Fluffy Tamer

"Psst! It's just like a puppy. A giant, scaly, spore-spewing puppy, but still..."

— Sticks the Jungle Badger (about Gore Magala), Sonic Boom #10

When your setting features snarling, ferocious beasts with names like Fluffy the Terrible, call in Alice the Fluffy Tamer. She'll turn that man-eating, three-headed dog into a precious puppy by sundown, and the hardest part of the job will be finding a large enough rawhide bone...

But Alice isn't merely good with savage animals, she's the one who names them "Fluffy" in the first place. To her, such creatures are as adorable as any kitten or similar house pet. She would either be mortally offended by the idea of What Measure Is a Non-Cute? or hold it in completely opposite regard than your average person. The main drawback of such a pastime seems to be having to deal with consequences of Muggles and Idiot Heroes freaking out when they see her with her latest pet and mistake her for a Damsel in Distress or something. Repeatedly.

Alice is frequently a Friend to All Living Things and/or Animal Lover. Other times this preference may only extend so far and won't encompass all scary beasts but perhaps just a particular kind. She may also be a Nightmare Fetishist, who finds beauty in all things, especially when they're terrifying.

A sure sign of a Fluffy Tamer is that she talks to rampaging beasts in Baby Talk (and doesn't get eaten). She can even get close enough to pet them. Alice always wins over the monsters with love and kindness; if she gets her way by frightening them into submission, that's And Call Him "George". Compare Admiring the Abomination, where the character might not want to tame Fluffy but is still impressed at the synchronization between his three heads; contrast Animals Hate Him, who gets on the bad side of even the most sweet and gentle critters.

See also Nightmare Fetishist, The Beastmaster, Domesticated Dinosaurs, Training the Pet. Has nothing to do with a guy named Fluffy. Dragon Tamer is the subtrope where Fluffy is... y'know, a dragon.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Mad Scientist Hanji Zoe attempts this with her test subjects in Attack on Titan, giving them names and treating them like adorable pets. They're definitely not tamable, but it doesn't stop her from trying.
• In Episode 13 of A Certain Scientific Railgun, Mitsuko Kongo arrives at a gathering with a snake wrapped around her. Everyone freaks, except Uiharu who coos over the snake and rushes over to pet it. Also, the snake wears a bow. The snake's name is Ekaterina and is Kongo's pet; a later story shows her buying whole, frozen mice from a pet shop for its food, to the disgust of the heroines.
• There is a story arc in Chocotto Sister in which Choko discovers a gigantic kitty cat (a.k.a. a panther), names it Kuro (the Japanese equivalent of a black cat named "Blackie"), and doesn't get eaten. In the manga's finale, Kuro appears to Choko as a spirit guide of sorts.
• Light Yagami of Death Note has his Shinigami Ryuk, who he refers to as "cute" and feeds out of his hand, despite Ryuk's literally being a god of death. Not to say he treats Ryuk particularly well either, though; Light isn't known to treat anyone particularly well, and eventually his treatment of Ryuk and tendency to forget who he's dealing with bites him in the butt — making this a definite subversion.
• Demon City Shinjuku. Sayaka Ram in the 1988 OVA. She tames the vicious two-headed mutant Doberman called Kuro just by talking to him, while her kindness brings peace to the Fire Demons who haunt the ruined park and allows them to pass on to the hereafter.
• While perhaps more of a Killer Rabbit Tamer, Tamako of Den-noh Coil is the controller of the Satchii and Kyuu-chan anti-virus programs. She's also prone to giving them affection pet names like "Tama", a Japanese equivalent to "Fluffy," and praising them like one would a pet.
• In Durarara!!, Celty turns out to have named her massive, undead, headless horse-turned-motorcycle Shooter. She thinks the way it terrifies random passers-by on the street is adorable.
• In Gintama, Kagura is this to Sadaharu, the massive dog left on Gin's doorstep. While watching the girl and her dog play, Shinpachi notes that Sadaharu is actually attacking Kagura, but her Super-Strength allows her to fend off the dog's attempts to maul her.
• The Keeper Wants to Build a Zoo in Another World, so He Tames Monsters: Ikuhara loves all kinds of animals, and doesn't consider that being afraid of giant three-headed dogs might be a good idea.
• Kukuri of Magical Circle Guru-Guru reaches the fourth level of a tower made for her to train her powers, the last before she reaches the top. There she must befriend a creature named Tora Tora before she can proceed. The previous three tests Kukuri did took her three, one, and two months respectively for a total of six. She has Tora Tora giving her horsey rides before the person giving her the test is finished killing time dancing.
• Caro of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S was born with the ability to summon not one, but two dragons. One of them, "Voltaire", is said to be a dragon god. Against the odds, she manages to befriend both of them and becomes able to call on them in times of need.
• Magic Knight Rayearth:
  • When Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu first entered Cephiro, they met a large flying fish. Umi and Fuu agree that, unlike Hikaru, their first instinct was not to pick it up and give it a hug. It's very much part of her personality: when the trio found an "injured puppy" (really one of Ascot's monsters disguised as a cute creature) Hikaru was the first to pick it up, bandage it, and care for it like it was her own dog. Even when it reverted to its true form as a whale-sized fire-breathing monstrosity, she STILL tried to get it to calm down and play nice, and was devastated when she had to put it down.
  • Ascot himself makes a living out of this. His "friends" are huge caterpillar-monsters, the aforementioned canine beast, gargoyle-like creatures, etcetera. And he really cares about them and gets very upset when the Magic Knights kill them. His whole motive for serving Zagato is because Zagato promised that his creatures would no longer be shunned.
• While her personality is rather unlikable to others, Machi from Nagasarete Airantou is beloved by her Shikigami, who she treats as friends when all other summoners consider them mere tools. Machi's great-grandmother Yashiro is the same.
• One Piece:
  • Luffy finds a huge foreboding three-headed dog on one of his adventures and decides to tame it. Afterward, Luffy is later seen triumphantly riding his tamed pet. The sequence goes something like this:
    Luffy: Okay. Shake.
    All three heads of the dog bite Luffy. No really.
    Luffy (soothing tone): Good dog. Now let go. Slowly. Carefully...
    Three-headed dogs confused at his calm tone slowly let him go.
    Luffy (smashing them into a wall): You bastard!
    Luffy (to the now unconscious dog): Shake.
  • Robin found the dog to be cute, putting her in line with this. A chapter cover also shows Robin preferring a scarred wolf over a cute seal and the opening chapters of the Zou arc have her internally gushing at how cute a dragon drawn by terrible artist Kanjuro is.
  • A minor incident occurs on Jaya when Usopp happily plays with a tarantula that freaks out Nami and Sanji. Especially noteworthy seeing as Usopp is absolutely terrified of everything else.
  • On the way to Fishman Island, Luffy feels an irresistible urge to tame an enormous octopus named Kraken. Knowing Luffy... it should come as no surprise he pulls it off.
  • Luffy's new Haki abilities seem to give him this power as a bit of a secondary effect. That tends to happen when you're taught to stare at people in a way that tells even the most hardened criminal to shut the hell up and do what they're told. Or simply knock them unconscious depending on the strength of your 'will' vs. theirs.
  • O-Tama's Millet-Millet Fruit (Kibi Kibi no Mi) Devil Fruit allows her to create dango that tames any animal that eats one. Lion dogs, giant baboons, users of artificial animal-type Zoan Devil Fruit called SMILEs, any beast is fair game.
• Mizuki of Onidere wherever bears are involved. She can summon them at will and has gone to amusement parks and played Indian poker with them.
• Misao Nanjo from Pani Poni Dash! has among her menagerie squirrels, hamsters, fish, snakes, ostriches, and alligators. She absolutely adores them, gives them cutesy names based on what species they are, and the alligator once saved Becky from drowning.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Misty is known to adore all Water Pokémon, finding even Tentacruel beautiful. The only Water Pokémon she's ever disliked was Gyarados, due to having crawled straight into the mouth of a sleeping Gyarados as a baby. A spinoff episode later in the series shows her overcoming this fear. After that, she not only battles with the same Gyarados that originally traumatized her, but also kisses its Poké Ball before throwing it. Her Fluffy Taming doesn't extend beyond Water Pokémon however. She finds Bug Pokémon repulsive.
  • Alder in Pokémon the Series: Black & White is this way too, once he quits goofing off. The guy is able to flip a Gigalith which was rampaging through a town and destroying everything over with his bare hands, after realizing it's got a nail in its foot. Throw in a Potion to heal the wound, and the thing calms right down. Of course, it didn't seem to work all the time. His Bouffalant goofed off during his battle with Ash.
  • Bonnie of all people in Pokémon the Series: XY is this. She calls what some would find terrifying to be cute (like say, a Dusclops). While she is not a trainer due to her young age, she manages to befriend a baby tyrannosaurus rex Pokémon and evolve it. Then there's a fact that she's taking care of a Legendary Pokémon.
  • James seems to be particularly fond of carnivorous or otherwise dangerous Grass-type Pokémon, and vice-versa. As examples, he's had a Victreebel (a giant pitcher plant), a Cacnea (a mobile cactus), and a Carnivine (a giant venus fly-trap), and all have a tendency to glomp onto James when he releases them. This doesn't just apply to grass-types though, as in Sun and Moon he also catches a Mareanie who glomps his head to straight-up poison him because when his face is purple, his hair and face reminds the Mareanie of her former crush, an alternately colored Mareanie.
  • Also in Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, some of Ash's friends seem to try to one-up each other with Lillie helping raise the pre-evolutions of the legendary Pokémon, Solgaleo, Mallow befriending the mythical Pokémon, Shaymin (long story), and Ash's Rowlet of all characters befriending the mythical Pokémon, Meltan, but none of these feats held a candle to Lana practically and single-handedly saving a massive legendary Pokémon, Kyogre from some poachers with antidote bait (while she had help from Ash, it was mostly to keep the Pokémon belonging to said poacher and his hired goons from attacking Lana), then later placating it's rage by reeling it in and having her newly evolved Primarina sing it a beautiful song (not to be confused with the move known as Sing mind you, as no one who heard it fell asleep), after which she befriended it.
• Kodachi Kuno of Ranma ½ has a pet alligator called Mr. Green Turtle. She's also been seen feeding a shark like a koi.
• In Softenni, the tennis club is attacked by a ginormous bear. Kurusu fights it to a standstill, naked. Then makes it so the rest of the team (except Chitose, who's carried by the neck of her uniform in its mouth) can ride it the rest of the way up the mountain. Then Kurusu waves goodbye to the bear, calling it her friend.
• In Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Broly reveals that when he was younger he was able to tame a dangerous dog-like beast he called Bah; at first he trained by trying to avoid Bah's teeth, but they eventually became friends. This sadly ended when his father Paragus disapproved of their friendship and shot off Bah's ear with a gun, scaring the beast away from Broly for good. Broly still keeps Bah's severed ear wrapped around his waist as a reminder of their friendship.

Comic Books

• Gabby in All-New Wolverine: Jonathan the wolverine is a snarling, bad-tempered ball of fur and fangs that Squirrel Girl drops off at Laura's apartment. He proves a handful for Doreen to cart around, and even snarls and snaps at Laura. Gabby, however, squees and takes an instant liking to him, and adopts him as a pet.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • In "Back To The Klondike", Goldie has a domesticated bear act as a guard dog for Scrooge's old claim.
  • In The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck story "The Terror of Transavaal" Scrooge makes a lion his steed just long enough to ride into town and take vengeance on the viper that robbed him.
• An early issue of Doom Patrol depicted Rita Farr in giantess form cuddling and cooing over lions and tigers like they were tame housecats. Little wonder she was an amazing mom to a kid who could shape-shift into any critter he could think of.
• To everyone else, the Joker's former pet hyenas Bud and Lou are vicious animals that will eat you alive. To Harley Quinn, they're her "babies" and eager for her attention.
• Marvel Adventures: In one issue, Hercules comes by and asks the Avengers to pet-sit two of his dogs: giant monstrous underworld hounds, one with three and one with two heads (though Hercules tells them apart by their different spots...) One of them might even be the actual Cerberus. Not only does he treat them like cute puppies, so do the Avengers, who have nothing better to do and start teaching them stupid tricks.
• Robin: Lagoon Boy shows up in Gotham with his new pet "Spotty", a giant fish-crustacean mashup with several rows of serrated teeth and tentacles, that he found near a deep-sea trench. It probably helps that he's displayed some level of marine-telepathy à la Aquaman.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, Sticks manages to calm down an angry Gore Magala after it tears the X Hunters apart, simply by speaking gibberish to it. She decides to take it home and throw it at Sigma.
• Spider-Man: In Maximum Carnage, when Shriek and Carnage first encountered the Doppelganger, Shriek stopped Carnage from killing it because she thought it was neat, and eventually turned it into a loyal little pet. To put things in perspective, Doppelganger is an animalistic, six-armed, fanged monster clone of Spider-Man with compound eyes. It got even freakier looking when it came Back from the Dead, mostly due to the photorealistic approach the artist took.
• The Walking Dead: By wearing human skins and emulating their behavior, the Whisperers live alongside and even among zombie herds. Its as close to domestication as you can get, as the zombies are essentially their guard and attack animals.
• In the XXXenophile story "Rescue 911 a.d.," the unnamed hero goes into the dragon's lair not to kill it or take its treasure but to "ease its loneliness." May not count because he's half-dragon.

Fan Works

• Thor, Loki, Rocket, and Gamora all view Nick Fury as this in the Marvel Cinematic Universe fic Been There, Blown That Up, when Fury brings Goose the tabby cat/flerken to the tower. The four of them are cowering in sheer panic and holding Fury in awe at his effortless handling of such a deadly creature, while Fury is warning them away from his pet and Clint has absolutely no idea what's going on.
• Enemy of My Enemy has Little Sarah Jennings, who effortlessly befriends a Hunter pair to the point where they once abandon their post to save her from a Brute pack. Also, when the two are killed by overwhelming odds, the last one's final thoughts are of her.
• Facing the Future Series: Danielle, having dealt with strays while living on the streets, is instantly able to turn Wulf into her loyal pet with a few belly rubs.
• Harry Potter:
  • House Hunting:
    Harry: My mother owned an owl?
    Remus: Yes, an owl that was truly the incarnation of evil itself. Completely black with a gaze that frightened everyone. She called him Precious. We called him Monster.
  • Veonica Weasley of the Weasley Girl series, is literally this, as she befriends Fluffy the Cerberus.
  • The Odds Were Never In My Favour: During the Magical Tournament, one of the few champions to get past the beasts in the first task is Eleonora da Riva, who offers food to the monster and then caresses the creature and gets it to give her a ride.
• Played for laughs in The Horror! The Horror!, where Harry moves to Africa to start a potion-supply business and routinely handles animals ranging from dragons to a manticore to a Nundu.
• Kyoshi Rising; Princess Miyaki gets it into her head that Kyoshi must tame a dragon to please Renowned Selective Mentor Lady Sho. While touring stables in search of some other animal for Kyoshi to "practice" on, they come across a shirshu who had been captured and was causing problems. After Kyoshi calms the beast, it takes a liking to her and starts following her around. They bond, Kyoshi naming her Isra while Miyaki muses on whether or not it's the Avatar's spirit animal.
• In The Mansionverse, the Ghost Host was one when he was alive, having such Pet Monstrosities as a man-eating bat, an elephant, and an equally carnivorous octopus (whom he likes to hug).
• Lezaford in The Tainted Grimoire managed to have a dragon as a loyal pet.
• The Twilight Child: Princess Luna is one in regards to Cerberus (see Western Animation below), whom she treats like a puppy (and also calls him "Kirby").

Films — Animation

• Encanto has Antonio Madrigal, the youngest person in the Madrigal family, whose magical gift is the ability to talk to animals; a prominent member of his animal entourage is a jaguar, which is normally a fierce predator.
• How to Train Your Dragon:
  • How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Hiccup astounds his Viking community on how he is able to handle fearsome dragons without fear. However, this is because he has taken the time to seriously observe dragons and discovered that all the old negative assumptions about the beasts are wrong.
  • How to Train Your Dragon 2 has Valka, Hiccup's mother, who has spent the last 20 years with dragons and thus is even more experienced as a dragon tamer. In contrast, Big Bad Drago controls dragons by dominating them through sheer force of will and cowing them into submission.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), the titular character is found at one point happily patting what was up until that moment a large, vicious, bear-like creature that seemed more than happy to tear into whatever it could find that stood still for long enough (which even snapped and roared at the inmate that happened upon the odd pair) with no explanation from Riddick besides a nonchalant comment of "It's an animal thing". One possibility is that because the creature possesses eye-shine similar to Riddick, it may have originated on Furya at well.
• Thorgrim, the henchman who cared for the giant snake in the movie Conan the Barbarian (1982). He was suitably pissed when Conan and friends hacked off its head.
• In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander doesn't tame them per se, but is supremely talented at handling all manner of magical creatures. One of the beasts that he gives free run of his enclosure is a Nundu, a supremely dangerous plague-breathing feline that ordinarily takes a full hundred wizards to subdue — ten times more than a mature dragon.
• The film Gamera The Invincible has a little boy named Kenny who befriends the titular giant turtle despite everyone else thinking Gamera's nothing more than a destructive monster.
• In the 1994 live-action film of The Jungle Book, Mowgli is this. The end of the film centers on him being able to look into Shere Khan's eyes and stop him in his tracks.
• Owen from Jurassic World; he's a Velociraptor behavior specialist, and he's trained a pack of them to act like his personal hunting dogs. However, it's made quite clear that the raptors (Blue, Echo, Delta, and Charlie) are less like domesticated dogs and more like lions, barely restrained and always on the verge of attack. Even Owen, who has been imprinted and raised them from birth, states that his whole relationship with the raptors is based on mutual respect and trust, which he's constantly striving to maintain as their Team Dad alpha.
• In the Russian movie Polosaty Reys (Striped Freight), a whole bunch of tigers and lions are set loose upon a cargo liner they've been freight by (no gore, it's a comedy). The stewardess suddenly finds herself in favor of the predators, grooms them, and even manages to herd them back into their cages. Doubled since she's played by an actual tiger trainess.
• The film of The Spiderwick Chronicles has the kids summon a half-puma, half-vulture gryphon who screams, roars, and beats its wings like a territorial animal about to attack. Jared and Mallory back away in a panic, have a brief chat with Thimbletack over whether it's a bird or a mammal, and look back to see Simon petting it as it lowers its head and purrs.
• In supplemental material, it's revealed that the guy who cried after Luke Skywalker killed the Rancor in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was one of these. That same supplemental material reveals that Rancors are Fluffy the Terrible of the Gentle Giant variety; they're sort of like big, lovable apes with strong parental instincts. The particular Rancor from the movie fell victim to Jabba the Hutt's prejudices; because it looked big, mean, and nasty, he ordered it starved and mistreated so that it would make a good show when he threw people into its pen. That's right, the Rancor is the Star Wars equivalent of a pit bull. If a pit bull were large enough to eat you in a single bite. They are even used as beasts of burden on their homeworld of Dathomir.

Literature

• In N.D. Wilson's Ashtown Burials series, Jax is a tiny twelve-year-old who lives in the Crypto Wing of the Ashtown Zoo. It's full of mutant creatures so dangerous that no one else will go near them, but Jax can't bear to stay away. Mind you, he doesn't so much tame them as feed them and clean their cages while wearing full body armour. He does know how to steer a giant, immortal, venomous turtle, though.
• Daystar and Shadow: For reasons Robin doesn't understand, the giant, poisonous fireworms won't hurt him and sometimes even protect him, when they usually attack anyone who annoys them. Once a small fireworm presses against his leg and purrs like a cat.
• Rob Korrigan of The Dinosaur Lords is a Dinosaur Master, a job which entails taming, training, and preparing dinosaurs. He loves them all fiercely, to the point of crying when he sees them wounded.
• Discworld:
  • Lady Sybil Ramkin from is this way towards dragons. Also worth noting is she likes Nobby Nobbs, who has to carry a card that states he's most likely human, when she first meets him.
  • Despite all evidence to the contrary, Nanny Ogg can only see her tomcat Greebo as the sweet little kitten she first took in. This would be the Greebo that is said to be able to fight and/or rape anything up to and including a four-horse logging wagon, and has killed at least two vampires: he ate one in Witches Abroad (said vampire was in bat form at the time), and the other one in Carpe Jugulum he just attacked violently for disturbing his nap.
  • Hodgesaargh, Lancre's royal falconer, is somewhat of an example, although he doesn't name his charges "Fluffy". Still, he's successfully reared the most lethal feathered hunters in the world (which is, after all, half the point of falconry). He just hasn't managed to tame them completely (admittedly, this is the other half). And that's still better than some people could manage, given that Lancre's native birds of prey are described as having "a certain 'sod-you' disposition".
  • This is how Letitia demonstrates she has more depth than Tiffany thought she did in I Shall Wear Midnight. Her reactions to a headless ghost and a screaming skeleton were to give them, respectively, a pumpkin to carry under her arm and a teddy bear.
• In Dune, the Fremen use special hooks to tame and ride Sand Worms.
• In The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Sybel's collection includes some monstrous beasts, including the Dragon Gyld and Gules Lyon.
• Harry Potter:
  • Rubeus Hagrid has raised a giant spider (Aragog), a baby dragon (Norbert), and a three-headed dog (Fluffy). He breeds the aggressive and dangerous Blast-Ended Skrewt hybrids and would never believe that anybody doesn't love them as much as he does — and he tends to underestimate how dangerous they can be. Hagrid's half-giant heritage grants him some natural strength and dexterity for dealing with dangerous creatures but it constantly gets him into trouble. Tom Riddle used Aragog to frame Hagrid for opening the Chamber of Secrets and Hagrid receives some bad publicity from the Skrewts, which threatens his job as the professor of the Hogwarts course, 'Care of Magical Creatures'.
  • During his years at Hogwarts, Ron's second-oldest brother Charlie Weasley liked animals and magical creatures; he later went to Romania in order to study dragons.
  • Hagrid's predecessor Silvanus Kettleburn was just as fanatic about dangerous creatures, and suffered multiple probations because of his recklessness towards them. But, because he was an ordinary human wizard, his charges inflicted numerous injuries on him. When he retires at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Dumbledore claims it was to "Enjoy time with his remaining limbs". He received wooden magical limbs as a retirement gift, gifts he had to have replaced because of his habit of visiting dragon sanctuaries.
  • Newt Scamander was a wizard who had a very large collection of magical beasts and even published the definitive compendium on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. He had a great deal of respect for the creatures he studied, but very little in the way of fear.
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen has the Hounds of Shadow, a pack of pony-sized vicious magical hounds, whom Tulas Shorn claims to have been the original master of. The prequel, the Kharkanas Trilogy, reveals how it happened; having been presented with a pack of half-wild wolf-shapeshifting pups as war tribute, Silchas Ruin thought it a good joke to dump them on his best friend and see what happens... Tulas Shorn proved to be quite skillful at handling them, to say the least.
• In Gery Greer and Bob Ruddick's Max And Me And The Time Machine, the Earl of Hampshire's daughter Lady Elizabeth keeps an ill-tempered, vicious falcon named Fluff-ums.
• In The Moon and the Sun, Marie-Josèphe sees herself as this at first. Yves thinks the sea monster he's captured is incapable of learning or understanding anything, but Marie-Josèphe trains her to eat fish from her hand, do tricks for an audience, and repeat "Fish" like a parrot. When Marie-Josèphe realizes that the sea woman is actually a sentient being, she tries to persuade others, but is accused of being overly attached to her "pet."
• October Daye: Bridge troll taxi driver Danny treats Barghests like puppies, starting a rescue service for them after the third book.
• In Otis Adelbert Kline's novel Outlaws Of Mars, the hero attempts to save a Martian woman he just met from a hideous lizard monster that he sees running towards her. After he kills it, the weeping woman has him arrested for killing her pet that she raised from a baby.
• Daeis from The Outside has the ability to befirend Outside monsters. In the team's lair, they hold and pet small monsters like cats. During the battle with the Keres in The Infinite, they have larger monsters attack enemy ships.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Katie Aalto's childhood love for living creatures evolves into an academic interest in magical ecology, which turns into her gathering a small menagerie of magical creature allies. She starts by befriending Marco the troll, and then successfully tames a griffin fledgeling to the point where the prideful creature will let her ride it, something few mages have ever achieved.
• Sandokan: Tremal Naik's pet is a tiger, and treats her like a cuddly cat who can also guard his home. Kammamuri qualifies too, as he's the one who cares for the tiger when Tremal Naik isn't around.
• Semiosis: Human colonists on Pax learn to communicate with and command the local "lions". Higgins becomes the first "fippmaster" by winning a fight against a lion and establishing himself as pack leader; they pass on the position by staging a mock fight in front of the lions, which the new fippmaster "wins".
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • The Stark children (including Ned Stark's illegitimate son Jon Snow) each adopt a direwolf pup of their own near the beginning of the series when a litter of direwolf pups are found by the two eldest kids, Robb and Jon. The six pups quickly grow into powerful beasts the size of small ponies, proving to be loyal companions to each of the six Stark kids, Stark family, and their friends but the wolves can be hostile to anyone posing a threat to their masters or the family. Robb calls his pup "Greywind," Jon calls his pup "Ghost," Sansa names hers "Lady," Arya calls hers "Nymeria," Bran names his "Summer," while Rickon calls his pup "Shaggydog." Each direwolf pup and child share personality traits and a strong bond. The pups also have a strong connection to each other, also representing the bonds each of the six kids have to one another. Each of the kids (aside from Sansa, who lost her wolf early) are powerful wargs with their wolves.
  • Daenarys Targaryen hatches three dragon eggs at the end of the first book and names them "Drogon," "Rhaegal" and "Viserion," regarding them as her children. Like the direwolf pups, the dragon hatchlings also grow rather quickly and prove loyal to her. Unfortunately for Daenarys, she has trouble taming them because of their increased aggression and taste for human flesh.

Star Wars Legends:

• In The Thrawn Trilogy, Talon Karrde keeps a pair of vornskrs, Sturm and Drang, as pets. Wild vornskrs are quite vicious and dangerous, as Luke and Mara find, but apparently surgically removing their tails curbs their aggression. Even so, Sturm and Drang are both hostile to Force-Sensitives, even if they don't make instant diving leaps of death, and won't listen to his commands to relax. Karrde does have the sense to have one of his people take the animals away when he talks to Luke as soon as he learns about the hostility.
• Both Jacen Solo and later his daughter Alonna have this as a Force ability. Alonna has a pet nexu, a creature that’s usually rather vicious, though she adopted this one as an orphaned baby.

• Savannah Drysdale from the Swindle series calls Luthor, a fierce ex-guard dog, "Sweetie" and seems oblivious to the havoc he could potentially wreak.

Live-Action TV

• In The Addams Family The Addamses had a pet lion (Kitty Cat), an aggressive plant (Cleopatra), and Pugsley had a pet octopus.
• Vicki Pallister from Doctor Who. Much to the Doctor's consternation, she finds a tame Zarbi "cute", and even christens it "Zombo". Unfortunately this works against her in her first episode when Barbara mistakes her beloved pet Sandy for a threat and shoots him.
• Game of Thrones: In "The Night Lands," Sam appears to be the only person Ghost will listen to besides Jon.
• The Munsters were noted for their pet dragon, Spot, that lived under the stairs. Though never seen it would be heard and the Munsters never had anything but affection for it.
• Night Court had a stinger joke where Bull tells the Judge that he has a new pet and takes him to his office. It turns out to be a large crocodile and Bull notes, "I call him 'Muffin'."
• Star Trek: Discovery:
  • Michael Burnham is the only person on the USS Discovery who can approach the giant space tardigrade nicknamed "Ripper" without being mauled. This is mostly because she's the first person to treat it as an animal to be observed, rather than a monster to be either killed or dissected, so it recognizes her as a non-threat.
  • Cleveland Booker, aka Book, is a Kwejian with an empathic sense that allows him to soothe creatures called trance worms, which can otherwise swallow people whole.

Myths & Religion

• Heracles was mainly known for killing monsters as part of his twelve labors, but for one of them, he had to bring back Cerberus. Instead of fighting the beast and getting on Hades's bad side, he just asked Hades if he could borrow his dog, to which the god agreed as long as he returned it unharmed. May count as a subversion, since Cerberus was technically already "tamed".
• Saint Martha owes her fame mostly to using her faith and charms to tame the legendary Tarasque, a dragon so ferocious that whole armies couldn't bring it down. Unfortunately, when she decided to bring it to town to show her success, an angry mob descended upon it in vengeance and killed it while it refused to fight back. Once she explained the truth, the town was renamed Tarascon in penance.

Podcasts

• Pokémon World Tour: United: Cobalt at one point notes that Rose has an affinity for monsters. While many of her Pokemon, such as Bango the Growlithe or Sakura the Bulbasaur, are conventionally cute and otherwise normal Pokemon. Others on her roster include Scramble the Killer Rabbit Togepi and Pepper the ghost Charmander. Pepper, in particular, freaks people out regularly just by being the ghost of a Charmander and having the traits thereof. The creepiness factor increases significantly when Pepper evolves to Charmeleon. Despite this, Rose adores her "sweet boy" and regards him as being every bit as cute as Scramble or Bango. The fact Pepper can regularly take down threatening Pokemon is simply a plus, since she's a trainer on a Pokemon journey.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Most editions have various "Beastmaster" kits. In settings like Dark Sun, a dumb lizard the size of a house is but one of many usual means of transportation and the desert has more than enough powerful beasts and semi-sentient monsters one could persuade to cooperate.
  • A nereid often has a pet, their taste in pets being Fluffy-like Sea Monsters, like giant squids, eels, and possibly even dragon turtles.
  • In Third Edition, a Druid could start out with a pet wolf or cobra (or, admittedly, some cuddlier critters), and after gaining experience has the opportunity to tame larger and fiercer animals, such as a 35-foot-long (10.7m) dire tiger or a Tyrannosaurus rex.
  • Fourth Edition/Essentials introduces the Fey Beast Tamer character theme, which allows a character of any class to have a monster from the Feywild as a loyal pet. The four default ones are a Blink Dog, a Feywild Panther, a Displacer Beast, and an Owlbear.
• Pathfinder has the Goliath Druid, a Druid archetype who can only get dinosaurs or megafauna (other giant prehistoric animals) as animal companions and can only affect animals at least in the Large size category with wild empathy.

Video Games

• Ace Attorney: Regina Berry works as an animal tamer in her father's circus, and can get lions, tigers, and even a wild alligator to follow her commands. She's introduced with her tiger, Regent, who she calls "cute".
• In ARK: Survival Evolved you can tame almost any creature in the game, including massive carnivorous dinosaurs. And call them Fluffy if you feel like it. It's one of the main mechanics of the game.
• In Civilization: Beyond Earth, a civ that follows the Harmony affinity will also be able to domesticate alien critters and use them as attack animals or mounts, their Fantastic Nuke is a trigger that lures gigantic Siege Worms to attack the city, and the Harmony civ's ultimate unit is the Xeno Titan, basically a Kaiju with the highest melee strength of any unit in the game. Any civ, regardless of affinity, that has an alien nest in its territory for 60 turns will be able to control the aliens spawned from it, as if they were their own units. TheRising Tide expansion gives Harmony players the ability to "leash" wild alien creatures and convert them into controllable units, including Siege Worms and Kraken.
• In Dead Rising 2, Chuck can tame a tiger by the name of Snowflake. Not only that, but he can even give it to his daughter as a pet.
• Dragon Age:
  • Anyone who owns a Mabari. While Mabari do act like adorable puppies around the people they like, one can't forget that they are sentient warhounds fully capable of tearing apart armored warriors.
  • The Ranger Specialisation for Rogues allows them to summon a Wolf, Bear, or Giant Spider to fight alongside them in battle.
  • In Dragon Age II Mark of the Assassin, Duke Prosper has a pet wyvern named "Leopold". Wyverns are huge, vicious, venom-spitting, man-eating lizards, and Leopold is much bigger and stronger than wild wyverns. Prosper has tamed Leopold so well that he can ride the beast.
  • Merrill would like to be one of these. She often mentions how much she'd like a pet griffon, despite them being (supposedly) extinct. As of Last Flight, the species may be making a comeback. Dare to dream, Merrill! She also finds deepstalkers adorable.
• Dragon Quest V
  • Parry Gotha takes interest in his father's ability to capture and tame monsters.
  • Meanwhile, his sister Madchen shares daddy's love for monsters and often laments their bad reputation.
  • The Hero inherited this power from his own mother, a woman who could purge the evil out of monsters.
  • Monty the Monster Monitor is a master of monsters who's perfectly willing to help others see how to do so themselves.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • This was the job of a Dungeon Master in older versions. Having one lets you tame anything with the [PET_EXOTIC] tag, which means you can greet a siege with a flock of War Giant Eagles or Giant Cave Spider web-turrets. The Dungeonmaster was eventually phased out entirely: now how well you can tame an "exotic" animal depends on your dwarfs' experience with that specific creature. So with enough time, you can have an entirely civilization of Fluffy Tamers. It's also easy to mod the proper tags onto almost any creature and make them into potential exotic pets.
  • Elves, thanks to their peace with nature, are excellent tamers as well, which lets them provide you with some great beasts if you deign to trade with them, as well as being their main source of proper offense on a fortress/world map scale if you're on unfriendly terms with them. Pillaging an elven forest sounds easy right until the wall of war bears comes out.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • The Falmer somehow tamed and domesticated Charuses: vicious giant carnivorous insectoid monsters. Chauruses are docile livestock to their Falmer masters, but fearsome predators to everything else in Skyrim. In Dawnguard, one of the members of the Dawnguard tamed a bunch of trolls and made armor for them. The player can pay him 500 gold to take an armored troll as a follower.
  • With the fully-upgraded "Bend Will" shout, the Dragonborn is capable of bending Dragons to their will, preventing them from attacking and even allowing them to be ridden.
• Fallen London: The local zoo analogue, the Labyrinth of Tigers, is staffed to the brim by these, what with having to deal with cranky serpents, a Grumpy Old Rhino, a very, very playful giant octopus, among others. And if you want to start making progress inside it, you'll have to learn their ways.
• In Fall from Heaven, one of the available leaders for the Balseraph Civilization is Keelyn, a young girl who was Raised By Summons - she basically grew up around minor demons and summoned monsters, and eventually used her affinity for them to seize control of the kingdom. Her favorite is a towering demon named 'Giggles'.
• The Sole Survivor from Fallout 4 can gain the Wasteland Whisperer perk and with it can pacify any mutated animal below their level. This includes Yao Guai and Deathclaws. Sadly, this is only a temporary ability that only works as long as the Sole Survivor has a weapon drawn. With the Wasteland Workshop DLC, the Sole Survivor can build traps that allow him/her to catch mutated animals at settlements and use them as guard beasts. So it's quite possible to have half a dozen Deathclaws roaming around Sanctuary to act as guard animals.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The job classes Beastmaster and Trainer are precisely this, able to tame wild monsters from that cute little flying kitty to that rampaging three-headed hydra. The Mediator/Orator class in Final Fantasy Tactics can even learn the "Tame" and "Beast Tongue" abilities to use while equipping another class, and they only work on animals, leading to situations where a tiny White Mage is backed up by her new pet, the Dark Behemoth.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 has a monster taming mechanic. Serah will often praise the Mon party member with an affectionate "Good boy!", regardless of what the monster is, be it a cute kitten in a jar, a chocobo, or a behemoth... or the old guy who flies airships, or her fiance, or her sister, or the sadist who was tormenting the old guy, or the octopus who was trying to prey on her... Serah the Fluffy Tamer gets weird with the DLC beasts.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Alkaios is one of the many researchers in ancient Elpis creating new ideas for creatures to roam the wilds of the world. He's noted to have a fondness for the round and/or stocky, as he's the creator of the large, horned toads that make up many an early enemy in the game. His crowning achievement, once he adds a few touches at your suggestion to make it more of an apex predator, is the Behemoth.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening has Cherche, the wyvern rider, and her pet wyvern, Minerva. She frequently calls Minerva "Minervykins" and is surprised at her comrade's reactions when she claims Minerva is the cutest wyvern of all. Her son, Gerome, also has some of these traits, although he tries to hide it behind his stoic nature.
• In the Gaia Online MMO, zOMG!, a labtech asks you to acquire technology from vicious prairie dog/cyborg aliens, in hopes that he can build a translator to communicate with them. When you meet him again in the Sealab Compound, he indicates that he can communicate with Grunnies and that they gave him a heads-up you were coming.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • One of the possible Guild Bounty targets is the skritt Brekkabek, wanted for illegally keeping bears as pets. In the fight to subdue him, one of his attacks is to throw bears at people.
  • One of the preferred pets of the Charr is the devourer, basically a two-tailed scorpion. One meta event in the Iron Marches features you helping some Charr confront a gigantic devourer queen that's become a victim of The Corruption. The Charr think it's cute until it starts attacking you. The leadup to this fight is taming another large devourer who initially leaves after helping but comes back to fight the boss and digs you an escape route when it departs again.
    Centurion Bloodfist: Blood and fire, look at that monstrosity. It's, well, it's kind of cute.
    Sentinel Whiptail: Aww, it's not that monstrous. (upon aggro) Never mind! It's not cute, not at all!
• Zagreus from Hades can't resist the chance to pet the monstrous Cerberus, and refuses to fight him when he's assigned to keep Zagreus in the Underworld; instead, he bribes the hellhound with snacks. Cerberus is also Hades' only friend.
• In Half-Life 2, Dr. Isaac Kleiner keeps a "de-beaked" headcrab as a pet. Its name is Lamarr.
• Any hero in the Heroes of Might and Magic series who has an affinity for Hellhounds is probably one of these. Fiona from the third game and Lorhish from the sixth were, respectively, a circus animal tamer and an imperial kennel-master before they were recruited by the demons, and use the skills from their old jobs to keep their hellhounds in line, while Grawl from the fifth game considers hellhounds to be the only creatures he can truly empathise with.
• In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, the alien creatures of Vertumna are highly dangerous, but if the protagonist has enough skill in Animals, they can tame them and make them their pets, which can be equipped as gear to provide card bonuses. Also, one possible "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue snippet for Nomi-Nomi is them managing to tame a unisaur that is giving trouble to everyone else in Geoponics.
• League of Legends has Zoe (a hyperactive, young-at-heart Aspect of Twilight) the tamer of Aurelion Sol (an impossibly ancient and incredibly vain cosmic dragon responsible for forging all the stars of the cosmos) who she considers her "space puppy". The two have a somewhat odd relationship; Aurelion Sol hates the Targonian Aspects after they enslaved him, but despite being annoyed by how Zoe treats him, he has a relative soft spot for her and her genuine (if humiliating) protectiveness and compassion for him, enough to consider her worthy of sparing once he finally enacts his revenge on all of Targon.
• Cultists in Majesty use this as their main tactic; they tend to end battles by charming whatever creature your other heroes are fighting. It's common for higher-level Cultists to be followed by a dozen or more monsters, ranging from giant rats to dragons. And their temple will spawn creatures specifically for their residents to build up their retinue.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 2, Shepard can feed a Varren named Urz, who was a former pit-fighting champion. Despite having teeth that are several inches long, Urz gleefully proceeds to follow them around the Urdnot Camp like a puppy.
  • Lampshaded in Mass Effect 3, where the black-market Shepard VI program claims that Shepard looks like a Varren person.
  • Jack takes it up a notch in Citadel with a formerly abused biotic varren. Shepard ends up using a frying pan to play fetch with him.
  • Javik claims that in his Cycle, the Prothean's used to ride Thresher Maws (though he claims they're bigger now). Of course, he's known for being something of a Troll.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl has an NPC standing outside Amity Park (which only admits "cute" Pokémon) complaining about discrimination against his Steelix.
  • Thanks to the complete aversion of What Measure Is a Non-Cute? any Pokémon trainer can become one of these. Want to raise a giant fire-breathing dragon and call it Snookums? Sure, why not? The embodiment of nightmares? A Pokemon doesn't mind at all what its nickname is. Player Characters will be Player Characters. However the Tamer Class among NPCs is the closest to this trope.
  • Pokémon X and Y brings it to the logical extreme with Pokémon-Amie. From the tiniest kitten-like critter to gigantic, snarling behemoths, all are fair game for petting, cuddling, playing, and feeding Puffs.
• Quest for Glory: In Spielberg Sauruses (Saurii?) are vicious, purple, monsters who are a (relatively minor) hazard for an experienced adventurer. Not so in Shapeir, where Sauruses (Saurii?) have been tamed into loyal beasts of burden ferociously protective of their masters. Looking at a Saurus in the second game even responds that the ones in Spielberg weren't so friendly. Making Shapeir an entire kingdom of Fluffy Tamers.
• In Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Qwark somehow manages to tame an Agorian War Grok, a feral, bloodthirsty beast the size of a small house. He calls it "Snowball".
• Rune Factory series lets you tame monsters, name them, pet them, and make them do chores or fight with you. A monster "wooly" is known for being so cute that almost everyone in-game like them, especially the in the third game, where a few heroines have a common quest to discover a certain golden wooly. That golden wooly is the protagonist in his monster form.
• In Star Ocean: The Last Hope, there's Lymle with her demonic canine Cerberus whom she refers to as "Doggy". Also, a catgirl is normally not considered Fluffy the Terrible, but when you consider the fact that she crossed over alternate dimensions and was treated as a monster by special forces black ops, well...
• Tales Series:
  • Colette and Raine from Tales of Symphonia will, if you defeat a monster with them in the party, have the following exchange.
    Raine: I wonder what the enemy's name was.
    Colette: I like "Poochy!"
    Raine: No, dear, I was talking about the species.
  • And in Tales of the Abyss Luke and Tear have a similar exchange:
    Luke: What's that monster called?
    Tear: Fluffy!
    Luke: Huh?
    Tear: I thought it'd be cute...
• World of Warcraft:
  • Pet classes in MMOs will often count. For example, Hunters can tame things like Devilsaurs and Core Hounds.
  • An NPC example is Watcher Leesa'oh at the Cenarion Watchpost in Zangarmarsh, who gushes over her beloved tiger, Buddy.
• Yes, Your Grace: Princess Cedani, who spends the game taming bigger and bigger wild animals, will have a bear cub bigger than she is by the end of the game if her player-controlled father lets her keep it. If still alive at the very end of the game, she'll be heard seriously considering befriending an even bigger animal.

Web Animation

• DSBT InsaniT:
  • Bear managed to make friends with Windears and stop them from attacking Snake, Duck, and Balloon.
  • Tide owns an aquarium exhibit in the zoo, filled with creatures like White Killer Eels and Pink Fish Chargers, and all of which he has an attachment to and can call upon on a whim.
  • Working in the Windear exhibit, Teacher can calm them down from a flurry of rage easily.
• Shephard from Shephard's Mind has his little alien weapon critters, named Sparky (the shock roach), Gil (the spore launcher), and Barney (the barnacle grapple).

Webcomics

• Virus from Exterminatus Now is infamous for this, having a reputation of adopting various demonic entities as pets. He eventually finds a Chao, which starts out cute and cuddly, but ends up absorbing the DNA of a Hellhound and turns into a vicious killer. He remains Virus's pet.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Molly's pet Snookums is a giant space monster shrunk to the size of a basketball, but Molly had already made friends with him when he was still the size of a house.
• Jared from Manly Guys Doing Manly Things is a Pokémon Trainer. He named his Gyarados Mr. Fish, but it did start out as a Magikarp. Jared has taught it not to eat him, though.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Tsukiko give us this disturbing little number:
    Tsukiko: [after creating a goblin undead] Hello, little one, I'm your mommy.
    Undead: I crave mortal flesh!
    Tsukiko: Aww, Baby wants his num-num, doesn't he?
  • Belkar, technically, can do this as well, being a ranger, but almost never tries. The times he does, however...
    Belkar: FLEE! FLEE BEFORE ME, WORMS!!!
  • Oona, a bugbear living near a major dungeon, has managed to tame a few of the creatures that live in it, including an yrthak and a worg.
  • Serini Toormuck is the most successful example in the comic, having tamed, befriended, and allied with countless magical beasts and aberrations in the process of building Kraagor's Gate. Her closest companion (bordering on surrogate child) is a beholder she raised almost from birth, whom she's named Sunny.
• Kirk from Suppression has his best little buddy Morty, a Fun Size Extreme Omnivore demon that he feeds guns to. Then he lets the little guy eat his arm to become a Shapeshifter Weapon with a nasty Wave-Motion Gun.
• Prezleek Comics's Prez tamed the world-devourer Tuska into rolling over for scritches. Later he did the same to Helwyr... until the latter shifted out of beast form. Then things just got awkward.

Web Original

• In The Impossible Man, Angela loves her pet Chupacabra, Eli. Just don't call it a Kaijumon.
• Protectors of the Plot Continuum:
  • In the original series, Agent Jay Thorntree gets Cuteness proximity with Watchers and Balrogs.
  • In later spin-offs, many other agents exhibit this trait towards large monsters of the unfriendly and canonical variety and nearly all agents towards minis.
• The SCP Foundation, as part of their ongoing attempts to destroy Nigh-Invulnerable Omnicidal Maniac SCP-682, introduced it to SCP-053, a seemingly ordinary little girl whose presence induces homicidal rage and then lethal heart attacks or seizures in those who interact with her. 682 did not attack 053 either by its own intentions or by her influence, and by the end of the experiment was tolerating being drawn on with crayons. This has raised questions about SCP-053.

Web Videos

• The Nostalgia Critic hates "relatable" animals and they despise him right back, but give him a drooling demon dog from Star Trek and he'll descend into squeeful goo.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • The beloved pet of King Bumi is a goat-gorilla named Flopsie.
    • June also at least has shades of this, as she cuddles her Shirshu and calls it "snuffly-wuffly" in her appearance in the finale.
• The Legend of Korra has Korra with Naga. She is the first person to ever tame a polarbear-dog. Said polarbear-dog is also her animal guide.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn and her "babies" — the Joker's pair of snarling pet hyenas. They like her, and lets her gush over them like a pair of puppies, but viciously attempt to maul anyone else.
• Molly from Bump in the Night tries to tame the Closet Monster in "Comforting the Uncomfortable."
• Several Craig McCracken series:
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Three Girls and a Monster" features Blossom and Buttercup arguing Brains VS Brawn to deal with a new monster. Bubbles flies up to it, asks it to leave "pretty please with sugar on top" and it peacefully walks away.
  • In the pilot episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends ("House of Bloo's") shows Duchess is able to exert near-perfect control over an Extremosaur and even speaks to it with Baby Talk.
  • In "The Pet" episode of Wander over Yonder, Wander finds the spider creature adorable, naming it "Captain Tim," unknowingly after the ship captain who was eaten by the monster (it coughed up his dog tag). Wander treats it like a pet and trains it to obey a few commands, but when even he finds raising it to be a challenge ("He's stolen my heart... HE'S STEALING MY HEART!"), he and Sylvia "give" it to Lord Hater, who's also very fond of it.
    • This seems to be a talent of Wander's, as he successfully pulls this on creatures ranging from an enormous horned space beast that Hater tries to feed him to in "The Birthday Boy" to the "fierce Tigrex of Nil" in "The Epic Quest of Unfathomable Difficulty!!!" In "The Brainstorm" Hater shoots down Commander Peepers' plan to use "Doom Dragons" to invade a planet by pointing out that Wander will likely "tame them with The Power of Love or something gross like that."
    Hater: Now Wander has an army of Doom Dragons! Great work, Peepers!
• Dragons: Riders of Berk:
  • Hiccup's reputation as a dragon trainer has been taken to mythical levels by people outside the village, to the point that he is known as The Dragon Conqueror and described as a 10ft tall giant of a man with the strength of 20.
  • In the movies and the series, it is also shown that almost everyone in the village have become dragon tamers by following Hiccup's example.
• Cousin Fethry of DuckTales (2017) is the caretaker of Scrooge McDuck's undersea labs. Among the denizens of said labs are mutated worms that, Fethry learned, are not dangerous if you show them affection, which he does with far less hesitation than Huey and Dewey are capable of mustering. He also has a jar of small bioluminescent krill that he sings to, has individual names for when he calls Huey and Dewey "Little Donalds 1 and 2", and has tamed to provide light when they have to swim in the deep sea. When a giant monster attacks the lab, Fethry eventually recognizes it as a mutated version of Mitzi, one of the aforementioned krill he'd raised previously. The episode ends with Mitzi saving Fethry's life and Fethry riding her off into the distance.
• On The Fairly Oddparents, Cosmo has a pet hydra named Snowball. Also, when he becomes a superhero, he gets a pet wolverine. "Tamer" might not be the best word for it though, given that the wolverine tried to kill Cosmo in his sleep.
• The title character of Freakazoid! attempts this with his former sidekick Foamy The Freakadog, a stray mutt Freakazoid found in the back of a dogcatcher's truck. Said dog is clearly rabid, incredibly vicious, and constantly attacks him, not that Freakazoid notices.
• Futurama:
  • In the episode "Spanish Fry", Lrr and Nd-Nd, the fearsome rulers of Omicron Persei 8, meet Bigfoot and start gushing over it as if he were a fluffy bunny.
  • Leela is devoted to her adorable extraterrestrial pet Nibbler, a tiny carnivore who eats animals many tens of times his size and isn't above wreaking a little havoc on Leela's friends. His gentleness to her is justified, however; he's fully sapient and only pretends to be a dumb animal. When Leela similarly tries to adopt a deadly space bee, things goes south very quickly.
  • Fry to "Mr. Peppy," the dragon-like "Bone Vampire" he raises from an egg in "Fry Am the Egg Man."
• In "Show Stoppers", a U.S. Acres segment of Garfield and Friends, Wade Duck, afraid of literally everything, pulls this off. He has a giant pet bull who he named Fido. Fido ended up chasing Orson's mean brothers away.
• Godzilla: The Series: Nick Tatopoulos is the only person in the world who can control his adoptive son (without having to use force or Mind Control). Said adoptive son happens to be Godzilla Junior.
• Lilo & Stitch:
  • Lilo single-handedly turns a rampaging, genetically-modified alien into a loving pet. She proceeds to do the same to 625 other such creatures in Lilo & Stitch: The Series, as well as 625/Reuben and Gantu in Leroy & Stitch by finding "their one true place" and helping Gantu get reinstated as Captain in the Galactic Armada with Reuben as his first mate and galley cook.
  • And in one of the episodes, Mrs. Hasagawa has adopted and tamed multiple experiments—but she insists on calling them her 'cats' despite none of them looking any close to one.
• Charlotte from Making Fiends has the ability to befriend most, if not all, of the fiends Vendetta makes, even to the ability to taming all her guard dog puppies, and keeping them as pets.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:'s Fluttershy is the Friend to All Living Things. This includes mythical creatures and giant monsters.
  • In the second part of the pilot, she calmly flies up to a Manticore that had been kicking the group's butt, pulls a thorn out of its paw, and calms it down, all without a hint of fear. It licks her like a happy puppy. She flew up to the Manticore before even knowing it had a thorn.
  • There are exceptions such as in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" where a vicious hydra is determined to devour her, and she can't do anything but flee for her life. The only thing she's legitimately afraid of is adult dragons (which further justifies her inability to deal with the aforementioned hydra). Her logic for all those other things she can face down is "because it's not a dragon", except for Spike, where the logic is "because he's tiny and adorable and not big". Or, more specifically, 'gobble up a pony in one bite' big.
  • In the Season 2 episode "It's About Time" she does meet an actual three-headed dog out of hell. She's one of two ponies in town not running for their lives, and she gives Cerberus a tummy rub.
  • Season 3, Keep Calm and Flutter On. Fluttershy does the impossible and redeems Discord.
  • While not as impressive as the above, there's also the matter of a fairly large bear that's been shown among her animal friends in a few episodes.
  • "Trade Ya!" has Fluttershy able to calmly walk up to and calm a vicious orthros^note A two-headed dog and brother of Cerberus, who is mentioned in the "It's About Time" example just by rubbing the chin of one of its two heads, after watching it break a chain with its two heads. At the end, as part of Rainbow's deal to get a first edition Daring Do, she almost ends up going to Manehatten to spend months training the orthros because of how much it likes her before Rainbow realizes she made a big mistake and has Twilight call off the trade.
• Among the pets owned by Ruby Gloom's Iris, we have a giant flying worm called Squig and a venus flytrap named Venus. The episode "Iris Springs Eternal" ends with her happily cultivating an entire garden of flytraps actively trying to eat her. She even successfully taught Venus to speak.
• The Centipeedle is the first monster Steven faces in Steven Universe. In a later episode, he attempts to tame it, and even partially succeeds with his chips. It ultimately doesn't take, however, and the Crystal Gems are forced to re-bubble it. Later, when trying to find a way to cure Corrupted Gems, Steven insists on testing his progress with Centipeedle. Again he partially, but not permanently, succeeds, but in the process find other of Centi's kind for it to be with and, rather than re-bubble it, the Crystal Gems are content to leave Centipeedle be, since it isn't an active threat.
• South Park: If Eric Cartman taming Cthulu himself to engage in mass murder doesn't qualify, nothing will. He accomplishes it by being cute and manipulative to the monster.
• Superman: The Animated Series:
  • Bizarro adopts a vicious reptilian alien from the menagerie Superman liberated from the Collector in the two-parter "The Main Man", and refers to it as "Krypto". Thanks to Bizarro's invulnerability, he takes the creature's attempts at mauling him as affectionate cuddling.
  • Superman himself is this, having a large zoo of sorts in his Fortress of Solitude for the various alien beings he rescued from the Collector, most of which are of the Starfish Alien variety. This actually comes back to bite him in Batman Beyond as it's revealed that one of these aliens is the DCAU version of Starro The Conqueror.
• Noah from Total Drama World Tour. When the contestants get attacked by an angry yeti in Paris, he's able to train it to play fetch with an imaginary ball via All Animals Are Dogs. This is justified as he mentions that the trick 'always works on my dog'.

Real Life

• This is the job of César Millán as featured on the National Geographic Channel, his specialty being breeds that are (unfairly) thought of as Fluffies... Pitbulls and Rottweilers.
• Steve Irwin may not have given them cutesy names, but he definitely was good with dangerous animals.
• An episode of That's Incredible featured an otherwise normal American family that reared a brood of large cats - 10 cougars, 4 bobcats, a jaguar, and a lynx. All were treated affectionately as if they were house cats.
• Your average circus, zoo or water park animal tamer, charged with telling giant carnivorous animals to perform tricks for our amusement.
  • Killer Whales come to mind, although they and pandas may be a subversion in that they are generally considered cute.
  • Killer Whales also don't attack humans in wild, and most accidents involving whales in captivity had them going mad (who can blame them?) or simply forgetting their size / making a mistake (which is usually deadly for a trainer, as Killer Whale weights 7-9 tons, and human 70 - 90 kg).
• This brave fellow shows that if you raise Polistes wasps from an early age and desensitize them to your fingers they will happily eat whatever you hand them on your finger. It's implied he's not only feeding a wasp but a queen wasp whose behavior could determine whether the colony will accept him or sting him mercilessly.
• ASPCA agent Mark MacDonald, who often appears on Animal Precinct, one of the Animal Cops series, is known as the Beastmaster (not to be confused with The Beastmaster) for his ability to calm and handle the various creatures the agents are called on to rescue.
• Tarot Cards. Many versions depict The Strength of the Major Arcana as a beautiful woman holding a ferocious-looking lion in a headlock, clearly dominating the beast.
• Ernie "Turtleman" Brown Jr. is this, catching a variety of nuisance animals, including wild hogs, coyotes, and snapping turtles, with his bare hands, a stick to use as a target for its teeth so he can grab them, and a sack. He usually gives them a name before he releases them back into the wild.
• Real-life untrained guard dogs, kept specifically for their natural aggressive and/or violent behavior by private owners or low-budget businesses, can occasionally be an excellent example of this trope. Anyone else stepping foot near the fence faces mauling, but the keeper who bottle raised them risks only being playfully presented the remains of the latest attempted burglar by a proud tail-wagging fluffy.
• Christian the lion was raised for nearly two years by a pair of roommates in London, from 1969 to 1970, and eventually released into the Kora National Reserve when they realized he was getting too big and might hurt someone by accident. Their reunion a year later (and a similar, unfilmed one 2 years after that) reflect that the men had made their mark on the lion cub.
• Keepers of exotic animals typically show as much care and affection for their strange wards as any other animal (within the confines of safety, of course). In turn, many animals that are typically thought of as dangerous can be handled in relative safety if raised in contact with humans. Snakes, tarantulas and scorpions, and wolves are probably the most common examples.

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