Goo-Goo-Godlike

He seems mature enough to handle running a universe.

"Did you hear? Paragus's son was born with a power level of 10,000! 10,000, and only an infant!"

— Saiyan scientists discussing Broly, Dragon Ball Z: Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan

Superpowered, godlike infants and very young children.

Apparently, Plot Leveling happens inside the fictional (and, especially, superheroic) world as well. Not only is it true that Lamarck Was Right about parents passing on their more noteworthy abilities through a number of increasing Evolutionary Levels (never mind that that last bit is there only if you read between the lines really hard), but more powerful people are born chronologically later; just ask anyone who's been to The Future. This trope is most pronounced in those who are currently infants: They don't get any lines or characterization, but they still alter the fate of the world just by existing.

Maybe it's all that Improbable Infant Survival building up and exploding into the world as Pure Energy, or maybe it's just some writer's idea of a "surprising" development, but if you see a baby in any genre which lets people have power disproportionate to their physical and mental ability, that kid is going to be God.

Woe betide any babysitter (or parent) who cannot quite control the baby's immense powers.

Sub-Trope of Superior Successor.

Contrast Puberty Superpower, where your abilities show up later. Happens because of Superpowerful Genetics. Do this on an industrial scale and you get a Bizarre Baby Boom. When one of these goes wrong, it's an Enfant Terrible.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• AKIRA from the eponymous manga is a child with extreme psychokinetic powers. He was so powerful that he had to be sealed away in an underground facility at below freezing temperatures.
• In Beelzebub, the titular character is considered to be one of the strongest demons of the series (quite possibly the strongest with the exception of his father, the Demon King), despite being a baby.
  • Notable that Beel (like all demons) needs to be channeled through a human contractor to achieve anything near his acutal power in the human world and is too young to be able to pull out any of his own power anyway. When he goes to the demon world though...
• Ivan Whisky aka Cyborg 001 in Cyborg 009: he's just a little baby, but has insanely powerful psychic powers and is extremely intelligent.
  • Ivan's also a rather sad subversion: he's a cyborg who was experimented on by his own father first and then by the Black Ghost group, so he will be stuck as a baby forever.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Before the events of Dragon Ball, Goku was sent to Earth because he'd easily be able to wipe out all life on the planet as a newborn baby (later retconned in Dragon Ball Minus where he was actually sent there to escape his home planet's doom). That's not speaking highly of Goku; that's speaking badly of Earth. We're so back-water and worthless that we're not even worth a proper invasion, just send a baby there, let it full-moon-rampage for a few years, then send someone to clean up whatever's left over.
  • Any Saiyan Half-Human Hybrid can be relied on to crush a Big Bad who has otherwise proved unstoppable. Two of the big bads of Dragon Ball Z (Raditz and Cell) are defeated by Goku's son, Gohan, as a toddler and pre-teen respectively. However, it's also subverted in that these power spurts are the result of short-lived moments of Unstoppable Rage; Gohan didn't constantly train and focus to keep up his might or to hold his temper in check, and that's largely why Goku is the one to defeat Frieza and Majin Buu.^note It had originally been intended that Gohan was going to take over as the main character post Cell, but Akira Toriyama changed his mind, believing Goku was a better fit as the protagonist.
  • Both versions of Broly were born with a very high Power Level, making him equal to adult Saiyan veterans like Bardock and King Vegeta. In comparison, Goku was born with a measly power level of two. This led King Vegeta to either execute him as an infant or sent him to a Death World where he will presumably die due to it's harsh conditions. Neither method worked.
  • This grows worse as the series progresses, too: Goku and Vegeta had to go through great suffering to obtain Super Saiyan. Gohan merely had to imagine going through great suffering. Goten merely had to get scared sparring with his mother, and Trunks could do it because Goten did it. Vegeta lampshades this both in Japanese and English.
    Vegeta: Is this some sort of Super Saiyan bargain sale?
  • From Dragon Ball Super we have baby Pan. She can not only fly, but her just powering up destroys Pilaf's battle machine. She is also strong enough to carry Pilaf's gang back to Earth after they shot themselves into the stratosphere.
  • Zeno, also from Super, is the Top God of all 12 universes and has the power to annihilate them all effortlessly. Which his future counterpart does to Future Trunks' timeline when Zamasu infected it. He looks and acts like a little child.
• Labra from Jewelpet is canonically the most powerful of all the Jewelpets. But since she's a baby, most manifestations of her power are during temper tantrums which do more (hilarious) harm than good to her friends.
• Vivio of Lyrical Nanoha, the title character's adopted 6-year-old daughter who slapped around her mother's Super Mode silly during the final battle of the third season and managed to remain conscious while taking five Starlight Breakers at full blast. Being a clone of Sankt Kaiser Olivie, perhaps the most powerful mage in history, explains pretty well why she's so powerful.
• My Hero Academia :
  • Not as bad as most of these, but apparently Present Mic's first cry caused his parents and the doctor who delivered him to all bleed from the ears.
  • Eri is a six-year-old girl with a very powerful and dangerous ability to "rewind" living things to a previous state, which she can't fully control. So far, it's caused her nothing but grief. She accidentally erased her father from existence when her power first awakened, leading her distraught mother to disown her and leave her with her Yakuza grandfather. Eventually her adoptive uncle Kai Chisaki/Overhaul got a hold of her and used her as the basis of his Quirk-destroying drug operation without any care for her well-being. Even after she's rescued, it's noted that her ability isn't one that can be trained easily since it only works on living things and testing it out would put lives at risk.
  • There is an In-Universe theory that the ability of Quirks to strengthen over generations and combine to form new powers will result in the world being destroyed by Quirks too powerful for their users to control. This is given clout by the young children in the Remedial Exam arc, who have unusually strong and esoteric powers that allow them to cause a great deal of trouble.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Brock's Happiny is an amusing case of "doesn't know her own strength". The father of the egg must have been a Granbull...this is of course, ignoring the fact that, at least in the games, Happiny has the lowest attack power of any Pokémon. That may well be intentional.
  • And, to a point, Togepi did in earlier seasons...sort of. Its Metronome was very convenient in many situations, even if none of the cast realized it. In the games, Metronome (which randomly uses almost any move in the game, except for whichever moves the Pokémon actually knows and a handful of other exceptions) is usually too unreliable to be useful. In the anime, though, whenever Togepi used Metronome, you could count on something impressive (and usually explosive) happening.
• Pretty Cure: Chiffon, Ai-Chan, and Hugtan of Fresh Pretty Cure!, Doki Doki Pretty Cure and HuGtto! Pretty Cure fit the bill pretty well as they are babies with incredible power. Chiffon especially, as Fresh's story revolved around trying to protect her, and with the Story-Breaker Power of telekinesis and teleportation, the writers were forced to essentially find a way to put her out of the story in The Movie and the Pretty Cure All Stars movies. Hugtan is also notable since unlike Chiffon and Ai-chan (who are fairies), she's only a human baby despite having very strong magical powers which likely has to do with the fact that she was a Pretty Cure before using the last of her power aged her down into a baby.
• Jururu from the third season of PriPara has the ability to give the idols powerful new coords, as her true form is the goddess Jewlie.
• Hana from Ojamajo Doremi is a baby with incredible magical powers who, unlike the Ojamajos, is a full-blooded witch. Even among witches her power is immense, which makes sense because she was born from a rose that only blooms every once every hundred years in order to birth the next Witch Queen. Her introductory season is all about how the Ojamajos need to raise her properly- not only so she'll grow into a good queen, but because raising her poorly could have bad consequences.
• Sasami of Tenchi Muyo! cheats: she was never born god-like, she was bonded to the goddess Tsunami to save her life. However, thanks to the extreme trauma of it all, she thinks she was revived as a simple vessel for her. She doesn't like talking about it. At all.
• All of the naturally born Mu children from Toward the Terra, but especially Tony who, at the age of three, almost killed a man (deliberately!) with his Psychic Powers.
• While not at all godlike in any way, Hiei of YuYu Hakusho needed to be wrapped in a special cloth and sealed with many talismans because he was surrounded by an aura of fire that was especially hazardous to the ice demons around him.

Comic Books

• Shortly after being born in Aquaman (1962), Aquababy displayed reality-warping powers that got him and the family expelled from Atlantis briefly.
• Alexander Luthor Jr. made his debut as the ultimate MacGuffin in Crisis on Infinite Earths. And from there, he eventually went on to become the Dimension Lord Big Bad of Infinite Crisis.
• Fantastic Four:
  • Him, who would later rename himself Adam Warlock, was so fantastically powerful he was self-aware and capable of defending himself before he was even properly born. His creators were just a little freaked out about this, and had every right to be, as the minute he was fully born (as a full-grown man) Him decided they were evil and tried to annihilate them.
  • Franklin Richards, son of two members of the Fantastic Four, can do literally anything. Basically, Franklin has two separate superpower sets: he is explained as possessing both the cosmic radiation which empowered his parents and being a mutant. Mutants usually acquire their powers during puberty (with physical mutations, such as Nightcrawler's physique, sometime happening sooner), but his are unlocked faster because he inherited power from his parents. Fantastic Four (2018) retcons that Franklin was never a mutant at all, but had such powerful cosmic powers that he literally rewrote himself to be a mutant. He doesn't take it very well at all.
  • The miniseries The Thing: Freakshow has Ben Grimm encountering an infant Watcher who is still quite intelligent and verbal.
• X-Men:
  • Rachel Summers (occasionally going by Rachel Grey) is the time-travelling daughter of Jean Grey and Cyclops, who has all of her mother's powers and power-levels combined with an even greater affinity for the Phoenix, which she successfully controlled for years on end, and some serious time-manipulation abilities. Even at 16, as a horribly stressed, traumatized, and malnourished teenager, she unleashed Xavier level psychic attacks when she felt threatened, and later, nowhere near her current power levels, she created a miniature black hole and subconsciously rewrote her genetic code with her telekinesis.
  • Nathan Christopher Summers is an amusing twist: he generally appears as the time-travelling adult Cable... but as an infant in the 'present', he was actually far more powerful. This is thanks to Apocalypse being pissy and giving Nathan a techno-organic virus, meaning that he has to use the vast majority of his powers to keep in check — and it's sometimes implied that a lifetime of doing so has essentially limited him. It's also a tribute to how powerful he is that he's still often a heavyweight psychic even with those limitations. When the limits came off, he proved capable of simultaneously lifting up the gigantic island of Providence (which he'd been doing for months on end, often in his sleep and on the other side of the world, without anyone being the wiser), fighting the Silver Surfer, reconstructing all the damage they'd done (including reassembling the entire US Navy's Pacific Fleet on an atomic level), and psychically communicating with the Surfer. Rachel, meanwhile, could barely hold up Providence.
  • Meanwhile, Nathan 'Nate' Grey of the Age of Apocalypse was never infected and was shown to be much stronger than his biologically identical counterpart from another mother. In fact, he's the baby of the family, and his raw power was such that he was frequently paralleled with the aforementioned Franklin Richards (they were good friends). On demonstrated power so far (Hope's upper limits haven't yet been seen), he's by far the most powerful — most recently in Age of X-Man, he became a new living plane of reality. The Summers' Tangled Family Tree is so much fun.
  • Cable's evil clone Stryfe was originally far more powerful as well (since he too lacks the techno-organic virus), but not to the extreme levels that Nate Grey reached... as Stryfe was very well aware of, to the point where he tried to steal Nate's power. Cable's power has greatly increased since the last time he fought Stryfe, so they're probably on more even terms now.
  • Gabriel Summers a.k.a. Vulcan, Cyclops's long-foreshadowed second brother. He was artificially aged from two-month-old fetus to adolescence by aliens and has the power to absorb literally any form of matter or energy and fire it back, survive in the vacuum of space, and shut off superpowers. He was described as "beyond Omega-level", but since Omega-level already means a mutant of unlimited potential, the part about being beyond a mutant of unlimited potential is most likely a regretful mistake. Still, he's very powerful - and even despite having next to no training and, to be brutally honest, not much in the way of brains (certainly not compared to his older brothers), he's still capable of taking on entire teams of X-Men and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard (who beat him, but only because of Gladiator).
  • Potentially the strongest of the lot is Hope Summers, who blew up Cerebro when she was born, healed Rogue with a touch as a baby, can fundamentally manipulate the X-Gene and the powers of other mutants, mimic the powers of anyone in range at maximum potential, and was the chosen host of the Phoenix Force — which she is frequently implied to retain a connection to.
  • Mutant X's Scotty Summers, the child of an alternate version of Havok and Madelyne Pryor, is no more than six or seven years old, but can easily demolish the Goblin Force, which had devoured both the Phoenix Force and Galactus, in a psionic battle. He also has practically perfect clairvoyance, can insert projections of himself in others' minds, and can shrug off the mental attacks of Charles Xavier, the most experienced mutant telepath on Earth, with ease.
  • Havok once got help from a Reality Warper named Haven who, despite all appearances, is actually a normal human woman. She's actually deriving her power from the mutant fetus developing within her.
  • Sometimes this applies to even normals. The powerless Dr. Moira MacTaggart, whose status as Professor Xavier's ex-girlfriend was enough to knock her son, Kevin aka Proteus, into major Combo Platter Powers levels. This is later revealed to be because firstly, Moira is actually a powerful mutant in her own life, reincarnating every time she dies, as herself, with all the knowledge of her previous lives. Secondly, she and Charles researched genetically suitable partners to each produce such a mutant (Xavier provided Legion), as they need a Reality Warper to complete their plans.
• A further Marvel Universe example is Hyperstorm, the alternate future child of two of these, Franklin Richards and Rachel Summers. His powers include controlling the fundamental forces of the universe, moving to any point in the universe instantly through hyperspace, and ridiculous levels of psychic power. (He was still vulnerable to being eaten by Galactus, though.) This isn't terribly surprising with a dad who can re-arrange reality and a mum who is so powerful a telekinetic she can create a black hole and then destroy it just as easily, and that doesn't even start on all of her other abilities.
• In the WildStorm universe (home of The Authority, Planetary, and more), several superpowered "century babies" were born in the year 1900. Jenny Sparks, seemingly the most powerful of these, was actually the embodiment of the 20th century, and died shortly after it ended. Thus far, only a single century baby is known to have been born in the year 2000: Jenny Quantum, Sparks' godlike spiritual successor and quite possibly the most powerful being in the WildStorm universe. She's even singlehandedly, effortlessly, defeated Lobo.
• The Blake twins in Spawn are not godlike: one IS God, and the other, Satan. Cyan had also some power over Spawn during her baby years, but now, as a preteen, she has become more of a protegé.
• In the 2018 version of The Avengers, the new Starbrand appears to be a pregnant woman. In fact, it's her baby. Who is adopted by the Avengers. Hilarity Ensues.
• Superman:
  • Superman was originally one of these as a child; these days he's usually portrayed as having Puberty Superpowers. The often unintentionally unsettling "Superbaby" comics and cartoons are a good demonstration of why so many comics try to avoid all this. Kyle Baker did a story called "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter," which was initially pulled from the Elseworlds collection it was destined for as the then-president of DC didn't think Superbaby in a microwave was funny.
  • Ariella Kent, the daughter of an Alternate Universe Superman and Supergirl (they're not cousins in that world) has greater-than-Silver Age Kryptonian powers, plus an array of Psychic Powers and Time Travel. She causes massive collateral damage every time she... well, does anything.
  • In JLA: Act of God, the child of the depowered Supes and Wonder Woman is shown using telekinesis.
  • Jonathan Kent, the son of the pre-Flashpoint Superman and Lois Lane (as seen in Superman: Lois and Clark) has... his poppa's powers. And that's it.
  • Likewise their adopted son, Chris. A full-blooded Kryptonian (the son of Zod and Ursa), he has the full set of powers as soon as he lands on Earth, unlike Clark, who got them over time. Batman made him a Power Limiter to help reign in his Power Incontinence... only for it to eventually explode from holding so much power back, destroying the Kents' apartment.
  • In the epilogue of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, the baby son of Lois Lane and Jordan Elliot (really a depowered Superman living under an alias) plays with a piece of coal and squeezes it into a diamond.
• The Inhumans: Black Bolt nearly destroyed his home just by crying as a child. It is later revealed that his parents experimented on him in utero.
• The baby Celestial born in S.H.I.E.L.D. (2010) #4.
• The Star Child, son of Ken Connell, in The New Universe. Born with the Star Brand already within him (Ken had sex with the child's mother while in possession of the Brand), he's actually pretty damn powerful, going so far as to stop death itself from happening. He later fuses with Ken and his Stable Time Loop older self, takes blame for the White Event and Black Event, then bolts.
• In PS238, this gets deconstructed. One of the main 'villains' considers this an inevitable result if superhumans continue to breed with each other over several generations, and that it will lead to the destruction of the Earth. His entire plan is based on preventing this from ever happening.
• On her fifth birthday Sabrina, in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, threw a tantrum that created a storm inside the house. Apparently this is normal for witch children and her aunts act like any parent scolding an angry child.
• Kobik, also from the Marvel Universe, is a little girl formed from the shards of Cosmic Cubes. She is a Reality Warper just like the Cubes, but other than that seems like a normal little girl. Unfortunately, she does not have a well developed moral compass yet and will assist just about anyone, hero or villain alike, as long as they are nice to her. Kobik also has fond memories of the times a wielder of one of the Cubes reshaped the world and goes to the Red Skull hoping they can have fun together again. The villain is delighted to have his most powerful weapon return to him, and immediately agrees to be "friends" with her.
• Monsters Unleashed: Kei Kawade, better known as Kid Kaiju, can potentially start an invasion of monsters that are all on the level of Fing Fang Foom simply by scribbling in his notebook. His Inhuman ability is so powerful that he can easily occupy every single superhero team on Earth if he just keeps drawing.
• Black Moon Chronicles: The inhabitants of Terra Secunda inadvertently create a new god, the One and Only, after creating a new religion built around said deity. However, because the god was just "born", he is still a young child with omnipotent powers, so Wismerhill has to slowly teach the boy how to be a benevolent god.

Fan Works

• In Aquaman: Monster, Tommy exhibits both Arthur's fish communication and Mera's hard water powers, making him a very formidable infant.
• Being half-fae, Steven in The Crystal Court possesses inherent magical power that he has little control over. He possesses his mother's magical charisma, but without her control, his charm borders on a form of Mind Control. His belief warps reality around him, cartoon characters manifesting for tea-parties and monsters appearing under his bed and in his closet that Pearl has to fend off. Overtime limits are magically imposed by Pearl and Garnet and normalcy is restored.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Jean Grey not only manifested her powers rather earlier than canon, at 6 when she made an unwitting psychic connection with her friend Annie as she was dying. In the process, she ended up meeting Death (something she doesn't remember) and in her psychic scream of distress, unleashed a pulse so strong that it nearly blew up Cerebro and fueled the rumours of 'the Lost Omega' (a fusion of rumours surrounding the Smallville Meteor Shower and said psychic pulse). Oh, and they may well actually go back further, with psychic connections to her younger cousin Harry and to her twin sister, Rachel Grey a.k.a. Maddie Pryor, both being speculated to have developed in utero. Professor X accordingly kept the full extent of her powers from her as he built up her knowledge, control, and morals, until Doctor Strange forced his hand.
  • Harry's not a slouch, either, with Sinister suggesting that his latent psychic powers were active from early childhood, with some of it being mixed up with accidental magic. And then there's the fact that he's technically a baby Phoenix host, with his protection being a fragment of the Phoenix Force. It's a pretty small fragment, smaller than a usual host, but that doesn't stop it literally blowing up in Voldemort's face.
• In Hell's Kitchen, Full of Grace, due to his Superpowerful Genetics, Peter has all of the powers his counterpart had gotten in his teens at birth. While this means he's more intellectually developed for a baby his age, having an awareness of his surroundings more advanced that he should, it also means he has Spider-Sense, making him a rather fussy baby. It's not until Matt was able to anticipate his heart-rate when he was being vaccinated did he and Jessica begin to realize this.

Films — Animation

• Disney's Hercules opens with Herc as a baby strong enough to lift his father Zeus. Even after drinking all but one drop of a potion that would make him mortal, he retains his godlike strength, as shown when he beats up two giant snakes (actually Hades' minions).
• Baby Jack-Jack of The Incredibles shows off several superpowers during the climax and Incredibles 2 shows that he may have as many as 17 different powers, depending on how you count them.
  • The shorts Jack-Jack Attack and Auntie Edna rather hilariously demonstrate even more powers and deconstruct the implication of having to watch over a toddler with quite varied Combo Platter Powers. In a light-hearted moment, Edna calls him a "tiny god" as he's showing off his new supersuit, in reference to her line from The Incredibles where she says "I used to design for gods".
• The LEGO Movie has the premise, plot, and characters as the imaginative playtime of a boy named Finn.

Films — Live-Action

• In Day Watch, Yegor is a super-powerful Dark One able to lead the dark ones (or light ones) to victory over the never ending struggle between the two forces. Naturally he's a small boy who's just about to enter pubescence. He's a lot younger in the first film Night Watch.
• Superman: The Movie: Shortly after arriving on Earth, baby Kal-El effortlessly catches a truck that almost falls on Jonathan Kent.
• In the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey, David Bowman's final, god-like form is the "Star Child", which mostly resembles a human baby.
• Alvey Avery, the titular Son of the Mask.

Literature

• Joe from The New Humans, who is first introduced as a flying infant with godlike powers.
• Eriond from The Belgariad and The Malloreon. He becomes a literal god in the end.
• In The Dresden Files, we have Ivy. 8 years old and acts as the Archive for all human knowledge. Having all human knowledge makes her an incredibly powerful spellcaster, able to take down fallen angels with only the magic within her tiny body.
• Discworld: Sourcery presents Coin the Sourcerer. Shortly after being born, he gets hit by lightning and merely absorbs its power. By the time he's ten, he's the most powerful force in the world.
• Charlie McGee, the eponymous incredibly powerful pyrokinetic of Stephen King's Firestarter. She's 7 when the story begins, but her powers first manifested when she was a baby.
• Two years after Coin, Terry Pratchett co-wrote Good Omens with Adam the 11 year old Antichrist, who shares quite a few traits with Coin.
• It's a Good Life by Jerome Bixby, famously adapted for TV on The Twilight Zone (1959). Anthony Fremont is a three-year-old (six in The Twilight Zone) Reality Warper, he can use People Puppets, he has Telepathy... and he's an instant generator of horror. His daughter makes it better.
• Baby Prudence of The Parasol Protectorate is a type of being referred to in supernatural circles by such endearing titles as "Flayer" and "Stealer of Souls"; the vampires of London are so afraid of her that they make repeated attempts (none of them successful) to kill her in the womb. We find out why shortly after she is born.
• During the epilogue chapters of Solo Leveling: Sung Jin-Woo gets called by his wife to warn him that their infant son, Su-Ho, is flying, and later even able to slip into Jin-Woo's Shadow Dimension. Eventually realizing that the powers Su-Ho inherited from him and his mother might deprive him from a normal childhood and friends, Jin-Woo seals Su-Ho's power away for when he is ready. He eventually starts training Su-Ho through his dreams once he becomes a teenager. The spin-off/sequel Solo Leveling Ragnarok has Su-Ho sowly inheriting his father's powers as part of the plot.
• In Robin McKinley's Spindle's End (an expansion of the various "Sleeping Beauty" stories) magic permeates everything and the "Fairies" are actually normal people who happen to have the inborn ability to control it. The Fairy condition may not necessarily be hereditary and most Fairies come into their power as teens. However, a few Fairies manifest powers very early, a phenomenon known in the novel as "Baby Magic". As cutesy as that sounds, it's actually very dangerous and unpredictable, especially because you never know how those powers will manifest. A baby Fairy may be able to intuitively understand Animal Talk. Or, they may be able to transform the nanny into a terrier and pull a One-Winged Angel act every time they have a tantrum...
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch: Rebecca Sisko, the daughter of the Emissary, who one Bajoran splinter group believes is the Avatar of Peace. Thus far her only displayed power has been the ability to hit the Reset Button when something bad is about to happen to her, and then send a burst of energy to attract attention, but even that effectively makes her a Reality Warper.
• In Fiona Patton's Tales of the Branion Realm fantasy series, the royal family has very literal divine right, in the form of a pact with a fire god. The members have flaming eyes, and this gives their children an eerily adult expression. In one book, an assassin assigned to murder a newborn prince has a religious epiphany when she looks into the child's eyes. In another, a five-year-old inherits the throne and the power, and muses aloud about being able to blow things up with her mind, alarming the adults around her.
• Played with in Touch (2017). Twelve-year-old James is noted as being one of the most powerful mages in the world, though currently he hasn't been trained enough to use more than his default gifts. While he might be too old for this trope, his five-year-old sister Bex apparently would be even stronger, though she hasn't manifested yet.
• Discussed in The Witling. Azhiri Psychic Powers are constant throughout a person's lifespan, so particularly Talented Azhiri make for terrifyingly powerful children. The Guild rounds up dangerously Talented children to teach them how to not be Enfant Terribles, but occasionally they miss one.
  Prou: I don't remember my family. I was less than a year old when the Guild took me. It was a lucky thing, too: occasionally the Guild will miss a child, which can be horrible for the village he's born into. There are cases of super-Talented kids just taking over isolated villages, killing anyone who opposes their whims. Children like that should be raised by equally Talented adults—Guildsmen—who can plant consciences in them.
• Surprise Golem from Xanth appears to be one of those initially, but turns out to have a significant handicap later on (though the handicap is less significant than it initially seems). Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm are legitimate examples.

Live-Action TV

• Isabelle from The 4400 is extremely powerful as an adult in series three and four, but back in series two she was just a baby, and still powerful enough to terrify her own father. When her family is being pursued by rednecks, the infant Isabelle mentally forces them to kill each other. She was even powerful enough to temporarily incapacitate Jordan Collier while still in the womb.
• Charmed (1998):
  • Piper's son will be the ultimate agent of either good or evil. This is mostly due to the fact that he's a son of both a Whitelighter and a Charmed One.
  • Phoebe's son was also destined to be an ultimate agent of either good or evil, since it was the child of The Source and a Charmed One. It didn't go well. Or for long.
• In Falling Skies, the alien Espheni tamper with Tom Mason and Anne Glass's child, creating Lexi, a psychic hybrid they mean to use to put an end to Earth's resistance as well as the Espheni-Volm war. In the season 3 finale, Lexi uses her powers to fly an Espheni starship into the Espheni's power plant on the moon, shutting down the Espheni war machine on Earth.
• Doctor Zee from Galactica 1980 is one of these. Although he doesn't have any "magical" powers per sé, even as a young teenager his intellect is vastly greater than any other human in the fleet. He has saved the fleet from the Cylons "countless times in the past", created "super-science" weapons and vehicles, and has now guided them to Earth... and it is revealed in the final episode that he is the "spiritual" child of Starbuck and one of the Seraphs, the "Beings of Light" encountered in the original series.
• Ghost Whisperer: Melinda's future child will have more/different powers over spirits then his mother; just what those powers are haven't been revealed yet, but it's enough to disturb the spirit world into haunting Mel with faceless children and books of doom.
• Grogu from The Mandalorian. Despite being only an infant (at least by the standards of his Long-Lived species, since he's actually fifty years old), he already has some awareness of how to use the Force, being able to lift a rampaging Mudhorn off the ground, heal wounds, and even Force-choke someone he sees as a threat. The fact that he's a Living MacGuffin for an Imperial Holdout implies that he's seriously powerful despite how young he is, and while he initially suffers from a Power-Strain Blackout, his abilities are gradually getting stronger.
• On one episode of Misfits, an infant (unbeknownst to his single mother) has mind-control abilities that he uses to force Nathan to want to be his father, which culminates in Nathan actually attempting to kidnap the baby. Everyone is at a loss for how to save Nathan without hurting the relatively innocent baby, until they just let him demonstrate what a terrible job he would do, and the kid decides maybe he'd rather not have this guy for a dad.
• The Genius Ditz superhero Thermoman in British sitcom My Hero (2000) had a son, Ollie, who was just as powerful as his father — but also twice as intelligent.
• Elizabeth Maxwell from V (1983) is the only known successful offspring between a human and a Visitor. She shows unusual powers from birth, aging at a rapid rate to the point that she is the equivalent of an 8-year-old mere hours after birth. In the series finale, she uses previously unknown powers to disable the Visitors' Self-Destruct Mechanism meant to destroy the Earth. Her powers continue to increase in the TV series that followed.

Myths & Religion

• In Norse Mythology, Thor's son Magni was only "three nights old" when he was able to free his father from under the giant Hrungnir's foot, a feat none of the other gods could do.
  • The god Váli was conceived for the specific purpose of avenging his fallen half-brother, Balder. He grew up in one day and killed Hoder, who had been tricked into killing Balder by Loki.
• Greek Mythology:
  • Hercules. His first heroic act was before he was a month old, when he killed two serpents created by Hera to take out him (and his normal twin Iphicles) with his bare hands. This was discovered by his parents when baby Herc was found using the dead snakes as rattles.
  • Prometheus warned Zeus against this: Prometheus told him that a certain nymph named Thetis would bear a son who would be more powerful than his father. So they married her off to a mortal hero, the myrmidon King Peleus, and her son was "merely"... Achilles.
  • Hermes, according to the Homeric Hymn dedicated to him, was one day old when he walked across the countryside, stole a herd of cattle from the god Apollo, drove them back to his mother's cave while cleverly covering their tracks, sacrificed and burned one or two of them, and invented the lyre. Apollo was not amused, and chased Hermes all the way up to Olympus. Hermes then talked his way out of punishment.
• The apocryphal early Christian text the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas" treats Jesus Christ as an example of this.
• Islamic tradition recognizes Jesus as a Prophet of God, a miracle worker, and born of a virgin (though not God himself). One such miracle was an incident where he performed one of his famous Shaming the Mob speeches from his crib as an infant.
• Hindu Mythology has numerous stories of Krishna performing amazing feats while still a child. Aside from killing several demons sent by his Evil Uncle, he once turned a collection of wheat into gold and jewels (for a nice lady who had given him some mangoes) and has the entire universe inside of his mouth (including himself, somehow).

Radio

• The Big Finish Doctor Who audio "The Holy Terror" features a child who has been kept by his wicked father in a dungeon all his life, exposed to no external voices, so he can learn the language of God. When the child is released, it has become God, and sets out to kill everyone it can in order to find its "real" father. (This character was an influence for the Empty Child from Series 1 of the revival series of Doctor Who.)
• That Gosh Darn Hippie Show: In The Twilight Zone (1959) Parody Episode, Anthony sounds around three, and probably isn’t any older than six. He’s still basically omnipotent.

Roleplay

• The Ever-Child from Embers in the Dusk. An Honoured Greater Daemon of the Chaos Undivided born from a powerful psyker child who was intended to be sacrificed for a Chaos Lord's ascension ritual. Instead, they struck back at their captor, wiping out millions of people alongside him and amusing the Gods to get ascended in place of the Chaos Lord. Afterwards, they remained a child mentally, a completely insane child seeing everything in terms of children's games, even on battlefields.
  • Higher-level psykers in general, who tend to develop their powers at very young ages. When they lose control of their powers and go rogue, these toddlers can be responsible for the destruction of large swathes of hives and the deaths of billions.

Tabletop Games

• In Warhammer 40,000 lore, the anticipated future reincarnation of The Emperor of Mankind is called the "Star Child", and it is believed he will possess all the powers of the Emperor from birth.

Video Games

• Genshin Impact: Though she looks and acts like a five-year-old, Klee is one of the most powerful Vision users in Mondstadt, rivaling Diluc, Eula, Kaeya, and Jean. The latter two must keep a close eye on her to prevent her from accidentally hurting or killing someone with her explosives. Her "Vision" story entry states that she got her Vision at an early age.
• Kirby. The little pink Eldritch Abomination slayer with a bottomless stomach is specifically said in the anime based on the games to be a baby, and he acts like one.
• Pokémon: Lorewise, Cosmog is one of these, as it holds enough power to open portals to an alternate dimension full of Eldritch Abominations, from which it is said to come from. Said power, however, doesn't apply to battle: it has very low base stats, only learns Splash and Teleport^note two no-effect moves that actually prevent it from attacking due to their high PP keeping Cosmog from using Struggle for at least 40 turns if you remember to delete one of them and needs to evolve twice in order to learn any move that can cause some form of damage. Since it becomes a powerful Olympus Mons with control over its powers at the end though, it's worth the journey.
• Hand Waved in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, it's stated that Eoleo got the same Psynergy Stone exposure that a few others got in the course of the first game. Additionally, he's on par with everybody else in Dark Dawn, so maybe Adept kids are just a handful like that.
• Zettai Hero Project: The main story is about Dark Death Evilman kidnapping the Super Baby, a designer child with superpowers. She seems fairly harmless, as her physical self just levitates in place right next to DDE, but over the course of the story it's revealed that she manifested an older astral projection who has been "helping" the protagonist (with her baseball bat and enough home runs to win a major league) so she can make a buttload of money to please her mother, and is the true source of DDE's power. Most of the plot is actually about teaching the Super Baby (and her 'brother') about the true meaning of heroism so that they will stop abusing their world-destroying powers like the spoiled children that they are.
• Pakko from Gigantic is a young frost titan and acts like a small child. Despite this he is one of the largest characters in the game, possesses enormous strength and is capable of freezing anything in his path.
• Sonic the Hedgehog has small, fairy like beings called Chao. They act like toddlers and are generally adorable creatures, but they have the power to reincarnate over and over again like a Phoenix. If the player follows specific instructions after the Chao has reincarnated at least 2 times, the Chao will evolve into a Chaos Chao, becoming truly immortal.
• Whenever Yoshi obtains a Super Star in the Yoshi's Island games, Baby Mario transforms into Superstar Mario and becomes capable of running around while being virtually invincible against anything but Bottomless Pits. This is averted in Yoshi's New Island, where Yoshi is the one who turns invincible.
• Path of Exile: The Maven is one of the final bosses of the Atlas bonus dungeon, a threat to the entire planet, and the eqivalent of a sheltered little girl playing with her 'dollies'. To 'defeat' her, you need to deal enough damage that she feels a scratch - but this causes her to realize she isn't playing the equivalent of a video game and you're a real person. She makes friends with you and leaves.
• The characters Squares in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is an extremely powerful God that completely outclasses Marle (the Goddess who created him), and he uses his power to create a dystopia from the fundamental misunderstanding of Marle's utopia of fun. Marle created him in the first place out of boredom and loneliness, but his frustration with her unwillingness to change the world to something more fun led him to revolt and create the conflict of the story. By the end of the narrative, just as they manage to start defeating Squares in a series of battles to weaken his power, the group realizes that Squares physically resembles a grown adult man, but is no different than a baby. He lacks any form of self-awareness, life experience, or moral understanding, and his actions are that of a confused child trying to give his mom exactly what he thinks she wants mixed with the mentality of an adult's abstract reasoning.

Webcomics

• This is the entire premise of minus., a webcomic about an omnipotent little girl. The title character has created and destroyed entire worlds while playing. Frequently involves disturbing Fridge Logic / Fridge Brilliance which proves that even a sweet-tempered, happy little kid like minus can do some mind-warpingly horrible things when given godlike power. The comic is full of one-shots and brief arcs, the last of which involved a well-meaning young couple convincing her to use her powers to make the world better, ultimately leading to the resurrection of everyone who had ever died. EVER. Which in turn led to the death by crushing or suffocation of all life on Earth. It's not quite the Downer Ending it sounds like.
• Jareth the Monster Roommate of the Roommates cast was a scarily powerful child. Why is he mentioned here? Because he was born with Time Master powers (amongst other things), which means his child self can appear in the present of the comic to everybody's great annoyance. For the record, he comes from a long line of mindbogglingly powerful magical villains and we still got a picture with him and his dad where you get the distinct Badly Battered Babysitter vibes from said parent.
• In Axe Cop, Unibaby is a humanlike baby girl with a horn that can grant wishes. It seems to detach and reattach quite easily, so several characters have made some serious mayhem as a result of granting their own selfish wish.
• Baby Clouder in the photo webcomic Hearts of Plastic. Starting off as just an innocent baby, Clouder has evolved into a near all powerful being. He can blast holes in Heaven, has caught the Grim Reaper in a pokeball, is able to lift Thor's hammer, and frightens the Illuminati (made up of the Time Lord/Chaos God Mr. Chaos, Da Vinci, Ganthet, and Yoda).
• The Monster in the Darkness from The Order of the Stick is a very young ... whatever he is. Yet he already has incredible strength (which he doesn't realise) and has done magic by accident.
• The new Saber in Learning with Manga! FGO is not the heavily pregnant woman— it's her unborn baby. As a result, while the readers have enough hints who most of the new Servants are, Saber's identity and powers are still a complete unknown.

Web Original

• My Son Zack is a short film that explores this trope from the point of view of the godlike child's (understandably deeply stressed) parent. And it is one heck of a Tear Jerker...
• Jeannette of Funny Business has had her powers since birth. This led to problems when she was a toddler, and also shows what happens when one of these grows older and realizes how irresponsible they were when younger.
• The SCP Foundation's SCP-239. An 8-year-old girl. Everything she wants becomes true. The Foundation managed to limit her powers by telling her she's a witch and giving her a spellbook, potentially limiting her to only using spells from the book. They later put her in a chemically-induced coma because her existence is too big a risk. And there are plans to kill her to permanently eliminate any further threats she poses.

Western Animation

• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • Wanda and Cosmo's Baby Poof is "the most powerful baby in the universe". His father Cosmo also was very powerful as a baby, and he was why Jorgen outlawed fairy babies in the first place.
  • Foop. He gains godhood, drains the power of 2 planets, defeats Jorgen Von Strangle, sends a plague upon Dimmsdale, and changes said planets within an hour of his life, EFFORTLESSLY, with nothing but a bottle. His only weaknesses are his mindset and normal weaknesses of a newborn.
• Parodied on an episode of Futurama where the Planet Express Crew and the stars of Star Trek: The Original Series end up on a planet controlled by the seemingly omnipotent energy being Melllvar. Towards the end his mother shows up and tells him he'll be late for dinner, making Fry remark that all that time Melllvar was simply a child. The mother's response?
  Melllvar's Mother: He's no child! He's 34!
• In Gargoyles, Alexander Xanatos is descended from The Fair Folk, and while his half-fairy mother's power has withered to basically nothing, he's getting training pretty much from birth. At only a few months old, he's able to transfer souls between bodies. Fortunately for now, he has one limitation—he can't actually talk to do the spells. The only time we see him do magic himself is when he's using Lexington as a (somewhat-)Willing Channeler.
• Gravity Falls has the aptly-named Time Baby, who appears to be an all-powerful, god-like being from the future.
• Justice League Unlimited: The episode "Kid Stuff" features Mordred Le Fay, an immortal child who gains his godlike abilities when he steals an all powerful amulet from his mother. He banishes all of the adults in the world to a parallel dimension, forcing the Justice League to revert to children to stop him. Mordred is eventually defeated when he's tricked into turning himself into an adult, banishing him in accordance with his spell. Unfortunately for Mordred, his stunts have drained the magic from the amulet, taking away his eternal youth, but not his Eternal Life. The episode ends with him as an immortal husk, decrepit, weak, and not getting any younger.
• The Legend of Korra, the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender, has Korra, the new Avatar. She first displayed bending skills in three of the four elements at the age of five. However, she doesn't actually manage to learn airbending until several years (and a few traumatizing months) later.
• The Puppeteer from Miraculous Ladybug is one of the youngest people on the show so far to be akumatized (being Manon, a young girl whom Marinette occasionally babysits). Arguably, she's also the most powerful, not to mention having gotten the closest to getting Ladybug and Chat Noir's Miraculouses. It helped that Marinette had told her the usual motivation of akuma victims earlier that day.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the episode "The Crystalling", Twilight Sparkle and her friends meet Shining Armor and Cadance's newborn foal, Flurry Heart...who happens to be the first pony born an alicorn since the founding of Equestria. She not only has the strength of an earth pony, the magic of a unicorn, and the flight of a pegasus, but her powers are far above those of other newborn ponies, and even some full-grown ones! However, she suffers from Power Incontinence: she's a newborn foal and all foals tend to have bursts of their powers strike up. In her case, her sneezes cause her to blow holes in the castle via her unicorn magic and her crying actually destroys the Crystal Heart. Starlight Glimmer's foalhood friend Sunburst has to create a Power Limiter spell to keep that magic under control. Even when her magic outbursts are contained, "A Flurry of Emotions" shows Flurry Heart is still quite capable of deliberate use of very powerful magic that can give Twilight Sparkle a run for her money.
  • A few seasons earlier, in the episode "Baby Cakes", Mr. and Mrs. Cake's infant foals Pumpkin Cake and Pound Cake are shown to have abilities way above what the adult ponies exhibit even when exerting themselves. It takes Pinkie Pie everything she has to prevent them from destroying the house.
  • In the series finale Cozy Glow becomes this after siphoning the magic of Discord. She turns into an Alicorn and effortlessly takes down Celestia and Luna.
• The Collector from The Owl House is essentially a Physical God with the mind of a preschooler, whose true form looks like a little kid in a onesie. Their main motivation is wanting to play, and they don't seem to be able to grasp concepts like death, morality, or people's willingness to take advantage of them. After being freed, they gleefully declare a game of tag before reducing Belos to a smear on the wall with a flick of their finger. When told that the "Owl House" game needs a whole island worth of players and the ones available are being drained of heir life force thanks to a ritual powered by an eclypse, they literally move the moon away with a finger like he was using a touch screen. They then rip the Titan's Head apart to create a gameboard for the new game they want to play, and start tantruming when King and the others try to escape the world collapsing around them.
• One Pinky and the Brain episode had the duo discover the baby Kal-El before the Kents. Although Brain initially wants to turn the kid into a Tyke Bomb after seeing his amazing powers, he eventually realizes he's not cut out to raise a kid, let alone one with superpowers. Pinky and the Brain return Kal-El to his ship, right before the Kents arrive.
• The Powerpuff Girls are physically five-year-old girls with extraordinary superpowers. This is shown well in The Movie, where they wreck the city by simply playing tag.
• Right Now Kapow has a short sketch involving this. In an inversion of a well known fact, everytime the infant in the sketch closes his eyes, his mother literally ceases to exist. She is horrified upon discovering this. Cessation of Existence is scarier after all. The baby lies down for a nap at the end of the sketch. Poor lady.
• The Simpsons: Bart Simpson's dream in Treehouse of Horror II is a parody of "It's a Good Life," (featured above) where he takes the place of Anthony, terrorizing Springfield and forcing everyone to be happy or get punished.
• The Smurfs: Baby Smurf is enchanted and often demonstrates magic powers when a Deus ex Machina is required without the other Smurfs' knowledge with the lone exception of Papa.
• Wakfu: In Season 3, Eva and Sadlygrove's third child is shaping up to be this, blowing even his older demigod siblings out of the water. While still in the womb, he has enough power to threaten to destroy Oropo's tower and possibly the entire pocket dimension, requiring both Oropo and Adamai using the Six Eliatrope Dofus to counteract the destruction (for reference, Adamai using the Six Eliatrope Dofus by himself already makes him the equal of an actual god).
  Oropo: A test of willpower against a newborn. If it didn't hurt so much, it'd be funny!

---