Since this trope can be traced back to Greek mythology, it's Older Than Feudalism.
This could mean that the hero(es) has a chance to seal it back up, or even destroy it once and for all.
That said, being cooped up for centuries is likely to have weakened the SEIAC, meaning that it needs some time to recover its lost strength. Or maybe it was killed and the method of breaking the seal was resurrecting it.Įxpect the mere release of the SEIAC to cause a World-Wrecking Wave, Walking Wasteland, and sundry other disasters. And a good excuse that is often used is that the evil was way too strong, so even the most powerful heroes of the past couldn't kill it, but the sealing spell worked just fine. Another common excuse is the Balance Between Good and Evil if they'd killed the ancient evil, then a bigger, badder evil would've taken its place, thus sealing it away neutralizes the threat but also keeps it in the world and maintains the balance. Maybe it couldn't be killed for good (or more commonly, the conditions weren't right to deal the final blow), so sealing it was the next best thing. This brings up the primary question "Why did they just seal it, as opposed to kill it?" The answer tends to vary but usually it's a variant of The Punishment (for both the sealed and everyone else), Thou Shalt Not Kill (heroes can take pity and/or show mercy towards the oddest things), and/or As Long as There Is Evil. (To be fair, 1,000 years is plenty of time for people to forget about something, especially if more immediate concerns arise in the meantime.)Įither way, if a Sealed Evil is introduced into a story, expect it to escape at some point. Yet nobody ever seems to know that the evil is about to reemerge in that time frame. Oddly enough, no matter what the cause of the seal being broken, it seems to always happen 1,000 years after the evil was first sealed. Or perhaps it was awoken by unsuspecting miners or archaeologists who Dug Too Deep and found something better left buried and undisturbed - often ignoring every single warning they found before releasing it. The hero occasionally breaks the seal themselves due to ignorance, lack of information, or active manipulation by the villain. (Of course, occasionally the Big Bad actually succeeds in controlling the sealed evil.) It may even act like the malevolent flavor of a Jackass Genie, twisting their releasers' wishes back on them. Sealed Evil ™ almost never rewards those who release it. Of course, Evil Is Not a Toy if they succeed, it usually turns out that the Sealed Evil does not care for them (or may have even been manipulating them into freeing them) and disposes of them, making the Sealed Evil the true Final Boss. It also explains why the villain hasn't done anything up to that point: It escaped very, very recently.Ī sealed evil is often introduced as a Greater-Scope Villain: the direct Big Bad's plan will be to unseal the can of some ancient God of Evil, hoping they'll get some of that great power as a reward. Sealed Evil in a Can, as the title suggests, is a way to suddenly introduce a villain, especially one that is legendary and powerful. Using various methods, they bound the evil into a prison from which they thought it could never escape. Long ago, An Ancient People faced a terrible evil.
Rod Serling, from The Twilight Zone (1959) episode " The Howling Man"
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