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Marge: (looking out the window to the front lawn) There's just something about flying a kite at night that's so unwholesome.
Bart: (turns head to the window. In monotone:) Hello, mother dear.
They look sweet, innocent, even angelic, but there's something not quite right about them. They're too calm, too knowing. They aren't really children any longer, not at heart.
Children should be innocent, in need of adult protection. By inverting this, the trope arouses deep-rooted fears. The Creepy Child might not be physically dangerous, but their profound unnaturalness is just as chilling.
Creepy children are frequently female, and often Emotionless Girls. They can be, among other things, a Robot Girl, an Oracular Urchin, a changeling, a Waif Prophet, a Strange Girl or a villain. The Enfante Terrible may fall into this category. As prophets they emanate otherworldliness; as good guys they may illicit distrust and contempt from the rest of the team(sans the one female who wants to be surrogate mother) as villains they remain cute even while the bodies pile up around them. They usually have an Ironic Nursery Tune theme.
May be holding a Creepy Doll. A girl who is a Woman In White is usually the Creepy Child.
Compare and contrast Psychopathic Manchild. See also Undead Child.
Examples
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Advertising
- A cellphone commercial played with this trope, featuring loads of Creepy Children (including a pair of white-kneesocks-wearing twin girls sing-songing, "We want a cellphone"). It ended with a message to parents that they shouldn't be scared to buy cellphones for their kids, although if you had kids like that, wouldn't you be wary about giving them what they want?
- The early "Dead Zone" ads for Verizon featured pairs of creepy siblings (two brothers in dress attire and twin girls in blue dresses).
- An ad for Australian real estate agent L.J. Hooker ended with a creepy girl's gratitude "Thank you, Mr. Hooker". The really scary part was, she probably wasn't meant to be creepy.
Anime & Manga
- Neon Genesis Evangelion had Rei Ayanami.
- Subverted in Azumanga Daioh: Chiyo has enough knowledge and intelligence to put an average high schooler to shame, yet she's still an innocent 10-year-old child.
- Although it is kinda creepy for a few seconds when she has a flashback to her car ride. But then, that's panic, not calm.
- Osaka is in her mid-teens and YMMV but she can get pretty creepy at times, though it may or may not have been her intention.
- Welsper from the Ah My Goddess manga, who took advantage of his appearance to get closer to Belldandy in ways Keiichi hadn't, such as sharing a bed with her.
- Johan Liebert in Monster. Though most of the story takes place in 1995, in which he is a very creepy twenty-year-old instead, he's been a sociopathic master of More Than Mind Control and murderer since he was nine. There is also Dieter, who has a genuinely creepy moment during the "Kinderheim 511" arc, depite being one of the most innocent characters in the story.
- In The Slayers, Hellmaster Phibrizzo, Man Behind The Man to Chaos Dragon Gaav (who is, oddly, another Big Bad but not The Dragon to Phibrizzo) and one of five ancient demon lords, takes the form of a ten-year-old child in every appearance.
- In the Cowboy Bebop "Sympathy for the Devil", Spike discovers that his latest bounty is connected to a strange, sinister child.
- Vanilla H, the youngest of the Galaxy Angel haremettes, is an Emotionless Girl that spends most of her time praying. The anime plays this up to comically scary levels.
- In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, Selim Bradley starts to show Creepy Child tendencies once he's revealed to be a homunculus. He's basically an Eldritch Abomination..
- The titular girls from Gunslinger Girl appear to fairly normal children — at least to outsiders. During their missions they change into relentless killing machines, showing hardly any emotion whatsoever, contrasting heavily with their innocent looks. Especially the actions of Rico are often jarring, since she is prone to kill innocent bystanders and remorselessly tortures people to get a confession.
- Both Enma Ai and Kikuri from Jigoku Shojo are excellent examples.
- Sabrina, the psychic Gym Leader from Pokemon with a nasty habit of turning people into dolls. Actually, the real Sabrina (as seen in the games) is older, but her childhood form still wanders around bouncing a ball.
- Rin from Kodomo No Jikan often crosses the line into this trope with her overly sexual and manipulative behavior, which at times becomes downright malevolent if she doesn't seem to get her way. Her classmate Kuro is pretty scary as well, since her poor teacher Aoki often bears the brunt of her fits of jealousy.
- Guu from Haré+Guu is a definitive Creepy Child when she's in her deadpan mode (i.e. almost always), but only Haré seems to notice.
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni provides the example of Rika Furude, the little miko girl who knows way too much about what has happened and what will happen, and who also possesses a rather disturbing fixation with torture and mutilation.
- The sequel to Higurashi, Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, features Maria, the protagonist's nine year old cousin who has a creepy fixation with the occult.
- Zazie the Beast, in the anime version of Trigun.
- Miyu from Vampire Princess Miyu. She's got the excuse of being mentally an older woman who has allowed to keep a teenage form to capture the Shinma.
- The little girl form the first OAV, Aiko, also qualifies. We first see her as an Ill Girl in a Convenient Coma, but later we larn that she sold her soul to a Shinma after her parents died in a car accident where she was gravely injured and, out of trauma, she started calling herself a vampire since they donated their blood to her to save her life, right before perishing.
- When at her worst, Shokatsuryou Koumei (Zhuge Liang) from Ikki Tousen. She's a middle school Moeblob who never changes her expression and can devise the most amazing and shocking Xanatos Gambits... She's mostly on the side of good, adores her leaderess Ryuubi and is nowhere as villainous or ruthless as her rival Shiba'i, but she's still creepy.
- The three espers in Akira (Kyouko, Masaru and Takashi) were young children who, due to government experiments to develop psychic abilities, were trapped in aged, pale blue shells of their child bodies
 ◊. They speak largely in Creepy Monotone, especially Kiyoko (who also is a bed-ridden Ill Girl), and have a master plan which involves the resurrection of Akira.
- Not to mention Akira himself.
- Hansel and Gretel, the ultimate Creepy Twins, from Black Lagoon.
- A good portion of the Diclonius children in Elfen Lied tend to act this way, to the point of being Enfant Terribles due to an instinctual murderous impulse towards humans. More likely though, it is shown to be the result of severe emotional, physical, and sometimes sexual abuse and isolation at the hands of said humans.
- 2nd Grade Deadman Wonderland Undertaker (Deadman neutralizer) Daida "Punishment" Hibana, who knows way too much about various methods of torture having apparently learned from mer mother, shown in flashback watching over her "suspention". Understandably, she is a bit delusional having to invent nonsensical punishments for herself after her mother apparently comitted suicide.
- Masato from Rumiko Takahashi's Mermaid's Scar, the second compilation of the Mermaid Saga. At first glance he looks like an eight year-old boy, living happily with his mother... but then, why does the mother look so sad to be with him? Why did she try to abandon him? Why is she trying so hard to kill him? He's also pretty handy with Razor Floss and an axe as big as he is.
- Lain Iwakura from Serial Experiments Lain
- And others as well. Like the one chasing people through the virtual reality game or that girl who commits suicide in the opening. This anime pretty much takes the cake for creepy children.
- Anita from the Darkstalkers anime/OVA was a creepy Emotionless Girl. People kept picking on her, until she started breaking things with her Psychic Powers.
- Laetitia and Poupee from Madlax. By the end, though, Laetitia loses a part of her creepiness and is accepted by her "creator" Margaret, who adopts her as her little sister
- In Fruits Basket, Hanajima's brother Megumi deliberately exploits this to frighten the Yuki fan club.
- Joshua Christopher from Chrono Crusade becomes this after Aion puts Chrono's horns on his head. Although most of the time we see him he's 14 and doesn't look quite like a child anymore, in his crazier moments he still acts like he thinks he's ten—which only helps the creepiness.
- Czeslaw Meyer from Baccano! is what happens when you take a Cute Shotaro Boy, orphan him, grant him immortality alongside thirty or so self-serving, maladjusted individuals, have one of those self-serving, maladjusted individuals flip out and kill half of them, have another self-serving, maladjusted individual take the Cute Shotaro Boy into his custody and torture him for 200 years, then make the Cute Shotaro Boy's only means of escape be to kill that Complete Monster and take all of his thoughts and memories as his own. The fact that he's able to function at all probably calls for a medal of some sort, but that doesn't mean he isn't prone to lapses of absolutist, "kill-or-be-killed" insanity...
- The Infant in InuYasha. There's something very wrong with having such an articulate baby, especially one which is in essence, a cutoff from a man who is 99% Body Horror.
- The Infant isn't the creepy, articulate one; Hakudoshi is. The Infant is just an infant and Naraku's heart. Of course, Hakudoshi looks like a four-year-old at most, so yeah, just as creepy.
- Also the Emotionless Girl Kanna, who looks no older than 10 and is the most loyal of Naraku's cut-offs. And there's her Magic Mirror...
- According to Rinko, Yuuto from Omamori Himari was one of these when she first met him. He gets better though.
- Tama is many times worse. It doesn't help that she speaks with her mind, and that her side of any conversation is almost never seen.
- Near from Death Note pulls this off rather well, despite being almost 19 when the manga ends.
- For some L is Estrogen Brigade Bait, and for others he is this. Yes, he is in his mid 20's when introduced in the story, but to some fans his appearance is rather creepy, and coupled with his eccentricity and, at times, childlike mannerisms, well...
- Nanoha occasionally steps into this. During episode 11 of A's she seemed close to unnerving the Book of Darkness.
- Sailor Moon has Tomoe Hotaru. Although she just wants to be loved, she houses a planet-destroying senshi spirit as well as an evil, inter-dimensional power bent on "silencing" the world. In the original manga she was ever part-cyborg, and is dark and sickly as well.
- Chibi Usa could be construed as a Creepy Child, simply by the fact that she is over 900 when she appears but looks like a little girl, turns into a psychopathic yet love starved adult version of herself when her own emotions are manipulated, and she is way too advanced for a normal child.
- Himeko, from Shinigami Trilogy is basically Mandy with the ability to be a Deliberately Cute Child. Add her shinigami sutor and she's an evil Mini-Mandy with Grim Jr.
- When she was no older than 12, Silvana Greone aka Intoccabile from Noir scared the crap out of a pre-teen Mireille Bouquet when they played together, due to her unhealthy fixation with pointy objects. By the time she's in her 20's, she's a full-blown Dark Action Girl and still a magistrally creepy magnificent bitch.
- In the third Pokemon movie, Spell of the Unknown, Moe/Molly is a seemingly innocent child, who lost her mother to something not explained in the film, and her father to the Unknown. While playing with the Unknown tiles, she summons the Unknown and an Entei. She proceeds to use her innocent desire for friends and parent figures to have Entei kidnap the mother of the protagonist and brainwash her into think that she's Molly's mother, get a LOT of the countryside covered in weird crystals, and, when Ash tries to get his mother back, she spawns waaaay too many of said crystals. In spikes. To make matters worse, she ends up being able to control the Unknown, and ends up as a little girl in a grown woman's body trying to be grown up. She even has three crystal Pokemon, which are all based off three cute mons, but are all insanely powerful.
- The writers of Yu Gi Oh! were probably aiming for a more serious version of the Heartwarming Orphan here, but the child version we see of Seto Kaiba in flashbacks is incredibly unsettling. Mostly due to the way he talks, as he's incredibly cynical and mature for a child. Has enough intelligence to best a world class chess champion at the age of ten and becomes CEO of a huge military corporation a few years later.
- And then, there's Noa. Dear God, Noa.
- Road Kamelot from D.Gray-Man. She's an immortal child, and the eldest of the Noah despite looking in her adolescence. She sings about killing people, acts like an excited child, and messes with your mind to turn you insane. She likes the taste of blood, and often cracks into hysterical laughter when maiming people. Also, as well as possessing a number of creepy dolls, she herself can transform into a creepy doll. And she has a crush on the main character, which she expresses by, within an hour of each other, a) glomping and kissing him and b) trying to force him to kill his friends.
- Ciel from Kuroshitsuji seems to fit this trope. He's a cynical, jaded, and very driven 12-year-old (or 13, depending on how far you are in the series) who is a Chess Master and wise beyond his years. He has no qualms about getting involved in dangerous missions and will command his badass butler Sebastian to kill someone without a second thought. Then again, there's a reason why he is the way he is now.
Comic Books
- The Cuckoo, from the Sandman arc "A Game of You," arch-enemy of the Narnia-like dream-fantasy "Land." Despite her name (and true nature), she mostly appears in the form of a young, pig-tailed, freckled blonde girl — in fact, the childhood form of Barbie, the arc's protagonist.
- Innocence (AKA the Child) is part of a malevolent and extremely powerful living tarot arcanum called The Basanos in the Lucifer comic book. She takes the form of a young, barefoot blonde girl and appears most often as their spokesperson. Her power is the ability to make people "see the world with fresh eyes" - that is, in a harsh light without illusions, delusions, or rose-colored glasses. As an added bonus, this power is exhibited as she walks down a seedy avenue in Amsterdam's Red Light district, causing everyone from hookers to cops to street people to come subtly repulsed at what they're doing.
- 30 Days of Night had a little girl vampire.
- Layla Miller of Marvel Comics' X-Factor. Also an Oracular Urchin.
- Valeria "Val" Richards, daughter of Reed Richards. She has genius level intelligence at just 2 years old.
- Ariel Chylde in Manga Darkchyle isn't stoic and her voice isn't a harsh monotone. Adults find her creepy because at roughly 12 years old she's smarter than most of them and she reacts to literally everything with open hostility and condescension.
- Cassie Hack battles the Undead Slasher Movie Serial Killer who Kills People In Dreams variety in Hack / Slash.
- In some incarnations, Batman, particularly after his parents' death. As an adult he is also sometimes confronted to creepy children who killed their parents.
- Little Keiko in Usagi Yojimbo. Her only relative was robbed and killed by bandits, and they were about to kill her too when Jei, the book's most stubbornly recurring villain, appeared, declared them to be "evil" and killed them. Keiko almost got the same treatment, but he randomly decided she wasn't evil. She's been traveling with him since then, calling him "uncle", and her ability to remain cheerful through massive bloodbaths is chilling.
- The X Wing Series arc "The Warrior Princess" has Plourr flash back to her brother, Harran, when they were both children. Very definitely Royally Screwed Up, he was basically sociopathic, and the flashback shows him torturing an animal. Then Darth Vader, on a visit, used mental manipulation to transform his hot-blooded sadism into something cold and calculating. When a faction of nobles slaughtered Harran's family and one sister escaped, he tried to stop her so he could watch her die. She killed him and left his body to be eaten by scavengers. That's how she knows that the revolutionary calling himself Harran can't be her brother.
Film
Literature
- Cornelia Vermeer in Girl With A Pearl Earring is six years old and a member of the family who Griet goes to work for. She has red curly hair which seems to highlight her fiery and rebellious personality. Indeed, out of all the Vermeer children, Cornelia is the most mischievous and doesn't always respect her elders. In fact, she is downright cruel to Griet and causes all sorts of trouble for her, including stealing her possessions, breaking a treasured family heirloom that Griet's father gave to her, spying on Griet's interactions with Johannes (Cornelia's father and Griet's employer), and tattling on Griet to her mother Catharina (lying by saying that Griet stole Catharina's comb, Griet's been getting too friendly with Johannes) and all the while she puts up a sweet appearance, pretending like she's a innocent little girl in order to deceive everybody. Griet rightfully calls her out on this a few times, and slaps her twice for her maliciousness.
- Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, in which the title character has a son so weird they don't seem to bother naming him, calling him "Little Father Time", due to being old beyond his years. He goes on to murder his step-siblings and then commit suicide because he believes that they and he are dragging Jude and Sue (first cousins, if the family wasn't odd enough) into even direr poverty, making him a damn sight less self-centered than most kids.
- The Midwich Cuckoos, adapted into the film Village of the Damned.
- Alia in Dune, born with the knowledge and cunning of generations of Bene Gesserit ancestors. She was extremely creepy in David Lynch's film, very creepy in the Sci-Fi Channel adaptation, and only slightly less eerie in the original book.
- Alia is also notable for being one of the few instances where we get to see what happens when the Creepy Child goes through puberty and then grows up. Needless to say, it turns out quite tragic.
- In a Flashback in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Tom Riddle is shown to have been a Creepy Child. At the age of eleven he says to Dumbledore: "I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."
- In addition to some interesting scheming as a later teenager — beyond, well, the Chamber of Secrets and all (and getting a more or less innocent classmate punished for it, knowing he'd be an easy suspect due to his half-giant heritage) we also see him charming his way into a teacher's favour and exploiting him for secrets in a way that is creepier than usual for a budding Dark Lord. And the movie cranked it up to eleven. Lil' Tom was all the time leaning on the Uncanny Valley.
- The classic representative of this trope: Rhoda Penmark of The Bad Seed.
- Jonathan Lethem's novel Gun, with Occasional Music, features "babyheads", toddlers who have been genetically modified to possess adult-level intelligence. Unfortunately, they also have adult-level cynicism and bad habits.
- Pet Sematary. Ye gods. Because normal creepy kids aren't enough for Stephen King, they have to be psycho zombie creepy kids.
- HP Lovecraft's novella The Dunwich Horror involves a creepy child who appears to grow supernaturally quickly. By twelve, he is approximately seven feet tall, is badly in need of a shave, and has completely adult proportions. Of course, this is nothing compared to his brother.
- Not literally a child, but certainly childlike, is Psycho For Hire Jonathan Teatime from Hogfather. In the TV adaptation, he's very Wonka-ish, which only makes it worse. He's been like that since childhood, with the suggestion that as a child he may have murdered his parents, or at least watched them die. Even at the Assassin's Guild, kids know to keep the hell away from people that freaky, a remark that becomes important in the climax.
- Lord Downey is quoted as saying that when Teatime was taken in, "We took pity on him because he was an orphan. I think, in retrospect, we should have wondered a bit more about that."
- Overlapping with Tykebomb is Coin from Sourcery, who quite calmly converts people into piles of ash or clouds of smoke without seeming to grasp that they're even dead. Is anything bad happening to him? Although Coin is spurred on and encouraged in this behavior by his Wizard's staff, which contains the soul of his insane father. Once freed from the staff's influence, he's a normal boy. (Or as normal as someone who can remake his local reality on a whim can be).
- Also, in Soul Music, we see that Susan very seriously freaked out her principal. Which is very understandable.
- She's still at it later in life, although she's mostly learned to control it for her own ends.
- Starting in Eldest, The Inheritance Cycle has Elva. As a result of his "blessing", Eragon causes a one-year-old infant to mutate into a six-year-old who speaks with the voice of a world-weary adult and has Purple Eyes, becoming the empathic Elva. The other characters get really, really creeped out just hearing her speak.
- Artemis Fowl, from the series of the same name, is the world's greatest criminal mastermind and 12 years old.
- Literary/film example: the Stephen King short story Children of the Corn is based around a Town With A Dark Secret in which a bunch of creepy children have killed all of the adults, and sacrifice everyone to a vaguely Jesus-like entity called "He Who Walks Behind The Rows" when they turn nineteen.
- In the postmodern novel House Of Leaves, the character Will Navidson has two children named Chad and Daisy. As events in the book become more and more surreal, the children begin to act quite differently from their normal behavior, at several points becoming the Creepy Child.
- A. N. Wilson's A Jealous Ghost contains two children, brother and sister, who are strangely shifty and reserved with the nanny. They like to sit quietly in their room after dinner. Said nanny begins to believe they are being corrupted by their mother's ghost: however, she is very much alive. Oh, and the nanny goes completely bonkers.
- The Archive from The Dresden Files is a seven-year-old girl containing the entirety of human knowledge and understanding. She talks very calmly about matters of magic and vampires and stuff, and then completely upends the trope and reverts to normalcy somewhat when Dresden's cat Mister walks in. "Kitty!" As Kincaid, the hardened mercenary of doom put it, "Okay, that's just creepy."
- She was seven in Blood Rites (the sixth book in the series). By Small Favor (the tenth book), she's twelve.
- The Age Of Misrule features the Big Bad, Balor, at the end of book 3. He destroys whole pantheons... and he appears in the form of a Victorian private school boy. And then his face folds back so he can fire lasers at the heroes.
- As of the latest novel in the Dexter series, Dexter in the Dark, his soon-to-be stepchildren Astor and Cody are definite examples, heading into Psychopathic Manchild territory (Astor being female doesn't seem to rule it out in her case.) No indication that Astor and Cody have been sent into creepy territory by their abusive dad has shown up in the TV series, though, and since the show diverted from the books starting with Season 2, it's no guarantee that the plot will show up there.
- According to The Areas Of My Expertise, The Virtuous Child is a creepy one parodying Puritanical values. See the page on Glurge. There's also the child prodigies.
Basically, it comes down to this: Child prodigies are fine, but you could do without the violins. If you have ever been alone at night in Penn Station, barefoot, with only a sword cane and a half-empty bottle of brandy, and suddenly, swiftly, with ninja-like stealth, a group of child prodigies surrounds you, rattling their violin cases, you will know what we're talking about.
- Angel of Maximum Ride is an angelic-looking child...except that she possesses psychic powers that she can and will use on anybody. A slightly less creepy example is in book 1 when she "asks" a woman to buy an overpriced stuffed bear for her, but by the third book she has taken a level in badass and mentally commands all the mutants at Itec to kill the evil doctors. Scary stuff indeed.
- There's also the original Jerome Bixby short story "It's a Good Life", basis of the Twilight Zone episode described above. If anything, this version of Anthony is even creepier.
- Pearl in The Scarlet Letter.
- Pater Sin's runt-psykers in Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts: Sabbat Martyr.
- The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series is full of unnerving Oracular Urchin types. But Kettle takes the cake. From the constant hints that she's Not Quite Human to her matter-of-fact revelations of things "the dead told her" to the vaguely annoyed way she tells Fear Sengar that she'd been raped by the slavers they'd just rescued her from... She unnerves the guy who can turn into a giant dragon.
- Twins Jane and Alec from the Twilight series. Jane can make people writhe from extreme agony, and Alec can make people feel absolutely nothing. Every other vampire that knows about them is at least slightly scared by them. Not to mention that despite their childish appearance, they're both several hundred years old.
- Jane's going to be played by Dakota Fanning (who is decidedly less creepy now that she's mini-Gwyneth Paltrow)
- One word: Renesmee. The human-vampire hybrid beats up her mother in the uterus, is so genetically advanced as to be reading in her first MONTHS, and will be physically mature at seven (which is convenient, because she's been imprinted on by her mother's ex-boyfriend). Oh, and there's the whole thing with her ability to read minds and show others her thoughts through touch.
- The main character, Will Stanton, from The Dark Is Rising
- Spider Robinson probably did not intend Jake Stonebender's supersupergenius daughter Erin to be a Creepy Child. But I defy you not to be creeped out, or at least Squicked, when at the age of fourteen MONTHS she responds to a compliment with "Why, Uncle Nicky, what a sweet thing to say! I'm going to start fucking when I'm sixteen, would you like to take a number? I can work you into the single digits if you hurry."
- The "nudnik" (human, in mouse slang) child in House of Tribes captures mice and other small animals to dissect, and feeds the remains to his pet mouse. Even from the point of view of a human, this is Squicky, and from the point of view of the mouse main character it's positively horrifying.
- The title character of Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin certainly qualifies.
- The title character of Ray Bradbury's short story The Small Assassin — who is a baby.
- Avoided in Good Omens: Adam Young, despite being the Antichrist, is a thoroughly normal child due to the lack of any angelic or demonic influence in his upbringing.
- Miles and Flora in Henry James' Turn of the Screw. First, they look very cute and innocent... later, not so much.
- Angel from Maximum Ride.
Live Action TV
- A 13-year-old sociopath kills his younger neighbor in the Law And Order Special Victims Unit episode "Conscience".
- The Test Card F girl from the British Life On Mars.Watch her and be afraid.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer had The Anointed One. In a typical Joss Whedon moment, however, when Spike shows up he takes "The Annoying One" down within an episode. (According to rumour, he was killed off because the actor was growing too rapidly for a dead kid.)
- "Gingerbread" features a demon who poses as the ghosts(?) of two murdered children.
- "Hush" opens with Buffy dreaming of a spooky little girl, complete with the nursery tune.
- Wolfram & Hart's conduit to the Senior Partners in Angel was a little girl.
- There is also an episode revolving around a creepy, demonically-possessed child that possessed people to steal their souls. When they exorcised the demon they learned that it hadn't been controlling him, but had possessed him and been trapped inside by the soulless child.
- The unnamed schoolgirl in the Doctor Who serial "Remembrance of the Daleks".
- The more recent series two-parter "Human Nature/The Family of Blood" involved one of these as well, who always carried a bright red balloon. It never popped. Odd. Most likely a reference to the original book, in which the little girl's balloon behaved like Rover. When either girl appeared on screen, they also had the same Ironic Nursery Tune.
- And what happends to her in the end will make you afraid to look in mirrors.
- Jamie, "The Empty Child" in the Doctor Who episode of the same name, although this was the result of being infected by The Virus. In fact, to hell with infected — he was The Virus. Also, the girl in "Silence in the Library."
- Chloe Webber of "Fear Her" is a rare example of a black Creepy Child.
- Doctor Who Magazine comic strip "Ghosts of The Northern Line has Mnemosyne take on the form of a little girl ghost who at one point stands on the tracks in front of a tube train prompting the driver to slam the brakes on stopping the train, giving the other ghosts time to feed on the living.
- Jasmine in the Torchwood episode "Small Worlds".
- The tarot reading girl in season two of Torchwood.
- The obvious one missing here is that this was the entire basis of the plot of the third season/miniseries Torchwood: Children of Earth, as every single child on the planet is simultaneously used as a voice for alien invaders.
- Yandere Rhonda Vollmer on Big Love is a non-supernatural variant: behind her artless demeanor and expressionless blue eyes lurks the brain of a baby sociopath and master-manipulator-in-training (not to mention a disturbing fondness for rhinestones). She's got something of an excuse, having been raised in an abusive cult and married off at the age of fourteen to a man in his seventies, but it doesn't do much to make her less terrifying. (Amusingly, she's played by Daveigh Chase, who portrayed the ultimate Creepy Child in the American version of The Ring.)
- Anthony Fremont from The Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" is literally omnipotent. He's no more evil than any other three-year-old who's never been told "No" in his life, but his ignorance, capriciousness, and lack of empathy holds Peakville, Ohio in complete terror.
- The sequel in the 2000 remake features Anthony's daughter, who is able to bring back everything her father "sent away".
- Supernatural is in love with the Creepy Child. The very first episode has a creepy brother and sister, "The Benders" has a thirteen year old cannibal named Missy, "Playthings" has a creepy girl ghost manipulating the daughter of the owner of an inn, "All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1" has an Acheri demon appear as a little girl◊, "The Kids are All Right" has changeling children feeding off mothers' synovial fluid, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester" has two little girls terrorizing Bobby and "Jus in Bello" has the new Big Bad Lilith in the form of a small child◊, who is pure nightmare fuel and decided that the Creepy Child was so nice, she did it twice◊. Season Four's "The Rapture" has Claire Novak possessed by the angel Castiel informing Castiel's previous host (Claire's father Jimmy) that his (Jimmy's) work on Earth is done while poor Jimmy begs to be possessed instead.
- Lampshaded in the season five episode "The Real Ghostbusters: "Oh look, more creepy children brought to you by Supernatural."
- While not creepy in a supernatural sense, Hannibal Lecture-ing Insufferable Genius Hannah from a two episode "arc" of CSI definitely qualifies. In her first episode she helps get her brother out of a murder conviction by convincing the jury that she did it, while gaining CSI Sara Sidle's sympathy (she was also a gifted child), only to smugly reveal to her that her brother did indeed set up the prank and that she's going to get a lot of book deals once she's out of juvie. In her second episode the two siblings are in college (their parents are mysteriously dead), with the brother as a student and Hannah as his professor. Several plot twists and one Hannibal Lecture at Sara later, it is revealed that Hannah had begun to envy of her brother's growing independance and framed him for murder in order to put him in jail, under her control and at her side forever. Her brother could no longer stand his sister's truth-destroying Xanatos Gambits and killed himself and "arresting officer" Sara was simply disgusted, which probably contributed to her eventual permanant leave of absence.
- La Femme Nikita: In the episode "He Came From Four," a creepy child with telepathic and telekinetic abilities is sent to Section One to assist in a mission.
- The Littlest Cancer Patient on House.
- Megan from Drake and Josh.
- Not that scary as Megan but Rico from Hannah Montana. Same with Sophie from Corey In The House.
- Tina from Still Standing is pretty creepy with her unblinking stare and vindictive nature. Her aunt Linda and older sister Lauren are particularly wary of her.
- By the end of American Gothic, Caleb has come to resemble this.
- The X-Files had a bunch of these. The Eve twins and the freaky girl with the doll from "Chinga" come readily to mind. Emily and the little boy from "The Calusari" are pretty creepy too. And Billy Underwood from "Invocation". Oh, and Tommy Conlon from "Scary Monsters". Wow, they loved this trope.
- Hera in Battlestar Galactica is somewhat creepy.
- The Denton twins, Chloe and Radcliffe, from The Leagueof Gentlemen definitely meet this trope.
- Wednesday and Pugsley Addams from The Addams Family.
- Star Trek Voyager: Susperia in "Cold Fire", the Borg children on their first appearance, Naomi Wildman in a nightmare scene in "Dark Frontier", and (it was hinted on a couple of occasions) Kes.
- Oscar from The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "The Temptation Of Sarah Jane Smith". At the end of Part One he turns out to be a Graske in disguise.
- Ally from episode two of Demons who kidnaps children for Gilgamel.
- Walt on Lost generally seems like a normal kid, but also has the habits of appearing in places he shouldn't be, knowing the future, and smacking birds into nearby windows. He manages to creep out his stepfather to the point of relinquishing custody. Then in season 2, he scares the Others enough that they give him back to his father.
- Yet another thread that went absolutely nowhere.
- Madison from Harpers Island. She tends to creep out her mother late at night by waking her up and telling her everyone is going to die.
- Dotty/Kirsty Cotton from Eastenders. She was a little girl of no older than nine or so, seemingly dumped on her grandmother Dot by her criminal father Nick. At first she seemed saccharine sweet, but it soon became clear that something was wrong. Her hymn-singing, baking, little 1930's cardies and general innocence took her beyond the realms of 'normal but goody-two-shoes kid' and into the realms of creepy. You could tell she had to be hiding something- and she was. Turned out she had a pact with her Father Nick to kill Dot for her money, and it didn't seem like she was being threatened by him or otherwise coerced into it- she appeared to be doing it willingly, off her own back. She pressed on with this plan until the last minute, when she got cold feet and attempted to drug Nick instead. Nick survived, but as he left he shouted not to be fooled by Dotty's traumatised tears- she was rotten to the core and the plan to kill Dot had been all her idea. It sounded like a bitter rant, but this is Eastenders we're talking about, so there will almsot definitely turn out to be some truth to his words.
- Dollhouse has Iris.
- Flash Forward has Charlie, who has an unspecified vision that she simply (and in monotone) describes as "dreaming that there were no more good days".
- Mordred in Merlin.
- Caligua is portrayed this way in the TV version of I Claudius. He becomes partially responsibly for the murder of his father when he was just hitting puberty.
- Kayla Scavo
Music
- The video to Portishead's "All Mine" features an extremely unnerving little girl lipsyncing the song.
Tabletop Games
- The Apex Twins.
- The old World Of Darkness game Wraith: the Oblivion has "Striplings", a title given to Spectres (evil ghosts of Oblivion) who died before the age of ten and have corpuses (ghost bodies) resembling children. They exist among all of the Spectral castes (including at least one Malfean, the God-Kings of Oblivion) and form a society unto themselves. Other Spectres (even Malfeans) find them to be completely ungovernable and "creepy".
- The short-lived Immortal RPG featured the Peri, youngsters rescued from the Children's Crusade and made into immortals whose talent is to transform their bodies into weapons. The game's soundtrack had a bit with the sound of someone being stabbed, followed by a childish voice saying, "G'night!" and giggling. Worth noting is that Immortal has been revived as a free RPG, available here, although the Creepy Children described have been retconned into being just part of the Peri as of the current edition; many of the others are still Creepy Children, though, just from different origins.
- The card game Lunch Money features monochrome pictures of a young girl with nursery rhymes and other sayings having vaguely to do with the cards intended effect. The artwork is fairly sureal, but becomes truly creepy when one considers that the cards represent the characters actions in a brutal street fight (i.e. Punches, Kicks, hitting a guy with a chain, etc.).
- In the french game "In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas" (which has been poorly adaptated in english) children of a demon and a human can be either normal kids, demons, or official creepy children. I love the illustration on that chapter in the rulebook.
Theater
- In some productions, the demons/witches that deliver the misleading prophecies to Macbeth take this form.
Video Games
Web Animation
- The unnamed girl in the notorious Quicktime animation Play With Me goes beyond merely creepy and right into Nightmare Fuel.
- On a similar note the kids from the Nick.com clickamajig Black Licorice also suit this trope. In the game you're supposed to give them candy but you CAN'T give them black licorice because it causes them to transform into horrible grotesque monsters.
Web Comic
- Scary Go Round had a story arc based around such a character, known simply as "The Child".
- Chaos-child from El Goonish Shive. Introduced in Hidden Genesis. Not much is really known about her. Given Dan Shive's addiction to The Chris Carter Effect, little will likely ever be known about her.
- Zimmy from Gunnerkrigg Court starts off as an over-the-top creep: she's verbally combative towards the protagonists, her science fair entry is "an abomination", she seems to have no eyes, and a body-snatching demon is afraid of her. This gets thrown on its head in a later chapter, when the revelation that she's been Blessed With Suck turns her into a sympathetic character. Which gets flipped on its head again, with the revelation of how Zimmy treats her best friend and why.
- The main character, Antimony Carver, is an interesting example. The audience sees her when she's alone with her best friends, and thus sees that she's pretty well-adjusted for someone with such an unusual childhood. Eventually, however,it's revealed that most of her classmates see her as a creep—because all they see of Annie is her impassive public facade and the fact that she never socializes with anyone besides Kat.
- Annie's father, Anthony, may have been one as well, if his sole appearance in-comic (in a Flash Back) is any indication.
- Assuming Jones ever was a child, one can only imagine how creepy she was.
- Chelsie Warner of Concession appears to be a cuddly anthropomorphic lamb-girl in a pink dress. On her first appearance, she stabs Artie Crowley in the eye with a crayon. Shortly thereafter, she has sex with him when he's too delirious to realise what he's doing. When he wakes up, he is horrified not only because of what he's done, but because "Chelsie is actually a boy." It's recently been revealed that Chelsie's hypersexual behaviour is related to a form of childhood bipolar disorder.
- The titular character from Charby The Vampirate is a perfect example of this.
- Mye, Hex, Tony, Claire and a large number of other characters qualify too.
- The Cyantian Chronicles: Quinn and Collin.
- Collin is a telepath who can walk through walls. He's experienced fear from come people due to this fact.
- Quinn is also a telepath. She can also walk through walls, teleport through another dimension that only she can reach. Quinn also has "Oulies" as friends, who are beings who are trapped between life and death in a realm that only Quinn can see. IE: Quinn's invisible friends are real. And to top it all off, Quinn has been known to surprise/creep out Collin and the other members of her family.
Web Original
- SCP-053 is a seemingly normal three-year-old girl. Except that something about her is deeply unsettling to adults and older children. Unsettling to the point that it induces violent rages, usually directed at her. Then, the moment they inflict any harm upon her, they die almost instantly and she regenerates rapidly from any injury they managed to inflict. Omnicidal Maniac SCP-682 seems to like her, though — and, as the label suggests, he holds a murderous hatred for all other living things.
- SCP-899 is a spatial phenomenon that kidnaps regular children and turns them into this. And they will kill you.
- Katy Towell's Children R Skary IS this trope. One of the reasons she drew the art and made the animations was because she thought children were creepy.
Western Animation
- An 8-year-old Azula in a flashback episode of Avatar The Last Airbender displays these traits, doing such things as burning a doll (a gift from her uncle), mocking her uncle's sorrow about his son's death, and hoping for his death as well as her grandfather's so her father can get on the throne. Her mother speaks for everyone when she wonders "What is wrong with that child?"
- One episode of Dexters Laboratory, "Aye-Aye Eyes", features Dexter returning a creepy looking rag-doll bunny to an even creepier looking doe-eyed little girl who then follows him around everywhere. He eventually gets rid of her by hooking her up with a creepy doe-eyed boy.
- Gaz of Invader Zim is a morbid, vindictive little girl with supernatural powers and prowess who plunges people into nightmare worlds from which there is no waking if they dare interfere with her pizza or her videogames. Not even her brother is immune.
- The eponymous Mandy of The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy tricked The Grim Reaper into eternal servitude, using him as her maid and his powers for personal gain, and faces down everything from the Boogeyman to Cthulu with nothing more than a wry comment. She also never smiles, ever, because doing so would cause the universe to implode.
- Then there's Nergal Jr. Nergal Jr is able to turn into almost anything and is extremely creepy. His true form (although it's rarely seen) is very horrid to see.
- South Park has a few, including Kenny. Then there's Damien from the episode Damien - after all he's Satan's kid.
- Don't forget about Cartman ever since the Scott Tenorman incident he's become increasing psychotic through out the years, going as far as attempting to kill his mother when he feels she doesn't love him anymore.
- WITCH has Miranda, a shape-shifting spider demon who takes the form of a little girl. Often uses her human child form to trap and trick her prey and enemies, but still manages to keep her creepy spider attitude.
- In The Simpsons episode Wild Barts Can't Be Broken, the kids all break curfew to see The Bloodening — a parody of the 1960 horror film Village of the Damned — featuring sinister telepathic and telekinetic children terrorizing an English village. When the kids of Springfield are punished for sneaking out, they get revenge by hijacking the radio airwaves and, speaking like the Creepy Children of the film, broadcast their parents' embarassing secrets.
- "We've got to do something about these blabbermouth kids and their creepy English accents!"
- "Doctor, we know you and the bootblack have been rogering the fishwife in the crumpet shop!"
- Codename Kids Next Door has five of them — the Delightful Children from Down the Lane who carry out the adults' evil orders. They don't have individual names, except the one with the helmet (Lenny). And they're always speaking in unison.
- Some say that Suzy Johnson, Jeremy's little sister on Phineas And Ferb, is the true villain of the show. And who can blame them? As Jeremy's self-proclaimed "favorite girl", Suzy resents her brother's relationship with Candace and constantly puts the hurt on Candace when no one else is looking... and thus, no one believes Candace when she says that Suzy is evil. Buford Von Stom is the only other character on the show who knows what Suzy is really like (no one believes him either).
- Would you believe Robin qualifies? After you see what the Joker's turned him into, courtesy of Mind Rape in Batman Beyond, it definitely ends up as this. A manic grin, just like the Joker's, plastered over his face, and his high-pitched giggling make it downright Nightmare Fuel.
- In The Weekenders, Frances is a middle school girl who does nothing but say "I like pointy things" while her eye twitches. According to a flashback, she used to be a kid genius who was friends with Tish, before her sudden decline into... whatever it is she's suffering from.
- Creepie Creecher, the protagonist of Growing Up Creepie, is a young girl raised by insects. She is a junior Goth in style, and her creative efforts regularly terrify her teachers and schoolmates. Things like ghost stories and urban legends merely arouse her curiosity, usually leading to her debunking them (usually followed by an "Or Is It" twist that only the audience sees).
- The three Fates of Gargoyles can appear as three young girls (among other things).
- Well, they ARE the "Weird Sisters" of Macbeth, after all.
- Lizzie, a girl at the science fair in Meet The Robinsons:
Teacher: N-now, what did we say about the fire ants? They have a tendency to bite people
Lizzie: Only my enemies.
- Ace from Justice League. Just looking at her can make you go insane. Even if you already are; ask the Joker.
- The final episode of The Weekenders shows how frightening Todd and Quintie can really be. Apparently, they're threatening enough for The S.W.A.T. team.
- Stewie from Family Guy.
Real Life
- Unusually mature child actress Dakota Fanning, both in some of the characters she plays and as a person.
- This hasn't prevented her from developing a very squicktastic following.
- She even has her own clone — little sister Elle, who was featured as a disturbed foster child in Connie Nielsen's last episode of Law And Order Special Victims Unit. Attempting to bond with this littlest victim, Det. Dani Beck let her spend the night in her apartment. Elle's character repaid the kindness by setting it on fire so that the two could die together. While both survived, the already emotionally fragile Dani was completely broken and left the SVU (and Det. Stabler) for good.
- The "if you hit me at 30mph" spiel from the ubiquitous UK Public Service Announcement would make you think regardless of who said it, but one suspects the young voice-over artist they used (more than a bit reminiscent of "are you my mummy") could probably give people nightmares by singing "Old McDonald had a Farm".
- Josh Peck started off as the complete opposite of this, but now he looks somewhat similar to this.
- Mary Bell, an eleven-year-old serial killer. Now she has a daughter of her own, who is apparently normal.
- Nevada-tan, a.k.a. "Girl A", a Japanese schoolgirl who murdered a classmate with a boxcutter. Her nickname comes from the famous photo of her wearing a University of Nevada hoodie. She inspired a surprising amount of fanart and a song called "Boxcutter, Baby".
- This kid.◊ Admittedly, a very appropriate mascot given the product.
- Actor Whit Hertford was very creepy looking as a child, he could have easily played Mikey the title character of one of the films he was in, but they chose Brian Bonsall because he was more innocent looking but for what Brian looks like now that's another story.
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