Team Pet

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The Gaang has one BIG team pet and one little one.
"The rabbit is cuddly! Kids like little cuddly sidekicks! I mean, the rabbit... it's a time-tested... okay, the rabbit bites."
Mr. Incredible, defending an In-Universe fictional Team Pet.

The default mascot of the party and usually the most outlandish of the bunch. Can be a robot, magic animal, or in a more realistic setting, a little girl much younger than everyone else. Often a Small Annoying Creature.

Most of the time, the Team Pet is comic relief. For obvious reasons their mere presence can ruin a dramatic scene most of the time. More seriously, their motivations for fighting may seem kinda vague, especially when they are Optional Party Members. You wish more of them were. This doesn't stop some of them being a member of the Five-Man Band.

If the Team Pet is an otherworldly being, it may end up as an Amusing Alien. It may also be a Pet Monstrosity.

Team Pets do have their other uses, however. We hear lots of stories of dogs pulling people from burning buildings or otherwise saving their lives, for example. Also, the Team Pet can go get help if its master (or someone else on the team) gets in trouble. And a Team Pet can act as an adorable scene partner for a heartfelt Surrogate Soliloquy. It can be a Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear if it is Not So Harmless once it's Restraining Bolt is loosened.

Gratuitous Animal Sidekick is a special category of this, often used in an Animated Adaptation of a live-action show. See also Intellectual Animal, Nearly-Normal Animal, Talking Animal, and Timmy in a Well.

Tagalong Kid is the human equivalent to this, Robot Buddy the artificial version.

Examples of Team Pet include:

Anime & Manga

  • Iggy the Boston Terrier from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Played straight for the first few seconds of his introduction as he jumps on Polnareff and chews his hair, then subverted when he's shown to be just as strong as the rest of the human members of the group.
  • Kon the mod-soul in Bleach, who insists on being taken seriously, since he has the duty of possessing Ichigo's body when he's in shinigami form. He seldom is, since he normally inhabits the body of a plush lion.
  • In early episodes of Pokémon, Pikachu, when not in battle, was usually found doing something goofy while the human characters were dealing with the situation. This was later dropped with both his and Ash's maturity.
    • As the series went on, other Pokémon took the role of Team Pet from Pikachu, usually the weakest Pokémon of the female member of the party. Thus, Pikachu was succeeded by Togepi, Torchic, Aipom, Piplup, and Happiny.
  • Menchi/Mince is Excel and Hyatt's Team Pet (and emergency food supply) in Excel Saga. She knows this, and always fears for her life when her rescuer/master gets those "hungry eyes".
  • Kameo in Gun X Sword is Wendy's pet pink turtle, and can usually be found at the end of a chain around Wendy's neck. How it was attached to his shell is never revealed. Van doesn't like him very much.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam has a Team Pet for the entire franchise in Haro, the little spherical robot, who, in the original series, was created by Amuro Ray. Usually a non-combatant, although in some SD Gundam games, a Haro tends to be included as a Lethal Joke Character.
    • In Gundam 00, Haro actually copilots the Dynames, by extension Cherudim.
      • Later in 00, Red Haro (the next-most-"important" of the Haros after Orange Haro, the Dynames/Cherudim copilot) even gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome when it stows away on 0-Raiser, bounces around to beat on the Innovator who stole it, and then takes control to dock with 00. Admit it, NOBODY saw that coming.
  • Boota is this for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
  • Should Pen-Pen the penguin from Neon Genesis Evangelion be included?
  • Subverted and played straight in One Piece. Characters often mistakenly assume this is Chopper's role in the crew, and as a result he got a bounty of 50 Berries when everyone else was in the tens or hundreds of millions. He is in fact The Medic, and a perfectly capable fighter in his own right. A straighter example is the whale Laboon, who was Team Pet of the Rumbar Pirates.
    • And apparently, in the recent chapters, Luffy managed to tame a Kraken.
  • Sadaharu from Gintama. He is used for poop gags a lot. Also, the yorozuya combined their... powers... to become Sei-chan, the short-lived mascot of the Shinsengumi.
  • Timcanpy from D.Gray-man.
  • Xiaomei from the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, at least for the little Scar party. And Black Hayate for the Mustang people.
  • Happy from Fairy Tail fits better as The Smart Guy, so Plue fits better as Team Pet.
  • Pandaikon from Nerima Daikon Brothers.
  • Cerberus from Eyeshield 21. Although he's not cute and is primarily interested in savaging and eating the Devil Bats. There's also Butaberus, and the little Devil Bat, the actual team mascot, who doesn't physically appear in the story but handles meta explanations, omake and reader questions. There's also Baby Devil Bat, which is just a smaller, student-like version of the Devil Bat.
    • Word of God reminds us that Cerberus is not a pet. He's a normal person who happens to be a dog. He likes to go for walks, he has his own house, and the only reason he follows Hiruma is because it's an easy way to get food.
  • Karen in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Unlike many other examples, she's not primarily comic relief. Any humor value is derived from the fact a large crocodile is being carried around in someone's backpack. She's also the key part of the link between Jim and Judai, leading Jim to end up sacrificing himself in an attempt to free Judai from Haou. Fittingly, Karen goes down with him.
    • Don't forget Pharaoh, the cat belonging to the teacher in the Osiris Red dorm.
  • Mint in Genesis Climber Mospeada. Aisha also seems to fill this role after her introduction in episode 10.
  • Subverted in Magic Knight Rayearth, with Mokona, who is treated as nothing more than a useful Team Pet up until the end, where it's revealed that he's actually the creator of both Cephiro and Earth.
  • Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple has Shigure's pet mouse Tochumaru. It happens to be a competent martial artist.
  • Shiina in the Vampire Princess Miyu TV series is both Miyu's talking pet of sorts and a Shinma with a very powerful eyesight.
  • Ein the Welsh corgi from Cowboy Bebop. He mostly serves as a vehicle for Animal Reaction Shots, though he does get one notable chance to help the team out near the end of the series.
  • Arthur the cat is probably this for the student council in Code Geass. He's used mostly for Running Gags (his tendency to bite Suzaku at every opportunity, his tendency to incite mad chases through the school by stealing important items), but he actually does arguably save Suzaku's life near the end of the first season, when he distracts Black Knight Tamaki, who has Suzaku at gunpoint, by attacking his face.
  • Blair the cat from Soul Eater, who has the distinctly unique honor of being the Team Pet, a Were Cat, a Catgirl, and Ms. Fanservice all at the same time.

Soul: Anyone want the sexy kitty? She's free.

  • Mahou Sensei Negima gives us Chamo, the talking ermine. He's also a bit of a mentor, though.
  • Shuko, the 1121st owl mascot in So Ra No Wo To
  • Future GPX Cyber Formula has V-8 (Asuka's pet dog) to the Sugo Asurada team.
  • Ryo-Ohki from Tenchi Muyo! certainly belongs here, when she's not a Cool Starship.
  • Akamaru from Naruto serves as the team pet for his team.
  • Don't forget about Kirara from Inuyasha, Sango's two-tailed demon cat who can go from a tiny kitty from a huge fanged feline who can fly.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS has Friedrich, Caro's baby dragon who could take a more adult form during battle.
  • Hana Kimi has Yūjirō.
  • Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. When he's not being the Big Bad.
  • Printemps, Jeudi's pet cockatoo in Honoo no Alpen Rose.
  • Darker than Black had Mao, a Contractor who had the ability to switch bodies. He lost his human body during an explosion and previously resided in the body of a black cat in the first season before regaining consciousness in the second season and found himself occupying Suou's pet momonga, a flying squirrel. Unlike most Team Pets, Mao (when he was in his cat form) was a useful part of the Syndicate through espionage and diversions. However, when he switches his consciousness to a squirrel, his ability to provide assistance is severely hampered by his small size, demonstrated when an enemy contractor (and a Psycho for Hire) incapacitated him by grabbing his tail and taping him to his car.
  • Kuroko no Basuke has Tetsuya #2, a dog. It was adopted by the Seirin High Basketball Club, and named after the main character, Kuroko Tetsuya, for their identical eyes, and expression, or lack thereof.


Comics

  • In Cable & Deadpool, Bob, Agent of HYDRA, is either Deadpool's Team Pet, best friend, or hostage. No-one is really clear on this, not even Bob or Deadpool.
    • Since Bob's attitude towards Deadpool seems to have moved from fearful to appreciative (if not outright adoring in some places), the last one seems to be discounted.
    • Since his reappearance in Deadpool has him being quite happy to see the merc with a mouth, it's definitely not hostage.
    • The clearest indication that Bob might no longer be considered a hostage is really that he and Deadpool don't appear to have seen each other in some time. During Cable & Deadpool, Bob seems quite happy at Agency X, running around on adventures with Deadpool and referring to his capture as a liberation when all the while Deadpool has been trying to get HYDRA to pay a ransom for him (the mention of which doesn't faze Bob in the slightest, suggesting that he realizes that he's still ostensibly being held hostage).
    • To be fair, Deadpool has never been au fait on the distinction between "friendship" and "Stockholm Syndrome". See Weasel, Blind Al, etc.
  • X-Men have Lockheed, when Kitty Pryde is on the team, most of the time.
    • Subverted in that Lockheed is anything but harmless—when roused to fighting fury, he's single-handedly routed Brood hunter packs and utterly annihilated an entire squad of alien Sidri hunters. Both have given respectable fights to experienced X-Men.
      • He can also speak and has actually been spying on the X-Men, albeit benevolently, for quite some time.
        • Hardly a subversion. Whoever said that a Team Pet has to be harmless? Lockheed is certainly goofy, though, at least in appearance (and for this Troper, quite intensely irritating, to the point of being The Scrappy as much as a Team Pet. Of course, that's frequently a damn fine line).
  • Great Lakes Avengers have Squirrel Girl as their Team Pet, being the youngest, goofiest and least experienced member who has a tail and talks to squirrels. But if you want to get technical, it's really Squirrel Girl's sidekick Monkey Joe Tippy-Toe, who's a full member of the group, despite being a squirrel. Yes, that kind of squirrel.
  • Bamse has Katten Jansson and Husmusen, a cat-and-mouse duo that really belong to the main character's grandmother, but often sneak along on adventures. Some Furry Confusion is involved here, as the cast of the comic are Funny Animals, but Katten Jansson and Husmusen (as well as other pets and wild animals) are portrayed more like Talking Animals who only talk among themselves.
    • Katten Jansson and Husmusen are also usually Those Two Guys when they do not star in the story.
  • Back in the Silver Age, Superman and Batman both got a Gratuitous Animal Sidekick, Krypto the Superdog and Ace the Bat-Hound respectively... who ended part of the "Legion of Super-Pets". Both were retconned out eventually for the obvious reasons, but Krypto has later returned, and so has Ace - in the 90s run as a seeing eye dog Batman inherits from a blind Native American medicine man, and in Batman Beyond. Krypto's actually a subversion of sorts as he has all the powers of Superman but little of the human restraint, making him a very dangerous combatant who can fight Superman's foes on even ground.
    • Batman gets a Great Dane puppy in The New 52 version of Batman and Robin named Titus
  • Glomulus the Cleaner Slug for the Orange Lantern Corps.
  • Vincent Van Goat (codenamed HAEDUS) from Quantum and Woody went from a one-shot gag character to an Ensemble Darkhorse.


Literature

  • In Steven King's Dark Tower one of the protaganists, Jake Chambers, has a pet billy-bumbler named "Oy".
    • Related to that continuity, Kojak probably counts in The Stand. Glen found him, then he was with Glen and Stu until they had to leave him. Later, he makes it to Boulder, goes with the final four to face Flagg, and ends up helping Stu by bringing food until Tom arrives.
  • The Famous Five have a dog, Timmy.
  • Subverted at least twice in the Discworld series, once with the Luggage (an Amusing Alien which actually hates its companions and every other life form, aside from its owner and an occasional Love Interest), and again with Quoth the Raven and the Death of Rats, who tend to constitute a Tag-Team Pet between the pair of them.
  • Villainous example- Nagini from Harry Potter, the giant snake who is almost always in the company of her master, Lord Voldemort, and his Death Eaters. Nagini is, however, very dangerous in her own right (being, after all, a huge and very poisonous snake), and she's also a living Soul Jar for Voldemort.
    • For the good guys, Hedwig the owl (and to a lesser extent Hermione's cat Crookshanks) are more ordinary examples.
  • Malevil has Craa, a raven spotted raiding the castle's wheat fields. Though a pest, they name and feed him as he's the only wild animal they've seen since World War III.


Films -- Live Action

  • In Clash of the Titans, Bubo the mechanical owl regularly acted goofy, including flying into things and making crash-landings. However, it also led Perseus to the Stygian Witches, grabbed the Witches' Eye for him, single-handedly freed Pegasus from captivity in Calibos' camp, distracted the Kraken long enough for Perseus to arrive, and carried the bag containing Medusa's head to Perseus, allowing him to petrify the Kraken and save the day.
  • Star Wars: R2-D2 could be considered a Team Pet. An especially useful Team Pet, though.
  • Dark Star: Pinback thought the ship needed a mascot. Pinback was wrong.
  • The Beastmaster has a tiger and an eagle at his command, but he also has his iconic ferrets, Kodo and Podo.


Live Action TV


Music

  • Snot had Dobbs, who appeared on the band's only completed studio album, Get Some. Sadly, Dobbs, along with his owner, Lynn Strait, the vocalist for the band, died in a car crash in 1998.
  • Sublime had Louie Dog, the beloved Dalmatian of the late Bradley Nowell, who frequently joined the band on stage.


Video Games

  • ChuChu in Xenogears. There's a scene late in the game where your party gets captured by Krelian and used as bait to draw Elly out. The Big Bad has the party's Gears crucified in a field, which is meant to be somber and reflect on their possible fate. But if you have ChuChu in your party, that giant plush toy will be up there with the crucified giant robots, turning "Chu-Chu died for your sins!" into a meme among Xenogears fans.
  • MOMO in Xenosaga.
  • Riki in Xenoblade Chronicles.
  • Mog, and to a lesser extent Relm, in Final Fantasy VI (although the team has an actual pet in Interceptor, Shadow's canine partner).
  • Cait Sith in Final Fantasy VII (Fits more than one stereotype, as the character is actually a robot cat working for the bad guys.)
  • Sazh's Chocobo chick in Final Fantasy XIII.
  • Swiss Army Weapon Jack in Gears of War.
  • Meemai in the first Baten Kaitos game isn't a party member—she's a little seal-like creature that rides in the neck of Xelha's shirt. And is used in several of her super moves.
  • Boo in both the Baldur's Gate games was something of a pet if Minsc was in your group, though he was little more than an annoyance to many players as he took up a valuable quick item slot.
    • In Megatokyo, a hamster is named Boo in honour of Minsc's pet.
  • Team Pets are common in the Tales (series): Quickie, Meredy's pet, in Tales of Eternia; Noishe, Lloyd's Arshis companion, and Corrine, Sheena's manmade Summon Spirit, in Tales of Symphonia; Zapie, Claire's pet, in Tales of Rebirth; Giet, Moses's pet Galf, in Tales of Legendia (the Oresoren may also count somewhat); and Mieu, Luke's stress ball a young cheagle, in Tales of the Abyss.
  • Repede in Tales of Vesperia is... a dog. That fights with a knife, but still a dog. Gameplay-wise he's a Fragile Speedster.
  • In Chrono Cross, the first recruitable character in the game is the Team Pet Poshul, a pink, unnervingly cutesy talking dog. (Sample dialog: "Me will use my Pretty-Miracle-Power-X! Me will do it, Thergiepoo!")
  • Koromaru from Persona 3: a highly intelligent dog who can summon the spirit of Cerberus to strike your foes with fire and darkness. And invoke hilariousness when he refuses to eat Yukari's cooking.
    • Don't forget he also saves the team when Ikutsuki tries to force Aegis to kill them.
  • From Persona 4, Teddie, a life-sized teddy bear from the TV world, fills this role. He later becomes human, and a Bishonen at that.
  • Cupil from Skies of Arcadia fills this role, but doubles as Fina's weapon. To a lesser extent, the "Jester" Pow, who's Vyse's dog huskra.
  • Hans in Valkyria Chronicles, a (vestigially) winged pig. Exists mostly to look embarrassed when the protagonist flubs romantic moments in cut scenes.
  • Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis gives us Muppy, a slug-like alien floating in a pot-shaped UFO. No one except Nikki can see that he was actually an alien invader. The Smart Guy/The Rival thinks he's handicapped, and the principal who admitted him to the school? Transfer student from "Waii'ha". Everyone else? Hoo-boy...
    • And, apart from being the McGuffin at the end of one chapter, he doesn't have any impact on the story at all. And, the best that the main character can get out of his Relationship Values with Muppy? A pinky swear. No, really.
  • Similarly to R2-D2 in the movie example, T3-M4 from Knights of the Old Republic is essentially a very useful team pet.
  • Dragon Age: Origins has a Mabari Hound that the player names themselves. All the characters that join you like the dog, even the less pleasant characters like Morrigan, Sten or Loghain.
    • OTOH, Oghren seems to dislike him (becomes more obvious when he's drunk). Alistair, of all people, also has a knack for pissing off Dog. Getting too close to his food, teasing him about eating human flesh, etc. At one point, the Grey Warden can remind him that Dog is a warhound and not a puppy to be teased. The "dialogue" Alistair has with Dog also doesn't seem terribly friendly either.
      • Oghren's just annoyed that Dog doesn't agree that his wearing a saddle and serving as Oghren's personal cavalry mount is a good idea.
    • The entire Mabari breed are the Team Pet of Ferelden. Dragon Age II reveals that other nations refer to Fereldans as "The Dog-Lords".
  • Nall and Ruby of the Lunar series.
  • Ricky the monkey from Dubloon.
  • In Mother 3, one of the party members is the main character's dog, Boney, who is also the only character besides main character Lucas to appear in every chapter.
  • Dragon Quest V's Borongo/Saber is a sabrecat served as The Hero and Bianca's Team Pet. Though in the later of the game, Borongo has no more importance to the plot, and you can develop your own army of monster Team Pet.
    • Dragon Quest VIII has Munchie, The Hero's rat pet that is very smart. It can be used to clear curtain puzzles in a dungeon. It turns out very latter that Munchie is The Hero's ancestor in disguise.
  • Pochi, the family's pet monster from Legacy of the Wizard.


Web Comics

  • Parodied in the hiatused webcomic RPG World by the character Dragobo, a portmaneau character based on a dragon and a chocobo.
  • Parodied in Those Destined, where the Team Pet is also the party thief. Another adventurers party was less lucky, and their Team Pet is a Small Annoying Creature.
  • The May 28, 2004 strip of Exterminatus Now sees Virus bring a Chao to the team, lampshading its role in the process, which is soon followed with a discussion on what to name it. Seven strips after its introduction, it meets a demon, undergoes a radical transformation, and becomes a bite-sized killing machine. In the following strip, it is christened "Blasphemy."
  • In Sluggy Freelance, the non-human members of the main cast (Bun-Bun, Kiki, and Aylee) tend to fill this role, each in varying degrees (though not so much Aylee now that she's taken a mostly human form).
    • Bun-Bun is actually a pardoy of this trope as he was specifically bought by Torg so the strip could have a cute animal...said cute animal is a murderous criminal that can take care of himself and seemingly only hangs around Torg for free food and lodging and whom orginially Torg wanted dead and/or gone (although it IS later revealed he has grown to actually really care about the main cast much later in the strip and fairly early on Torg was shown to clearly miss Bun-Bun when he was AWOL for a while). Kiki on the other hand plays this trope very straight.
  • Davan's hairless, amorphous cat Choo-Choo Bear in Something*Positive, odd for an otherwise (usually) non-fantastic Life Embellished Web Comic. Sometimes seen seeping out of box, popping out of a toaster or acting as Davan's scarf or somesuch.
  • Adventurers! has Chookie, some sort of smurfing pink thing. Karn has a... violent reaction during their first encounter, but he's shown to be part of the party later anyway.
  • Snookums the tentacle bunny in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, although he's mainly Molly's pet. It's notable that Molly herself started out as Bob's pet, before she turned out to be sentient and grew to human size.
  • In Order of the Stick, Mr. Scruffy the cat becomes the Team Pet once adopted by Belkar. It could be argued that Blackwing, Vaarsuvius' raven Familiar, occupied the role before, but he's more of an Intellectual Animal, and now a full character in his own right.
  • Fontes' Rants: Tanooki.


Web Original

  • Tennyo's stuffed cabbit, which is animated anytime Generator wants. It Makes Sense in Context. While cute and silly and usually played for laughs, the cabbit can alert Generator instanteously, and in "Christmas Crisis" demonstrated that it can be horrifically effective.


Western Animation


Real Life

  • The Other Wiki refers to many military mascots, including goats, rams, antelope, ferrets, and even penguins. Maybe a penguin can be quite sensible, but the idea of having them as a pet isn't...