Sealed Evil In A Can / Video Games

• In Age of Mythology, the cyclops Gargarensis is on a mission to free Kronos from Tartarus in return for godhood. He fails. Kronos gets out in the expansion, but gets buried right back in by Gaia.
• AI War: Fleet Command:
  • The Dark Spire, Abusive Precursors that they are and a branch of the regular, more benevolent Spire. After a bloody civil war, they were stuffed into prisons called Vengeance Generators, never to be let out, and where they could stew in their ever-increasing xenophobia. If they could leave to enact their final vengeance on the galaxy's denizens, they would, but the only thing they can do in there is absorb energy from anything killed or destroyed in the vicinity, and use that to release what is either part of their population, or simple manifestations of their vengeance that will attack you, the AI, and anything else with all-consuming hatred. And yes, any death they cause counts to fuel the generators. Kicking the can around through hacking is discouraged.
  • Nanocaust Supressor beacons, unlike other beacons that simply keep the threats away, actively supress and smother their particular threat. Do not destroy them, even if that science boost is tempting; there are very few situations where having a highly contagious Gray Goo infestation will not make things even worse.
• The entire Arc the Lad series revolves around this trope with the Dark One. He starts every game being sealed, winds up being unsealed at some point, and then gets re-sealed by the end of the game.
• In Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, the hook and most the line of the plot involves the player character being a Chosen One prophecied to defeat the Evil Sorcerer Arronax, last known to be sealed in the Void. Later it's revealed that several other evil beings are sealed in that dimension, including a demon with insatiable hunger, the murderer who killed Arcanum's last dragon, a genocidal barbarian king. By the time you finally wormhole your way inside, Arronax did a Heel–Face Turn long ago, after having been overshadowed by an Evil Overlord you must defeat instead.
• The gorgons in Astalon: Tears of the Earth are demonic creatures who are trapped inside the "Tears" mentioned in the title. They can escape from their prison if they become powerful enough, allowing them to wreak as much havoc as they want, and this is the goal of the gorgons in the Tower of Serpents.
• In the first Avernum / Exile game, there is the Haakai Lord Grah-Hoth, who was sealed in a bottle before the game begins. Despite being unable to directly act, the game reveals him to be manipulating events, such as aiding the Slith against the humans who imprisoned him. Freeing him from the bottle is a necessary first step for defeating him permanently.
• Baldur's Gate II:
  • In the Expansion Pack, the Superboss is the avatar of a very powerful demon lord. You are asked to reseal him in his prison as he's about to break free. Alternatively, you can fight him in an epic battle. However, if you win and kill him, it only means he is freed back to his own plane.
  • Kangaxx the demi-lich is another example. He dies very permanently after underestimating you, however.
• The Bard's Tale, being a parody of fantasy RPG tropes in general, has two of these. The first is the Nuckelavee, which our hero accidentally releases. The other is the "Princess" that he's supposed to be rescuing. Turns out that she's really a powerful demon, and the world gets progressively worse as her seal weakens.
  • The Bard seems to make a habit of unsealing evils. There's also a dragon, which the Bard had apparently set free before the events of the game. One Side Quest brings him to the town that it ransacked, and the residents are none too happy.
• The Furies in Battlezone (1998) are Cthonian war machines, whose biometal hulls are infused with the essence of ancient Greek warriors who were dying on the battlefield before being collected, giving them a certain psychotic bloodlust. In their bid to stay ahead of the Americans in the 1960s Biometal wars, the Soviets start building Fury craft from blueprints and tech they've found scattered throughout the Solar System. Predictably, things go pear shaped, and most of the Soviet forces are destroyed before they announce a ceasefire with the Americans and merge their forces. It's then up to Grizzly One and what's left of the American and Soviet forces to save the Solar System before the Furies blow up Earth like they blew up the Cthonian homeworld — now known as the Asteroid Belt.
• The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble: The Beast was one, and the final puzzle is putting it back into a can.
• BlazBlue:
  • The Black Beast. Ragna is the can. Nu-13 is the can opener.
  • Also, Yuuki Terumi, who couldn't be defeated by the Six Heroes, so he was instead trapped in the Boundary with Hakumen.
• Bleeding Sun: One of the honor choices is to trap Chiyo in another dimension, since killing her would just cause her dark energy to spread throughout Hitoshima. However, the party acknowledges that she will likely escape her prison someday.
• Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django has a textbook example in its Big Bad, Jormungandr.
  • The Japan only sequel has a similar deal, except its cosmic horror, Vanargand, was sealed on the frickin' MOON.
• In Borderlands, the Vault only contains—as far as the player is concerned—a monster called The Destroyer who is "immortal in his own realm". Sadly, this final fight is easier than a single monster from the previous zone. The Vault also opens every 200 years, which raises the question if it really is a sealed can.
• A significant portion of the plot of Brave Fencer Musashi revolves around this. The first major quest in the game involves Musashi being sent to collect Lumina, the legendary greatsword used to defeat the Wizard of Darkness; a significant portion of the rest of the game revolves around Musashi questing to recover the elemental Scrolls in order to power Lumina up enough to take out the Thirstquencher Empire. Unfortunately, it turns out the voice which set Musashi on this quest in the first place, a voice originating from Lumina itself, was actually the Wizard of Darkness himself, not destroyed but sealed within the sword. Guess what the only things holding him back are? If you guessed "the five Scrolls and the Crest Guardians they're connected to," you win the kewpie doll.
• The Sea of Black Tears in Brütal Legend, a body of enchanted water that would entice people to drink from it, which would corrupt them into undead horrors. To protect themselves from it, the ancient Titans placed a mountain over the Sea to cut it off. Centuries later in a war between the demons of the Tainted Coil and their once enslaved humans, the demons broke a path into the mountain to let out the Sea so that humans would drink from it and destroy their rebellion from within. After the new human rebellion Ironheade killed the Coil's human puppet, they reopen the path to the Sea of Black Tears so history would repeat itself.
• Dracula's castle in the Castlevania series is eventually sealed this way after the Dark Lord's death. It's sealed inside the total solar eclipse of 1999. In the solar eclipse of 2035, it sucks in everyone present at the shrine where the sealing took place.
  • Dracula, and Castlevania itself, were also sealed in the underworld throughout most of the series, both of them reappearing on Earth only once every hundred years. But Dracula found so many ways to circumvent that rule that it became more of a "sealed evil in a sieve".
• Lavos in Chrono Trigger.
  • A subversion, Lavos was an alien that burrowed into the earth and then unleashes the apocalypse many ages later as part of its natural life cycle. Essentially, it seals itself in the final can and breaks out when it wants. The villains of the game attempt to awaken him to harvest his power, with the apocalypse being a byproduct of this.
• The City of Villains is practically filled with these: Bat'Zul under Cap Au Diable, the Leviathan under Sharkhead Isle, Shiva in Bloody Bay... and the City of Heroes isn't lacking in them either, as Dark Astoria apparently houses the sleeping dread god of the Banished Pantheon, and the Kaiju that may still be in battle with Talos underneath Talos Island... Also, both sides can get involved in the escape of the Reichsman, Nazi with the power of the gods.
• The Firstborn in Clive Barker's Jericho.
• The Undying King from Clive Barker's Undying. who was actually the LID on the can, opening the door to the rest of the series. Unfortunately, this well done game bombed monstrously, so the series never materialized...
• The Relic of Moirai in Contra: Shattered Soldier, which is revealed to be the mysterious force that the alien attackers in the previous Contra games were trying to recover the whole time, after it was taken and hidden away by the Triumvirate, according to Lance Bean.
• Before the events of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Aku Aku's Evil Twin Uka Uka had been sealed within a temple. This temple was destroyed after a piece of the Cortex Vortex fell onto it from orbit, and, from there, Uka Uka was free to command Cortex in his new plot to obtain the crystals from across time.
• In Criminal Case, Season 7's Greater-Scope Villain the Demon Queen has been defeated and imprisoned by rebels, and her loyal followers have been wreaking havoc throughout Supernatural Investigations in order to find the keys to her prison. By the time the Supernatural Hunters learn of this fact, only one (of five) keys have already been found, and the Hunters have to find the final key before the demons do.
• In Cyberpunk 2077, after the DataKrash disaster nearly destroyed the Internet in the early 2020s, multiple AIs being developed by the United States military were freed and mutated into autonomous and hostile entities. In response, the British policing organization known as Netwatch developed another AI known as the Blackwall to quarantine them as they constantly probe it for weaknesses. On the rare occasions the "rogue" AIs do break out, they wreak havoc on the real world for reasons only discernable to themselves.
• In Dark Cloud, the general of an expansionist empire frees the Dark Genie from its place of captivity. At first, it seems to grant his wish by destroying every other nation on the face of the planet, but in the end, it takes over his body to progress towards its final goal — the complete destruction of everything.
• In Dark Messiah, the Demon lord is locked in a prison under the city of Stonehelm, however the original prison is flawed and can be broken, the player can choose to get the good ending and seal him away forever by repairing the seal or get the bad ending by releasing him.
• Dawn of War:
  • The original one has an absolutely beautiful example. An ancient demon imprisoned in a stone manipulates Orks into attacking human cities on the planet. Space Marines come to the rescue and do what space marines do best — spill ungodly amounts of Orkish and human blood — just so at the end, the demon can reveal that the entire planet had previously been converted into a blood altar for releasing him. Bonus points: most characters wanting to use demon or its power for their own end up badly.
  • The Chaos Rising expansion to Dawn of War II also features a plot to unseal a demon trapped inside a planet that was lost in the Warp.
• In Dead Space, the Marker seals the infection that turns corpses into horrific alien monsters (it was actually a manmade knockoff of the real marker). Anyways, the Marker-Worshipping Unitologists discover the Marker in the midst of mining Aegis VII and move it off its pedestal. Bad things occur. Even worse, later games indicate that the Markers cause the infection that turns corpses into horrific monsters while doing a number on the sanity of those with higher education in engineering and biology compelling the affected to eventually make more Markers and worse corpse monsters respectively. The Pedestal itself was the can, with the Marker being and its signal being the Evil.
• Occurs in the first three installments of the Devil May Cry series. At the end of the first game, Mundus is resealed in the can due to Dante's inability to fully kill him.
• In the Diablo series, when the Prime Evils were unleashed upon Sanctuary, the Archangel Tyrael selected a group of mortals known as the Horadrim and charged them with imprisoning their essences into the Soulstones so that they would not be reborn into the Hells upon death. But thanks to the betrayal of Tyrael's lieutenant Izual, who filled the Prime Evils in on the Soulstones and how to corrupt them, it turns out that this played directly into their hands.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: The healers of Bloodmoon Island sealed the most dangerous and incurable cases of Demonic Possession in underground tombs, chained and anchored with pure Source, with a member of their own order to guard them as a ghost. The player character can resolve three of these cases in the Sidequest "The Forgotten and the Damned"; their companions might voice their disgust that the healers didn't just Mercy Kill the poor unfortunates.
• In the background lore and manga of Dofus, you can learn that long ago the Iop God accidentally had a child with Lacrima, one of Sadida's ten dolls and part of Sadida himself: the resulting spawn was a demented, ferocious and incredibly powerful being who violently attacked Sadida before the god eventually tore him into nine pieces, sealed his soul within nine mask and tasked the first Masqueradier/Danzal, Raziad, with guarding the masks so that the being won't return. As the backstory continues, the creature is eventually fred from its prison, fights the Iop God and take over his divine powers and the name Cornu Mollu, before being eventually defeated by Iop's strongest son Goultard and sealed back into the masks.
• The demons in Doom³. Sealed in a can until Dr. Betruger teleports himself and the Soul Cube into Hell. They were sealed back into the same can at the end, as well...
• Inverted in Doom (2016), where according to demon lore, you are the ancient sealed evil. Mook Horror Show was in full effect here.
• Becomes straight again in Doom Eternal after the final battle with the Icon of Sin. Even after Doomguy has shot its armor off and unloaded everything in his arsenal to reduce it to muscle and bone, it cannot die. The most he can do is stab it with the Crucible and send it back to Hell where it came from.
• Dragon Age:
  • Played with in Dragon Age: Origins. The Darkspawn seek out the seven ancient dragon gods buried within the earth, and when they find and awaken one it becomes the Archdemon and leads them in a massive invasion of the surface world — but the sealed gods were not necessarily evil until tainted by the darkspawn, making them more like Sealed Badass in a Can Gone Horribly Wrong.
  • The draconic Old Gods of the Tevinter Imperium were, according to the Chantry, banished to the depths of the earth by The Maker to slumber for all eternity. The Darkspawn are somehow able to hear the Old Gods' Call and devote centuries of effort tunneling through the earth in search of them. When they finally discover an Old God, the Darkspawn taint immediately corrupts the ancient dragon, turning it into an insane and twisted shell of its former self — an Archdemon. The new Archdemon then commands the Darkspawn hordes in a bid to kill everything — a Blight. By the time the game starts, the world has already suffered through four such Blights. One of the biggest secrets that the higher-ups of the Grey Wardens keep from the rest of the Order is that they know where the Old Gods are buried.
  • In Dragon Age II, Hawke can fight several powerful demons that were sealed away in and around Kirkwall. The "Legacy" DLC revolves around the Hawke family's connection to an ancient Sealed Evil In A Can — Corypheus, one of the original Tevinter Magisters who brought the Darkspawn Taint to Thedas — whose subconscious efforts to free itself have brought danger to Hawke's doorstep. There's also ANOTHER uber-monster sealed right outside the prison housing him, but that one's an Optional Boss.
  • According to the Dragon Age: Inquisition "Trespasser" DLC, most of the eleven pantheon are an example of this. They were a lot crueller and more mercurial than the elves remember, and were sealed away by one of their own number after they finally went too far. This process involved separating the waking and dreaming worlds, creating the "Veil" itself.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest IV: For a long time the demon Estark slumbered under the mines of Mamon, until the native miners accidentally dug him out.
  • Dragon Quest V
    • Bjorn the Behemoose, a mountain-sized ancient demon, was sealed away in the past by Rodrigo Briscoletti's ancestor. It is his family's duty to make sure it stays sealed.
    • Grandmaster Nimzo basically can't leave the Demon World. He captured the hero's mother in order to fix this.
  • Dragon Quest VIII has Rhapthorne, with two cans: the scepter of Trodain to hold his soul, and the statue of the Goddess on Neos to hold his body.
  • In Dragon Quest XI, it's revealed that the star Erdwin's Lantern was a container for the body of Calasmos, the Dark One. Interestingly, you don't find out about this until much later while the original Big Bad destroys said container in an effort to solidify his power, but when you go back in time to defeat him earlier, this allows the soul of Calasmos the chance to reunite with his body. Whoops!
• The Grotesqueries in Drakengard, with a twist. Also, no one knows the Sealed Evil in a Can exists except possibly the Big Bad. They're concerned about some other thing that comes out when those seals are broken.
• Greed, the content of the Golden Chest from Dubloon.
• In the final route of Duel Savior Destiny instead of killing Lobelia after she is beaten, her soul is trapped via alchemy when she tries body hopping.
• Dwarf Fortress has what is popularly referred to in the community as "Hidden Fun Stuff". If your dwarves tunnel far down enough, they may breach a secret chamber containing demons which are powerful enough to bring the fortress to its knees. It's possible to kill them, though.
  • As of the latest update there are now "Demonic Fortresses" which are a bit like the pits, but the pits have been replaced with hell itself, which you simply reach by digging far enough, implying most of the physical structure of the planet is a cavern made of an unmineable, indestructible, impossibly heavy Unobtainium whose exits are blocked by another Unobtanium which is very valuable, light, and hard. And every Demonic Fortress contains a hole straight to Hell, blocked by a masterwork sword made of the latter type of Unobtainium. As for Hell itself, it contains so many demons that the game doesn't bother counting them.
  • You can have a lesser version of this when you find an "unusual volcanic wall" studded with gems in the middle of otherwise solid natural rock. Dig into that, and you'll unleash one of the aforementioned demons right on your poor miners and the fortress as a whole... but at least just the one demon is manageable, and you get both the implication they're a Fallen Angel and multiple valuable artifacts made from divine Unobtainium in the same pocket once you take them down.
• EarthBound (1994): Giygas is first encountered in the Devil's Machine, which seals away his warped consciousness. Subverted in that Giygas can still damage Ness and his friends while sealed away, but played straight when Pokey unleashes Giygas' true form by turning the machine off.
• Earth 2160 has the traditional sealed-ancient-evil-alien-race-beneath-the-surface-of-Mars for the first half of the game. Then some Dutch nerd learns to control them, and it all ends badly(-er).
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The series' primary Creation Myth provides an example of a permanent sealing. Anu and Padomay are the anthropomorphized primordial forces of "stasis/order/light" and "change/chaos/darkness", respectively. Their interplay in the great "void" of pre-creation led to creation itself. Creation, sometimes anthropomorphized as the female entity "Nir", favored Anu, which angered Padomay. Padomay killed Nir and shattered the twelve worlds she gave birth to. Anu then wounded Padomay, presuming him dead. Anu salvaged the pieces of the twelve worlds to create one world: Nirn. Padomay returned and wounded Anu, seeking to destroy Nirn. Anu then pulled Padomay and himself outside of time, ending Padomay's threat to creation "forever". From the intermingling of their spilled blood came the "et'Ada", or "original spirits", who would go on to become either the Aedra or the Daedra depending on their actions during creation. (Some myths state that the Aedra come from the mixed blood of Anu and Padomay, while the Daedra come purely from the blood of Padomay).
  • Morrowind:
    • Dagoth Ur and his minions have been sealed within Red Mountain by the Tribunal with the Ghostfence. However, as the power of the Tribunal has waned due to being unable to replenish their divinity since Dagoth Ur's reemergence, Dagoth Ur's influence has begun to spread outside of the Ghostfence, slowly turning this into a Leaking Can of Evil.
    • The Dremora Lord Dregas Volar, wielder of the last Daedric Crescent Blade, has been sealed inside of Magas Volar, a Daedric shrine not physically connected to the outside world and only accessible with a magic amulet.
  • Likewise, in its followup, Oblivion, the player must prevent Mehrunes Dagon, lord of the titular realm, from unleashing his forces upon the world. Dagon isn't really sealed IN anything so much as he is sealed OUT. In this case, the world is a Can Sealed Against Evil.
  • Skyrim:
    • Alduin, a colossal black dragon who it is said will "eat the world" at the end of the current cycle of time, was sealed away thousands of years in the past. When Alduin, his dragons, and the Dragon Cult that worshiped them came to rule early mankind, mankind prayed to the Divines for aid. Their prayers were answered when they were taught to use the Thu'um, the draconic Language of Magic. Three ancient Nord heroes set off to defeat Alduin using this ability, but he proved too powerful. As a last ditch effort, the heroes used the power of an Elder Scroll to cast Alduin adrift outside of the stream of time. A prophecy describes the events that must transpire before he would end up back in linear time again, and it just so happens those events happened in the previous four games. Naturally, Alduin returns to kickstart the plot of the game.
    • The dragons who served Alduin are technically sealed as well. Dragons are ageless and divine Aedric beings, somewhat akin to highly destructive angels. While anyone of sufficient ability can slay a dragon's physical form, dragons possess a form of Resurrective Immortality and can be brought back to life by another dragon. The return of the dragons is due to Alduin resurrecting them, causing them to Rise From Their Graves. The only way to permanently kill a dragon is to slay it and then absorb its soul. This just so happens to be an inherent ability of the Dragonborn, a rare mortal gifted with the divine soul of a dragon by Akatosh, the God of Time and chief deity of the Nine Divines Pantheon. Akatosh has specifically created those who are Dragonborn throughout history to serve as natural predators to the dragons.
    • Clavicus Vile, the Daedric Prince of Bargains and Wishes, is severely weakened, separated from Barbas, and has been forced to spend the past several decades trapped within a cave, high in the mountains of Skyrim. This is in no small part due to the player's actions during Vile's Oblivion quest.
    • Many other smaller evils are sealed throughout Skyrim. Some of the most prominent are the Dragon Priests, leaders of the ancient Dragon Cult, many of whom were sealed following their overthrow.
    • The Ebony Blade, a Daedric artifact sword associated with Mephala, a Daedric Prince whose "obscured" realm includes manipulation, lies, sex, and secrets, has been sealed under Dragonsreach Castle in Whiterun. Mephala's quest is to recover and recharge the blade, which requires using it to kill those who trust the wielder. Given that, it's quite evident why it was sealed, but recharging turns it into the game's Infinity +1 Sword.
• In the Infocom text game Enchanter, your job is to defeat the evil enchanter Krill without disturbing the Cosmic Horror that's sealed below his castle. The tie-in novel by Robin Bailey takes the tack that your character accidentally did release the thing, and now it's up to the book's protagonist to stop it.
• Akron, the Final Boss of Epic Battle Fantasy 3. He notes in his Boss Banter that he has been defeated and sealed away countless times through time immemorial — but in the end, his enemies all succumbed to time while he always returns.
• Towards the end of The Evil Within it's revealed that the STEM system that the protagonists are connected to is the can and Ruvik slowly became the evil after having his brain used as the base for the experiment. Who may or may not have been released in the games ending, though the former heavily implied.
• In Evil Zone, the inhabitants of an island dimension sealed away an incarnation of a cosmic destroyer, but couldn't finish the job themselves, so they had to hire out heroes to finish the Big Bad off.
• In Evolve, the Hybrid, the most dangerous of the monsters, cannot access the monsters' method of moving between worlds and remains trapped on a single planet. This is because they Hybrid was once Kala and thus not a pure monster. As such, she cannot return to the monsters' home dimension and rematerialize elsewhere.
  • The monsters themselves become this at the end of the war, when the humans severed the connection between the monster and human dimensions. The monsters became trapped in their own dimension again, but if the humans ever redevelop the technologies that caused them to come through in the first place they may escape and begin a second war.
• EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist This is the truth of the bracelet sought after all game, though the details are only revealed with the final unlocked character.
• Big MT of the Fallout: New Vegas expansion Old World Blues is the can for the dangerously amoral Think Tank. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Mobious, they are kept in an oblivious loop. Unaware of time or anything outside Big MT. As shown in a cut ending, should they ever escape said can, they would turn the already brutal Mojave into a giant testing ground for their insane experiments.
• In Fallout 4, the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 can be seen as this From a Certain Point of View, as they emerge from a two-hundred year stint in cryogenic storage enraged and traumatized by the death of their spouse and the abduction of their son, and quickly become a nightmare for the Institute in their quest for vengeance.
• In Faria, long ago, when the Evil Sorcerer was defeated with the magical scrolls, the King had him entombed within the Legendary Sword. Unfortunately, on a dark and stormy night a few months before gameplay begins, the spell on the sword was lifted.
• The entire point of most the rituals in the Fatal Frame series is to make sure the sealed evil (specifically Hell itself) stays that way, though naturally they always eventually fail and plunge the area into endless suffering,we'd have no game series otherwise
• Fate/Grand Order's British Lostbelt is absolutely FULL of these. The Red Calamity and the Black Calamity, mentioned at the very beginning of Lostbelt 6, are Fairy Knights Lancelot and Gawain, more accurately known as Melusine and Barghest. Melusine was given form by Aurora, as well as a purpose to keep her in check. Barghest's transformation into the Black Calamity is a result of a curse laid upon her lineage by the King of the Mors. Barghest is a ticking timebomb who can't help but eat her loved ones, which eventually breaks her. Melusine also has a rough time of it, having transformed into the first dragon, Albion, after also being forced to kill the person she loved the most. Funny how that works, right? And of course, Fairy Knight Tristan, AKA Baobhan Sith becomes the core of the ancient, resentful, curse-filled god Cernunnos, after her mother is butchered before her eyes. Just one of its curses alone is enough to manifest as its own disaster, the Calamity of Norwich. Even then, it isn't the worst of them all. No, that honor falls to Oberon-Vortigern, the Insect of the Abyss, who was kept sealed within the pit by the efforts of BOTH Queen Morgan and Cernunnos, who blocked the hole up from opening. Once the Insect was released, the end of Fairy Britain was already decided.
• Fate/stay night has the Holy Grail, which was corrupted as of the third war by the Anthropomorphic Personification of evil.
• Most Final Fantasy games feature a Sealed Evil in a can. Even Final Fantasy Tactics, which is grounded in realism and political intrigue, has an evil god trying to find a suitable host body.
  • Final Fantasy III gives us the Cloud of Darkness, the living essence of the power of the Dark (as opposed to the Light of the heroes' world.) The game implies that Xande's machinations allowed it to take form, but it would have remained sealed away in the Dark World had it not been for him opening a portal leading straight into it. The Dark Warriors imply that they fought the Cloud 1,000 years ago, when it was Light surrounding Darkness, and got it Canned within the Dark World. Xande was nothing but a can-opener.
  • Zemus in Final Fantasy IV, who, despite being sealed in the Lunarian Moon was still able to influence events in the world in an almost successful attempt to effectively kill all humans. Notably, he is never released from his can; you raid it.
  • Final Fantasy V's previous generation of heroes, the Braves of Dawn, used the power of the Crystals to seal away Exdeath, who then surreptitiously began to drain the power of the Crystals (either personally or through manipulation). Additionally, the player learns that, prior to Exdeath, the sorcerer Enuo was the first to harness the power of the Void, and waged war with it until he and all his obscenely powerful demons were thrown into the Dimensional Rift. The Advance version expands upon this by letting the player explore Enuo's prison and vanquish him for good.
    • Also in Final Fantasy V, there once was a tree in the Great Forest of Moore used to seal up evil spirits. Eventually, the power of those spirits corrupted the tree, filling it with dark magic and their evil desires. The tree then assumed a human shape and left the forest to wreak havoc. That tree became Exdeath; an example of sealing so much evil away that the can itself turns evil.
  • The Warring Triad of Final Fantasy VI, who started the War of the Magi, sealed themselves away after realizing the destruction they had wrought upon the world, and the Espers hid them away in their own underground kingdom. Then Kefka came and released them, destroying the balance of magic and devastating the world. The resulting cataclysm also released Humbaba, Deathgaze, and the eight dragons, monsters sealed within the earth long ago.
  • Jenova of Final Fantasy VII is a basic example of the trope; she spends most of the plot going from tomb > water tank > freezer. In the sequel movie Advent Children, what's left of her is stored in a literal can.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Laguna Loire tricks evil sorceress Adel into walking into a specially-prepared technological "tomb" in which he is able to seal her considerable powers. Then he launches it into space and spends the next seventeen years making regular trips to monitor the seal. Predictably enough, catastrophe eventually lets her loose again, but by that point Laguna's son is well-equipped to kill her off for good.
  • One interpretation of Final Fantasy IX is that the Final Boss, Necron, is one of these, sealed in either the Crystal or the Iifa Tree, and awakened by Kuja's destructive rage. Or maybe not. It could also just be a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere. The game itself has little to say on the matter.
  • Shuyin of Final Fantasy X-2 is a special case. In one sense, he is still sealed within the Den of Woe, but in another sense he is free to wander around within the body of first Nooj, then Baralai. It’s implied that his fight in the Den of Woe is with an echo of his hatred, and the fight with him as the Final Boss is with the real thing. Also, while his goal is indeed to break free of his prison and destroy the world, this is because he's a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, all the Espers, as well as several other bosses.
  • Final Fantasy XIV's biggest example is Bahamut, the primal god of a civilization of dragons who was captured by the ancient Allagan Empire and jailed within Dalamud, an artificial satellite that future societies would mistake for a moon, for thousands of years. Zig-zagged, as Bahamut wasn't evil going into the can, but was driven mad by the experience, lashing out at everything when he was finally released. Had he been sane, it's likely he could've been an ally, but... Heavensward reveals that not only was he Bahamut In Name Only, but his very nature as a primal would have endangered everyone anyway even if he had been benign. The other biggest example turns out to be Zodiark, the Evil God that our heroes have been fighting the Ascians to prevent his resurrection. He was actually sealed inside the other moon until Fandaniel had Zenos break the seals.
    • Various other minor threats are also found canned, generally in reference to previous games. Notably: Sephirot, Sophia, and Zurvan (the Warring Triad mentioned above), Ultima (the aforementioned evil god from Tactics), and Omega.
• Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War wins the "strangest method of resurrecting" award, with two half siblings being brainwashed in order to breed a vessel for the dark dragon god they are descended from.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance uses the trope, with the characters believing that Lehran's Medallion contains an evil god that flooded the entire world save Tellius. So at the end, not only do the heroes fight Ashnard in order to liberate Crimea, but also to prevent him from unleashing a dark god. However, the true nature of the relic is revealed in the sequel Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, and the heroes are the ones who free Yune, the Goddess of Chaos, rather then letting the negative energies of war do it. As it turns out, Yune was actually a Sealed Good in a Can, one half of a benevolent goddess who just happened to mess up (the Great Flood); in fact, the Big Bad is Ashera, the goddess everyone had been praying to throughout both games, who is what remains after the goddess purged her emotions (forming Yune) to avoid another Great Flood.
• The second installment of Fossil Fighters has one of these as the Big Bad. Pay CLOSE attention to the foreshadowing of a certain Absent-Minded Professor.
• The Dread Lords from Galactic Civilizations 2. The Dread Lords had a pocket dimension which they had used as a base for their fleets. Their enemies, The Arnor, used this against them by sealing the last of their empire in the dimension. Later on, the Dregin found the lock to the Dread Lord prison. Thinking that is was an ancient weapon, they activate the device, allowing the Dread Lords to escape and wreak havoc across the galaxy. Upon seeing this, the Drengin realize their mistake and decide to leave the others for dead.
• Well before the start of the Geneforge series, the Shapers discovered a startling new technology that could imbue ordinary humans with incredible magical powers. When they discovered some of the side effects involved (such as Suicidal Overconfidence, a violent temper, and in extreme cases, outright Body Horror), rather than take any steps to destroy this technology, they simply abandoned the remote island outpost where it was discovered, and declared it off limits under penalty of death. Fast forward a few hundred years: A band of explorers from across the seas happens upon the abandoned outpost and all its forbidden goods. Things go downhill from there.
  • In fact, the Shapers do this constantly. Their laboratories, workshops, and schools are designed to be sealed up quickly should anything Go Horribly Wrong.
  • Not just should. It's said at one point that more often than not something does go wrong.
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • Several Primal Beasts have been sealed away a long time ago in several islands. Some events revolve around them being unsealed, whether intentionally or purely by accident.
  • The Astral prison, Pandemonium, is host to some of the most vile Primal Beasts that they created and thus were subsequently sealed away in the prison. Though it is later revealed that their creator Lucilius intentionally makes them this way so he has test subjects for his experiements after he has them rebel. Making them victims of their own creator.
  • Ninetails is this, having been sealed away by the nine Sovereigns to wait for the day their descendants would destroy it.
• Guild Wars:
  • The lich Palawa Joko suffered this fate centuries before the game. After his defeat by Turai Ossa, he could not be killed and so was instead sealed in an unknown tomb until the events of Nightfall freed him. Ultimately, in an attempt to stop Varesh Ossa from opening a gate to the Realm of Torment, you have to let Joko keep his freedom.
  • Abaddon was one of the human gods until he came to blows with them and was cast down. He and all of his followers were imprisoned in the Realm of Torment, including the Titans from the first game. Nightfall was the culmination of his efforts to break free from his bonds, though he was killed just before he could escape.
• In Guild Wars 2 Rytlock encountered a chained spirit deep in the Mists who offered him a favor in exchange for freedom. Rytlock agreed, not knowing that the spirit was in fact the fallen god Balthazar who proceeded to rampage across Tyria.
• In the Halo series, the bad guys accidentally release the Flood, a race of alien parasites that were sealed in special facilities all over the galaxy at the end of a cataclysmic war between them and the Forerunners 100,000 years ago. This war ended with the extinction of all sentient life in the galaxy, so it's a wonder why the Forerunners left little pockets of Flood spores for nosey aliens to stumble across. The AI monitor of one of these facilities comments on this (while you're in the middle of fending off a large wave of rotting space-zombies), saying that specimens were kept over after the last outbreak "for study," and remarks that "this decision may have been in error." No shit...
  • Done again in Halo 4 with the Didact, who is most likely the last living Forerunner, being accidentally released by the Master Chief.
• In Hollow Knight, you have the rare example of a Sealed Can inside of a Sealed Can (though they both aren't doing a good job of staying truly sealed). Early in the game, you discover the Black Egg Temple, a place later confirmed to be where the final boss is, but requiring you to vanquish three Dreamers to unlock it. As the game goes on, you can eventually discover that it is essentially a way of sealing off the Hollow Knight, who was a hollow vessel created to contain the Infection, and with it, the Radiance. The True Final Boss is contained within the Final Boss, which is contained within the temple.
• Coincidentally, Homeworld Cataclysm also involves a similar scenario. Somewhere around a million years ago, the extragalactic exploration vessel Naggarok picked up a deadly technoorganic entity in hyperspace. Seeing no way to defeat it, the crew scuttled the engines, trapping the entity in deep space. However, they screwed up as the ship auto-launched az empty lifepod with a transmitter (and some Beast material) onboard. In the present, the Kiith Somtaaw mining ship Kuun-Lan finds the pod and opens it. Cue to a race with time to find both the Naggarok and the new Beast mothership and blow both to smithereens before the whole galaxy suffers a fate worse than death (ship crews aren't simply killed, they're broken down into biomass to function as a makeshift neural interface between ships and the Beast — and judging by the sound of it, it's not exactly painless).
  Bentusi: We will NOT be bound!
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: The sealed evil takes the form of an ancient Sith Lord, whom the game's big bad is naturally trying to resurrect, thinking she will be rewarded. The Sith Lord has other ideas.
• Throughout its history, Kingdom Rush had many examples of these, with varying levels of danger:
  • The original had Sarelgaz the Spider Queen, a gigantic arachnoid sealed in the deep caves of the mountains. After Vez'nan bites the dust, his remaining forces find those caves and open it in hopes of avenging their master, but end up controlled by her and fight the Linireans alongside her children.
  • In Frontiers we have Umbra, the God of shadows. It has been sealed a long time ago by people of Hammerhold, who put it in a crystal forged with Hammer of Ages and strengthened by magic. Lord Malagar, the Big Bad of the game and Vez'nan's most loyal follower, seeks to free the thing to gain it's power in an effort to bring an end to Linirea as revenge. He succeeds, but the thing kills him not too long after being freed and becomes the Final Boss.
  • Origins has Godieth, the Balrog. It was trapped in the depths of the caves until Dwarves decided to make a new shaft near where it laid, causing Godieth to awaken and corrupt them into Shadowspawns and other monstrosities.
  • Vengeance has the Winter Queen, the Winter incarnate. With her army of ice and stone elementals, she wanted to plunge the world into eternal coldness and night, but was sealed by Stormcloud Sorcerers whose temple you visit in first game. Years later, she's freed by the cannon fire from Vez'nan's campaign, forcing him to take action.
  • From the same game, Dragon King. A Water Dragon who wanted power and proclaimed himself a God of the sea, he was sealed by his own into a golden statue. After Vez'nan takes over Linirea, few who managed to flee stumble upon the statue and free the Dragon King in hopes of retaking Linirea with his help. Naturally, he only uses them in hopes of taking over himself.
• Orochi in The King of Fighters '97.
• King's Quest IV had Pandora's Box show up. Opening it killed Rosella. There was also that infamous lamp in King's Quest V. The Fan Sequel The Silver Lining hints that Pandora's Box will play a part in its plot.
• Kirby: Squeak Squad plays with this one a little. What started as a hunt for stolen strawberry shortcake leads to Dedede getting smacked down on false suspicions, Kirby chasing all over the world to get his snack back from the titular menace only for the chest allegedly supposed to hold the shortcake stolen away by Meta Knight, and when HE gets smacked down, the Squeaks grab the chest and let loose Dark Nebula. For such a simple protagonist, the plot for these can get quite complex, especially given Meta Knight grabbed the chest away just to prevent Dark Nebula from being released. The best part is that, through all of this, you get the feeling that Kirby is still being motivated only to retrieve the cake.
  • Possibly the only case in the Kirby series where opening the can isn't a case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero takes place in the Meta Knightmare Ultra mode of Kirby Super Star Ultra, where Meta Knight questions NOVA, a mechanical, wish granting comet, about an extremely powerful warrior named Galacta Knight who was sealed away because his powers were too great. Immediately after this, he orders NOVA to break the seal on this incredibly powerful evil just so he can kick its ass.
• Seems to be the case with the Kingdom of Sorrow in Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil. As it turns out, it was sealed away because no one wanted to remember sorrow, and the King of Sorrow tried to undo the seal so everyone could remember sorrow.
• Knight Bewitched 2: In the final dungeon, Hermes becomes a demon because he used the Vulcan Stone to free Lissandra from Lilith's master. Before he loses his sanity, he attempts to seal himself in another dimension, but the party follows him in and delivers a Mercy Kill.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, the ancient Rakatan species used "mind prisons," obelisks intended to capture and seal away the minds of condemned criminals for all time. In a side quest, the player has the option to open a "mysterious box" (read: mind prison) meant to be delivered to Motta the Hutt. Doing so causes the box to engulf the room in a flash of light, sucking the player in. He or she will later appear in a seemingly endless white void, save for a Rakatan prisoner that has been trapped there for God-knows how long. Apparently spending millennia in a blank subspace container gives one time to think, as the prisoner is not as evil as before and greets the player with serenity. Luckily, the prisoner knows a ritual that can free exactly one person and offers him or her a riddle contest for the winner's freedom.
• Legacy of the Wizard: The evil King dragon Keela was sealed away in a painting by the hero's grandfather. Signs that Keela is about to break the seal lead the Worzen family to explore a vast dungeon maze in order to retrieve several magic items required to slay Keela before the evil dragon breaks free.
• The Legend of Kyrandia III: Malcolm's Revenge has the player play as a Sealed Evil in a Can, who is rather dismayed to discover that being unsealed does not include getting his awesome magical powers of doom back, leaving him running around with no powers in a fantasy kingdom where everyone hates his guts.
• In The Legend of Zelda:
  • Ganon is often a sealed evil. Link must either re-seal him or stop him from fully unsealing himself or his power. The first time he is actually sealed away takes place at the end of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
  • Vaati, the baddie from the The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords games. In The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, he starts wrecking havoc as a sorcerer and breaks the seal on the monsters in by destroying the Picori Sword at the beginning of the game. He himself gets sealed for the first time at the end of the game.
  • And there was also Bongo Bongo, the Evil Shadow Spirit from Ocarina of Time that was sealed in the Bottom of the Well.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Agahnim works to break the seal of the sages. Doing so will unleash evil power across Hyrule.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks features demon king Malladus, who tyranized the land that would one day become New-Hyrule when Tetra and Link arrived. He was sealed by the ancient Lokomo spirits underneath vast chains that eventually developed into a railway-system.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Death Sword is found as an inert blade, imprisoned in the depths of the Arbiter's Grounds and bound with ropes festooned with magic seals. He only returns to life when these bindings are cut off.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The God of Evil Demise was sealed by the goddess Hylia. His servant Ghirahim, who is actually Demise's sword, seeks to free him and succeeds. In the end, Link seals away Demise again within the newly forged Master Sword.
  • Hyrule Warriors: The legendary hero separated the evil force — Ganondorf — into four pieces, sealed one in the temple of the Master Sword, and sent the other three into the depths of space-time.
• Lightning Legend: Daigo no Daibouken has Dragless, a legendary and all-powerful Demon King who rampaged through the Kingdom of Japone 450 years before the story's proper, destroying everything on his way. He ultimately was defeated and sealed away in the deepest ends of Mt. Ohsore by the young hero Taikei Raioh, but by the start of the game he has finally freed himself, and it's now up to the descendant of Taikei, Daigo, to defeat him for good.
• In the LucasArts computer game LOOM, Bishop Mandible unleashes Chaos by ripping open the fabric of the universe near a graveyard.
• Luck be a Landlord: In-universe, the Frozen Fossil symbol. It takes 20 turns to thaw, less if you've destroyed or removed a Hex, Witch, or Cultist. Once it thaws, it turns into the Eldritch Creature symbol, which is hardly destructive to your run but heralds pain for your Cultists and Witches.
• Happens in LittleBigPlanet 3 literally with the Titans, who were stuffed into a tea tin.
• In Luigi's Mansion, major ghosts that Luigi encountered were once imprisoned inside portraits, but were released by King Boo once E. Gadd captured Boolossus. Eventually, they are recaptured by Luigi and put back in their portraits, including King Boo himself... although in the next game he has apparently been released to fight Mario. He is killed this time and the next time he is fought (in this case by Peach).
• The Soulless Gods of Lusternia. Originally a host of thousands of abominations, they're whittled down to a mere five before The Elder Gods fled to the Void. Rendered Load-Bearing Bosses by devouring whole sections of reality, they're eventually sealed away by the Council of the Nine. Unfortunately, the cans in question are legendarily insecure — one of the five breaks out like clockwork every thirty years.
• The world of The Magic Candle was narrowly saved from the immortal demon lord Dreax when a few heroes managed to trap him in a candle flame. Keeping him there is the daily task of 44 mages... who have just disappeared. The seal is now critically weakened, leaving the player a set number of days to find out how to fix it.
  • Somewhat unique in that the point of the game is to reactivate the seal, not simply to grind yourself to the point where you can just kill the damn thing (because doing so is impossible, at least by the terms of the game world).
• Parodied in Makai Kingdom as Zetta seals himself in a book after he destroys his own netherworld. Hijinks happen as he tries to get his body back.
• Marathon Infinity starts out with a grim message from Durandal about the W'rkcacnter getting loose from Lh'owon's sun, due to the Pfhor using the trih xeem on it. The W'rkcacnter cannot be fought directly, and is only defeated by the player jumping between different places and timelines, before the player reaches a Jjaro space station that is able to turn the sun into a black hole, thus trapping W'rk before it (them?) escapes.
• The Dark Star from Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. It was imprisoned in Toad Tunnels until it is released by Fawful. Its core is destroyed by the Mario Bros. and its main form is killed by Bowser.
  • At the end of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, it is revealed that Princess Peach seals Elder Princess Shroob, the leader of the Shroobs, inside the Cobalt Star. When the star is pieced back together, she is released, and fights the Mario Bros. She is defeated, and eventually killed when she possesses Bowser and the Mario Bros. trick him into hitting her with his fireballs while aiming for them.
  • Antasma in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. About a thousand years ago, he was sealed away in the Dream World by the Pi'illo people, who ended up getting turned to stone by his last act. And then, when everyone finds out Luigi can open Dream Portals by sleeping... he manages to capture Princess Peach, and then escape back to the real world just a short while later. Guess that can was ludicrously ineffective then...
• The Reapers in Mass Effect actually seal themselves after their habitual galactic genocides in order to conserve energy. The only hand the Protheans had in dealing with them was tampering with the Citadel's mass relay after they'd already receded so that they couldn't get back out so easily.
  • The DLC "The Arrival" reveals that the Reapers left themselves another way in. A special mass relay at the edge of the galaxy that can access any other relay anywhere.
  • In Mass Effect 3, are revealed to be more like Sealed Well-Intentioned Extremist in a Can. Their true goal is to preserve organic life in the long run by "resetting" civilization to prevent the Robot War that their creator the Catalyst believes is inevitable.
• The Antarans from Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares. They are an ancient and powerful race who were banished to another dimension by the Orion Empire. However, they learned how to break out of their prison and were able to warp raiding parties to attack colonized worlds while preventing others from invading their prison-turned-stronghold. Nice job breaking it, Orion.
• The Shadow Demons in MediEvil were sealed in the heart of the Enchanted Forest under an iron dome, locked with the Shadow Artifact. In order to get through the forest and to his next destination, Sir Dan Fortesque is forced to free them; he later makes up for it by trapping them in an abandoned castle and dropping it into lava, destroying them.
• Maverick Zero of Mega Man X, with The Virus originally coming from him. He spends the rest of his life/lives atoning for it.
  • The "can" in question is in itself a Sealed Evil, although, becoming a hero, this was obviously subverted.
• A Mess O Trouble (a Mac WorldBuilder shareware Adventure Game) has two godlike creatures trapped inside time dilation bubbles in some ruins. You know from local historians (and abominations lying around in the ruins) that their civilization was practically constructed by a good creature and then fooled into nearly destroying itself by a bad creature. One is a beautiful Energy Being, the other a dull-looking lizard man. Guess which is which?
• Metroid:
  • The titular creature from the first Metroid Prime game was sealed within the impact crater. In the original version, the Space Pirates managed to free it by digging under the seal, although it later escaped from them and returned to the crater, and you have to open the seal to fight it. In the European release/Player's Choise version, it was never released.
  • In Metroid Prime: Hunters, "the ultimate power" broadcast in a telepathic message throughout the galaxy is actually the sealed evil Gorea, originally a Giant Space Flea run amok and the presumed source of the message. This is one of the few cases where the good (the Alimbics) weren't strong enough to kill the evil, just entangle its energy with theirs in the Seal Sphere and hide it in a pocket dimension. You arrive at the Seal Sphere only to see the other Hunters pounding away at it like idiots. They break it open, then stare as the core of the Seal Sphere (the Alimbics' energies) is snatched by Gorea, who proceeds to impale all of them with tentacles from the Sphere and steal their energies (weapons). You saw this coming, or at least you WOULD if you've scanned at least 25% of the Alimbic lore hanging around the place... Anyway, this leaves you to clean up the mess (kick Gorea's ass).
  • In Metroid Dread, the surviving X-Parasites are sealed within Elun on Planet ZDR. But one of them seems to have escaped, and a video showing this is what drives Samus to go to ZDR to investigate the potential threat to the galaxy. They are then released by Raven Beak halfway through the game and proceed to completely destroy ZDR's ecosystem, taking over every single lifeform in a matter of minutes.
• In the Mortal Kombat series, the fallen elder god Shinnok is sealed in the Netherworld. The Realms themselves are actually the Can keeping the One Being sealed. Merging them would allow the One Being to return, which is why the elder gods resist any attempt at unification.
  • Ermac gets this as well, thanks to Shao Kahn's soul being part of Ermac.
• Speaking of Bungie, the main plot of Myth: The Fallen Lords is this, and it's reanimating corpses and whatnot. After you all but lose the war, you manage to kill it.
  • A more literal example is The Watcher, a powerful Lich who was imprisoned in a cave by a charm on his hand that would turn him to stone if he tried to leave. Ultimately, he chose to cut that hand off. He finally met his doom when an arrow was fashioned from the bone of the hand that was left behind and turned him to stone after striking him.
  • They also smashed his stone form into rubble just to be sure.
• The demon of the first Ninja Gaiden game, and the Archfiend of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Malachi, a Vampire Lord of great power and pure evil, was sealed inside a magic Tomb underneath the Castle centuries ago. The Count's objective is to release him.
• In Okage: Shadow King, King Stan has been (purportedly) stuck in a bottle for the last 300 years, waiting for someone wimpy enough to let them possess his shadow. Additionally, while he was stuck in the bottle, a number of monsters stole portions of his evil power and became "Fake Evil Kings". He then drags the main character around to defeat them and get his powers back so he can take over the world.
• Orochi in Ōkami is a definite example. 100 years before the game begins, Nagi and Shiranui sealed Orochi in the Moon Cave using the blade that defeated the monster. That sword is later removed, awakening Amaterasu (Shiranui's avatar), and unleashing Orochi once again.
• In what is possibly the worst-sealed can ever, Pac-Man. He kills the ghost, sealing it in the little box in the center of the screen. Three minutes later, it escapes again, and poor Pac must kill it over again. Perhaps he'd have better luck if he gave his little ghostbox a lid.
• Paper Mario:
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the plan of the antagonists is to summon the Shadow Queen, who can only be summoned into a princess (read: Peach). Upon release, the Queen promptly reduces the head of the antagonists to, well, a head, and plans to conquer. Unluckily for her, Mario arrived at the same time.
    • On the other hand, she recognizes Mario's strength and offers him to work for her. The player is given a Yes or No choice, while the former leads to an instant Nonstandard Game Over.
    • The Black Chests are a lesser case of this. The "curses" they inflict upon Mario are actually useful abilities. Justified in that the inhabitants of the chests are the former heroes who defeated the Shadow Queen 1,000 years ago.
  • In Super Paper Mario, Bonechill, a fallen Nimbi, was held in the area of the Underwhere in which the dead villains suffer for eternity among the game overed. He escapes due to an earthquake (often speculated to be the work of the Big Bad, Count Bleck, who is known to be a dimension traveler) and wreaks havoc in the Overthere. Mario, Peach, Bowser, and Luigi fight him and easily destroy him.
  • In Paper Mario: Color Splash, the Black Paint begins as this, the bloblike Eldritch Abomination separated into primary and secondary colors and contained within Prisma Fountain, albeit left out in the open. Bowser, wanting to use the paint to decorate his shell, finds the fountain and mixes the paints together, reviving the Black Paint. It's defeated when it gets itself sealed again—though in an even more literal way, as Huey, a sentient and talking tin can, sucks in all of the Black Paint into himself.
• In Pathways into Darkness, the Marathon games predecessor, a modern-day Special Forces team must prevent a W'rkcacnter from escaping from its can.
• The Snow Queen Mask in Persona is definitely one. It's kept in a gym storage room, in a box sealed with MAGIC TALISMANS, and after going on That One Sidequest in which everyone warns you about the horrible past of said mask, you can just decide to open the box like nobody's business and walk off with it completely unpunished.
• In Persona 3, the "sealed evil" is Nyx, a Cosmic Horror and Anthropomorphic Personification of death — while the "can" just so happens to be the main character.
  • In Persona 3: FES, we find out that said main character has become the seal. And it's in place not to seal Nyx from attacking Earth. It's for sealing Earth from summoning Nyx itself.
• The demon in Phantasmagoria.
• The Dark One of SRMTHFG has nothing on the Profound Darkness in Phantasy Star IV; the Precursors sealed it with a solar system.
• In Phantasy Star II and III, you find the big bad end boss Dark Force/Dark Falz/Dark Phallus (depending on translation) in a literal Pandora's Box in the final dungeon.
  • In IV, it's revealed that the Profound Darkness is one of these, and it has been creating Dark Force/Falz/Phallus for thousands of years (there's a thousand-year gap between I and II, and between II and IV). The seal on the Profound Darkness is the entire Algo solar system.
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, you learn early on that Dark Falz (one of its incarnations, at least) was sealed beneath the surface of the planet Naberius a few decades before the game's story takes place. Unsurprisingly, it ends up being released sooner or later.
• Phantom Brave features an example as the main antagonist, the demon Sulfur. Rather than the usual thousands of years of imprisonment though Sulfur is capable of coming back every 30 years, and during his imprisonment can extend enough influence into the world to wreak havoc.
• In Planescape: Torment, the literal Sealed-Evil-In-A-Box. Also, the Monster Jug (which you can buy at a shop and open, should you feel like it).
• In Planet 404, the titular planet contains an evil crystal that has the power to destroy the galaxy.
• Pokémon:
  • There exists an entire species of them, the Spiritomb. Sure, sealing 108 souls into a single keystone makes economic sense, but by the time they get out, they've merged into a single, massively pissed off Pokémon whose Ghost-Dark typing means it has no natural weaknesses (prior to getting a Fairy-type weakness in Gen VI anyway), and is pretty powerful to boot. You can catch one, though to unseal it so you can fight it takes a somewhat occluded Side Quest, and the place you release them is a bit intentionally creepy. Spiritomb could actually be Sealed Army in a Can, due to its composition being 108 individual spirits that just happened to fuse together.
  • Satanic Archetype Giratina was imprisoned in the Distortion World millennia ago for being a rampaging monster. He's chilled out since then, though. Except for that one time.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduced the Ruinous Pokémon, four legendary Pokémon brought to Paldea from their world's equivalent of China centuries ago that went on a destructive rampage and were sealed away in shrines scattered across the region ever since. The Player Character is tasked by their history teacher to uncover the truth behind the legends by unsealing their shrines and capturing them.
• In [PROTOTYPE], Elizabeth Greene, the host of the Redlight Virus is sealed in the Genetek building. Badly. The protagonist might also count as a Sealed Evil In A Can, although in this case it's more like Sealed Evil in a Vial.
• Quest for Glory is fond of this one. In fact, every game following So You Want to Be a Hero centers around such a plot.
  • Toward the end of Trial by Fire, it is revealed that Ad Avis is trying to summon Iblis, a powerful and evil djinn with the intent of using him to further increase his power. However, Ad Avis doesn’t understand that releasing Iblis will result in him destroying the entire world.
  • In Wages of War, the Demon Sorcerer attempts to free the Demon Lord. (If he succeeds, the Demon Lord's first act is to cast Thermonuclear Blast on the immediate area. As it turns out, this is a legitimate spell, and can be learned in the fifth game.)
  • In a minor twist, in Shadows of Darkness, Avoozl, the Dark One, wasn't quite sealed properly, and the surrounding countryside has suffered for it. Even as the two antagonists (one new, one old) try to release it, it is only through their actions that it can be put away for good.
  • Dragon Fire has a twist of its own — there is a villain working behind the scenes and trying to unleash the Dragon of Doom, but by this point in the series, the hero (under extenuating circumstances) has become strong enough at this point to just kill the thing.
• The Tyrant in Resident Evil, which is released by Wesker near the end of the game. In the bad ending, it escapes from the facility.
• In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, an experiment with the Veronica virus on Alexander Ashford mutated him into a grotesque monster codenamed Nosferatu, who is imprisoned in Umbrella's Antarctic base until our heroes arrive. Alexia also counts somewhat.
• In Resident Evil 4, the parasitic Las Plagas were sealed away for eight generations before the start of the game.
• Heinrich I, in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Doubly so, given what he does to Blavatsky. Earlier in the game, there's Olaric, who is accidentally unleashed by Helga von Bulow when she tries to take the Dagger of Warding.
• Return to Krondor presents the Dark God as this. The Dark God does not get released, but the ending makes it clear that the person trying to unseal it has not given up.
• In Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, the god Saruin was sealed away via the Fatestones; naturally, his minions are trying to 'correct' this. However, an even better example is the Jewel Beast: a monster poised to destroy a whole country if awakened. Even if the player manages to delay its awakening — no easy feat by itself, given the precise timing and difficult sequence of events that involves — they can't stop it unless they enter its lair while it's still sleeping. It's one of the harder fights in the game.
• In Rune Factory 2, mysterious earthquakes start happening about a third of the way into the game. Eventually, the main character's child finds these are being caused by a Sealed Evil in a Can which is about to escape and destroy the world.
• RuneScape: The devastating Zarosian creature Nex (Latin for "violent death") has been sealed into an enchanted, frozen sleep by the armies of Saradomin. Sliske tricked a band of peace-seeking Saradominists into performing a ritual they thought would wake Guthix from his slumber, but instead released Nex.
• The Dragon of Ryzom is currently (as far as we know) asleep in the Prime Roots. It's responsible for creating The Goo and is only sleeping because the Karavan stopped its rampage (or so they say). As such, their policy with it is to put up a sign that says "DO NOT TOUCH" in bright, mile-high neon letters to deter anyone from getting too close and waking it up, something they believe will bring about The End of the World as We Know It. The Fyros are currently ignoring that sign, if their goal of killing the beast is any indicator; and doing that, while a seemingly noble goal, is what caused the Great Swarming of Kitin in the Backstory.
• Sacred Earth - Alternative: As each Envoy boss is defeated, Konoe regains some of her memories and a mysterious being in the final dungeon is slowly unsealed. This being turns out to be the original Konoe, who is responsible for the world becoming a husk.
• The Secret World features quite a few villains who've ended up imprisoned in weird and eldritch locations throughout the world: arguably the simplest of them is Janos Dragosani, an ancient vampire sealed in a custom-made sarcophagus deep within the ruins of a derelict Soviet bunker. Having been captured by the Red Hand, he was intended to be used as part of a Soviet experiment to create immortal cosmonauts; unfortunately, Dragosani was too powerful to be experimented on or killed, and the whole thing ended with the base being abandoned with the vampire still inside. If you're tough enough to dare, you can open his sarcophagus and try to kill him.
  • The Red Hand ended up creating way too many these for its own good: whenever an experiment blew up in their face, their first approach was to seal the bunker responsible and leave the subjects inside to rot. In the case of Facility 9, this left Halina Ilyushin trapped next-door to a wellspring of Filth, allowing her to spend the next few decades infusing herself with it until she started making attempts to break out in 2012. In the case of Facility 10 AKA "The Slaughterhouse," the Red Hand didn't even bother to check if the bunker was properly shut down before they welded the doors shut: as it turns out, the facility was completely self-sustaining, and locking the place up just gave the vampire scientists the time and privacy they needed to build an army.
  • Pharaoh Akhenaten has spent the last few thousand years imprisoned inside the Black Pyramid at the heart of the City of the Sun God. In order to keep him from ever returning and bringing Aten with him, seven Sentinels were built to watch over the Pyramid, empowered by the sacrifice of the builder's children: together, the Living Statues keep the Black Pharaoh suppressed in a deathly slumber through their magic song and ensure that his followers can never find the valley where the city's been hidden. Needless to say, the action of the Egypt arc is kicked off by the song of the Sentinels failing.
  • Another one in Egypt: the Unbound, the first and greatest of the Jinn. Unfortunately, it was too powerful for its creators among the Host to control; even the Dreamers couldn't corrupt him to their service. However, when they failed, King Solomon succeeded and imprisoned the Unbound in a 3rd-age artifact, concealing it beneath the Black Pyramid. Appropriately enough, the Atenists ended up accidentally breaching the shields around the prison.
  • And of course, the most prominent and the most powerful of all sealed evils in the game are the Dreamers, a gathering of godlike monsters sealed beyond our reality by the power of the Gaia Engines. Throughout the game, you're given options on whether to reinforce their restraints or succumb to their temptations and help them in their attempts to escape.
• Averted and parodied in Septerra Core. The game's intro movie and backstory tell about a great battle in which Marduk (the world's Crystal Dragon Jesus) defeated Gemma (the local Satan equivalent). In most RPGs, at some point towards the end Gemma would be resurrected and become the final boss. The main character even speculates that this is going to happen after hearing the tale about the battle between Marduk and Gemma. In response, the mentor remarks that such a plot twist would be rather silly, and only happens in stories. Sure enough, Gemma never comes back, and the final boss of the game is the character who's been the main villain from start to finish, the Knight Templar Evil Overlord Lord Doskias.
• In Shadow of the Colossus, except there are sixteen cans wandering throughout the area. Most notable with the final Colossus though. Besides having a name that literially means 'evil' in Latin, the only possible way you can reach it is to have killed all fifteen other Colossi ingame. Might also apply to Dormin as well, if you're part of the group that thinks They really are evil.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse has the Pirate Master, a great evil from the past who was sealed in a lonely grave on a small island after all the full genies of the world performed a Heroic Sacrifice. Unfortunately, he was unexpectedly revived when a new source of Dark Magic suddenly appeared before the start of the game.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV has the Kagome Tower prisoners — three of the Four Archangels. It's scripted to continue. And, unfortunately, soon you'll probably wish you just had left them there to rot.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has the Demiurge, a monstrously powerful shard of God, imprisoned in the depths of Sector Grus. Unfortunately, said shard doesn't hold much of God's mind — it only has His Ax-Crazy, Knight Templar nature. After defeating and placating the entity, it may join you (only in the Law Path), chide you and threaten you with destruction for not following the same ideals, or it can be shoved back in its can even worse than before by simply switching off the visor.
• Seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme in the Shining Series. Evil guys try to unseal something worse;
  • In Shining Force, Darksol's evil plan is to unseal Dark Dragon.
  • In Shining Force II, evil Zeon is accidentally released by the good thief Slade who steals the crystals sealing him.
  • Shining Force III's overall plot is about a secret cult reactivating ancient weapons to create enough chaos to allow the Vandals to return.
  • Shining the Holy Ark is all about how a group of low powered Vandals want to release one of the most powerful Vandals ever; so he can recreate the 1000 Year Kingdom.
  • Shining Soul sees you seal away Dark Dragon for at least 1000 years.
  • In Shining Resonance, it's the goal of the Sanguine Church to unseal Deus, the god who wrecked the world in the Catastrophe and the World Dragons sacrificed themselves to seal "beyond time" thousands of years ago.
• Shivers (1995) has the Ixupi, ancient soul-sucking Mayincatec demons who were sealed into pots with talismans. Millennia later, an itinerant archaeologist digs them up and puts them in a museum. Then two kids sneak in the museum and break them open.
• In Shuyan Saga, an evil spirit called the Python is sealed away in a now-ruined temple. It attracts cultists by promising power if it is released — and one of the people who answers is Jade, who thinks that freeing the spirit will give her enough power to fight Ganbaatar (and who is probably angry that the "useless" Shuyan already has a spirit). In reality, of course, the Python is just going to possess anyone who performs the rituals.
• Sonic The Hedgehog:
  • Sonic Adventure has Chaos, a water monster who was sealed inside the Master Emerald in ancient times, until Eggman shattered it to him as part of his latest scheme. Ultimately subverted, as Chaos isn't evil, just really pissed.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) has the sun god Solaris, forcibly split into two separate forms due to an experiment acted upon it: Iblis and Mephiles. Princess Elise served as Iblis' can, with her control over her sorrow being the lid — if she cries, the can is opened and Iblis is unleashed upon the world once more. Somewhere else, Mephiles is sealed away in the Scepter of Darkness until an encounter with Eggman shatters it.
  • Sonic Unleashed has Dark Gaia, who was sealed within the planet by his light counterpart a.k.a. Chip in a neverending cycle of planetary death and rebirth. Eggman cracking open the planet to let it out long before the appointed time causes Dark Gaia to shatter apart into the monsters that plague the world and amplify the negative emotions of the people at night. Eggman eventually succeeds in recombining enough of the monsters to revive Dark Gaia properly, and ultimately it's resealed within the core alongside Chip once more.
  • By the end of Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic does this to contain Erazor Djinn, using his own magic lamp against him.
  • In Sonic Frontiers, the game's big bad and the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire franchise The End, It's an Eldritch Abomination that it has been sealed on the island archipelago by the Ancients with the help of the Chaos Emeralds. However, it breaks free when Sonic is tricked into setting The End loose.
• Gig from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters starts the game as an example of this... and in a subversion of this trope, unless you actively start asking for his 'help', he's rather harmless, if a bit foul-mouthed.
• In Spider-Man (PS4) one of the collectible backpacks contains a vial of sand that turns out to be Sandman himself. Peter wonders aloud if opening it would set him free, adding that he's in no hurry to find out. It's unclear whether Sandman was conscious while being trapped in the vial for all those years.
• Spirit Hunter: NG: As revealed in the tale of Nagoshi no Gi, Kakuya is an ancient evil doll that was sealed away inside a mirror via a ceremonial rite. However, one of the spiritualists in charge of sealing her lost his powers, causing the seal to weaken and Kakuya to slip through into the world again.
• The Legend of Spyro:
  • Malefor, the Dark Master, was born as a purple dragon, like Spyro, some countless generations ago. He was taught how to master the elements, but kept gaining more power, resulting in the Elders banishing him to exile. He took on the title of the Dark Master, where his malice was so great that it split the Earth, creating the Mountain of Malefor, also known as the Well of Souls, where he was imprisoned. In A New Beginning, he sends out Cynder to open the convexity portal to free his soul, which she succeeds in, although Spyro frees Cynder from his control, causing the portal to implode. In The Eternal Night, Gaul uses the lunar eclipse of the two moons, which causes absolute darkness for a short while, to seemingly resurrect Malefor. However, it's revealed by Malefor in Dawn of the Dragon that this was merely all a ruse to get another person to free him to the Well of Souls — Spyro himself.
  • The Destroyer's sole purpose for existing is to destroy the world, but it slept below a volcano until Malefor awakened. This is a rare case of one Sealed Evil in a Can freeing another.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: You can't take two steps without encountering some ancient Eldritch Abomination or terrible Sith Lord locked away for anywhere between decades to millennia, several being canned by the Rakata. There's the Imprisoned One on Tatooine, the Esh-Kha and World Razer on Belsavis, Tulak Hord's manservant Khem Val on Korriban, Sel-Makor on Voss, the Dread Masters, Darth Revan in a secret Imperial prison, the list goes on.
• In Stellaris, players and AI empires can build a "global pacifier" superweapon that creates an impenetrable barrier around planets while leaving the surface unharmed, which can seal warlike and/or dangerous species off from the rest of the universe without killing them.
  • The Grey Tempest are a bunch of rouge nanobots that seek to destroy anything not themselves. Fortunetly they are sealed away in the L-Cluster behind L-Gates. Unfortunetly, anyone can unlock the L-Gates for the Grey Tempest.
  • One anomaly event involves finding a shielded planet in which the inhabitants appear to be caught in a time loop. If you successfully take down the shield and break the loop, you may unleash the Prikkiki-Ti, a race of fanatical purifiers.
• Big Bad of Super Robot Wars K, Lu Cobol was defeated by the Crusian. They decide to hid Lu Cobol's fragments in planets across galaxy. 2,000 years has pass and now bodiless Lu Cobol seek to reform itself, by destroy whatever planet that hold its fragments.
• Dhaos, the villain of Tales of Phantasia, was sealed away by the protagonist's parents, but was released early on in the game by a minor villain he had been manipulating.
• Metatronius of Tears to Tiara 2 has been sealed away by the elves during their war against heaven a thousand years ago. Now it has possessed Big Bad Abraxas to break the seal and continue its original mission.
• Ogre, Jinpachi, and Azazel of the Tekken games.
• Every game in the main Tengai Makyou series.
  • Ziria has the Daimon Cult trying to revive Masakado.
  • Manjimaru has the Root Clan trying to revive Yomi.
  • Fuun Kabuki Den has the Daimon Cult trying to revive Garp.
  • Fourth Apocalpyse has the Dark Society trying to revive their Absolute God.
• In Tomb Raider I and the remake, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Natla was locked in limbo for thousands of years after using her powers for evil.
• Tomba! has the titular main character being given the task of sealing away seven Evil Pigs (eight including "The Real Evil Pig" who is their leader behind the scenes) in color-coordinated "Evil Pig Bags".
• In the Touhou Project game Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom the evil cherry tree, the Saigyou Ayakashi, is sealed up by the dead body of Yuyuko Saigyouji. At the same time, the tree seals her, preventing her from reincarnating, so she wanders as a ghost. In a weird twist, Yuyuko eventually forgets her life as a human, up to and including why she died or who is sealed beneath the Saigyou Ayakashi. This leads to her trying to undo the seal that she placed in the first place, because she forgot she did it.
  • The player characters in Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object think that the incident is releasing one of these, however Byakuren is very much a Sealed Good in a Can.
  • From the perspective of the Buddhists, the Taoists in Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires are this, what with that whole religious war thing. As usual for Touhou they aren't evil, but neither are they particularly good.
  • In the fandom, a wildly accepted Epileptic Tree is that Rumia is this to herself; that the Ofuda in her hair, that she cannot touch, is actually a Restraining Bolt that holds back her Superpowered Evil Side, in the process turning her into a mostly harmless idiot.
• Turok 2: the objective is to stop the Cosmic Horror Primagen from being unsealed from his can.
• In Valis II, Cruel King Megas had been sealed away long ago, but was released when rebels battling the forces of the fallen Lord Rogles broke the seal and opened the Forbidden Door. The result was to turn Vecanty into Hell on Earth.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines features a memorable subversion — the MacGuffin of the game is a sarcophagus that supposedly contains an Antediluvian (very old, very powerful vampire). Everyone is trying to make a move for the sarcophagus, partially because the presence of such a thing might be a herald of Gehenna — but also because a low-generation vampire represents a massive power grab for anyone willing to commit diablerie (the consumption of another vampire's soul). Well, the Prince has been pushing you around all game in an attempt to claim the sarcophagus, and when it's finally opened... the only thing he finds is a lot of C4. And a note from the guy who set the whole thing in motion. Boom.
• Illidan Stormrage in Warcraft III, another Blizzard production, is imprisoned in a cage for 10,000 years for continuing to research arcane magic after the night elves had banned its use. Also a subversion in that Illidan is not evil at the time of his imprisonment, but has become obsessed with power and revenge by the time he is freed.
  • Maybe Illidan wasn't evil, but he did kill people with a handwave who tried to stop him from corrupting a lake with the Well's water.
  • In a continuation of this universe, a majority of raid bosses in World of Warcraft are sealed evils. The quests to kill them generally go something like Go beat up these mildly bad dudes who have this Big Ancient Evil imprisoned, so that you can kill him too. One wonders why the player doesn't just say But, they're doing a fine job keeping him imprisoned! What happens if I manage to kill them but the Big Ancient Evil kills me? A variation goes Go beat up these mildly bad dudes who are trying to unseal this Big Ancient Evil before they succeed, then kill the half-unsealed form of the Big Ancient Evil, which makes a little more sense.
  • Warcraft's universe also has the Old Gods, very similar to Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, sealed beneath the world and waiting to be freed. For the longest time, it was a total mystery why the god-esque Titans didn't just kill them all, considering they'd managed to off one. Recently it was revealed that the Old Gods are parasites who have bonded with the planet of Azeroth so that killing them will cause untold damage to it. And yet, the players continue killing them for loot...
  • The fourth expansion to World of Warcraft (Cataclysm) involves the unleashing of Deathwing, the Earth Dragon who was slowly driven insane by the Old Gods and imprisoned in Deepholme, the elemental plane of earth. His emergence not only blows up parts of the world, but also opens up the elemental planes, which are full of Sealed Evil in a Can, including the elementals themselves (locked up because they were tearing the world apart with their wars)
  • The Mists of Pandaria expansion features the sha — beings of pure hatred and other negative emotions — as this. It later emerges that an artifact called the Divine Bell has the ability to control the sha, and Horde Warchief Garrosh Hellscream orders it stolen in an attempt to make super-soldiers with it. It misfires when the sha ends up controlling its test subjects instead of the other way round, and have to be slaughtered by adventurers. The sha are eventually revealed to be fragments of a slain Old God whose still-living heart is removed from a Titan prison and used by Garrosh in another attempt to empower his loyal orcs.
• Warframe: The Sentient Hunhow. His can was underwater on Uranus, right up until Tyl Regor broke through his tomb and released him. He is so scary that the Lotus goes to ground when she learns he's being freed in the "Natah" quest. And for good reason. Turns out that he is the Lotus' father, and he is trying to finish her mission to destroy the Tenno. While most of his body remains trapped, he ends up as a greatsword used by the Stalker. Even in that state, he is still the most dangerous foe the Tenno have faced.
• The Wario Land series and other Wario games have had a few cases of this:
  • Wario Land 3 has Wario spend half the game trying to 'help' a mysterious figure trapped in the music box, who turns out to be Rudy the Clown who was manipulating Wario into releasing him from his prison for the entire game, and then tries to take over the world and turns on Wario when he's free again for the final boss battle.
  • Similarly, inverted with the Golden Pyramid in Wario Land 4, given that the Golden Diva was sleeping within it after she cursed Princess Shokora and stole the treasures from the pyramid for herself.
  • Wario World had him accidentally unleash the sealed evil in a can at the very beginning, a.k.a. the Black Jewel, which was taken from some kind of treasure chest by Wario and his obsession with treasure, and that then turned his entire castle into a parallel dimension of sorts and what not.
  • Terrormisu (alias Tiaramisu) in Wario: Master of Disguise, the ancient demon who brought ruin to Poobah the Pharaoh's Kingdom and was later sealed by Cannoli the First inside the Wishstone that Wario was trying to piece together.
• Daglathor in Warriors of Might and Magic is sealed inside a dungeon in the heart of a mountain. And the mechanism to avoid his eventual escape is found... inside his prison.
  • Might and Magic VI has a rather mundane evil — Archibald Ironfist, the losing contender in the Succession War shown in Heroes of Might and Magic II. The thing is that while he is evil and a powerful mage, it is nothing earth-shaking, he was simply an ambitious tyrant that also happened to be a decently powerful (and knowledgeable) mage. The only reason he is sealed instead of dead is that when he lost the War of Succession his brother sentenced him to be Taken for Granite "for some future generation to take mercy upon". Your characters release him around a decade later — deliberately, as he is the only one around that knows a specific ritual you need to use to avoid the world blowing up when you save it. The ending, in a stinger, has him gloat about being free to scheme again, but by the time VII ends he has helped save his brother, more-or-less reconciled with him, and settled in in a fortified laboratory to do magical research in peace.
  • Might and Magic VII has a rather simplistic sealing liable to be done by the player characters: the medusa crawling around in the sub-level of an abandoned mine have developed an immunity to magic. As a class promotion quest, you get sent to sabotage the elevator to keep them down there.
• Mother from Wild ARMs was sealed away in three Guardian statues to prevent her from destroying the world. (This reappears in Million Memories but she's sealed away in four elemental stones instead.)
• Witch Hunter Izana: After doing a short side quest, you will find yourself beneath the local noble's villa. There you are on in an island surrounded by featureless grey static and with no visible ceiling. The only item of note is a small empty altar. Touching it of course unleashes an eldritch abomination that must be sealed away again.
• In A Witch's Tale, the Eld Witch was a wicked creature sealed away by Queen Alice. The heroine, Liddell, accidentally sets her free.
• In Wizardry IV, the player controls the villain Werdna, who has been sealed at the bottom of a dungeon, and most of the game is spent trying to escape. Unless you have absolute knowledge of how the game works, you're not going to get past the first room. The heroes were thorough in making sure you don't escape.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Zanza splits himself into two cans: the Monado and Shulk. Once he's built up enough power, he emerges from Shulk's body and absconds with the Monado, rendering him lifeless for a short period.
• Almost all games in the Ys series use this trope, e.g. Darm in I and II (who was originally Cain Fact who fused with the black pearl then sealed in Ys Origin), Galbalan in III and its remake, the Ancient City and Arem in IV, the lost city of Kefin and its de facto ruler, Jabir, in V, and the Ark of Napishtim in VI.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, Reshef is an ancient Egyptian sealed evil in a can. He's re-sealed in the ending.
• In Yuletide Legends: The Brothers Claus, Santa's evil brother Varyk was trapped in a snowglobe for 500 years before tricking Tinsel the elf into setting him free.

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