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Heroes tend to lead very... interesting lives, full of so many strange and fantastic sights and events that before long he's Seen It All, or at least dealt extensively with one type of non-mundane creature/phenomenon. As a result of this, or coincidentally, the character now casually lives alongside or in close proximity with an alien, ghost, friendly cryptid, vampire, mutant and/or robot (though not necessarily all in one character).
The nature of the arrangement varies. They might be allies of long standing, the monster came with the apartment as an unadvertised "bonus" and they've since hit it off, or both have made the completely mundane arrangement to share living space. It doesn't even have to be The Unmasked World, any monster that can fool muggles is going to have to pay the rent,note and it's sometimes convenient to share space and bills. If they're Vitriolic Best Buds, expect them to claim they keep the other as a "pet".
The setting doesn't have to be a Fantasy Kitchen Sink for this trope to happen, it just needs one difference that makes it Like Reality, Unless Noted, and the character has to live right next to that thing. For maximum effect however, the character's house might become a full blown microcosm of the world's supernatural scene.
The "roomie" might be a Nice Guy ghost, a personable Fully-Embraced Fiend of a vampire, The Protagonist's Magical Girlfriend, or one of the Mad Scientist's Mascot Mooks that has been reprogrammed/retrained. If Tom develops an Unwanted Harem, each girl will be from a different monster race. Mind the Fur Against Fang.
Expect a lot of humor deriving from the cross-species Culture Clash. Two Gamers on a Couch frequently uses the Monster Roommate as a pet or one of the gamers.
Compare Pals with Jesus, where the friend is a powerful cosmic or mythical figure, and Pet Monstrosity, where a monster is kept as a pet.
Examples:
- In Bleach, Shinigami Rukia lives in Ichigo's closet (much to his displeasure).
- Brigadoon: Marin and Melan - Melan, a flying alien cyborg with weapons for hands, moves in with Marin and her human family in order to protect her from other aliens that try to kill her. He is treated as a member of the family by everyone in the house.
- In Death Note, Ryuk, a Shinigami, lives in Light's room, and describes himself as being his roommate.
- Doraemon: The title robot cat lives in Nobita's closet (one of the earlier examples).
- The premise of Gingitsune: a shrine family lives alongside the shrine's resident kitsune, although only the heir to the shrine can see him.
- Gugure! Kokkuri-san features an Emotionless Girl living with a kitsune, a tanuki, and a dog youkai.
- The main premise of Kamisama Kiss is an Ordinary High-School Student moving in with a kitsune and a pair of shrine spirits.
- The plot of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's begins when the four Ridiculously Human Alien Program Wolkenritter appear before Hayate and start living with her.
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has several cases of dragons living with humans, though the only one who's actually referred to as a roommate is Fafnir. Averted with Elma, who is the only one to have her own apartment.
- Mononoke Sharing is about a high school student moving into an apartment with five Yokai living in it. The main reason she was allowed to move in was part of a sort of social experiment to see if Yokai are capable of integrating into human society.
- In Monster Musume, Kimihito has a whole harem of monster girls living in his house.
- My Lovely Ghost Kana leans more into the Magical Girlfriend side, with the titular Cute Ghost Girl living there first, and Daikichi moving into the rundown apartment building because he can't afford anything else.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, the half-dog demon Kotaro starts staying with Natsumi and Chizuru after a little incident that resulted in amnesia. He gets his memory back and has been staying with them ever since under the pretense of being Natsumi's little brother.
- Takeo-chan Bukkairoku is about a supernaturally unlucky girl who moves into a youkai apartment house.
- The Unpopular Mangaka and the Helpful Onryo-san is about a human man living with a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl.
- Urusei Yatsura: Ataru has his "wife" Lum, an Oni Alien Princess, living in his closet.
- The Caged Demonwolf in Empowered, Sealed Evil in a Can that can still see, hear and talk, and spends most of its time snarking at its captors and perving over their sex lives.
- Gotham Academy: Maps eventually finds out that her roommate Katherine is actually a detached portion of Clayface and can't hold her form when she's asleep or upset, sort of melting all over the place. After Olive and Maps are able to prevent Clayface from reabsorbing her and reconfirm for her that she's her own person Map's mother buys her a large fishbowl to sleep in so she doesn't have to keep trying to figure out how to deal with the bed situation.
- The very premise of Monster Allergy: the protagonist Zick is a boy that lives in a Detention Oasis for monsters, meaning that his home is filled with monsters that committed some crime (that for humans are just childish misdemeanours) and his cat is actually their jailor. Subverted when it turns out that he himself is the son of a human and a Tamer, a kind of monster that looks like humans and can control other monsters exiled due the crimes of some of them, thus he is the monster roommate, and Justified because his mother, who is actually a human, is a Keeper, a human who can see monsters and has volunteered to host a Oasis in her home.
- Spider-Man & Venom: Double Trouble has the Lethal Protector be this to our Wall Crawler. Spidey does his best to be a friendly neighbor, but Venom makes it very difficult by being a rude slob who will shamelessly devour meals for two, throw trash out the window, and dismiss the weird smell coming from his filthy room as perfectly natural.
- In the Alternate Tail Series, Dragon-Slayer human Gajeel shares a cabin with his shapeshifting Exceed partner Pantherlily. Following the timeskip, their teammate Levy moves in after being kicked out of her apartment.
- In The Bridge, after the initial confusion the six original transported to Equestria and turned into native forms* are partnered up with alicorns or Element Bearers to both keep an eye on them and help them get acclimated. This results in Godzilla spending time in the guard barracks at Canterlot, Anguirus at Sweet Apple Acres, and Mothra at Ponyville Library among other places.
- In The Dragon and the Butterfly, Hiccup and Toothless (after they arrive in the Encanto) take up residence at Ignacio the blacksmith's shop. While Hiccup is used to living with a dragon at this point, Ignacio views Toothless as this.
- In Empathy, Oh the Boov ends up staying in the Hamada garage after he escapes from Krei. Due to unforeseen events, he ends up staying with Wasabi. By the sequel, he's staying with Fred.
- From Gensokyo 20XXV, we get this twice. The first one is more or less played straight with Mokou, Kaguya, and Suika, two immortals and an oni, and the second instance is played straight with Kosuzu (a human), who lives with a hermit (Miko), a celestial (Tenshi), and a tsurube-otoshi (Kisume).
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fics:
- This is the Life: A Tale of a Human in Equestria
puts the title character and Octavia as roommates for some undisclosed reason.
- Another good example stemming from the same franchise is Bucking Nonsense's fic
Five Changelings in Equestria: The Monster Under the Bed
, where the changeling Ladybird evicts a boogeyman epyx for a young foal in exchange for under-the-bed and board priveleges.
- This is the Life: A Tale of a Human in Equestria
- Soma and his roommates Naoki and Kazuya all pretend to be normal humans in Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse), but turn out to be each other's monster roommate.
- In Science Knows No Bounds
, Almighty Tallest Miyuki becomes this to Professor Membrane when she crash-lands in his backyard and essentially moves in with him, helping him with his projects.
- In the Bleach fic The World In Black And White, Ichigo, who became a Hollow after being killed by Grand Fisher, is roommates with Uryu. On the one hand, he's an oversized saurian Monstrous Humanoid who often slips into the Spirit World of Hueco Mundo for Soul Eating binges and whose spiritual energy attracts unwanted attention from Shinigami; on the other, he's Uryu's best friend and a dab hand at making tempura.
- Clembrane becomes this to the Membrane family at the end of Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus.
- At the end of Beetlejuice, the human Deetz family is living with the ghostly Maitlands.
- Spaceballs riffs on the aforementioned Chewbacca with John Candy's character Barf, a Mog (half man, half dog — "I'm my own best friend!") who lives with the protagonist in a Winnebago.
- Han Solo from the Star Wars movies shares the Millennium Falcon with his Non-Human Sidekick, a seven-and-a-half-foot Wookiee named Chewbacca.
- Venom: Let There Be Carnage shows Eddie Brock and Venom's relationship to have become such after one and a half years of sharing his body with the cannibalistic amorphous alien, living their day-to-day routine with Venom even helping (and spectacularly failing) to whip up a decent breakfast for the two of them.
- This is the main premise of the comedy What We Do in the Shadows (as well as its TV spinoff)— five vampires attempting to navigate modern life, whilst sharing a flat in New Zealand.
- The Dresden Files: At the end of Blood Rites, Harry's vampire buddy (and half-brother) Thomas is exiled from House Raith and moves in with Harry for a while.
- Elegant Yokai Apartment Life has this as its main premise and setting: After the school dorm burns down, the main protagonist Yushi is left with nowhere to turn to, except into an apartment filled with all kinds of Yokai and other odd beings (and even some ghosts) from the illustrious Japanese folklore.
- In Godshome by Robert Sheckley, it's technically a god roommate, but these gods are near enough to being monsters for most people. When Arthur Fenn gets his prayers answered, he doesn't realize that in payment, he'll get four very unpleasant gods living in his spare bedroom. They like their meat raw, and in large quantities, and they have a habit of throwing the gnawed bones out the window to rot in the yard, which eventually attracts the attention of the police.
- The Harry Potter books imply several times that most wizarding houses have a ghoul living in the attic (as magical creatures are attracted to the magic generated by wizards). Seeing as how ghouls are ultimately harmless, most wizarding families view them as nothing worse than a slight annoyance (the Weasely house has one, and Ron simply complains about how it makes noise in the attic).
- In InCryptid, the entire Price-Healy family lives with a colony of Aeslin mice, which worship them as gods and act as a living history of the family with their Photographic Memory. When one of the family members moves to another house, part of the colony goes with them. People who go on long-term missions, like Alice and Antimony, carry only one or two with them.
- The short story Living with the Harpy by Tim Pratt is about, well, just guess.
- Monsters in My Mailbox: Reginald has several monsters living somewhere in his room.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: In Camp Half-Blood, cabins are sorted according to one's divine parent. This means that Percy rooms for a time with his Cyclops half-brother, Tyson.
- There's a Wocket in My Pocket!: The main character lives with all kinds of oddly-named creatures.
- The Addams Family (1964-1966) lives with The Thing, as well as frequent visitor Cousin Itt, and YMMV on the monstrousness of some of the others living in the house (eg. Lurch).
- The show Being Human (UK), where a vampire and werewolf move into an apartment that they later realize is haunted by a ghost. They all get along better than you might expect. Similarly, its US remake.
- Buffyverse:
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When she enters college, Buffy finds herself with the roommate from hell in "Living Conditions" who has numerous annoying habits. Naturally this turns out to be literal with the roommate a soul-sucking demon.
- Angel:
- Cordelia shares her apartment with "Phantom Dennis," the ghost of a previous tenant whose mother walled him up to prevent him from running off with his girlfriend. At one point, he is shown helping Cordy cover up the escalating damage her visions had been doing.
- Lorne also fills this role quite a bit in later seasons. See also the page quote. Both Buffy and Angel are regular employers of this trope.
- SARAH, the Smart House on Eureka, might qualify. Some people are certainly freaked by the idea of living inside HER and her actions/over-reactions in one of the later first season episodes made her the Monster of the Week when she thought Sheriff Carter was going to leave town.
- The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968-1970). A young widow and her two children discover that the seaside cottage they move into is inhabited by the ghost of the old sea captain who once lived there.
- Harry and the Hendersons, about a family sheltering a friendly Bigfoot.
- Kamen Rider OOO: A single weird day led to Eiji nearly dying several times, becoming a Kamen Rider and rooming with Ankh, a Greed in a borrowed human body. To say that neither of them is okay with this arrangement is an understatement because they get along just as well as could be expect from an All-Loving Hero and a nihilistic Maker of Monsters.
- On Mork & Mindy (1978-1982), Mork (played by Robin Williams) is a Human Alien and Mindy is his roommate.
- The Munsters (1964-1966) inverted the trope (perhaps before it was fully developed) with a family of token monsters and human live-in relative Marilyn.
- My Roommate is a Gumiho: The premise. Woo-yeo (an ancient gumiho who can shapeshift into a human) and Dam (a human girl) live together.
- Oz: At one point, Hill had to room with Beecher while he was in full Ax-Crazy mode. They actually get along just fine, outside of Beecher's penchant for trolling Hill with his farts.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "The Search Part I", Odo briefly serves as this to Quark, literally and figuratively. Limited space on board the Defiant means that the two must share quarters, which becomes very uncomfortable for both men when Odo has to liquefy in order to rest.
Odo: I have been holding this shape for sixteen hours. I have to revert back to my liquid state, but I don't want you to watch and gawk at me.
Quark: I understand, completely. This is a very private moment and I won't interfere. This won't be so bad, sharing—
Odo: I HAVE NO INTEREST IN SPEAKING TO YOU, OR IN LISTENING TO YOUR WITLESS PRATTLE. SO STAY OUT OF MY WAY, OR YOU'LL REGRET THE DAY YOU EVER MET ME. - Ultraman Geed: The titular Ultra's human form, Riku, shares an apartment with a peaceful Alien Pegasaa named Pega.
- Final Fantasy Legend II: In addition to being able to set your class as a monster child raised by human parents, other monsters are generally living with humans. They can be roommates, classmates, and/or teammates.
- Lapis Re:LiGHTs has Kaede and Salsa, a human onmyōji-in-training and a werewolf, respectively. Downplayed in that they're both witches training to become Magical Girl Idols called "witches" at Flora Girls' Academy and though rare outside of the country of Dortdgard, "demi-humans" like Salsa are considered citizens like everyone else.
- Inverted in Mongrelmen. You play as the titular mongrelmen, a tribe of grotesque humanoids building an encampment in fantasy wilderness. One random event involves a worn-out adventurer party asking for permission to stay at your place.
- In the interactive romance novel Moonrise, the player is the monster roommate. Rosario is the game's Token Human.
- Randal's Monday: Mortimer is a mystery, but what does become clear after awhile is that he's done some pretty questionable things.
- The Soldier of Team Fortress 2 is roommates with a magician named Merasmus. They don't exactly get along well. One Halloween Merasmus sent out his anger towards the entire team simply because he couldn't kill his roommate. Kinda fuzzy who's more monstrous though. Merasmus' last roommate? Tom Jones.
- In Touhou Project, this is why Reimu Hakurei doesn't get many donations. As the Hakurei Shrine's miko it's her job to deal with any youkai that cause trouble in Gensokyo, but nearly every one she battles succumbs to Defeat Means Friendship, leading them to drop by her shrine to hang out. Though Reimu herself doesn't mind - she's equally rude to humans, youkai and even deities - this does mean ordinary humans rarely make the trip to the Hakurei Shrine for fear of bumping into that drunk little oni who can tear apart mountains with her bare hands, or that "youkai of boundaries" who can do whatever the hell she wants.
- Ultraman Geed: Riku (the human form of the titular Ultra) shares a room with Pega, an Alien Pegassa from a destroyed world. Who can even follow Riku around in public thanks to Pega's ability to hide in Riku's shadows.
- A variation in 8-Bit Theater, where it's heavily implied that Fighter and Black Mage have been traveling and living together for a very long time (they met up after they both got kicked out of their respective schools (Black Mage for giving a new meaning to the word Evil, and Fighter for having the attention span of a rock) and they've been together ever since). It may have contributed to Black Mage's frequent bouts of omnicidal mania. Exhibit A
.
- This
Bigger Than Cheeses strip. Oh Xu'alz'kthar, you adorable scamp.
- In The Crawling City, Aria Wintermint is an ordinary young woman but lives with Gug, a huge tentacle monster. No explanation for this is given. Gug seems like an annoying but harmless roommate at first, mooching off her food and bugging her to buy him video games, but as we see more of this sinister city in which they live, it becomes clear that Gug has been protecting Aria, even going so far as to kill and devour a thief who broke into their apartment while Aria was asleep. Aria seem oblivious to this dark reality.
- Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell is about a guy who lives with his pet Manticore, a pretentious, Ambiguously Human artist and his thousand-year old muse girlfriend, and a bunch of pot-smoking angels. Of course, Darwin isn't super normal either, as he's doomed to Hell for "making the Dalai Lama retarded". The work is set in a world that's like normal 2010's New York City, with the key difference that All Myths Are True.
- Tedd of El Goonish Shive lives with Grace, a shapeshifter whose ancestry is part-human, part-alien, part-squirrel, and part-second-alien. She was created to be a Super-Soldier, but fled her Dark and Troubled Past and came to Tedd, hoping the technology he was experimenting with could help her defeat a powerful monster. It does. Also, they end up falling in love, and she moves in with him long-term. Which is more than a little awkward, since they're both under 18 and Tedd lives with his father.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Bob originally adopted baby Molly as a pet, assuming her to be some kind of animal. As she rapidly grows and learns to talk, he eventually realizes he's come to think of her as his daughter.
- In Questionable Content, several human characters live with AnthroPCs. Marten and Pintsize are there from the beginning, and later on Marigold and Momo, and Hannelore and Winslow are introduced. Dale is later assigned May, a personal AI assistant projected through Dale's Augmented Reality Glasses (who, as a result, only he can see). She has her own robot chassis, but it's locked up in Robot Jail at the time (she tried to upload herself into a fighter jet) and she's essentially doing community service. Later on, she shows up "in the flesh". After Dale and Marigold start dating and move in together, she lives with them. Another robot named Bubbles also moves into the apartment Faye shares with Marten and Pintsize, especially after she and Faye get together.
- Dielle in Rhapsodies lives in an extremely posh apartment belonging to the psychopomp Deidre. Apparently in exchange for taking care of Deidre's extremely demanding cat.
- Jareth for the other main cast members of Roommates. He's one of The Fair Folk (or at least pretty close, as his father is pure blooded fae noble and his mother a powerful witch) so generally not good for soul and sanity.
- Aylee from Sluggy Freelance is a mutating-shapeshifting xenomorph-type alien from another dimension, who is actually one of the more stable, reliable and friendly roommates in the house when her mutations aren't causing problems. Sam is a vampire who occasionally crashes with the gang. Depending on one's definition of "monster" Bun-bun might count as well, being a talking, misanthropic lop-eared rabbit who is one of the deadliest beings in the universe and possibly an amnesiac god.
- In Toby, Robot Satan bartender Morris is roommates with Toby, a Viking helmet-wearing robot who claims to be Satan Incarnate.
- In a side-comic of Too Much Information (2005), Maddie shares her room with what is, essentially, the larval form of a 'cosmic horror' type entity. He seems to exist mostly for the benefit of Fish out of Water jokes.
- Undead Friend: Both Orrick and Wylie each live with a ghost who their family and friends can't see.
- In Wapsi Square, Tepoztecal, the Aztec god of alcohol, has spent much of the comic living at Monica's place.
- Wilde Life: Oscar arrives at the house he rented on Craigslist in the first chapter to discover the reason it's so reasonably priced is that it's haunted. After freaking out about his surprise roommate he decides to stay and befriends her.
- Zombie Roomie: John is a human dork and George is a jerk and a zombie.
- CollegeHumor: The sketch "The Six Monsters You'll Have as Roommates
" humorously characterizes the types of college roommates as various kinds of monsters: the antisocial control freak is a robot, the one you never see because he's always out is a ghost, the Guyliner-wearing goth who Really Gets Around is a vampire, the foreign exchange student with strange customs is an alien, and the one who's always tired and lifeless is a zombie. The last Monster is the fact that there are no more monsters—that is, you live alone, and are now completely freaked out at night because there's no-one to blame the noises in the night on.
- The Cult of Scratchwood is a fan webseries which sees ordinary young man Matt forced to share his flat with a bunch of Daleks. (They are, for Daleks, unusually incompetent, fortunately for him.)
- Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party and its prequel ''Socially Awkward Poe'' feature Edgar Allan Poe sharing his house with the Deadpan Snarker lady ghost Lenore. While Poe is The Comically Serious who speaks in dreary poems, Lenore is a bit shallow and speaks Totally Radical YOLO speech. Still, they have a bit of a soft spot for each other.
- Less is Morgue has a surprisingly nuanced take, with Evelyn, the more human of the two, being a Cute Ghost Girl, and Riley, the decidedly less human of the two, being a ghoul. There's plenty of comedy derived from the fact that Riley's diet and lifestyle are weird as hell to Evelyn.
- The Plantar family in Amphibia initially saw Anne as this, seeing as how they'd never seen a human before and thought that she was some kind of monster.
- The trope is played straight in season 3, when the Plantars end up living in the Boonchuy house after they get trapped in the human world.
- None of the Justice Friends (titular stars of the segment and show-within-a-show on Dexter's Laboratory) are exactly what you'd call normal, but The Infraggible Kronk is the most monstrous of the three, being a giant purple Expy of The Incredible Hulk.
- Die Sendung mit der Maus has "Trude's Flatmate". Selfsame mate is a completely nice and harmless monster...if it only had a whiff of knowledge of the local customs. Like you don't simply "borrow" a dredge for playing. (Think of Starfire, just less sexy.)
- Futurama: Human Fry lives with Bender, who, for those not familiar with the show, is a robot. Specifically, Fry lives in Bender's apartment. So Fry is Bender's Monster Roommate. More than that: he lives in Bender's closet (which is as large as a 1 1/2 apartment), while the apartment itself is as large as, well, a closet.
- The Ghost and Molly McGee: When the cheerful McGee family moves into the house haunted by grumpy ghost Scratch, Scratch attempts to scare them away by cursing the daughter Molly so that if she doesn't leave, he'll haunt her forever. Molly takes this to mean she'll never have to be alone again, so now Scratch can no longer leave Molly's side, forcing him to be her roommate. By the end of the first season, Scratch has come to accept the McGees as his family.
- Lilo and Nani Pelekai from Lilo & Stitch have three aliens (Stitch, Jumba and Pleakley) living in their Hawaiian home, with the first of them having originally been created to be a monster.
- The Owl House: Eda has King, an incredibly cute demon as her roommate. Also, it's eventually revealed that Vee (a basilisk) has been living with Luz's mother for an extended period of time. After the fall of the Boiling Isles, Camila not only allows Vee to stay, but also welcomes Willow, Gus, Amity, and Hunter into her home (although she admits that it takes a while to get used to taking care of six children).
- An episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast has Zorak rooming with Space Ghost briefly, much to his displeasure.
Space Ghost: ZORAK! Living with you is like living in a living nightmare!
- The Tick once faced against an evil alien named Thrakkorzog, ruler of dimensio... Errr... Apartment 14-B. He was roommates with a man who was barely even aware that he was sharing rent with a Blob Monster from outer space.
Arthur: Are you aware your roommate is a hideous monster from another dimension with evil plans for world domination?
Thrakkorzog's roommate: Listen, a good roommate relationship is based on a respect for privacy.- Tick himself can also be considered an example, a Nigh-Invulnerable Cloudcuckoolander superhero rooming with a mild-mannered former accountant (who wears a moth costume, but that's neither here nor there).
- After being ejected from her home by a Corrupt Corporate Executive, human child Sari Sumdac spends the second season of Transformers: Animated living with the Autobot protagonists (who aren't so much monsters as they are giant alien robots). Then it turns out she's not actually human. She's a protoform who scanned her "father" and acquired a human alt-mode in the process. She's a Transformer just like her friends.
- For a short while in Transformers: Prime (immediately following the events of "Darkest Hour" and its following episodes), the kids spend a few nights in the new Autobot base, making them this to the Autobots (though, as Ratchet points out several times during the series, they're already there so often that they practically live there already).
- In Ugly Americans, Mark lives with Randall, a zombie. This is a series where the monsters considerably outnumber the humans, so Mark doesn't see anything particularly strange about his living arrangements, even though Randall has brain cravings that seem reminiscent of a recovering alcoholic. (And he has the annoying habit of borrowing Mark's things without asking.)