Living Dust Bunnies

Even your couch can be home to sentient life.

"Now, if you excuse me, it's dust bunny season and I'm hunting wabbits."

— Deadpool, Deadpool 2

In real life, "dust bunnies" are clumps consisting mostly of dust, loose carpet fibers, and (if there's a pet in the house) shed fur that form over time when a piece of furniture has not been cleaned underneath. But in fiction, dust bunnies are often depicted as creatures that live underneath furniture. They will often be portrayed as rabbit-like, to fit in with their name.

In most works featuring dust bunnies, the characters will be depicted as being scary and mysterious because of where they are often found. On rare occasions, fictional dust bunnies can be friendly. They also may be found living in the Trash of the Titans.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Nyoron Churuya-san has Hokori-chan, a tan Waddling Head with pigtails who says her name as a Verbal Tic (translated as "Dusty" in the dub). She keeps on getting vacuumed up by Churuya. There's also a male version called "Hokori-kun" who ends up meeting the same fate.

Comic Strips

• Dilbert: The Easter Dust Bunny is an occasional member of the cast.
• The Far Side has a dust rhino, which a housewife takes on with a broom and dustpan.
• Pearls Before Swine has a giant, angry dust bunny appear in the October 31st strip for 2013.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Large amounts of Metallia-type magical power causes creatures to be Born of Magic, where Creating Life Is Unforeseen, since that was Ami's first time trying that. With the large amounts of dust in the practice room, this happens.

Films — Animation

• Studio Ghibli: Susuwatari, generally translated as "soot sprites", feature in a few movies. They're typically depicted as black fuzzballs with large eyes and stick-thin limbs.
  • My Neighbor Totoro: Susuwatari appear living in Satsuki and Mei's new home. At first, the girls are scared of them, but are more willing to see them again after the first few encounters. In the original Streamline English dub, the susuwatari are referred to as "dust bunnies". Satsuki and Mei call them Makurokurosuke.
  • Spirited Away: Soot sprites serve as Kamaji's helpers, keeping the furnaces of the boiler room stoked with coal. Their favorite food is konpeitou.

Films — Live-Action

• Deadpool 2: Deadpool refers to cleaning as hunting dust rabbits.

Literature

• Rhyming Dust Bunnies follows four dust bunnies playing a rhyming game. One always breaks the chain by saying the name of an object that is an enemy to dust bunnies, like brooms and vacuum cleaners.
• In one Myth Adventures book, the heroes pass through several identical worlds of eternal dust storms. Each time, Tananda leads the way to each world's shelter, desperate to escape the shadowy figures approaching through the dust. After a few passes, she identifies the attackers as "dust bunnies" with a fearful shudder, to the confusion of Skeeve and Aahz. Tananda is later informed that dust bunnies are only visible to women, hence why the guys never noticed them. We therefore learn nothing about what they look like, or why creatures called "dust bunnies" are things that Tananda is desperate to escape from.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Comfy Couch: Two dust bunnies live under the titular couch. They often play with objects that are found underneath, and can only be seen by Molly (not because they're Invisible to Normals, Loonette just always fails to notice them).
• Hey Vern, It's Ernest!: A dust bunny lives in Vern and/or Ernest's house (the writers couldn't seem to keep it straight).

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: In an "Abby's Flying Fairy School" segment, when it's time to put the toys away, Blogg tries to put the toys under the carpet. When he lifts up the carpet, he releases a colony of Fairy Dust Bunnies living under it. Mrs. Sparklenose is allergic to Fairy Dust Bunnies, and when she sneezes she turns her students into frogs, chickens, and cheese. Abby, Gonnigan, and Blogg are able to turn themselves back to normal by saying "Gezundenshniffle", but to get Mrs. Sparklenose to stop sneezing, they have to trap the Fairy Dust Bunnies back under the carpet, and they do so by using a fairy dust carrot as bait.

Tabletop Games

• A 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons monster is the trosip, a six- to nine-inch-long fuzzy worm-like critter that is indistinguishable from a normal clump of dust and hair when motionless. They feed upon bits of dust and refuse during the day, but at night try to absorb sleeping creatures' body heat... and if enough trosips gather around a sleeper's face, they have to save or suffocate to death in their sleep. Thus, in places where trosips are common, even the poorest households are kept spotlessly clean.
• In GURPS Magical Items 3 the "Housekeeper's Nightmare" is a dangerous magical prank which appears to be a wand that does the dusting (with the legend "Vanquisher of Dust" or "Dust-B-Gone" depending on which would be more appropriate to the setting). However, instead of getting rid of the dust, it sends it to the darkest corners available, where it forms a swarm of "dust mice" that attack anyone they see.

Video Games

• Celeste: Dust bunnies are the main enemies encountered in Chapter 3, which takes place in a hotel abandoned for decades.
• Deltarune: The Rabbicks are dust bunnies given form by the Dark Fountain. In the Dark World, they're lethargic rabbit slimes covered in a mass of dust, which can be blown off to reveal that they're much smaller and more energetic underneath it all.
• Five Nights With Mr. Hugs (& Friends): One of the threats the player must avoid is Dust Bonnie, a bipedal Toy Bonnie-like dust bunny animatronic. Despite the fact that he's a merely a dust bunny, he can still Jumpscare you and end your run, and can be avoided only by vacuuming him up before he reaches the right end of the screen.
• Stardew Valley: Soot sprites are small, weak enemies who live in groups in the mines and typically drop coal on defeat.
• Zork: In Beyond Zork, living dust bunnies are encountered at one point.

Web Animation

• Dust Buddies is a 4 minute short about rabbit like dust bunnies facing off against a maid with a vaccuum cleaner.

Web Comics

• Irrational Fears: The world under the bed is full of living dust bunnies, which live in fear of the monsters under the bed.
• User Friendly has Dust Puppy, born in a server from a combination of dust, lint and quantum events, as its Team Pet. There's also Dust Puppy's evil twin Crud Puppy, born of crud in Stef's keyboard.

Western Animation

• Codename: Kids Next Door: In one episode, Numbuh Four gets sucked into a world under the couch while trying to retrieve a lost TV remote and has to participate in a chariot race where the chariots are pulled by monstrous dust bunnies.
• Chowder has Fuzzballs.
• Dexter's Laboratory: In "Pslightly Psycho", Mom has a mental breakdown when her family tells her to rest without doing any chores for Mother's Day, during which she sees literal giant, angry dust bunnies she tries to get rid off.
• The Muppets: Muppet Babies has instances of this in both incarnations of the franchise:
  • Muppet Babies (1984): The live touring show Where's Animal? features a scene in which the babies stumble upon friendly dust bunnies when looking for Animal. They perform a musical number called "Dust Bunny Boogie".
  • Muppet Babies (2018): In "One Small Problem", a group of dust bunnies steal Kermit's toy car.
• Ruby Gloom: Dust Bunnies live in the Gloomsville mansion, cared for by both Iris & Misery.
• New Looney Tunes has Bugs dealing with Terry and the Dust Bunnies.
• Rugrats: "Dust Bunnies" has Tommy and Chuckie imagine the creatures as monsters whose ears grab children and take them away.

• Vampirina: "Dust Bunnies" focuses on a group of mischief-making dust bunnies resulting from Demi the Ghost's magic.

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