Sealed Evil in a Can: Difference between revisions

* Peter F. Hamilton does this in at least two series: in ''[[The Night's Dawn Trilogy]]'' Series, a wandering alien accidentally opens a portal to the afterlife, and in ''Pandora's Star'' and ''Judas Unchained'', an alien menace is released by its hidden enemy (who has {{spoiler|arranged a long-term "[[Let's You and Him Fight]]" situation between the menace and humanity}}).

* Subverted in [[Matthew Tobin Anderson|M. T. Anderson]]'s book ''[[Thirsty]]'', in which a group of vampires are trying to free the Sealed Evil, the god of vampires, and one character pretends to be trying to kill the vampire god in order to protect humanity, but in reality is assisting the god in committing suicide.

** Also in the same volume, Tom Riddle's diary has the "memory" of the teenage Voldemort sealed inside, which Ginny unknowingly awakens through her liberal use of the diary.

* In James Alan Gardner's ''[[The League of Peoples Verse|Hunted]]'', the [[Humanoid Aliens|Mandasars]] have queens who are very smart, very large, very strong, can persuade other Mandasars to do just about anything by emitting the right pheromones, and are physiologically hardwired so that each queen believes that ''she'' is the most competent person around and ''should'' be in charge. Having more than about four of them on the planet tends to mean endless power struggles; having that few risks having them all die. The solution implemented is to have a bunch of queens in [[Human Popsicle|cryonic storage]]. While they aren't evil per se, waking them all up at once is still [[Civil War|really, really bad]].

* In William King's ''[[Warhammer 40,000]] [[Space Wolf]]'' novel ''Ragnor's Claw'', Botchulaz.