Creating Life Is Bad

"IT'S ALIVE! NOW I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE GOD!"

"He created an angel just for himself, he gave her beauty he gave her life, but she couldn't live without a soul..."

— Blutengel, "The Oxidizing Angel"

In many lores and settings, humans creating life (especially intelligent life) is not awesome, and the act of creation does most certainly not make them valid Gods. On the contrary, the act is considered to be a foul act of hubris, often referred to as Playing God. Even if the character doesn't claim to be (like) one.

The creation of autonomous, independent, and above all intelligent life has long been the exclusive province of the divine. Just about every creation myth has the creation of animal and then sapient life forms as the second or third thing done; right after space/time but before waffles. Even assuming there is no God, the odds of it happening are such that it is a secular miracle not to be taken lightly. Thus this trope.

Often however you'll see the Luddite throw accusations of "Hubris" and "Playing God" for something as minor as inventing a new species of bacteria to break down inorganic trash heaps, which realistically would be just another GMO. Besides, by these standards, humans have already been "playing God" since the domestication and selective breeding of the wolf into the dog first started over fourteen thousand years ago.

This archetypal plot probably emerged due to how artificial lifeforms might invoke an effect similar to the Uncanny Valley.

Subtrope of Creating Life. Contrast its sister tropes Creating Life Is Awesome, Creating Life Is Unforeseen, Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!, A.I. Is a Crapshoot, and Deity of Human Origin. Different than Sex Is Evil, unless artificial creation of life is explicit symbolism for sex.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Dragon Ball Z, Dr. Gero/Android 20 creates several androids and the biological chimera Cell, the latter of whom, after reaching his perfect form, threatens to destroy the universe and ultimately kills Goku.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • The homunculi created by Father in the original manga and its Brotherhood adaptation. He's some form of homunculus himself, who was created by Hohenheim's master so that he could reveal the secret of immortality to their king.
  • Every alchemist who tries human transmutation, creating life, or resurrecting the dead suffers this in the 2003 anime, as it is these attempts that create homonculi in this version. Greed implies that Team Evil has had several of them through the ages, with himself and Envy being the oldest at the moment.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Project Fate was designed to revive the dead daughter of a scientist, Precia Testarossa. The work went fine and the girl herself is very sweet, if a little emotionally repressed. However, her creator couldn't handle that Fate was a clone and not her original daughter and goes off the deep end as a result. Fate herself still turns out fine, though. She's adopted by a loving family, makes a lot of friends, and finds love.
  • This gets continued in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, with the Big Bad being a wanted criminal due to his extensive research into clones and cyborgs. While the act of creating artificial lifeforms is considered both illegal and immoral, Clones Are People, Too is in full effect and only three of them appear to be evil. Even those aren't monsters.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has a being known as "The Lifemaker" and "The Mage of the Beginning", who was the Big Bad before Negi's father Nagi kicked his butt. However, he wasn't a villain because of his implied creation of the entire magic world, but because he seemed to behave as though he was free to do with his creations as he pleased, though he was still trying to help them.
• Type Blue Mu from Toward the Terra have the ability to create living organisms from organic matter via telekinesis. Tony uses this power to show Artella they can still have children, even if doctors have said otherwise.
• Zombie Loan has a character who creates golems out of zombie parts. They're not very nice, except for one who is also rather woobie-ish. She doesn't last long.

Comic Books

• Fantastic Four (1961): Of the Enclave, Jerome Hamilton is the only one to start having cold feet when their creation, Him (later known as Adam Warlock), starts pre-emptively attacking them before even being properly born. He comes to the conclusion that they never should've tried creating life in the first place, and therefore the best solution is to kill Him before he's fully born.
• The title character from Omega the Unknown was created to be a real Übermensch by an ancient race of aliens.
• Gargamel in The Smurfs created Smurfette as a weapon to destroy the Smurfs, with that purpose being more apparent in the Animated Adaptation and in the film series. When Papa Smurf turned her into a real Smurf, Gargamel in the comic books abandoned the idea of creating any similar life forms, while Gargamel of the cartoon show tried it again by creating a giant named Doofus, and Gargamel of the film series created the Naughties in The Smurfs 2 with the intention of them being turned into Smurfs so he could extract their essence to power his magic, create more Naughties to turn into Smurfs, and gain enough power for world domination and total destruction of the Smurfs.
• Superman: In How Luthor Met Superboy, this formed part of Lex Luthor's origin. Young Lex Luthor was an aspiring scientist who resided in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy. Luthor saved Superboy from a chance encounter with Kryptonite. In gratitude, Superboy built Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later, he managed to create an artificial form of life. Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor created an antidote for Kryptonite poisoning. However, an accidental fire broke out in Luthor's lab. Superboy used his super-breath to extinguish the flames, inadvertently spilling chemicals which caused Luthor to go bald; in the process, he also destroyed Luthor's artificial life form. Believing that Superboy intentionally destroyed his discoveries, Luthor attributed his actions to jealousy and vowed revenge. In The Supergirl Saga, because Superboy died before Lex Luthor had a chance to meet him, Lex was able to complete the creation of an artificial lifeform, which ended up becoming the Matrix form of Supergirl.

Fan Works

• The Psyche Master of Empath: The Luckiest Smurf became the creator of his own Master Race, the morally-ambiguous Psyches.
• Played with in Love, in All Its Forms. Luna, tired of her subjects shunning her and her beautiful night, experiments with magic to create a living being that will love her, much to the horror of her sister Celestia, who thinks to herself that it isn't natural and nothing good can come of it. The creature turns out to be the first changeling, a little foal that Luna names Antumbra. Although Antumbra is a sweet little thing, she must feed on her mother's love to survive, leaving her drained and exhausted. It is not her fault that she must do so, as she was born that way, but Celestia banishes her from the palace in order to keep her from draining Luna completely dry and eventually killing her.
• Tantabus Mark II: Luna accidentally creates a sentient magical construct; after some initial paranoia, she accepts it as her child and moves on. The biggest problem is that her sister is annoyed she wasn't told about this until the Tantabus just showed up in her dreams one night. However, when Starswirl the Bearded returns from a thousand-year exile, he freaks, because in his time creating life was seen as a great sin. Thankfully he does calm down after having a chance to talk to both Luna and the Tantabus.
• A major part of the Fourth Movement of With Strings Attached. Brox discovers a spell that will turn inorganic items into living creatures, and wants to use it to repopulate Baravada with monsters for the skahs to kill. To that end, she mind-controls Paul, who seems to be able to boost spells well beyond their parameters, and teaches him the spell so he can boost it and then channel it through the Vasyn, which will boost it exponentially.

Film — Animated

• Igor focuses on playing with and inverting this trope; the title character is trying to be bad in creating Eva, only for her to turn out as a Gentle Giant who's later instrumental in the Character Development of the entire twisted society.
• The first part of Pokémon: The First Movie alludes to many failed attempts to Create Life, with Mewtwo being the lone survivor. The Mad Scientist Dr. Fuji only agreed to attempt a clone of Mew in order to get funding for the project. Its true purpose was to bring the good doctor's daughter, Amber/Ai, back from the dead. It ends with them succeeding in creating the world's most powerful Pokémon.

Film — Live-Action

• Alien:
  • In Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, the Engineers' method of creating life involves a horrific mutagen, Chemical A0-3959X.91 - 15, that spawns terrifying monsters (including humans) and creates endoparasitic predatory lifeforms called Neomorphs in suitable hosts, which David uses to exterminate not only the Engineers but all faunal life on Planet 4.
  • Alien: Covenant also reveals that David created the Xenomorphs from earlier experiments that he perfected by hybridizing Neomorph strains developed from Planet 4's wildlife, such as a species of parasitic wasp. As you might expect from someone who created a mutated living weapon that kills anything on sight, he was driven to do this by his nihilistic hatred of all other lifeforms and his desire to become a god.
• The Golem features the creation of the Golem of Prague. The eventual rebellion of the Golem is already forecast by the warning the Rabbi finds in his book: "If you have brought the dead to life through magic, beware of that life."
• Jurassic Park:
  • Jurassic Park (1993) initially shows us that Creating Life Is Awesome, but not all the characters agree. When the dinosaurs are released by the Fat Bastard, the film falls cleanly into Creating Life Is Bad.
  • Jurassic Park III drives the point home even farther, with Alan Grant having transformed into a sarcastic, somewhat bitter man due to his experience in the Park. He calls the dinosaurs "genetically engineered theme-park monsters" and calls the scientists out for playing God.
    Amanda Kirby: This is how you make dinosaurs?
    Dr. Alan Grant: No. This is how you play God.
  • By the time of Jurassic World, the scientists have mostly gotten the hang of containing dinosaurs and the park has been open and successful for ten years. (The raptors are still off-limits.) To counter declining attendance, they create the Indominus rex, a Mix-and-Match Critter based primarily on a T. rex but bigger and scarier. It's also smart enough and has enough genetic advantages from various species to escape its enclosure and go on a rampage. This is intentional; the I. rex is secretly intended as a prototype Living Weapon for military applications. So, Creating New Life Is Bad... or, Creating Life for the Expressed Purpose of Murdering Things Is Bad... or, for the series as a whole, Trying to Control the Life You Create Is Bad... or, given how half-hearted (well below standard zoos) said attempts turn out to be, Not Trying Very Hard to Control the Life You Create Is Bad.
• In Lady Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein is single-mindedly obsessed with completing his life's work, which is creating life. He ignores the misgivings of his assistant Marshall, and presses ahead despite the brain he is using being a damaged one taken from an executed murderer. Needless to say, he winds up being killed by his creation, who then goes on a murderous rampage across the countryside. His daughter Tanya decides to forgo creating life, and instead concentrates on a simple Brain Transplant.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show, of course, has Dr. Frank N Furter creating a sentient (but not that bright) playmate named Rocky.

Literature

• Bazil Broketail: The Masters of Padmasa create new lifeforms regularly, and this is portrayed as a terrible evil. It's less the act itself though than how they do it (forcibly impregnating both women and female animals) along with the result (monsters used to wage war). Still, only they ever do it, and they're the main bad guys for most of the series.
• The ur-viles, artificial life-forms created by the Demondim in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, believe this. They consider their own existence to be an abomination against the natural order, and serve Lord Foul out of a combination of Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life and Death Seeker (since their bargain with Foul is that if they serve him well enough, he'll destroy them). However, in the Second and Third Chronicles, the ur-viles reevaluate their life choices and decide that there are better ways to deal with their situation, and pull a collective Heel–Face Turn.
• Subverted in Dark Lord of Derkholm. The protagonist Derk is a wizard who specializes in creating creatures like winged pigs and horses, intelligent, talking pigeons, and enormous, partially human griffins. To all the other wizards, Derk is considered a freak and somewhat disturbed, and most of them either don't "get" his projects or think they're weird. However, he takes great pride in them, and considers his five intelligent, talking griffins to be every bit his children as much as his biological son and daughter. Derk is shown to be sympathetic and generally in the right.
• The Diabolic: Servitors, Diabolics, and other Artificial Humans are seen as soulless abominations, and if any of them should try to ask questions they will be told this to their face. However, in a blatant act of hypocrisy, it's not a sin to make or use servitors. The price of the sin is purely on the creature itself, and they will be told repeatedly that they have no souls even as they are sent to fight or kill or whatever else their makers need.
• In the Dragonlance saga, in the second set of novels (Legends, possibly), Raistlin tries to create life in his tower lab. It's not a very big point in the book, and he's not very successful, but there are pitiful, slithery things in the tower that he created. This is probably done to illustrate his evilness and his ambition — the major plot of the trilogy is that he's trying to become a god, after all.
• Frankenstein: Frankenstein's Monster, probably the Trope Codifier of this in modern thought, despite the fact that the loaded term "monster" was applied to it retroactively (he is only referred as the "Creature" in the original novel), and that the book never actually portrays the act of creating life as evil — instead, it is the act of Frankenstein abandoning his own creation that drives it to evil actions. Shelley never argued against creating life, only against humanity refusing to take responsibility for what they create. Nonetheless, genetic engineering controversies are very likely to invoke the Frankenstein's Monster archetype in arguments (an example is how genetically modified foods are referred to as "frankenfoods"). In-universe, he was not beautiful, though he was meant to be so:
  How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.
• In the John Carter of Mars novel Synthetic Men of Mars, Ras Thavas creates the Hormads, nigh-invulnerable artificial life forms that promptly rebel against him and plan to conquer all of Barsoom.
• Arguably Jurassic Park, though there is also the interpretation that it wasn't Hammond returning the dinosaurs to life that was the problem, but his belief they could be controlled.
• In The Monster Men, this is what Professor Maxon is up to. In the opening, he is disposing of one that died, and goes on a long ocean voyage to repair his nerves. Alas, it works, and he decides to try again, and even marry off his daughter to one.
  He believed that he had reached an unalterable decision never again to meddle with the mighty, awe inspiring secrets of creation; but with returning health and balance he found himself viewing his recent triumph with feelings of renewed hope and anticipation.
• In Otherland, this is Mr. Sellars' dark secret, explaining his obsession with Otherland. He created virtual reality lifeforms as a forcibly accelerated "hothouse" experiment, and then panicked when his playthings were stolen by the Other.
• Zig-zagged in The Silmarillion. Aulë, the patron archangel of smithing, craftsmanship, etc., gets impatient for Men and Elves to show up and decides to make some people of his own, the Dwarves. Unfortunately, he lacks the power and authority to do so, and the Dwarves are empty shells without free will. At first, it looks like Ilúvatar (God, more or less) will condemn him for this, but he ultimately stops Aulë from destroying his creations and breathes true life into them instead. Opinions vary on the moral of this, but it seems to be that you must take responsibility for what you create and not destroy it just because it turns out differently than you expect, and/or that what you create ultimately belongs to God, not to you as its creator. His plans appear to have a great deal of flexibility in any case; this isn't the only time he changes creation to accommodate the creative input of the Valar by a long shot.

Live-Action TV

• Battlestar Galactica (2003): "The Cylons were created by man..."
• The second episode of the first season of Fringe is all about immoral attempts to create humans in labs. One such created human is active, and needs to consume parts of human brains to stay young. The episode ends with An Aesop where the main scientist guy babbles about how we scientists must always remember the boundary between our domain and God's, no matter how easy it is to forget.
• Kamen Rider contains many examples of creating artificial life, and they mostly end poorly.^note All of them but two. In Kamen Rider Ghost: Specter Re:Birth V-Cinema movie, there is no problem with the life itself, just with the creator. Bugster in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid are an example of Creating Life Is Unforeseen.
  • Kamen Rider Drive: Roidmudes were created by a Mad Scientist for shits and giggles (and abuse). Unsurprisingly, it came to bite him in the rear and he died by their hand.
  • The Greeed in Kamen Rider OOO were created 800 years ago by human scientists out of human desire forged into Medals. They were just non-sentient entities until the humans thought it was a bright idea to destroy one of each of their Core Medals, which caused them to go out of control and try to devour everything in their path to fill the void it left.
• Within the first few minutes of the first episode of the first season of True Detective, Rustin Cohle is drawn into discussion by his partner Marty. When pushed by the latter to talk about himself, Cohle caves in and says the following:
  "I'd consider myself a realist, alright? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist... I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself — we are creatures that should not exist by natural law... We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody... I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction — one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." ^note Incidentally, a quick summation of this philosophy, known as antinatalism, can be found in the Real Life section to explain this unique spin on the trope.

Multimedia Franchises

• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • In "Metamorphosis", a Sufficiently Advanced Alien says that she can't create life because "that is for the maker of all things".
    • The immortal Flint from "Requiem for Methuselah" creates an android who goes on to achieve proper sentience... and then dies, as she can't deal with her newfound emotions. He doesn't revel in the fact that he created new life, which is impressive all by itself. Bear in mind this is about 75 years before Data was created and you'll appreciate why this is slightly unrealistic.
  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Doctor McCoy is outraged at the implications of the Genesis Project, though in his case, it was for the same reasons that David was concerned about working with Starfleet on the project: While Genesis was designed to create life, its method of doing so (a Class 6 apocalypse followed by rebuilding from scratch) could also make it the most devastatingly powerful weapon ever created. Indeed, it is shown in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home that the creation of the Genesis Device had caused increased tensions between the Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, who had similar concerns.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the evil overlords known as the Founders created the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar.
• Star Wars:
  • Darth Plagueis, which is to say, the Emperor's original teacher, was this trope, at least according to the Emperor. Read Palpatine's monologue on the subject from Revenge of the Sith for more detail:
    Palpatine: Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create... life. He had such a knowledge of the Dark Side, he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.
    Anakin: He could actually... save people from death?
    Palpatine: The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
  • Also, the creation of the Clone Army turns out to be this, with the clones eventually making The Empire possible. This gets lampshaded by Lama Su in The Bad Batch.
    Lama Su: We have empowered them, to our own detriment.
  • Toyed with in the backstory of Galaxy of Fear. On Kiva, two scientists delving into the creation of life accidentally unleashed a World-Wrecking Wave that killed everything on the planet but them. The heroic one considers it My Greatest Failure, but the villainous one had been aware that this would happen and convinced the heroic one it would be fine just because he wanted to see it. Whether the creation itself is good or evil is never said.
• Whoniverse:
  • In an inessential moment in the otherwise tightly plotted Doctor Who story "The Brain of Morbius", Solon rants that he was declared mad due to his belief that he could create life! ...But he never actually creates life in the story, just a patchwork body that requires Morbius's will to bring to life. Since there's no evidence he can do this, it's entirely possible that his belief he could create life is actually just delusion. The Past Doctor Adventures book Warmonger does feature as its monsters a race of artificial spider abominations created by Solon.
  • Explored in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Heritage, in which a scientist who has become obsessed with becoming the first to produce a perfect human clone has resorted to murder to further his ends, including causing the death of one of the Doctor's old companions. When the Doctor confronts the scientist, he reveals that the scientist actually isn't the first to discover human cloning — but the secret has always been forgotten. Not, interestingly enough, because cloning is somehow 'unnatural', but because in trying to create life artificially the people involved forget how precious life is, no matter how it is created, and end up treating it as a disposable commodity — just as the scientist has done. Upon being confronted with both the futility of his life's work and precisely what a monster he's ultimately let himself become, the scientist doesn't react well.

Music

• Blutengel's song "The Oxidizing Angel" twists the Frankenstein myth a bit: the created woman is exquisitely beautiful, and unlike Frankenstein's original monster, her creator doesn't abandon her. However, while she has a mind, she does not have a soul, and this is utterly traumatic for her. Her creator, being selfishly in love with her, refuses her plea to kill her, driving her to kill him instead.

Myths & Religion

• To give a simplified synopsis of Gnosticism, the God who created life is not the real God and botched the job royally.
• Averted in Shinto. In short, Shinto believes that everything in existence has a kind of divine spark ("kami"), from the smallest pebble to the tallest mountain, and of course anything organic, like plants, animals and humans. According to this viewpoint, everything is already "alive" in a way, and it's understood as a good thing to "uplift" life into a higher state of consciousness. Often, this is the given explanation on why the Japanese are so fond of A.I. and robots (which would be uplifting the inorganic materials of the robots); they're doing God's work in a good way, so to speak.

Tabletop Games

• In Genius: The Transgression, creating life is one of the first things you can learn. Creating intelligent life is a bit tougher, although any two-bit Mad Scientist could create shambling zombies to handle really menial tasks. Both cases are Transgressions against Obligation, mostly because ordinary humans would find it kinda weird (and Obligation takes a very hard line against rejecting standard human norms).
• In Promethean: The Created, each of the major lineages of Prometheans was created because somebody started channeling the Divine Fire and decided to create life, either for purposes of companionship, servitude, just rule, an idea of what was happening on "the other side," or just plain because. Every Promethean is essentially a walking example of Came Back Wrong on many levels. Humans instinctively hate them, they rot the environment, and are prone to cause destruction. They have to earn a soul and become fully human to end the karmic pain from merely existing. Incidentally, part of the process of becoming human requires creating another Promethean.

Video Games

• In Baldur's Gate II, the PC wakes up in the dungeon of the wizard Jon Irenicus and has to fight his way out. Some of the things he encounters suggest that Irenicus was trying to create life in that dungeon. Most prominently, one can stumble upon a clone of an elven lady, apparently abandoned and gone crazy there. When you find out who the original is, that abandonment serves to underline just how lacking in empathy Irenicus has become: she was the love of his life, who turned against him when he tried to grab power. Several pods are said to hold other clones... though not all pods hold created life: one who begs you to let him die states that he was a servant who was put in there until Irenicus could get around to healing him.
• Geneforge is all over this, since your Mons come from genetic engineering. The relationship between serviles and humans is repeatedly paralleled to institutionalized slavery, with eugenics, that explodes into an open race war and magical WMD race from the third game on. This can even work its way into gameplay — you might find yourself unwilling to make a drakon if the MP requirement means you'll have to dissolve that Fyora you've been keeping around for ten levels... or you might not even give it a thought.
• The Little Tail Bronx series seems to take a stance along the lines of this trope:
  • As revealed in Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, Juno erased and re-seeded the entire population of the planet after humanity and their Titano-Machina warring risked the permanent destruction of Earth's biosphere. Solatorobo itself features three "hybrids" created by Baion and Merveille. Two of them are Omnicidal Maniacs, and the third is the titular hero. Merveille really feels bad about it, though.
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 features a more overt and personal example of this in Jihl, another hybrid. Back when humans were still around, an organization named Crusade created Jihl and many other hybrids to act as potential pilots or Child Soldiers for their large-scale weapons. It's made explicit that Jihl alone had to suffer through constant tumultuous experimentation in order to become as powerful and durable as he is, and he ended up being the only survivor after all of Crusade's other hybrids died in agony either through experimentation or on the battlefield. As Jin puts it:
    Jin: Hmph… I understand the desire to create as an engineer, but they were playing with life itself…
• According to the characters of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, alchemy is a science (as opposed to black magic) because it can't be used to create life. It turns out that it can.
• Toward the end of Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dr. Suvi Anwar speculates this was the motivation of the unknown beings who set off the Scourge, trying to kill the Jardaan for creating the Angara, noting how many people back in the Milky Way were against creating life, whether organic or synthetic.
• In Return to Krondor, the necromancers encountered throughout the game turn out to be doing this. The sewer monsters were humans that were transformed into green beasts with poisoned claws that could make eggs if a male one and female one came together. It is possible to transform one of them back to a human via an alchemical catalyst. Also, in the middle of the game, it is possible to encounter a two-headed red beast that seems to be similar to an Air Elemental but this one can inflict fire damage. Jazhara comments that that thing was an abomination. That creature may have been one of the experiments conducted by Sidi's necromancers.
• Strider (Arcade): In the first game, Grandmaster Meio discovers the secret art to create life, and plans to use it to repopulate Earth with his own creations (after cleaning it up first) as a way to satisfy his twisted ego. In Strider 2, it's implied he has succeeded, and the game (set 2000 years after the first) is now inhabited entirely by his creations. This world, however, has gone to high hell in the interim, horribly polluted and besieged by wars, crime and diseases. After returning from his two-millennia-long slumber, Meio finds the state of the world so disgusting that he decides to simply destroy it and look around for a new planet to try again.
• In System Shock, SHODAN is seen performing a variety of biological mutation experiments on Citadel Station, intending to have these violently insane mutants, once perfected, replace humanity. The pod they are on is jettisoned partway through the game, but said pod shows up again in System Shock 2, its inhabitants having evolved into a Hive Mind race known as "The Many", which plans on assimilating humanity into itself. One character mentions that SHODAN should never again be allowed to play God... not just because of the horrific results, but also because "she's far too good at it."

Visual Novels

• There are two forms of this in Edelweiss. The first is apparently not that big of a deal, creating plants spontaneously. The second is the extremely difficult task of creating a homunculus. One of the heroines is a homunculus created accidentally in an attempt to revive a girl who died. She Came Back Wrong, but in a good way.

Webcomics

• Creating new species is a crime in the world of Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures. This law was passed after the accidental creation of the undead race. Jyrras has managed to create life completely by accident twice, first by accidentally making a living bubblegum creature and then again by accidentally making a sapient AI, and he has to keep them hidden for fear of legal repercussions.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has many artificial beings as characters, most of whom are perfectly nice, but also most of whom were made accidentally. The only two who were made deliberately, Galatea and Gosh, are by far the most dangerous and emotionally unstable of the bunch.
• Inhuman has this in its backstory. A company that until then created equivalents of Star Wars's droid army had the bright idea of creating the equivalent of the clone army for theocratic clients. Furious, they had the whole company exterminated, from CEO to janitor. The protagonist's parents worked there.
• Parodied in the Alt Text of this xkcd strip.

Web Videos

• French Baguette Intelligence: Discussed in Should science be morally ethical?, with Gringo taking this stance regarding the creation of humanzees.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • Played with in "Slumber Party Panic". PB attempts to resurrect some candy people and accidentally creates zombies, but after the zombie outbreak is dealt with, she discovers the correct resurrection formula anyway and brings the zombies back to life.
  • "Too Young" focuses on the kingdom being taken over by Princess Bubblegum's first failed experiment: Lemongrab, a mentally unbalanced manchild.
  • Princess Bubblegum's second failed experiment is Goliad. Although Goliad is made properly, she is corrupted after getting the wrong idea about power, and believes in using her vast psychic abilities to maintain order. However, a third creation, Stormo, doesn't seem to have any issues physically, mentally, or morally. Funnily enough, Goliad also may serve as something of a clone to Bubblegum, as her DNA is derived from a baby tooth from the Princess. Stormo, on the other hand, is made from a lock of Finn's hair, and it appears that he managed to inherit Finn's heroic nature, as he locked himself in eternal psychic combat with Goliad to keep her from harming anyone.
  • Aside from these mistakes, Bubblegum actually has a pretty good track record. Her creations populate the Candy Kingdom, which, while not exactly normal, is pretty nice overall. On the other hand, leaving her candy life formula where Lemongrab could find it was not a wise move.
  • In the eyes of the Lemongrabs, this trope is averted, as they think that Creating Life Is Awesome. When Princess Bubblegum actually starts being nice to them, they begin referring to her as "Mother Princess" and "Mommy", and actually enjoy the fact that she made them and gave them life. The earls also see themselves as being dads to the strange-looking lemon creatures they create, and are overjoyed to finally have "more family". The Lemon Children appear to be hideous abominations, but the Lemongrabs think of them as their adorable toddler-aged children.
• Rudy Tabootie of ChalkZone makes it a rule not to use his magic chalk to create any living creatures in the Zone unless in the direst of circumstances since the inhabitants are immortal and then it'll be his responsibility to take care of them.
• The Simpsons: In "HOMЯ", some scientists say they can't play God with Homer's intelligence.
  Homer: You do nothing but play God, and I think your octo-parrot would agree.
  Octo-Parrot: Rawk! Polly shouldn't be!

Real Life

• There is an ethics-based philosophy called antinatalism with the mindset that even the mundane creation of life via human reproduction is bad. This can come in the form of several arguments:
  • Consent based: The argument that only the person in question has the right to decide whether or not they should exist, not their parents, and creating them without consent (which by definition is impossible without a time machine) is immorally robbing them of that right.
  • Suffering based: The argument that creating life is unethical because people inevitably risk pain simply by coming to exist, essentially calling into question whether life's joys outweigh its sorrows.
  • Environmental based: The argument that the best way to minimise humanity's impact on nature is to minimise the number of humans being born.
  • Overpopulation based: The argument that people need to at least limit their reproduction to avoid the consequences of overpopulation.
• Some arguments against genetically modified organisms consider breeding GMOs to be creating life and that being a bad thing. Whether it's this trope or not depends on your view about GMOs, and if modifying existing species truly counts as creating new life in the context of this trope.
• Creating artificial biological organisms from scratch is a controversial topic in the scientific community. This is because of the potentially devastating consequences that any organism with no natural predators poses to the environment.
• More "altering life is bad" than "creating life is bad," but of the same principle; many dog, cat and horse breeds suffer as a direct result of people altering them by breeding them to be the way they are. Pugs are one of the best examples of this trope and are hit with it very hard. All of them without exception suffer a myriad of health problems because of being bred to have such a short wrinkled face and little stubby body. All pugs struggle to breathe, as if they are doing it through a straw because of the structure of their inner nose. They are very prone to having their eyes pop out of their sockets (this can be caused by something as seemingly harmless as putting a tight leash on them). About 64 percent of them are affected by hip dysplasia, which is painful. It goes on and on. Yet people breed them because they can make money off them, and people buy them because they think these deformed miserable dogs are cute and that somehow justifies supporting these selfish breeders. Many animal rights advocates thus feel that such breeds shouldn't be continued (or in some cases, existing members euthanized) for such reasons.

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