Companion Cube/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Companion Cubes in Western Animation include:

  • In an incredibly literal case of this trope, the Eliacube in Wakfu is this for Nox, who is heartbroken and obsessive enough to hear it talk back. In the end, this relationship turns ugly.
    • Though at this point its rather ambiguous whether the cube spoke to Nox, or whether he was just that insane. It's possible that Quilby whose was actually inside the cube was speaking to Nox.
  • Thirty-Thirty's BFG Sarah Jane, on Bravestarr.
  • The Simpsons once had Mr. Burns give an employee of the month award to... an inanimate carbon rod. Later in the same episode, a second inanimate carbon rod is hailed as the one who saved a space mission from disaster, and said rod ends up on the cover of Time, with the title "In Rod We Trust!" Homer is not happy.
    • In a Continuity Nod, a much later glimpse at the nuclear plant employee chart gives us just enough time to see that Homer is right at the bottom... and the rod is his immediate superior.
    • Let's not forget Bobo Sheriff Lobo. Okay, okay, Bobo.
  • Mr. Hat and Mr. Twig on South Park. At least, Mr. Garrison treats them as real characters. To the point of rushing Mr. Twig to the hospital and accusing Mr. Hat of trying to kill him. It doesn't make things much clearer when Mr. Hat, despite being an inanimate doll who never moves onscreen at all, manages to drive a truck into the side of the jail to break Mr. Garrison out.
    • "How the hell did he reach the pedals?!?!?"
    • Mr. Hat also manages to vanish from Mr. Garrison's hand when Garrison refuses to take him to a Klan meeting. Mr. Hat is then seen sitting on the ground of the meeting later in the episode, though he doesn't do anything.
    • Somewhat subverted by a single instance of seeing him move by himself; his eyes turn in "Summer Sucks."
      • If you pay attention to Mr. Hat, the pupils in his eyes do change position fairly frequently.
    • Mr. Hat also managed to beat up Mr. Mackey whilst removed from Mr. Garrison's hand in "Worldwide Recorder Concert". Not bad for a hand puppet.
    • Mr. Hat is also a boss in the South Park video game, seen piloting a Giant Robot.
      • Mr. Hat is a two-timing whore.
  • Johnny Two-By-Four's best buddy Plank in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, a wooden board with painted eyes and a smile.
    • Kevin's treatment of his bike is sometimes shown as this. The Movie takes it to the point of being a Cargo Ship, with him repeatedly showing more concern for it than his sort-of-girlfriend Nazz.
  • Rupert, Stewie's teddy bear, from Family Guy. Stewie evidently views him as... a big, muscular thong-clad man with a teddy bear head.
    • Although only shown for a few seconds in a flashback vignette, Chris' Christmas present from Brian, namely a long-dead cat, buzzing insects and all. "I'm gonna call you Sticky Head. I love you Sticky Head."
    • "More tea, Mr. Bike?"
  • In the The Venture Brothers episode "The Revenge Society", the villain Revenge AKA Phantom Limb is completely insane, and the rest of his organization consists of various inanimate objects that he believes are people: Lady Nightshade, a woman's shoe, Chuck, a toaster, and a coffee mug named Wisdom, who he believes is a traitor and executes.
    • There is a spark of sanity to his assumption as the Sovereign is a shapeshifter who has shown the ability to impersonate inanimate objects much smaller than himself (a single cigarette to be exact). He apologizes to the mug's broken shards when he later confronts Sovereign and realizes his mistake.
  • Cynthia, Angelica's tattered fashion doll, from Rugrats.
  • In Phineas and Ferb Dr. Doofenshmirtz's only childhood friend was a balloon with a face drawn onto it, which he talks to and calls "Balloony." In a later episode, he gets another one he names "Balloony 2."
    • In "Meapless In Seattle", Baloony returns. Apparently, he really is sentient and cares for Doofenshmirtz. Or maybe it's just his super-suit.
    • In "No More Bunny Business", Doofenshmirtz is upset when Perry the Platypus doesn't show up on schedule, and creates a new nemesis by putting a hat on a potted plant, which he dubs "Planty the Potted Plant". It defeats him.
  • One of Darkwing Duck's Rogues Gallery, Quackerjack, had Mr. Banana Brain, a doll which he treated as completely real, despite speaking the doll's side of the conversation also.
    • This reached a particularly strange point in the episode The Haunting of Mr. Banana Brain in which Mr. BB becomes possessed by a demonic spirit. Even though the doll was actually moving and talking on its own for once, Quackerjack never seemed to notice much difference besides commenting on how Banana Brain's voice was deeper than usual.
    • Another villain, Megavolt, is either insane or an electrical empath (both have been implied). He considers all electrical devices to be sentient beings, and many of his crimes revolve around "rescuing" or "freeing" his electrical brethren. He also gets rather upset when he goes through all the effort of setting them free and they just sit there doing nothing.

Megavolt: (to light bulbs) Run away! Runawayrunaway! Oh no, they can't move! They've been weakened by the long servitude!

  • Slightly weird preschool TV example: Little Bear has a human friend named Emily, who in turn has a doll named Lucy, which she treats as sentient. Her intelligent talking bear friend and his likewise chatty forest buddies think talking to a doll is hilarious.
  • Phillip, Cosmo's (female) nickel in The Fairly OddParents.
    • Also, Trixie is paired with a rock for a class project when her and Timmy are the only living beings in the room without partners.
    • Recurring villain Dark Laser (a parody of Darth Vader) has Flipsie, the flipping toy dog. Every single episode he's in, he spends at least one scene talking to Flipsie, and actually seems to take advice from him. In a recent episode, Foop told him to seek help - and since Foop himself isn't exactly the poster boy for sanity...
  • A spool of thread, which was said to be Pinky's sister in Pinky and The Brain.
    • In another episode, Pinky's actor is "married" to a sock puppet. When Brain's actor's wife kicks him out, Pinky said that his "wife" did the same... "or maybe she just fell behind the dryer."
  • A variant in the crime "duo" of Scarface (a ventriloquist's dummy) and Arnold "The Ventriloquist" Wesker in Batman: The Animated Series. Wesker suffers from multiple-personality disorder, but Scarface comes up with all the evil schemes, and ruthlessly bullies his alter ego (whom he calls "Dummy", just to hammer home the point of who is really in charge). Even the other members of the gang fear and respect Scarface.
    • When the Scarface doll is destroyed, Wesker uses a sockpuppet that he called Socko in his therapy. Socko is a lot nicer.
    • In Justice League, there's a quick, creepy visual gag that implies giving the puppet a lobotomy with heat vision is all it takes to cure Wesker.
  • One episode of Gargoyles features an Unknown Rival of Goliath's who wanted revenge. He was a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of John Travolta, and talked to his bazooka, naming it "Mr. Kotter". He spends the entire episode talking about how Goliath is going to "get creamed". The bazooka? Shot pies.
    • Actually it was scripted as "Mr. Carter," but because of the character's accent, it sounded identical to "Kotter."
    • Over the course of the episode, the character flashes back to other episodes when Goliath inadvertently cost him a string of jobs, and he appears at least once more as a Quarryman (his work with Mr. Carter evidently made him feel better at the time but in the long run didn't help his grudge), but he doesn't seem to have bonded with his hammer the way he did Mr. Carter, and he does a Heel Face Turn after Goliath saves his life. He eventually decides to go to Japan, where he thinks he can get away from Gargoyles.
      • He can't.
  • Several times in SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • Patrick enters a rock in the snail race. Somehow, "Rocky" wins.
    • SpongeBob's "Bubble Buddy", though he turns out to be animate after all.
      • Don't forget Nickel Buddy "I'll never spend you"!
      • Funny Muffler
      • Jerky Pal
      • Boo-boo keys
      • Snake Eyes
      • "We love you!!!!"
      • ...POP THE BUBBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • Also Spat from "All That Glitters", thought it also seems to be sentient.
    • In the episode "I Had an Accident", SpongeBob shuts himself in his house with his three "new friends" Penny (a copper one-cent piece), Chip (a potato chip), and Used Napkin (take a wild guess). He acts as though they can speak, and carries on one-sided conversations. ("I could do without your sarcasm, Used Napkin!")
      • Patrick at least also treats them as being real, tearfully commenting on Penny's beautiful singing voice, as well as thanking Chip when he 'showed them the door', an act apparently done by Spongebob tossing it at the door.
  • Stump from The Angry Beavers. Stump is clearly a sentient being. He just never shows any signs of life onscreen.
  • The Tick (animation) once created his own Companion Cube sidekick, Little Wooden Boy.
    • And unfortunately was forced to burn him in order to escape the belly of a whale.
    • There was also Arthur's nemesis Handy, a hand puppet belonging to The Human Ton.
    • In the live action adaptation, The Tick converses and attempts to reason with a clogged toilet.
  • Tire and Feather Duster from Ellen's Acres.
  • Although he's capable of creating other sentient robot minions, Grizzle from Adventures in Care-a-lot prefers the company of Mr. Beaks, a completely inanimate bird made from scrap metal that he treats as a living being.
  • Lampy, Awful Alvin's "sidekick" on Larry-boy: The Animated Series.
  • To an extent, Sokka's boomerang in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
    • But he really does always come back!
      • Except the last time :(
  • In Get Ed, Loogie has a sock puppet named Dr. Pinch who is a good deal saner than the hand that he sits on. The other characters treat him as if he's perfectly normal (Dr. Pinch, not Loogie - they know Loogie's insane). He's also capable of carrying on a full conversation while Loogie is soundly asleep, and will even maintain his voice and personality if one of the other characters picks him up... In fact he was once able to enter a computer simulation when the mind scanner was on his head.
  • Mister Pück is Aelita's doll in Code Lyoko, first introduced as a living elf in her dreams. It is also the basis for her Lyoko Avatar.
    • The teddy bear from the first episode, "TeddyGozilla", might also count... until it is possessed by XANA.
  • Code Monkeys has this with Todd's on again, off again girlfriend, a doll named Tiffany, who in recent episodes comes off as rather abusive.
  • Mr. Buns from Ruby Gloom is a weird sort of cross between this and a Living Toy; when he's on-screen, he seems totally inanimate, and just to be treated as though he's a character by the other characters. But the moment he's off-screen, he seems to be genuinely animate, doing things like stealing buns or, in one case, fencing with Poe.
    • This is highlighted in "Missing Buns", when Misery shocks everyone else by claiming that Mr. Buns is just a stuffed sock and therefore irrelevant to their game of hide-and-seek. By the next morning, she concedes defeat to Mr. Buns and goes to bed.
  • In Moral Orel, Nurse Bendy has a teddy bear family at home she treats as actual family figures, up to making meals and talking broken child-talk with them. This is due to her loneliness and her feeling that men only want her for sex. Later on she is reunited with her real son and chooses to abandon the fake teddy-son for the real thing.
  • Let's not forget Megatron's rubber duck in Beast Wars.
  • In one episode of Total Drama Island, Owen has a very intense emotional bonding experience with a coconut. Later, the other campers vote it off the island. The last scene of the episode shows Mr. Coconut floating out to sea.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Meatwad's best friend is a Blaxploitation hero named Boxy Brown. You figure it out.

Boxy Brown: I'm just a what, bitch?

  • In one episode of The Brak Show, Zorak finds Brak talking to a lobster doll named Hippo ("He's a hell of a guy!") and throws it away because he's just mean. Brak gets a replacement, Dr. Grumbles, who actually can talk, but in something of a subversion, only Zorak and Thundercleese can hear him.
  • Sammy, a dead rat, in Wayside. Miss Mush seems to be able to interact with him with no problem, and he routinely beats her at cards. "How you do that? You dead!"
  • Dexter's Laboratory has a Suck E. Cheese's episode featuring a stuffed Monkey doll that DeeDee believes she could talk to her. Their conversations are surprisingly dark, almost veering into The Shining territory.

DeeDee: What was that, Monkey? (listens intently) Yes, Monkey! I too can see into the future!
Mom: DeeDee! Time to go! Have you seen your brother?
DeeDee: What was that Monkey? (listens intently) Monkey says that Chubby Cheeses took him into the deepest, darkest shadows!

    • Naturally, this is completely accurate.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: Lolly Poopdeck is a recurring minor character on the show who is always seen carrying two buckets. Originally being his ongoing job on the harbor, each new episode has him acting as if his buckets are his best pals. Ironically, he is one of the residents who appears to regard candy wife as an inanimate object when hanging with Knuckles in the episode, "Candy Cassinova": "Hanging out with inanimate objects is ridiculous and embarrasing. Right bucket?"
  • There are times in Danny Phantom when Tucker shares special bonding moments with his PDA, sometimes with the former treating the latter like a lover.

Tucker: If I don't make it, tell my PDA I love her. The cell phone meant nothing to me.

    • Other technology, too.

Tucker (Talking to a security camera in a loving voice): Hello special new friend.

  • Ivan Dobsky from Monkey Dust has his space hopper which he calls Mr Hoppy. It was implied that Mr Hoppy was the force behind some of Ivan's crimes; having said that, the results when the prison staff took Mr Hoppy from Ivan definitely count as Squick and probably count as pure terror: Ivan fashioned a new space hopper out of some dead guards. Needless to say, people weren't laughing at him then
  • Timon and Pumbaa: In one episode, Pumbaa ditches Timon in favor of a meteorite that fell from the sky. It ends up becoming a better friend for Pumbaa (despite being a space rock) and this causes Timon to get jealous and find a new friend. The friendship is only temporary, since Timon and Pumbaa reunite again and the meteor strikes a new relationship with a cheetah.
  • Freakazoid!: Freakazoid once had his own sidekick named Handman in "The Sidekick Chronicles", which happened to be his own hand with eyes drawn on it, and a voice provided by his ventriloquism. What's more, Handman then had an affair with Freakazoid's other hand, who both shared a long, kissing sequence (which was graphic even for a kids show) and married among a wedding made up of the cheering, dressed hands of the guests. Despite losing his sidekick, Freakazoid hopes to gain a daughter... or an upper hand. Unlike his hand couple, however, his feet are in a very rocky relationship.
  • While martial arts training, Johnny Bravo befriended a pebble. It was surprisingly touching.
  • Computer from Courage the Cowardly Dog. While he, if his speaking isn't just Courage's delusion, may be treated as a living character, it's still a computer.
    • I'll go against this. Unless you have ever watched the episode "Mega Muriel the Magnificent", then you should now that the Computer is treated as a living computer; since a lightning storm made him a sentient being, and he took over Muriel's body. Muriel and Eustace even acknowledge his existence.
  • A Jimmy Two-Shoes short had Beezy making friends with a sandwich. Naturally, it doesn't last long.
  • In Transformers Cybertron, Decepticon loner Lugnutz' only true friend is his trusty rifle, Dutch.
  • Rico from The Penguins of Madagascar has an amorous relationship with a doll.
  • Stan from American Dad seems to have a rather intimate relationship with his gun. It "laughs" by shooting.
    • In an episode of American Dad featured Steve dating a girl who had a doll as a companion whom she believed was alive and could talk to her, she sets up a date with the doll and Steve's friend Snot who is not amused, angered by this he tosses the doll on the bed and uses the restroom and the girl seeing the doll with her legs spread apart and him emerging from the bathroom believes that he raped her, she goes as far as taking the doll to a hospital because she believes that it's "pregnant", eventually Steve and Snot write a suicide note and hang the doll from the ceiling fan, but she thinks the doll was "murdered" because it wasn't "her handwriting".
  • Fanboy and Chum Chum has a lot of these:
    • Fanboy went to the school dance with a sentient mop, Moppy.
    • Boog treats the Chimp Chomp arcade game as if it's his girlfriend. He does the same thing with his car, Sandy.
    • Lenny acts similiarly, though to a much lesser extent, with his bike, Bikey.
    • Janitor Poopatine appears to have a personal relationship with his mechanized chair, Brenda.
    • Yo's best friend is a pine cone named Ingrid. She also has a digital cat named Scampers.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Over a Barrel": Applejack's apple tree Bloomburg gets this treatment. She buys it a private sleeping car in a train and reads it bedtime stories. Spike gets into the act when he bunks with Bloomberg to get away from the girls' night-time chatter, and apologizes in advance to the tree if he starts snoring. (This may be justified if he snores fire, however.)
    • "Party of One": Pinkie Pie thinks her friends don't want to come to her parties anymore and completely flips out. She sets up a pile of rocks ("Rocky"), a sack of flour ("Madame LeFlour"), a bucket of turnips ("Mr. Turnip"), and a piece of lint ("Sir Lints-a-lot") as her new friends, and tries to throw a party with them.
      • Pinkie Pie does their voices so well that she even gets Rainbow Dash to argue with the rocks.
    • In "The Return of Harmony", Rarity is brainwashed by Discord into thinking a boulder is actually a giant diamond. She becomes increasingly obsessed with and protective of it, and starts calling it "Tom".
    • In "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle introduces her cherished childhood toy "Smarty Pants": a raggedy old stuffed pony doll with a notebook and quill. Twilight casts an enchantment spell that makes everypony in town to be attracted to the doll, leading to a large fight between all of them over it. After the spell is lifted, every pony loses interest and leaves the doll behind, except for Big Macintosh who is (for some unexplained reason) still attracted to it and ends up running away with it.
  • Adventure Time Almost all of the residents of Ooo are composed of sentient candy, mountains, teddy bears, etc. However, in the beginning of 'The Jiggler', Finn and Jake are rescuing a 'family' consisting of seemingly random food, although one, a watermelon, is named Stanley. None of them are sentient, and yet they have a house and apparently they get into danger constantly.
  • Spliced: Boosty the jetpack.
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