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"except that once Hulk has a hold of Mjolnir, it promptly makes a U-turn and races back to thor even though he hadn't recalled it yet."
Are you sure it's not the CG guy/animator botching things?
We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza
Mjolnir's been shown for decades to have some degree of self-awareness and ability to act without a wielder in times of emergency.
I believe the trope you're looking for is It Can Think.
4tell0life4: No, it's not a mistake. It's clearly shown that there's a few-minute buffer between Mjolnir turning around, and Thor calling it.
BattleMaster: It actually depends on the writer. In The Dark World, when Thor falls into a Convergence portal sans-hammer, it immediately goes supersonic, then promptly achieves re-entry speed as it ascends into orbit, as opposed to seeking out Thor's last known location and flying into the portal after him. Suggesting that it isn't smart enough to know what teleportation is. In my setup, it's practically smart enough to be it's own character.
- Also, I don't think ICT is the right trope, as it appears to focus on evil creatures as opposed to inanimate (albeit enchanted) objects.
It seems to me a sister trope of Nearly Normal Animal: something that is animate but normally with simple behaviours, which at times implies an unspoken intelligence.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
Pretty sure we have "objects with sentience" trope somewhere.
We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza
We might, Seems like the right concept. Though I must point out the difference between sentient objects that are basically humans in terms of "Living vs Dead" (EG: everything listed in Animate Inanimate Object), and truly inanimate objects with special features that give them a minor amount of autonimity (EG: most modern drones when depraved of a control signal). Note that, when it comes to robots, the former is more likely to go "F*ck the rules" and go on a rampage, while the latter can be beaten by just turning it off and calling IT.
I think you're looking for Empathic Weapon.
What I'm looking for is a trope similar to Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass or Obfuscating Stupidity, except applied to inanimate objects. As an example, here's an episode of an Avengers tv show that I've unfortunately forgotten the details of:
The main plot is that Thor is on an uncharted island fighting a fellow asgardian who, via an unmentioned series of loopholes, has managed to beseech the asgardian oath of honor without actually violating it, and is now fighting Thor in a noticeably dishonorable way. In one scene, as they're fighting, Mjolnir gets knocked out of Thor's hand with enough force to send it over the horizon, which in most cases means it's going to be a tad wet when it returns. However, in the next scene, we see The Hulk on an oil platform trying to (singlehandedly) find Thor. A few seconds later, Mjolnir arrives on a trajectory that suggests that it's not just blindly tumbling through the air like a mortal hammer anymore. Once the two get close enough, Hulk promply leaps into the air and grabs Mjolnir, with predictibly useless results, except that once Hulk has a hold of Mjolnir, it promptly makes a U-turn and races back to thor even though he hadn't recalled it yet. And once he does, it simply changes to a more precise course. And once it arrives, Hulk promply bodyslams the unfortunate adversary while Mjolnir returns to Thor.
If that was a tad wordy, here's a version that's simpler to understand: Under normal circumstances, Mjolnir's basically a normal hammer that can't really do anything except fly when not wielded by Thor. And even then, it's autonomous flight is limited to "Get back to Thor ASAP when called", and just sits there like a(n unnaturally stubborn) brick if not told to do so. In this situation, Mjolnir's enchantments are apparently inteligent enough that when it's separated from Thor by a significant margin whilst he's fighting a vastly superior opponent, it starts to seek out a sutable "playing-field-leveler" as if it knew what was happening. Granted, Hulk trying to grab Mjolnir went about as well as expected, but the fact that it was able to act without Thor makes it a unique situation.
Edited by Gofastmike