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Enfant Terrible - TV Tropes

  • ️Tue Dec 16 2008

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Enfant Terrible (trope)

"A little child, she was. But also a fierce killer... Now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood, with all a child's demanding."

The Enfant Terrible is an adorable child. An angel, one might say, with a cherubic face. One just wants to pick them up and hug them.

But they're dangerous. An Enfant Terrible knows people think they're cute, and will use that to their advantage. When one person finds out, said hero usually has a hard time convincing others, who will turn on them for even suggesting such a thing about the poor, poor child.

An Enfant Terrible may be supernatural, or simply a child born without a conscience. They may also be a Self-Made Orphan.

A form of the Devil in Plain Sight. Might overlap with Girl Scouts Are Evil, if they do more than just sell you cookies, and with Kids Are Cruel, if the kid's behaviour also transpires in his relationship to other children. Akin to the Creepy Child, except Enfants Terribles are truly dangerous and vicious at heart, whereas a Creepy Child isn't necessarily psychopathic or evil.

It is common for an Abusive Offspring to be an Enfant Terrible, although they are not exclusively this, or vice versa.

Of course, such a character almost always plays the Wouldn't Hurt a Child and Children Are Innocent cards to get away with their actions, which almost always works — for a while. They're unlikely to be directly killed by any heroic character in the story, but they have a habit of becoming Self Disposing Villains.

Virtually defenseless in a direct physical battle and hindered by their undeveloped bodies, Enfants Terribles with no super powers are usually obliged to operate by proxy. Thus, Corruption by a Minor is often their favourite technique to get what they want.

Sub-Trope of Superior Successor (assuming it's unusual).

See also Undead Child and Evil Orphan, which are common subtypes. Often the nemesis of a Kid Hero. Not related to Child Soldiers, but the two can overlap.

Compare Tyke-Bomb, Little Miss Badass, Cute Is Evil, Fetus Terrible, Cute and Psycho, Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon. Contrast with Psychopathic Manchild, where an already-grown psycho behaves like a child. Contrast Goo-Goo-Godlike, in which the child is not evil, just playful and way too powerful. See also Teens Are Monsters, the aggregate adolescent equivalent of this trope.

Not to be confused with Les Enfants Terribles, which instead both fall under Tyke-Bomb.

It is sufficient to say that psychopathy manifests itself from a very young age, and there is some Truth in Television in this trope. However, any specific Real Life examples…no, thanks.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

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Asian Animation 

  • Little M. from Happy Friends is young enough to be in the same classroom as the Supermen, who are in third grade (placing all of them at around 8 years old). He also has no problem actively helping Big M. to take over Planet Xing, though it's usually Big M. who does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to their evil schemes.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The wolves are the villains and are generally loathed by the goats for wanting to eat them. Angelalily, the daughter of Wolnie's cousin Fragrant Wolf, is young enough that she is just entering school for the first time and has already caught upwards of 100 goats. (Mind you, this may not be considered so bad for the wolves, since they just want something to eat, but seeing a child wolf trying to capture goats would be a bit concerning for the goats themselves — especially since both species are Funny Animals in this show.)
  • Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Subverted. While his kid self is usually sensible for someone who is otherwise rude, Wolffy has no qualms in bringing out a gun to potentially shoot an elephant in the first episode of the first season, Animals & Plants, after Weslie discusses how hunters hurt elephants for their tusks. The gun shoots out a toothbrush that Wolffy uses to brush the elephants' tusks instead of actually hurting them.

Fairy Tales 

  • "Little Otik": The eponymous character is an endearing-looking living wooden baby whose insatiable hunger causes it to eat people.

Films — Animation 

  • Barbie and the Secret Door has Malucia, who plans to take over the world at age 10 and uses a magic-draining scepter to scary effect.
  • Darla Dimple from Cats Don't Dance is a psychotic child actress.
  • Kung Fu Panda 4 has a trio of adorable bunny kids... who viciously attack Po when provoked, and generally prove to be a bit too excited about violence. They fit right in with the other ruthless and violent criminals in Juniper City's underground.

Films — Live-Action 

  • The Bad Seed (1956), which was a theatrical film (in which the Enfant Terrible was named Rhoda) and a TV movie in 1985 (where she was named Rachel). She murders others (including another child), but people don't suspect a cute little girl of doing such things.
  • Berkshire County: One of the three intruders is a child who, when he's not sitting in their van eating candy and listening to the police radio, is just as willing to murder as the adults.
  • The unstoppable Paperboy from Better Off Dead pursues Lane throughout the movie, demanding the two dollars Lane's family owes him. He also duplicates himself/recruits an army of identical helpers and survives falls that should kill a human.
  • Better Watch Out has Luke who tries to seduce his teenage babysitter, stages a home invasion and holds her hostage when she turns him down. He's not even above murdering his own best friend when he tries to free her.
  • In Bloody Birthday three children, Debbie, Curtis, and Steven have no consciences and murder anyone either because they feel like it or feel they have wronged them; it was foretold in the movie that anyone born during an eclipse would cause them to behave that way.
  • The Brood has a woman who has developed the ability to parthenogenetically give birth to mutant children who represent all her negative emotions, and exact bloody vengeance on anyone who has done her wrong, whether real or imagined.
  • The Children semi-combines this with Zombie Apocalypse, as an unknown sickness affecting only children turns them into murderous sociopaths who are very good at faking innocence. Then it turns out teens are affected too; it just takes them longer to turn...
  • Several classic horror movies are filled with them, including the Stephen King adaptation Children of the Corn (1984) and its sequels.
  • City of God features Lil' Zé, who cemented his position as a monster when he was still only a little kid, and casually walked into a brothel and gleefully killed everyone inside just to satisfy his bloodlust. He didn't get any better with time, and became a Psychopathic Manchild as an adult. The most troubling part is that this was a dramatization and Lil' Zé was a real person.
  • The monster in Creepozoids gives birth to a baby with a human face, who subsequently attacks Jake. After an extended struggle, Jake strangles the monster baby with its own umbilical cord.
  • Jody Mitchell from Daddy's Girl is a psychopathic little girl who kills anyone who gets in the way of separating her from her beloved father.
  • The baby Nicholas in The Devil Within Her is possessed by the spirit of a Depraved Dwarf, and has tremendous strength and murderous intent.
  • Dust Devil: One of the Dust Devils is possessing the body of a young child, who seems a little too efficient with his shooting.
  • Eastern Condors has a scene set in the Vietcong's internment camp, where a child Vietcong is gleefully playing Russian Roulette with some of the adult soldiers, and doesn't even hesitate pulling the trigger. The same Vietcong child shows up later when the heroes broke out of the camp's prison, and pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit before killing one of the team (who hesitated attacking when seeing the soldier is a child).
  • Early on in Freaks (2018), Chloe uses her powers to force a pre-teen neighbor to pretend to be her absent mother, and to hug and kiss her in order to fill the void that she feels due to her mother's absence. Later, she escalates to forcing people to kill themselves and others (albeit as an act of self-defense). It's indicated in news stories during the film that the force of Abnormal children's powers is part of why the government is tracking down and killing Abnormals, showing that apparently the children's powers leveled the entirety of Dallas.
  • Full Circle includes Olivia, an adorable little girl who used her psychic influence over other children to make them kill animals ritualistically and watch her murder a young boy.
  • In The Good Son, the murderous title character is a Gender Flip of The Bad Seed.
  • Gore Orphanage features Nellie who is the reason why children in the orphanage keep dropping dead.
  • The Gravedancers: Dennis was preteen Pyromaniac who burned down his father's business, and started the house fire that killed his entire family (and himself). He returns as an Undead Child with pyrokinetic powers to haunt Sid.
  • In Halloween (1978), Michael Myers is six-years-old at the time of his first murder. Even more so in the remake, with Deborah finding the notion of Michael killing animals unbelievable. Until he graduates to people.
  • The main antagonists of Hellions are a horde of beings that resemble trick-or-treaters and want a pregnant teen's baby.
  • At the end of Identity, Timmy York turns out to be the one who committed all of the murders at the motel and kills his mom in her deathbed.
  • Claudia from Interview with the Vampire is a little girl who was turned into a vampire by Lestat to give Louis a surrogate child. Upon becoming a vampire, she is a blood-thirsty murderous child who lures people to her by pretending to be lost so she can kill and feed off them.
  • It's Alive is about a malevolent baby. Within minutes of its own birth, it kills everyone in the room except mom.
  • Parodied in Jane Austen's Mafia! with Chucky, a psychotic little boy who is a parody of Chucky from Child's Play; he murders his grandfather with bug spray so that he can steal his wallet and his father can become the new godfather, he is later seen torturing animals and stabbing dolls, and he gets his comeuppance when he receives a package of tiny dinosaurs which eat him alive.
  • The title character in Joshua was possibly one of these. But it is also possible that everything that happened was just happenstance and misunderstandings. In the final scene, it is revealed that yes, he had arranged the destruction of his entire family, just so he could go live with his favorite uncle. He is shown to have dissected his hamster and possibly killed the other class pets, as well as demonstrating textbook psychopathic traits, so he definitely qualifies.
  • Thelma from Little Sweetheart definitely is this. Absolutely psychotic she will stalk, blackmail and murder to get her way, and she is only nine years old.
  • The Loved Ones: Lola's been torturing boys for a long time, judging by her scrapbook.
  • M3GAN: The titular robot is designed to look like a young girl and, over the course of the film, becomes a violent killing machine.
  • Men in Black lampshades this in a scene involving a shooting gallery filled with aliens. While the other MIB applicants shoot at the aliens (who're actually just working out, sneezing, etc.), Will Smith's character shoots the lone civilian, an "...eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time of night with quantum physics books? She about to start some shit...".
  • The title character in Mikey is one of these as he is a seemingly innocent child who is actually a psychopath who murders his foster families or anyone else who makes him really angry.
  • Lock, Shock, and Barrel from The Nightmare Before Christmas look like trick or treating kids, but are among the most malevolent residents of Halloween Town. The only reason they don't kill Santa Claus instead of capturing him as ordered is that they're afraid Jack will punish them for losing parts of him in the process.
  • While not cute per se, Winchell in North certainly is terrible, a Smug Snake really. This preteen school newspaper editor encourages the hero's search for new parents and publicizes it. While North's out searching, Winchell spearheads a powerful movement to make all parents subservient to their children. When he realizes that North choosing to return to his real parents would spoil things, he tricks North into thinking they no longer love him — then sends assassins (adults) out to kill him.
  • Damien from The Omen. Your chances of being a decent kid aren't exactly great when you're the antichrist...
  • The film Orphan stars a serial-killing orphan or so it would first appear. She's later found out to be an escaped 33-year-old Estonian mental patient with a pituitary disorder and a lot of makeup. It's a lot smarter than it sounds on paper.
  • The main character of the B-movie The Pit who feeds his tormentors to a bunch of creatures called the To-lo-logs.
  • Played for comedy in Problem Child. Junior and later Trixie, his arch-rival and later best friend and stepsister.
  • In Relative Fear, the newborn Adam suddenly lashes out and scratches his mother's face for no apparent reason.
  • Samara in the remake of The Ring was aged down from 40 or so in Ringu to about 12. Oh, and she can drive you insane or kill you with her mind. Even after death.
  • Sinister: Ellison finds a box of videotapes showing grisly murders that claimed entire families, except for one child who was always missing. The "Extended Cut" of the videotapes reveals that Bughuul possessed the youngest member of the family to kill the rest and leave behind a record showing the murders, to be added to the box, before taking them to his own world to be eaten. Unfortunately, Ellison has a young daughter...
  • Soccer Dog: the Movie is a '90s kids movie about a dog who plays soccer. The one atypical character, one of the teammates, Sonny, is evil to the core. He's basically a stereotypical Italian mobster, only nine years old. He poisons his teammates, threatens to kill the main character's dog, and even punches the coach in the balls at the end of the movie.
  • Poked fun at throughout Son of the Mask. Alvey isn't an evil baby, but he just feels that his own father doesn't care about him, so he uses his Reality Warping abilities to attempt to drive him insane.
  • 13/13/13 features a few killer children, including one in the opening scene who killed her mother and appeared covered in blood, and Kendra, the protagonist's daughter, who propositions her father's friend, then kills him violently.
  • The main character of The Tin Drum is more of a sociopath than a psychopath but he's still terrible nonetheless.
  • The protagonists of Tragedy Girls give the phrase "Teens Are Monsters" a new meaning, but it's revealed they were always like this. They committed murder for the first time in grade school.
  • 12/12/12 has Sebastian, a murderous demonic newborn.
  • The kids from Village of the Damned. A boy hits one of the kids with a basketball sort-of on accident. He later drowns.
  • In Who Can Kill a Child?, children on an island of the coast of Spain for no particular reason start murdering all the adults until only they remain and they go off to recruit other children for their killing spree. The only explanation for their psychotic behavior was that one of the initial survivors claimed that a virus that only affected the children may be causing them to act like that. The same holds true for the remake, Come Out and Play.

Gamebooks 

  • Fighting Fantasy have a few:
    • Beneath Nightmare Castle: While strolling through the crime-infested streets of Neuberg, you might be pickpocketed by a child thief, a little girl around 9 years of age who took advantage of your surprise to slash at you with a knife. She runs off after a single round of combat, and if you chase after her, she'll lure you into a back alley where three boys her age armed with weapons will ambush you.
    • Appointment with F.E.A.R.: An installment set in the modern day, at one point you come across a child trying to shoplift a chocolate bar. If you decide to talk to the child, the kid will guiltily stick his hand into his pockets, as if to take out the chocolate bar he had stolen... only to pull a gun on you instead. Cue a Boom, Headshot!
    • Legend of Zagor: One of the rooms in Castle Argent contains a trio of thieves, all of them younger than you, the youngest at around 8 years old... and they'll try slashing at you with knives. Although you're given an option to talk to them instead, where it turns out they can be reasoned with, and the youngest thief can be hired as an Assist Character during fights, helping you by stabbing at orcs and zombies.

Music 

  • The previous page-quote, "The Curse of Millhaven", by Nick Cave and his aptly-named backup band, The Bad Seeds, is about a 14-year-old mass murderer, who drowns the neighbour's kid, burns down property, decapitates the handyman (with the circular saw in his garden shed), stabs an old lady to death, and is directly responsible for a class of children drowning, but did not Crucify the Dog. Nothing odd about the mass murdering, especially on an album like Murder Ballads, but it just goes to show- even a cute, blonde-haired small-town girl can be evil to the core.

    Since I was no bigger than a weevil
    They've been saying I was evil
    That if bad was a boot then I'd fit it
    That I'm a wicked young lady
    but I've been trying hard lately
    Aw, fuck it! I'm a monster, I admit it!

    • Additionally, they have an album called "The Good Son".
  • Independent L.A.-based band Creature Feature has a song called "Such Horrible Things," which follows the birth, life, various horrors, and final institutionalization of an unnamed psychotic individual whose deeds include but aren't limited to:
    • Pouring super glue into his father's hair at the age of two.
    • Attempting to leave a "friend" in the woods to die at age six.
    • Burning down his family's house at the age of eight because he hated the color of the place.
    • And at fourteen "there was that one time" which, on the actual song, is conveyed only by a musical interlude and lots of screaming.
  • Edge of Sanity's "Crimson II" is about a demonic child born to a nun who read a cursed book. The child can read minds and kill victims by projecting "images too hideous for human minds to bear".
  • Cruella de Ville's song "Those Two Dreadful Children" details an allied pair of Enfants Terribles:

    We've got a sense of humor but we haven't any cares.
    Oh how I had to laugh when we kicked granny down the stairs.
    On our tippy-toes we crept right up where she was standing,
    And the tears ran down my face as she lay bleeding on the landing.
    And when we called out "Mama! Quick! We think our granny's dying!"
    And when Mama came a-running we pretended to be crying.
    We said "We saw her trip"; they couldn't tell that we were lying
    And since Granny was unconscious she was doing no denying!
    Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

  • And to top that, "The Cat Is Dead" by The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (the predecessor group to the better-known Oingo Boingo), gleefully delineates the actions of a trio of psychopathic children:

    The cat is dead, the cat is dead,
    And Mikey too, and Uncle Fred
    Expiring oh so suddenly while sipping down some tea.
    The tea was hot, the tea was nice
    With strychnine and a little spice
    To cover up the funny taste
    Of our conspiracy.
    When Grandpa saw what we had done
    He went straight for his hunting gun.
    But we were quick, we stole the clip;
    The rest is history.
    To make sure Grandma wouldn't flee
    We gave her a lobotomy
    And now she's just as happy as can be.

  • Tom Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad", from Songs by Tom Lehrer.

    About a maid I'll sing a song
    Sing rickety-tickety-tin
    About a maid I'll sing a song
    Who didn't have her family long
    Not only did she do them wrong
    She did ev'ry one of them in, them in
    She did ev'ry one of them in

  • Oingo Boingo themselves did the song, "Only A Lad", which is about a child psychopath who gets away with his crimes because all of the authority figures think Society Is to Blame.
  • "That's My Boy" by Stan Freberg, a smarmy Parental Love Song about a son whose most endearing habits include setting the mailman on fire, pouring acid on the rug and taking potshots at his dear old Dad (*BANG* "Missed me!").
  • "Tug-O-War Intestines" by Skinless, involving a pair of kids playing schoolyard games with the internal organs of a car crash victim. One who made it to the hospital. Not to mention that said victim reveals it's his own grandkids who've torn him apart to use his guts for playthings.
  • Pretty Little Girl by The Pine Box Boys, The Poet reminisces about a time he peered through a fence to watch the eight-year-old neighbor girl having a tea party with another neighbor, who she poisons and drags into the cellar.
  • Evillious Chronicles has "Daughter of Evil", about a 14-year-old tyrannical princess who steals money from her people and executes those who defy her. At some point she becomes so enraged with envy when the prince she loves falls for another princess, that she sets fire to the latter's kingdom, resulting in the loss of many innocent lives. Eventually everyone revolts against her and she is supposedly sent to the guillotine, although the song "Servant of Evil" revealed that her twin brother took her place in being executed.

Myths & Religion 

  • Older Than Feudalism: the Greeks had Zeus, whose mother saved him from being eaten by his father Cronos (trying to avoid Karmic Death for overthrowing his father); Zeus then served up some nasty poison to Cronos while posing as a servant; his son Hermes tops this by stealing a herd of Apollo's cattle almost as soon as he was born and then sweet-talking his way out of being punished for said theft (and, on top of that, killing one of the cattle as a sacrifice to himself).
  • Kullervo, of course, in The Kalevala.
  • Jesus, according to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is most likely Gnostic heresy. When Jesus was five years old and making sparrows out of clay while collecting and purifying a bowl of water, a boy comes and drains the water out of the bowl, then Jesus curses the boy to dry up, and he dies. Later on, a boy runs by Jesus and bumps Him on the shoulder, and Jesus curses that boy, and he also dies. When the parents of the children Jesus killed come to Jesus' parents and complain about the situation, Jesus causes those parents to go blind.
  • A way to square the incident with the bears with Elisha's many acts of compassion and pity is to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was dealing with a violent juvie gang (and that this would have been clear to readers of the time).

Podcasts 

  • Comedy Bang! Bang! has the recurring character played by Bobby Moynihan named Fourvel, introduced in episode 150, who is a seemingly innocent young orphan who is actually a murderous psychopath who's prone to getting "a little stabby".
    • Also there's JJ and Murphy O’Malaman, introduced in episode 355, a pair of incestuous kid detectives who murdered and flayed their own mother.
  • The Kingmaker Histories features Dieter, the 13-year-old nephew of a mob boss who has mind control powers and is set to inherit a criminal empire.
  • Off Book: The Improvised Musical: The episode Creeps, Thieves, and Things with Wings features a criminal group of adorable young girls known as the Little Larceny Ladies.
  • In Pretending to Be People, Maggie Cook was this as a child growing up in a facility run by the Circle of Knowledge.
  • The Storage Papers: "The Cold in the Cabinet" features an infant Eldritch Abomination birthing itself into existence through the titular cabinet. While it's left ambiguous how malevolent it actually is, the damn thing is absolutely terrifying, and Ron understandably decides to Kill It with Fire just to be safe.

Radio 

  • The Child from the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama The Holy Terror. The child in question is a five-year-old boy who has been imprisoned in a dungeon ever since he was born so he would grow up untainted by the world, divine and all-powerful. His first few scenes confirm that he's all-powerful alright and that he's a dyed-in-the-wool sadist.

    Do you think I'll be the best torturer in the world? Do you think my father will be proud of me? WELL? WILL MY DADDY BE PROUD?

  • In the radio adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hyde's evil emerged in Jekyll at a very young age, terrifying his parents and peers.
  • Old Harry's Game: Thomas Crimp, when he was a child. Even by the age of five, other children hated him because he scared them, when he wasn't just stealing from their parents. Thomas responded by killing them. And his parents, when they wouldn't buy him an expensive toy. And possibly one of his siblings. As an adult, Thomas is in many ways still that little child. He just got a lot better at getting what he wanted... until he winds up in Hell.

Roleplay 

  • In The Gamer's Alliance, both Arawn and Yurius were truly horrible even when they were still young. Yurius gleefully set people on fire, and Arawn massacred his foster family as well as plenty of other people who annoyed him but still had the nerve to act innocent in order to fool the mages investigating the murders.
  • Open Blue features Remillia, which deploys Tyke-Bomb special forces known as Angels. They begin active duty at the age of 13, and the younger ones tend to use their age to fool targets of their assassinations. Senseless Violins are just one of their many weapons.
  • Survival of the Fittest:
    • Kimmy Redmond, a girl who has the look of somebody five years her junior, complete with carrying a lollipop around. A unicorn lollipop. She also has very few compunctions about causing harm to her classmates. Although it hasn't happened yet, it's very likely this will transfer to killing them too. ( It didn't, but she tried.)
    • A more accurate example of this trope is 12-year-old prodigy Brandon Cuthbert, who, before the game, sliced up various woodland creatures for experiments. This carries over to when he dissects the former featherweight boxing champion of the world with a box cutter after suffocating him to unconsciousness with an X-box controller. He seems to show some remorse for his actions right before his death at the hands of Sera Wingfield though.

Tabletop Games 

  • Blackbirds RPG: Caoimhe-Ailis was the only daughter of a brutal warlord named Caoimhe-Ondrej, and had the charming habit of torturing small animals using and parts of their corpses as decoration. When Ondrej joined the Oligarchs in their quest to usurp the gods, Ailis murdered him and stole his divinity by tearing his throat out with her teeth at the age of 10. She is now the Child of Longing, a mothlike Eldritch Abomination who has corrupted the ancestral Caoimhe clanlans, and often afflicts innocent travelers with nightmarish fates worse than death for her own amusement.
  • There is a sequel to Cyberpunk 2020 called Cyber Generation, where the Edgerunners of CP2020 have mostly been either killed or grown complacent by buying cushy corpjobs with retirement, leaving the rebellion to their children. It's very possible to play this kind of character in this game, especially if your character is a type of YoGanger referred as a Beaver Brat. Beaver Brats mostly come from suburban areas and specialize in talking their way out of trouble by convincing adults that there has been a big misunderstanding and they couldn't possibly have done it.
  • The Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 manual Heroes of Horror, incidentally, introduces a template called Unholy Scion, which is a creature whose soul has been substituted with a demonic/devilish/evil essence while still in the womb. Already at birth, the resulting child holds his/her/its own mother in thrall through evil power alone and gains terribly destructive powers as it grows in Hit Dice. Oh, and it is so evil that its merest touch can grievously harm good-aligned characters.
  • In Mage: The Ascension, widderslaint were reincarnated Nephandi (mages who were evil because of their malformed souls, or whose souls were malformed by their evil). Even before their awakening as mages, they're irredeemably evil (the fiction introducing them describes an infant crawling into his twin brother's crib to strangle him to death, then falling asleep hugging the corpse like a teddy bear).
  • In Magic: The Gathering, the card Blood Bairn depicts a vampiric child who has just killed two travelers.
  • In World of Darkness: Innocents, where the player characters are children, a character who hits zero on the Karma Meter becomes one of these. They aren't necessarily evil, but they have absolutely no empathy or conscience. As the book puts it, they'll probably end up institutionalized.
    • The New World of Darkness game Changeling: The Lost includes Fetchspawn, one of the options for the children of the fake people that the Gentry leave to replace Changelings. They have no Karma Meter. They have no empathy. Most people just assume they're autistic because of their total inability to relate to other human beings on an emotional or social level. They tend to kill things just because. This is all exacerbated by the fact that their touch automatically opens all doors, springs all locks, they cannot be bound or imprisoned, and people tend to ignore them, so they're able to slip around without notice. They are immune to Changeling superpowers, and their touch drains the Lost of magical energies. Oh...and did we mention that at the age of 21 they get sucked back into the Hedge, likely to become Gentry themselves?

Theatre 

  • In the 2013 adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mike Teavee is upgraded from the Spoiled Brat of the book to this. The reason his mother allows electronic media — i.e. Shoot 'em Up video games — to babysit him is because it's the only thing that he enjoys that doesn't result in actual destruction and injury to those around him. Otherwise, he's setting a cat on fire, chloroforming a nurse, stealing a German tank, etc. "[T]he authorities request/That little Mike not leave the house", she explains, and all the adults in his life seemed too cowed by what he might do to them to attempt more than token efforts to discipline him. Poor Mrs. Teavee has become a Type A Stepford Smiler in response to all this. It's telling that he didn't find his Golden Ticket, but rather managed to hack into the Wonka Factory computers and get one without having to buy a Wonka Bar — and he does it just because he can, not because he wants to see the factory. With all this in mind, and unlike in other versions, his mom is quite happy when he is reduced to a few inches tall...
  • Mary Tilford from The Children's Hour is a malicious girl who tells a lie about her two teachers just to get out of going to school. She then blackmails another girl into saying she started the lie, pulls the other girl's arm out of its socket (albeit accidentally), and steals some jewelry.
  • Orin Scrivello's Villain Song in Little Shop of Horrors details how he enjoyed torturing animals as a child, which led his mother to push him toward a career in dentistry: "People will pay you to be inhumane!"
  • Kerchak falsely believes this of a young Tarzan in the stage version of the 1999 Disney film Tarzan, when he comes upon the child fashioning a spear.

Visual Novels 

  • The special bonus story of Cat President 2: Purrlitical Revolution introduces an antagonistic human girl who's seemingly no older than ten, named Jill Johnson. She has a habit of flip-flopping between being a normal kid and acting like an underhanded, unpleasant supervillain. During the course of this story, she abuses a loophole in the legal system to run for President as a Fancy Furball candidate, and goes on to run a campaign centered around insulting the opposition.

    Jill: Remember the name Jill Johnson, for it's the name of your executioner.

  • Ilyasviel Von Einzerbern of Fate/stay night is the Token Mini-Moe of the cast... but is also a ruthless Master with a Nigh-Invulnerable force of insane destruction as her Servant.
  • The Warriors of Hope in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls. All of them are around 10-11 years old, and they're killing every adult in Towa City. Special mention goes to Monaca Towa, for deceiving all the other Warriors of Hope into almost committing suicide and, at the end of the game, taking over as the successor to Junko Enoshima.
  • Dahlia Hawthorne from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations was a prime example of this trope before she had even committed her first murder. When she was just fourteen, she staged a fake kidnapping with Terry Fawles and her stepsister Valerie in order to extort ransom money from her father, and then got Terry put on death row as a result of Dahlia faking her own death, with him as the only suspect. Of course, Valerie wasn't much better, but Dahlia was the one who came up with the plan in the first place. And she later killed her stepsister.
  • Maria Ushiromiya from Umineko: When They Cry isn't one normally, but she definitely was one when she became a witch in the 4th arc and repeatedly killed her own mother. Though this is implied to either be All Just a Dream or an Indulgent Fantasy Segue, it definitely says something about her troubled relationship with her mother. In Bernkastel's game during the 8th arc, it's stated with the purple truth that Maria is incapable of directly murdering anyone, furthering the implication that while Maria might entertain thoughts of killing people in order to cope, she wouldn't be able to pull it off in real life.

Web Animation 

  • Many/most of the kids from Childrin R Skary [1] fit this.
  • Dayum:
    • One unnamed boy in “Types of People on Christmas Portrayed by Minecraft” kills a Mall Santa just because he got coal the previous year.
    • Juan from “Types of Kids Visiting the Doctor Portrayed by Minecraft” shoots the doctor to death just because he’s Afraid of Needles.
    • Wesley from “Types of Kids Portrayed by Minecraft # 2” cuts up a cat, claiming he wants to be a surgeon when he grows up.
  • Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination): Gregory can be something this terrible, since the shorts "Gregory is a GOD and Freddy can't stop him" and "FREDDY'S BIGGEST FEAR" show him as a conniving brat and a god firsthand, in the former, he has a role that can alter reality and uses it to do evil, while in the second, he leads the Glamrocks in an attack on the pizzeria to expel Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy and take it over, oh, and how can we not forget about how he made Roxanne Wolf cry with harmless insults until Freddy decides to insult him to avoid more problems.
  • Various kids in GoAnimate videos are this, to the point where many of them kill without hesitation and are completely fine with committing terrorism and other crimes.
  • Dr. Monster: The eponymous Mad Scientist introduced his son who's every bit as evil as his dad as stated by himself in his "I Am" Song:

    Father, what have you done?
    Who needs those freaks when you've got a son?
    I'm gonna be the new Monster M.D.
    Cuz the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!
    I'm gonna run the family biz for sure!
    You're the sickness, I'm the cure.
    I'm a bouncy, blue-eye bundle of joy, with just one mission: DESTROY!
    I'm the Sinfant! A Diabolical delinquent!
    I might look sweet but don't be fooled
    All shall suffer under my rule!
    Cuz I'm the Sinfant! I snatch your soul in a instant!
    You cannot hide or run away!
    Defeating you is child's play!

  • Helluva Boss: A photo of Stella strangling a pet as a child shows that she was a nightmare from day one.
  • The Most Popular Girls in School:
    • Mikayla is just as bratty and malicious as her teenage sisters. She even threatened to throw Mackenzie's little sister down a flight of stairs.
    • Brittnay was also very bitchy and violent in the Third Grade. Becoming friends with Mackenzie has put her a bit more under control.
  • Revenge Films: Jill is a creepy little girl who bullied OP's daughter and even assaulted her with a pair of scissors while OP went for cake and a Coke as her daughter requested, which turned out to be for Jill. What's more, she blinded a classmate before and even beat the neighbor's dog with a shovel.
  • Very Bad Children: It is about a trio of macabre, troublesome children who threaten the lives of anyone who disrupts their life with their senile grandmother in their spooky mansion, including a smug social worker in the short "Social Call" and a bossy nanny in "Sweet and Sauerkraut".

Webcomics 

  • In 8-Bit Theater, The Onion Kid is mistaken for this after the deaths of his family and several foster families afterward. Black Mage did it in reality.
    • BM might have been one of them but we don't know if he was cute (we can guess he was not though).
  • Jason Vorhees in Anthro Friday The13th is a child rather than an adult like in the movies. It doesn't stop him from being a murder machine like his original counterpart.
  • Awful Hospital: Baby Heads Worm. Not only did it try to attack Fern and Celia, but it also succeeded in killing JBE 12837.
  • The webcomic/video series Contemplating Reiko stars the daughter of Satan and her three older sisters, who tend to do a lot of terrible things including murder (this is especially the case with the titular Reiko).
  • Eerie Cuties: Chapter 9 introduces Tia Darkness, a pint-sized demoness who may be older than she appears (which was subtly implied when she refers to Nina as "little one", despite appearing to be the same physical age). She soon established herself as an antagonist, by using her powers to severe friendships so she can feed of the victims' misery. By the same token, kindness and happiness weakens her, to the point of making her physically ill. So in all likelihood, she has to sow discord in order to sustain her existence.
  • Megaweapon from Far Out There certainly acts the part (and the things we only hear about are even worse).
  • Slippery Weasel of Frog Raccoon Strawberry is an incredibly evil wizard who is still in diapers.
  • Girl Genius: While none have appeared in story just yet the Heterodynes have a history of having truely uncontrollable kids. When Gil rides out with the "devil dogs" to defend Castle Heterodyne until it's fixed and goes into full-on Spark mode, this conversation happens:

    Council Member: But—I thought you said the new Heterodyne was a girl.
    Vanamonde: She is. That's just the boyfriend.
    Council Member: That's—
    Vanamonde: Uh-huh.
    Council Member: We're...we're going to have to break out those little iron cages for their children, aren't we?
    Vanamonde: Uh-huh.

  • Guilded Age: Taro Iwatani.
  • Apparently normal to some extent for Homestuck's trolls. Backstabbing and mutilating each other is rife among troll kids, and Eridan and Gamzee went on killing sprees at the equivalent age of thirteen.
    • One thing a lot of readers forget until the killing sprees begin is that Vriska and Eridan had already murdered countless other troll kids and their guardians, prior to the game. A Million Is a Statistic, except when it's not.
    • As soon as Calliope and Caliborn's personalities split, Caliborn became an insufferable little brat whose first act was to bite into his adoptive father Gamzee's shoulder. He only gets worse with age.
  • Ruby Gem in Monsterful: She's plain open evil, especially with her mother Diamond. On recent chapters, her evilness has evolved to the point of sacrificing virgins and wanting to gut her teacher like a fish.
    • On the Monsterful 2010 Xmas Special, Ruby wanted to kill Santa because he brought her coal, not really a shocker.
  • #Killstagram: In the Deadly Game of the second season, the youngest participant is a cute fourteen-year-old girl who turns out to be a deranged killer. She has been killing other children since she was six.
  • Happens multiple times in Last Place Comics.
  • Noblesse has Kalvin & Regis. Kalvin is an Enhanced Human assassin who specializes in poison. Regis, while 199-years-old, is still a child in both appearance and by the standards of his species, and while a good guy, he spends a considerable amount of time trying to kill people.
  • In The Order of the Stick:
    • Elan's Evil Twin Nale was a jerk even as a baby, complete with an evil goatee. Baby Nale would constantly Dope Slap poor Elan's soft undeveloped baby skull, which is why Elan is The Ditz.
    • Xykon was far more depraved as a child, having murdered his own parents with a zombie at the age of 12.
  • In True Villains, Bayn Pheonix and Mia Jalek are both children that work for an evil demon. Bayn is a more direct example — he fights alongside the demon and his minions. Mia builds golems that fight in her stead. Neither of them is quite a straight example, though: Bayn was an old (evil) man who was severely aged down, while Mia is a genuinely kind, sweet girl trying to help out her friends... who happen to be, well, villains.

Web Original 

  • In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Game - The Movie, Billy Pones's father takes pride in the fact that he attacks Jekyll unprovoked with a slingshot. Pretty much everyone agrees that the pride is well-deserved.

    Bartender: The little laddie Billy Pones...
    Everyone: Aye!
    Mr. Pones: That's my boy!
    Bartender: He's a good boy.
    Man: I like him already!

  • From Killerbunnies, we have Malou, Visceraline, Snow, Atlasnaya, and Creamline and they seem to have a fairly messed up view of the world and enjoy doing fairly harmful things. Although, in Snow and Atlasnaya's case, this is fairly justified, seeing that they've only known violence and thus act they see fit, although the same cannot really be said for Malou, Visceraline, and Creamline.
    • As a child, Computer Virus was this or starting out that way.
    • According to their profile, Hattie is this.
    • Corrine "Cori" Andrews is a serial arsonist with several counts under her belt.
    • There is also Frankie, who ran a meth lab when she was four, caused an explosion in the family's basement when she was five, poisoned a cousin with chemicals, and used pets as test subjects, the none of which survived. Apparently, she likes to look for guinea pigs.
  • Within the world of Magical Girl Hunters, some of the magical girls joined to save the world. Some just like the excuse to kill stuff. Captain Kawaii... shudder.
  • The Mwa Mwa Penguins you can find at the Pet Shop in Club Penguin embody this trope.
  • On Roger Ebert's website, he once posted a letter from a female reader who noted that it would be possible to save any number of mediocre movies by adding a scene at the very end which showed an otherwise normal looking child whose eyes suddenly glow. The example she used was the movie Volcano.
  • Bonesaw, from Worm. A pre-teen Mad Doctor with the personality of a five-year-old. She has one Hell of a Freudian Excuse, though; she was forced to heal her dying family. Over and over and over again, until she was too tired to continue. After such, Jack, the man who killed her family, took her in, and Bonesaw followed the last request of her mother to 'be good' by putting on the superficial mask of a cheerful, well-behaved child while using her powers the way Jack wanted in order to stay alive.

Web Videos 


Mischevious Tiny Sweet Tooth

When winning rc contest, Billy Calypso was confused on why Needles Kane wished for a little ice cream,but he didn't realised that his real wish wasn't a little ice cream, it's worse than he thought. Needles Kane tighted him up on front of truck and gets chased by police.

Alternative Title(s): Enfante Terrible, Enfants Terribles