Guardian Entity

Even villains have Guardians.

Zodon: Incredible! I wasn't able to get three feet before the sensors defeated my last cloaking device.
Ambriel: It's what I do.
Tyler: How do you do it?
Ambriel: I told you; no one knows. Something keeps me safe. That's why they call me "Guardian Angel".

— PS238

The Guardian Entity is a being that protects their ward from harm. Usually, they spend most of their time floating invisibly and intangibly, preferring to subtly steer harm away from their ward, and only materializing when necessary. But when they do appear? They will lay a smackdown for their trouble.

Their nature can vary quite a bit. Usually they're benevolent, but of course, that may not extend past protecting their ward so they can fulfill a dark fate. They may be the ghost of a loved one, a fey entity that torments and protects in equal measures, a classic Guardian Angel, or a demonic entity there to protect The Antichrist. Depending on their nature, the entity and ward will have a very interesting relationship, but it's not impossible for a really subtle entity to avoid being noticed at all by their ward.

In terms of strength, it might only be able to nudge butterflies, or fully embody the Hyper-Competent Sidekick and bring down the Wrath Of God/Satan/Crystal Dragon Jesus on those who look funny at their ward. Speaking of that, the Guardian Entity is often its own master rather than completely subservient to its ward; in such a case, while it may take some input from said ward, it chooses who to hurt and how to do it all on its own. This can be especially nightmarish for the ward if they are psychotically overprotective, and oversensitive or inscrutable as to what they consider "threats" to their ward.

See also and compare The Kid with the Remote Control, where the ward actually controls the entity, which is corporeal and Kid with the Leash where the entity has evil/violent tendencies kept in line by his ward. May overlap with Fighting Spirit in some instances, and may also be a Friendly Ghost. Also related to Familiar, Hypercompetent Sidekick, Chessmaster Sidekick, Mon, Guardian Angels, and Fairy Godparents. Threshold Guardians may be this if fully aware of their role as "Obstacle to ensure that character is strong enough to face what's after them."

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Guardian of Tsukasa in .hack//SIGN which is definitively on the overprotective and very brutal and trigger happy side of things. Tsubasa isn't very happy about this, and the rest of The world even less.
• The Otherselves from the Black★Rock Shooter TV Series protect their physical world counterparts by destroying psychic sources of their stress and pain from their end of their Layered World. They are rather elemental, and this can have a detrimental effect on more complicated social interaction since their answer to everything is Cutting the Knot.
• Bungou Stray Dogs has many of these, the most obvious being Kouyou's Golden Demon ability which she can freely control, Kyouya's Snow Demon which works similarly to Kouyou's own demon but can only be controlled through a cellphone though she is later able to control it herself thanks to Fukuzawa's ability and Elise is revealed to be this as Ougai's ability.
• Hanyuu acts as this for Rika for much of Higurashi: When They Cry. Despite being unable to directly protect her when she is killed by either Takano or one of her friends, she is capable of transporting Rika to another world at the moment of death, where she gets another chance to save herself. This is the true reason for the Eternal June.
• In Hunter × Hunter, the Kakin royal family has a pot infused with the Nen of their ancestors. By donating a drop of blood to it, a member of the royal family with a strong desire to rule will be blessed with a guardian beast.
• The Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure are the Trope Codifier for most Japanese media. Stands are a manifestation of the user's soul and the user dies if his or her Stand is destroyed (and usually vice versa), but they are often incredibly powerful. Although most of the time, they're closer to a Fighting Spirit since they're an extension of the user's will and can usually be controlled manually, some of them can also act independently to protect their user in certain situations: Jotaro's Star Platinum is the one that fits the description the best, since it automatically intercepts attacks coming his way without him needing to do anything, and has Super-Reflexes fast enough to catch a bullet fired from point-blank range.
• Naruto:
  • Shukaku and Karura acted as this for Gaara when he was young. The sand protected him from any harm, but also tended to react to people who cause him emotional harm, making his abilities unstable. Later he learned to control it... after crossing the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Naruto himself can rely upon his Tailed Beast to lend him its assistance in times of need, with the later stages of transformation producing a seemingly impenetrable shield.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has its own take on the guardian entity in the Evangelions themselves. While the Evangelions have a massive physical presense, it is the soul of the pilots mother which provides the Guardian Entity component, only appearing when the situation is dire to send The Evangelions berserk, going straight from Giant Mecha to nightmare as they render the target completely silent.
• Doubles with Guardian Angel in Oh My Goddess!, where each Goddess gets an angel when she comes of age. They are also used to power up stronger spells.
• Ride Your Wave: After dying, Minato returns as a ghost to protect his girlfriend because he promised to always be there for her. He can only control water, but he uses it to do things like stop her and her belongings from falling into ponds, and save her life by putting out a massive fire.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Guardian Eatos, as well as the other Guardian cards, were this for Rafael, at least after the storm that killed his family.
  • The kas in the Memory World arc are the same, and the slabs they can be bound in make it clear that the slabs/original cards are essentially portable Guardian Entities. Otherwise, they act almost exactly like Stands, right down to being Invisible to Normals.
  • Yubel was surgically restructured into their current dragon/fiend hermaphrodite form in order to guard Judai, the person with the power of Gentle Darkness, until he became an adult. They kind of overdid it with the protection angle, though.
  • The Pharaoh himself always steps in to protect his host Yugi Muto whenever his well-being or that of someone he holds dear is in danger, especially in the early manga and Toei anime when he was very vicious and borderline amoral.
• The fairies in Yuki Yuna is a Hero protect the Heroes from serious harm. As shown in Washio Sumi Is a Hero, when the fairies aren't around, things tend to get pretty bloody; they were introduced after Gin died in combat in order to prevent such deaths from happening again. It's later established that the fairies prevent the Heroes from dying entirely, and will even intervene if they attempt suicide.

Audio Play

• The Elysium Project has the companions, a side effect of the eponymous Elysium formula. They are essentially alternate personalities given form by the reality-warping powers of the formula, existing solely to act out the thoughts and desires of the subjects.

Comic Books

• The original Captain Marvel fit this mold as he was actually a separate entity from Billy Batson. Billy said Shazam and Captain Marvel took over to deal with the threat and get Billy out of danger. Jeff Smith's Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil outright called Captain Marvel a "guardian spirit"
• Mister Immortal of the Great Lakes Avengers (X-Men, Champions, Initiative, etc.) had Deathurge (who is exactly what he sounds like) as his "imaginary" childhood friend/guardian.
• The Shadowdog in Hellblazer protected humanity from The Beast, a denizen of Eden that refused to be named by Adam that dedicated itself to destroying mankind. Unfortunately, the Shadowdog ended up being blamed for the destruction caused by The Beast since the dog would always appear during those troubled times. The dog savagely ripping seemingly random people (actually people possessed by The Beast) apart didn't help.
• A twist on this in Immortal Hulk as normally the Hulks in Bruce Banner are split-personalities that take over when he transforms and all of them seem to hate "Puny Banner". Except the Devil Hulk. Devil Hulk isn't exactly a version of Bruce but more like an Imaginary Friend created when he was a child being abused by his father, Brian Banner. Devil Hulk was modeled after the serpent in Paradise Lost as Bruce was looking at the book when his father attacked him. Bruce wanted a loving father figure to look after him but couldn't imagine a father who wasn't scary or see love without pain so the Devil Hulk is simultaneously very protective of Bruce and takes the role of a paternal figure but is also incredibly violent and brutal. As Bruce modeled this Hulk after Satan, Devil Hulk is supernatural and can control the mystical form of gamma energy while performing feats that are scientifically impossible. Now that the Devil is out of Bruce, woe be to any who would seek to harm him.
  Devil Hulk: ....He needed a dad...Or something like a dad. Like a dad that loved him. But he didn't know what love was. Couldn't see love without pain. I can only come out at night. I only come out when I'm needed. When someone hurts him. Then... I take it personal.
  [...]
  Devil Hulk:...I know that I scare you. What I do. What I am...But before any of the others...I was there. Protecting you. I'll always be there to protect you....Because I love you, you stupid kid. Somebody had to.
• In Midnight Nation, a robed figure carrying a flaming sword protects Laz (the Biblical Lazarus). The guardian is mostly off-panel, and is never seen actually doing anything — just putting in an intimidating appearance does the job.
• Guardian Angel of PS238 has an 'invisible friend' who protects her from harm both direct and indirect. If she's attacked, she simply seems to have an active forcefield that repels objects. If she walks out past curfew, the surveillance cameras somehow just fail to record her and anyone else nearby (after all, if they'd get caught, she'd get caught with them). If she walks out in the rain, it never hits her. It also protects her from needles, and from ever catching any illnesses, leaving her with no vaccinations and an atrophied immune system - so when her powers are turned off on a rainy day, for just a few hours, she catches a common cold, and dies from it. Fortunately, her guardian apparently also protects her from passing on to the other side, so she eventually comes back.
  • The Guardian later switches to become more reactive than proactive in response to having let her down like that; at one point Emerald Gauntlet successfully hits her with a paper airplane, but the Guardian immediately picks it up and sends it back at him.
• X-Men: The Phoenix Force has served as this to several characters.
  • One of the reasons Jean Grey has cheated death so much is because the Phoenix Force seems unwilling to let her die. It shows up almost every time she's at risk of death to heal and/or transport her out of danger in some way. One of the most darkly and unintentionally hilarious instances was when she told Wolverine to kill her, hoping the Phoenix Force would be weakened trying to heal her. He obliged, stabbing her to death six times (at least, seeing it was a montage), and when that wasn't enough, she threw herself into a frozen lake. This still didn't work (which isn't entirely surprising, given that the Phoenix is a Cosmic Entity - stabbing isn't going to bother it). Eventually, it resurrected her one last time in Phoenix Resurrection, vaporising Teen Jean in the process (apparently out of spite - though Teen Jean promptly annoyed/bullied it into resurrecting her) whereupon she told it to leave her alone. Reluctantly, it complied.
  • Rachel Summers, Jean's alternate reality daughter, is in some ways even closer to this trope - while she doesn't die, the Phoenix is a bit more active about protecting her. The Phoenix protected her and helped convey her to the past in the first place, erasing the memories to protect her sanity, merged with her for a very long time, being genuinely protective of her, and then a fragment - a 'shadow' - merged with her when Korvus Rook'shir (then a Punch-Clock Villain) tried to use the Phoenix Blade that contained it to kill her and she responded with a Barehanded Blade Block. In the face of his utter bafflement, she smirked, with a glowing blue Phoenix symbol over one eye, and said, "The Phoenix knows me. It likes me."
  • Hope Summers, the Mutant Messiah, was born with an Uncanny Family Resemblance to her adopted grandmother Jean and a strange brand of protection from the Phoenix. It finally manifests in full, along with her powers, when she goes toe to toe with Bastion and obliterates him. However, after Avengers vs. X-Men, the Phoenix has broadly left her alone.

Comic Strips

• Rose is Rose: Pasquale has a guardian angel who usually looks like a robed and winged twin of Pasquale... except when he senses a threat to Pasquale and transforms into an intimidating warrior angel with a gigantic sword.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm:
  • Harry's protection comes from the Phoenix - specifically, a fragment lodged inside him thanks to a bargain Lily struck with the entity. It goes to some lengths to obscure its identity in the first book, with it being up in the air whether or not it was the Phoenix, Lily's ghost, or something else entirely, until finally revealing the truth when Harry gets killed in chapter 71 and it goes berserk. Since the entity in question is now merged with Lily as the White Phoenix of the Crown, this is not especially surprising - and complicated by the fact that Lily can and sometimes does act through the fragment.
    • In the sequel Harry learns to tap into that power in his own right, which is generally (and correctly) considered to be a terrible idea because he's horribly traumatised, the Phoenix is not evil but incredibly volatile, and every bit of Phoenix power expended in the Nine Realms after Red Sky Day risks cracking Surtur's seal. Once all of these variables are mitigated, or compensated for, it's not considered to be a terrible idea... just a risky one.
  • Doctor Strange usually functions as this for those he has an interest in, thanks to his vast precognitive and time-manipulating/travelling powers, significant magical power, and utter ruthlessness. As he bluntly tells Harry in the sequel, the creatures that he's murdered on his behalf would, piled together, make a small mountain.
  • As in The Dresden Files below, the Swords of the Cross and the Denarians function as good and evil versions of this to their respective wielders - the latter give their wielders boosts in knowledge and power, while the former removes all advantages to create a level mortal-on-mortal playing field.
• In Exposure, a Dark Fic Harry's daughter had a guardian djinn with limited intelligence which usually stayed invisible when it wasn't obeying her requests but was perfectly capable of opening a can of whoopass of its own volition when a threat arose.
• Know Thyself: the Prelude: When Oracle meets Harry and recognizes him for what he was, she sends Seraph to protect him, appearing almost out of nowhere to fend off a group of agents that try to ambush them.

Literature

• In The Dresden Files
  • Harry has his own Fairy Godmother, who, as revealed in Changes, has been protecting him from ALL dangers targeting him from Nevernever his entire life as part of her deal with his late mother. Unfortunately, sometimes her idea of 'protecting' him is to turn him into one of her dogs, on the grounds that he would be safer and happier that way. The sad thing is that she's probably right.
  • This trope also applies in a villainous regard to the Knights of the Blackened Denarius who are protected by actual fallen angels. The Angel needs the mortal host to exert its power into the world otherwise it is trapped within a silver coin.
  • On Heaven's side there are three known Guardian-type beings.
    • Guardian Angels appear around holy sites and the homes of Knights of the Cross. Though they appear dressed as white-clothed police officers, this is a guise to keep their power in check. However, their hands are tied if the threat is a mortal acting on their own Free Will to attack a place they protect. While they have a duty to defends, these Angels must respect the choices a mortal makes, even if it is a bad one.
    • The power that lives within the Swords of the Cross is similarly restricted. They won't come out unless it is Right and Proper a time. They won't permit their power to be used in an abusive manner. They will not permit an evil or corrupted entity to touch them unless either the Sword's protections are weakened from a mortal's actions or the entity swears to use the Sword in a Just and Right manner in a purpose befitting the Sword's nature.^note The Sword of Love once permitted a Dhampyr mother to wield it in her quest to save her innocent child, while some years before simply grabbing a different Sword so it didn't fall down a shaft resulted in a numb arm for a month. They will level the playing field against the Fallen and ensure the combat between the Sword's wielder and the Fallen's host is just mortal-on-mortal.
    • Temple dogs, or also called Foo Dogs, are larger versions of the Tibetan Mastiff and are born from a mortal female dog and a divine spirit. They will guard and protect their wards from harm, taking their power based on the strength of the threshold of that home. Harry Dresden's temple dog, named Mouse, is explicitly referred to as "Guardian" by Mab, the Winter Queen (and with far greater respect than she usually accords Dresden himself). After living with Harry, learns to "cheat" and still use his powers even far away from the Harry's home.
  • Seeking to plug up the loophole that mortals can strike a home protected by Guardian Angels Winter Lady Molly Carpenter is commanding a contingent of Sidhe knights to protect her human family's home from mortal assault without telling her family about the protection.
• In Ella Enchanted, Ella has her own fairy godmother who's been in her family for generations.
• In Good Omens, the Hellhound is sent to be one for the Antichrist, Adam. Adam unwittingly turning it into a normal little dog makes its job somewhat more difficult.
• In Harry Potter, the Patronus Charm produces an Animal Battle Aura made from positive emotion to act as a bulwark against Black Magic monsters for which there is no other defense, namely the Made of Evil Dementors and their equally spooky cousins the Lethifolds. Its Latin Is Magic incantation, Expecto Patronum, directly translates to "I expect a guardian".
• In "The Price", a short story by Neil Gaiman, a mysterious black cat protects a family from the Devil. Unfortunately, the cat's frequent battles are taking their toll on him.
• In This Rage Of Echoes, the protagonist has an imaginary friend that looks like a mummy. This doesn't seem to be important other than insight into Mason's personality. That is, until he realizes that the evil copies of himself can see it and are absolutely terrified of it. It still seems like a shared hallucination though, until it manifests and wipes the copies from existence.
• In The Twelve Kingdoms, one of the later arcs concerns a Kirin who wound up getting stuck in the human world with amnesia - he was bullied for being 'weird', but fortunately, he has guardians: the Youkai he took as his servants back in the Twelve Kingdoms, acting from the shadows to keep him safe. Unfortunately, they don't have a lot of restraint, and as a resulting, anyone who shows him the least bit of hostility or unkindness winds up having 'accidents', including a few deaths...
• Bink's talent in the Xanth books sometimes acts like this. His ability is immunity to magical harm, but rather than no-selling magical attacks it functions by altering his surroundings to cause something else to block hostile magic. This is because the talent protects him from even indirect magical harm. This requires the talent to have its own intelligence and conceal its existence by making Bink seem to just be incredibly lucky, or else his enemies might realize their magic isn't working and just cut him with a sword.
• The entire point of This Present Darkness and Piercing The Darkness.
• The giant golden warrior from Moving Pictures is this for Holy Wood (and, by extension, the rest of the Discworld), protecting it from the Dungeon Dimensions.
• In Shaman Blues
  • Every shaman should have a guardian spirit to keep him from being kidnapped by the Old Ones. Vulture assigns himself to Witkacy.
  • The Curse of Cain makes one person of the curse a guardian for the other - all sicknesses, ill will, accidents and the like that would befall the protected strike the protector instead.
• In Not Long Before the End, the Warlock is the most powerful human magician on the planet, and his greatest protection other than his own mind is one of these. His parents, themselves powerful wizards, knew that his greatest weakness would be his name, as anybody who knows and can pronounce your name can exert magical power over you. To protect him, they summoned a powerful demon, bound it to a tattoo on his back so that nobody else could summon it and ask it questions, made it give him a name no human could pronounce, and forced it to protect him with its life. Too bad about the magic sword Glirendree...
• Wearing the Cape: The superhero Seven is usually described as having supernaturally good luck; guns pointed at him jam, bombs fail to go off when he's around, and if he doesn't want to be recognized while at the biggest gathering of superhero fans in the world, he won't be. Astra immediately asks why he doesn't just go and win the lottery. Seven admits that his power isn't really as simple as good luck; it's more like he has some sort of protective force looking out for him that also lets him indulge in some minor whims—for example, cute girls literally fall into his arms with surprising regularity.
• Once: Rigwit, in his custody of cottage Little Bracken, with revitalising herbal juice, aids Thom Kindred's recovery from a stroke; and helps him out against various mystical menaces. Jennet, a waterfay, is revealed to have cast her magic back through time to save Thom from the stroke in the first place.
• In Ghosts Among Us by Leslie Rule, a woman is watching TV at home and hears her deceased father's voice telling her to get up from the couch. She brushes it off at first, possibly thinking it's her imagination, but when it happens twice more, she moves to a loveseat on the other side of the room. Then a car driven by a careless teenager crashes through the wall and hits the couch she had been sitting on just moments before.

Live-Action TV

• Ultraman had one called Woo as a Monster of the Week. This Yeti / Yuki Onna kaiju was the guardian of a village girl named Yuki, implied to be the ghost of her dead mother. Unfortunately, everyone else believed Woo to be nothing more than a typical rampaging giant monster and wanted Science Patrol to destroy it.

Mythology & Religion

• The concept is really Older Than Feudalism, with Zoroastrianism (scholars disagree about when this religion originated: it goes back at least to 5th century BCE Persia, and maybe to between 18th and 10th century BCE). Each living person is believed to be a part of a greater being, "fravashi", which separates from it upon birth and reunites with it four days after death. During the person's life, however, their fravashi acts as a Guardian Entity for him/her.
• Hesiod (ca. 700 BCE) claimed in his Works and Days that the extinct humans of the Golden Age became guardian spirits for the future generations. Plato (428–348 BCE) merged Hesiod's idea and the Zoroastrian concept and placed the result into his philosophy as "daemons".
• The Zoroastrian concept also entered Judaism, presumably, around the time of or after the Babylonian Captivity (597-538 BCE), along with many, many other things, thanks to cultural osmosis. Since then, the Bible has mentioned on several occasions that inviduals and entire peoples have guardian angels assigned by God to watch after them. The idea was later adopted, almost without change into some Christian traditions.
• Islam has a similar concept, "Kiraman Katibin", though these "guardian angels" don't interfere with the person's life but record all actions he or she performs. There are also the "qarin", jinn-like spirits assigned to each individual as companions.
• Some Native American nations have a Rite of Passage called "guardian spirit quest" (The Other Wiki calls it "vision quest"). In this ritual, a boy fasts and meditates for several days to receive a visitation by an animal spirit who henceforth becomes his guardian and imbues him with some of its (magical) properties.
• In Norse Mythology you have the Watchers or Wardens, a spirit that follows your soul from birth to death. They are known as "Vörðr".
• Chinese mythology features a variant - tomb guardians, either for protecting the interred soul, or for protecting living people from the interred soul.
• Ghosts are typically believed to haunt the place of their death, but one notable exception is the legend of the "Graveyard Guardian": It haunts the place where it's buried and keeps it safe from threats, both human and supernatural.

Pinball

• Game of Thrones has The Lord of Light, who can be summoned once per ball. If it is present, a ball that drains down the outlanes will be automatically reloaded and launched back onto the playfield.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • A sacred watcher is the spirit of a bodyguard who died while protecting their charge, but refuses to move on to the afterlife until their charge is safe. They spend most of their time watching over their charge from the Ethereal Plane, but can manifest on the Material Plane like a ghost and kick some ass when necessary. Though dead, sacred watchers are defined as "deathless" creatures rather than "undead," since they're virtuous souls powered by positive energy rather than parodies of life animated by negative energy; as such, Revive Kills Zombie and Turn Undead don't work on them.
  • In 5th edition, Barbarians who follow the Ancestral Guardian path summon spectral warriors whenever they rage. These warriors defend the Barbarian’s allies by harassing the Barbarian’s target in order to Draw Aggro, and can reduce damage taken by a single ally once per round. At higher levels they can also retaliate against whoever attacked that ally.
  • 5th edition Clerics get two spells, spirit guardians and guardian of faith, which are all about this trope. The former summons a swarm of spirits which inflict continuous damage to, and reduce the mobility of, any hostile creature that comes within 15 feet of the caster, while the latter summons a single, stationary spirit that doles out a Fixed Damage Attack whenever a hostile creature comes within its reach.
• Pathfinder:
  • Spiritualists are a player class focused on this. Each spiritualist is bonded to a phantom, a lingering ghost, psychic echo or similar entity who fights at their side and protects them from harm.
  • Taiga giants maintain close bonds with the spirits of their ancestors, which can be called upon by their living descendants to protect them from physical and magical harm.
  • Summoners revolve around having one of these as a class mechanic, with various options for guardians.

Theatre

• the ballet Raymonda has the White Lady, a ghost that haunts Doris Castle and protects all members of the family. She shows Raymonda of danger that awaits her as well as gives her betrothed the advantage in a duel.

Video Games

• Gardevoir from the Pokémon series towards its trainer (and possibly friends/relatives of the trainer). It's right there in the dex entry, which states, "Gardevoir will try to protect its trainer with its life.". It's also in the name: Gardevoir comes from the French words "garde" (protect) and "devoir" (dutiful or devoted). It's a devoted guardian.
• Cid from Final Fantasy XII has one of these in the form of Venat.
• Nasuverse:
  • Servants have shades of this, being able to go into a sort of spirit form and watch over their Masters. Saber and Archer are special cases. Saber is different because she's technically not a Servant, as she was pulled right before she died; Archer is different because he, as a Counter Guardian, is basically this trope for the human race.
  • Counter Guardians are people who made a pact with Alaya, the Spirit of Humanity, to protect the human race from catastrophe. They are very rare, and across the franchise only four have been confirmed, and three of them were technically an Alternate Self from either an Alternate Universe or alternate future: Jeanne d'Arc, Okita Souji, Kiritsugu Emiya, and Shirou Emiya. They are unbound from time and give up their own afterlives to be summoned at all of humanity's worst moments to save the world. The problem is that they are only summoned after everything has gone to absolute shit, meaning their first task is inevitably to kill absolutely everyone stupid enough to cause so much damage. As one Counter Guardian bitterly notes, they aren't really guardians at all; they don't save anyone. They just kill people. Since the majority of the Counter Guardians are selfless (Okita was a noted exception for being a Blood Knight who enjoys the endless battle), this takes a severe psychological toll. Guardian EMIYA eventually found a way to go back in time and kill his past self, in the hopes that the paradox would delete him from existence despite the fact that he is unbound from time.
  • Fate/Grand Order introduces the Servant Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, who in addition to possessing powerful ice magic is also a shaman who made a contract with Viy, a Living Shadow elemental who inspired the creature of the same work and various similar monsters of Slavic folklore, at the time of her original death and is the very reason she is able to be summoned as a Heroic Spirit. Viy fights by emerging from her shadow to pummel her opponents physically and unleash blinding rays of blue light from its eyes that can also paralyze her foes, leaving them easy prey for her spells.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The first game's Big Bad, Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (pictured) summons a shadowy being he simply calls Guardian to fight for him. In his One-Winged Angel form he even fuses with it and a giant battleship.
  • In both Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Riku channels his darkness after his defeat by Roxas, which transforms his body into Ansem. This lets Riku use the Guardian, which aids him in incapacitating Roxas.
  • It's revealed in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep that Ansem's original being, Xehanort, also used this Guardian, and it was first summoned/created when Xehanort got angry at Aqua during their fight.
  • Ansem continues to use it in his reappearances in future Kingdom Hearts games, most notably in 3D, where he once again fuses with it for the second phase of Riku's battle against him. This time, it expands into a Sphere of Power Ansem's body can hide in, with the Guardian's body sprouting from the top.
  • In the same installment that Ansem reappears in, it is revealed that Riku has become Sora's Spirit guardian in the Realm of Dreams.
  • Kingdom Hearts III reveals that the Guardian (with its official name being revealed to be the Dark Figure) is actually a container for Terra's heart, created when Xehanort forced Terra's heart out of his body in an effort to be rid of him during his battle with Aqua back in Birth by Sleep. After Terra-Xehanort is beaten by Sora, Aqua and Ven, Terra takes back control of the Guardian's form and returns to his original body.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, after defeating a major boss plaguing the home of one of Link's major allies, they get promoted to a Sage and bestow Link with a ghostly blue copy of themselves to accompany and fight alongside him around Hyrule. These copies are essentially identical to their original selves alongside retaining their Aura abilities.
• In Gigantic, Aisling's father Cador went off to war, was betrayed, and died. Then he came back from war to protect his daughter once again. Specifically, when Cador's sword was delivered to Aisling and she took up the giant blade in his stead, his ghost manifested itself out of the weapon, and now fights alongside her in the guardian conflict.
• Record of Agarest War's Ellis is protected by Borgnine, a lesser god. However, Ellis isn't exactly weak herself.
  • Ellis' expy Alice in ZERO has this in Galios.
    • This makes Agarest 2's Fiona the only playable full-blooded High Elf in the series not to get her own guardian.
• The player acts as one in Baten Kaitos. As a Guardian Spirit, the player aids the spiriter Kalas in his travels. In Origins, three other spiriters appear: Sagi an artificial Spiriter who is bonded to one of the pieces of Malpercio instead of an actual Guardian Spirit, Verus a jerk who is faking his Spiriter status though (unbeknownst to him) he is the host of Wiseman, and finally Baelheit, the only true Spiriter in Origins. His Guardian Spirit Daimon taught him how to build machina.
• Dizzy's wings Necro and Undine are this to her in Guilty Gear. They are especially violent about it, as well.
• Beyond: Two Souls is about how having "Aiden" or "the entity" attached to her since birth has affected the life of Jodie Holmes, and since you have to play as both of them how destructive he can be and how protective he is of his ward is partially up to you.
• One character in Jade Empire is a heavenly spirit sent to help the Spirit Monk, who usually possesses a little girl called Wild Flower with her permission. Unusually, Wild Flower also has another spirit within her, but this one is evil. Wild Flower is actually Dead All Along. You can enter Wild Flower's mind and choose to help the good or evil spirit; if you help the good one, she can be brought back to an ordinary life without anyone possessing her.
• Inazuma Eleven has shades of this, the protagonists Endou Mamoru or Mark Evans in english speaking countries, showcases this ability most prominently in the original series.
  • This is even more prominent in the "Go" series, where "gifted" characters have the ability to summon avatars, and even put them on as ARMOR.
• In Deadly Premonition, this is one possible explanation for the York half of Francis Morgan's consciousness. It's also the one that seems to be implied by the Director's Cut, as some of the dialogue in the extended epilogue implies he's not and never was human. The other distinct possibility is that he's a Tulpa.
• Across the Shin Megami Tensei series, Taira no Masakado serves this role for the city of Tokyo, with varying levels of success. He was defeated and sealed with the Kunitsukami in Shin Megami Tensei II, was completely incapable of preventing the world's destruction in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, but was fully capable of imparting his status to the Demi-Fiend (giving him the Game-Breaker ultimate Magatama), his wrath very nearly overflowed to complete disaster in Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, and in Shin Megami Tensei IV, he's the reason why most of Tokyo is still alive, successfully tanking a nuke aimed at the city (at the cost of trapping everyone in a bubble of slowed time).
• This is how Black Lotus is translated in Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax, being the Guardian Entity for Kuroyukihime.
• The MIND's from Mind Zero, which function similar to the titular beings of Persona.
• Zombie Jason's second Unleashed move in Terrordrome the Game: Rise of the Boogeymen has him sending the blue-tinted spirit of his mother to slash his opponents with a knife.
• In Shuyan Saga, true masters of the martial arts can call on powerful beings for protection (with each of the Five Kingdoms having a different protector). Only the rulers of each kingdom can draw on their full power. In the prologue, however, the leader of an Guer invaders has little trouble defeating the White Tiger of Jin Wu when it is summoned, since he has his own power to draw on. When Shuyan inherits the Vermillion Phoenix of her own kingdom upon her father's death, she still has to go through a lot of training before she can actually do anything useful against the Guer.
• Tokyo Tattoo Girls has Akika Machida, a protagonist accompanied by "Jovani", who she at first assumes is a spirit possessing her umbrella that only she can hear. She later decides that it's instead being channeled through her tattoos, as its voice gets clearer after the Tattoo Master player helps develop them.
• In Town of Salem's Coven Expansion, it is possible to play as a Guardian Angel, who is assigned a player to protect. They are able to heal this player twice throughout the game, and if the assigned player dies, they fall and become a Survivor.

Visual Novels

• Nekojishi: Lin Hu is a Guardian Tiger, he protects Liao from other spirits. He especially becomes like this after fusing with Liao

Webcomics

• The Castle Heterodyne in Girl Genius, to a certain extent. It also demonstrates incredible stupidity in refusing to let Agatha die, even though it was just to cure her of a disease that could have permanently killed her.
• In Blip, Lucifer himself is this for K. He protects her because he's convinced that she has the power to destroy the world.
• Charyeok in The God of High School is a supernatural martial art that allows its users to borrow power from mythological entities and occasionally have them assist in fights as avatars.
• In Homestuck, Guardians are support characters, often family members. The trope, however, applies to the sprites - ghostly entities that can protect and guide the main characters. Guardians do tend to end up as sprites as well, though. Additionally, each planet with a sapient species has a godlike First Guardian. At first one would think that they're there to protect the species as a whole, but no, not really. They're there to protect those who are fated to play the Game of Creation until they start the game, and will inevitably leave the rest of that planet to die when the time comes.
• Ciem Webcomic Series: Angie becomes this for her mother Candi — in a dream, at least.
• Ava's Demon Wrathia is this to Ava and Nevy is this to Gil. They treat their wards differently though.
• Peter and Company: Seth is this to Peter. He's more of a voice of reason to Peter and occasionally may give him some magical aid.
• Plume: Corrick was made to be this by his brother.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-204, "The Protector", is a "semi-organic nano-machine colony" which follows a kid around and eats anyone who endangers the kid. (Or anyone the kid tells them to eat.) It is interesting to note that, in true SCP fashion, 204 appears to be malevolent, and kids "protected" by it always become cruel, reckless, and more than willing to sic it on anybody who as much as looks at them funny. This profits SCP-204, since it subsists off devouring organic matter (i.e. the corpses of its victims). The Foundation theorizes that SCP-204 needs sustenance, but is not allowed to attack without its ward's permission, therefore it somehow changes its ward's thought patterns in order to have more opportunities to feed. To keep 204 from causing too much trouble, the Foundation provides it with orphans who are already broken by years of abuse. Worse, if no such children are readily available from orphanages, they take otherwise normal kids and put them under the "care" of D-class personnel convicted of violent crimes, child abuse, and pedophilia.
  • SCP-5056, "The Constant Companions", is a Mirror Monster that constantly stalks a Foundation janitor after a Freak Lab Accident, protecting him from danger by compelling attackers to mutilate themselves while serving as a physical manifestation of his clinical depression. It eventually proves to be a subtle Trickster Mentor, as its constant torment of him externalized all of his negative thoughts, allowing him to rationally confront them and grow as a person with it becoming more docile as this progressed.
• The Creepypastas "Love" and "The Man in the Purple Shirt" have these. In "Love", the paranormal activity is the result of a soldier's ghost fulfilling a promise to take care of a young girl, while "The Man in the Purple Shirt" is revealed to be one protecting people against an implied Humanoid Abomination.
• In Gemma and the Bear, Gemma is a straight white woman who turns into a gay black man named Bear when she falls asleep (or rather, she vanishes and he appears). Bear clearly aspires to this trope and regularly wreaks revenge on Gemma's childhood tormentors Tom and Zach. Inverted, in that his attempts to help Gemma as an adult tend to make things worse.
• Dreamscape: Keedran is the guardian of all of humanity.
  • CHEN is the guardian of the entire planet.
• The Great Nerf War: The Ghost is a guardian for the 59th Company and especially Captain Edgar

Western Animation

• In Gargoyles, Puck is forced to take on this role for Alexander in order for the boy to remain with his parents in the human world.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: Crunch the Rockdog was created by Mountain King to be a guardian for his Heartstone. Unfortunately, the Mountain King forgot to give Crunch a heart of his own, resulting in him being a cold rampaging beast.
• Pocket Dragon Adventures: Filbert, the leader of the group sees himself as guardian and protector of the castle and wizard, despite the fact that nearly everyone who knocks of the door is a well-acquainted old friend of the wizard.

---