Basic Trope: A character treats an inanimate object as if it's a pet or a person.
- Straight: Alice keeps a rock for a pet and calls it "Bob".
- Exaggerated:
- The whole world treats "Bob" as a dog, even dog trainers, owners of boarding kennels, etc, even though it's a rock.
- Alice marries "Bob" even though it's a rock.
- Alice legally adopts "Bob" as her "son", even though it's a rock.
- Downplayed:
- Alice sometimes monologues to her favourite rock when she doesn't know what to do, but doesn't act as though it's an actual person/animal.
- Alice is a young girl who plays with a teddy bear, but the teddy bear isn't treated as a character.
- Justified:
- Alice is a little girl — young children often pretend inanimate objects are alive.
- Alice has a psychological condition and so actually thinks "Bob" is sentient.
- Alice knew someone named Bob, who died, so she uses the rock to pretend he never died.
- Bob was a person but was turned into a rock by a curse.
- Alice's landlord won't let her have a pet, so she makes do with a rock.
- Inverted: Bob is a person, but Alice acts as though he's just a rock.
- Subverted: It turns out that Bob isn't a rock at all, but rather a little alien.
- Double Subverted:
- But Alice didn't know Bob was an alien.
- But Bob keeps an actual rock as a pet and calls it "Charles".
- Parodied:
- "Bob" beats Alice at chess, even though it's a rock.
- Alice thinks geology and biology are the same thing.
- Zigzagged: Alice often speaks of her pet Bob, but it's unknown if Bob is actually the rock she monologues to sometimes, or the dog that is occasionally seen at her place and all the characters have a different opinion. Charles, for instance, thinks that Bob is just a rock and the dog is a stray, but Diane is on Team Dog and thinks the rock is just a rock Alice keeps because it's pretty.
- Averted: Alice's pet Bob is a dog, not a rock.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "Are you insane? It's a rock, not an animal!"
- Invoked: Alice is a young girl who wants a pet, but her parents, Emily and Frank, think she's not responsible enough, so they give her a rock instead.
- Exploited:
- Defied: Alice is a young girl who wants a pet. Emily and Frank give her a rock instead, but she doesn't take it.Alice: "No! I want a pet, mom and dad, and rocks aren't alive!"
- Discussed: "My neighbour is so weird! She keeps a rock as a pet!"
- Conversed: "Oh, man. Here comes a character with a pet rock. I can see the schizophrenia theories being written right now."
- Implied: Alice is seen sleeping in bed with a rock next to her.
- Deconstructed: Alice has been trapped in a testing facility for months, if not years. Just for fun, the omnipresent mad scientist Mallory gives her a cube with a heart on it and tells her that it's in love with her. Just as she starts to reach full emotional bonding with the cube, however, Mallory snatches it away and forces Alice to watch it get tortured.
- Reconstructed: But then Alice is able to get the cube back and develops an emotional bonding with it.
- Played for Laughs: Alice does things like take her rock "Bob" to the vet, hold it a wedding with a different rock, etc.
- Played for Drama: It's a sign Alice is going mad.
- Played for Horror: Alice is not only going mad, she's going Ax-Crazy.
Back to Companion Cube and isn't my pet link so cute?
