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Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 18
The children were party dissatisfied with it because it did not end with a Day of Judgment; because it was never revealed to the hero and heroine that the dog had been faithful and the cat faithless. For children are innocent and love justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy. — GK Chesterton
Victorian-era Europeans are the direct inspiration of a dominant view of children, inspired by the New Testament and stretching to the present day. In this view, there is a sharp transition between innocent child and little adult. The conventional age Western culture assigns to this tradition has grown over the years. The meme, however, remains: a young child is a Blank Slate not yet sullied by the evils of the world. Only upon coming of age does the child lose this innocence.
The Children Are Innocent trope captures the idea that children are never naturally evil. A consequence is that harming one is the ultimate evil act, no matter how provoked — unless that is forcing others to harm them. This is an extremely pervasive trope that is at the heart of many other tropes, such as Friend To All Children, Harmful To Minors and Dead Little Sister, and often motivates Papa Wolf and Mama Bear. The Children Are Innocent trope is old enough that it is difficult to assign it an age; certainly it is Older Than Feudalism, and most likely it is Older Than Dirt.
Off-stage children almost always fall under this trope; the subversions all require some development, and being informed that a character has killed, injured, exploited, etc. children is always a mark of evil without such development. See Empathy Doll Shot. Indeed, one of the commonest ways to subvert Always Chaotic Evil is to bring up their children, as in the Genocide Dilemma.
Where blond hair is found naturally, children are often depicted with Hair Of Gold. Indeed, this trope is considered to drive that one: because children (and the young) are more likely to have blond hair than older people, blond hair is a sign of innocence.
Part and parcel of this is depicting children as the other meaning of innocent: naive, guillible, and altogether too trusting. They can misunderstand anything other than the most obvious. On the other hand, this very quality can lead to their being Too Dumb To Fool.
Frequently children Can Not Tell A Lie, because they are too innocent to think of suppressing the truth. Children who do start to lie often show this is new to them by being momentually Bad Liars.
Standard for The Linus. Often comes into play for A Child Shall Lead Them. Generally does for Elephants Child and Curious As A Monkey.
Spoiled Brats may subvert this. On the other hand, if the causes of the spoiling are clearly identified, and the children revert to innocence when they are removed, the children may still be innocent.
Even when the child is doing wrong — as in the Mouthy Kid, the Bratty Half Pint, and Kids Are Cruel — it is often regarded as not as wrong as when an adult does it, because children have to learn empathy, and not to be self-centered, and also often have a poor grasp of consequences of their actions. On the other hand, this often leads to Ambiguous Innocence.
The Creepy Child, the Enfante Terrible, and Corruption By A Minor, on the other hand, draw much of their force from their knowingness. They understand as much, if not more, than the adults about them, which contradicts not only this trope but the general understanding of children.
There are also subversions that portray children not so much as evil but as capable of counter-tropical insight. Subtrope for Children Are Special.
Invoked, however derisively, by Silly Rabbit Idealism Is For Kids.
The reason the Ageism Double Standards were created.
Examples
Anime & Manga
Fairy Tales
- The Emperor's New Clothes, with the classic case of a kid who is Too Dumb To Fool.
Film
Literature
- Little Cindy-Lou Who, who was not more than two
- Christopher Robin
- Enders Game both uses and subverts the trope. Valentine and Peter are angel and demon, respectively. Ender is, well, Ender.
- In John C. Wright's Orphans Of Chaos it is explicitly invoked, when Mrs. Wren asks Vanity and Amelia to pray for her, because God will hear the prayers of the "young and sweet" better than hers. Later in the same work, Amelia ponders that Kids Are Cruel, and while some adults take advantage of their power to do wrong, others don't — and wouldn't they be more innocent, because their opportunities are greater?
- In The Secret Garden, Mary and Colin are both Spoiled Brats when they first appear. However, the causes are delineated: Mary's mother neglected her, and the servants learned to indulge Mary to keep her from coming to her mother's notice, and Colin's father had neglected him after his mother's Death By Childbirth. Letting them play together and experience the beauties of the garden and nature causes them to shed the characters and become their true, innocent selves.
- In James Thurber's The 13 Clocks, one of the wicked duke's wickedest deeds was imprisoning children in the tower. Late in the book, the sounds of children's laughter from the tower and a ball rolling down the steps deeply enrages him.
- In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, the narrator and his wife have many run-ins with evil forces. The final one, which shocks them to the core despite all they have seen, is the kidnapping of their baby daughter to Hell.
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novels, the Ghosts on several occasions make special provision for children. In Necropolis, Criid takes two children, total strangers, under her wing when their mother dies, and when Caffran sees that a child and a woman are looting, he brings out what they had intended to steal, and gives them a gun as well. In Sabbat Martyr Criid opens a deserted building to shelter children and stands down the Obstructive Bureaucrat who objects; later, the Ghosts are particularly protective of the children among the refugees. This lends particular horror to Caffran's death at the hands of a child in The Armor of Contempt.
- Princess Irene In George Mac Donald's The Princess and the Goblin. Who is so innocent she can't fathom why she should not be called Irene.
"Oh, then, Curdie, you must call me just Irene and no more."
"No, indeed," said the nurse indignantly. "He shall do no such thing."
"What shall he call me, then, Lootie?"
"Your Royal Highness."
"My Royal Highness! What's that? No, no, Lootie. I won't be called names. I don't like them. You told me once yourself it's only rude children that call names; and I'm sure Curdie wouldn't be rude. Curdie, my name's Irene."
- In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Ultramarines novel Dead Sky Black Sun, Uriel is horror-struck by the sight of crying children being herded into the process that turns them into Chaos Space Marines. It influences him later, when he witnesses the twisted remains of those who are rejected, and is willing to consider that Beauty Equals Goodness might not be true.
- At this point this is the only thing keeping Eragon from The Inheritance Cycle from being a 'complete' asshole: he won't harm a child, he'll just consider it.
- In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the vampire Lucy preys on children. Although she doesn't kill them, the children's innocent inability to understand that she was harming them — some even wish to meet her again — is particularly horrific.
- In Simon Spurrier's Warhammer 40000 novel Lord of the Night, when Sahaal captures a child, who cries for its mother and then, when he's close enough, tries to stab him, even a Chaos Space Marine such as Sahaal reflects that there is no place for innocence in the underhive.
- Later, when he orders Chianni to kill child hostages, she merely nods, and he is impressed that it does not perturb her.
- In Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novel Death Masks, Susan tells Dresden that the Red Court prey on children, which disgusts them both. Then, Ortega offers to turn Dresden into a vampire rather than kill him in a duel, claiming they are Not So Different. Dresden fishes until he establishes that Ortega preys on children and cites it as a difference.
- In Dead Beat, Wardens can not bring themselves to leave children behind in danger while they deal with the bad guys.
- In Piers Anthony's Incarnations Of Immortality books, the souls of infants are pure — except, in some interesting theology where they can be tainted down to "in balance" by such things as the circumstances of their conception, or by their deaths owing to genetic disease precipiating their mother's suicide.
- Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience: Children are portrayed this way in Songs of Innocence. This is then Subverted in Songs of Experience, in the poems "NURSE'S Song" and "Infant Sorrow".
- In Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, Vetinari speaks coldly of killing children; those he is addressing counter that they had exterminated pups — which only makes them look bad. Even when we learn they are speaking of orc children.
- In JRR Tolkien's Two Towers, Theoden throws off Saruman's charming voice citing the children who died from his attack (plus their multilation of the dead).
- In Sandy Mitchell's Duty Calls, a Knight Templar explains to Ciaphas Cain how he needed to do everything: even, when abandoning a settlement to alien attack, shooting the inhabitants when they tried to get their children on his ship. Cain, a self-professed Dirty Coward who would abandon anyone to save his own skin, is horrified.
- A Song Of Ice And Fire: Tommen Baratheon is portrayed in this manner, in great contrast to his older brother.
Other
- Innocent, lovely, wholesome children, threatened by harm or in idyllic happiness, are a popular propaganda image for just about everyone, as in these posters: Australian
 ◊, British◊, German◊, American◊, Soviet◊, Japanese◊, French◊.
- Little Sarah Jennings just can't see why everyone's so upset all the time, or why some people think "Jib & Jub" are so scary...
TV
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Gil Grissom: Let me tell you something, Humbert. You're twice the age of these kids, and half of them couldn't find their own ass with a map. You prey on innocent children, concocting God-knows-what from God-knows-where, selling Russian Roulette in a bottle and you think we came all the way out here to bust you for possession, you dumb punk? I'm gonna get you for murder. Cool?
Video Games
- The Legend Of Zelda has a few of these:
- Young Link and Zelda in Ocarina of Time
- The children of Ordon Village, particularly Colin, in Twilight Princess
- Surprisingly touched upon in Killer7. When a villain brings up a character's popularity with children, that character responds by declaring that children's purity makes them the most objective judges in the world. Turns out they're right.
Webcomics
Subversions and exceptions
Anime and Manga
- Haru initially believes this in Katekyo Hitman Reborn!. During their first meeting with her, Reborn is with Tsuna. Naru asks to be friends with Reborn, then to hug him. After Reborn tells her he is an assassin, she punches Tsuna, telling him that babies are innocent, pristine angels, an he should be ashamed of himself for tainting him. She changes her mind soon enough.
- An inversion of this trope appears in Code Geass during Lelouch's Roaring Rampage Of Revenge over Shirley's death. One of the soldiers participating in the assault of V.V.'s headquarters notices a bunch of children and starts to have second thoughts. The children, who are actually Tykebombs raised and trained by V.V's cult, proceed to calmly use their Geass to make him attack his comrades. And soon, they're killed by a teenage boy who's not much older than them.
- Anything written by Mohiro Kitoh (Narutaru, Bokurano). So. Very. Much.
- While Monster actually prefers to play this trope straight (considering Dieter, Nina and the Kinderheim 511 survivors), it also has the one exception: Johan. And what an exception.
Film
- Subverted and inverted by the play and movie The Bad Seed (and its remake "The Good Son").
- Tropic Thunder subverts to the point of Refuge In Audacity: the brutal head of the Flaming Dragon drug ring seems to be about twelve years old.
- What, really? No mention of the child Ben Stiller's character wants to adopt stabbing him multiple times in rage before being flung off a bridge?
- The movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is built around this trope and its subversions.
- The Omen.
Literature
- Pretty much the entire base of His Dark Materials. Will and Lyra are 11-year-olds who kill people while fighting against God. And that's just the beginning...
- Brutally subverted in Lord Of The Flies.
- A Song Of Ice And Fire. Arya Stark and Joffrey Baratheon. That is all.
- Subverted in Stephen King's It with the kids who bully the protagonists, but Henry Bowers and Patrick Hockstetter are the most psychotic. For example, Henry chases down Ben Hanscom, pins him to the ground with help of his fellow bullies, and proceeds to carve his name into Ben's stomach (fortunately he only gets as far as "H"). Patrick Hockstetter is a complete solipsist, but his world view is shaken when his baby brother is born and he loses some attention from his parents. This makes him afraid that his little brother may actually exist, so he smothers the infant with a pillow. No one ever finds out.
- Played with in Ray Bradbury's The Small Assassin, in which a mother becomes convinced that her newborn baby will kill her. She's right. And the father too.
Live Action TV
- At first, American Gothic appears to subscribe to this trope: Buck is proven to be absolutely evil by
murdering mercy-killing Merlyn in the first episode, and most of the first half to three-quarters of the series is devoted to protecting the innocent Caleb from the sheriff's vile influence. But then, as Caleb gradually falls deeper and deeper under his father's thrall, starts taking lessons from him, and even absorbs some of his powers, he becomes more disturbingly amoral, wicked, and heartless. By the end of the series, Caleb is practically a carbon copy of The Omen and it is Buck who must actually save Trinity from him. All the more chilling because of how artfully it is done.
- In an episode of Angel in which a young boy is being possessed by an evil demon we eventually learn that the demon is actually trapped inside the boy's body and the boy in question has no soul and is pure evil, shown by his actions after he is exorcised of the demon, when he burns down his house while his parents and younger sister are still inside, starting in his sisters room to make sure she cannot escape
Theater
Video Games
- Subverted in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, the spirit of a priest is convinced that "the child" (who, at this point, is over centuries old after his soul was imprisoned in a furnace) can't have committed the crimes he was convicted of, turns out "The Child" is a brilliant liar who was more than capable of murder by arson, and if the requirements are met, join the party in control of a mis-mash of spirits called One Of Many. One of Many's dialogue is mostly encouraging the player to kill at every chance he gets.
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