History Main / AHeroIsBorn

* ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'' - Yes, Quasimodo was a baby. Even as a baby he was ugly enough that Frollo had to be talked out of throwing him down a well.

* The standard OriginStory for Franchise/{{Superman}} shows him as a baby when he is sent to Earth in a spaceship.

* ''Film/Thunderpants'' begins with the protagonist's mother farting him out in birth, since the plot revolves around a boy who always farts.

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* The [[Manga/TheLegendOfZelda manga adaptation]] of ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons]]'' opens with Link's birth, showing his Triforce mark from those games as a birthmark.

* '''Type 1''': Work literally begins from the birth of the protagonist. A TimeSkip or two are permitted.
* '''Type 2''': Protagonist is shown as an infant at the beginning. Might overlap with DoorstopBaby.

!!Type 1:

!!Type 2:

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* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' begins with the details of what happened to him as an infant.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', one of the first cutscenes shows Master Xehanort leaving a dying Ventus on the paupu fruit tree in the Destiny Islands. Ven's heart is badly damaged after [[spoiler: having his darkness ripped from him to create Vanitas]], and is only saved by the heart of an infant Sora... who was just born offscreen. That's right: Sora has been helping those in need right from his own birth.
* ''WesternAnimation/PenguinsOfMadagascar'' starts with young versions of Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico rescuing a runaway egg, which hatches to reveal Private.

* Frequently in Literature/TheBible.

* ''Film/TheVikings'': Eric appears as a baby at the beginning (after the Vikings RapePillageAndBurn in Northumbria, he's a ChildByRape) when he's given the jewel stone of the hilt of the Requiter sword to identify him some time before his mother Queen Enid dies. He grows up to be the closest thing the film has to a hero.

* Frequently in Literature/TheBible.
** Many people are more aware of the story of Jesus's birth than anything else he did. The story is considered pretty important since Jesus was conceived divinely.
** Taken to the extreme in the genealogy sections where you get long, long family history of who was begat by who, leading up to the people who are more familiar.

* In ''The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain'', a collection of short stories which form a prequel to the ''Literature/PrydainChronicles'', Dallben is a DoorstopBaby for Orddu, Orwen, and Orgoch. He would later raise his own foundling, Taran, though the circumstances of Taran's babyhood are not revealed until the final chapter of the final book.

* Traditionally origin stories for Franchise/WonderWoman begin with her "birth", given it's strange nature as a birth from clay or a clay vessel rather than from her mother's womb.

** ''Literature/{{The Sight}}'' follows the above formula with [[TheHero Larka]]. Justified in that the book is set in the same universe as Firebringer and are both written by the same author.

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* ''Manga/RoseOfVersailles'' begins just a moment before the birth of Oscar in her family's château, with her father anxiously hoping for a boy to carry on the Jarjayes family name as trusted guards of the royal family. He gets his hopes up when he hears a loud cry from the other room that's strong like a boy, and is upset to find that the child is another girl. However, instead of giving up his ambitions, he decides to give her the masculine name Oscar and [[RaisedAsTheOppositeGender raise her as a boy]].

* ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'': Although the manga starts InMediasRes with grown-up Guts in the Black Swordsman Arc, it's immediately followed by the Golden Age Arc which shows HowWeGotHere and begins with Guts' inauspicious and vaguely supernatural birth. A group of mercenaries including their leader Gambino and his mistress Sys pass by a grisly tree with perhaps a dozen people hanged by nooses from its branches, and see a newborn baby boy lying motionless beneath his mother's corpse. Sys, who lost her mind three days before from miscarrying her own baby, picks up the child; when Gambino forces her to drop him, the baby that everyone but Sys thought was dead comes to life and begins to wail. Gambino changes his mind and allows Sys to keep the baby, figuring he will probably die soon and console Sys in the meantime, despite one of his men saying it's bad luck to take in a child born from the womb of a hanged woman. The boy is named Guts, and after Sys catches the plague and dies three years later, Gambino blames everything on Guts, saying he should have died instead. What all this means is that Guts was born into the world surrounded by death, but from the very beginning he struggled to live. He is fated to live a life of suffering, but imbued with the ability to survive no matter what.

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* ''Disney/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians'': 15 of the main characters are shown being born. Of course, the puppies are not so much the heroes of the tale as their parents are.
* Aladar the Iguanodon in ''Disney/{{Dinosaur}}'' is taken from his mother's nest as an egg by a Pteranodon and winds up hatching in the presence of a family of lemurs.

* ''Disney/{{Hercules}}'' - Hercules was not only once a baby, he was once a god.

* Simba in ''Disney/TheLionKing'', with definite heroic overtones as all the animals in the kingdom come to see him. The film actually begins a short time after his birth; it opens with his formal presentation to the animals as their future king.

* ''Disney/{{Bambi}}'' begins with assorted wildlife coming to view the just-born Bambi and his mother. Seeing his adorable first steps is particularly endearing.

* ''Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'' - Yes, Quasimodo was a baby. Even as a baby he was ugly enough that Frollo had to be talked out of throwing him down a well.

* Mario and Luigi for the entire game of ''VideoGame/YoshisIsland''.

* In their movie, WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls weren't so much born as they were created purely by coincidence. From the get-go, they knew they were different but their sense of heroism would reach critical mass by the movie's third act.

What better way to introduce the protagonist of the story than start at his/her birth? This device is used to have the audience fall in love with the character, because who can't love a baby? A protagonist may be concieved and born in extraordinary or even supernatural circumstances which portend that they will grow up to be a hero. A lot of expectation may be placed on them from birth depending on if their parents are royalty needing an heir or suchlike. On the other hand, they may be born to poor parents or a mother abandoned by her partner, indicating that their early years will be full of hardship.

* Type 1: Work literally begins from the birth of the protagonist. A TimeSkip or two are permitted.
* Type 2: Protagonist is shown as an infant at the beginning. Might overlap with DoorstopBaby.

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-->His hair is fuzzy, his eyes are blue,\\

Joseph Taylor, Junior!

* The protagonist of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}''. The game starts out with the player seeing the protagonist's father through their baby eyes and later moves one to their early childhood.

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* A slightly strange example: Although the [[Franchise/IndianaJones movies]] already introduced us to him as an adult, the ReCut home video release of [[Series/TheYoungIndianaJonesChronicles The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles's]] first episode has the opening scene of baby Indy being handed to his parents shortly after his birth; complete with voice-over narration from a teenage-ish Indy.

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* The second story arc in ''Webcomic/{{Fatebound}}'' begins with the birth of Hadral "under a mourning moon" before jumping ahead to his mid/late teens.
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* ''Literature/OksaPollock'': The prologue of the first books shows how Oksas father sees his new-born daughter the first time.

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* ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'': [[http://www.drowtales.com/mainarchive.php?id=63 here]].

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!!Please sort if you know which type the examples are

* ''VideoGame/DreamfallChapters'' opens with a [[BirthDeathJuxtaposition juxtaposition]] of [[spoiler:April's]] VikingBurial and the birth of the game's new PlayerCharacter[[note]]technically, she is just one of the three playable characters, but the other two are old guard from the [[VideoGame/DreamfallTheLongestJourney previous game]][[/note]], Saga, who is later revealed to be her {{Reincarnation}}.