Sometimes you get lucky, and the
Mysterious Waif you adopted becomes a
well-adjusted and welcome addition to the family. Other times...not.
For the sake of the story, the young couple will have no idea anything is wrong, but
tropers will know right away there's something not right with this newcomer. She's a
Creepy Child, who looks like she strolled out of the
Uncanny Valley. It's not long before things start going wrong around her.
Pets start acting up. Things go missing. There are
fires. Injuries.
Nocturnal birds of prey show up
everywhere.
As if they don't have enough to worry about, the couple's biological child is making up crazy stories about how the orphan is planning to
kill them all in their sleep!
They will be ignored. Sometimes one or both of the parents figure it out
at the very last minute. Sometimes
it falls to the children to stop her.
Feminine pronouns are used because
Evil Orphans are most times little girls but evil little boys are hardly uncommon.
The Evil Orphan is the modern-day incarnation of the
Changeling Tale. It uses the tried-and-true horror of
Subverted Innocence and the
Devil in Plain Sight, as there is little that can compare to the fear and revulsion of discovering that
one has been succoring evil incarnate in one's own home.
Expect anything of the
Ungrateful Bastard, but be particularly on the lookout for those that
play on her youth, like the
Wounded Gazelle Gambit. May cause
Fridge Horror when the audience wonders
just how she became an orphan in the first place. Incorporates any and every trope having to do with with
Creepy Children. See also
Enfant Terrible.
The polar opposite of the
Heart Warming Orphan.
Examples:
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Anime
- Johan from Monster, is the monsterin the title.
- Rosemary from Ashitano Nadja didn't start as this, but she got in the role very quickly after a major Freak Out caused by seeing that her old friend Nadja was the one living her formerly innocent dream.
- While Orochimaru of Naruto didn't defect from Konoha until around 10 years before the start of the story, the Third Hokage noticed there was something unsettling about him after he lost his parents. He largely turned a blind eye to it because of his talent.
- Mukuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is adopted by another family but soon uses the man taking care of him to kill off the entire family.
Film
- Exploited in The Good Son: the evil one is the kid with both parents, but he manipulates the people around to make it look like his innocent, half-orphaned cousin is the bad seed.
- The Omen. The boy Damien is an orphan substituted for the couple's real child, who died shortly after birth.
- The antagonist of Thor and The Avengers, Loki, had this trope forced on him, seeing as he was lied to his entire life about his parentage. He didn't become evil until he was found out he was adopted.
Literature
- The novel Hogfather features Mr. Teatime, who was taken in by the Assassin's Guild after both his parents died suddenly when he was very young. In the words of guildmaster Lord Downey, "In hindsight, perhaps we should have looked into that a bit more."
- Harry Potter:
- Lord Voldemort was raised in a Muggle orphanage, where he spent his free time bullying the other children in a variety of cruel and magical ways. He became an orphan in the first place by his own hand.
- Harry himself is an aversion, as is Teddy in the last book.
- Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. His Freudian Excuse is relatively strong, but at any rate, he ends up a usurping beast of pure spite, and his intentions are just that.
- Discussed in A Brothers Price. In a case of Deliberate Values Dissonance, adoption is seen as "a hidden evil". When a family commits treason, if it's not believed to be divided then every member down to the youngest is killed to prevent a Cycle of Revenge or You Killed My Father situation. There is treason in the book, and while Ren does not want to kill her five-year-old 'niece' Eldie, her sister ruthlessly reminds her that none of the child's relatives will take them, and if they take the child, Eldie will eventually know why their family was killed and turn on them.
Live Action TV
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has the very Creepy and Insufferable Genius Hannah, whose parents have died (the details are never explained) by her second appearance. In her first appearance she gets her brother off a murder charge (albeit an accidental one). In her second she frames him and Drives Him To Suicide to keep him dependent on her. She also Breaking Speeches Sara, possibly contributing to her decision to go on a vacation to the rainforest.
- Supernatural has a young girl in the first season who not only cut the throats of her biological and adoptive families, but made it look like her adoptive father did it. Then she did it to people who owned a painting of her adoptive family.
- Considering how ugly that painting was...And that they knew it has a bad reputation of previously deceased owners...Maybe they had it coming.
- Alexander on Smallville is an infant clone of Lex Luthor. Tess Mercer hoped that by raising him to be good, she could save him from the Luthor legacy. Unfortunately, Alexander has all of Lex's memories, and is aging very rapidly to boot. As of "Luthor" he's gone AWOL, and is out there, somewhere, plotting revenge on her and Clark. Eventually inverted, since he ended up losing these memories and becoming Superboy.
Video Games
- During a questline in World Of Warcraft Alliance players encounter Hope Saldean, a friendly young lady who was adopted by the Saldean couple four years earlier. While Hope seemingly spends much of the Westfall-storyline feeding the homeless, a shadowy figure is gathering the old members of the Defias Brotherhood. In the end Hope reveals herself to be Vanessa Vancleef, the daughter of Defias leader Edwin Vancleef, who has been secretly plotting against the Kingdom of Stormwind the whole time.
- Whole bunch of them in Rule of Rose, though all have their own Freudian Excuse, and you will end up feeling more pity than loathing for them by the end. Wendy tops all the others by making the others kill Jennifer's dog, and then setting a serial killer loose on the orphanage. All because Jennifer didn't love her alone.
- Clive in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, who lost his parents in a time machine explosion 10 years ago, and schemed to take vengeance on the people responsible with the money he inherited from his adoptive mother.
Western Animation
- FamilyGuy spoofs this with Stewie's pet turtle.
