"What would you wish of me: The ever-impressive, the long-contained, the often imitated, but never duplicated...Genie of the Lamp!"
— Genie, introducing himself to the title character in Aladdin
Tropes pertaining to genies, also called djinn or jinn, which are spiritual beings originating in Arab and Muslim folklore. In Western pop culture, they are usually depicted as powerfully magical beings who are often forced to serve humans by granting any wish or desire they have.
Compare Elf Tropes, Fairy Tropes, Infernal Tropes, and Wishing Tropes.
Tropes:
- Alchemic Elementals: Ifrit and marids, two different categories or subgroups of genies, are often incorporated elementally in some series.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: As the page image demonstrates, genies are extremely likely to come in a wide variety of colors.
- Becoming the Genie: When making too many wishes causes someone to become a genie themselves.
- Bedlah Babe: A common outfit for female genies in modern media.
- Benevolent Genie: A genie who's friendly and will faithfully grant their master's wish.
- Fog Feet: Genies commonly have wispy tails in place of legs and feet.
- Freeing the Genie: Wishing for a genie's freedom.
- Genie in a Bottle: A genie who's trapped in a bottle or lamp and grants wishes to whoever frees them.
- The Genie in the Machine: A genie who's a well-meaning but hopelessly logical computer program.
- The Genie Knows Jack Nicholson: Genie magic as an excuse for anachronistic humor.
- Immortality: In popular Western media, genies are often immortal beings.
- Instant Allegiance Artifact: A known weakness with most Genies, their loyalty to a Master can flip if their Vessel/Lamp/Bottle is stolen, be it through full on Evil Personality Takeover or Obligation to Obey.
- Jackass Genie: A genie who deliberately misinterprets a wish out of cruelty or spite or makes it so their master's wish is granted at a terrible price.
- Literal Genie: A genie who gives you what you asked for as opposed to what you actually wanted.
- Long-Lived: In both the original Middle Eastern folklore and more modern Western depictions, genies have extremely long lifespans, if they're not outright immortal.
- Our Genies Are Different: Some Genies in works of fiction work differently from both their mythology’s original counterparts and/or other fictional genies!
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls have their origin as a class of djinn.
- Satan: According to Islamic beliefs, Satan (Iblis in Arabic) was a jinn who rebelled against God (Allah).
- Super Smoke: A standard genie power. Turning into smoke is often the prerequisite for exiting from (or slipping into) tiny lamps or bottles. This led to the common representation of genies lacking legs and feet, the lower body still being vaporous while the upper body is solid.
- Three Wishes: In more modern works, a genie will typically grant these. However, the idea of three wishes actually comes from unrelated Celtic mythology. In older Arabian folklore, the genie can typically be used an unlimited number of times.
- Wishplosion: Defeating a genie by making certain wishes which cause some sort of paradox, which may undo all previous wishes.
