History InfantImmortality / VideoGames

* A blanket note for several of the examples below: While it's hard to confirm because the ESRB criteria for rating games isn't entirely transparent, a number of people have alleged that allowing the player to deliberately murder children in a game is a fast track to an Adults Only rating; this would be financial suicide for any title with a multi-million budget as all major consoles prohibit AO titles on their system and few retail stores (and no major ones) will carry them. (This may have carried less weight in the 90s, especially for PC games which got lax treatment to begin with.)
* In ''VideoGame/TinStar'', the titular character refuses to shoot Kid Johnson, a little kid who also happens to be a gunslinging bandit. It turns the QuickDraw ShowdownAtHighNoon with the kid into a HopelessBossFight.
* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'':
** The PC frees the inmates of an asylum for those driven mad by magical power to help take on BigBad Jon Irenicus. One of these inmates is a young girl with the ability to shapeshift; she does not actually take part in the battle, in which all the other inmates die.
** Subverted for [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential children on the streets of Athkatla or Baldur's Gate]], as you can kill as many as you want...[[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment at least until the guards show up]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania 64}}'' has the hero fighting horrible menaces to save a human kid named Malus. Then he sends him off into the monster-filled worlds. The [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaLegacyOfDarkness rerelease]] had a different hero give a different kid a plot coupon that would protect him from said monsters.
** Subverted in Malus' case [[spoiler:since he's ''freaking Dracula reborn''. In the true ending you get to confront and kill him.]]
* No children or infants appear in the ''VideoGame/{{Crusader}}'' series of games, because with the care most players usually take to avoid killing civilians there would be frozen, burning, or gooey babies ''everywhere''. [[BlackComedy And you can't get baby out of carpet]].
* In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestV'', during the segment where your characters are children, they don't die when they hit 0 HP, but are just knocked out until the end of the battle. Actual -- if not-permanent -- death isn't an issue until your lead character is an adult.
** [[spoiler: Subverted with the PC's own children who CAN get killed in battle]]
* ''Videogame/{{Fable}}'': The only children to appear are in a town which the player cannot enter without leaving his weapons at the gate.
** You are never unarmed in ''VideoGame/FableII'', but no matter what you use, you can't kill the kids. Oddly subverted in the intro sequence, in which [[spoiler:Lord Lucien shoots dead your sister Rose, who is barely older than you are, and then shoots you with enough force to send you through a window and down a fall you only survive because of your magical heritage. Near the game's ending, Lucien will kill your spouse and children, offscreen.]]
* In ''VideoGame/SixtySeconds'', when one of the adults go too long without a needed resource, they die. If a kid goes without food or water, however, they "run away".
* Creator/{{Bethesda}} invokes this trope whenever their videogames have child [=NPCs=]. In both ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' and''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' children are completely invincible. Attacking them won't lower their health at all. This is done to prevent these games potentially being used as child-killing simulators, which would most certainly invoke the ire from MoralGuardians. Bethesda is very strict with this policy, as they forbid any discussion about this subject on their forums, while also allegedly removing Youtube videos showcasing mods that allow players to kill children.
** In ''Fallout 3'', this restricts an Evil player's options in Little Lamplight, a town populated entirely by kids. While children are invulnerable to harm, a "[[VideogameCrueltyPotential creative]]" player will discover that you can ''enslave'' some, sell drugs and guns to them, bully them, taunt one to run away from his neglectful mother and the evil solution to the "The Power of Atom" quest ([[spoiler:detonating the atomic bomb]]) will kill the two children living in Megaton.
** It's actually still played straight during "The Power of Atom." If you [[spoiler:activate the bomb but do not detonate it,]] leave town, and come back before you finish the quest, you'll find that the two children in Megaton have mysteriously vanished.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' picks up this policy from its predecessor. The game makes a point of this feature by including a quest where one can find a range finder in order to use a prewar super weapon, the ARCHIMEDES II. However the player character needs to obtain said rangefinder from a child named Max who believes that it a toy. Max can not be killed in order to get the rangefinder off of his body, you must pay him a thousand caps (20 with a high barter skill), or pick pocket him. However Max constantly runs so it is impossible to pick pocket him unless he is asleep.
** ''Skyrim'' is actually inconsistent with this trope. While living children are invincible, there are two undead children in the game, them being Helgi and Babette. Helgi is a ghost of a girl who died in a fire, while Babette is a Really700YearsOld vampire and an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood, who was turned into a vampire at a very young age, meaning both cases avert Infant Immortality. But if the player raids the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary, Babette is nowhere to be found, as to prevent the player from killing a child, despite said child being a self proclaimed three hundred years old killer.
*** In a similar, albeit inverted, vein to the above, Haming, a small child, is one of the only confirmed survivors of the destruction of Helgen in the opening, alongside [[PlotArmor General Tullius, Ulfric Stormcloak, Elenwen]], [[JustifiedTutorial Hadvar/Ralof and the player character]].
* This is applied strangely in ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R.]]'' Alma is already an ImplacableMan, but the moment you have to actually face off against her, she goes from her CreepyChild StringyHairedGhostGirl form to a teenage one. This makes absolutely no sense plot-wise, and seems to be solely so you won't have to face down and eventually shoot a little girl -- even one that's already dead.
** It does make sense in the way that Alma is [[OlderThanTheyLook actually grown-up,]] since she already [[spoiler:gave birth to the player character]]. Thus, you see her "real form" instead of the mind-projection of a little girl.
*** Canonically, she was an adult when she died [[spoiler: -- but, IIRC, only ''fifteen'' when she gave birth --]] but she was ''unconscious nearly the entire time'', and would have ''no frame of reference for herself looking like this''. It doesn't make a lot of sense that she'd psychically project herself as what is, to her, virtually a complete stranger, rather than the image she probably has of herself.
** There's also the small matter of Alma [[spoiler:raping the main character]] at the end of the second game. Doing that while she still looks like a little girl would probably cause even worse publicity than being able to shoot her.
* In ''Franchise/FinalFantasy Fables: VideoGame/ChocobosDungeon'', the journey into people's memories starts by chasing a mysterious flying infant, worried that he'll be hurt. He somehow manages to escape the monsters unscathed, though Chocobo has a hard time finding his way through.
* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'': In a game where you can beat people to death, blow up cars, and just be an all around psychopath, there are no kids and it also regularly {{Lampshades}} the absence of pets. Averted in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' where it has people walking their dogs and you can kill the dogs for no reason other than to [[BecauseItAmusedMe be a complete jerk]]. Attacking the owners or causing general mayhem will have the dogs attack you and they can OneHitKill you if you're not careful. Going into the wilderness will have you encounter deer, coyotes, and rabbits, all which will actively run away from you if you spook them, but cougars will attack you the moment you're spotted by them.
* [[CheerfulChild Gwen]] in ''VideoGame/GuildWars Prophecies'' is invulnerable. When she [[SheIsAllGrownUp appears again as an adult]] in ''Eye of the North'', she [[SquishyWizard isn't]].
* The reason why there aren't any children in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' - so they can't be killed. The game designers turned it at their advantage though: the childless city was explained in-game by a "suppression field" which prevents certain protein chains necessary for embryonic development from forming, according to Doctor Kleiner. There's a great atmospheric moment at the start of the game, when you pass by a playground and, if you look at the deserted swing and the broken doll on the ground, you can hear a distant, fading kid's laughter.
** Amusingly lampshaded once [[spoiler: the suppression field goes down - Kleiner suggests via broadcast that, while the Citadel's reactor is going critical, "now would be an excellent time for procreation" for those who are out of the city.]]
* Depending on which games in ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' series and how good the player is, this can either be played straight or subverted with a child Link.
** The Stalchildren and Skull Kids are what's left of [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin children]] that died or got lost. In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', you even meet a teen in the Lost Woods only for him to have disappeared when you come back later. [[CreepyChild A Kokiri girl infamously explains that he's become a Skull Kid]].
* In ''VideoGame/TheSims 2'' and ''VideoGame/TheSims 3'', babies and toddlers cannot be killed in any way. If they are caught in a fire they will miraculously escape, and if their needs drop too low, a social worker will take them away. The same is true for children, except they actually can burn to death, drown, or get crushed by a satellite or meteor. They just can't get electrocuted, scared to death, or starved to death (the social worker will come first). Pregnant women also cannot die. However, ghosts in ''3'' can reproduce (with other ghosts or with living Sims), and the babies are sometimes ghosts who will then age like normal Sims.
* This is in full swing in the ''VideoGame/{{Siren}}'' series... which actually works ''against'' the player, as they enforce it by having children panic and curl into a ball before they're actually even hit, yielding a game over. If you're playing one, you're currently playing a stage where not using stealth, rather than just being dangerous and wasteful, is ''completely impossible''. If you have one with you, you have to take great care to protect it -- and a stray hit during combat that connects with them causes them to panic as well.
** Both an example and exception in ''VideoGame/{{Siren}}: Blood Curse''. On escort missions, you can hurt and kill the person you have to protect. Except 10-year-old Bella. Your weapon has no effect on her. Likewise, enemies can hurt and kill escorts... but when Bella "dies" it's by covering her head and cowering in fear. And when you play as Bella, instead of taking damage from enemy attacks and eventually dying, you cower in fear and scream "NO!" if an enemy gets too close to you, causing you to lose. Technically a way of avoiding showing Bella's obvious death. Yet, the game also creates an exception later when [[spoiler:Bella is shown later on having turned into a shibito, the zombie-like creatures in the village. The condition for becoming a shibito is to die, so obviously something happened to Bella. An earlier cutscene shows a large log rolling towards her and a quick cut to black, indicating that's what might have killed her.]]
* Tails from ''SonicTheHedgehog'' cannot die if you play as both Sonic and Tails in ''Sonic 2 and 3''.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' follows this to a T. You can slaughter whole towns, but not the children in them. Apparently it's better to let the children get along without their parents that you slaughtered than to also kill them. Then again, given respawn, that's not an issue...so it raises the question of why one can't kill a level 5 child since they'd just come back anyway.
** The reason is, Blizzard doesn't want either side to seem AlwaysChaoticEvil to the other, and child murder is a good way of crossing the MoralEventHorizon. This is also lampshaded with an in-game holiday dedicated to helping the orphans in every city.
** Averted somewhat lore-wise, given the presence of [=NPCs=] such as [[http://www.wowwiki.com/Pamela_Redpath Pamela Redpath.]]
*** Even then if an undead child has to be depicted, they have to be depicted as that of a ghost. So yeah, no zombie kids for Children's Week.
* It's only to be expected that ''VideoGame/ZooTycoon'' would honor this trope, being a family game. It's worth mentioning because of how blatantly the Infant Immortality rule is applied: if predators escape or a guest ends up in their enclosures, they'll leap on and attack adult guests, while completely ignoring children. Hence, a runaway lion or tyrannosaur will charge right past a dozen kids to pounce on a grown-up.
* The ''VideoGame/SonicBlastMan'' arcade game (as well as the SNES version) featured a stage where the player must punch out a truck that is about to cross path with a runaway carriage with a baby boy inside it. If the player fails the stage, it will show that [[spoiler:the carriage managed to get safely out of the truck's way, only for Sonic Blast Man to get run over in its place.]]
* It's a good thing this trope is in effect in ''Videogame/ShiningTheHolyArk''. When you're exploring a HauntedHouse you come across a child called Justin who is searching for his father. You've had to fight tooth and nail to get to the point where Justin is. Justin later turns up in the sequel ''Videogame/ShiningForceIII'' as one of the main protagonists. There are some allusions to one of the [[BigBad Big Bads]] [[BloodBath bathing in children's blood in order to retain her beautiful image]], but we never see it happen.
** However averted in a battle of ''Shining Force III'' where three of the five refugees you're tasked with saving are children, they have the lowest hit points in the group so the enemies will target the children over the adults. And yes, you are treated to a 3D cinematic of enemy knights slaughtering helpless civilian children.
* In ''VisualNovel/VirtuesLastReward'', Quark is the only person you will never explicitly see dead. Everyone else is fair game.
** Though it is highly unlikely he survives [[spoiler:any of the endings where the whole facility goes up in an explosion]].
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII,'' you will occasionally be joined by a [[FourIsDeath fourth]] party member. The only guest party member who doesn't eventually die is Larsa, who is twelve.
* In the Japanese version of ''VideoGame/{{Scribblenauts}}'', child [=NPCs=] have infinite hit points.
* In ''VideoGame/NiraOni'', a group of teenagers gets trapped in an AbandonedHospital. Although they're all in danger, most of the cast show particular concern about Cassey's younger sister [[TomboyishName Ryan]], and this directly factors into the ending. Hiroshi can decide to ensure she escapes at any cost, meaning [[spoiler:she survives even the worst ending... but at the cost of everyone else]].
* In ''Videogame/{{Terraria}},'' the Angler is the only child in the game. He can be hurt by monsters or traps like the other townsfolk, but instead of dying bloodily like the others, he vanishes in a puff of smoke with the message [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere "[name] has left"]] when his health runs out. [[spoiler:Since this is how some phantasmal enemies like the Wraith "die," the most popular explanation is that [[DeadAllAlong he's a ghost]], so whether this is an aversion or not is unclear.]]
* ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'' plays with this trope, as while a certainly number of child characters die in horrible ways or are shown undead, a number of them also survive such as [[spoiler:Clementine, Alvin Jr. and Sam's brothers in the ''Michonne'' spin off]] regardless of the player's choices.
* In ''[[Videogame/TraumaCenter Trauma Team]]'', Alyssa [[spoiler:takes a bomb blast at point-blank range. The same type of bomb has already been used to kill 4 adults. Not only does Alyssa survive, she even retains all her limbs (the bomb did mangle her quite badly, but she eventually makes a full recovery.)]]
* ''VideoGame/{{NARC}}'' is a famously violent game where you ruthlessly massacre hundreds of people. But killing ''dogs'', even vicious attack dogs, is evidently considered too violent: in most, if not all ports of the game, shooting or blowing up a dog merely turns it into a puppy that runs away.
* ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'': While you hear horrible stories of people dying from the Rat Plague (including children) regarding the game world's backstory, the only child you actually meet during the whole game is Emily, and unlike every other NPC in the game, nothing you do can harm her. [[spoiler: Subverted at the end of a High-Chaos game, however, as Havelock will attempt to jump from the lighthouse taking Emily with him, and should you screw up, he succeeds]].
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* Unlike its predecessors (see below) where killing a child would give you the very negative child killer rep, ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' makes children completely unkillable. They'll survive mini-nukes undamaged. This restricts an Evil player's options in Little Lamplight, a town populated entirely by kids. While children are invulnerable to harm, a "[[VideogameCrueltyPotential creative]]" player will discover that you can ''enslave'' some, sell drugs and guns to them, bully them, taunt one to run away from his neglectful mother and the evil solution to the "The Power of Atom" quest ([[spoiler:detonating the atomic bomb]]) will kill the two children living in Megaton.

** In addition, Bethesda prevents discussion of game mods that allow child killing on the official forums, and has had videos of child killing mods removed from YouTube by claiming copyright infringement.
** There are also points in the story where the player character is a child during the game. They however are not affected by miraculous immortality other wasteland children have, though a child can at least be killed. [[note]]That is, yourself.[[/note]]
** They've continued the policy in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', where again children are immune to damage.
*** Not only that, but the child seen in Helgen, the town destroyed at the beginning of the game, was specifically shown to escape the dragon and can be found later on as one of the few survivors. The Dark Brotherhood questline has one that just ''looks'' like a child, having been turned into a vampire centuries earlier, but when the [[spoiler:sanctuary is raided and destroyed]] during the questline, she is one of the survivors - and is not there ''at all'' if the player chooses to wipe it out himself instead of joining.
*** There are, however, mods that avert this trope, allowing kids to be killed like any other non-essential NPC. The fact that killable children was one of the first mods made says alot. These mods can be seen as mods only sick people would play, or mods that enhance a player's sense of immersion, bringing the game closer to real-life.
*** When playing a mod that allows you to kill children, you will find that ''they have recorded death screams''. These aren't part of the mod; Bethesda actually recorded voice acting for children's deaths and included it in the game files, which means they must have considered allowing children to die at some point.
*** When using a mod that allows the killing of children, killing a bully child will cause the child she bullied to send you a letter thanking you for killing the other kid and stopping the bullying. That is not from the mod, it is in the game files already if Bully Child is dead then Victim Child thanks player for killing Bully Child.

* Notably averted in ''VideoGame/DeusEx''. One child, Louie Pan, is a ''mob enforcer'' who is incredibly rude; the game seems to ''dare'' you to kill him. You ''can'' knock him unconscious ''and'' the game will tell the difference (his handler Gordon Quick will give a WhatTheHellHero in both cases, but in one he'll either say "is" or "was" referring to Pan.) It's a plot point in ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'', in which Saman will ask you to ''kill all the children in a special school''. Doing so will indicate Alex has crossed the MoralEventHorizon to most characters.

* In ''Franchise/FinalFantasy Fables: VideoGame.ChocobosDungeon'', the journey into people's memories starts by chasing a mysterious flying infant, worried that he'll be hurt. He somehow manages to escape the monsters unscathed, though Chocobo has a hard time finding his way through.

* Averted in ''{{Limbo}}'', seeing as nearly every reaction to you screwing up a puzzle in that game causes your protagonist (a small boy) to meet a grisly and painful death.

* Averted with a vengeance in ''VideoGame/Prey2006''. The very first children you come across are two siblings of perhaps 8-10 years, one of which almost immediately gets possessed and turned into LudicrousGibs by an evil spirit. He (it?) then wastes no time to launch his sibling several meters deep [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice onto a huge spike]] sticking out of a nearby wall, killing them instantly and turning them into a ghost as well. They and many others of their kind then continue to harass your PlayerCharacter time and again over the course of the game, forcing you to destroy scores of evil ghost children in very creepy settings. The game's original draft was even worse in that the kids were possessed but still fully organic instead of whitish spectral entities. Not that it makes much of a difference anyway...

* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM0iN3UTQmw&feature=youtu.be Think Of the Children!]]'' averts the trope intentionally, as the entire point of the game is where the player takes on the role of a parent who has to prevent their kids from [[TooDumbToLive killing themselves in the stupidest way possible]].

* Averted hard in ''[[NexusWar Nexus Clash]]''. The world is an incredibly violent kill-or-be-killed battlefield and some of the randomly generated player-character appearances are small children, which aren't treated any differently in game mechanics terms than adult aspects. This gets noticed less than one might expect, since the violence is all text-based and thus not actually shown.

*** When using a mod that allows the killing of children. Killing a bully child will cause the child she bullied to send you a letter thanking you for killing the other kid and stopping the bullying. That is not from the mod, it is in the game files already if Bully Child is dead then Victim Child thanks player for killing Bully Child.

* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'': In a game where you can beat people to death, blow up cars, and just be an all around psychopath, there are no kids.
** It also regularly {{Lampshades}} the absence of pets.

* In the second ''BaldursGate'' game, the PC frees the inmates of an asylum for those driven mad by magical power to help take on BigBad Jon Irenicus. One of these inmates is a young girl with the ability to shapeshift; she does not actually take part in the battle, in which all the other inmates die.
** Children seem to be actually "immortal" in this game, at least those playing in the streets of Athkatla.
*** Children? Immortal? What do you mean? [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential I can go around Athkatla or Baldur's Gate killing as many kids as I want]]... [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment At least until the guards show up]].

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Played Straight]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Exceptions]]
* Brutally averted in ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', in a setting where AnyoneCanDie, children are no exception, be it the little girl who gifts you a music box, her older sister who dies ''on screen'' shortly after finding a ribbon for her, or a baby of an EldritchAbomination, whom you '''[[WouldHurtaChild brutally]] [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu slaughtered]]'''.
* In the classic Commodore 64 game Mad Nurse, the entire premise is trying to prevent wandering babies from blundering into poison, electrical sockets, high-flush-power toilets and even elevator shafts. If you do nothing, almost every baby in the ward is guaranteed a gruesome death.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' it is possible for the player to kill very young children, though doing so earns you the "Childkiller" title and greatly decreases your reputation. The European release of the game was {{Bowdlerise}}d specifically to prevent this (to the extent that certain quests cannot be completed, and the player can have their items stolen without realizing it). This is [[LampshadeHanging commented on]] in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}''.
** The first two ''Fallout''s avert this trope with such fierce glee that probably some of the most vivid and horrifying descriptions of critical hit damage in the games come from shooting a child in the eye, or blowing off a leg, or firing a minigun at a groin, and so on.
** For reference one player semi-famously played through the entire game in a completely non-violent manner as even the final boss fight can be resolved with words. He did, however, kill every single child in the game.
** ''Fallout'''s spiritual predecessor, ''VideoGame/{{Wasteland}}'', has Camp Highpool, a [[TeenageWasteland town populated entirely by kids]] where this trope is in full aversion.
* Horribly, horribly averted in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' - children can die in any number of ways, and military mothers will carry their infants into combat, where they are very likely to get impaled and upset said parent. On the other hand, if you can offset the mood loss, children make excellent body armor.
** Moreover, sometimes the mother ''uses the child as a blunt weapon''
* ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts: Covenant'' subverts this, albeit with a young girl, not a true baby. Early in the game, a young girl is taken hostage by one of the villains apparent. In keeping with the trope, she apparently escapes in the scuffle... but shortly thereafter, we find out she was killed off-screen when she appears as Yuri's SpiritAdvisor.
* Averted in the ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/ThePhantomMenace'' game. You can kill children who conveniently run in front of you, even after already killing a few of them.
* In ''VideoGame/DeadRising'', the hero offers to help a hysterical mother find her missing baby only to be told that she saw it eaten by zombies.
** The opening cinematic has a woman and her child trying to escape the zombie horde in a car, but they crash. It fades out with the zombies surrounding the car, with the child trapped inside.
* ''VideoGame/CorpseParty'' averts this trope spectacularly, from the four main antagonists being the ghosts of elementary school children to the many bodies of tiny individuals lining the cursed halls of Heavenly Host.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'' subverts this during the [[spoiler: destruction of Akzeriuth. After the city's complete decimation, the first thing of the aftermath that the heroes see is a small child crying out in pain and screaming to his parents, dying as he sinks into the hot mud of the Qliphoth]]. Kinda chilling and really hits home at how horrible the devastation is.
** Zig-zagged with the death of [[spoiler: Fon Master Ion.]] He's almost old enough not to count... except that [[spoiler: he's a replica, so while being physically fourteen might disqualify him, he's mentally ''2 years old.'']]
* In the beginning of ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'', [[TheHero Cless]] and [[TheLancer Chester]] set out to go hunting, only to discover upon returning that their village has been completely destroyed, seemingly with no survivors. Among several dead bodies scattered throughout the town are that of a young boy who looked up to Cless and wanted to become a warrior like him, a young girl who had a PrecociousCrush on Cless, and Chester's younger sister, Amy. When examining the body of the girl, Cless will even wonder out loud who could be so cruel as to slaughter innocent children.
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblem: Radiant Dawn'' has a scene where [[KickTheDog Begnion soldiers shoot a bunch of arrows into a crowd of Daein civilians]]. Everyone stops when an arrow hits a small boy. Cue female using HealingHands on the boy, both exit stage right. What really makes the scene guilty of this trope is Jarod's arrival moments later. After finding out his men failed to apprehend Micaiah, he promptly kills three (adult) civilians.
** Averted later when Fiona and her troops attempt to rescue several civilians, two of whom are children. If the knight carrying the child dies, the kid will be exposed to enemy units who are almost guaranteed to make a beeline for it.
** ''Seisen no Keifu'' also features child civilians, and yes, enemies will kill them given the chance. Given that saving one grants ''an automatic Level Up'', it's in your best interests to save them.
** One chapter in Sacred Stones features a child civilian who, along with her parents, is in danger of being eaten by giant spiders. Yes, you can fail at rescuing them and see the entire family die at the hands of the spiders.
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblem: Fates'' has [[spoiler:Elise, the PlayerCharacter's younger sister from the Nohr Kingdom, while her age is rather ambiguous, she is no older than 13, and yet she has a death scene in ''Birthright'' where it is impossible to avoid]].
* Averted in ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'', in which Max's newborn daughter is murdered at the start of the game, though the body is mostly concealed in the PC version, and completely concealed in the [=PS2=] port. Still, there's no mistaking the rag-covered lump in the bloody cradle for anything else.
* Avoided numerous times in ''Videogame/AlterEgo''. At several points during childhood and infancy, it's possible to inadvertently kill yourself or severely injure yourself by food poisoning, a falling iron, or numerous other means.
** At one point, a bad choice can result in your character (while a child) being kidnapped, molested, and murdered by a pedophile.
* In ''VideoGame/CliveBarkersJericho'', some of the enemies that the Jericho squad have to face are simply known as the Children: hideously mutilated, demonic child spectres, who are the souls of a child army that was massacred during the time of the Crusades.
* Subtly averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII''. In the beginning of the game, in the various towns you can travel to, here are many child [=NPCs=] you can talk to! After the Imperial Dreadnaught goes on its first run...there are significantly fewer child sprites left, and some shell-shocked adults [=NPCs=] grieving their sons and daughters. And then the Cyclone starts its world tour...
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', Kefka wipes out the kingdom of Doma via poison. One of the main character's family is in Doma, and as he rushes in to warn about the poison, he discovers his wife dead, and as he opens the door, the corpse of his son falls out of the bed. And [[MoralEventHorizon that was the moment]] where Kefka lost his [[AffablyEvil charm]].
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', there is a cutscene in Kilika where children are playing with a blitzball near a mother with her baby. Then Sin comes and attacks the villiage. The last thing that you see is the blitzball in the wreckage. Later, when Yuna does the Sending, you can see a very small casket among the dozens in the water, and you see the mother breaking down back on shore.
* ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' has a number of (male only) kids around, all of whom are viable targets. One of them is, in fact, a Jerkass most players relish killing. The sequel, ''[[VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar Invisible War]]'', is no different: you can go on a rampage in a girls' elementary school.
-->'''Scott''': You can [[LudicrousGibs gib]] a child with one stroke of the [[CoolSword nanosword!]]\\
'''Chris''': That’s because children have fewer hit points. They are inferior and weak.
-->-- ''VideoGame/DeusEx developer quote''
* ''VideoGame/AmericanMcGeesGrimm'' has children die all over the place, which is played for BlackComedy.
* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars: Days of Ruin'' features a virus (Endoflorus Terriblis) which kills ''only'' children [[spoiler:though it mutates into killing ''anyone'' later]]. To drive the point home, photos are shown of a child with ''[[VideoGame/GrimFandango flowers sprouting out of his body]]''.
-->Lin: He had roots and leaves growing under his skin... In his ears... In his eyes... Little roots creeping behind the eyes... ...What if you could hear them...?
-->Dr. Morris: Lin, please! Stop talking about it! Curiously, the virus seems to only infect young people. [[KidHero You're in the right age range, Will, which means you're at risk.]] If you meet anyone suffering from this, you must stay away! Is that clear?
-->Lin: Starvation, raiders, and flowers that kill you. [[CrapsackWorld Gotta love this place.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'', Leonard is forced to kill child soldiers employed by the Empire.
** Drakengard goes against this trope. The Verses full of child conscript enemies are only one example.
* In ''VideoGame/MegaManZero 3'', Zero finally kills Cria and Pria, the Mother Elf's two children. While they were trying to stop the hero from stopping [[BigBad Dr. Weil]], they are really [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter bad at discerning good guy from bad guy.]]
* In ''UltimaVII: The Black Gate'' you can find a small bundled-up baby held captive by harpies outside the first town. As the baby is considered an ''object'', it's impossible to harm, and you don't have to feed it or change diapers, can keep it in the bottom of your pack or drop it wherever you stash your spare loot, and it doesn't make a sound. Your party member Iolo will helpfully mention that his mother is lady Tory and you should bring him to her, but doesn't mention WHERE she lives - you have to actually get a transport to get there, it's out of the way of the plot and you'll probably stumble across her by mistake. In other words, you'll be hanging onto that baby for a long time.
** When you find the mother she is extremely relieved, but rather than actually taking her child herself she asks you to put the kid in his crib, in the next room. She doesn't get any further dialogue on the topic, and the game actually doesn't have a function for putting the kid IN the crib (a mod corrects this), although you can balance the tyke on the edge with no problem. Or you can put the kid on the bed, never go back, and just pretend that the mother eventually stopped walking around whining about her lost kid and dealt with it.
** Spark, the son of the murdered blacksmith from the beginning of the game, is a recruitable party member (and will in fact force his way into the party lineup even if you refuse to take him along, although you can kick him out afterwards). He'll carry your stuff, he'll fight for you, and he can die gruesomely in a pool of his own blood. Of course, [[DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist this is Ultima]].
** In ''Serpent Isle'', you're attacked by a woman who carries a DEAD child. If you click on it, the avatar or a companion will lament the tragedy. (Curiously, the dead baby is just as effective as a live one at soiling diapers, which are super-effective fear inducers, so you can get some use out of it if you don't mind being a psycho.)
*** A possible implication is that the woman was actually pregnant, and the child you find is a fetus.
* ''Franchise/{{Ultima}}'':
** In all ''Franchise/{{Ultima}}s'' after the first three games, you can initiate combat with and kill the children you meet. In ''VideoGame/UltimaVIII'', there's no KarmaMeter, so there's not even any consequences for killing them.
** In ''VideoGame/UltimaIX'', the aversion and the karma penalty are lampshaded and delivered as a PlayerPunch, twice. One is a hostile spellcaster and the other is doomed whether you show the mercy to kill her or not.
* The beginning of ''VideoGame/ZoneOfTheEnders'' has several of the kids Leo knows tied to a light pole. As BAHRAM begins their invasion of the Jupiter space station, one of the station's mechs is hit and topples right on the kids. They even have a close up of a pool of blood seeping out from under the wreckage.
* At one point in ''VideoGame/ArmyOfTwo: The 40th Day'', Salem and Rios encounter a little boy and have to escort him to safety. During a firefight, the boy sees a sniper rifle and asks if he should try to get it or stay in hiding. If you let him go for the gun, he will die. [[EvilPaysBetter It's also the only way to unlock that particular sniper rifle for you to use yourself, and it's the strongest one in the game]].
* Harshly averted in ''VideoGame/DantesInferno''. The player is presented with already dead unbaptized babies that can be absolved, punished, or simply slaughtered.
** Though a lot of players seem to [[VideoGameCaringPotential just absolve them instead.]]
* Completely averted within the first minutes of ''VideoGame/PoliceQuest: Open Season''. In the exposition crime scene at the start of the game, open the dumpster at the back to find [[spoiler: the corpse of an 8-year-old riddled with bullets]].
* In the beginning of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'', as part of a PlayerPunch, [[spoiler:Ezio's thirteen-year-old brother is killed alongside his father and teenaged brother.]]
** Namely by being [[spoiler: hung. In front of the player; even swaying slightly in the breeze]]
* Obscure arcade ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' inspiration ''The Outfoxies'' averts this with [[CreepyChild creepy siblings]] Danny and Demi, playable characters who die just as violently as the rest of the cast. Some argue this is part of the reason the game wasn't found in more locales.
* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZqrG1bdGtg The trailer]] for ''VideoGame/DeadIsland'' shows us a little girl getting bitten by a zombie, dying, and then turning into a zombie herself before biting her dad, who throws her out a window to kill her ''again''.
* Very very VERY averted in the Flash game: ''VideoGame/GretelAndHansel'', most of the achievements are based on finding all the different ways to die in the game. And they are heartrendingly painfull to watch.
* ''VideoGame/JaggedAlliance 2'' allows you to kill children just like anyone else. It comes with a massive penalty to Loyalty, like killing any other innocent civilian (or being wrongly blamed for killing one, which also can happen). The worst is when children run between you and your enemies during a firefight - they're veritable bullet magnets.
* In intro for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' during the [[EldritchAbomination Rea]][[AbusivePrecursors per]] invasion of Earth, Shepard sees a child in a vent and tries to get the child to come with them. The child refuses and disappears. [[YankTheDogsChain Eventually the child is seen getting on board an evacuation vessel.]] Said vessel is blown to smithereens by a Reaper.
** [[spoiler: Similarly, despite how much fans might want to kill it, the Catalyst cannot die.]]
* The plot of ''VideoGame/SilentHillHomecoming'' involves the founders of Shepard's Glen sacrificing one of their own offspring (though age range isn't specified), and [[spoiler: the one child your character sees several times throughout the game itself turns out to have been DeadAllAlong]].
** ''VideoGame/SilentHillDownpour'' makes it its ''[[UpToEleven mission]]'' to inform you that horrible, horrible things both can and will happen to children, and how devastating it is for those left behind. In fact, with one possible exeption, ''every'' kid either shown or referred to in-game ends up dead before the end, with the molestation and murder of [[spoiler:protagonist Murphy Pendleton's son Charlie]] and the actions this lead him to commit serving as the games central theme.
** All of the Silent Hill games seem to have a little bit of this; a lot of them refer to [[CreepyChild Alessa Gillespie]] being burned alive by [[ApocalypseCult the Order]], and in ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' you can occasionally hear babies cry in the background, though it's unclear whether this is [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness real]]. It was originally planned for the player to hear crying babies when standing in certain locations during ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'', but the sounds were removed because it was "too much".
* Although you can't kill any children in-game, the story for ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' states that the titular BigBad possessed a young prince's body. When Diablo is finally defeated in the end of the first game, his body turns back into that of the dead prince. Made even more tragic by ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'', which reveals that the Warrior who canonically defeated Diablo [[spoiler:was the prince's older brother Aidan. The guilt Aidan felt from killing his little brother made it easier for Diablo to possess him.]]
** In ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' the child [[spoiler:Emperor Hakan II]] is possessed by [[spoiler:Belial]], dying as a result. When the possession occurred is unknown making it possible he was already dead by the time you met him.
** In ''Reaper of Souls'' an oddly cheery mother can be found looking for her children in the zombie-infested city. While never outright stated it's heavily implied they're dead and the mother is in denial.
* Subverted several times in the Zombie game ''VideoGame/TheyHunger'', sadly. In the hospital, a baby is heard crying, until it abruptly stops. The player cannot get to the nursery immediately, and when he does... There is a rib left in the bed for newborn. And later in the mountains, the player has to kill resurrected tiny, tiny skeletons that have the hunger...
* In ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'', a major plot point consists of Kratos' guilt at having murdered his wife and young daughter in a blind frenzy.
* Averted in Story Mode of ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''. A flashback reveals that Scorpion's wife and infant son were killed by Sub-Zero [[spoiler: (AKA Quan Chi disguised as Sub-Zero)]]
** Smoke's ending in the same game also reveals that he is half-enenra (a demon of smoke and vapor) as a result of being a HumanSacrifice ''when he was a baby!'' Said demon then relentlessly killed his murderers before bringing Smoke back to life with no memory of it.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/NaziZombies'' mode of ''Call of Duty''. Richtofen Kills Samantha by locking her and her father in a room with a hellhound.
* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: VideoGame/ModernWarfare3'': [[WhamEpisode Davis Family Vacation, Day 3.]] A young American girl on vacation in London with her family ends up being killed by a truck bomb explosion. [[spoiler: Which may have been a small bit of mercy, as this meant she did not suffer the effects of the nerve toxin released by the bomb that ended up killing many others.]]
* Early in ''VideoGame/CallOfCthulhuDarkCornersOfTheEarth'', the player accidentally releases a monster that [[spoiler: kills Tom Waits' daughter]]. It looks at first like the death will only be off-screen and you'll never get to see the body beyond the screaming and tearing sounds, but then you wake up and hear her father crying as you go downstairs....
* Averted in Videogame/ClockTower, where the first game features the 14-15 year old Jennifer and her friends of the same age locked in Barrows Mansion. Depending on how you play the game, all four of them can all die. But no matter what, at least one (be it a friend or Jennifer, the player character) has to die.
* Averted in ''LiberalCrimeSquad'', where the Conservatives will happily force children to work and execute them for any crimes - and the player has the option to free said children to participate in armed terrorism. It is possible to build an army out of liberated child workers. The only thing children are exempt from is sex - children under a certain age can't prostitute or seduce [=NPCs=].
* Surprisingly averted in ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure''. Tikal, who is 14, is trapped in the Master Emerald and dies from unknown causes.
** Likewise averted with Maria Robotnik, who was shot down by G.U.N. when she was only twelve years old.
* In the first episode of ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'', [[spoiler:Duck survives whether you try to save him or not, but...]]
** [[spoiler:Averted in episode 3 in the [[TearJerker most depressing way possible]], with Duck getting bitten and slowly dying. Kenny and Katjaa eventually makes the painful decision of [[MercyKill making sure that he won't return as a walker and end his suffering]]. The result? Katjaa ends up [[DrivenToSuicide shooting herself]], [[DespairEventHorizon not being able to live with the thought of her son dead or as a walker]]. Depending on the player's choice, either Kenny or Lee ends up shooting him (and yes, [[PlayerPunch you have to manually aim and fire the gun if Lee does it]]) or they both leave him in the woods if Lee remains silent when Kenny tries to shoot Duck]].
** In Episode 4, the group comes across a boy who starved to death and became [[UndeadChild undead]], and yes, it will be someone's job to put him down. In the same Episode they learn of [[spoiler:Crawford, a walled-off fortress of survivors that weeded out the elderly, disabled, sick, wounded...and children under the age of fourteen]].
** Also averted on two occasions with [[spoiler:Clementine, one when escaping from the drugstore at the end of episode 1 and the other when she is locked up with a walker in the train station at the end of episode 3. [[HeroicBSOD Both of these times Lee just stops fighting and becomes paralysed with despair]]]]. Both are treated as Game Overs.
** Absolutely {{Averted|Trope}} by Clementine (now the protagonist) in Season 2. The world she lives in doesn't care that she's only eleven years old, and failing a crucial QTE means a gruesome demise, just like Lee in Season 1. Regardless, it is played straight as Celmentine [[spoiler:and Alvin Jr.]] will survive to the end of the game.
** The ''Michonne'' mini-series has this both played straight and averted. Averted in that Michonne and Pete will stumble across a little girl who was killed in the Mobjack massacre, and when [[spoiler:Greg, who looks to be in his mid-teens, is fatally shot in the chest and reanimates]]. But regardless of the player's choices, Sam's brothers cannot be killed.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', villager children can be killed, and can even be turned into zombies.
* ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'': One of the playable champions is Annie, [[EnfantTerrible the Dark Child]], and you can score a kill on her like on any other enemy.
* Indie horror game ''VideoGame/CalmTime'' is all about people who get murdered during a NastyParty in a countryside house. There is a little boy among the characters, and he can be killed just like everyone else. In fact, he is ''easier'' to kill than the other guests.
* ''VideoGame/ChildOfLight'': The duke's young daughter Aurora dies from poisoning in the very intro of the game. Thankfully, her soul is transported to Lemuria.
* The plot of ''VideoGame/WatchDogs'' is driven by the death of the protagonist's 6-year-old niece.
* At the climax of ''VideoGame/MOTHER3'', twelve-year-old [[spoiler:Claus]] doesn't just die, he ''[[DrivenToSuicide commits suicide]]''.
* Episode one of ''VideoGame/TelltalesGameOfThrones'' ends with [[AxCrazy Ramsay Snow]] brutally stabbing [[spoiler:the young Lord Ethan Forrester]] in the throat and cheerfully leaving the room as [[spoiler:Ethan's]] family watch him slowly bleed out.
* The exact moment that Walker [[HeroicBSOD snaps]] in ''Videogame/SpecOpsTheLine'' is when he finds the horribly mutilated corpse of a mother and her child in a camp [[spoiler: that he inadvertently bombed with [[KillItWithFire white phosphorus mortars]].]]
* Averted right from the start of ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs''. At the end of the opening, Joel's daughter gets shot and tumbles down a muddy slope. Made even worse by how desperately she still tries to cling to life, painfully whimpering in his arms for several seconds before she's gone.
* ''VideoGame/GrimFandango'' is a game that takes place in [[DeadToBeginWith the afterlife]]. And yes, they're extremely rare, but you do meet a few children. How they died is never revealed.
* Averted for the most part in the ''VideoGame/{{Neptunia}}'' series, where children are either noncombatants, or party members that can be easily revived... except for one [[WhamEpisode notorious]] sequence in ''mk2''. [[spoiler: In killing the other goddesses to power up the evil sword, Nepgear also has to kill their little sisters. Adolescent Uni just gives up after her older sister dies and lets Nepgear finish her off. Rom and Ram, a pair of ''ten-year-olds'', die screaming and clinging to each other in hysterical fear. Neither Nepgear nor [[PlayerPunch the player]] will ever be quite the same after it.]]
* In ''VideoGame/DmCDevilMayCry'', [[spoiler:Vergil guns down Lilith and her child on-camera during the hostage exchange sequence, the latter fearing for her life all the way to the fated moment. While the child had been shown taking on a hideous form during the prior boss fight, it had reverted to its form inside Lilith after the beating, and while Mundus killed Dante and Vergil's mother, manhandled and imprisoned their father, and tried to kill them when they were kids, it's kind of hard not to feel for him after seeing ''that''.]]
* Completely and utterly averted in every single game in the ''VideoGame/FatalFrame'' franchise.
** In the first game, the 2nd Night partially centers around several young children that were murdered by a ghost. Each child ghost is a mini-boss, and defeating them gains the player a photograph of their final moments.
** The second game features several child ghosts, all of which can be fought. Besides a group of children that died while playing tag, there's ''two'' child Bosses in the game. The first, Chitose, is a woobie IllGirl who died while trying to hide in a closet. Then there's the Kiryuu Twins, one of which was the youngest VirginSacrifice known in the series. Her surviving sister ended up getting her soul eaten by a demon that possessed a doll modeled after her dead twin. The final battle with the Woman in the Box includes a baby crying, revealing that mother and child died together in that very room.
** In the third game, there are a total of five dead little girls to contend with. One died of the Curse, while the other four were Handmaidens during the disaster. The eldest sacrificed the other three as part of a ritual, then killed herself. The player can find the scenes of their gruesome deaths playing out, and even find a bloodstained floor where the first Handmaiden was crucified by the others. Then there's the hidden well, where the cries of a baby can be heard. It's implied this is where the matriarchal Kuze Family disposed of male infants.
** The fourth game features several dead children, all once patients at a hospital.
** The fifth game brings back another set of Children Playing Tag, as well as a mysterious 7-year old Shrine Maiden that was a VirginSacrifice. One of the areas that can be explored is a shrine dedicated to dead children.
* Horrifically averted in ''VideoGame/{{Stasis}}'': [[ApocalypticLog in-game log entries]] make clear that children were amongst the unwilling "test subjects" for the medical experiments occurring on the ship, and John comes across the corpses of children relatively early on in-game. Later, [[spoiler: John is [[ForcedToWatch locked in a room with a two-way mirror looking into where his unsuspecting young daughter is holed up when a savage creature is unleashed upon her.]] She does not survive]].
* Originally an easter egg, the backstory of the ''Franchise/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' series involves five children being murdered by an ex-employee of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and the third game confirms that their spirits ([[spoiler:[[KarmicDeath and later their murderer]]]]) [[PoweredByAForsakenChild are possessing the animatronics]].
** At the end of ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys4'', it's implied that [[spoiler:the child protagonist died as a result of his injuries. Which would be having a sharp-toothed animatronic crushing his head between its jaws during a prank gone wrong.]]
* ''VideoGame/WhosYourDaddy'' invokes this trope, as it is about a baby trying to kill itself, while the dad tries to prevent that from happening. The baby wins if it dies.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfZestiria'' has a few:
** Several children are shown to be killed throughout the events of the game. A lategame flashback also reveals [[spoiler:Mikleo was killed as a sacrifice when [[WasOnceAMan he was a human infant]], before being reborn as a seraph]].
** One child, [[spoiler:Margaret]], is a tragically cruel example from doing the Lastonbell Lord of the Land sidequest, as [[spoiler:''you're the one who kills her.'']]
* In ''VideoGame/HometownStory'', Dexter's backstory includes the FailureToSaveMurder of a little girl. Harvey, one the kids that the PlayerCharacter befriends, later dies in an accident. Incidentally, this is a ShopKeeper SimulationGame.
* ''VideoGame/TheWedding'' has Metus always die, before you can get to the portal. And in the Bad ending, protagonist Anima dies, too.
* ''VideoGame/OutlastII'' shows how much darker it's trying to be than its predecessor, where in the demo you can find many decaying bodies of children lined up in a cross pattern.
* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'':
** Averted in the backstory where [[spoiler:the Fallen Child deliberately committed suicide and had Asriel absorb their soul. When the Fallen Child tries to goad Asriel into killing a human town, Asriel manages to resist it, resulting in both of their deaths.]]
** The Snowdrake enemy is at the eldest a teenager when you encounter him, and you have the chance of killing him. [[WhatTheHellPlayer You will get called out on it by Undyne or later Snowdrake's father if you're not on a No Mercy run]].
** Played straight with Monster Kid, as he will always be saved from near death by either you or Undyne regardless of the player's actions. [[spoiler:Unless said "actions" leads to the world being destroyed, but Monster Kid is moot by that point.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Partial Aversions]]
* In ''Videogame/{{Metro 2033}}'', you come across the shadow of a young child. You hear him cry out for his mother, and see a shadow of a mutant leap at him. Where his shadow disappears you can find a small skull. The Metro - and the desolate surface - are littered with skeletons of parents clutching their children when the [[WorldWarIII nukes fell]]. One mission has a toddler ride on your shoulders as you try to find their mother - in a tunnel full of booby traps and mutants.
* While rare, ''VideoGame/HouseOfTheDead 2'' has a few child civilians you can rescue. The zombies make no hesitation in killing them should you not save them in time.
* ''VideoGame/BioShock'':
** The [[CreepyChild Little Sisters]] have turned Infant Immortality into an actual superpower. Having their bodies infused with [[AppliedPhlebotinum ADAM]] makes them indestructible to anything and everything in your arsenal... unless you "harvest" them, which removes the symbiont that stores their ADAM and kills them in the process.
** The "desperate, grieving mother" splicer has a line which goes "Shh, oh no... Of course you're not dying my little one. You're just a baby... Babies don't die."
* While otherwise played straight in the main game, ''VideoGame/{{Bioshock Infinite}}: Burial at Sea'' averts this as that timeline's [[spoiler:Elizabeth had her HEAD get caught in the portal, leading to her being decapitated as an infant]].
* While earlier ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' games avert this trope (as discussed above) ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' feature unkillable children. Upon taking normally mortal damage, they'll fall unconscious for a while before getting back up (similar to what plot-critical [=NPCs=] do.) This can be a problem for sociopath characters [[spoiler: in Little Lamplight as it's entirely populated by children and necessary to pass through]] since it forces you into a diplomatic solution.
* The heroes of the second ''VideoGame/{{Onimusha}}'' game manage to save a baby that has been kidnapped by demons. The baby's crying, however, gives one of the secondary characters a flashback to how he was unable to save his own baby daughter from a fire.
* In ''VideoGame/ClockTower 3'', one of the first scenes is a young girl, around ten or eleven, being viciously beaten to death with a sledge hammer.
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblem: Genealogy of the Holy War'' has an empire that believes that children are only good as conscripts or to sacrifice to the SealedEvilInACan (makes you wonder what they would have done in a generation or two). The games final bosses also consist of three children and a creepy old guy. One child is brainwashed and can be recruited while another is possessed by Sealed Evil in a Can but the third is a genuinely good person who has fallen in love with the aforementioned possessed demon child and is only fighting you after you killed her entire family. Doesn't help that the main antaognist of the second generation doing all this killing is a child himself.
** For the series in general, while you'll almost never see children among the enemy's ranks, enemy units hold no pretense when it comes to killing ''your'' army's ChildSoldiers, and since they typically have low HP compared to adult units, they often have to be guarded by someone with more endurance.
* In two of the four endings of ''VideoGame/{{Splatterhouse}} 3'', Rick's son is killed.
* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' leaves hints of what happened to the children of the village. Early in the game a very small skeletal hand can be found on a bench near an impaled woman, and the ending credits shows children in the village, the last shot showing a child playing while a ganado sharpens a knife.
** [[WordOfGod The booklet]] that came with the ''Biohazard 4 Incubate'' DVD confirms that the children were injected with the same parasites as the adults, but their small bodies were unable to contain them.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'', though she's only a thought in a paranoid schizophrenic's mind:
-->'''[[GirlScoutsAreEvil Rainbow Squirt]]''':[''pointing gun''] Freeze! Don't come any closer! I'll never tell you the location of [[MilkmanConspiracy the Milkman]]! Never!\\
'''Raz''': Okay, let's all just settle down and talk--\\
''[She throws herself out the window.]''\\
'''TheMenInBlack''': Where is the Milkman? Who is the Milkman? What is the mission of the Milkman?\\
'''Rainbow Squirt''': [''dying''] Come closer...and I'll tell you...\\
''[Her cookie box explodes, blowing them all away.]''\\
'''Raz''': Glad I never bought any of those.
** Also, averted more [[TearJerker seriously]], in one of Milla Vodello's memory vaults: [[spoiler: Before joining the Psychonauts, she was in charge of an orphanage, which burned down with the children inside, while she was unable to save them.]] This vault is easy to miss, as it is locked away in a far corner of her mind, presumably her way of trying to forget it and move on, despite the fairly strong implication that she's still haunted by the memory.
* In ''VideoGame/FableII'', an early quest has you attempting to rescue a man's son from a gang of hobbes. You don't reach the child in time, and he has been turned into a hobbe, which you then kill. You never actually saw the child as a human, and he looks like an ordinary hobbe, so it's a lot less heartrending than if you had.
* In the "They Hunger" mod for ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'', in the hospital, you hear a baby crying. When you get to the room, near a window and press the button to call for the nurse, you see the nurse open the window, and it's revealed she was zombified. When you take a look at the baby crib, you see a blanket and bloodstains.
* In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'', it is possible to witness the death of Sherry Birkin, a twelve-year old, if the player allows her to take too much damage.
** Which is rather hard to do, as the kid takes more damage than Ada Wong, superspy, can. Kid drinks her milk.
* In ''Franchise/DeadSpace'', babies have been transformed into hideous monstrosities that are still recognizable as babies. Protagonist Isaac can kill them by shooting them, or, if they latch on to his face, ripping them off, ''power-bombing them to the ground, '''and then punting them'''''. There's an achievement for doing it enough times.
** The sequel cranks the aversion up to eleven. Not only are there infected kids running amok, [[spoiler:but there are also EXPLODING BABIES. One poor social worker tries to empathise with a cooing one. Guess how you first figure out the exploding part.]]. Messed up as he is, Issac has no explicit qualms about cutting off their limbs and stomping their torsos. On the plus side, they are easier to defeat.
** Which leads to more than a few chuckles when you say to yourself, "Ready Issac? Kick the Baby!"
* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 3'' also had mutated babies with wings as monsters, appropriately called "cherubs".
* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' does not have children as humans or zombies anywhere in the game, but it does say that many died during the crisis. Inside the church in the end of Chapter 3 on the Death Toll campaign there are written memorials to dead family, friends, and pets with their birthdays and days of death listed under them. A lot of the people listed as killed end up being less than 5-years-old.
* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'', as a testament to quite how evil the Night Mother is, she has in her tomb the only infant skeletons in the game.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Siren}}'' (also known as ''Forbidden Siren''), the characters of [[spoiler:Miyako]] and [[spoiler:Tomoko]], both of whom are aged [[spoiler:14 (though the instruction manual of the US release states their ages as 17)]], meet their untimely ends: [[spoiler:Miyako is sacrificed in a ritual (although her spirit lives on), and Tomoko transforms into one of the undead Shibito]]. It is also possible to see them both die if they sustain too much damage in-game. However, ten-year old Harumi of the same game is never even seen being attacked if she is discovered by a Shibito, so perhaps the game developers didn't want to go '''too''' far.
* ''VideoGame/MetalGear2'' for the [=MSX2=] actually allows the player to shoot the small children wandering around Zanzibarland. Doing so will cause the player to be penalized with loss of health.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Stuntman}}: Ignition''. In the trailer for the film ''Aftershock'' -- one of the films you do stunts for -- the first scene features firemen trying to get a little girl's cat out of a tree... when an enormous wave of lava flows through and kills all of them. The little girl ''is'' conveniently off-camera when this happens, but...
** Softened somewhat by the fact that it's entirely fictional, even within the context of the game it happens in.
* Played with in ''VideoGame/NeverendingNightmares''. Throughout the game, Thomas and Gabby go between being adults to being children and back again. And they can die. [[{{Gorn}} Horribly]]. But what makes this a partial aversion is that the game is AllJustADream to begin with, therefore nobody is actually in any danger.
* Somewhat averted in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''. For the most part, this trope is played straight; children don't generally show up in any combat situations and you can't randomly slaughter most of the children you do see. But there are storyline-related exceptions where children DO die. In the Human Noble origin, the PlayerCharacter's endearingly cute nephew is killed alongside his mother by Arl Howe's men. In Redcliffe, any PlayerCharacter may opt to slay a demon-possessed child. And in Orzammar, a PC can convince a mother to abandon her casteless child in the Deep Roads to starve to death or worse.
** The DLC "The Stone Prisoner" also features a little girl who can become possessed by a demon in front of your party. You can then [[ShootTheDog kill her and then go back and tell her father that she's dead]].
* Let's be fair, most games where you play as a kid avert this trope (to maintain challenge), though usually only for that playable character, and only when you mess up, rather than in the story.
* In ''Dark Fall: Lost Souls'', one of the haunted rooms at the hotel contains a cradle, from which the cries of an infant can be heard. Followed by the sound of a bomb exploding, which presumably killed the infant when the hotel got bombed in WorldWarII.
* Almost all the characters in ''VideoGame/RuleOfRose'' are children, but the game masterfully skirts around the issue by hinting, rather than showing the horrors which they endure. Not one dead child is actually shown, but it's made painfully clear that many end up dead in the course of the story.
* Averted in some places in ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn'', as a sign that the stakes have been raised [[spoiler: and the Grave Eclipse is deathly serious.]]
** If you go for the Crystallux summon in the Belinsk Opera House, [[spoiler: a cute violinist girl tries to defend her friend the chandelier-dragon from a trio of Eclipse monsters, one of which casually crushes her. [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Matthew avenges her]] as [[TearJerker the dragon bids her goodbye]].]]
** If you return to Harapa, [[spoiler: one of the kids you demonstrated Psynergy to earlier in the game tells you that [[PlayerPunch his friend got killed by the Eclipse monsters]].]]
** Oddly enough, played straight (maybe) if you return to Kaocho. [[spoiler: Several of the rotting corpses you find there, when Spirit Sensed, mention that the kids were all evacuated to the palace, which is shut tight. [[FridgeLogic How straight this plays it]], considering that Kaocho Palace is not exactly a fortress and the king's a [[ItsAllAboutMe war-hungry narcissist]], is up for debate.]]
* There are no children at all in the Postal games, because even the game designers felt that putting children into a world where the player can kill everyone would be horribly wrong. However, dogs and cats are open targets starting in Postal 2 and Postal 3 promises even more. Cats may be used as pistol silencers in Postal 2 by shoving a pistol up the cat's butt.
** The trope is played around with in the first game. The final level of the game is at a school, and the Postal Dude appears right in front of a playground full of kids. [[spoiler: He then proceeds to open fire on them, but doesn't hit anything, nor do the kids even react, suggesting that they might be some kind of hallucination. The Postal Dude then suffers a [[HeroicBSOD Villainous BSOD]] and is captured right after.]]
* Consider the fate of Mobliz in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''. Somehow not one of the town's adults survives the end of the world, yet every single one of the children does. The [[HandWave explanation given]] is that all the adults perished trying to save their children, but still...
* Averted and played straight in ''VideoGame/RuneScape''. There are no attackable human, elf or troll children, but players can freely slaughter gnome children (another of the civilised races in game), calves and baby dragons.
* The "hero" of ''VideoGame/PeasantsQuest'' throws a baby into a river, nearly trades it for pills and generally abuses it. The baby never dies, and a text part once it runs away permanently tells you it grows up reasonably well-adjusted, but he eventually "develops a severe mead problem and blames you for never being there."
** You can also leave the baby in a well, but if you leave the area, the game will scold you for trying to ditch the baby, then kill you.
* Ambiguous in ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}''. Near the end of the game, [[spoiler:the pure-blooded High Entia are turned into monsters, and for all intents and purposes killed. You can look at the affinity chart screen after this point, and many of the High Entia [=NPCs=] have their icons darkened indicating they've been transformed. This includes two young children. However, unlike many of the adults, there isn't a quest that opens up after this point requiring you to kill the monsters that the kids turned into. There's another quest that indicates that there may be a way to return the transformed people to normal, so it's up to the player's imagination whether the children will live or die.]]
* Something of an aversion in ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia.'' [[spoiler: Governor-General Dorr's young daughter is killed and replaced by a lookalike demon thing.]] It's averted because the death supposedly happens before the game starts, so we never see the death or the corpse, and we do not interact with the [[spoiler: real]] girl before she dies.
* ''VideoGame/DivineDivinity'' doesn't let you kill children intentionally, because if you click one while in combat mode you'll inevitably get a prompt where all options read "Sheath weapons", unlike with adults. There are still a few ways around that, like the spell "Seeking Flame" which flies slowly toward the target area and then explodes, damaging anyone around it unless they are FriendlyFireproof, which is applied only for very few characters. Children killed don't leave corpses behind however, they just turn into a fountain of blood.
* While ''Videogame/{{Fallout 4}}'' has children be immune to damage (a carryover from the [[Videogame/{{Fallout3}} previous Gamebyro-engine games]], above) inflicted by the player or mooks, they can die off-screen in the various endings. [[spoiler: The Railroad, Institute, and potentially Minutemen endings have the Brotherhood's airship get blown out of the sky, with half a dozen children and more non-combatants on it, and every non-Institute ending has the player blow up the nuclear reactor beneath the Institute apartments, though they are given the option of first setting off the evacuation alarm in the Railroad and Minutemen ending.]] Amusingly, in the [[spoiler: Railroad]] ending, your allied mooks will gun down Institute personnel and ''attempt'' to gun down the invincible children.
* The ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal'' series usually plays this straight whenever children are shown (including most of the endings in ''Small Brawl'') or at the very most implies it offscreen, but averts this in the reboot when Sweet Tooth commits PaterFamilicide, including both of his sons. [[spoiler:Or at least, the younger one.]]
[[/folder]]

* ''VideoGame/WhosYourDaddy'' is about a baby trying to kill itself, while the dad tries to prevent that from happening. The baby wins if it dies.

** The Snowdrake enemy is just a teenager when you encounter him, and you have the chance of killing him. [[WhatTheHellPlayer You will get called out on it by Undyne or later Snowdrake's father if you're not on a No Mercy run]].
** Played straight with Monster Kid, as he will always be saved from near death by either you or Undyne regardless of the player's actions.

** Absolutely {{Averted|Trope}} by Clementine (now the protagonist) in Season 2. The world she lives in doesn't care that she's only eleven years old, and failing a crucial QTE means a gruesome demise, just like Lee in Season 1.

* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}:

* Originally an easter egg, the backstory of the ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' series involves five children being murdered by an ex-employee of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and the third game confirms that their spirits ([[spoiler:[[KarmicDeath and later their murderer]]]]) [[PoweredByAForsakenChild are possessing the animatronics]].