tvtropes.org

Quest for a Wish - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Feb 08 2013

In the setting, there exists an entity that grants wishes—any wishes, and not in a jerkass way—to those who reach it. However, the path to this entity is long and perilous, so that only those of strong conviction can reach it. The plot of the story then centers on a character or characters trying to do just that. Possible plot points may include:

A related trope is Choose Your Own Reward (which is about unexpectedly receiving a wish, rather than seeking one out).

Examples:

open/close all folders 

Anime and Manga 

  • Doraemon: In the anime episode "Move Fast, Doraemon! The Galactic Grand Prix", the titular contest's prize is chosen by its winner. Despite having lost his ears earlier in the episode, Doraemon uses his wish to get dorayaki buns.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • A recurring plot is that the person who collects all the eponymous artifacts gets a single wish granted, then all the Balls split off randomly to wait again.
    • In Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, said collection happens under slightly different circumstances. Bulma hosts a bingo tournament for her birthday with a wide variety of prizes, including the use of the Dragon Balls for any wish they want. She also offers a cash prize if none of the prizes are to the winners' liking. The wish ends up needing to be used to learn about the Super Saiyan God.
  • In Inuyasha, the eponymous hero was originally searching for the Sacred Jewel in order to get his wish to be a full demon granted.
  • The Blue Crystal Rod that waits at the top of the The Tower of Druaga is said to grant a single wish to whoever claims it.
  • In Banana no Nana, the legend says that whoever reaches the legendary land of Oz (reference intentional) in the far west of the continent can ask for any wish to be granted. The title heroine plans to become the king of the world this way. In the ending, it turns out that Oz is actually on the moon, and while it can grant any wish to anyone, that person must then kill the one they love the most with their own hands or the world will be destroyed.
  • One episode of GO-GO Tamagotchi! is about Mametchi and his friends racing to reach the top of Moshimo Mountain, their motivation being a rumor that whoever reaches the top of the mountain will be granted one wish.
  • In Urusei Yatsura All Stars, Mendou enlists the aid of Ataru and his friends to recapture an escaped octopus. When they balk at the request, Mendou says he'll give them "anything in my power". Ataru decides that he'll ask for the hand of Ryoko Mendou, Mendou's sadistic but beautiful sister, while Shinobu decides that she'll ask for the hand of Mendou himself. Ryuunosuke decides that she'll ask for lots of feminine clothes. However, none of them are able to claim the reward, because the octopus is a special breed that grows to a gargantuan size if left in warm temperatures too long.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has the World Duel Carnival, the winner of which will supposedly have one wish of theirs granted. The reward is meant to distract from the Carnival's true, sinister purpose, but Yuma requests it anyway once the Big Bad is defeated. His first wish is for Kite's family to be happy, but when he's told to mind his own business, he changes it to duelling Kite one last time in an all-out, no-stakes match.

Comic Books 

  • One issue of Miracleman, toward the end of the series, is about a group of people climbing a mountain to meet the now-godlike Miracleman and petition him to grant their respective wishes. Some of them are being less than honest about their reasons for doing the pilgrimage. Not all of them make it to the top, and not all those who do get a satisfactory result for their trouble.
  • In Secret Wars (1984) the godlike Beyonder transports assorted heroes and villains to Battle World. He tells them, "Slay your enemies, and all you desire shall be yours. Nothing you can conceive is impossible for me to achieve." This is likely true, as the Beyonder swept away an entire galaxy except for one star, then cobbled together Battle World from pieces of other planets, including a whole suburb of Denver, in mere minutes.

Fan Fiction 

  • In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Professor Quirrell incentivises his class by promising that whoever earns the most points in all seven years will earn one wish from him.

    Professor Quirrell: Any school-related feat that lies within my power, my influence, or above all, my ingenuity. Yes, I was in Slytherin and I am offering to formulate a cunning plot on your behalf, if that is what it takes to accomplish your desire.

  • The Queen of the May protagonist, Princess Rhaenys, grows up in a Gilded Cage, knowing she will be killed after she is no longer politically useful. To escape this fate, she wins the May Day dancing competition and becomes the May Queen, which allows her to ask for a boon from the king. When she asks for freedom for herself and her family, King Robert insultingly refuses. He is unaware that refusing to grant the May Queen her boon disrupts the ancient rite and invites Divine Punishment, allowing Rhaenys to unleash her wrath by burning down a pavilion with nearly all the Lannisters and Baratheons in it.

Film — Animation 

  • Aladdin (1992, Disney): The Cave of Wonders serves as a mini-quest in order to find the wish-granting genie's lamp - not only must the person who enters the cave be a "diamond in the rough", but said person must refuse to touch any of the treasures, except for the lamp. While Aladdin is unaware of the genie, Jafar essentially sends Aladdin on the quest to get the genie for him.
  • Downplayed in Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. The Wood Sprite promises Sebastian the cricket one wish if he looks after Pinocchio, but he's the only person who knows or cares about this. At the end of the film, Sebastian uses it up in a Selfless Wish to bring Pinocchio back to life.
  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Puss becomes fearful of permanently dying after losing his eighth life and retires, until he hears of a magical shooting star that has landed in the Dark Forest which will grant any wish to the first person who reaches it. Puss's adventuring courage is rejuvenated as he realizes he can wish his eight lives back. However, he's not the only one looking for the star; he reencounters his old paramour Kitty Softpaws, and they reluctantly team up against Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as well as "Big" Jack Horner and his squad of fighting bakers. In the end, no one gets the wish, as Goldilocks, Puss, and Kitty realize they didn't really need it, and they destroy the star to prevent Jack from using its power to Take Over the World.
  • The plot of the Animaniacs movie Wakko's Wish. All the characters race to find a fallen star; the first one there gets one wish. Interestingly, while Wakko of course gets the wish, his wish ends up granting the wishes of nearly every other good character in the Ensemble Cast.
  • The Disney animated musical Wish (2023) is a variation: The heroine makes a wish to save her homeland from a sorcerer king who can grant people's wishes but instead secretly hoards most of them for his own benefit, and an actual anthropomorphic star comes down to give her the means to do so. From there, she and her companions must first free the captive wishes so the star can grant them.

Film — Live-Action 

  • Aquamarine offers Claire and Hailey a wish if they prove to her father that love is real.
  • In O'Dessa, winners of "The One" can have any wish granted, which is part of the incentive to get on the show despite the life-threatening risk involved.
  • Stalker (1979), adapted from Roadside Picnic, goes even further than the novel, with the Stalker refusing to ask anything, the Writer having his wish granted while getting there, and the Professor abandoning his original plan to nuke the Room altogether.

Literature 

  • The Asterisk War: It's publicly known that the prize for being on a winning team at a Festa is any single wish it's within the IEFs' power to grant. This is usually relatively straightforward (money is a common choice, and is something of which they have no shortage), but sometimes a winner's wish impinges on their political power or procedures:
    • In the backstory, Madiath Mesa wished to become an executive at Galaxy, the IEF that backs Seidoukan Academy. Not wanting to compromise their hiring and indoctrination procedures, Galaxy pulled some Loophole Abuse and made him an Authority in Name Only whose sole job is supervising the Festas.
    • Galaxy attempts to have Claudia Enfield assassinated during the Gryps Festa arc out of concern that, if she wins, she'll use her wish to force them to reveal incriminating information about a Noodle Incident.
    • Politically Active Princess Julis comes from a country rich in manadite, which is a puppet state to the IEFs as a consequence. As her prize for being on the victorious Team Enfield at the Gryps, she asks that they grant the Lieseltanian government much greater autonomy. This forces them into months of intense negotiations with Julis and her brother King Jolbert, since they can't simply refuse her without jeopardizing the legitimacy of their regime and the Festas.
  • In All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG, completing the deepest level of the Dark Heart's challenge rewards you with a choice of two doors. One lets you make a single wish for what you want most, even things that aren't normally possible, like repairing a damaged heart deck. The other lets you search through a vast library of magic cards where you can find just about anything, even Rare or Legendary-ranked powers — but you don't have long to take one before the library collapses. Marion repairs his heart deck so he can link with a newly hatched dragon; Arthur tracks down the meta-power Master of Cards, a meta-power that helps him alter and repair other cards (and brings him a step closer to completing the "Master" set).
  • The first half of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz consists of Dorothy going to Emerald City to see the Wizard so he can send her home. Along the way she meets three other characters who join her to have their own wishes granted.
  • The final chapters of Roadside Picnic detail Redrick's attempt to reach the Golden Sphere to ask for his crippled daughter's recovery. However, journeying with his Wide-Eyed Idealist of a partner leaves him in the state of confusion about his true wish as the book closes.
  • The first volume of Hyperion Cantos has a framing narrative which is all about a group of pilgrims traveling to the home of the Shrike, a mysterious entity that, well, usually it just kills everyone who encounters it, but it has been known to kill all but one member of a party of pilgrims, and grant the survivor one wish. Yes, they're all that desperate.
  • A subplot of Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones has the heroine and her brother going on a quest to find a wish-granting entity that can heal her of a magical injury inflicted on her by the villain.
  • Xanth books frequently involve quests to have one's problems solved by Magician Humphrey, a grouchy old wizard who sets all kinds of dangers and tests at his tower. In the first book the plot is set off because Bink, a man who's going to be exiled for being the Un-Sorcerer, tries to find out his talent from Humphrey but even he is stumped.
  • The Hobbit centres around a dragon hunt, for which Thorin promises his teammate, Bilbo, any treasure in Lonely Mountain as his reward. Once the dragon is defeated and the dwarfs reclaim their former stronghold, Bilbo secretly takes the Arkenstone of Thrain as his reward. Had Thorin known that Bilbo would select the Arkenstone, an heirloom precious to Thorin's family, he'd surely have made an exclusion.
  • The Long Walk's winner gets the Prize, which is defined as anything the winner wants. One of the competitors wants to force the Major to admit he's his son.

Live-Action Television 

  • Agatha All Along introduces the Witches' Road, a mystical path witches can summon and if they can face its trials and walk to its end will gain whatever they want, with Agatha and "Teen" assembling a ragtag coven to face it. The Road isn't real; Agatha made it up long ago as bait for witches and her companion subconsciously created an artificial one when they performed the song to summon it.
  • In the Series/CSINY episode "Command+P", the trope is downplayed. Det. Flack challenges Det. Lovato to a game of ping-pong after work. She accepts, with the stipulation that "the winner gets whatever the winner wants." When he wins, he kisses her and she asks what he's doing. He replies, "Just collecting my winnings."
  • Kamen Rider:
    • Kamen Rider Ryuki: After getting sucked into the monster-infested "Mirror World", the idealist Intrepid Reporter Shinji is forced to bond with the dragon Dragredder and participate in the Rider War - a contest between 13 people where the last one standing will be granted a wish. Shinji is more interested in protecting civilians from Mirror Monsters than in using the wish for himself, but his fellow Kamen Riders are a far cry from the Ideal Heroes of past installments, some being outright psychopaths or just convinced that their wish is important enough to sacrifice human lives. In addition, the war turns out to be rigged by the presence of the Purposely Overpowered Kamen Rider Odin, whom the organiser placed in an attempt to claim the wish for himself. Odin's powers also include travelling back in time; this is in fact the latest in a series of attempts by the Big Bad to claim the wish and save his sister's life, which every time have been foiled by the Ryuki powers somehow ending up in Shinji's hands instead of the person he'd intended.
    • The first arc of Kamen Rider Ghost boils down to this. Several parties are trying to collect the 15 Heroic Eyecons so they can get a wish: Takeru wants to wish himself back to life, Makoto wants to restore his little sister, and Saionji wants power. Takeru gets the wish and restores Makoto's sister; his "resurrection timer" gets reset shortly thereafter. At the end of the series he's granted a second wish and comes back to life.
    • Kamen Rider Geats: Geats is a multiple-time champion of the "Desire Grand Prix", a Deadly Game which grants a wish to the winner. However, the management refuse to grant his actual dearest wish no matter how many times he's asked (being reunited with his mother) so he's spent his wishes on things like wealth and immortality instead.
  • LazyTown occasionally has plots revolving around granting wishes, such as a soccer game with a wish as a reward. Robbie Rotten often tries to win so he can wish Sportacus would leave town forever.

Mythology and Religion 

  • Hindu Mythology has Tapas(ya). If characters want something really badly, they can abandon their normal lives to live in a wilderness (snowy mountains are popular), entering a trance of ceaseless prayer to the gods — who must answer, if the tapasya lasts long enough. Self-punishment — starvation, physical rigidity, enduring below-freezing temperatures — is part of it, but tapasvin are too badass to die. Unfortunately, there's no moral requirement; the conflict of the Ramayana was set in motion when a very bad guy requested invincibility for his tapasya.

Roleplay 

  • This serves as the entire premise of Nothing Is Sacred. By collecting mystical artifacts and using them to empower her Sacred Beast before the other chosen are able to do the same, Stella will be granted a single wish. Her wish of choice? World domination.

Tabletop Games 

  • Magical Burst is about Magical Girls that kill Youma and collect their Oblivion Seeds. A Magical Girl that collects 13 Oblivion Seeds can have a single wish granted.
  • Scroll of the Monk describes the All-Creation Tournament of Dragons, a martial arts tournament held by The Empire. Anyone who wins is awarded a talent of jade note  and a boon from the Empress herself. Previous victors have requested things like legal changes, revenge against a nemesis, or rejection of a Parental Marriage Veto. (Since the Empress disappeared, victors have been presented with the governmental version of an IOU.)

Theatre 

  • The Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of Puyo Puyo, aptly named Puyo Puyo On Stage, features the characters trying to find the mythical “White Puyo” which grants wishes. It’s revealed to the audience early on that this is all a trick by Rulue to mess with Arle.

Video Games 

  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past:
      • The game revolves around Link's quest for the wish-granting Triforce; he wants it less to make a wish of his own and more to get it out of the hands of Ganon, who had previously used it to take over the Sacred Realm (in the process turning it into the Dark World) and is currently using it to invade the Light World. Once Link gets it, however, he realizes that he can use it to undo all of Ganon's evil works.
      • Link has to make a wish to unlock the second pendant palace, though the wish is unstated. Notably, the palace entrance requirement is that he make a wish, not a specific one: it's entirely possible that he just wished to enter the palace.
    • Like Link to the Past after it, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link revolved around Link questing for the Triforce of Courage in order to restore the full Triforce as well as Hyrule's glory, and use it to lift the Forced Sleep curse on Zelda's ancestor.
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, a distant sequel to A Link to the Past, has Hilda and Yuga of Lorule scheme to steal Hyrule's Triforce to replace Lorule's, which had been destroyed centuries before by Well Intentioned Extremists who were unaware that it was a Cosmic Keystone without which their world would slowly crumble. Once again, Link is more concerned with keeping it out of their hands than using it for himself. Once he recovers it, he realizes that he can use it to wish for the Lorulian Triforce to be restored. Win-win!
    • In The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, the titular cap was created by Ezlo, a renowned sage, to grant the wishes of humanity. Vaati stole it and wished for obscene magical power, and the overarching goal of the game becomes Link reclaiming the cap to wish for all Vaati's evil curses to be undone, especially one which turned Zelda to stone.
    • In the climax of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a Distant Prequel to the entire series, Link goes on a quest for the Triforce again in order to use its power to kill the Big Bad, the Demon King Demise. It doesn't last.
  • Kirby Super Star’s Milky Way Wishes gamemode consists of Kirby collecting seven stars to make a wish on the comet NOVA and get the sun and moon to stop fighting. Marx steals the wish and attempts to take over Popstar.
  • The plot of The Pirate's Fate is kicked off by this: Darious, a generally kind soul, has discovered the truth behind the folktale of magical coins that can change a person's identity. He assumes that by gathering all of them, one can make a wish to change anything in the world, and he intends to use it to better the world. Unfortunately, not everyone has such benevolent intentions for them, and the coins are, in and of themselves, dangerous enough...
  • The story mode of Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary has your selected character play through a puyo tournament with the winning prize of being granted one wish by a magic medal. Each character, naturally, makes a different wish once they win... but the medal takes their words at face value and usually mangles the wishes as a result. For example, Amitie wishes to be the greatest magician she can be, but the medal does nothing since it thinks she's already a good magician, Klug's wish to be in a magazine falls flat since he has to become famous first, and Sig's wish for new bugs in the forest is outright rejected because the medal dislikes insects.
  • Odin Sphere: When the Kingdom of Valentine fell, its inhabitants were cursed into becoming Pooka, and with many magic spells unable to break the curse, they turned to another solution: by collecting all of the enchanted coins minted in their kingdom, the collective magic can be used for a wish; in this case, it's to undo the Pooka's Curse. This is reflected in-game by the Valentine Coins being the only currency accepted by the Pooka Cafe and shops. The game's True Ending has a final scene where Cornelius and Velvet finally manage to collect all of the coins, and undo the curse.
  • The grand prize of Twisted Metal and most of its sequels is one wish, anything you want, granted by the enigmatic host Calypso. Unfortunately, Calypso is a bit of a Jackass Genie...
  • In the first special episode of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, Bidoof's Wish, Bidoof goes on a quest to Star Cave to get a wish from the wish-granting Pokémon Jirachi.
  • Destiny 2: The aptly named Season of the Wish focuses on the Coalition trying to reach an agreement with Riven to make a wish to open a path to the Pale Heart of the Traveler. Complicating things is that Riven's physical body was killed all the way back in Forsaken which, while not being too inconvenient, has made Riven rather angry at the Tower, especially since the Guardians wiped out almost all of the other Ahamkara. Additionally, Riven confirms that her physical death has weakened her powers such that this wish will be her final one, with the caveat being that she will only grant it if the Guardians can retrieve all of her surviving, untainted eggs.

Visual Novels 

  • What a Legend!: When Myrtle confirms that her husband is dead, she decides to go in search of the Wish Tree in order to resurrect him (despite her husband's ghost urging she move on). She ends up using her wish to stop the Wish Tree (which doesn't actually like having to grant wishes) from killing you, although by this point she has had second thoughts about the quest anyway.

Webcomics 

  • In the Ennui GO! arc "Blood on the Sand", Izzy holds a competition with a wish as the reward. The only limitations are that the winning team can't wish for extra wishes or just cash. Ultimately, Max and his friends win; they end up asking for Minecraft-themed fidget spinners.
  • The Kill Six Billion Demons character Solomon David offers one unconditional boon to anyone who can make him — a nigh-invulnerable Person of Mass Destruction — bleed in a ceremonial duel. White Chain succeeds, denounces his Might Makes Right philosophy, and wishes for him to relinquish his multiversal empire to his subjects. Solomon, reluctant to keep his word, waffles on until the Big Bad disrupts the proceedings.

Web Original 

  • Baman Piderman. In the episode "Happy Winter Friends", Baman and Piderman realize that Pumkin is rotting, so they set off on a quest through another dimension to find a Winter Friends Wish so they can use it to save Pumkin. Instead of a wish, they find a Sousaphone, who tells Baman that the wish was inside him all along. As in, literally inside Baman's chest. Not only does the wish heal Pumkin, it also gives him arms and legs.
  • Brawl of the Objects has a wish-granting Golden Ticket as the mysterious Grand Prize, which is only revealed in the final episode, but retroactively makes the entire series up to that point an example of this trope. Despite not being the winner, Pinecone is the only who gets to make a wish when he steals the Ticket while everyone else was focusing on the race between the final two.
  • One episode of Counter Monkey tells the story of a group of adventurers seeking a genie's aid in removing a curse that was going to turn them into animals. Unfortunately, when they reach the center of the genie's temple, Vegan Steve, the party thief, wishes for a Deck of Many Things instead, and has to run like hell when his friends realize what he just did. Not only does the Deck grant him a cure for the curse, he gets EVERY SINGLE GOOD CARD IN THE DECK OF MANY THINGS, save one. When the rest of the party finally catches up to him, they find his body surrounded by treasure, the deed to a castle clutched in one hand, the Void card in the other. Spoony, realizing how downhill his campaign had become, decides there was enough cure for the rest of the group to undo their curses.
  • The One villain Airy holds a competition show and kidnaps a group of people to force them to participate in it. To motivate them, he promises to give the winner any wish that they desire. The finale reveals that Airy was probably planning to accomplish this through a reality-warping computer he found.

Western Animation 

  • In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Best Hedgehog", Robotnik tells Scratch and Grounder they can ask for anything they want if they manage to capture Lucas and Sonic. Scratch thinks about asking for Robotnik's hovercraft or the fortress they're in, while Grounder thinks about asking for a wrench set that's sitting in the room.
  • In the Adventure Time episode "To the Limit", Finn and Jake explore a dangerous labyrinth alongside a bunch of talking hot dogs to get their wish of having an Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant. When they reach the wish granter, the hot dogs are so stupid they waste their wishes and Jake is so exhausted he wishes for a sandwich, leaving Finn to choose between saving his friends but making their journey pointless or getting the elephant but losing Jake. He beats the choice by choosing the elephant and psychically dominating it to make it use its wish to save the others.
  • Gravity Falls: In "Blendin's Game", Dipper and Mabel compete in a futuristic gladiator tournament known as Globnar, which gives the winner a Time Wish that can fix any impossible problem, even the ability to change history paradox-free. They initially compete (after being drafted into it by their enemy) in order to wish that Soos's dad had come to his 12th birthday, fixing the trauma from all future birthdays. But in the end, they give Soos the wish so he can make the choice himself. Soos, after seeing how much Mabel and Dipper did for him, decides his dad wasn't worth it, and instead uses the wish for his friends... and an infinite slice of pizza.
  • A villainous example in Miraculous Ladybug, where it is revealed that Hawk Moth/Papillon's attempts to capture Ladybug and Chat Noir's Miraculous are for this reason - their power combined will grant the owner one wish, implied to be the restoration of his lost wife.
  • Ōban Star-Racers: The Ultimate Prize for winning the Grand Race of Ōban is purported to be the granting of any wish, any dream. After learning this Molly hopes to use it to bring back her dead mother. But it turns out the real prize is becoming the galaxy's next Avatar, who is powerful but can't raise the dead.
  • The Patrick Star Show: In "A Root Galoot", the family meet a Shmandrake root that promises a wish to whoever in the family it likes best, leading them all to try to get on Shmandrake's good side. We see the characters' individual wishes: Bunny wants to be a superhero with super cleaning powers, Cecil wants to be a Supreme Chef, GrandPat wants nothing more than for the world to be wiped out (with him safely watching from a distance), and Patrick can't even think of what he wants his wish to be. In the end, Shmandrake turns out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing but wasn't planning on giving his wish to anyone. Once Squidina catches him in the act, she uses an Implied Death Threat to get him to grant her wish: that they never found him in the first place.
  • Señor Droopy shows a bullfight whose winner will be rewarded with anything they want; both Droopy and Wolfie want actress Lina Romay. When Droopy wins and names his wish, the emcee says "She would never go out with you." Cut to Droopy with a live-action Romay, who says "Oh, no?"
  • The South Park episode "It's Christmas in Canada" is basically the same premise as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, only instead of getting wishes granted, the protagonists merely wanted to repeal some unfavorable laws. Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny were just along for the ride.