.

Live-Action TV

• The Dukes of Hazzard: "When You Wish Upon a Hogg," where (only in Hazzard County) Boss and Rosco find an antique oil lamp in their office and debate whether to rub it and see if it will produce a genie. Common sense is thrown out the window when they actually believe the lamp is real ... and they rub it! Sure enough, a cloud of smoke later, a stunningly beautiful young woman named Trixie appears, seducing Boss and Rosco and conniving them into believing she will help them frame the Duke boys once and for all. Of course, it's all part of nephew Hughie Hogg's latest scheme to swindle Boss and Rosco out of everything they own, and Hughie's insight into the personalities of Boss and Rosco makes his plan easy to pull off. And, Trixie is soooo beautiful — and the unseen-in-this-episode Lulu is sooooo ug-lee! — that Bo and Luke cannot convince Boss and Rosco that the lamp is a fake.
• The X-Files: In "Je Souhaite", Mulder follows a case regarding a rather jaded Genie of the Three Wishes kind (though she's wrapped up in a rug, instead of trapped in a lamp). He eventually frees her after a rash of Literal Genie incidents to get the wishes to stop.
• I Dream of Jeannie was a series of yesteryear about an astronaut who found a jinnīya and was given unlimited wishes. She didn't want to be freed, because she had fallen in love with her master. Major Nelson rarely wanted Jeannie to ever use her powers. Mainly this was because she tended to complicate his everyday life. The show's continuity first said that Jeannie was cursed to be a jinni but this was later given a Retcon to say she was from a family of jinn.
• In one episode of The Monkees, Davy rubs against a table lamp and a genie appears. He turns to the camera saying "What do you know? Wrong show!".
• Jenji from Power Rangers Mystic Force (and by extension, his Mahou Sentai Magiranger counterpart, Smoky). He's naughty, but not as malevolent as some, using loopholes to get out of granting wishes. The story of his imprisonment is told, unlike most: he went after a booby-trapped treasure, and being connected to the lamp by the Sixth Ranger is the only thing keeping him alive. If he's out too long, the curse will reactivate again, and he'll turn to dust.
• Are You Afraid of the Dark?: In the episode, "The Tale of the Time Trap", the protagonist receives a box from a store-keeper holding a female genie who grants him any wish, but not the ones he desires.
• In Angel, the demon Sahjan is trapped in a magic jar, but he is not a genie himself and otherwise has no relation to the related mythology. Because he is a pop culture-aware demon, he jokes around when Connor frees him from the jar.
  Sahjan: Thank you, mortal, for releasing from my cursed prison. In gratitude, I grant you three wishes.
  Connor: Really?
  Sahjan: Nah. I'm just messing with you.
• In an episode of Fraggle Rock, Wembley frees an evil genie trapped in a bottle. The genie claims that he does not grant wishes, and proceeds to wreak havoc. They manage to trick the genie back in the bottle, but Wembley fells sorry for him and frees him again. Just when it looks like the genie is about to enslave the Fraggles, Wembley discovers that the genie does grant wishes if asked, so he wishes that the genie understand the difference between right and wrong, and is thus reformed.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • "The Man in the Bottle" has a couple who own a pawn shop coming across a genie, who gives them four wishes. The first wish is to fix broken glass, the second is to have a million dollars, but it's all gone after giving it their friends and a visit from the tax collector. The man uses the third to be ruler of a powerful country and can't be elected out of office, wherein he becomes Hitler. His final wish is to be returned to normal.
  • In "I Dream of Genie", one George P. Hanley purchases a lamp with the intent of giving as a gift to a co-worker. Once he brings it home, however, he discovers that it contains a genie. Most of the episode is spent going over what George imagines would happen if he wished for various things (a beautiful wife, to be president, or to be rich). In the end, George decides that none of these things would work out for him and wishes to become a genie himself. Probably the only case in history of someone intentionally wishing for this.
• There's one genie in the Wizards of Waverly Place episode "Justin's Little Sister". They invented the macarena. A good way to catch her out is to wish for something you already have - as she can't grant it. The inside of her lamp has a literal Reset Button which undoes all the wishes.
• There's one in the LazyTown episode "The Lazy Genie". Robbie orders a genie who at first only gives him one wish but gives him 3 after Robbie gives him some cake. Robbie then wishes for No More Sports Equipment and vegetables. But he didn't specify a time so they return 5 minutes later. Then he wishes Sportacus away but he's too fast for The Genie and Robbie is wished away instead. Genie gives Sportacus a free wish who then gives to Stingy who wishes Robbie back. Wow. Just Wow.
• A magic lamp shows up at the end of the Fractured Fairy Tale Panto The Goodies and the Beanstalk. When rubbed, out comes a genie played by John Cleese who says "And now for something completely...". Tim tells him to push off, and he retorts "Kids' programme!"
• In an episode of The Worst Witch Sybil and Clarice cast a spell to create a lamp that will grant wishes. There's no limit on wishing for unlimited wishes - but the lamp has to draw energy from other things in order to grant the extra wishes. According to Miss Bat, magic lamps quickly develop minds of their own which is why they get buried in desert caves. Luckily Clarice has a solution — the object they turned into a lamp was a torch so they just remove the batteries.
• Two in different Charmed (1998) episodes. The first genie gains his freedom simply through granting three wishes though he can choose to re-enter his bottle if he wants to. The second appears four seasons later and she must be wished free. Sadly there's two catches — one the genie is actually a powerful demon who was sealed in the bottle. Two, whoever wishes the genie free is forced to take her place.
• In The Genie from Down Under, the titular genies are in an opal instead of a bottle or lamp.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
  • A season 4 episode has a Genie's bottle delivered to the clock shop. When the lid is opened, it sucks Hilda and Zelda inside. There's a switch to get them out but disaster strikes when it malfunctions — as the bottle is resistant to witches' magic. Zelda also dresses in a Bedlah Babe outfit to really get into the spirit of this trope.
  • Sabrina mentions in another episode that she knows a genie who's "having a bit of a problem with the bottle right now". One can only imagine what chaos a drunk genie would cause.
• On The Dick Van Dyke Show Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) inherits a rolltop desk full of worthless crap from his old Uncle Hezekiah (also Van Dyke). Despairing of finding anything valuable he holds one of the objects, a brass bottle shaped like a magical lamp, looks around and begins rubbing it. His wife walks up behind him as he begins to slowly remove the top and she says, in a deep voice, "Yesssssss". He's so startled he nearly jumps off the couch.
• The Genie in the House revolves around a genie living with a father and his two teenage daughters. In this universe being a genie is actually a job and he had to go to school for it. Additionally here he must grant wishes by using an incantation about said wish — and things tend to go wrong from him phrasing things badly.
• Fort Boyard: The 2019 edition introduces Magik (Magloire), the genie whose lamp derived on the ocean until it reached Fort Boyard. Freed by Passe-Murailles rubbing his lamp, the genie pledges obedience to Père Fouras in gratitude, and offers him an Elixir of Youth (or a haircut). Instead, Père Fouras asks Magik to protect a key in a new challenge, "The Fakir".

Music

• The Christina Aguilera song of the same name kind of seems to invoke this trope. It's a metaphor ("You gotta rub (her) the right way"). Essentially rub her the right way and you'll get what you wish for.
• David Bowie "Jean Genie" is more a pun on Jean Genet, but it's on the album Aladdin Sane, doubling the allusion.

Pinballs

• In Tales of the Arabian Nights, the player's benevolent jinn lives in one of these. This is also the fate of the evil genie if you manage to defeat him in the Wizard Mode.
• Gottlieb's Genie is all about a Wizard Classic summoning one from a magic lamp.
• The two green jinn in Magic Girl each reside in one.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons has five main types of genies, each native to one of the different Elemental Planes (worlds made up entirely of a single classical element): the djinn from the Plane of Air, efreet for Fire, marid for Water, and dao for Earth; plus the jann, a weaker race of genies made up of all four elements that often serve the others. Some genies have a limited ability to use the Wish spell for others and can be bound to certain magic items, namely the Ring of Djinni Calling and Efreet Bottle. They're all noted as being very proud beings who hate servitude. Djinn are the only genies who are good aligned and prone to having a positive view on mortals, and thus the most likely to be a Benevolent Genie. The Marid are chaotic neutral and tend toward Literal Genie interpretations of wishes for the lolz. Dao and efreet are both evil and prone to Jackass Genie tendencies unless granting a wish that's equally evil, like causing pain and suffering to someone they already hate. Jann are too weak to grant wishes and as a consequence are generally ignored by the kind of people who like to stick genies into bottles. Also, efreet and dao are very fond of taking mortals as slaves, especially mortals who are dumb enough to try to get a wish out of them.
  • The "bottle" part is inverted for Genie Pact Warlocks, who are stuck in servitude to a Genie and get a vessel that's Bigger on the Inside to hide in for limited time each day; at higher levels, they can bring others along, and they have enough time for a short rest in there. It's stated that many genies do this precisely because they resent the idea of being enslaved in a lamp or bottle and find amusing irony in forcing others into that role.
• Pathfinder has the same array of genies, except for the dao (whose name was copyrighted), which are replaced by the shaitan.

Video Games

• The second stage of Biomechanical Toy have a genie named Ogwl trapped in a bottle, which you can release by shooting the glass. Ogwl will assist you by summoning smaller genies to attack the other mooks around you, until you reach the next area at which point he leaves.
• The Sims:
  • The Sims: Livin' Large has a lamp that can be bought. Every 24 hours it can be rubbed, and a wish can be made. However the genie inside isn't very good, and occasionally messes up, such as granting a wish for money, but instead filling the house with overdue bills.
  • In The Sims 2: Free Time, the matchmaker NPC can bring a genie lamp to a household whose sims are accomplishing great things, and the genie will grant the household members three wishes chosen from a small list of options. Your sims can take their time making these wishes.
  • Genies return in The Sims 3: Showtime. If you make friends with the genie you can wish them free, which makes them playable.
• The MMORPG RuneScape has a drastic variation of this. From time to time, a genie will randomly appear and speak to the player character. If the character does not reply, the genie - who is an in-game mechanic to discourage macroers - will teleport the character someplace far away. If the character speaks to the genie, the genie will give the character a lamp, then disappear. The character may then rub the lamp to receive experience points in a skill, after which the lamp disappears.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy V has a "magic lamp" item. Instead of a wish-granting genie, it releases one of the game's Summons (even ones that the characters have not obtained yet); however, every time it is used, the Summon provided is weaker. Taking the lamp back to the place it was found "recharges" it so that it starts with the most powerful Summon again.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, the "magic lamp" summons the demonic-looking Guardian Force Diablos, who immediately attacks. If defeated, he becomes a party summon.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic and the Secret Rings mixes this trope with classical Djinn lore. The beings are alternately referred to a Spirits, Djinn, or Genies throughout the game. It's noted that they lay eggs (!), and most of them run wild causing havoc. The great deal of them don't look human except for the main villain and Shara. Erazor, who is supposed to be the Genie of the Lamp from Aladdin, also ignores the U.S. take on Genies, as it's explicitly said he was imprisoned there by Solomon for being evil, and at the end of the game he's not only stuffed back into the lamp, they toss it into a volcano for good measure. Also, one of the bosses is a water djinn ("Marid") comprised of jelly-fish like monsters combined into a giant pirate and the other is a fire djinn ("Ifrit") that's a giant flaming robot. Our Genies Are Different?
  • Sonic Riders has the Babylon Rogues be descendants of genies. They don't go into much detail about it since they find out near the end, but it does say that they had a flying carpet that was really a prototype of a hoverboard.
• The King's Quest series had three genies over its course.
  • In King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, an unseen genie gives King Graham Plot Coupons every time he rubs the lamp but can only be used three times.
  • In King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, Graham finds a genie who traps whomever releases him in his bottle; this is used to get rid of a witch (and the only way to find this out is to try it yourself and then restore).
  • In King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, the Big Bad has his own personal genie Shamir Shamazel, who must obey whoever holds his lamp without any limit on the number of wishes. Throughout the game he is sent to kill Alexander, using various disguises to try and lure him to his death. In the canonical best ending, The Mole swaps Shamazel's bottle with a fake and gives the real one to Alexander; he expresses happiness if you do this, saying he was Just Following Orders.
• Metal Slug: In the second game and X, an alternate route in the pyramid leads to a magical lamp that houses a genie. You need some serious quick timing to get the lamp however, and take down the mummies guarding said lamp while standing on the head of an Anubis statue without falling off to your death, and after that wait for the genie to show up - grab the lamp too early before the genie appears, and you get 10 measly points, but wait for the genie to appear and you get a huge cluster of coins to add to your score. The genie also appears in the Gacha cranks for Metal Slug Attack, whenever you get a good result.
• Super Mario Bros.
  • In the Mario Party series, players can purchase a magic lamp. The Mushroom Genie will take you right to the star. The cheaper Lucky Lamp houses his female counterpart the Mushroom Jeanie who will just move the star to a different space on the board.
  • Luigi's Mansion 3: In the desert room of the Tomb Suites, Luigi can uncover a magic lamp buried in the sand. Suck it onto the nozzle and hold on it for long enough, and a Golden Goob emerges.
  • Wario Land:
    • The final boss fight of Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 involves Captain Syrup ordering a genie named Denpu to attack Wario. After Syrup's defeat and the destruction of her castle, Wario rubs Denpu's lamp and gets the genie to give him a new home/castle based on how much money Wario has.
    • Outright subverted in the description of one of the pieces of treasure in Wario Land: Shake It!, with a magic lamp that just lets out thick smoke when rubbed. The description even says so: This lamp issues a thick smoke when rubbed. That's all. What were you expecting?.
• You can get genies out of magic lamps in NetHack if you rub them, though you're not guaranteed of getting a wish from them (in fact if you're unlucky, the genie might get mad for disturbing them and decide to attack you).
• Dark Cloud has two of these. One was sealed in an urn centuries ago, and does not at all grant wishes. Its master uses him to rain destruction on the earth. The other is a humanoid female freed when Toan breaks a lamp, and instead of granting wishes, she simply joins the party after he explains the situation at hand.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Black and White has a trio of Legendary Genie Pokémon, incredibly fitting for a series that already lets you trap God. They aren't typical genies as they have no wish granting powers and are more likely to terrorize the countryside by whipping up severe thunderstorms. They're more based on Oni, specifically Raijin and Fuijin. Landorus is more benevolent and is more of a fertility god.
  • Gen VI introduces the event Legendary that is a more typical genie in Hoopa. Hoopa's main motif is its rings, which it uses to teleport and store anything it desires, up to an including entire islands. With an item called a Prison Bottle, it can unleash its true power and become a gigantic, terrifying six-armed being of immense size and avarice. It also changes its typing from Psychic/Ghost to Psychic/Dark.
• An early Side Quest in Baldur's Gate II involves freeing a djinni from his lamp. A fan-made Game Mod adds a second one in an extension of the circus side quest. Certain spells and items can also summon djinn or efreet to fight for you.
• Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire features it as the Sealed Evil in a Can the djinni Iblis whom the game's Big Bad Ad Avis (A vizier. Who would've thunk it.) wants to unleash upon the world. It also features a djinni in a ring, just like in Aladdin.
• The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has this as the second dungeon boss. First you have to destroy the bottle before you can defeat the clownlike Djinni.
• In MegaMan Battle Network 3: White has MistMan.EXE who's very obviously djinni based.
• The Cataclysm expansion of World of Warcraft introduces the Djinni: air elementals that are currently aligned with Deathwing. The closest thing to a "bottle" for them, however, is the "Fists of the Heavens" artifact weapon, introduced in Legion.
• Heroes of Might and Magic:
  • Genies can be used as soldiers in several games, often aligned with the "wizard" faction. In 2 they had a random chance of outright killing a number of enemies in one stack, while in 3 that ability was swapped out for the ability to cast three random beneficial spells on friendly units. They often vanish inside a lamp as part of their death animation.
  • Gavin Magnus, the immortal wizard king of Bracada, has his own personal genie servant named Solmyr, who swore an oath of lifelong servitude to Magnus when Magnus freed him from a millennium of imprisonment in a bottle.
  • Might and Magic VI and VII have Genies as enemies - not surprisingly, in VII they can be found in Walls of Mist in Celeste under Gavin Magnus' rule. VII also has a Wild Card item called Magic Lamp stated to give a reward/curse based on the released Genie's mood which is determined by the in-game date and current day.
• Shantae: Risky's Revenge: The lamp is treated as an Artifact of Doom because it's used to enslave genies. Shantae, being half-genie, isn't enslaved, but has her magic power stripped, personified, and turned against her.
• In the Neverwinter Nights expansion pack Hordes of the Underdark, it is possible to acquire a magic bottle which, when used, summons a genie who serves as a merchant and trades with you. If you ask him for a wish, he'll make a comment about the number of mortals he's met who are under the misconception that just because he's a genie, he's obliged to grant them wishes.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir features a dungeon called Tempest's Fury where wizards had been experimenting with air elementals, including a djinn. It's possible to bind the djinn to a ring you find in the dungeon, whereupon you can summon him into battle once a day.
• Skylanders: The Skylander Ninjini had been trapped in a bottle by a jealous sorceress. Rather than just wait for someone to free her, she trained her skills for a long (long) time until she could bust out on her own. She's kept the bottle and can retreat into it for special attacks.
• Torchlight II turns this on its head. The player has to seek out a djinn's assistance to break a spell cast by another djinn. After bragging about how trivial it would be for someone of his magnificent power, the djinn insists you prove your worthiness of his time and effort by performing certain tasks — three, to be exact. The third task is to steal a lamp from his rival djinn, which goes awry and ends with you having to kill the djinn yourself. This also breaks the spell you set out to get help breaking in the first place, which was the intention all along.
  Fazeer Shah: I HAVE HONORED MY BARGAIN!
• Ni no Kuni has Al-Khemi, genie of the cauldron. He doesn't grant wishes, but if you can best him in combat, he pledges his cauldron and his services to you and will assist you with Item Crafting.
• In the Interactive Fiction game The Djinni Chronicles, the player controls several genies of various sort (a classical wish-granting genie, a malevolent destructive genie, and an enslaved magical servant.)
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: It is mentioned that Salim was allegedly given his time-warping thief costume by a genie and may still be in Salim's possession through a lamp. When Sly is looking for his DNA, they find his fingerprints in a shop full of lamps, trying to find another genie to help him bust his old gang out of imprisonment.
• Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes had one of the restriction demons become a genie as well. However, instead of granting wishes, Genie Harvey only restricts the player from touching alcohol.
• Battleborn: Referred to as a djinn, Aurox is an omnidimensional horror that resembles a genie if it were a horned demon-like creature made up of floating body parts. The creature is somehow bonded with the 16 year old Shayne at the hip and both have a friendly relationship with one another. Floating above her, Aurox fights enemies alongside her and even grants her abilities such as stealth.
• Miitopia: There is a mischievous genie that is trapped in a lamp in the Egyptian-themed Neksdor Kingdom. He tricked the gullible Prince of Neksdor into freeing him so he can wreak havoc in the kingdom. He gets far nicer thanks to the player, though.
• Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse: The concept of genies being bound to serve masters is important to the plot. The Al-Hazrad family (to which you belong) is wealthy thanks to its genie, and near the start of the game, the fact that said genie nearly drowns the Caliph in a storm causes the Al-Hazrads to be imprisoned (except for you). You know that your family wouldn't have given any such orders, and must therefore Clear Their Name.
• The Darkside Detective: In one episode, a fisherman finds a lamp with a genie in it. The genie is bound to grant Three Wishes, after which it will be free. It enlists the game's protagonist to trick the fisherman into using up his wishes as quickly as possible.
• Puyo Puyo: Jaan comes out of a jar. She has an alternate form in Puyo Puyo!! Quest named Lamp Jaan who comes out of a lamp instead.
• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: The vessel that tainted Ubar's water supplies is stated to contain the evil spirits of the Djinn. All that's shown of it is the container covered in magic seals.

Web Animation

• In the Happy Tree Friends episode "As You Wish!", Lumpy is a genie stuck in a lamp; he grants one wish to each character that frees him, though each character's wish ends up killing them. At the end of the episode, Lumpy finds Giggles as a genie from another lamp.
• Peter, the main character of Petera Dzive, encounters one on the street. His wish is strange, though.
• The Relic of Knowledge from RWBY resembles a genie lamp. It can be used to summon Jinn, who can only grant wishes for knowledge, and only three times per century rather than per person (so when the main characters find the lamp, they only get two "wishes", because it was already used once by a previous owner).
  • Introduced later is the Relic of Creation, a golden staff topped with a crystal that can be used to summon Ambrosius, who can create or do almost anything described to him but only as it is described to him. He can be summoned as often as desired but can only maintain one creation at a time, so anything new requires giving up whatever was previously asked for. It takes very special wording from the heroes to circumvent this when they have him create a body for Penny free from a virus that's infecting her.

Web Comics

• In Minions At Work, one minion warns another:
  Let the genie out of the lamp, and we just have to let him join the union
• Adult webcomic Ship In A Bottle runs on this trope for wacky hijinks and sex. Notable differences include that the wish count is unlimited, just long as someone's hands are on the bottle, and Miss Ship wants to get it on with her new master.
• I Dream of a Jeanie Bottle is about an I Dream of Jeannie fan who finds an empty genie bottle and accidentally becomes the bottle's new genie himself via a poorly worded wish. "I would totally so do her" indeed.
• In Sluggy Freelance there's actually a Djinn of the Chamber Pot. It's a pretty huge example of a Jackass Genie, but only for the first wish; if someone manages to survive that one, it doesn't screw around as much with the second, and the third is withheld for tax purposes.
• Parodied in an xkcd strip: One of the characters rubs a lamp, which then spurts an... odd liquid. The alt text says, "That wasn't one of my wishes." "Who said anything about your wishes?"
• Deconstructed and parodied in a Cyanide and Happiness strip when a character summons a genie and is informed that he's limited to three wishes. He uses the first wish for more genies.
• This (NSFW) Oglaf comic Simon the Wanderer.
• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: While shopping for a new anchor for her extradimensional home, Mab comes across a lamp and asks if she'd have to grant wishes. The vendor assures her that's only if she gets it on loan, if she paid up front she'd be legally allowed to kill anyone who rubbed it.
• In this Light Roast Comics strip, a guy finds a magic lamp and rubs it, only for the genie to realise that, by the symmetric property, his command would be the genie's wish, and command itself to be free.
• In El Goonish Shive, a filler strip features Amanda as a genie coming out of a lamp.

Web Original

• Akinator is a typical genie in a lamp, but he doesn't grant wishes; instead he forces people to play "twenty questions" games about real and fictional characters with him.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-662 (a.k.a. "Mr. Deeds") is a modern reworking of the classical djinni: A magical British valet who is bound to a silver bell. He's competent, polite, and faithfully serves whoever summons him, but has no powers other than teleportation and immortality.
• The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show features the Genie of the Magic Truncheon in one episode, who appears after PC Rhomboids hits somebody three times with his truncheon.

Web Video

• The Irate Gamer's review of the Aladdin (Virgin Games) starts with him and Wise Sage finding a lamp out in the desert, with a genie popping out and wacky hijinks ensues.

Western Animation

• Aladdin: The Series. Genie is free by this point, but sticks around to help out with his weakened powers. He also points out a couple times that while he's no longer a prisoner, the lamp is still his home. There is also a jinnīya named Eden, who lives in a bottle.
• Animaniacs (2020): In the "Brain-laddin" story, Pinky plays the role of the genie in the bottle.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers has an episode with a Genie, too. He lures Monty into the lamp to be free, and the whole episode eventually gets so messed up that a Reset Button wish is required to revert things to normal.
• DuckTales (1987): Scrooge encounters two genies, in fact. One is the evil version in the cartoon series, whose lamp was buried and lost in the end; and a good variety in DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, who is freed.
• DuckTales (2017): "Treasure of the Found Lamp!" revoles around the McDuck family helping Djinn track down the lamp of the first genie after Louie accidentally sold it in a yard sale. The end of the episode reveals that the genie had actually been freed hundreds of years ago. Djinn only wanted the lamp for sentimental reasons since the genie was his ancestor.
• The Fairly OddParents! has a few episodes with a genie character named "Norm" (incidentally voiced by Norm MacDonald) who could grant wishes without the rules the fairies have to follow. He comes in a lava lamp. He also states that the "only three wishes" thing is a lie; Genies naturally come with three wishes, but humans can wish for more. Oddly enough, he also wants to be a fairy. He claims it's so he can make children happy, but in reality it's because he just doesn't want to be stuck in a lamp.
• ‘‘Imago'' is a Mons Series where the eponymous Imagos are magical animals created from their master's imagination. In order to rest and regain their energy, Imagos rest inside items called Tamins – which occasionally take the shape of a lamp – and are conjured when their powers are needed.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: When the fairytale characters escape from the Land of Legends in "Through the Door", Aladdin comes with the archetypal oil lamp holding a genie that comes out when a pony polishes it up with her tail. The genie then offers to use his powerful magic to conjure up whatever the ponies wish for, although his anal retentiveness causes him to spend so long obsessing over the minute details of each wish that he never gets around to doing much until the legends' magic starts to fade.
• Superfriends: In "Rub Three Times for Disaster", the superheroes battle a villain in control of an evil genie. Eventually, Superman defeats him in an unusual way; he flies up to the genie and literally sucks the genie in smoke form into his own lungs just long enough to forcibly blow him back into his lamp.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Bugs Bunny in "A Lad in His Lamp". With Jim Backus as Smokey the genie.
  • Bugs Bunny also pretends to be a genie in "Ali Baba Bunny" to help Daffy out of a jam. At the end of the short, a real genie is discovered... and Daffy tried to physically force him back into the lamp, paranoid that he is there to steal some treasure he'd gathered. The genie isn't happy.
• Shazzan has the titular genie that can be summoned when the two kid protagonists joined their halves of the magic ring in which he was sealed. Shazzan was very powerful and easily stomped every foe the kids faced, but he could not send them home. Only Shazzan's true master, the Wizard of the Seventh Mountain, could do that. Aladdin and the Genie of the Lamp also appeared twice in the series.
• Wacky Races: In one episode, Dick Dastardly finds a bottle with a genie and becomes the genie's master. As the Trope Namer for Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat, he never seems to realize he can easily wish to win the race.
• One episode of Grojband had hillbilly genies living in jugs that the band was planning to use for a jug music performance.
• Two episodes of Alfred J. Kwak (the first of which was, appropriately enough, titled "The Genie In The Bottle") featured a genie who long ago was imprisoned in a bottle for causing numerous disasters in a far-away country. Upon being found in the desert by an unsuspecting traveler, he pretended to be the kind, wish-granting type to be freed, but when the traveler did release him, he then quickly revealed he had resigned himself to devouring whoever was foolish enough to release him.
• The Real Ghostbusters episode "Janine's Genie". After busting ghosts, with the help of Janine, in an antique store, the man can't pay with money so he let the Ghostbusters take whatever relic they want. Janine took the typical genie lamp and it turns out it does have a genie in it. The genie was from the evil variety and, though he does not twist Janine's wishes (be the boss of the Ghostbusters and have Egon in love with her) he does use the wishes to open a portal to his home dimension and bring back all kinds of spirits.
• Mungo finds a genie in a bottle in an episode of Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats in the middle of the junk yard.
• In Pixel Pinkie, Pinkie is a digital genie imprisoned in a really old cell phone. When Nina frees, Pinkie becomes her servant, This appears to be an unlimited wishes deal, and Pixie is Nina's servant so long as Nina owns the phone.
• In The Smurfs (1981), Farmer finds a genie named Gourdy (who is an Expy of a similar-looking genie from Peyo's Pierrot and the Lamp) who lives inside a gourd that he finds growing in his garden. Before that, they discover a Jerkass Genie named Genie Meanie, who can only grant three wishes to whoever says "pumpernickel pickle" before sundown, when he goes back into the lamp for 100 years to rest.
• Oscar And Friends: Doris is a genie in a bottle that Oscar finds in "The Magic Carpet". She says she can grant Oscar two wishes.

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