Basic Trope: An evil being is sealed away but in a way that allows it to continue affecting our world.
- Straight: The evil was sealed away 10,000 years ago, but it can still use its magic to influence events in our world.
- Exaggerated: The evil can open portals anywhere in the world that it can reach its arms through. It's still sealed away for the most part, but it might as well not be.
- Downplayed: The evil's influence causes a feeling of vague unease and troubling dreams within a few miles around the Artifact of Doom that it's sealed in, but that's it.
- Justified:
- When the heroes were designing theevils's prison they were infiltrated by a mole who secretly altered their ritual so that it would allow his master to keep wreaking havoc.
- The sealing spell is holy and will eventually wither away if it is forced to contain the entirety of an evil entity. A fault is deliberately built in in order to extend the life of the seal without allowing the entity too much freedom, like a pressure release valve for dark magic.
- The sealing spell or mechanism wasn't designed to contain the entity in its entirety forever. It was just a stopgap measure, with the goal being to buy some time to develop a way to either contain the entity for good or kill it.
- The sealing spell or mechanism was flawed in ways that no one knew at the time.
- Things just don't last forever. After a few hundred or thousand years, anything you build will eventually decay, no matter what materials you use or how you built it.
- Inverted:
- The evil hasn't been sealed away at all, but he has been made permanently Intangible, Invisible, and Inaudible by something. He's still right here in our world but he can't be felt, seen, or heard - he can't affect anything at all.
- Sealed Good in a Can, where the sealed entity is able to act in some way.
- Subverted: It seems as if the evil is somehow managing to still affect our world despite having been sealed away, but it turns out it's just a fanatical cultist using his own sorcery to make people think his master is still among us....
- Double Subverted: ...and he's acting under telepathic orders received from the evil.
- Parodied: The evill can affect our world in one way and one way only: it has the ability to spill ice cream out of cones and onto the floor at will.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: The evil can't affect our world, or perhaps it wasn't even sealed away to begin with.
- Enforced: The previous Big Bad was sealed away forever at the end of the show's second season, but he was so popular that the writers had to keep him around in some way.
- Lampshaded: "Evil magic is like a bad smell. You can try to cover it up, but it never quite goes away."
- Invoked: The evil is sealed away forever. The hero, fearing that some of the villain's magic may seep through the seal and allow him to seek his revenge, takes a number of precautions to protect himself just in case.
- Exploited: It's discovered that sealing demons inside human beings grants those humans incredible powers. Various organizations begin using this to create demon-possessed Super Soldiers.
- Defied: The heroes are worried that the evil might be able to still affect their world after being sealed away, so they add a dozen extra seals on top of it just to make sure.
- Discussed: "Remember, when you banish a demon make sure you finish the job! If any of its essence remains, it'll be like it was never banished to begin with."
- Conversed: "How is the bad guy still doing things? I thought he was sealed in stone?" "What can I say? He's persistent."
- Implied:
- The show never outright says that there's an evil inside a leaking can, but we are aware that there is a Greater-Scope Villain, and the villain's demonic magic has to come from somewhere...
- The heroes explore an area where there is reported to be demonic activity. They do not see the entity responsible, but they do manage to find the center of the effect radius and discover a ritual spell circle.
- Played For Drama: The evil was defeated and sealed away, but his power still remains in our world, corrupting humans and allowing him to rule as if he was never sealed away to begin with. The hero's quest was pointless, the bad guy won, and it will always be that way.
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