Talking Appliance Sidekick: Difference between revisions

A subtrope of [[Non-Human Sidekick]], normally a [[Snarky Non -Human Sidekick]], that has become very popular in [[Web Comics]], the [[Talking Appliance Sidekick]] is an inanimate object, normally a household appliance that talks and... [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|you see where we're going with this]]. Beyond that, they are very likely to be part of a comic with a technological or a fandom bent; if it's [[Two Gamers Onon a Couch]], expect something related to game consoles, and if it's a comic about the Surrey Woman's Institute knitting circle, expect it to be a sewing machine. Such a character will have a lot of similar attributes of the [[Robot Buddy]], but sometimes is used as a parody or deconstruction of it and, like a lot of webcomic sidekicks, will be the outrageous [[Comedic Sociopath]].

* ''[[Two Thousand2000 AD (Comic Book)|Two Thousand AD]]'''s "Rogue Trooper" and his comrades have their memories and personalities hot-synced to chips which can be removed from their bodies when they are killed and plugged into weapons, helmet or backpack to provide advice and extra pairs of eyes (and firing commands in the case of the weapons). Though this isn't an option for Rogue (he's alone on the enemy planet and the last of his kind), he carries some of his comrades with him.

* By Season 3 of [[Script Fic]] ''[[Calvin and Hobbes: The Series (Fanfic)|Calvin and Hobbes The Series]]'', [[Do-Anything Robot|the MTM]] is one of these.

* It wasn't exactly a regular character, but the Talkie Toaster from ''[[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]]'' might qualify.

* The card game ''Super [[Munchkin (Tabletop Gamegame)|Munchkin]]'' has "talking car" as a possible sidekick.

* Stuffwell from ''[[Mario and Luigi Partners In Time (Video Game)|Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time]]'' is a sentient [[Bag of Holding|suitcase on legs]], and [[Perfectly Cromulent Word|tends to make up fancy-sounding words]] when he talks.

* The ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]: Old World Blues'' expansion has ten appliances in the player's apartment with simulated personalities [[For Science!|as part of a scientific experiment]]. The cast includes [[Terrified of Germs|a germophobic sink]], [[Casanova Wannabe|a smooth-talking]] agricultural research station obsessed with "[[Does This Remind You of Anything?|seeding]]" everything it can, a [[Red Scare|virulently anti-Communist]] book processor that turns [[Orwellian Editor|potential seditious documents into blank sheets of paper]], and a [[Robotic Psychopath|psychopathic toaster]] that would [[Kill It Withwith Fire|burn the world]], if only its heating coils were more powerful.

* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'', as mentioned above, turned the relatively obscure and short-lived DIVX media platform into an abusive, foul-mouthed sleazebag. To say nothing of the infamous [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|FruitFucker 2000]] juicing machine...

* Zeke the anthromorphised Xbox from ''[[Ctrl +Alt +Del]]''.

* A ''[[School HouseSchoolhouse Rock]]'' series from the early 1980s, now largely forgotten, was titled ''Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips''. [[Non-Indicative Name|Scooter was a human; Mr. Chips was his computer sidekick.]]

* Subverted in ''[[Beauty and The Beast (Disney)|Beauty and Thethe Beast]]'' where all of the talking furniture characters are actually humans under a magic spell.

* BMO from ''[[Adventure Time (Animation)|Adventure Time]]'' - an animate game console.