Companion Cube/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Companion Cubes in Live-Action TV include:

  • Mrs. Beasley for Buffy in Family Affair.
  • Radar's teddy bear in M*A*S*H.
    • "My bear went off!"
  • Mr. Bear in Full House.
  • Scrubs has Rowdy (and, in the later series, Stephen), the stuffed yellow labradors owned by JD and Turk.
    • Also, the Janitor's "squirrel army".
  • Abby from NCIS has her mass spectrometry machine ("Major Mass-Spec") and Burt the Farting Stuffed Hippo.
  • MythBusters gives us Buster, an oft-destroyed and rebuilt crash test dummy that the crew uses in most of their experiments. Most of the cast (and quite a few of the show's fans) jokingly treat him like a real person.
    • Including when he takes more damage than they intended. In "Escape Slide Parachute" Buster was reduced to little more than scrap metal and flesh-colored chunks when a quick release failed and he fell the full distance without his safety equipment. The reaction of the crew (especially Adam and Grant) was one of abject horror, as if a flesh and blood crew member had been severely injured.
      • It gets worse for the myth where they needed to test possible brain injuries to Buster and added a destructible blood packet inside his cranial cavity to simulate lethal brain hemorrage if the damage was too great.
    • Not to mention Earl, the car they dropped from a crane to test "Buster 2.0". And several one-time ballistics gel dummies they named.
    • It also doesn't help that almost all of the ballistics gel busts they use in experiments are molds of Grant.
      • Or that they devote entire montages to lovingly dressing the busts up in a wig, glasses, bandana, whatever's in-character for the myth's scenario.
    • And let's not forget (or maybe we should) Kari's ballistics gel "Zombie Dogs." Which she was actually baby-talking to. "Aw, whosa sweet widdle doggy? Mwa!" *kisses nose*
    • In the Dynamite Surfing episode, Kari wonders if anyone else has noticed the disturbing amount of Grant robots that have been built over the course of the series.
    • During the Supersized Myths Jet Taxi segment, to make him even more animate than usual, they added a voiceover of Buster's thoughts just before they pulled his taxi behind the jumbo jet's engine exhaust: "I wonder if Mike Rowe is hiring."
    • And then there was Lucy the Moose, a 600 lb rubber moose that they crashed cars into (To test the myth that speeding up before hitting a large animal will reduce the damage done to the car and driver. Busted).
  • In the short-lived cult TV show Sledge Hammer!, Sledge has a habit of talking to his gun.
  • In an unusual Panel Show example, after the third time Roy Hattersley MP cancelled his appearance as a guest on Have I Got News for You at short notice, his place on Paul Merton's team was filled by "The Rt. Hon. Tub of Lard MP" "imbued with much the same qualities and liable to give a similar performance", which Merton would confer with during the show. They won, in spite of the Tub being unable to confer with Merton for any questions aimed at it, and all of their team's questions in the final 'missing words' round being in foreign languages, and, in the last case, with the entire headline blanked out.

Ian Hislop: It is getting rather sad that I can't win against Paul when he's accompanied by a tub of lard and his questions are in a foreign language.

  • In a parody of Cast Away, an episode of Being Ian has Ian trapped on a sandbar and talking to polystyrene coffee cup.
  • While a semi-intelligent killing machine and thus not very inanimate, Rover from The Prisoner is a large, white bouncing ball. Needless to say, he is a favorite among fans and a common icon of the series.
  • Firefly's Jayne Cobb treats his very favorite gun, Vera, as if its a real person—so much so that he's willing to trade it for Mal's Accidental Wife.
    • And telling Vera that getting dressed up means she gets taken out special-like - while putting her in a spacesuit to fire at a target in hard vacuum.
    • Also, the ship's mechanic, Kaylee, often talks about the ship Serenity as if its a real person. In the pilot movie she strokes the inside wall of the engine room and coos, "That's my good girl" after a jury-rig allowed Serenity to pull off a difficult maneuver. Mal treats her like a person occasionally, as well.
  • Oliver, Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond's beloved 1963 Opel Kadett. Despite his age and third-hand ownership, Oliver survived a one-thousand mile cross-country trip straight across the spine of Botswana, including the entirety of the Makgadikgadi Pan, the largest salt flat in the world. Hammond loved the car so much that he bought it with his own money and paid to have it shipped to Britain.
    • To prepare to cross the Makgadikgadi Pan, the presenters were advised to remove as much weight as possible from their cars. May and Clarkson undertook the task with relish, but Hammond refused to remove anything from Oliver. After a while, May and Clarkson joked that it would be like asking him to cut pieces off his wife. (It should be noted that Oliver had almost no problems the entire trip, compared to the other two presenters vehicles, which sank in the mud on the Makgadikgadi Pan even after removing practically everything but the frame and engine.)
    • Oliver was endangered again in the first episode of Season 12, in which the presenters did challenges in transport trucks (obUK/Commonwealth: "lorries"). One of the last ones was a hill start—starting the trucks (with their cargo in tow) on a hill without rolling backward. To inspire each other to do well, their most prized items were placed behind them. Richard's was...Oliver (with a smashing new "OLI V3R" Vanity License Plate). Hammond forfeited the challenge rather than risk his precious car.
    • Oliver is now a supporting character in the children's science programme Richard Hammond's Blast Lab, where 'he' has a Herbie-esque personality.
  • Mr. Bean's Teddy, and to some extent his car. Much of the humour comes from the inconsistent way in how he treats them—one minute gently lowering Teddy into his own miniature bed, the next absent-mindedly ripping his head off so he'll fit in the drawer. Then when his car gets run over by a tank, he kneels down in front of the wreckage as sad music plays—only to retrieve the lock and seem perfectly happy with this.
  • Captain Oats and Princess Sparkles of The OC fame. When you start warning your plastic horse of possible overtures to rape, you know you've got yourself a Companion Cube.
  • The Impala (known to fans as Metallicar) in Supernatural is considered by some to be the third main character. It features prominently throughout the series, and Dean is occasionally found to be whispering sweet nothings to it.
  • One episode of The Mighty Boosh has them stranded on an island, talking to women they've made out of coconuts.
  • Margaret Lanterman (aka "The Log Lady") on Twin Peaks always carried around a small log in her arms. She seemed to share a psychic connection with it, sometimes dispensing advice and visions which she claimed came from the log itself.
    • Parodied in the "Twin Beaks" episode of Darkwing Duck, with Launchpad talking to a log-reduced Bushroot.
  • "Mr. Flibble is very cross...."
  • Similar to the above, "No... no, Sweetness... these people understand." Made worse because Sweetness is not a stuffed penguin—she's a gun.
  • In Farscape, John Crichton's favourite weapon is a Peacekeeper standard issue pulse pistol, he will risk his life to retrieve the weapon he calls Winona: "Winona would never have let me down". Similarly, when D'Argo gets a ship, he names her Lo'la in memory of his wife and becomes quite fond of her. Moya is a subversion, as she's an actual living organism.
  • Doctor Who, The Chase: companion Steven Taylor goes back into a burning city/building to rescue Hifi, the stuffed panda ("my mascot") which has been his only company for two years of captivity.
    • The Doctor himself is very closely attached to his sonic screwdriver. When it was destroyed in a 1982 episode, he remarked "I feel as if I've lost an old friend." The Tenth Doctor reacts similarly when his sonic screwdriver gets destroyed in the episode "Smith and Jones". Martha is trying to tell him the identity of the evil old alien woman they are looking for, and the Doctor totally ignores her, aghast at the death of his sonic screwdriver.
      • Immediately subverted when she gets his attention and he tosses the "dead" -- and therefore useless -- screwdriver carelessly over his shoulder.
    • Subverted with the TARDIS. Its just an old ship, right? Sure, the Doctor calls it 'dear' and 'sexy', and companions joke that he likes to stroke it, but that's just a laugh, right? Wrong. The TARDIS is alive, and its a she, thank you very much. She even became a human for the episode "The Doctor's Wife". See here. She even said that he can call her "Sexy".
    • In "The Girl Who Waited", Amy, who has been alone for 36 years, disarms (literally) one of the hand robots, painting a smiley face on it and calling it Rory. While it's initially taken as a sign of how distant she has become to Rory, a younger version of herself is able to remind her that it's actually because Rory is the love of her life.
  • A lot of TV spaceships have this trope evoked upon them; perhaps the most famous being the USS Enterprise and Millenium Falcon.
    • Both the Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon are known to have computers capable of interacting with people but of course, none of them are sophisticated enough for you to hold a conversation with. When it comes to Star Trek ships, though, Fridge Logic or even Fridge Brilliance applies: we know from holodecks, and fully sentient mechanical characters such as Data and the Doctor, that a computer with much more personality is not hard to create in the Trek Verse. If, in a world where any AI-run hologram left running long enough becomes a real person, the best the ship's operating system can do is "* Beep!* Unable to comply. Applied Phlebotinum conveniently offline," it's by design—possibly to keep it out of the Uncanny Valley.
      • In Th Ultimate Computer they tried to automate the Enterprise using AI. The developer who designed the computer treated in like it was his kid. Of course, it went insane and Kirk had to talk it to death, because A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
    • Captain Janeway sometimes talks directly to her ship in Star Trek: Voyager.
    • Scotty is mentioned above in films, but don't forget that The Original Series, he's been known to lament about the engine as if it were his child. And one episode has Kirk tell him to do anything to keep an air filter running, including coddling it and talking to it, if need be.
  • Dr. Bashir's teddy bear Kukalaka in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus: "And, on my right, putting the case against the government, is a small patch of brown liquid."
    • "Good evening."
    • Another (not completely different) sketch had a round-table discussion on customs enforcement with a duck, a cat and a lizard. The duck, cat and lizard were obviously played by wooden models, so their inability to respond to questions is unsurprising.
    • And another sketch had a panel discussion with various pieces of wood. Oddly, they could talk.
  • Drusilla's dolls in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including Miss Edith.
    • And then there's Spike's Buffy dummy, shortly replaced by the Buffybot.
    • Kendra has her favorite stake, Mr. Pointy.

Kendra: Here...In case the curse does not succeed, this is my lucky stake. I have killed many vampires with it. I call it Mr. Pointy.
Buffy: You named your stake?
Kendra: Yes.
Buffy: Remind me to get you a stuffed animal.

  • One of Mad TV's sketches includes a fake commercial about a woman in an abusive relationship with a bottle of shampoo.
  • An odd variation appears in Soap with Bob, Chuck's ventriloquist dummy. Originally Chuck was only supposed to be a temporary character but he and Bob were so popular that the writers had to keep them. It gets to the point where all but a few of the characters forget Bob isn't a separate person, the audience will always refer to Bob as a separate character as well. All of the characters dislike Bob because of his rude behaivour but like Chuck because he's very well-mannered.
  • Another panel show example: Billy the Answer Head of Figure It Out.
  • All That: Lori Beth Denberg's lifelong companion "The Big Ear of Corn".
  • Father Jack and his Brick.
  • My Name Is Earl has a HUMAN EAR fill this role for a soldier in Korea.
  • In Lost, John Locke, in no uncertain terms, talks with the island and believes it has a will. Though, depending on further reveals, there may be a significant element of truth to this.
    • Claire's Squirrel Baby was outright conceived as a Take That to Wilson from Castaway.
  • Arkwright's till from Open All Hours is an inversion. Arkwright and Granville treat it as though it's alive, but it's a malevolent being that does its best to trap your fingers every time you use it.
  • There is an episode in Malcolm in the Middle when Malcolm's mom has a mental breakdown and starts making little pigs out of balloons and paper-mache. Dozens of them. And she gives each and every one a name and background.
  • In Deadwood, Al Swearengen receives an Indian man's head in a box, which he doesn't want. He first makes use of the box as a prop in a ploy, describing his plan to the head beforehand. Subsequently, he takes to delivering Surrogate Soliloquys to the head, and addresses it as "Chief." As time goes on, he treats it more and more like a friend and confidant, and at one point brings it out onto the balcony and opens the box so it can "watch" the events on the street. Eventually Al's dragon Dan Dority confronts him about the issue, and Al has to assure him that he's not going crazy.
  • Arguably, House's red ball. When Cuddy complains of all the time he spends in his office playing with it instead of working, Wilson argues:

Wilson: It's part of his process. That ball saves lives.

  • Sir Monksalot
  • Ashes to Ashes had Gene's Audi Quattro. It even got its own He's Back moment in season 3 opening and the scene when it was destroyed in the last episode in a hail of gunfire it arguably had more emotional depth than Viv's death in a previous episode.
  • Rex from Victorious is Robbie's ventriloquist dummy. Despite Robbie controlling him, he seems to have a mind of his own, and the other characters, while at first humoring Robbie by pretending he was a real person, eventually start believing it themselves. If Rex says or does something rude, they get mad at him and not Robbie. And the reactions they all give when he is sucked into the Turblow Jet were as if one of their closest friends was being maimed.
  • On Fist of Fun "Lifestyle Expert" Peter's only friend was a small green toy called Donny Oddlegs. Unfortunately after Peter accidently ate the remains of Rich's father, Donny ended up in a bin and on fire.
  • Sherlock's skull. Case in point:

John: Have you talked to the police?
Sherlock: Four people are dead. There isn't time to talk to the police.
John: So why are you talking to me!?
Sherlock: Mrs. Hudson took my skull.
John: ...So I'm supposed to be filling in for your skull?
Sherlock: Relax, you're doing fine.

  • In Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Jonny has an Action Man that he named Corinthian (and later named his son after it). It is later destroyed in a fire.
    • Also, Janet has a mannequin named Jonny 2, which she has dressed exactly like Jonny. This is only featured in one episode, in which she uses it as a source of comfort when she's in labour.
  • An unsettling number of grieving pet-lovers on American Stuffers commence petting and fussing over their preserved pets when they collect them from the taxidermists'. Granted, this trope is the whole point of that side of the business.
  • Parks and Recreation: DJ Roomba, Tom's combination of an mp3 player and a Roomba. At one point it's destroyed when Jerry steps on it causing Tom to expel grief stating that DJ Roomba was like a son to him.
  • Pixelface: In "Out of Sight", a glitch in the system renders Claireparker unable to be detected by the rest of the occupants of the console. Starting to crack up, she begins talking to the rubber duck she picked up in the last session of her game.
  • In the first Halloween episode of The Office, Michael jokingly pretends to start taking advice from his fake second head on who should be fired. Dwight starts arguing with the fake head because it is suggesting maybe Dwight should be let go.

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