Basic Trope: A good being has been sealed away.
- Straight: A benevolent and powerful spirit is sealed away in a mystic mask.
- Exaggerated: A legion of 777 noble and powerful angels, any one of which could resolve the conflict alone, are all sealed away inside one outrageously complicated prison...All of them.
- Downplayed: The spirit was just hanging around in a difficult-to-access cave. He's a good guy but far from being a powerful savior.
- Justified:
- The Big Bad was either not powerful enough to kill her, or otherwise doesn't have the power to do so, and so decided to do the next best thing: Seal it away and try to make sure that no one ever finds him/her.
- No longer needed but realizing that the Big Bad would eventually return, the spirit seals him/herself away so he/she will still be around when the bad guy does return.
- Inverted: Sealed Evil in a Can
- Subverted:
- The good guy sealed away discovered long ago that it could get out any time, by the time the heroes come to save him, the spirit is already free.
- The Ragnarök Proofing didn't work, and by the time the new heroes find it, the good that was sealed away is now dead and/or useless.
- The sealed good turns out to be not so good after all.
- Double Subverted:
- ...and then it turns out that the room the box was in is in itself a much stronger seal.
- The team's resident wizard brings the good guy back to life with stronger powers.
- Turns it it wasn't evil after all, just scary and pragmatic in its methods.
- Parodied: A five-year-old accidentally frees a legendary hero trapped inside a gumball machine, who can barely stick his way out of it.
- Zig Zagged: The utterly benevolent entity was sealed inside the magical can because, unbeknown to him/her, he/she is actually, matryoshka-style, the Person-Shaped Can for some horrible evil. Specifically, something so abominable that even the villain that sealed him/her in is scared of it.
- Averted: No benevolent entities are or were ever been sealed away.
- Enforced:
- "These guys are too low powered to take on the Big Bad. They'll need backup. Send them after it as a MacGuffin and let them do some Level Grinding on the way."
- The heroes can't beat the God of Evil, let them have a God of Good on their side.
- Lampshaded: "Dude, maybe Sir Goodnik got sealed away with the same spell. We find him, and maybe we can shove the evil wizard back into the box?"
- Invoked: Unable to take down a powerful adversary, the Big Bad formulates a plan to seal him/her away so he can no longer bother his plans.
- Exploited: Being Genre Savvy, our witty hero sets his quest to release as many sealed goods as he can to overwhelm the Big Bad rather than setting off to fight him personally.
- Defied:
- Just as the Big Bad attempts to seal the good guy away, a friend comes swooping in and pulls off a Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind.
- The Big Bad makes sure that no one can free the Sealed Good in a Can.
- The spirit has taken precautions to become impossible to seal away by any means.
- Discussed: " You'd think they'd cram me inside a bigger can, but no! I have a killing 800-year neck strain right now!"
- Conversed: "This is the part when they release the Spirit of Life from the mask."
- Implied: The Big Bad mentions a powerful rival and how he/she is no longer a problem to him where he/she is now. We never see said enitity nor his prison.
- Deconstructed: Anything evil enough to seal away this force of good would make sure it's not just a sort of peaceful eternal sleep. The force of good has been living in a nightmare world that would make Cthulhu wet himself in terror for the last thousand years, and has gone completely insane as a result. When the heroes do let it out, it eats them and goes on a murderous rampage before realizing what it's done - and kills itself.
- Reconstructed:
- Anything evil enough to seal away this force of good would make sure it's not just a sort of peaceful eternal sleep. The force of good has been living in a nightmare world that would make Cthulhu wet himself in terror for the last thousand years, and has been severely traumatized as a result. When the heroes let it out, it babbles incoherently and hugs them before breaking down in tears. With the help of the heroes, the entity slowly regains its sense of identity and purpose and helps in the fight against the bad guys.
- The sealed good was imprisoned in a horrible nightmare world but has been spending the centuries fighting for his life day in and day out. As a result, the Sealed Good in a Can is now ten times as powerful than he was when he was sealed away from all that fighting and is now more than a match for the Big Bad who put him in there.
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