Literal Genie: Difference between revisions

** Another version didn't include the ostrich constantly agreeing with the guy. Instead, the guy was also accompanied by a cat who constantly refused to pay for anything; apparently, the guy had wished for a bird with long legs and a tight pussy, and to always have the exact amount money he needed.

** One variation is he rides the ostrich into a bar and orders everyone a drink. He had wished for infinite wealth, many friends, and an "exotic bird" with long legs to share it all with.

** There is a variant ending with "Please come in to get your pictures taken, Comrade Romanov".

* There is a joke about a man who wishes for a beer bottle in which the beer will never end. He's still trying to open it.

** ''[[Discworld/Wyrd Sisters|Wyrd Sisters]]'' shows a subversion, when the witches summon a demon who agrees to answer three questions, and takes great delight in giving technically-accurate but completely unhelpful answers to the first two, no matter how carefully the witches try to phrase them. For the third question, they decide to try a different approach and ask it "Just what the hell's going on? And no wriggling about trying to get out of it!"—which works far better. The fact they threaten him with being boiled alive and hit with a large stick helps some.

** In ''<s>Faust</s> [[Discworld/Eric|Eric]]'', demons try to give people who summon them "exactly what they asked for and exactly what they didn't want". This would also make them [[Jackass Genie]]s, except that they don't need to stretch very far to make Eric's wishes backfire.

** The Auditors have similar trouble. For example when asked, "Can I offer you a drink?" they say yes, because they judge the person perfectly capable of offering them one.

** Tiffany Aching has to deal with this from two sources. The first is the Nac Mac Feegle, who just want to be helpful. While they can't actually do magic, they are determined, numerous, and immensely strong. She reflects that while never actually likely to say "I wish I could marry a handsome prince", the fact that if she did she would probably quickly find a tied up prince and clergyman at her door makes one wary of voicing ones desires out loud. There's also the Hiver, a creature which possesses people's bodies, then tries to make all their wishes come true. Even the ones they don't say, don't ''really'' want except for a fleeting urge, or wouldn't work towards because things like conscience or sanity hold them back.

* One of the stories in ''100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories'' concerns a scientist who builds a machine which can create anything that he tells it to. To test it out, he decides to start with some simple commands. His first request is “drink,” and he gets a puddle on his desk (he hadn’t specified a glass). His next request is “girl,” and a girl appears. She is naked (he hadn’t specified clothing) and nine years old. His reaction to this is “Hell!” {{spoiler|He then dies when his house explodes in a giant fireball.}}

* [[Isaac Asimov]] wrote a series of (non-[[Sci Fi]]) short stories about a tiny demon named [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast/Demons Or Angels|Azazel]], who would grant wishes that started off looking like exactly what the person wanted, but ended up being the person's worst nightmare. In one story, a man with no self-confidence wanted to be irresistible to women. He ended up being literally chased everywhere by women, and in the end was engaged to a woman built like a linebacker because he was too afraid of her (and her equally massive brothers) to turn her down.

* A short story by Bill Pronzini has a young boy being granted three wishes by a genie. His first two wishes are trivial: for a huge number of ice cream cones and for the ocean to be as warm as his bathwater so he can go wading whenever he wants. But the third wish is for all the children in the world to be just like him, so he will always have someone to play with. The end of the story reveals that the boy is mentally retarded.

* Deep Thought from ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (novel)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' could qualify, although it's more of an example of computer programming humor: Deep Thought gives the correct answer, it's just that the questioners asked the question wrong.

** Haktar has a similar problem. He built the [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax]] the "ultimate weapon", a bomb that would link together all suns in an enormous supernove and destroy the universe. "Ultimate", meaning the ''last'' weapon. Again, this one is mostly the fault of the creators. When he asked them what exactly they meant by "ultimate" they told him to look in a dictionary.

* ''The Broken Lands'', the second book of Fred Saberhagen's ''Empire of the East'' trilogy, features a literal Literal Genie. That is, the wizard Grey summons a [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|djinn that does exactly and literally what is asked of it]]. Grey and Rolf don't get anywhere with it until they start asking questions instead of giving commands.

* An example, with '''God''' as the Literal Genie, can be found in the 11th-century satirical Arabic work ''The Epistle of Forgiveness''. The protagonist is in Paradise, and having just encountered a beautiful houri who asserts she has been promised to him since the time of Creation, he bows down to thank God - then finds himself thinking that while beautiful, the lass is a bit on the skinny side. As he raises his head, he finds that her buttocks have now grown a lot bigger, and needs to ask God to shorten them by a mile or two.

{{quote|'''Bernard:''' I have to be very careful, haven't I?

'''Genie:''' Yes, say the words "I wish" with the caution you would normally reserve for "Please castrate me." }}

* In an episode of ''[[LazyTown]]'', Robbie acquires a genie, and his first two wishes are for all the fruit and vegetables and all the sports equipment to disappear, but since he forgets to specify a duration, they return not 5 minutes later. [[Idiot Ball|He fails to wish away Sportacus]].

* In ''[[Weird Science (TV series)|Weird Science]]'', Wyatt wants to be the chess club president and accidentally wishes for it in front of Lisa, although she doesn't hear the whole story, and he forgets to mention the "chess club" part. So, she makes him the President of the United States. Gary's mismanagement and Wyatt's obsession with the chess club results in Wyatt's impeachment.

== Tabletop Games ==

* About 50% of all game masters when giving a player a wish. For the other 50%, see [[Jackass Genie]].

{{quote|'''Genie:''' Let me get this straight. You want me to ''raze'' all your ability scores?}}

** An anecdote from 3.5e using the "Speak with Dead" spell, which allows you to ask three questions from a corpse:

* The Triforce in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'' sort of acts like this as a safeguard against people who would use it for evils means. [[Big Bad|Ganondorf]] wanted to use the Triforce to gain power, and therefore, he got Power. As for Wisdom and Courage...

** Ganondorf actually wanted to use the Triforce to claim Hyrule for himself. However, the person who tries to use it must have a heart with Power, Wisdom, and Courage in balance. Otherwise, they only get the Triforce piece that embodies what they most believe in. Since Ganondorf was a power-hungry jerk he only got the Triforce of Power, while the other two pieces went to their destined bearers. Not that the Triforce of Power wasn't enough for him to take over Hyrule, but to make himself invincible, he needs all three.

* In ''[[Sonic Storybook Series|Sonic and the Secret Rings]]'', Sonic wishes for "A few" handkerchiefs for his cold after a brief bout of sneezing. Shahra seems too eager to serve her new master, resulting in Sonic being buried up to his head in handkerchiefs.

* Clavicus Vile, the [[Our Demons Are Different|Deadra]] Prince of Power and [[Deal with the Devil|Bargains]] in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series, is sometimes portrayed this way, especially in ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim|Skyrim]]''. When a wizard asked Clavicus for the means to cure his daughter of lycanthropy, Clavicus gave the wizard [[Mercy Kill|an axe]].

* The short story [http://www.madore.org/~david/lit/god.html Garbage-Collecting the Metaverse] by David Madore has a god that interprets a wish a bit differently than intended.

* To combat the Literal Genie and/or the [[Jackass Genie]], the folks at ''[http://www.homeonthestrange.com/ Home on the Strange]'' have an [http://homeonthestrange.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=4 open-source wish project] to create the perfect wish.

* The Word Worlds in ''[[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]]'' can be quite [[Literal-Minded]], especially when confronted with [[Rouge Angles of Satin|bad spelling]] or [[Purple Prose|overly-flowery descriptions]]. Consequently, any misspelling of a character's name creates a mini-monster to fill in their role in the sentence and [[Pronoun Trouble]] in especially bad slash fics can result in [[Squick|both parties doing every described action to each other simultaneously]]. And these are just the more prosaic typos; for example, one Sue managed to turn herself into a bottle of paint thinner, another created a Prefect Badger and a guy called "Ed of Dream Sequence," and a series of typos in "[[Twila the Girl Who Waz In Luv With A Vampyre]]" caused the appearance of a group of hip-hop dancers who then turned into copies of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

* In the "shapeshifter" email on ''[[Homestar Runner]]'', Strong Bad asks (no one in particular) if it would be all right if he could "change into almost anybody". He then finds he can only turn into about half of people, such as the right half of the King of Town, or only the legs of Bubs.

 

== Western Animation ==

** Not only does this apply to Cosmo and Wanda (to quote Timmy, "You guys take things way too literally"), but on the first Norm the Genie episode, Timmy wished for an omelet, it appeared in his hands, but it was too hot, so he dropped it on the ground... because he didn't wish for an omelet ''on a plate''. Beyond that, Norm proved to be a [[Jerkass Genie]].

* In the [[Animated Adaptation]] of ''[[Beetlejuice (animation)|Beetlejuice]]'', BJ would shape-shift into literal interpretations of whatever corny figure-of-speech he used. This led to problems several times, such as his head disappearing when he "lost [his] head there". Apparently, this was a reflex. This was even the plot of an entire episode where [[Villain Team-Up|his enemies]] convinced him to say "I'm coming apart at the seams", just so they could take his body parts and hide them until he died... er, [[Deader Than Dead|again]].

* In the "Rainy Day Robot" [[U.S. Acres|US Acres]] short on an episode of ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', Roy gets conned into buying a voice-activated weather-making robot, though the salesman ''does'' tell him that the robot will "do the appropriate rain dance, snow dance, ''or whatever''". It works fine during the demonstrations, of course, but then idles whenever Roy specifically demands rain ([[Wild Mass Guessing|perhaps because it only does each type of weather once]]). In his frustration, he then makes the mistake of saying things like "bucket of bolts", "overgrown vacuum cleaner", "horse", "tree", and "safe" (in which is a [[Shout-Out]] to Wile E Coyote [[Talking with Signs|as he holds up a sign that says]] "ouch" and an umbrella), in front of it (or within earshot as he tries to escape), prompting the robot to drop one of said things on top of him. Roy later uses it to thwart Orson's brothers, however, by tricking them into repeating his would-be last words, "27 pianos", so that the robot drops the required amount on them. The episode ends without them getting it to properly rain, though, and one has to wonder how the robot interpreted "trade jobs"...

* The ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Crippled Summer" had Nathan trying to get Mimzy to get Jimmy killed, but he misinterprets every command. For example, Nathan tells Mimzy to kill Jimmy by going underwater where he is and blowing a shark whistle to attract sharks. Mimzy then goes underwater, goes back on land, and ''then'' blows the shark whistle.

* ''[[Timon and Pumbaa]]''. Happens to the duo when they find a lamp near the watering hole, and each wish for a million wishes. In one [[Body Horror]] moment, after their desire to wish their own way of wishing sets them apart, they make up and wish to be together again, only for that wish to literally make them fuse together before they wish themselves separate.

** Another episode had one where Pumbaa saved a magical whale by throwing it back into the ocean. Telling Timon this, he gets him to go back and forth to make his three wishes, trying to be specific as possible, but all backfiring because Pumbaa didn't say it EXACTLY the way he asked it. The best example would be his final wish, when he wished for a fancy castle and just for kicks, a magical fire breathing monster (which he expected to be a dragon and not a chicken) he can defeat. Pumbaa instead said 'can't', so the episode ends with the duo hiding out from their fire breathing fowl fiend.