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Oh, monster of so little size... is that a parasprite before my eyes?
Cute Is Evil happens because people (both In-Universe and in Real Life) slide to the cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. It is also related to the phenomenon of people losing the ability to think critically around cute things. In places where critical thought is vital, cuteness can be the cover for a Person of Mass Destruction.
Parents and older siblings tend to never trust the cute. "Real men" especially hate cute, as it is contrary to more manly forms of expression. Television companies who try to keep girls liking cute as long as possible are often portrayed as Corrupt Corporate Executives.
Cute is often evil in Darker and Edgier works. In extreme cases, cuteness is a sign of someone being an Uncanny Valley inhabitant or Eldritch Abomination.
A frequent component of Subverted Innocence tropes such as Cute and Psycho, Corruption by a Minor, Killer Rabbit and Crapsaccharine World.
Very often the core of morally questionable, if not outright malevolent, children types such as the Creepy Child, Kids Are Cruel, Deliberately Cute Child, Spoiled Brat, Evil Orphan, Little Miss Con Artist and especially the Enfant Terrible, who exists mostly to enforce this trope.
If they succeed at causing death and destruction, this trope will likely overlap with Grotesque Cute.
Contrast Beauty Equals Goodness. Compare Beauty Is Bad, a milder form.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Majin Buu, the final major villain of Dragon Ball Z. The form that our heroes encounter first is an Ugly Cute, fat pink humanoid of mass destruction with the mentality of a toddler. He also has a massive craving for sweets. [Sweets made by zapping his victims with his head antenna and transforming them into foodstuffs that are still completely conscious as they are being eaten.
- Iron Maiden in Shaman King, but her alignment is more Lawful Stupid than evil.
- Pokémon has featured both an evil Teddiursa and an evil Togepi.
- Digimon Frontier Lucemon anyone?
- The Amazon Quartet and Sailor Iron Mouse from Sailor Moon.
- For all their creepy qualities no one can deny that Hansel and Gretel are cute.
- Kyubey of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. When you first see it, it's the most adorable thing in the world, but the blank red eyes and unchanging Cat Smile just get creepier and creepier every time you look at it. There is a very good reason for this. This is also an invocation of this trope, as Gen Urobuchi specifically asked character designer Ume Aoki to make it "as cute as possible."
- The Puchuus from Excel Saga.
- Deadman Wonderland is set in a prison that is also a theme park. The inmates stage shows for the visitors. This is mostly promoted by the... er... Promoter, who seems to run the place and is a Psychopathic Manchild who loves to put cute, evil props everywhere.
- Even the Sadistic way they restrain the prisoners is this, every prisoner has a collar constantly pumping poison into their body, the prisoners can't run away or else they won't get the "bitter candy" a foul tasting cure in a candy wrapper. Also they have to do menial or sometimes life threatening things to get the in prison currency to buy the candies. They can die in the bright and colorful carnival, from doing nothing! It makes you wonder what the guards think since they don't bat an eyelash, the whole thing is a sugary sweet and disgusting spectacle like death race, convicts dieing and suffering for entertainment, mostly the promoter's.
- In D. Gray-Man, The Earl and Road Kamelot seem to have a theme like this going on.
- Umineko No Naku Koro Ni has at least 3 characters like this, or 2 if you consider an independent avatar and her master as a single being.
- Popotan being what it is, it still provides an example in the form of the little girl from episode 4. She appears to be a normal child at first, but is actually a ghost who wishes to trap people where she can be with them forever.
- Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist. He's an Eldritch Abomination that can effortlessly rip people apart with his Living Shadow, and he has the body of a small child.
Art
- While not "evil" per se, New York's Japan Society had an exhibit called "Bye Bye Kitty!!!", which is a reaction against the kawaii aesthetic.
Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering has an Unglued card called Infernal Spawn of Evil. With a name like that, you're expecting some sort of demon, perhaps an Eldritch Abomination. It's...a mouse enjoying hot cocoa.
- In the sequel set, Unhinged, they introduce Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil, which is the same mouse, holding its cocoa in one forepaw, and its baby mouse in the other forepaw.
- On a more serious note, the non-joke set Ice Age included the Hyalopterous Lemure
 , which is pretty cute for a black card. Reportedly, the artist had never heard of a lemure (a minor evil spirit) and drew a lemur instead.
- Very literally in the horror-themed Munchkin Bites, where a fearsome high-level monster simply titled "The Evil" looks a whole lot like... a fuzzy little kitty cat. It's a reference to the Sluggy Freelance entry below.
Film
Live Action TV
Literature
- Baby Veil in Outcast of Redwall sends Bryony into paroxysms of Cuteness Overload, even when he's actively in the process of biting her. Unfortunately for him, it doesn't work when he's in his teens and starts playing with poisons.
Music
Newspaper Comics
- Nermal in Garfield, sickeningly cute, and Garfield's mortal antagonist (Garfield keeps trying to mail him to Abu Dhabi).
Video Games
- A lot of monsters in RPGs, but especially Tonberry (If you're in any way experienced, it can manage a One-Hit KO.) and Cactuar (not so bad when they can just do 1000 damage, but they often can do 10000) in Final Fantasy.
- Lakitu in most Super Mario Bros. games. He rides around on a smiling cloud, has cute glasses, is harder than hell to kill, and drops eggs on you that hatch into spinies when they hit the ground. The obvious exceptions are Super Mario RPG, where he's just another enemy, and the Kart games, where he actually grabs you if you fall off the track.
- The main villains of Razes Hell are an army of cute creatures that decide to wage a genocidal war against the ugly creatures of the world.
- Marx from Kirby. When you think all of the good characters in Kirby are good and the baddies are ugly, you are all wrong. Marx starts from being a really cute, armless puffball. He bounces on a really colorful beach ball and has a jester hat. Later he turns out to a villain after the mistaken 'end' of the game. In the sequel, Kirby Super Star Ultra, he turns to the freaky-looking Marx Soul.
- Aside from Marx, there is also Scarfy, though Waddle Dee won't count, since they're just innocent, carefree creatures.
- B.B. Hood from Darkstalkers.
- The balloon Pokémon Drifloon looks cute, but it tries to kidnap children.
- Let's also not forget about Litwick, which is a sweet little smiling candle that pretends to be a helpful guiding light but in reality is attempting to steal your life energy. Its evolutions are still pretty cute and even worse.
- Munna in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Gates To Infinity until her Heel Face Turn.
- In Kingdom Of Loathing, one of the most evil, foul, reprehensible creatures of in the world is... seals. Adorable little seals. Naturally, one of the character classes is the Seal Clubber.
- Tak 2:The Staff Of Dreams has the power parasites. They are cutesy in appearance and they sabotage JB's Planetarium by leaving large gunk. It takes a rather long time to clear them off.
- Model W in Mega Man ZX, the form that Dr. Weil from the prequel series had been reduced to after his final defeat. Guess you wish you could collect it along with the other biometals, don't you?
Web Original
Webcomics
Western Animation
- The JimmyNeutron episode "Attack of the Twonkies" is all about this — cutesy little fuzz balls morph into POINTY BALLS OF TERROR when they hear music.
- On Total Drama Island, Duncan is afraid of Celine Dion music store standees.
- On Robot Chicken, in a Dragon Ball Z parody, the characters go to the North Pole. Their enemies? Little Drummer Boy, the Nutcracker, and Composite Frosty/Santa Claus. But the Big Bad is Mrs. Claus.
- Baby Doll of Batman The Animated Series looks like a cute little girl but is a really a psychopathic adult.
- In Hoodwinked, a Little Red Riding Hood adaptation, the villain is Boingo, that little rabbit that follows Red around all the time.
- In the sequel, those dang "innocent" children they were trying to find.
- Jimmy, the effeminate squeaky kid on Ed Edd N Eddy, generally isn't the most affable sort. But he has on occasion demonstrated Chessmaster prowess — and ruthlessness — to rival Machiavelli.
- Kitty, a cute white cat who happens to be a minor villain, from The Powerpuff Girls.
- "Sweet 'N Sour" should probably be placed here.
- The Woodland Critters from South Park.
- Adam Lyon from My Gym Partners A Monkey has a run-in with the "Petting Zoo Kids" in one episode. These are a clique of doe-eyed miniature animals that use cuteness as a cover to pilfer unsuspecting victims who succumb to a "huggie". Adam loses all of his clothes following a few encounters and losing his good judgment around them. Eventually he turns the tables by cornering and shaving off their fur, removing their cute charm.
- The Adventure Time episode "Conquest of Cuteness".
- Lotso Bear from Toy Story 3.
- On Drawn Together, we have a Strawberry Shortcake expy, whose people almost completely exterminated Wooldoor's. Since nobody but the two characters had ever heard of this, we can assume they have been as successful at denying it as the Turks have been in denying the Armenian genocide. Oh, and she tries to kill Wooldoor.
- The Flores from the My Little Pony And Friends episode "Fugitive Flowers" look like cute and harmless talking flowers, but are really monstrous invasive weeds who trick Posey into protecting them from the creepy-looking Crabnasties who are trying to capture them, then proceed to suck all the life out of Posey's garden, transform, and go on a rampage.
- Clare of Titan Maximum, whose bio states "she loves cute things and desires to be the cutest thing in the entire solar system! Oh, and by the way, she’s completely evil."
- The Gigglepies from The Fairly OddParents, who hypnotize people with their cuteness in order to sell their merchandise and destroy planets.
- Darla Dimple from Cats Don't Dance
- Arguably the worst villain on Krypto The Superdog is Snooky Wookums, an adorable kitten with an evil mind (and one of the few villains on the show that is not a pet of some human DC Comics villain).
- The Real Ghostbusters once adopted a potential Scrappy named Vincent, a blue imp that looked like it might have been drawn by Dr. Seuss. And then it turned into Mr. Hyde...
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