Small Annoying Creature

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Navi: "Hey! Listen! Get up! Get up! Get up getupgetupgetupgetup--" *Wack!* Link: "Dude! Seriously! Shut! Up!" —The Legend of Awesome

A staple of '80s adventure cartoon shows, the Small Annoying Creature is a type of Sidekick. The Small Annoying Creature is there to be cute, provide comic asides and occasionally get into trouble and need rescuing. Often a "merchandising critter" . Sometimes it's crossed with the Non-Human Sidekick. It frequently has a Verbal Tic - and truly obnoxious nails-on-blackboard voice talent.

There was a time when even the most straight-faced of animated adventure serials had a Small Annoying Creature to provide a bit of slapstick in the background.

Saw a revival when C.G.I. became the norm for children's animation with a lot of films using them in advertising material.

Note that this trope is for characters who are annoying to the other characters, not just to the audience.

See also Weasel Mascot, Talking Animal, Cute but Cacophonic. If the Small Annoying Creature is a dog, it's a Mister Muffykins.

Examples of Small Annoying Creature include:

Anime

• Momo, Fuu's small flying squirrel pet from Samurai Champloo is the former trope namer
• Nono, "small robot you know, friend of" Ulysses 31.
• The Ojama Trio in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX are supposed to irritate the hell out of people - such as Manjoume Chazz, to whom they're attached and who is absolutely horrified about it.
• Giru from Dragon Ball GT.
• EXCALIBUUUR! EXCALIBUUURRR! From the United Kingdom...
• Most people feel that Puck from the Berserk manga would fit this trope pretty well.
  • Including everyone in the manga.
  • "Puck is like the Jar-Jar of Berserk!!"
  • Miura seems to realize how annoying Puck is; Casca post-demon rape insanity repeatedly tries to eat him.
• Parodied in the Magical Project S installment of the Tenchi Muyo! multiverse. Magical Project S and the Pretty Sammy OVAs are the only installments of the franchise where Ryo-Okhi talks. After a few episodes, one quickly realizes why she doesn't talk in the other series. As Magical Project S and all of the Pretty Sammy series are a direct parody of Sailor Moon, Ryo-Okhi is supposed to be annoying.
• Emusa in Transformers Zone.
• The Tyke Bomb flying squirrel in Zettai Karen Children. Fortunately he's not around very much.
• Guvava, Mylene Jenius's pet in Macross 7.
• Aria Pokoteng, the president cat from Aria, arguably fits here. Many fans still accept or even enjoy his role in the manga, since he has no speaking role and generally doesn't divert too much attention from the main characters. His loud and obnoxious habit of chewing scenery in the anime puts quite a few viewers off though.
• Kon from Bleach devolved into this as soon as they put him in a stuffed animal.
  • Strangely, he looses this trait every time he possesses Ichigo's body.
    • Chiefly because the intent is for him to do the fighting on Ichigo's behalf. Kon is some kind of renegade who isn't fully compliant to whatever arrangement souls like him are normally part of, which is why they keep him in a harmless stuffed toy while he's not in use (which is why he turns into this trope; he can't really fight, and thus has no meaningful contribution to anything).
• Happosai from Ranma ½.
• Angel-Gozen from Busou Renkin.
• Averted with Tony Tony Chopper in One Piece. He is a small creature, but is far from annoying.
• From Inuyasha, there's Shippou. He's small and he's annoying. However, he seems to be the Only Sane Man sometimes.

Comics

• Kitty Pryde's tiny pet dragon Lockheed.
• Any of the Super Pets, really.
• Any of the Preservers from Elf Quest, but especially Petalwing.

Films — Live-Action

• Frank the Pug from the first and second Men In Black films

Video Games

• Most Moogles in general from the Final Fantasy games, when they become anything more than fluffy balls of cute:
  • Montblanc from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has bad stats, says "kupo" all the time and looks more cartoonish than his friend Marche.
  • Mog from Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is supposed to be carrying the chalice, and yet he complains about being tired only seconds before you get surrounded by some 20-odd monsters.
  • Mog from Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon being a fully-voiced Moogle, is notorious.
  • Hurdy from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 averts this by actually being useful as far as Bards go.
  • Cait Sith from Final Fantasy VII is not a Moogle, but rides on a stuffed one. He has only two Limit Breaks, neither of which are very useful, and sticks out like a sore thumb in what is one of the darkest games in the series.
• Leonard's pact-partner the malicious fairy in Drakengard.
• Mieu from Tales of the Abyss -- as Lampshaded repeatedly by Luke, who constantly abuses the poor thing by stepping on it, kicking it or using it as an impromptu club, all because it pisses him off. And it's all played for comedy.
  • And referring to him as "Thing", because he can't figure out what sort of animal he is.
  • In the Japanese version, Luke calls him "butasaru," which means "pig monkey."
  • Admittedly, Luke is the only one who does this, and after his Important Haircut wherein he ceases to be Ambassador Asshat, he takes more kindly to Meiu and only goes back to his Jerkass ways when Meiu embarrasses him in front of Tear
• Murfy from Rayman 2/3
• World of Warcraft has dozens of "non-combat" pets you can buy or find. Most of them are innocuous, but you can shut off the audio for the ones that are annoying. However, when Lil' XT was first introduced it shared a sound file with the full-sized XT-002 Deconstructor from Ulduar; therefore the pet sounds cutoff didn't work. The week after its introduction there were dozens of them running around Dalaran screaming "I guess it doesn't bend that way!" and "I'm ready to play!" and you COULD NOT MAKE IT STOP. It was eventually hotfixed, but the scars remain...
  • There was also this floating voodoo mask that played a short "tribal" drum beat when you summoned it. The problem was, the beat looped forever and didn't go away once you "heard" it even if the pet was dismissed. What's even worse, you could summon and dismiss the pet multiple times to end up with dozens of layers of drum loops, not in sync at all!
• Daxter fits much of this in the Jak and Daxter series. He spends the majority of the franchise complaining, insulting, getting abused, and uselessly resting on his partner's shoulder. He's obviously the comic relief, though as the franchise progresses, he gets more and more chance to actively help out his friends.
• Bumble from Kinectimals, possibly.
• Chu Chu from Xenogears, a mostly-serious giant robot RPG that inexplicably had a cute pink animal that enlarged to enormous size.
• Teddie from Persona 4, as he is a living Hurricane of Puns.
• Poshul from Chrono Cross, a hideous pink dog that acts like an autistic Scooby-Doo mixed with a racist 1940s Japanese stereotype.

Actual Poshul quote: Me will use my Pwetty-Miwacle-Power-X! Me will do it, Sergeipoo!

Webcomics

• Chookie from Adventurers is a spoof of Small Annoying Creatures in general, and also a specific spoof of Chu Chu.
• Deconstructed with Howard Wigglebottom from RPG World.
• HELLO NEW FRIEND!
• Sette from Unsounded. Unfortunately for the protagonist, her dad knows his dark secret.

Western Animation

• Gabby from Max Fleischers Gullivers Travels. No bigger than a pin, has an obnoxiously shrill voice, and a personality as lovable as a mosquito, he has permanently etched the word "THERES A GIANT ON THE BEACH!" into the minds of many animation fans forever. Its certainly a surprise that he was popular enough to warrant a Spin-Off series to him, short lived as it was.
• Filmation was for some unholy reason addicted to this trope:
  • Ping and Pong the Pandas in The Brady Kids
  • Ptolemy and Tut-Tut on Mission Magic
  • Batmite in the The New Adventures of Batman
  • Mo in Space Sentinels
  • The "Trobbits" in Blackstar
  • Orko in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
  • Cowl in She Ra Princess of Power
  • Belfry and Brat-A-Rat in Filmations Ghostbusters
  • Deputy Fuzz in Bravestarr
• Snarf in Thundercats They later added his even smaller and more annoying nephew, Snarfer.
  • Humorously enough, Snarf's annoying nature is decried by a fan in the DVD extras. The fan in question is Wil Wheaton.
    • Snarf in ThunderCats (2011) loses his voice and gains about 10,000 adorableness points.
• Pip the mouse in Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and Tico the...hamster? in Around the World with Willy Fog, though the latter had a bigger role and more developed character than most.
• Oon in Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.
• Twiki in Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century. But only during the crappy second season when he wasn't being voiced by Mel Blanc. Otherwise his lines were often entertaining, and sometimes radar-dodging.
• Uni in Dungeons and Dragons.
• Dutifully parodied with "Mr. Skipperdoo" in the "Mr. Incredible and Pals" short included with The Incredibles DVD -- ostensibly an unaired cartoon pilot within the characters' universe.
  • Even more hilarious than the cartoon is the commentary with Frozone and Mr. Incredible, who both hate the rabbit.

Frozone: And that rabbit is getting on my LAST nerve!

• 7-Zark-7, introduced to pad out the gaps left by censorship in Battle of the Planets. Then he gets 1-Rover-1, a robot's robotic pet! Who eats nuts and bolts, yet!
• Mr Cool, Fonzie's dog in The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.
• When The Jetsons was brought back in syndication, the major change was the addition of one of these, in the form of Orbity, that little spring-legged unintelligible alien who changed colors depending on his mood. Granted, in a futuristic sitcom, a cute fuzzy alien pet wasn't entirely out of place.
• Zuffy from Defenders of the Earth.
• Parodied in South Park with Niblet in "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery."
• Parodied in Robot Chicken when the creators of Star Trek: The Next Generation decide to create an even worse character than Wesley Crusher to make him look better. Turns out, the more annoying character becomes loved and people still want the writers to kill off Wesley.
• Godzooky from the series The Godzilla Power Hour. It doesn't help that he's an Expy of Minya either.
• Poof on The Fairly Odd Parents.
• Gurgi in Disney's adaptation of The Black Cauldron.
• Bladebeak in Quest for Camelot.
• Scrappy-Doo, of course!
• Bleep, the alien cotton ball with legs, on Josie and the Pussy Cats in Outer Space.
• The sandmurks, in The Flight of Dragons, whose screechy noises will literally drive the listener mad. (Note that in this case, the small creature is meant to be annoying.)
• Mort the mouse lemur in Madagascar and The Penguins of Madagascar.
• Lampshaded in Shrek 2.

Donkey: "I'm sorry, the position of Annoying Talking Animal has already been taken!"

• Many years before Navi came about, The Legend of Zelda 's animated series occasionally had the fairy Spryte tag along with Link, and it can be argued that of the two fairies, Spryte is the more annoying. It doesn't help that she's constantly hitting on Link.
  • With a couple of notable exceptions, Spryte was almost completely absent from the Valiant comics based on the series. The role of token fairy was instead taken by Miff, a temperamental Deadpan Snarker who hated Link and repeatedly insulted him. The artists never seemed to agree how to draw her, though; in some stories she'd be this rather sexy, if tiny, woman, and in others she looked like a pudgy eight-year-old.
    • The big difference is that Spryte had a voice that was ran though a helium filter, making her extremely grating to hear, no matter what she was doing.
• Slimer in The Real Ghostbusters. He was toned down for Extreme Ghostbusters.