History Main / CensoredChildDeath

* ''LightNovel/GoblinSlayer'': During the scene where Goblin Slayer has to wipe out the children of the goblin den in the first episode, there's [[SoundOnlyDeath plenty of sound to be heard as he's doing it]], but the camera cuts away as he is bringing the club down, focusing instead on poor Priestess having a breakdown as she's listening to this, [[GoryDiscretionShot though there is blood in the aftermath of the act]].

So the [[WouldHurtAChild Murderer]] attacks a family. He [[MoralEventHorizon kills the father and the mother]] and is left with the child. However, we never get to see the murderer kill the child. There may be a scream, but no shadow or gore, if any, gets shown to the viewers at all. This is a very common practice, especially in Hollywood and many Western films, due to the heavy taboos surrounding deaths of children (and that's with DeathOfAChild. Onscreen child deaths have it even worse). This still occurs even in most violent movies, where child deaths are off screen. This is usually due to that such onscreen deaths would result in censorship from the [[MediaWatchdog Media Watchdogs]]. This may also be due to the risks of the MoralGuardians complaining about such deaths onscreen. While there are some notable aversions, such aversions are rare to encounter in most works that contain children.

* ''Film/MarsAttacks!'' While the Martians are invading and attacking the White House, they open fire on a Tour Guide in front of a group of kids on a field trip, they then slaughter all but two of them off-screen.

* In the ''Film/TheMatrixRevolutions'', while it was implied that [[TheVirus Smith]] assimilated Sati, her assimilation was never seen or heard.

* ''Film/LandOfTheDead:'' Several children are in the crowd of people who are trapped between the electric fence and the zombies. They aren't explicitly visible in the crowd of fresh bodies the zombies are eating later, but it is doubtful they could have escaped.
* ''Film/{{Looper}}'' have one of Old Joe's first kills, a child he mistook to be the Rainmaker's younger self. We see the child looking at Joe, then a close-up on Joe's revolver, then the camera pans out as Joe pulls the trigger.
* ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'': Viewers get to see a 3rd class mother telling her children a bedtime story as their room fills with water. Viewers also see dozens of children and infants floating dead in the water, but no actual drownings are shown.
* [[DoubleSubvertedTrope Double Subverted]] in ''Film/It2017''. When [[EldritchAbomination it]] was about to kill Georgie, instead of an offscreen death, [[SubvertedTrope we see him ripping his arm off]], with Georgie trying to escape. Then It reaches out to get him. [[DoubleSubvertedTrope This time]], his death is offscreen.
* ''Film/Warlock1989''. The warlock is shown talking to a child. When the child asks him what he needs to fly, he gives an EvilLaugh. The child is later found dead, and Redferne learns that the child was unbaptized. Redferne tells Kassandra that the warlock needed the fat from an unbaptized child to make a flying potion. All of this indirectly tells the audience that the warlock killed the child offscreen.

* Happens in ''Film/TheLodge'', possibly overlapping with ImprobableInfantSurvival, it ends with the strong implication that [[spoiler:Grace is about to kill Aidan and Mia]], even though we see [[spoiler:her]] kill [[spoiler:Richard]] in all its blood. However, the fact that we don't see it occur has led to some speculation that [[spoiler:Grace actually came back from her psychotic break and was "only" trying to terrify Aidan and Mia, but it's most commonly accepted that Grace killed them both and then herself.]]
* ''Film/MaximumOverdrive'', subverted, we see many people die, we even see a dog who has died with a toy police car in its mouth, poor thing, but in one scene, we see a possessed steamroller drive over one boy on a baseball field the other boy ran off in fear.
* ''Film/{{Nightbreed}}'': Doctor Decker, a serial killer who targets families, is shown attacking a household of three in the opening. The mother and father are graphically murdered with a butcher's knife, but he's only seen menacingly approaching their young son before the screen fades to black.
* In ''Film/FantasticBeastsTheCrimesOfGrindelwald'' when Grindelwald and co. take over a family's apartment when they get to Paris. The husband and wife are quickly killed but they later find the toddler son. They debate over killing him. Grindelwald shuts the door as he gives one of his minions the okay and all you see is the flash of green light from the killing curse from under the door.
* Zigzagged in ''Film/HalloweenIIISeasonOfTheWitch'', children are used as sacrifices by Conal Cochran as a Pagan ritual. They are given masks that end up killing them containing creepy crawlers (spiders, snakes, etc.). In a scene, Dr. Daniel Challis waits in a room with Conal Cochran and others to see what the masks do. In a contained room a boy is with his parents. The jingle plays on a screen igniting a button on the provided mask that the boy wears. As the jingle goes on, the boy antagonizes with pain as these critters lurk inside. We go from shots between the rooms, but we for the most part see the boy (a child) dying. At the end of the film, the jingle flashes on screens for advertising for children around to see, and Dr. Daniel Challis screams on the phone, repeatedly, to stop the jingle before it is too late, but it is heavily implied it does not.

* In ''Film/TheTenCommandments1956'', the actual murders of the Hebrew children aren't shown, but one Egyptian soldier does clean blood from his sword while a mother stands nearby with a ThousandYardStare...
* In ''Film/SleepyHollow1999'', the Headless Horseman kills the Midwife Killian, her husband, and their young son, who was hiding beneath the floor. The scene cuts away, only returning to show the Horseman stuffing something into a sack.
* Both ''Film/MadMax1'' and ''Film/ThePunisher2004'' have the protagonist's son be run down by a villain-driven car, cutting away at the last second, in films that otherwise are not shy about graphic acts of violence.

* The baby scene from ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' adaptations usually do this.
** In the [[Film/CountDracula1977 1977 Dracula TV movie]], we see the brides pull out the baby from the bag. Then cut to Johnathan's horrified expression before cutting back to two of the brides, now having full red eyes and blood on their mouths.
** The 1977 Christopher Lee version had him point to a bag on the floor when one bride asks what they're supposed to eat. The brides quickly run over to it, grab the bag and leave.
** In the 1992 ''Film/BramStokersDracula'' had the brides purring up to Dracula before he presents them with a baby. The three take, crowd around the baby, giggling, and descend upon it before we cut to Johnathan screaming.
* In ''Film/CountYorga'', a scene between Hayes and his girlfriend had them discussing if the police would believe Hayes about vampires, with the girlfriend saying she would due to reading about a baby being found in the swamp, its neck chewed up and drained of its blood. There ''was'' mean to be a scene showing one of the brides doing this, but the scene was cut likely due to being too disturbing.
* In ''Film/StarWarsEpisodeIIIRevengeOfTheSith'', during the 501st Legion's attack on the Jedi Temple, Anakin walks into the Council chamber, where a large number of younglings are hiding. One of them asks what they're going to do to survive...only for Anakin to ignite his lightsaber. While we don't see him do the deed, we see plenty of child-sized bodies afterward. Not to mention the likely ''hundreds'' of other children massacred by the new Empire.
* Subverted in ''Film/TheBlob1988'', when we see Eddie get dragged underwater by the Blob to be eaten. Then the Blob lifts him out of the water just to scare his friends, half-dissolved and all.
* In the bloody climax of ''Film/ReadyOrNot2019'', Emilie grabs her two young sons and tries to run away with them in a desperate attempt to escape the explosive effect of the curse. They manage to make it out of the room- and offscreen- before three more explosions are heard and a rain of blood sprays in from the open door.
* ''Film/TianDi'': Part of the villain's EstablishingCharacterMoment that paints him as a scumbag had him pretending to be passive and tolerant to an old man and a little girl who had interrupted his banquet, where he had both of them sent off together with a little wrapped present for the child. A present filled with C4, which blows up the old man and child from a distance away.
* ''Film/TyrannosClaw'' has a cave-boy being captured by the hostile Dark Tribe and last seen thrown into a hut stuffed with straw about to be set alight. The movie cuts away before his death can be seen, but the hut's burnt-down remains later on confirms his fate.

* ''Film/UltramanTigaTheFinalOdyssey'': During Daigo's vision of himself turning into Ultraman Tiga and embracing his real, formerly evil nature, one of the first thing Dark Tiga did before going on a rampage is to squash a little girl with his fist, but that was censored. All the audience see is Dark Tiga's fist hitting something, then the child's balloon floating into the air. A minute later however the scene turns out to be just a nightmare sequence.
* ''Vengeance'' (2009 HeroicBloodshed drama) opens with Costello's daughter, son-in-law and grandsons getting massacred, kickstarting Costello's quest of vengeance. While his son-in-law and daughter gets graphically shot onscreen, his grandsons, both hiding in a closet, are shot through the door with their deaths obscured and a pool of blood later confirming their fates.
* ''Film/OnceUponATimeInTheWest'' introduces its villain Frank while he's slaughtering a family of farmers with his gang. The parents are shown shot on-screen. However, when it comes to their infant son, there's only a shot of Frank's cold opening fire, and the child's death happens off-screen.
* ''Film/DoctorSleep:'' Played straight with the little girl at the beginning of the movie. We see the villains rush in to grab her after surrounding her, and the scene switches to her mother looking for her as we see [=RVs=] driving away. Averted later in the movie when they kidnap another child and we see in horrifyingly graphic detail how they kill him (which presumably is the same way they killed her earlier) in order to absorb his "steam".

* In ''Film/CountYorga'', a scene between Hayes and his girlfriend had them discussing if the police would believe Hayes about vampires, with the girlfriend saying she would due to reading about a baby being found in the swamp, it's neck chewed up and drained of its blood. There ''was'' mean to be a scene showing one of the brides doing this, but the scene was cut likely due to being too disturbing.

* In ''Series/GameOfThrones'', King Joffrey Baratheon orders the City Watch to kill all of Robert Baratheon's known bastards which he considers them as threats to his claim for the Iron Throne. While most of these bastards are teenagers such as Gendry, the youngest is still an infant. When Ser Janos Slynt of the City Watch orders one of his men to kill the baby, he refuses, causing Janos to do the deed instead in front the mother by grabbing a knife to stab the baby. The next scene cuts away to the mother wailing in terror as she watches her child die in front of her.

A subtrope of DiscretionShot, KilledOffscreen, and DeathOfAChild. Compare and contrast ImprobableInfantSurvival, as while the child survives, these depict a child not seen dying. Related to EmpathyDollShot, wherein a child's favorite toy is presumably all that's left of them.

* The opening FMV of ''VideoGame/NanoBreaker'' depicts the initial Orgamech outbreak and subsequent massacre. One of the victims is a young boy, whose mother was assimilated onscreen and the boy quickly rescued by a soldier, but when the boy starts turning into one of the monsters it happens offscreen with a quick cutaway.

* ''Film/DoctorSleep:''Played straight with the little girl at the beginning of the movie. We see the villains rush in to grab her after surrounding her, and the scene switches to her mother looking for her as we see [=RVs=] driving away. Averted later in the movie when they kidnap another child and we see in horrifyingly graphic detail how they kill him (which presumably is the same way they killed her earlier) in order to absorb his "steam".

* While ''Anime/SpaceRunawayIdeon'' is known for [[KillEmAll killing off the entire cast]] which includes [[DeathOfAChild onscreen deaths of the children]], they never show the death of Piper Lou, who is a baby. Though it's guaranteed that he didn't make it out alive given how the rest of the surviving cast was vaporized.

* The closest ''Literature/HarryPotter'' gets to killing a child on the page is when Voldemort murders a German woman and her two kids in the last book, but Harry’s vision cuts away right before it happens.

* ''Film/{{Warlock}}''. The warlock is shown talking to a child. When the child asks him what he needs to fly, he gives an EvilLaugh. The child is later found dead, and Redferne learns that the child was unbaptized. Redferne tells Kassandra that the warlock needed the fat from an unbaptized child to make a flying potion. All of this indirectly tells the audience that the warlock killed the child offscreen.

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueTheFlashpointParadox'', ComicBook/WonderWoman forces that universe's version of ComicBook/{{Shazam}}, Captain Thunder, back into his unpowered form of six children by using her golden lasso to force him to say his transformation word. Before they can react and retransform Wonder Woman grabs one of the children (Billy Batson), lifts him up by his wrists (onscreen), stabs him twice with a broken sword killing him (offscreen), before letting his dead body fall to the floor (onscreen).
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt'': When the Angel of Death strikes, we see a little boy carrying a jar inside his home. A gasp is then heard, and through the doorway, his arm is seen slumping lifelessly on the ground. Other firstborns are seen after their death such as the Pharaoh's.
[[/folder]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheBFG'': The scene in which the Fleshlumpeater devours a sleeping boy is made even scarier because we don't actually see him do it. Instead, when he reaches into the boy's window, it cuts to Sophie, whose reaction says it all, before cutting back to Fleshlumpeater, obviously chewing something we can't see.

* ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'': Zig-zagged in that you do not see the death itself, but the aftermath - showing a dead mother and child [[spoiler: burned to a crisp by white phosphorus while huddled together.]] And the worst part? [[Spoiler: It's all your fault.]]

'''''Note: Mainly preteens (less than 13 years of age) are accepted as examples as teenagers have been known to fight back. And this is a DeathTrope, so expect unmarked spoilers.'''''

'''''Note: If it's teenagers, then it's not this trope, as teenagers have been known to fight back. A maximum age of 11 is accepted. And this is a DeathTrope, so expect unmarked spoilers.'''''