Heartwarming Orphan

They're the characters the audience is predisposed to root for, suffering as they do from Parental Abandonment and in some cases, a tragic childhood. They're the little orphan girls and boys who come into the story and proceed to melt the hearts of cranky old people and improve the lives of everyone around them just by being their cheerful, innocent orphan selves. The girls may turn out to be little princesses, and the boys might end up as Lords.

This, of course, is their Happy Ending after a terrible childhood of drudgery most likely spent in an orphanage or on the streets, or (shudder) under the care of their dear uncle or fond stepmother. If they have foster parents, or sometimes relatives, they can Earn Your Happy Ending by melting their cold and cantankerous hearts.

Heartwarming orphans don't have to do anything to be heartwarming. It seems inherent to their orphaned state. They don't even have to appear on stage. Announce that an orphanage has been destroyed, and A Million Is a Statistic does not come into play; obviously only a monster would do such a thing.

Of course, if they do certain things, they can lose the "heartwarming" part and end up with a somewhat less appealing role.

The exact opposite of the Evil Orphan. Contrast Conveniently an Orphan. If they look and act like characters from a Dickens novel, especially resembling a Tiny Tim Template, that's a Street Urchin. Compare Littlest Cancer Patient.

See Orphan's Ordeal, Baker Street Regular.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Nadja Applefield from Ashita no Nadja, who travels around the world searching for her mother and helping others.
• Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket: a bit different from the others as she was orphaned while in high school, but it doesn't change the fact that her warmth helped heal the hearts of a dysfunctional family.
• Somewhat subverted in Fullmetal Alchemist, where orphan protagonist Edward Elric is a hot-tempered Measuring the Marigolds alchemist with a fiercely defensive nature and a wild talent for frustrating other people, being as stubborn as he is. Though Edward's genuine care for other people and love for his little brother tend to win even the most cold-hearted characters over in the long run, it is his personality, not his orphaned state, that make people put up with his less-than-pleasant tendencies.
• Hello! Sandybell: Sandybell is this to Edward Lawrence and Honor Longwood. Both were cynical, aloof adults (the latter was even a child abuser) before Sandybelle's kindness warmed their hearts and made them more open and friendly.
• Lietchenstein from Hetalia: Axis Powers is a bit like this, according to the published manga. Nothing is said about her original "family" and she's shown alone for quite a while, passing through lots of difficulties until Switzerland found her and took her in as his adoptive sister.
  • In the "Battle For America" strips, little America fits this as he is almost obscenely adorable and, when told to choose between England or France as an older brother, picks the former out of sympathy.
  • As for Liechtenstein, history suggests a relation to Austria, which fans have already considered. Then again, WW1 forced him to abandon her...
• Inuyasha: Rin was orphaned when bandits killed her family in front of her, leaving her mute and suffering nightmares. She lived as an outcast in the village, being beaten whenever she was caught stealing food to survive. Then Kouga and his demon-wolves kill the entire village, including her. Then she's saved by Sesshoumaru who was testing his Healing Shiv to see if it worked. And then she follows him everywhere, regaining her zest for life, her ability to talk, while becoming his Morality Pet and melting hearts along the way: starting with his.
• Serge Battour from Kaze to Ki no Uta.
• In Love So Life, Shiharu Nakamura's father dies before her birth and her mother dies when she's five. At the orphanage, she becomes the Onee-sama to the other children, cheers up even the bitterest of them, and remains a source of inexhaustible optimism for everyone around her.
• Hayate Yagami of Lyrical Nanoha, who turned four cold-blooded warriors into four kind-hearted people by being her cheerfully optimistic self. Though in a slight twist, they don't adopt her — instead, she adopts them.
• Lady!!: Lynn Russell is this to her Defrosting Ice Queen older half-sister Sarah. Lynn's mother Misuzu died in a car accident, and Sarah refused all her attempts to get close because she was dealing with her own load of issues being an Ill Girl (as well as envy that Lynn would steal attention from her). Even though Sarah was always mean to Lynn, Lynn kept trying to be her friend and picked flowers for her. Sarah was touched by this gesture and eventually accepted Lynn.
• Kaze no Shōjo Emily: When Emily Byrd Starr was 4, her mother died, and when she was 11, her father died of tuberculosis. She's sent to her mean Aunt Elizabeth's house, who constantly abuses her, but Emily still strives to honour her deceased dad and follow her dreams of being a writer, even if she's told it's "unladylike". Jimmy, Laura and Nancy, who similarly lived in fear of Aunt Elizabeth, are touched by Emily and her optimism, and view her as this.
• Joshua Grant from Marginal Prince. While he's not the only character in the series to have lost a parent, he is the only one to have his orphan status as a character (and plot) device. He's a genuinely Nice Guy and still hurts alot over his mother's death (his father died when he was still very young, but it had in turn big effects on Joshua's mother), even though he initially claims it never affected him much. It doesn't help that he is also the heir to a kingdom he doesn't have much of a connection with, being only winded into this because the current king, his uncle, doesn't have any children himself. Joshua spends a great deal of the series angsting over all this, and as he's the main character, this trope is in full effect for both the audience and a bunch of other characters (especially Yuuta once he learns of Joshua's history).
• This, complete with Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold, was inverted in Monster.
  • Not completely. Johan may be evil incarnate but his twin sister, Nina, is a very kind and compassionate person as is Dieter.
• Naruto is an orphan who has the tendency to make friends out of his enemies. Normally by spilling his life story out while beating them up.
• Played With (with rather tragic results) in PandoraHearts. Phillip is a very sweet little orphan kid whom everyone from the viewers to Oz seems to adore. Too bad he's contracted to Humpty Dumpty...
• Pollyanna: Many people express shock that in spite of how horrible her life is, Pollyanna always manages to keep smiling. Aunt Polly in particular is so moved, it causes her to change completely.
• Remy: Nobody's Girl: The titular Remy. She's The Cutie, she sings, and she always encourages her fellow orphans to never lose hope, even if they're under an abusive caretaker like Gaspard.
• The Secret Garden: Mary Lennox may have been born and raised as a Spoiled Brat, but she has a Hidden Heart of Gold when it comes to animals, and bonds with a little robin over losing her parents. Mary then decides to break out of her shell by making friends with the people around her and learning to empathize with them - Colin's illness, Ben's loneliness, Camila's isolation and so on. Mary doubles a Blithe Spirit to the people of the Craven mansion and the residents surrounding it, learning to be better people one step at time.
• Suigintou before her Start of Darkness (in Rozen Maiden: Ouverture).
• In Wild Rose there's Camille, who was taken in by his parents' friend after they died. Not only does he look like an angel, but he's also prone to Tender Tears and just wants some love and attention from his diffident father figure Mikhail.
• Heartwarming Orphan protagonists have been a staple of the World Masterpiece Theater series, which adapted most of the classic examples listed under Literature into anime series.
• Yotsuba from Yotsuba&! is exactly this kind of person - as the main character. However, the series barely touches on her orphaned status, instead focusing on her daily life as a pre-school kid being raised by a (adoptive) single father.
• Subverted big-time in Yu-Gi-Oh!. Kaiba, the orphan with the horrible past (his parents die, none of his relatives want to take him in, he gets continually bullied during his time at the Orphanage of Fear, he finally gets adopted by a megalomaniacal jackass who abuses him regularly and discarded his own son by blood for being too weak,) ends up being one of the series' biggest Jerk Asses.
  • AND played straight, in a way, in that it makes him the Draco in Leather Pants. Besides, can one really question why someone would be a jerk after all of that? Not that it makes it any better.
    • His little brother Mokuba plays it straight though.

Comic Books

• Incredibly common in British girls' comics of the period from around the 1960s to the late 1980s (by which time most of the comics had folded). One notable example was the highly-popular "Angel", set around an orphanage run by an angelic young woman who was herself an orphan.
• Batman: Dick Grayson. Both Bruce and Alfred have commented that he brought joy and color back into their lives after he moved into Wayne Manor. Even as an adult, he's still universally loved by everyone who meets him, and still the best at softening Batman's heart.
  • The other Robins also fit this trope to varying degrees. With the exception of Jason, every Robin after Dick has had at least one living parent, but there's usually some form of Parental Abandonment at play.

Fairy Tales

• A number of fairy tale protagonists are orphans or in the custody of a wicked stepfamily: "Cinderella", "Snow White", "Vasilissa the Beautiful" , "The One-Handed Girl", "The Little Match Girl", the eventual Marquis in "Puss in Boots", the kind girl in "Mother Holle", the heroine of "The Star Money", and so on.

Fanfiction

• In The Night Unfurls, readers are expected to sympathize with Sanakan and Hugh, Street Urchins barely noticed by peasant or noble who are exposed to the Rape, Pillage, and Burn brought by the Black Dogs. There's also Soren, who resorted to thievery as a means to support the Orphanage of Love he lives in. Throughout the story, the three of them are apprenticed by the anti-heroic Kyril as a way to soften him, and they all become Kid Heroes in their own right.
• Of Lilies and Chestnuts has Chestnut, an orphaned thestral/batpony. She may be a bit brash, impulsive, and clumsy, but she wins over Fancy immediately and Fleur shortly after, and they both hope this attitude will save her from the judging eyes of Canterlot nobles.

Films — Animated

• Anne-Marie from All Dogs Go to Heaven, though most of the main gangster dogs are too cold-hearted to be touched and actually find her irritating (including Charlie and Itchy, at first), especially Carface. Most other animals do like her very much though, which is the first step into the excellent communication that makes her so valuable to the villains to begin with.
• The Inuit boy Kunac in Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero.
• Koda from Brother Bear... especially after Kenai kills Koda's mother.
• Buster & Chauncey's Silent Night has Christine. When she first sees Buster and Chauncey, she sets them up in a crack in the church wall, and gives them a handkerchief to use as a blanket.
• In Despicable Me, we have the three girls Margo, Edith and Agnes being adopted by Gru.
• Heidi in Heidi's Song just like she is in the novel.
• The Kung Fu Panda franchise has Tai Lung, Tigress and Po. All were adorable kids and while Tai Lung later betrayed his foster father in his adulthood, Tigress and Po have done theirs proud.
• Lilo from Lilo & Stitch befriends a psychotic alien life form. And we're with her.
• Lewis from Meet the Robinsons manages to win the hearts of the titular family, and gets invited to join them, over the course of the adventure and the invention fair.
• Jeffrey, the protagonist of The Night Before Christmas.
• In Once Upon a Forest, Michelle the badger becomes this after her parents are killed by the poison gas. And she's also a Ridiculously Cute Critter to boot.
• Penny in The Rescuers: a sweet little kidnapped orphan who needs the mice of the title to rescue her.
• Flynn's Back Story in Tangled, all the more effectively hinted at by his refusal to whine over it.
  Flynn Rider: Ahh. . . yeah, well. I'll spare you the sob story of poor orphan Eugene Fitzherbert. It's a little bit of a... it's a little bit of a downer.
• Little Robyn Starling is such a heartwarming orphan that Tom and Jerry: The Movie abandons its lead characters and gives the movie over to her.
  • Nibbles from the actual cartoons was rather heartwarming at times, if a bit of a troublemaker.

Films — Live-Action

• Brianna in Mystery Team.
• Denny in The Room (2003) is an infamously botched case of this trope. An orphaned teenager who was taken in by the film's protagonist, he's supposed to establish Johnny as a good-hearted saint, and to provide an innocent contrast to Johnny and Lisa's turbulent relationship. The problem? Because of the movie's bizarrely inept writing and acting, Denny unintentionally comes off as a budding voyeur and sex fiend, and he spends most of the movie creepily hitting on Johnny's fiancee in front of him, even trying to convince the couple to let him have a threesome with them at one point. Contributing to the movie's general weirdness, Denny's actor, Phillip Haldiman, is actually one of the oldest actors in the cast.
• The wide-eyed, terrified, half-starved World War II refugee boy that a GI (Montgomery Clift) unofficially adopts in The Search. Clift's character names the near-catatonic boy "Jim" and gets him to come out of his shell and learn English as they bond—but it turns out that "Jim" isn't an orphan after all, as a desperate mother is criss-crossing Germany searching for her lost son Karel.
• Shirley Temple's parents often had a short life expectancy, allowing Shirley to play the Heartwarming Orphan and, usually, get adopted by new, ideal parents. Among the films in which Shirley played orphans are Bright Eyes, Little Miss Marker, Stowaway (1936), and The Little Princess (1939) (although in this one her presumed-dead father turns up alive).
• All the cute, adorable orphans at the horrible Orphanage of Fear dramatized in Sparrows, led by America's Sweetheart, Mary Pickford.
• Irena in The Way Back (2010) becomes something of a Morality Pet for the others in the group (seven escapees from a Siberian gulag). They all wind up papa wolves to her, but especially Mister Smith, whose teenage son had been shot before he himself was sent to the gulag. Unfortunately, she doesn't get a happy ending: she dies of heat stroke and dehydration while trying to cross the Gobi desert.

Literature

• American Girl started off with Samantha Parkington as one of the first three characters, who was orphaned as a child when her parents drowned and initially is being raised by her grandmother. The company founder, Pleasant Rowland, went with her being an orphan because her niece said orphans are more "interesting."
• Anne of Green Gables:
  • Anne herself starts out as one; though she winds up with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert by accident since they wanted to adopt a boy, she improves their lives by being a vivacious handful and they come to love her as their own.
  • When Anne is in her late teens, Marilla also takes in a pair of twins, Davy and Dora Keith. Davy is rather Anne-like whereas Dora is the girl Marilla likely wished Anne was sometimes when she was younger.
  • In the third installment of the movie adaptation, which diverges horribly from the book series (it moves the series thirty years forward), Anne and Gilbert end up adopting Dominic, the son of a friend of Anne's who was killed helping her look for Gilbert, who was missing in action during WWI.
• Joe from the Betsy-Tacy series is a somewhat older version of this.
• There are a handful of these to be found among the many orphans in Dear Enemy, the sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs. Sadie Kate and baby Allegra are perhaps the most direct examples of the trope. Sallie, the administrator of the orphanage where they live, admits she sometimes uses their heartwarming characteristics to charm donations of toys or clothing out of the wealthy and powerful.
• Nello from A Dog of Flanders.
• By Louisa May Alcott Eight Cousins and its sequel Rose in Bloom. Protagonist Rose Campbell, in the first, is orphaned and comes to brighten the life of her adoring guardian, lifelong bachelor Uncle Alec, as well as her seven male cousins and various other relations. In the second, adult Rose opens an orphanage called the Rose Garden, and personally adopts an orphaned toddler whom she names Dulcinea (after Don Quixote's lady).
• Flute, in the David Eddings' The Elenium trilogy, is not really an example of this trope, but the band of knights who informally 'adopt' her think she is. Bit of a shock when they find out she's actually the Child-Goddess Aphrael.
• Freckles is older than normal in Gene Stratton-Porter's Freckles, but manages to pull off the role, becoming McLean's son substitute.
• Harry Potter starts out as an orphan living in a closet under the stairs and ends up not only making Hermione's, Ron's and Hagrid's lives a little brighter, but also saving the world from You-Know-Who, who is himself a total inversion of this trope, as told in his backstory in Half-Blood Prince. Though ironically, Tom Riddle is more classically this, being raised in his orphanage and going in a quest to discover his parents and all, his charm at Hogwarts even plays on this appeal for sympathy. It's just that a Heartwarming Orphan can easily be The Sociopath.
• Heidi teaches Peter to read, makes the old grandmother more comfortable, helps Clara learn to walk, and makes her grandfather's life worth living.
• Parodied, along with many common Romance Novel Tropes, in P. G. Wodehouse's short story "Honeysuckle Cottage".
• The title character of James and the Giant Peach, abused and neglected by his creepy aunts, is something of an Iron Woobie, nicely adapted in the movie version with the "My Name is James" song. Though miserable in his circumstances, he maintains inner strength, and acts as the leader of all his giant bug friends during their emigration to America.
• Older Than Radio: Poor little Jane Eyre is tormented by her cruel Aunt Reed and her three nasty children. Then she grows up and meets Mr. Rochester...
• A few of Jo's pupils at Plumfield in Little Men, qualify for this trope.
• Sara Crewe from A Little Princess improves Becky's life and that of the Indian gentleman, and spreads sweetness and imagination everywhere.
• In The Little White Horse, the orphaned heroine transforms her uncle, and reconciles him with his true love.
• Subverted in the MechWarrior Dark Age novels where the resident Omnicidal Maniac "adopts" (read: found while strolling through a city that was recently razed by her instructions) a young girl. And she's changed! Now instead of wanting to just burn the known universe to the ground, she's going to burn the universe down for her!
• All the primary characters in Les Misérables are orphans. Or else raised by the Thenardiers, which probably counts anyway.
• Oliver Twist, who just wants a little more gruel.
• Pollyanna, who is so unrelentingly cheerful that she earned a place in the dictionary.
• Mary from The Secret Garden makes the garden grow and improves her cousin's health.
  • Mary is actually a sort of subversion. She doesn't start as one of these, but more as an orphaned Spoiled Brat who has to go through quite the Character Development first.
  • As a Spoiled Brat, actually, she does Colin a lot of good, since she doesn't put up with his nonsense.
• Tarzan is a grown-up example, having been Raised by Wolves.
• Mark Herron, from Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright. He's extremely knowledgeable about the natural world, and teaches others about it.
• Susan Warner's 1850 bestseller The Wide, Wide World.

Live-Action TV

• Dr. Lance Sweets from Bones, though older than most examples (22 in his first appearance), definitely counts.
• Boy Meets World had Tommy, a kid Eric befriends, although he eventually gets adopted by another family.
• There's a cameo in A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift Of All from what appears to be a trio of heartwarming orphans asking for donations. Subverted in that they're actually Colbert's own children, begging the audience to buy the DVD so they can eat tonight.
• Cathedral of the Sea has Mar, a child whose whole family died of the plague. She is raised by Father Albert, and later adopted by her sister's husband Arnau.
• Jang Geum of Dae Jang Geum does something ingenious and heartwarming to save the day every second episode.
• The Daily Show often makes use of John Oliver's British accent to do this.
• Forever: Baby Abraham is absolutely adorable, especially in "Look Before You Leap" when he's smiling and laughing despite the bleak circumstances of having just been orphaned and rescued from a concentration camp, a little bit of joy when Henry and Abigail doubtless really needed it.
• In Friends, Phoebe is effectively an orphan after her mother kills herself; her father is still alive (as is her real mother - it's a long story), but he walked out on her before her mother's death. She'll use this to get whatever she wants, be it the last muffin or a date; her friends know she does this and will question her if she does it more than once a day.
• Harry Hill's sketch show has the Poor Little Orphan Boy, who starts off cute, but ends up screaming demands for game consoles and the like.
• This was a main component of memorable Hoarders participant "Sir Patrick"'s alleged backstory.
• Little Timmy from Lassie is an orphan who ends up adopted with the best dog in the world. Subverted in The New Lassie TV series, which revealed that when his adoptive parents moved to Australia, they hadn't properly adopted him after all and left him behind.)
• Little House on the Prairie: Albert, James and Cassandra Ingalls, Jenny Wilder ... and (to an extent) Nancy Olesen.
• As with the Japanese drama version of A Little Princess, Shōkōjo Seira has Seira who lost her mother at a young age and her father to a mining incident. Yet, her determination to not let things get to her, even when she is mercilessly bullied and treated horribly by her previous classmates and the director of the school, is what shines the most.
• Merlin has one of these, a cute little boy whose father is killed on-screen, who is taken in by Morgana and Merlin, has large blue eyes and a timid expression, and who is eventually smuggled out of Camelot by Arthur. Then it's subverted when it turns out the cute little orphan that they've been risking their lives to protect is Mordred. Oops.
• Punky Brewster makes cranky old Henry's life much more interesting.
• Star Trek: Picard: In "Absolute Candor", Elnor is a Romulan orphan with a sunny disposition that's warm enough to melt Jean-Luc Picard's heart, who is normally awkward around children and dislikes displays of emotions (traits which Zani mentions aloud). Not only is the Admiral fond of the boy, but they even form an emotional connection like a father and son. Despite the Qowat Milat's no-men policy, the nuns grow to love Elnor.
• Teen Wolf has an adult example in the form of Derek Hale. He gets a lot of sympathy from fans because his ex-girlfriend set his house on fire and his whole family, including his parents, died.
• Voyagers!: Jeffrey Jones, an orphan at the beginning of the series, tends to be liked by most of the people he encounters. One of the bigger examples is his effect on Bogg, who transforms from self-proclaimed loner to protective caretaker after getting stuck with him.

Newspaper Comics

• Little Orphan Annie: Any character whose heart isn't warmed by little Annie is probably an irredeemable monster.

Opera

• In The Golden Ticket, the opera adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie Bucket's parents are never seen or mentioned — his kindly but mostly-bedridden grandparents, whom he tends to, seem to be the only relatives he has — implying that he's this. As if the poverty he lives in isn't enough...
• In Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, the pirates, who are themselves orphans, refuse to oppress any orphan. Word got around.

Theater

• Annie: Little orphan Annie makes Daddy Warbucks' life much better through song and dance.
• The title character of Sally.
• Broadway Example/subversion: Little Sally, from Urinetown: The Musical, is apparently an orphan. She appears with Officer Lockstock during the narration scenes as well. However, she never really makes anyone's lives more cheerful. She does witness Bobby's death, and she exposes Cladwell as a murderer, but she suffers the same fate as the rest of the cast.

Toys

• Hasbro tried to invoke this trope in 1965 with the Little Miss No-Name doll, dressed in a burlap sack with a Single Tear on her cheek and packaging showing her standing outside in a snowstorm, waiting for a loving owner to take her home and give her the love she needed. Unfortunately, she looked more unintentionally terrifying than cute, and didn't sell well. She ended up being discontinued after only a year of production.

Video Games

• Played With in Dragon Quest VII. Fidelia was taken in by the Praetor of Aeolus Vale, home of the Cirrus tribe. Since she doesn't have wings, most of the residents tend to look down upon her, and she gets bullied by the other kids in town, with her younger adoptive sister treating her like her personal servant. Then it's revealed that she's the biological daughter of the Praetor, who hid the truth about her heritage for fear of the village turning on him for having a non-winged child.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Hearthfire DLC offers the player the chance to adopt orphaned children found throughout the game and give them warm, loving homes. You can buy them gifts, play tag and hide-and-seek and even allow them to keep pets!
• Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade has Lugh, a sweet kid who's constantly apologizing for his brother Raigh's bad attitude, said brother when he shows his soft side, and Chad, an older kid who cares for both, although he tries not to show it. They're all from the same orphanage, which was burnt down and its caretaker killed by Bern soldiers before the start of the game, and share a common goal in wanting to end the war for the sake of "the little ones": the smaller children in the orphanage, who are currently under the protection of the Elimine Church.
• Sunny, in the Metal Gear series, who lives up to her name so much that even perennial grouch Solid Snake loves her.
• Flora from the Professor Layton games. Luckily, Layton takes her in as his own and she leads a very Happily Adopted life.
  • There's also the Barde siblings from Last Specter.
• Cheryl, of the original Silent Hill, is the Happily Adopted and much-beloved daughter of Doting Parent Harry Mason, who loves her more than anything... both of the times she's his daughter.
• The children from the Bassett orphanage in Solatorobo, who have a tendency of getting in trouble and needing to be saved. Two of the protagonists, Red and Chocolat are a fusion of this trope grown up a few years and fused with Happily Adopted (though they only adopted each other and apparently don't have any adoptive parents).
• Part of Super Mario Galaxy's plot revealed Rosalina to be one of these.
• During Children's Week in World of Warcraft, your character can do quests to chaperone an orphan of your choice for the duration of the event.

Webcomics

• In Doc Rat, Pippie lost her family to the fires, and is now living with her uncle.
  • She feels haunted.
• Goblin Hollow: How evil are these people? They had an orphanage condemned.
• Although Bob was present from the moment of her birth, Molly from The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! still qualifies on account of having no biological parents. She's okay with it, and will cheerfully say, "I'm adopted! It makes me special!" but she can still get very upset if a bully taunts her for having no real parents.
• In Sinfest, Orphantron needs TLC!
• Strays has Meela. Uncommonly mouthy for it, but still awfully pitiful.
• Twenty-Fifth Bam from Tower of God has never met his parents, the closest thing to a mother figure to him would be his only friend/surrogate-sister/frenemy/love-interest Rachel (it's complicated).

Western Animation

• Around the World with Willy Fog: Princess Romy is a very young woman who lost both her parents in a typhoid epidemic when she studied in England. Then she was forced to marry an old Rajah and almost died with him as a sacrifice to goddess Kali. She hopes to be reunited with her uncle and aunt who she thinks will take care of her. Unfortunately, they also passed away and she's all alone in the world. This tragic backstory makes her even more adorable and sympathetic to the viewers. She's warm and kind, and almost always smiling and happy. She's very grateful to Mr Fog and his companions for rescuing her, taking care of her and allowing her to travel with them. They all adore her and she makes their world lovelier.
• Max from Capitol Critters who watched his family get gassed to death.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Ma-Ti lost his parents when people who didn't like their stance on clear-cutting the Amazon burned down their village, and in consequence was raised by his grandfather. He's an incredibly Nice Guy in spite of his tragic backstory, and no one besides the villains dislikes him.
• Goslyn from Darkwing Duck certainly livens up her adoptive father's life.
• Futurama:
  • Leela is an adult woman but she is an orphan for all practical purposes; sadly, she doesn't seem to get much sympathy from it, and bringing it up may cause groans. She must have some of that mystique, though - she is the most beautiful and most accepted of her kind.
  • Tinny Tim, the small robot orphan who is seen now and then in Bender-related episodes.
  • Exaggerated with the current orphans at Leela's orphanarium. They are happy with any situation they are in, so when Bender adopts and neglects them it's funny instead of horrific.
• Twelve Heartwarming Foster Girls? From Jem, the Starlight Girls.
• Silly Symphonies short Three Orphan Kittens, in which said kittens are thrown from a car into a cold and snowy night, only to make their way into a house and cause a lot of cute and heartwarming chaos.
• The Simpsons : Patches and Poor Violet, who appear to have been transferred to Springfield from Dickensian London.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "Innocents of Ryloth": Numa is a skittish little Twi'lek girl who is the only survivor from the Separatist attack on her town not to have been rounded up by the Separatists for use as a Human Shield. She also tries to help the clone troopers and Obi-Wan at her own expense. Star Wars Rebels shows that she grew up to join the Rebellion against the Empire.
• The unnamed little girl mistakenly named "Cancer" thanks to her medical bracelet by the inmates of Superjail!. Naturally, this being Superjail, things turn out horrifically wrong. Also there's a subplot regarding her saccharine childhood innocence driving the warden mad because he's lost his. Then his inner child breaks out of his body and tries to kill her throughout the episode.
• Kit Cloudkicker from TaleSpin is not only an excellent little buddy but also a great surrogate brother to Molly.
• Otto Osworth from Time Squad absolutely livens up the lives of his adoptive dads, Buck Tuddrussel and the Larry 3000.

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