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| 8 | |
| 9 | ->''"Where were you hiding all these kids up til now? I assume they were all just sleeping peacefully in their beds. No need to traumatize beyond the occasional holiday cameo, am I right?"'' |
| 10 | -->-- '''Pietro''', ''Series/WandaVision'' |
| 11 | |
| 12 | On TV, babies seem to be able to [[ImprobableInfantSurvival miraculously survive any threat]], even when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. In violent video games, children show up so rarely the player suspects that they don't even exist. (If they ''are'' all missing or dead, you have a ChildlessDystopia.) |
| 13 | |
| 14 | This is because the {{Media Watchdog}}s won't allow it. Watching children be killed is bad enough, but [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential allowing the player to do it themselves]]? Not a chance. As a result, children will often be conspicuously absent in video games - [[LordBritishPostulate if they were there, somebody would try to kill them]]. [[HandWave Maybe it's a school day.]] If they make an appearance, it's likely the game will prohibit you from causing them harm. Occasionally, a daring game will go out of its way and avert this trope, in which case you can expect an [[RatedMForMoney AO-rating]], [[MoralGuardians media controversy]], and possibly poor sales on top of it all. [[EveryoneHasStandards Even Hardcore Gamers Have Standards.]] |
| 15 | |
| 16 | This is especially common in [[WideOpenSandbox freeworld/sandbox]] games in which you have the option to do just about anything (read: kill random people on the street). |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Note that if the child character is the ''[[KidHero protagonist]]'', all bets are off: brutal acts carried out upon children are perfectly fine as long as the child is the player's character. And of course, games with more stylized or cartoony graphics and no blood or gore are usually allowed to get away with depicting kids dying, or even letting you fight or kill them yourself. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Compare ThereAreNoAdults, in which the adults are missing. |
| 21 | ---- |
| 22 | !!Examples: |
| 23 | |
| 24 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 25 | |
| 26 | [[folder:Action Adventure]] |
| 27 | * There are no children in the ''VideoGame/{{Overlord}}'' series, except a few in ''Overlord: Dark Legend'' (who are conveniently invincible, and you're supposed to be helping anyway). When you're playing the Witch Boy before his Overlord days in ''Overlord II'', the children there are invincible, but in retribution for their bullying and tormenting you, you get to chase them down, harass and torment them, and finally strand them naked in a secret clubhouse while your minions use their clothes as a disguise. |
| 28 | * In ''VideoGame/TheGetaway1'', Alex Hammond appears to be the only child in the whole Greater London area. |
| 29 | * There are three kids that show up in ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs'': protagonist Joel’s daughter Sarah, {{Deuteragonist}} Ellie, and a boy named Sam who’s your companion for one of the chapters. Ellie says she’s excited to go to Joel’s brother Tommy’s town because there are probably kids there for her to hang out with. Tommy confirms this to her when they get there, but none of them actually show up. The [[VideoGame/TheLastOfUsPartII sequel]] adds more kids but they're mostly hidden in non-combat sections. Siblings Yara and Lev, who are 16 and 13, are the youngest characters in the "open" sections of the game. Ellie and Dina have a snowball fight with some of the kids in town at the beginning before any combat section and the latter's son, JJ, is also hidden in an exploration-only segment post-TimeSkip. While playing as Abby, you go through the WLF's school with some very young kids shown but it's also just an exploration segment that takes place before any fighting starts. |
| 30 | [[/folder]] |
| 31 | |
| 32 | [[folder:Action Game]] |
| 33 | * A level in ''VideoGame/GodOfWarI'' features Athens burnt to the ground, with random civilians running around all over the place, whom you can kill if you so desire. No children are present. There is ''one child'' that appears in the game, the daughter of TheProtagonist, Kratos. She is already dead before the game begins, because she was killed along with her mother by Kratos's own hand, and only appears in flashbacks. This is a vitally important part of Kratos's backstory, as he is constantly haunted by the knowledge that he was personally responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter. |
| 34 | * ''VideoGame/TheIncredibleHulkUltimateDestruction'': it's possible for Hulk to kill random civilians, but not children. |
| 35 | * In the console version of ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2'', countless adults get injured and mugged and it's up to you to save them, but the only scenario in which you have to help a child is when they let go of a helium balloon and you have to go and save it, in increasingly improbable places and times (like 2 AM in the morning in the middle of Queens). |
| 36 | -->'''Stupid Kid:''' ''I LOST MY'' '''BALLOO-HOO-HOON!''' |
| 37 | * In ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'', the only child is [[spoiler:shown after the credits after all the bloodshed is over]]. In ''[[VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle Desperate Struggle]]'', [[spoiler:the only child in the game, Matt Helms, is immortal, since he made a [[DealWithTheDevil pact with Satan]]. Also, [[SelfMadeOrphan he's a killer himself]], and [[HumanoidAbomination rarely looks like a kid]]]]. ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroesIII'' doesn't feature any children at all (Midori and Kamui, despite their looks, are young adults; and the former survives her defeat against Travis anyway). |
| 38 | [[/folder]] |
| 39 | |
| 40 | [[folder:First-Person Shooter]] |
| 41 | * Justified in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2''. The Combine have suppressed human reproduction for many years (it varies between 10 and 20 years, depending on where you look), so City 17 is populated only by adults. The children all grew up. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the first chapter when Gordon comes across an empty playground — cue ghostly laughter of children. Also, in ''Episode One'', Resistance members will occasionally say "I'm glad there's no kids around to see this." Doctor Kleiner also states in ''Episode One'', after Gordon and Alyx [[spoiler:take out the Citadel]], that the Combine's Suppression Field has been deactivated and allows humans to produce children again and awkwardly advises the Resistance and all surviving citizens who aren't still in City 17 to "get busy" doing their part to repopulate the species. |
| 42 | * Despite several towns decimated by a zombie pandemic, there are no child zombies in ''VideoGame/Left4Dead''. Taken to extremes in the "Dark Carnival" campaign in ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'', which takes place in a AmusementParkOfDoom without any children. Supposedly this is because the green flu everyone is infected with simply kills children, but this begs the question of why there aren't any corpses. |
| 43 | * Played with in ''VideoGame/TheDarkness''. At one point in the game, [[spoiler:an orphanage is blown up as an act of revenge against the protagonist]]. Everything is relatively cleaned up by the time you enter it, but there's still the matter of the [[spoiler:police-drawn chalk outlines of children's bodies strewn all over the floor]]. |
| 44 | * In one level of ''VideoGame/{{SWAT 4}}'', you are pitted against a cult and told to expect children inside. Naturally, it would be [[MoralGuardians very problematic]] to have you deal with children as hostages, so the game seems to be in a irreconcilable position. The solution? As you proceed through the level you see cribs, childlike decorations, and stuffed animals — but no children. [[spoiler:Finally, in the basement, you find numerous tiny graves with farewell messages scrawled on the wall, the implication being that the cult members murdered their own children. [[note]]Yes, apparently, implying that children were murdered en masse off-screen [[SkewedPriorities is better]] than giving the player an opportunity to rescue them, even if it risks hurting them in the process. By the way, the previous sentence was [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential only partially sarcastic]].[[/note]]]] |
| 45 | * Unlike the previous games, ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'' contains zero children in-game. You can see some silhouettes of children inside capsule rooms in the Alice Garden Ponds, but those are just textures you can't interact with in any meaningful way. |
| 46 | [[/folder]] |
| 47 | |
| 48 | [[folder:MMORPG]] |
| 49 | * ''VideoGame/CantrII'': Everyone spawns [[note]]the term generally used for when a new character is created[[/note]] at the age of twenty. |
| 50 | * Players of ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' have a running joke in that the entire city lacks any children save for one, who stands in the middle of a zone infested with hostile alien monstrosities with all the invincibility of a non-targetable {{NPC}}. There are also no educational facilities below university level, although school books are occasionally mentioned as a MacGuffin to save. |
| 51 | * Children [=NPCs=] are invincible in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', even when you try to kill kids from opposing faction. There is even a holiday event in the game called Children's Week, where players can act as a "big brother/sister" to a child from an orphanage by allowing the child to accompany them while they go about their normal activities. Predictably, enemies that the player might battle while the child is present will never attack the child. Even if the player is hit by an area-of-effect attack, the child will not be affected. |
| 52 | [[/folder]] |
| 53 | |
| 54 | [[folder:Platform Game]] |
| 55 | * There are no young children in the ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxter'' games, aside from the kid who appears in ''VideoGame/JakIIRenegade''. |
| 56 | [[/folder]] |
| 57 | |
| 58 | [[folder:Real Time Strategy]] |
| 59 | * Children do not appear in ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires'' until the third game, and even then they only do as decoration cinematics in the "Home City" menu boards or in Native villages. The player [[PoliticallyCorrectHistory can't attack]] these villages, only compete with other players to built trade outposts in them and get extra technologies and units from them, so the children can't be wounded either. |
| 60 | ** Early on, ''The VideoGame/WarOfTheTripleAlliance'' mod tried to give child soldiers to the Paraguayans as a special spawn unit given Solano López's use of everyone as the war [[HopelessWar turned hopeless]] for Paraguay. They gave up due to the lack of attack animations in children. Apparently you can mod a child soldier with the game's engine, but it will morph into an adult or grow adult arms and torso if you tell him to shoot an stab. |
| 61 | ** As of 2018, in the latest version of WOTTA (now ''Wars of Liberty''), the Zulu spawn free children (called "Youths") that can be selected to train into any adult unit. The youths cannot attack, but they can be killed by your enemies. |
| 62 | * Not only included in, but a large part of the gameplay, killing children in ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings'' is usually a means to an end to grab new titles, and sometimes it's a great way [[RevengeByProxy to punish those that you don't like]]. You can go so far as to kill your own children if they [[WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent don't live up to your standards]] (you play as the heir when your current ruler dies), it's almost game-ending for your [[InadequateInheritor kid to be barren]] or to split inheritance because the king couldn't keep it in his pants. |
| 63 | * Children appear in ''VideoGame/PoliceQuestSWAT2'' and they can be killed, sometimes in particularly gruseome ways (such as through explosions). The game punishes you for killing children, even when you play as the bad guys. |
| 64 | [[/folder]] |
| 65 | |
| 66 | [[folder:Role-Playing Game]] |
| 67 | * ''Videogame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura'' has no real children, with the exception of one quest with an underaged elf who is still over a century old. |
| 68 | * Actually becomes a plot point in ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'', where it takes someone pointing out that there are no children in the Junkyard, nor have there ever been, for the protagonists to realize something is very wrong about the setting. [[spoiler: It turns out the Junkyard is a simulation and all its inhabitants are combat AIs in development.]] |
| 69 | %%* ''VideoGame/{{Dubloon}}''. The closest to the child you will get in this game is Riley. |
| 70 | * ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'': |
| 71 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsArena Arena]]'' plays it straight, simply not having children present with no explanation offered. |
| 72 | ** After being averted in ''Daggerfall'', ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' goes back to the ''Arena'' approach of playing it straight, simply having no children present in the game and no reason given as to why. |
| 73 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' once again plays it straight in general, having no characters under the age of 15. |
| 74 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'': |
| 75 | *** Played straight with non-human races. You only see human children in the game, not [[OurElvesAreDifferent Elven]] or {{Beast|Man}}Race children. The game takes place in Skyrim, a human land several provinces removed from the homelands of most Elves and Beast Races, so it's justified for them. Additionally, the Elves have [[ImmortalProcreationClause a low birth rate]] and are LongLived, while the Beast Races have elements of BizarreAlienBiology going on. That said, game mods once again are available to avert the trope, allowing you to adopt non-human children such as the absolutely adorable Khajiit children. |
| 76 | *** M'aiq the Liar references the fact that ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'' had no children, and that ''Skyrim'' has no non-human children: |
| 77 | ---->'''M'aiq the Liar''': M'aiq does not remember his childhood. Perhaps he never had one. |
| 78 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline Online]]'' has no children, aside from a single ghost of a child in one quest (though it appears as a Wraith creature rather than as an actual child NPC). |
| 79 | * ''VideoGame/GreedFall'' has no children around, anywhere. There's the HandWave that the natives are hiding their children because of the threat from the colonizers, but there's no explanation for why there are no children in any of the colonized cities. |
| 80 | * The Faelands of ''VideoGame/KingdomsOfAmalurReckoning'' are childless. |
| 81 | * ''Franchise/MassEffect'': |
| 82 | ** Despite visiting many colonies and other places where families clearly live, no children are ever seen in the first two games. Partially excused by Shepard spending most of their time on military bases or small colonies and research facilities where families wouldn't be living anyway, but it is still a little odd to never see any on the Citadel or Illium... or Horizon, for that matter, especially because children are specifically mentioned in an e-mail received after the Horizon mission. |
| 83 | ** In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', it is mentioned in the Ex-Cerberus Scientists mission that the defectors brought families and children with them into hiding -- families and children who, naturally, are never seen; we just take Brynn's word for it. Also, in the Citadel's refugee camps, we see a teenage girl (who is obviously just a youngish-looking female NPC) asking a guard if her parents have arrived yet. When she worries over her parents being missing or possibly dead and having no one to look after her, the effect is somewhat lessened by the character model used. |
| 84 | * ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' is a game that makes a point of humanizing (for lack of a better word) all of the monsters that try to fight you, making it clear that killing any of them, even in self defense, is murder. But you ''can'' kill any or all of them, including the teenage runaways who live in Snowdin Forest, if that counts as "children". All of the younger monster kids are [=NPCs=] you can talk to but not fight... unless you decided to go full OmnicidalManiac and not only kill everything in your path but actively grind for more random encounters until the game stops spawning them in. The game will respond realistically to this, sending nearly all of the [=NPCs=] into hiding, save for two shopkeepers and the dinosaur kid who follows you through most of Waterfall... who becomes a scripted encounter, standing up to you despite having no chance. If you feel guilty and spare them, the game will be locked into a "neutral" route no matter what you do next. If you attack, [[spoiler:Undyne will show up out of nowhere to take the hit, and send the kid home]]. |
| 85 | [[/folder]] |
| 86 | |
| 87 | |
| 88 | [[folder:Simulation Game]] |
| 89 | * ''VideoGame/{{Littlewood}}'': While children are established to exist and everyone has had a childhood, none of the locations the PlayerCharacter can visit contains any children. However, with the exception of Deluca, all said locations are places where children would have no business being: a newly rebuilt town entirely populated by people who have yet to start their own families, two dungeon-type locations, a library with a dangerous tree in its yard, an UltimateForge and the edge of the FloatingContinent. |
| 90 | [[/folder]] |
| 91 | |
| 92 | [[folder:Stealth-Based Game]] |
| 93 | * The Franchise/{{Hitman}} series: |
| 94 | ** In ''VideoGame/HitmanBloodMoney''[='s=] "A New life", 47 has to carry out a hit on a mobster in witness relocation during a child's birthday party. The clown is there, the caterer is there, but neither the kid nor his teenaged sister is anywhere to be found, and the game strangely does not mention this oddity. |
| 95 | ** ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'' lampshades this. At the beginning of a level that involves a thug assault on an orphanage, there is a cutscene in which 47 overhears two nuns discussing how all the children are away on a field trip. |
| 96 | ** No mission in the ''VideoGame/WorldOfAssassinationTrilogy'' has kids running around, despite logically making sense to do so, such as playing in the streets of Marrakesh or Sapienza, playing in the jungles of Colombia, or just being with their rich parents in Dubai. Lampshaded if you wear the "Santa 47" outfit, which has a unique response said by a guard if you try to enter a restricted area: |
| 97 | -->'''Guard:''' Forget about it, there's no kids here...like....'''no kids'''. Anywhere. At all. It's like children do not exist. Capeesh? |
| 98 | [[/folder]] |
| 99 | |
| 100 | [[folder:Survival Horror]] |
| 101 | * In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'', an entire town is infected by a parasite, which turns them into bloodthirsty zombie-like beings. No children are ever seen, of course. A montage during the credits gives a glimpse of how the parasites were introduced to the villagers, and children are seen. Thus, one way or another, a lot of kids died before the game began. [[spoiler:There's a strong implication from that sequence that the [[FridgeHorror children were murdered]] by the Plaga-infected parents.]] |
| 102 | * ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' both plays this straight and averts this; the T-Virus-stricken town of Raccoon City has zombies galore, but there are no zombified children at all. However, there's a small portion of the game where you play as a young girl named Sherry (the daughter of the main antagonist of the game), and it's possible for her to get killed by zombies and dogs. Thankfully, the game doesn't allow Sherry to be killed in a gruesome manner. She only falls down unconscious, and you can only do it through zombie puke or dog bites. In fact, having Sherry die is so unlikely, thanks to her extremely high health, that it'll only happen if [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential you let it happen]]. |
| 103 | * The American release of ''VideoGame/SilentHill1'' featured enemies that resembled gray skinned children with knives. These were absent from both Japanese and European releases, replaced by a less obviously human-shaped creature. The demo of the American version, meanwhile, had these gray child-things giggle like infants on spotting you; [[{{Bowdlerization}} this was replaced in the finished game, of course]]. |
| 104 | * ''VideoGame/AlienIsolation'' has several audio logs that mention the kids aboard the station, but not a single one is seen or even heard from. |
| 105 | [[/folder]] |
| 106 | |
| 107 | [[folder:Third-Person Shooter]] |
| 108 | * For reasons that make sense both in and out of game, there are no children anywhere in the ''VideoGame/{{Crusader}}'' series. |
| 109 | [[/folder]] |
| 110 | |
| 111 | [[folder:Turn-Based Strategy]] |
| 112 | * For a game all about training up generations of heroes, you would think ''VideoGame/MassiveChalice'' would avert this; but no. All children are placed in "training" until they reach 16, not even appearing on the map when one of your keeps (where they're being trained) is attacked. |
| 113 | * Placed straight through most of the ''VideoGame/ShiningSeries'', but averted in ''VideoGame/ShiningForceIII'', where in one level you have to save a group of refuges, three of which are children. Because of the way the game prioritizes attacking units with low health, and the children have the lowest health of any character in the game, enemies will [[KickTheDog go out of their way to kill kids]]. |
| 114 | * In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'', the main character takes one of two sides in a war (or chooses neither). If one side is chosen, the characters who would be playable on the other side become enemies. The only characters on the opposing side who are neither met nor fought are the children of the opposing characters (because the main character is the only one who has access to the pocket dimensions that [[YearInsideHourOutside allow the children to grow up]]), and [[OlderThanTheyLook Nyx]]. Nyx never even appears if the player sides against her country, presumably because she looks like a child. |
| 115 | [[/folder]] |
| 116 | |
| 117 | [[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]] |
| 118 | * The 3D ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' games do this a lot. Only one character under the age of fifteen or so has ''ever'' appeared in the series, in any capacity other than the radio; in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCityStories'', Vic's love interest Louise has a baby daughter named Mary-Beth, whom you have to help protect. |
| 119 | ** However on the radio several children have been heard and even killed, for instance a JerkAss gun safety mascot tricked a little girl into shooting herself in the head. |
| 120 | ** Lampshaded on Vice City Public Radio show "Pressing Issues" when the host asked secessionist John F. Hickory if he'd been born in Florida. |
| 121 | -->'''John Hickory''': Of course not! No one's been born in Florida since 1877, but! I've been here five years which is a ''very'' long time. |
| 122 | ** GTA 3 was originally going to include kids, schools and [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091217163848/gtawiki/images/thumb/e/e7/Schoolbus_GTA_III.jpg/301px-Schoolbus_GTA_III.jpg yellow school-buses]] however they were scrapped for an unknown reason; although many people speculate it was because of school shootings that happened around the time the game was to be released, that caused them to take kids out. In fact, there was a quite well known mission that was taken out, in which the objective was to blow up a bus full of elementary school kids, and another mission was to have the player go into a school and kill all the people inside. Both were taken out, for obvious reasons. |
| 123 | ** GTA Advance involved a [[http://gta.wikia.com/School%27s_Out mission]] in which you had to kidnap a school kid. This trope is still played however, when the protagonist gets pissed at his employer for hurting the girl. |
| 124 | * The HD universe of ''Grand Theft Auto'' has continued the tradition of there being no children anywhere. The only child to appear in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' was the 13-year-old Jill Von Crastenburg, and children are also referenced with regards to a dubious beauty pageant called Little Lacey Surprise. ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' doesn't even have incidental references, since Jill turned 18 by the time the game is set (five years after ''IV''). However, it is possible to find children's playgrounds throughout both game maps ... populated by adults. |
| 125 | ** Protagonist Michael de Santa is the first actual father featured in the games, however his "kids" are both in their early 20s. |
| 126 | * In the ''VideoGame/SaintsRow'' games, no children show up at all. ''Ever''. This is lampshaded in 2 where a ban on children and animals in public is talked about in the Ultor Cathedral, and one of three "facts about Stilwater" on the official site claimed that "city code prevents the public display of children and animals". Despite this apparent ban, playgrounds and what could either be playhouses or dog houses can still be seen in people's backyards. |
| 127 | * The only humans in the ''VideoGame/DestroyAllHumans'' series are all middle-aged male and female suburbanites, hippies, and farmers, except for the occasional old crackpot scientist or mid-50's communist hating general. More likely, the same character will respawn in the same spot a few minutes later, implying that they reproduce Asexually, or some such. |
| 128 | ** In the sequel, an NPC even lampshades this phenomenon, asking "Where are all the children?" |
| 129 | * ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}'' plays with this trope. You can eat or slash through the whole of Manhattan without encountering a single child but the Web of Intrigue cutscenes not only feature children, they feature children who are dead, mutated or experimented on. One of the "memories" has the creepy, distorted cry of a baby. Have fun sleeping. |
| 130 | * Children die in ''VideoGame/DeadRising''. [[InferredHolocaust Either offscreen or before you ever show up]]. Nobody under eighteen is encountered in person in-game, not alive, dead or undead. The ages of young-looking [=NPCs=] are listed as 18-25. |
| 131 | * The ''VideoGame/{{Postal}}'' series, especially ''VideoGame/Postal2'', lacks anyone under adult age, as Vince Desi and the rest of the RWS staff felt it would be crossing a line. Considering that the player can kill, maim, burn and/or urinate on anyone or anything, from civilians, store clerks, priests, police officers, Gary Coleman, Taliban members, Osama Bin Laden and even digital expies of the game company staff, as well as dogs, cattle and cats (the latter of which can be used as makeshift shotgun or rifle silencers, even), the ability to kill children is considered one hell of a big line to cross. Some [=NPCs=] will mention that they have children if they're huddled down, begging not to be killed in the many random acts of violence that seem to infest Paradise. On the other hand, this trope is averted in the Uwe Boll movie adaptation, which features dozens of kids getting hit during a particular firefight, in an attempt to [[CrossesTheLineTwice cross the line as far as possible]]. |
| 132 | * {{Downplayed|Trope}} in ''VideoGame/DragonsDogma'', which has children down to about the age of twelve, then stops; it's as if a decade ago, everyone decided to stop reproducing. This is due to characters' construction using the same system that the player is allowed in CharacterCustomization, and the youngest Arisen possible is that age. This also means that ''every'' young girl is post-pubescent, if ever so slightly, as there is no body for a completely breastless female; there is only a range from A to DD. |
| 133 | * The base game of ''VideoGame/{{Rimworld}}'' is a straight example, although colonists as young as fourteen can join your settlement, but a GameMod to avert the trope was developed based off the existing code that lets animals reproduce. The ''Biotech'' DLC makes it an aversion with an official reproduction system for colonists, and optionally, the ability for other factions to send child raiders against your base. If you capture them you can treat them with the same VideoGameCrueltyPotential you perpetrate against adult prisoners. |
| 134 | * Present in ''VideoGame/ShadowsOfDoubt''. The cause is probably twofold: the game's primarily FilmNoir SerialKiller-related content would be ''especially'' gruesome if 'targets children' was a motivation, and a kid somehow being selected by the emergent world AI to be a killer would be ''all kinds'' of TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior. |
| 135 | [[/folder]] |
| 136 | |
| 137 | !!Non-video game examples: |
| 138 | |
| 139 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 140 | |
| 141 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 142 | * Film/JamesBond has talked to exactly ''one'' child (a young Thai boy in ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'') in over fifty years worth of movies (1962-2015). Although children are occasionally visible in crowd scenes, they're always mysteriously absent when something violent happens. Largely justified, though, because with the exception of chase scenes, more of the action takes place in non-public areas. |
| 143 | ** ''Skyfall'' subtly enforces this. [[Creator/JudiDench Judi Dench's]] M was stated to be a mother in the original continuity, but in this film, she only mentions that her husband is dead with [[AdaptedOut no mention of any children,]] presumably to keep the focus on her role as Bond's mother figure and avoid making her [[KilledOffForReal death]] ''too'' tragic by leaving orphans behind. |
| 144 | ** ''Film/NoTimeToDie'' averts this ''big time'', and twofold: there's the first part of the [[TheTeaser prologue]] in Madeleine Swann's childhood in which she almost died by the hand of Lyutsifer Safin, and then [[spoiler:Madeleine's daughter Mathilde, who's been fathered by Bond]]. Bond even prepares her something to eat [[spoiler:and goes all PapaWolf to protect her in the climax.]] |
| 145 | ** In ''Film/DiamondsAreForever'', a bunch of children can be seen at the circus/casino in UsefulNotes/LasVegas, but Bond isn't around in that scene. Tiffany Case goes to a balloon blast game to pick up her shipment of diamonds hidden in a plush toy. The game is fixed so she can win the plush toy. The kid next to her quickly figures it out and complains, only for Tiffany to tell him to "blow up [his] pants". |
| 146 | * No children (besides Eggsy's baby half-sister) are visible during any of the HatePlague-induced riot scenes in ''Film/KingsmanTheSecretService'', not even in the church sequence, with the same being true of all of the scenes where people's heads start exploding due to their immunization chips being overloaded and shorting out, even though at least some children were presumably selected to be spared by Valentine. |
| 147 | * ''Film/{{Shirley}}'': Shirley and Stanley had children by the time this film was set, but they are never shown onscreen. After Rose gives birth around three-quarters of the way through the film, unless she's carrying her child around (as she is in the climax), her baby will be somewhere but not commented on by anyone or seen. |
| 148 | * Despite the series emphasis on families and carnage in suburban homes, no pre-teen children have had any role in the ''{{Film/Scream}}'' series, save Sidney mentioning she has two in ''Film/Scream2022'', who are even kept just out of shot when she'd shown jogging (implicitly) with them in a stroller. |
| 149 | [[/folder]] |
| 150 | |
| 151 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 152 | * Lampshaded in ''Literature/FiveHundredYearsAfter'', in which LemonyNarrator Paarfi points out that he's specifically avoided all mention of Dragaera City's children, babies, or pets in his account of the events leading up to Adron's Disaster, specifically so readers won't have to dwell on such defenseless innocents being wiped out. |
| 153 | * In the first ''Literature/Level4'' book, the teenage protagonists find that a computer game with a ThereAreNoAdults premise has become reality and everyone over the age of fifteen has disappeared... but, as they realize a little later, so has everyone below a certain age as well. The main character points out that in the game, while the adults' disappearance is explicitly the premise, babies and toddlers just don't exist in first place, and since real life now seems to functions by its rules, they have vanished as well. |
| 154 | * ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'': |
| 155 | ** Played straight when Peter and Nightingale investigate a suburban home whose residents have become vampires. Although photos of the family's children are displayed inside and their unexplained absence from school is one of the things that roused the Folly's suspicions, the actual ''bodies'' of the kids - whether undead or dead - aren't found before Nightingale makes the call to contain the infection by burning the place to the ground. |
| 156 | ** Thoroughly averted in the same book with the Coopertown family. When Peter, Lesley and Nightingale go to interrogate Brandon Coopertown and his family, they arrive just in time to see that someone threw their baby son from the first-floor window. Lesley attempts to resuscitate it but fails, and her face is described as being covered in the baby's blood from trying while they're waiting for their statements to be taken. Six books and some four years in-universe later, [[spoiler:Lesley, who's switched sides to the bad guys, cites this incident as one of the reasons why she can't believe in Peter's attempts to create police procedures to deal with "monsters", and angrily demands to know if Peter even remembers what the baby's name was. Peter remembers it instantly, suggesting that despite him bottling up his emotions even in his job as narrator, it still had a massive impact on him as well]]. |
| 157 | [[/folder]] |
| 158 | |
| 159 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 160 | * ''Series/{{Atlanta}}'': Though they were shown co-parenting her in Seasons 1 and 2, Van's parents take Lottie so Van can go to Europe with Earn, Paperboi, and Darius in Season 3. This is only mentioned in passing. |
| 161 | * ''Series/TheGoodPlace'': Absolutely NO children are EVER seen in the afterlife. None. Anywhere. At all. If it weren't for flashbacks to the main characters' childhoods, you would think children don't exist in this universe at all. Thus, the audience doesn't have to think about children being tortured in the Bad Place. |
| 162 | * ''Series/{{Motherland}}'': Although a comedy about mothers, the children are only shown fleetingly, such as running past Julia or playing in the background, and they hardly ever speak. |
| 163 | * An episode of ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' called "A Feasibility Study" ended with an entire town committing suicide to save the rest of humanity from being enslaved by aliens. The makers were under strict instructions not to feature any children in the episode. Despite this, a woman is seen holding her baby at one point... |
| 164 | * ''Series/WalkingWithCavemen'' dances heavily with this trope, not just because the violence taboo but also the nudity taboo, since most featured hominids are naked and often played by naked actors. When children have to be included, it is almost always as unborn inside their pregnant mothers or as babies played by puppets (in the case of the ''Australopithecus'' and ''Paranthropus'' segments). The ''H. sapiens'' segment has children, but they are clothed like the adults. The most ''risqué'' segment is the ''H. ergaster'' one, which pans over a large tribe including several children at one point, and they are, of course, naked. These children are always far in the background and so blurry, it is certain they shot their scenes in skin-colored suits and were later digitally inserted in the scenes with the adult actors. |
| 165 | [[/folder]] |
| 166 | |
| 167 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 168 | * In the direct-to-DVD ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' movie "The Beast With a Billion Backs", the titular Beast [[spoiler:has neck-sex with every single being in the universe]]. In the commentary track, the creators note that they very deliberately did not have any children appear in the episode. |
| 169 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', episodes where major threats come to [[WizardingSchool Hexside]] like "The First Day" and "Labyrinth Runners" tend to only have the older students show up, with all of the kids in the baby class being completely absent. |
| 170 | [[/folder]] |
| 171 | |
| 172 | !!Exceptions: |
| 173 | |
| 174 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 175 | |
| 176 | [[folder:Action Adventure]] |
| 177 | * ''VideoGame/{{Uncharted}}'' has very few children across all four games. There’s some kids Nate can play with in the Tibet section of ''[[VideoGame/Uncharted2AmongThieves Among Thieves]]''. You play a section as Nate himself as a teen in ''[[VideoGame/Uncharted3DrakesDeception Drake’s Deception]]''. In ''[[VideoGame/Uncharted4AThiefsEnd A Thief’s End]]'' there are times where you play as Nate a couple of years younger than he is in the aforementioned game and his teenage brother Sam, and you [[spoiler: play the epilogue as his fourteen year old daughter Cassie.]] |
| 178 | * In ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion1'', of all games, some of the enemies are small children. Of course, they're already dead. |
| 179 | * The ''Franchise/StarWars Episode 1'' game allowed you to kill several children, including the Gungan children, Anakin's friends and even Anakin himself, which was a taboo for a Jedi. |
| 180 | * There are children all over the place in the various episodes of ''VideoGame/AmericanMcGeesGrimm'', and not even they are safe from [[BloodyHilarious hilariously brutal injury and death]]. |
| 181 | * ''VideoGame/AmericanMcGeesAlice'' contains Insane Children. While you don't kill them directly (mostly, they get in the way), they are made into clockwork automatons that you do have to fight. However, one of them helps you in a later level. |
| 182 | [[/folder]] |
| 183 | |
| 184 | [[folder:Action Game]] |
| 185 | * During the Venom tutorial of the ''[[VideoGame/UltimateSpiderMan2005 Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' game, your first order of business is to devour a darling little girl holding a balloon. She is spit back out, but doesn't seem to be moving after that. This is a parody of the above ''Spider-Man 2'' missions. |
| 186 | * ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheSamurai 2'' is ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' in Late Edo Japan... you can draw your [[KatanasAreJustBetter katana]] on a busy market-street, and start cutting down innocent civilians left and right. Unlike ''GTA'', however, there ''are'' children. They're just MadeOfIron -- your strongest attack will do little more than slow them down as they run towards the nearest exit. Even on "Extreme mode", where everyone in the game, including yourself and the final boss, dies from [[OneHitPointWonder a single hit]], the kids remain immortal. |
| 187 | * Completely averted in the ''Platform/{{Newgrounds}}'' flash game ''[[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/71851 Chainsaw the Children]]''. |
| 188 | * In ''VideoGame/LegoIndianaJones'', you can gleefully kill your partner Short Round whenever you like. He will simply respawn a few seconds later. In his review, [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]] notes that doing so a few dozen times helps deal with any [[TheScrappy lingering resentment]] you may have for the character. |
| 189 | * Averted, ''VideoGame/MaxPayne1'' has a very sickening one. Criminals on drugs (due to the orders of the BigBad) managed to track down his wife and newborn daughter, break in and shoot them dead just as Max Payne arrives too late (You can see the corpse of his daughter in the crib.). He kills them out of self-defense and revenge but it's inadequate justice as it doesn't bring his loved ones back of course. This is his motivation for becoming who he is in the game series: A broken but crime fighting badass! |
| 190 | [[/folder]] |
| 191 | |
| 192 | [[folder:Adventure Game]] |
| 193 | * Excluded in the game ''VideoGame/{{Harvester}}'', where just about anyone can be killed, and whether this has game-ending disastrous consequences is generally random. You need to kill several children to complete the game, including a mob of small children you find [[ImAHumanitarian feasting on their mother]]. Of course, this is a twisted horror game where interactivity is part of the horror. |
| 194 | * Played with in ''VideoGame/EdnaAndHarveyHarveysNewEyes'', the first act revolves around Lilli and the other children at the convert. By the end of the first act, most, if not all of the other children have been gruesomely killed, often because of something Lilli did. However, pretty much all of the deaths occur off-screen, with lilli coming back to find little gnomes spreading pink paint over what looks like to be the bodies and blood. It's not until very late in the game that it dawns on Lilli exactly what's been happening. |
| 195 | [[/folder]] |
| 196 | |
| 197 | [[folder:Fighting Game]] |
| 198 | * ''VideoGame/SamuraiShodown'' has several children amid its roster. It also has moves that lets you slaughter the opponent messily. Aside from ''IV'', where the programming to hit two characters with the finishing moves was left out due to time constraints, ''everyone'' can be killed in brutal fashion, age notwithstanding. |
| 199 | [[/folder]] |
| 200 | |
| 201 | [[folder:First-Person Shooter]] |
| 202 | * ''VideoGame/{{SWAT 3}}'' avoided this trope -- if you took a mission involving a home invasion, and the call up tells you the family had children, you will very well find and rescue those children. The corollary of having to deal with child hostages is avoided by having them all curled up on a couch or at the side of their bed when you find them, so there's no chance of the player accidentally shooting them and, them being children, no need to put them in handcuffs before calling in to evacuate them. |
| 203 | * In ''VideoGame/Prey2006'', there are children captured by the aliens. You never get to kill them, but you get to see two die messily, and one enemy type is a ghostly, possessed little girl. She was originally going to be a fleshy possessed girl, and have a male counterpart that was a child husk stretched over an insectoid wraith, but these were dropped from the final game, likely for much the same reasons that motivate the trope in general. |
| 204 | * In ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'', you can easily go on a shooting spree in a school populated by twelve year old girls, though the place is protected by security turrets and guards. |
| 205 | ** The children in the original were killable, too but that's the game's ''setting'', not its attitude - ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' was and to some extent still is notable in encouraging the player ''not'' to plow through the game destroying everything in their path. |
| 206 | * In ''VideoGame/BioShock1'', creepy little girls who collect genetic material from corpses and their massive armoured guardians are prominently featured. These "Little Sisters" are immune to damage as long as their "Big Daddies" live; if the player tries to shoot them or harm them in any other way, the [[AppliedPhlebotinum ADAM]] in their bodies causes all damage to ''literally bounce off them''. However, if the Big Daddy is dispatched, the little girl is completely helpless against TheProtagonist. At this point you can do one of two things with them: either rip out the symbiote that controls the Sister and carries their supplies of ADAM, killing the Sister in the process, or use a special plasmid to "cure" the Sister, meaning she becomes a normal girl again, while the protagonist will not get as much ADAM he would have gotten if he had "harvested" her. Note both the harvesting and the curing are [[GoryDiscretionShot conveniently obscured]] ("harvest" by a black-green mist, "rescue" by a flash of white light). According to a pre-release review, this happened in plain sight in an earlier version of the game shown to journalists. |
| 207 | ** After saving a little sister, they become a plain young girl, thank you, then run to the nearest vent to escape. You can shoot them after saving them, but your bullets will still bounce off her and a stern message will appear: |
| 208 | --->"You can only HARVEST or RESCUE Little Sisters." |
| 209 | ** It's possible to kill children in another way - the final level of the first game [[spoiler: is an EscortMission where you have to guide a Little Sister who can open doors that you can't. If she takes enough damage, she will die and Tenenbaum will berate you - then tell you to go get another sister.]] |
| 210 | ** There is also a single scene in which you find that a family of five committed suicide in their apartment by drinking poison. Oddly, the parents show sign of decay, but not the three identical daughters. |
| 211 | ** You can also find a family sitting down to dinner, which had apparently been turned into a semi-living statue by [[MadArtist deranged artist]] Sander Cohen (and you actually have to ''help'' Cohen in order to continue on in the game). Of note is that, if you strike the parents, they make a squishy sound indicating they were/are alive. Hitting the girl produces a sound like hitting rock. |
| 212 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}} 2'', you don't face any ''human'' children... but some of the conversion cocoons and Chimera resulting from them are distinctly child-sized. You can break open the cocoons, killing the occupant, and the "child" Chimera will try to kill you just like any others -- WhatMeasureIsANonHuman probably applies. |
| 213 | * Also averted in ''VideoGame/Doom3'', as cherubs look like a kind of mutated human infants. However, since this is all taking place either on a purely-industrial station or in Hell, they may be just demons deliberately made to ''look'' like infants [[ForTheEvulz just for the psychological effect it would have on their prey]]. |
| 214 | [[/folder]] |
| 215 | |
| 216 | [[folder:Hack and Slash]] |
| 217 | * ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'': |
| 218 | ** This trope is [[InvertedTrope horribly, horribly inverted]] in the first game. First off, there is a stage in Leonard's side-story in which you are forced to fight the child-soldiers of the Empire, who are [[MindControl brainwashed as the rest of the Empire's soldiers are]]. As you are [[LeaveNoSurvivors slaughtering them all]], Leonard cries out, "But Caim, they're just children!" Your dragon then loudly declares "Soldiers are soldiers!" and ''encourages'' you to carry on. [[spoiler:Leonard's major regret (before you even meet him) is that he was unable to prevent the slaughter of the child soldiers under his command... because he was off in the woods masturbating. Even with his [[PedophilePriest attractions]], Leonard is one of the most sympathetic characters in the game.]] The world of Drakengard is not a happy one. |
| 219 | ** Then there's the matter of the Grotesqueries, which is plain and simple terror. Not to mention as well that Arioch [[spoiler: will actively seek out and murder small children]] after her pact sends her over the edge. |
| 220 | ** One of the ending paths includes a [[spoiler:child (or childlike) character [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever growing to giant size]] in a ''boss battle''. No prizes for guessing what you have to do.]] |
| 221 | * In ''VideoGame/Diablo1997'', there is a peg-legged young boy in Tristram named Wirt with whom you can "gamble" to buy items. In ''VideoGame/DiabloII'', you return to Tristram, which has been overrun by monsters, and you can find Wirt's remains (as well as his peg leg, which you can [[ImprobableWeaponUser use as a weapon]], and a stash of gold he likely conned off the player character in the last game). After defeating Diablo (and either starting a new game or moving on to the Lord of Destruction expansion) go back to the rogue camp from act 1 and combine it with a [[WarpWhistle Tome of Town Portal]] and enter the infamous [[EasterEgg Cow Level!]] |
| 222 | ** Wirt is the exception to the rule, as no other children are seen in Tristram. However, this is justified, because the manual and NPC dialog indicate that all the other children have already been killed by the demons. |
| 223 | ** As a MythologyGag in ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'', you can acquire an artifact called "Wirt's Other Leg" that boosts your hero's attack power. In ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', you can recover [[http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=9359 Wirt's Third Leg]], a fairly rare and fairly powerful one-handed mace. As a ShoutOut, you can retrieve "Wart's Peg Leg" in ''Hellgate: London'', though Wart is a much less obnoxious character and he doesn't have to die for you to get it. |
| 224 | * ''VideoGame/NinetyNineNights''. [[KnightTemplar Self-righteous]] [[LightIsNotGood psycho bitch]] Inphyy murders goblin children with no qualms both under the player's control and in a cutscene. |
| 225 | * In ''VideoGame/DantesInferno'', the game, there are Unbaptised Babies to kill freely... yikes. |
| 226 | [[/folder]] |
| 227 | |
| 228 | [[folder:MMORPG]] |
| 229 | * Although there are children present in a few major cities in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', there is an event where you can pick up an orphan from your faction's capital and take them around questing (read: 'killing stuff') with you. They seem to enjoy it. |
| 230 | ** Overlaps with WhatMeasureIsANonhuman in Northrend with a quest to kidnap Wolvar pups for the Tuskarr. The Tuskarr insist that they want to raise the Wolvar to be more peaceful than the vicious hunters they normally are, but the lack of any Wolvar in their village can lead to some nasty FridgeHorror implications. Also, to capture the pups they have to be targettable, which also makes them ''attackable''; players that don't watch what they target, or use [[AreaOfEffect AoE]] abilities on the adults, can kill the pups as well. |
| 231 | * In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse'', there are child {{NPC}}s and prefab {{PC}}s, and the character creator for {{PC}}s automatically scales down apparent age along with height, allowing you to make your own KidHero. There's even -- according to the storyline -- a subrace of the Beast race that [[OlderThanTheyLook never ages beyond apparent childhood]], regardless of their actual age. |
| 232 | * In ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' there are some human children you can find but can't attack, but go to the Grand Tree and you can slay little gnome children galore. |
| 233 | * Though you never see a child die in ''VideoGame/GuildWars'', the canon makes it very clear that children can and do die; as one character puts it: ''"There were no children left after the Searing. They either grew up fast, or they didn't grow up at all."'' |
| 234 | ** [[BreakTheCutie Gwen]]. At the age of ten, she witnesses searing fire rain from the sky, is orphaned, gets kidnapped by the race who sent the Searing, and spends the next seven years toiling in a slave camp. She escapes only when they attempted to feed her to a giant scorpion. Meanwhile, her mother's ghost is desperately searching the Underworld for her, having no knowledge of her fate. Children are commonplace in areas outside Gwen's devastated homeland, and even there, too, during [[YouMeanXmas Wintersday]], when you can give gifts to the children. |
| 235 | * ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' uses smaller versions of the adult models for children (which can be somewhat... disconcerting with the girls). [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential In keeping with the spirit of the Dark side, Republic players can threaten to kill a sick child to get a refugee demanding help to back down]]. |
| 236 | [[/folder]] |
| 237 | |
| 238 | [[folder:Platform Game]] |
| 239 | * ''VideoGame/HeartOfDarkness'' got away with death sequences that showed the kid player character crushed, devoured, incinerated and drowned in a variety of non-gory, yet non-discreet ways. ''Heart'' is one of the few realistic 2D {{platformer}}s, along with ''Another World'' and the first ''Prince of Persia'', so [[DeathThrows falling off the screen]] would look flagrantly out of place -- and all of them are sadistic to begin with, at least in difficulty levels. |
| 240 | [[/folder]] |
| 241 | |
| 242 | [[folder:Real Time Strategy]] |
| 243 | * In ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'', you can actually kill children {{NPC}}s. Without any ill-effects. As a holy paladin. Who is also the prince of the kingdom. Yeah, seriously. [[spoiler:And this can happen ''well'' before Arthas' corruption. Try it in the first Human mission, go nuts.]] |
| 244 | ** Played straight in "The Culling", the mission where you need to kill infected villagers before their souls can be claimed by Mal'ganis. There are no children in the level. |
| 245 | ** Once [[spoiler:Arthas is a Death Knight]], another level has you running around a human village. While the children are killable, they don't show up as enemies. You, the player, need to specifically order your troops to murder the children. YouMonster. |
| 246 | ** During the Undead campaign, you can destroy a cage to release a ghoul named Little Timmy, Little Timmy being a child you likely recued from gnoll kidnappers in the very first mission. Killing him grants an item. Strangely enough, Timmy makes a return in the expansion's undead campaign, where he now looks human again, is mechanical, and functions as a shop selling powerful Ice Shards, and later still as a perfectly normal child in Theramore during the orc campaign. |
| 247 | [[/folder]] |
| 248 | |
| 249 | [[folder:Roguelike]] |
| 250 | * ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress''. Not only do infants catch arrows and melee attacks initiated at the mother, the children will blithely follow their mothers into combat. Since soldiers tend to have the highest birth rates, unless you have a lot of traps outside your fort, you're not going to have a lot of children surviving into adulthood. And that's not even including the people who practice 'population control', and actively kill off the children that take up space in their fortress. This is just Fortress Mode. Play on Adventurer and you can easily liberate children from Goblin fortresses to be in your party (which is a good idea, as they are useful as shields since you can't hire drunks anymore). Sound bad? How about the fact that, should you decide to invade a human town, you'll find yourself catapulting children into walls as they try to kill you? Sound bad? How about invading an elven town, where you will frequently find yourself beset upon by entire waves of children, some as young as two? |
| 251 | * ''VideoGame/{{Elona}}'' allows you to kill children just like any other [=NPC=]. Because most children in the game are nameless [=NPCs=], you won't even suffer any sort of karma penalty for killing most of them. |
| 252 | * ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' inverts this. The eponymous player character is a small child, and nearly every enemy in the game is some form of [[EnfantTerrible baby]] [[FetusTerrible or aborted fetus]]. Copious BodyHorror is also involved. Thankfully, the [[CrapsaccharineWorld artstyle is cutesy enough]] that it gets away with it. |
| 253 | [[/folder]] |
| 254 | |
| 255 | [[folder:Role-Playing Game]] |
| 256 | * ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'': |
| 257 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'': |
| 258 | *** Children are present, but only as two-dimensional sprites who cannot be interacted with beyond conversation. Thus, you cannot harm or kill them. |
| 259 | *** Averted in the quest to cure yourself of being a [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent Wereboar]]. It involves letting an orphaned child drink your blood, and then slaying him once he transforms into a Wereboar himself. |
| 260 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'': |
| 261 | *** [[MurderInc Dark Brotherhood]] member Gogron gro-Bolmog, an Orc who performs assassinations with a huge axe, tells a story during the quest "A Watery Grave". It was about him assassinating a little Nord girl at her own birthday party: |
| 262 | ---->'''Grogon''': She asked me if I was the jester! So I said to her, "No, I am a messenger of death." You should have seen the look on her face! Ha ha ha ha! Anyway, she won't be seeing age six! |
| 263 | *** One can find a non-wearable item called "Child Overalls" on a small corpse. [[FridgeHorror What the hell happened to the children in Cyrodiil?]] |
| 264 | *** M'aiq the Liar [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall leans on the fourth wall]]: |
| 265 | ---->'''M'aiq the Liar''': M'aiq believes the children are our future. But he doesn't want them ruining all of our fun. |
| 266 | ** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'': |
| 267 | *** ''Skyrim'' includes children as full [=NPCs=] for the first time, but they cannot be harmed or killed. [[BrattyHalfPint No matter how much they deserve it.]] There are {{Game Mod}}s that remove the invulnerability from children, and oddly enough, utilize existing dialogue recordings hidden in the files of the children's death screams. (At least one modder took advantage of this and twinked his character to summon an army of invulnerable, knife-wielding little girls.) |
| 268 | *** The ''Hearthfire'' DLC allows you to [[AHomeOwnerIsYou build a home]] and [[HappilyAdopted adopt up to two of the game world's many orphaned children]]. You can easily take advantage of your immortal kiddies as companions. |
| 269 | *** [[MurderInc Dark Brotherhood]] member Babette is a vampire who turned at [[UndeadChild around age ten]] and is now the oldest member of the group in Skyrim. When the Sanctuary is [[spoiler:sacked by the Penitus Oculatus]], she's one of the few who survives. If instead you choose to destroy the Brotherhood rather than join, she'll be the only member not present during your attack. |
| 270 | * You can murder children in the first two ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' games, though the resulting penalty to your reputation makes the rest of the game nearly unplayable. Versions outside the US remove the children by turning them invisible[[note]]in fact, excluding their graphics resources but leaving the data for their critter ID's[[/note]], which makes a town full of pickpocketing urchins in ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' [[DidntThinkThisThrough even more annoying than normally.]] |
| 271 | ** The game rewards creativity: players sick of the Den's pickpocketers have the [[LoopholeAbuse consequence-free option]] of either hitting them once to make them run away or planting live explosives in their inventories by means of Stealing (or letting them sneak the explosives from you). This will cause such entertaining visual effects as the [[LudicrousGibs child's body exploding into a red mist, while his head goes rocketing upward with a trail of blood]]. |
| 272 | ** ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' makes use of the "present but invincible children" subclause by not allowing the children to die ([[NukeEm by your actions directly]], at least). You can shoot them, stab them, nuke them, burn them, etc. but you can't kill them or splatter their brains all over the pavement. Or maybe just use them as living shields... |
| 273 | *** One of them happens to be ''extremely'' annoying, though, and just screams "Help, they killed everybody! [[Film/Troll2 Now they're coming to kill us!]]" |
| 274 | ** While ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' technically treats children the same as in ''3'', the number of children in-game was reduced tremendously -- the only ones you're likely to meet are the fortunetelling kid at the 188 Trading Post, one kid acting as a barker for Mick and Ralph's weapon store, Pete and the Mini Boomers at Nellis Air Force Base (or the path up to Black Mountain, [[GoodBadBugs sometimes]]), and a few kids in Freeside chasing around rats. And the child slaves in The Fort. |
| 275 | * ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'': |
| 276 | ** ''Fable'' was originally going to include children that could be killed (a widely-circulated pre-release picture showed the protagonist impaling a child on his blade), but this was scrapped at the last minute. Instead, children only appear in places in the game where you're not supposed to be able to kill ''anyone'', at least not without glitches. |
| 277 | ** There are children all over the place in ''VideoGame/FableII''. You still can't kill them, but they quite distinctly notice you if you try. Specifically, you get some evil points, everyone gets ''very'' upset, and the guards will chase you down... to make you pay a fine. |
| 278 | * ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'': |
| 279 | ** In ''Neverwinter Nights'', players can destroy every guard and adult in the place, but there is a little child in one of the districts who cannot be killed. If you kill his parents, he even seeks vengeance. Protected by sheer invincibility, he will follow you anywhere in the game, [[CherryTapping pounding on you with his tiny fists]]. [[{{Determinator}} He will follow you into every room of the game.]] |
| 280 | ** ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'' has a fair number of children, but peaceful {{NPC}}s are now invulnerable and cannot even be targeted. |
| 281 | * Played literally in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'', the entire population of a town has been turned to stone by the first major villain of the game; the player can bring the party around to see all the statues who were once residents, but most of the buildings are locked up-- except one house. Inside, there are two adults, standing in front of the stairs leading into their basement. If you walk around them and go down, you'll find their two young children hiding, frightened but otherwise in perfect condition, and they'll tell you that their mother told them to hide down here and be quiet. |
| 282 | * [[spoiler:The first form of the [[FinalBoss last boss]] in the normal game of]] ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'' is, in fact, a baby.[[spoiler:.. which is the Ultimate Being; as such, it keeps developing, eventually becoming an adult and a bizarre gelatinous skull thing.]] Also, Aya's [[spoiler:dead sister, Maya, is a key character in the game, as well as being in the true final boss fight in NewGamePlus.]] |
| 283 | * A big exception occurred in ''VideoGame/UltimaVIII'', where it was possible to round up a bunch of children near the edge of the starting town and start hacking them to bits. Doing so resulted in a very powerful guardian coming to kill you in their defense, but especially nearer the ending of the game, that guardian was perfectly beatable. |
| 284 | ** Even bigger exception in ''VideoGame/UltimaV'': there is a dungeon room full of hostile children behind bars. To proceed to the next area, one has to trigger a switch which opens the cells, letting the children out. As you are the Avatar, the paragon of virtues (and acting virtuous; the game does have a KarmaMeter, and it ''is'' running in this scenario), this creates an interesting moral dilemma. Some (or maybe most) players choose to flee rather than fight. |
| 285 | *** Mercifully, [[TakeAThirdOption third and fourth potential options]] are available. [[spoiler: if a player has enough magically powerful characters in the party, they can charm all of the children instead of killing them, a most difficult and impressive feat likely to require a lot of SaveScumming. Alternatively, a party with enough resources of a certain sort can turn everyone in it invisible, which will cause all the children, believing they have no one left to attack, to wander away into the dungeon.]] [[FridgeLogic While technically this means the children are now lost and wandering somewhere in the dungeon]], one's moral qualms may well be softened considerably if, as the ''Lazarus'' edition of ''Ultima V'' suggests, these are in fact [[RaisedByOrcs monster children]]. |
| 286 | ** Even outside the dungeons, children aren't necessarily faring well. The player will meet a child enslaved to extort information from her mother, another child subject to brutal punishment along with his father for a trivial offense, and another child in hiding and slowly starving since his father was unjustly imprisoned. |
| 287 | ** The dungeon room is even worse in the brilliant remake ''Ultima V Lazarus'', where you hear the children laughing as you approach, and hear them screaming in pain if you and your companions decide to kill them. |
| 288 | ** In fact, rooms with children is a RunningGag in the later Ultima games--there's usually a dungeon room somewhere in each game that is populated with children with the generic monster AI, that will attack the player. There's been one in pretty much each game since IV. |
| 289 | ** In ''VideoGame/UltimaIX'' a boy highwayman demands gold from the Avatar and taunts him on being unable to fight a child. Whether the boy is given gold or not, he immediately flings powerful fireballs while laughing. Killing him results in a hefty karma penalty. Near the game's end, the Avatar comes across a girl who has been incurably poisoned with a toxin that will slowly, excruciatingly and inevitably kill her, and she begs the Avatar to end her suffering. Whatever choice the Avatar makes, the Guardian will beam a BreakingSpeech into the Avatar's head over it. |
| 290 | * ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' features various child {{NPC}}s -- mostly just scenery, but one of them, Rhyme, is a major character. It's established fairly early on that anyone in Shibuya during the "Reapers' Game" is at risk of being Erased [[spoiler: And you actually get to see it happen to Rhyme partway through the game.]] |
| 291 | ** [[spoiler:Nevermind the fact that since everyone in the Game is dead, you get a brief blink-and-you'll-miss-it flashback of her and her brother about to be run down by a truck.]] |
| 292 | * ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' features a nine-year-old girl. As a BossBattle. Go ahead and beat the crap out of her. She even shows up again in another BossBattle, with her co-workers, a big brawler and an axe swinger, and is considered at least equal in power to them. |
| 293 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Avernum}} 1-3'' there are children in towns (where they are unlikely to be harmed). However, the young of AlwaysChaoticEvil races like goblins and giants almost never never appear. The [[LizardFolk slithzeraki]] are an exception. In the first game, when they are universally evil, you can slaughter a tribe's young with no negative consequences. (In fact, to complete one quest it may be necessary.) In the second game, you can do the same thing in very similar circumstances, but now that many slithzeraki are friendly, it's heavily implied you shouldn't. In ''Avernum 4-5'', [[BlackAndGrayMorality where towns are more likely to be wiped out]], children show up a lot less. However, ''Avernum 5'' does give you the option to wipe out several baby giants. |
| 294 | ** In the original version of ''Exile II'', destroying the enemy slithzeraki children is first described as fun, but when complete, your party feels TearsOfRemorse because you shouldn't be killing children even if they are enemies. |
| 295 | * In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' you have the option of killing a young child as a way to solve a quest. The game makes you [[TearJerker suffer for it]], though. |
| 296 | * As noted above, ''Franchise/MassEffect'' plays this completely straight for most of the time, but an onscreen death of a child at the beginning of ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' becomes a major plot point. |
| 297 | * In ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' you can kill children, although it will decrease your reputation significantly (...but not any more than killing any other civilians). |
| 298 | * Despite the infamous trailer for the game, no children appear in ''VideoGame/DeadIsland''. However, the death of children is mentioned frequently in conversation and the storyline. |
| 299 | * While they don't appear onscreen ''alive'', the first ''VideoGame/TheFinalFantasyLegend'' game has you find a room filled with corpses, and a journal that identifies them as children killed in a nuclear war. Somewhat surprisingly, this made it through NOA's censorship when the game was localized. |
| 300 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuestXI'' works with this trope as well, though not by the player's hand. [[spoiler: Between the game's first and second acts, LittleMissBadass Veronica, cursed to be in a child's body, sacrifices herself to save the rest of the party. An Arborian couple's newborn son also dies during the disaster, as do child villagers in multiple towns. Thankfully for all of them, the postgame gives you a TimeyWimeyBall to undo 99% of the death and destruction.]] |
| 301 | * ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'': Child [=NPCs=] are as vulnerable to damage as anyone else and are specifically threatened by several quests. Several {{Child Mage}}s are enslaved on Fort Joy and can die during their escape attempts; one {{Sidequest}} has the [=PCs=] explain to some children that their friend was killed by a shark; and another has a [[KnightTemplar Magister]] posse murder an innocent child while trying to put down a ChildMage. |
| 302 | [[/folder]] |
| 303 | |
| 304 | [[folder:Simulation Game]] |
| 305 | * The villagers in the [[AGodIsYou God Game]] ''VideoGame/BlackAndWhite'' raise their children to adulthood in full view of the player, so they're fair game for all the VideoGameCrueltyPotential an evil deity can dream up. Moreover, newborns are by far the best choice of HumanSacrifice since they're a drain on resources and provide the biggest boost in prayer power, so gods unconcerned by a swan dive to the bottom of the KarmaMeter are encouraged by the game to opt for... ''crèche-fresh'' victims. |
| 306 | * Averted in ''Website/{{Lioden}}'' and sister site ''Website/{{Wolvden}}''. Cubs have a chance of dying on each rollover if not sufficiently protected, and they can also die of illness or birth defects. In ''Lioden'', [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential you can even kill cubs yourself. Both games also have encounters with other baby animals that give you the option to kill them]]. |
| 307 | * ''VideoGame/TheSims'': Sim children can die from drowning and fire but they can't die of starvation. If you try, they'll be taken away by social services before they reach death. Most sims can use cartoony violence on each other, with the "slap" and "fight" interactions, but the worst an adult sim can do to a child is "argue" and "condescend". Child sims themselves can't do any negative interaction except "argue", even when talking to another child. |
| 308 | * ''VideoGame/VirtualVillagers'' averts the trope hard. Children are just as likely to die as any other villager, usually from starvation or disease. The occasional "Island Events", which can have a good, bad or neutral outcome depending on player choices, can also affect children, including their death or disappearance (with the implication of death or [[FridgeHorror possibly worse]]). |
| 309 | [[/folder]] |
| 310 | |
| 311 | [[folder:Stealth-Based Game]] |
| 312 | * ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'' and ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedBrotherhood'' play with the trope: There are no children to be found in the world unless the plot calls for it, but it does several times, and one of them even meets an untimely demise near the beginning of ''II''. |
| 313 | * ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'' has children as beggars, but they cannot be harmed. |
| 314 | * The ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'' games have 'child-like things' but there are far fewer children around than there logically should be; the game involves sneaking around houses in the middle of the night when children should be at least present, if asleep. However, you encounter the ghost of a child in ''Thief II'' and ''Thief III'', and something that might be a child transformed by mad science in ''Thief II'', as well as a couple of robotic children (sometimes very annoying and... yes, invulnerable). All these are used for their disturbing qualities. |
| 315 | * ''VideoGame/VelvetAssassin'' shows dead children lying in the streets and hanging from gallows. [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany This is not inaccurate for the time period]]. |
| 316 | * ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' contains exactly one child, and that's Emily Caldwin, daughter of the late empress. She's also the only NPC that's immune to whatever you may want to throw at her. |
| 317 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain'' features African ChildSoldiers and Eli [[spoiler:aka young Liquid Snake]]. Killing any child soldier without neutralizing them in a mission nets you a game over, along with a scathing WhatTheHellHero from Ocelot or Miller. |
| 318 | [[/folder]] |
| 319 | |
| 320 | [[folder:Strategy]] |
| 321 | * The isometric strategy game, ''[[VideoGame/{{SWAT}} Police Quest: SWAT 2]]'' featured children among the civilian hostages who can be killed the same way as any suspect, civilian, or officer. |
| 322 | [[/folder]] |
| 323 | |
| 324 | [[folder:Survival Horror]] |
| 325 | * While more than a few kids die in the game ''VideoGame/RuleOfRose'', the game is [[GoryDiscretionShot noticeably shy about showing it happen]], keeping the deaths off camera and featuring empty clothes in the place of bodies. Even though in this game, the children are the bad guys. Although the enemy Imps resemble children with either bizarrely distorted faces or the heads of animals, and it's not at all shy about showing ''them'' dying gruesome deaths. |
| 326 | * ''VideoGame/FatalFrameI'' has the ghosts of children who will help you some of the time but other times will attack you like the adult ghosts and have to be dispatched like adult ghosts. It probably helps that defeating a ghost once does not stop it popping up again at a later time -- they'll usually keep hassling you until a suitably dramatic final battle -- and your weapon is a magical camera. |
| 327 | * Undead baby clones show up as enemies in ''VideoGame/DeadSpace1''. [[BlackComedy Drop-kicking them into a wall is possible, and even encouraged.]] |
| 328 | ** [[VideoGame/DeadSpace2 The sequel]] takes this to a new level. The tentacled babies return, but new to the series are exploding infants called "Crawlers" and swarming five-year-olds called "The Pack", [[BlackComedy whose heads you can punch off]]. |
| 329 | ** Finally {{averted|Trope}} by [[VideoGame/DeadSpace3 the third game]]. {{Justified|Trope}} when the setting was a military expedition with a few civilian scientists, so understandably no children were there to be infected. The Lurkers, which were the original dead babies, are now made of dogs. |
| 330 | *** Then {{Double Subver|sion}}ted in the ''Awakening'' DLC, where the Pack from ''2'' makes a reappearance. The reason they show up is because ''[[ReligionOfEvil the Unitologists brought their children with them to Tau Volantis just to infect them]]''. |
| 331 | * ''VideoGame/DeadRising'' appears to play this straight at first glance, due to the fact that out of the 50,000+ zombies in the mall there is not one child. However, the reason that two of the human psychopaths (Adam and Cliff) are the way that they are (read: insane) is due to the fact that they had to watch children be killed by the zombies (even worse with Cliff as the kid killed was his granddaughter). Also, one of the survivors who can be rescued by Frank is a woman who was helpless to stop her baby from being devoured by zombies. There is also the EasterEgg on the title screen. |
| 332 | [[/folder]] |
| 333 | |
| 334 | [[folder:Third-Person Shooter]] |
| 335 | * ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'': Although no children appear in the regular gameplay, one of the intel items the player can find is a small doll made of expensive silk and precious gems. Walker surmises that it belongs to one of the insurgents' children. Later, [[spoiler:the victims of the white phosphorous incident include several mothers and their children.]] |
| 336 | [[/folder]] |
| 337 | |
| 338 | [[folder:Turn-Based Strategy]] |
| 339 | * In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'', there are two chapters where civilians, including children, are on the field. While you cannot harm civilians, enemy units often attack them, and generally kill them in one hit. While you can defend them, doing so is not strictly necessary, and you can still beat the level if one of them dies, although even one civilian death will prevent you from getting the rare items that civilians give you at the end of the chapter. |
| 340 | ** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'', Nico, a little boy who tries to help Micaiah escape from pursuing soldiers, is ''killed'' by said overzealous soldiers, in broad daylight and in a market full of witnesses. [[spoiler:Micaiah runs back to use her HealingHands to revive him, mercifully... [[InvertedTrope no such luck for the adult civilians who are then killed for trying to protect them.]]]] |
| 341 | ** Inverted most heavily in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'' where the villains have a custom of actively hunting children. The one instance the player encounters this it is possible to save all the children but the game makes it clear this practise has been happening for many years and is a key part of the backstory for several characters. The FinalBoss is also approximately fifteen and possessed by Satan. |
| 342 | ** An example that applies to most of the series: When visiting villages and noteworthy homes on a map, you might occasionally meet little kids there; if Bandits proceed to torch said house/village before you can get there in time, [[PlayerPunch it's safe to assume the occupants are dead]]. |
| 343 | [[/folder]] |
| 344 | |
| 345 | [[folder:Turn-Based Tactics]] |
| 346 | * Averted in ''VideoGame/JaggedAlliance 2'': children appear in most towns and, like other civilians, can get caught in the crossfire, or murdered for a huge hit in morale. |
| 347 | [[/folder]] |
| 348 | |
| 349 | [[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]] |
| 350 | * In ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'', we see two children in the entire game; a kid selling newspapers in the opening cutscene, and John's son Jack who's 16. In Mexico, it's mentioned that kids have been taking up arms in the revolution, but we never see any, for obvious reasons. |
| 351 | * There are more children in its {{Prequel}} ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'' but they're mostly hidden in cutscenes. Four-year-old Jack can always be found at camp but the only other kids you can find outside missions are the [[StreetUrchin street kids]] in Saint Denis who you can't hurt. |
| 352 | * ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' features one child, the PlayerCharacter's daughter Katey. She can be killed through the player not fulfilling certain tasks, but not directly and her death is never shown on screen. Note also there's one survivor who has an age of less than 18. [[spoiler:Snowflake the tiger, who is three years old.]] Although this time the trope is played straight as that is considered the age of maturity/adulthood for the average [[spoiler:tigers]]. |
| 353 | * In ''VideoGame/LANoire'', you come across a handful of kids in the entire game, usually during cutscenes and interrogations. But none of these times are even remotely pleasant for either you or them. In the final ''Traffic'' case, you come across a 15 year-old [[spoiler: almost-murder-victim who was drugged and raped after running away from home to become a super star]]. During ''Homicide'', you get to tell a pre-teen girl [[spoiler:that her mother has been raped and murdered by a serial killer. Then you get to ''interrogate'' her, and later end up hunting down and arresting her father in front of her]]. The same thing you later do to [[spoiler:a father of two kindergarden-age girls, whom the father quickly ushers into the next room]]. Then, in ''Arson'', you investigate in [[spoiler:two houses that have been burnt down with everyone in it, including the children. The second house is particularly gruesome, as you find the charred corpses of the whole family in upright praying positions]]. Later, [[spoiler:when you play as Kelso,]] you find a suspect in bed with a twelve-year old prostitute. The last children you see in the game are Cole's daughters, [[spoiler:sitting in the first row at his funeral during the ending sequence]]. |
| 354 | * No-one dies in ''VideoGame/{{Bully}}'', but there ''are'' elementary-school kids. After one too many yelled out 'I'm telling!', it was too much, and they just had to be beaten until they [[EverythingFades disappeared]]. Granted, even touching one shoots your WantedMeter to max, but sometimes they just deserve it... |
| 355 | ** Its even possible to deliberately ''humiliate'' the younger kids; by taunting them enough times until the context sensitive "Humiliate" option becomes available, the player can provoke one of the little kids into flinging himself at Jimmy, being held back by the head just out of punching range, before Jimmy crisply sidesteps and sticks out his leg, and puts the kid flat on his face via momentum... or, Jimmy grabs the kid by the nose and lifts him up onto his tiptoes, the kid moaning in pain the entire time. |
| 356 | * ''VideoGame/MafiaTheCityOfLostHeaven'' averts this, with Frank's daughter Alice appearing ingame, where [[spoiler:you have to rescue her and her mother at an airport]]. A pedestrian who bears resemblance to Alice appears in the opening video, but other than that, no child besides her ever shows up in-game. [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential You could kill her and her mother March]] at any point in the mission, though of course doing so will lead to mission failure with the game [[YouBastard telling you what the hell you just did]]. |
| 357 | * Even ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' averts this. In creature stage, you can kill baby animals of another species, which makes sense considering how real life carnivores often go for the young. (Note that doing this will make that species hate you forever- you'll pretty much have no choice but to extinct them.) But it's a bit more morbid in tribal stage, when attacking another village allows you to kill their babies as well. Civilization and Space stages play the trope straight, though, unless you enter a Galactic Adventure that allows it. |
| 358 | * Children in the ''VideoGame/ZooTycoon'' games, although never actually ''attacked'' by zoo animals, will run away in a panic if an escaped predator comes near them. |
| 359 | * ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' lets the player kill not just villagers, but villager children and baby animals as well. You can even sic zombies on villager children so that they become children zombies! |
| 360 | ** This has repercussions, though, since killing a villager child decreases the player's popularity with the villagers far more than killing an adult villager does. Let your popularity in a particular village drop too low, [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment and the village's]] [[{{Golem}} iron golems]] [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment start attacking you on sight]]. |
| 361 | * The original ''VideoGame/Postal1'' actually toyed with this. The final level of the original release ''did'' feature multiple children in a school backdrop... but the entire level was scripted, as the Dude opens fire on them with his various weapons, hearing their screams - but [[ImprobableInfantSurvival none of them actually get hit]], which causes the Dude to enter a VillainousBSOD, at which point he's finally captured and locked up. [[spoiler:The ''Redux'', however, switches this out for a new finale where the Dude apparently becomes an out-of-body witness to his own funeral; Running With Scissors noted that in the almost 20 years between the original and ''Redux'', school shootings in reality had become [[UnfortunateImplications far too commonplace]] for the original ending level to still have any of its shock value.]] |
| 362 | * ''VideoGame/WatchDogs'' has the usual no children in the over world, although a major plot point is the death of Aiden’s niece Lena, who died in a hit meant for him, while his nephew is a secondary character. There’s also a few schools that serve as basic building props along with kids toys around residential areas. When Aiden is infiltrating the Black Viceroy’s HQ via cameras, a woman can be seen cradling an infant and a few Home Intrusion events has a few parents interacting with their kids. |
| 363 | * ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' often features children in side stories and some areas, and some are even major characters, but you can't see any randomly-generated ones in the overworld. Not that you could fight them anyway; fights are only triggered when someone tries to pick one with you. You do end up fighting an elementary school kid in ''0'' [[YoungerThanTheyLook but he looks like an adult]]. |
| 364 | [[/folder]] |
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