Pro-Human Transhuman

"I will rebuild what the many have lost. I will create a future with limitless possibilities.
I will protect and sustain. I will act as guardian for the many.
And throughout it all, I will never forget.
I will remember the ones who sacrificed themselves so that the many could survive.
And I will watch over the ones who live on. Those who carry the memory of the man/woman I once was.
The man/woman who gave up his/her life to become the one who could save the many."

— Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 3 ^note Paragon, Control Ending

This character has been hit with a Viral Transformation, Emergency Transformation, become a Cyborg, demon, magical creature, alien or discovers they were never human at all. Despite this, and regardless of any angst over What Have I Become?, they decide that rather than go down the path of Transhuman Treachery and be a Smug Super, Black Shirt, or The Quisling, they will do everything in their power to stay a part of humanity. And if their new species/transhuman fellows are anti-human, they will vow to protect humanity in a pseudo Faustian Rebellion.

This can also include transhumans who cast themselves in a shepherd-like role for mankind. This doesn't include forcibly empowering humanity to bootstrap them up, though. That's more of a Visionary Villain who believes Utopia Justifies the Means. Many Friendly Neighborhood Vampires fall in this category.

If the transformation is due to The Virus, this requires copious Heroic Willpower. These characters can usually pull off a Sheep in Wolf's Clothing gambit. See also Monster Adventurers. Related to My Species Doth Protest Too Much, which refers to creatures that aren't former humans, and Humans Need Aliens for when "creatures that aren't former humans" decide to protect humanity, usually against their own kin that threatens humanity.

Opposite Trope to Super Supremacist, a superpowered individual who regards the non-superpowered as beneath them. Super-Trope to Vampire Refugee and Phlebotinum Rebel. Contrast Transhuman Treachery. See also/compare A God I Am Not.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Attack on Titan, Eren is a human who can transform into a Titan. He is firmly on the side of humanity unlike the other Titan Shifters, who are either The Mole, or, in the case of Ymir, a Heel–Face Revolving Door. Unfortunately, this is subverted when Eren and the cast learn the cold hard truth about the humans outside the walls who want them dead because they see them as "devils". By then, Eren decides to use his abilities to wage war against the rest of humanity to free his people.
• Most of the characters in Battle Angel Alita, largely justified by the fact that, because the percentage of Cyborgs in the setting is roughly equal to the percentage of the Americans owning cars, the question of What Measure Is a Non-Human? simply doesn't come up. It is still played straight in cases of Caerula Sanguis and the protagonist, though. In fact, even Aga Mbadi is in it just for the world domination.
• The protagonist in Blue Gender has a "disease" called B Cells which are a form of Gaia's Vengeance. It's intended to cause humans to rebel against their peers and go kill crazy (which it does spectacularly to two other characters). He manages to stay sane despite the various hardships Gaia and humanity throw at him.
• In Claymore, the eponymous warriors are human-youma hybrids who choose to fight for humanity's sake. Just about everyone who finds out that the organization which transformed them does not have the best interests of the citizenry at heart ends up going rogue.
• Nezuko from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba becomes this after being turned into a demon by being forced to absorb demon blood. This is thanks to her absurd willpower, as she is one of only two people in over a thousand years to achieve this, with Tamayo being the other.
• Gundam:
  • Upon discovery and confirmation that Amuro Rey is in fact a Newtype in Mobile Suit Gundam, he argues that this does not make him special or any better than anyone else on the White Base crew. Even later on in Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, he outright says he is not going to force humanity to change and has faith that humanity can improve on its own.
  • Schwartz Bruder in Mobile Fighter G Gundam is this. He is a dead body occupied by the DG (Devil Gundam) Cells to live. Despite being made up by the cells of the Big Bad, he is the Devil Gundam host Kyoji Kasshu's physical manifestation, driven to save his brother and stop the Devil Gundam.
  • Kira in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is accidentally this, being a Coordinator fighting for an army consisting entirely of Naturals (in a war started to exterminate his kind!). Not really his intention: he only fights to protect his friends. When it's revealed that both sides have genocidal intentions, he and his girlfriend, Lacus, form the Three Ships' Alliance, which includes deserters from both the Natural and Coordinator armies, and want an end to the war. Naturally enough, several other Pro-Human Transhumans, including Lacus, Athrun, Dearka, and the Desert Tiger, end up in this faction.
• Hellsing:
  • While most vampires revel in their non-humanity even if they fight for humans, Seras does everything in her power to remain as human as possible without neglecting her duties to the organization... which involve drinking blood so that she can use her vampiric powers to kill vampires that threaten humanity.
  • Alucard's a weird case. He'll gleefully slaughter ordinary humans just for being ordered to attack him, but he also believes that monsters like himself are, in truth, weak because they could not bear to live mortal lives. He believes firmly that humans are the only ones who could ever truly defeat him, the way Abraham Van Helsing and his companions did in the past. Thus he has a loathing for humans who choose to become monsters for the sake of power, especially the power to defeat him.
• The titular Inuyashiki is augmented with advanced technology thanks to aliens (just like Shishigami), but unlike him, Inuyashiki uses his newfound powers to help those in need, and his actions of kindness bring joy to him, making him feel human again.
• The Lyrical Nanoha franchise has a very broad definition of humanity, so the various clones and cyborgs never really treat themselves as being better than your average person. Several of them end up pursuing jobs with a humanitarian angle like nuns at the local Saintly Church or Emergency Services.
• In Nightwalker, Shido, a vampire, defends humans from the nightbreed. He apparently has been a vampire for a long time and at first he was not so friendly to humans, but later changed his mind.
• Ayato in RahXephon is part Mullian (basically a human subspecies with blue blood) and when his Mullian blood manifests, there's concern he'll pull a Face–Heel Turn and join the Mullians, but he remains a nice guy on the side of his friends.
• In Silent Möbius, some Type 4 Lucifer Hawks (Rally and Katsumi!) raised as humans decide to serve humanity.
• This is invoked in Tiger & Bunny, as all of the Heroes are trans-humans called NEXTs with extraordinary powers which they use to save people and stop crimes, all of which are recorded by Hero TV for people's entertainment.
• The sequel to Tokyo Ghoul has the members of the Quinx Squad, all experimental Half Human Hybrids created as a new potential weapon for CCG to use against Ghouls. Their existence and usage is controversial, with many other investigators expressing unease about the organization performing human experimentation and blurring the line between humans and Ghouls. In particular, team leader Haise Sasaki was transformed into a Half-Ghoul against his will and made the decision to use his new-found powers to protect humanity. Or rather, after Ken Kaneki was fatally wounded and lost his memory, CCG took him in and studied him before putting him to work as a potential trump card. As such, it isn't clear how genuinely "pro-human" he is.

Comic Books

• 30 Days of Night:
  • In the original miniseries, sheriff Eben purposefully infects himself with vampirism and manages to save the survivors with his newfound strength. He then kills himself since he can feel the bloodlust coming on and knows he can't maintain his original self for much longer.
  • The second comic series, Dark Days, has an originally less-than-nice vamp pulling a gradual Heel–Face Turn (at first helping Stella out purely for revenge against the Big Bad, but later on out of genuine feelings for her); by the end of the story, he doesn't even try to feed on her, despite having the perfect opportunity, which is saying something as vampires in that 'verse are pretty much all bloodthirsty (in both senses) Always Chaotic Evil sociopaths from the moment they're turned, even if they were dedicated vampire killers just before. Unfortunately, after his resurrection, vampire!Eben is not quite so inclined...
• Gunn in Angel: After the Fall. He is determined not to become a monster and continue being a hero, though he's really trying to prove he's better than Angel, who he blames for letting him get turned.
• The Confessor in Astro City is a Batman-like hero who is secretly a vampire. He wears a cross as his Chest Insignia so the constant pain will help distract him from his thirst. After he's destroyed, his sidekick is surprised to find the Cross Breed, a local Christian superhero team, mourning him; they assert that as far as they're concerned, he was always doing the Lord's work.
• Blade chooses to use his vampiric abilities as a Dhampyr and daywalker to hunt vampires.
• The Thing of Fantastic Four. His teammates too, although they can pass for ordinary people in a way he can't.
• Hellboy is a half-demon fighting demons for humanity.
• Michael Costner and Sasha Bordeax, two of the OMACs in the post-Infinite Crisis continuity.
  • Sasha Bordeaux, formerly a Batman companion and then part of Checkmate, was infected with the O.M.A.C. nanovirus to become a more advanced O.M.A.C., with enough free will to coordinate and command the other units. That enables Sasha to rebel, destroy Brother Eye and later reclaim a less advanced, but more useful and human-like cyborg form for herself.
  • Michael Costner, a young thief and grifter is activated as a regular powered O.M.A.C. unit to help rebuilding a thrashed Brother Eye. A peculiar combination of guilt for his past as a common burglar, lack of self-worth, his earlier bout with drug addiction and The Power of Love enable Michael to shake off his programming and fight against Brother Eye for the sake of the world and his girl. In the end, while his pregnant girlfriend Vienna acquires his very same powers and rushes to his help, she dies and with Brother Eye deactivated, Michael loses access to his powers. In a bittersweet ending, Clark Kent manages to have Michael and Vienna revered as heroes and saviors of the human race.
• The plot twist at the end of Superman: Red Son is that Superman is an evolved human from the future instead of an alien. He takes over the world in order to solve problems like poverty and unemployment.
• Dr. Manhattan in the beginning of Watchmen. Though this is actually his main character arc — he becomes less and less so as the story goes on, eventually getting to "Why would I save a world I no longer have any stake in?". By the end, Silk Spectre II must convince Dr. Manhattan that human lives are worth protecting. It's the revelation that her father is the Comedian that does it — realizing the sheer improbability of human life is enough to restore his interest in protecting it.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Vivienne Graham has been resurrected as half of a Two Beings, One Body Titan alongside San, yet she's not only on the side of humanity overall, she's also liable to go out of her and San's way to try and help any humans in mortal peril in the hybrid's immediate vicinity, showing concern for individual human lives to an extent that goes beyond Godzilla's and arguably even Mothra's pro-human compassion.
• Among You: In like son, like father, Orange is horrified by his transformation into an Impostor, and despite the Horror Hunger for his crewmates, he has no desire to kill anyone. He only eats Blue, who had already been killed by White, and the only person he kills is Lime, in order to save the rest of the crew.
• Codex Equus deconstructs this with Golden Scepter. He's an ancient and powerful Alicorn god who embodies Ponykind as a concept (and is speculated to be the "Parental Deity" of modern Ponykind), and was noted to be rather fond of mortal Ponykind. However, a tragic combination of various factors — such as the Alicorns' toxic practices, his own flaws, and untreated war-related PTSD — left him unable to truly connect with his subjects. This became prominent during his reign over the Imperium of Ponykind where, much like the Emperor of Mankind, his xenophobia, ruthlessness, arrogance, and hypocrisy would alienate everyone around him and ultimately kickstart the "Aurum Apostasy" when some of his Generals betrayed him. After he was sealed away in stasis and woke up in the Second Age, he soon realized the extent of what he had done and initially spent a portion of the Second Age in a deep depression, especially after seeing what mortal Ponykind achieved in his absence. It's later reconstructed when, motivated by Luminiferous and Dazzleglow, he atoned for his crimes by traveling all over Equus and learning from the examples set by both mortals and divines, thus becoming a truly benevolent ruler of Ponykind once the Fourth Age started. While he still feels close to Ponykind, he supports non-Pony races as well and lets them live in co-existence with his Pony subjects in the Terran Empire.
• Shinichi of Experiment is turned into a Cyborg by Ai, but because he's the only one around, he has to do the masquerade and try to be as human as possible.
• Final Death of Death explores this. Despite being killed off by Marilyn Manson in Deathbowl '98, made into a cyborg angel combo, eventually to her form as robotic werewolf called Redd, Melanie C still considers herself human deep down inside. Both Emma and Athena explain this to her.
• Werewolves in Fur And Photography are naturally protective of those who they consider being a part of their pack. For Max this applies to her many human friends, nearly ripping Nathan in half when she finds out that he fed on Kate.
• Adam Jensen in Mass Effect: Human Revolution is this trope even more than he was in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, to the point where Hein means to use him to force humanity as a whole into a Heel–Face Turn.
  Hein: I'm going to turn Jensen into the most powerful human being in the Galaxy. I'm going to make the rest of mankind turn green with envy and stew in their jealousy as Jensen comes to their rescue, again and again, and again, and go mad when he fails to turn into the monster they all expect him to become.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku discovers that he's an alien when he's four years old. Despite his growing array of Combo Platter Powers, he doesn't think himself better than anyone else and is in fact terrified of what he's capable of. After meeting All Might, Izuku decides to put his abilities to use as a hero who can save others and maintains his Humble Hero attitude to the point of Heroic Self-Deprecation even as others shower praise on him for his good deeds.
  Bakugou: You think you're so special, don't you, Deku? You think that you can have a Quirk like yours, show me up one time, and then just get away with not having the balls to settle things?!
  Izuku: I don't think I'm special, and I don't want to be special.
• The shinigami of Project Tatterdemalion are Super Soldiers made this way through a live virus vaccine against a superbug, giving them Combat Tentacles, venom, Absurdly Sharp Claws, an EMP-based Starfish Language, Super-Strength, Flash Step, destructive psychokinesis, a loneliness that can only be alleviated by staying near the pack, a Healing Factor that works fast and a bad case of Cuddle Bug. Because The Republic does not allow Bio-Augmentation, they are UnPersoned.

Films — Live-Action

• David Bowman in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Transformed into a demigod by the Monolith, one of his first acts after awakening in his new form is to say goodbye to his wife and mother, as well as sending a warning to the crew of the Discovery for them to evacuate the area around Jupiter immediately before the Monoliths turn it into a star.
• Alien: Resurrection: Although she really seems to connect with the Xenomorphs that were created from her, the Xenomorph DNA-tainted Ripley 8 ultimately sides with the human cast in fighting off the Xenomorphs with deadly force and trying to get off the Auriga with their lives.
• Juxtaposed with Transhuman Treachery in Captain America: The First Avenger. Johann Schmitt believes that Erskine's Super Serum has elevated him above humanity, while Steve Rogers takes Erskine's understanding of the serum to heart — as it enhances everything a person is, Rogers states that the Serum simply made a monster such as Schmitt more monstrous, while he sees his enhancement solely as a greater responsibility towards his fellow man.
• Lucy: Protagonist Lucy is exposed to a Super Serum which vastly expands her mental powers, but which will surely kill her. She searches for a way to record her new-found knowledge for the common good before she dies. Features more shooting and shouting than you might think from that summary.
• The Brotherhood is presented this way in Perfect Creature. They are a Christian order of vampire monks that are perceived as superior to humans in every way (stronger, faster, smarter and long-lived) therefore closer to God, but are nominally sworn to guide and protect them and have managed to live in peace and prosperity with humans for centuries, surviving on willingly donated blood by churchgoers, and they consider it abhorrent to drink directly from the body. However, it's revealed that they are corrupt in many ways, such as subtly keeping mankind dependent on their rule by outlawing scientific research, and being indirectly responsible for the main villain's actions by practicing it in secret: in an effort to produce more vampires after no new ones being born in decades, they commission the Big Bad to perform experiments on the virus that ends up infecting him and driving him insane.
• Defied in Ultraviolet (2006), where a human tries to reason with the not-vampire heroine, saying she was human once, too. She dismisses it, saying that humans were who made her that way and then wanted her dead, so she owes them no loyalty.

Literature

Examples by author:

• This is the case in stories written by Greg Egan, thereby justifying how transhumanism led to utopia rather than some sort of crapsack Feudal Future — apparently, the process causes those who undergo it to become more empathetic than baseline humans, meaning that the first transhumans worked selflessly to peacefully uplift everyone else to their level instead of exploiting or subjugating them.

Examples by work:

• Mira of The Accidental Superheroine chooses to side with humanity rather than Orlov, although she has the occasional second thought about it when government organizations attempt to capture her for experimentation.
• The Aeon 14 shared universe abounds with pro-human transhumans. Indeed, the average person in 9th millennium advanced societies such as the the FGT, The Transcend, and New Canaan could be considered transhuman given the ubiquity of biological mods, cyberization, and integrated nanotech. Particularly applies to ascended AIs and humans, such as Bob, Tangel, and the Bastions of Star City, who ally themselves with the corporeal humans and Sentient AIs.
• The novelization of Alien: Resurrection states that the Aurega's mission was to find a way to give people the xenomorph's signature Super-Toughness and adaptability.
• The Great Ones in the Belisarius Series embody this trope, being all for freedom, diversity and free adaptation of the human race to the new circumstances, while their archrivals the New Gods are Politically Incorrect Villains bent on racial purity and conformism.
• Berserker: Hilary Gage, an artificial intelligence designed to mimic every aspect of the human thought process, continues to think of "himself" as human, at least with respect to interstellar politics, despite being very much aware of the fact that "he" has no biological body parts. Later, he downloads himself into a berserker warship's central AI, and has to make sure he maintains enough control to prevent the warship from continuing its fight against humanity.
• In the Boojumverse, Christian Cultists modify their bodies in ways that make it easier to maintain starships and space stations in order to keep everyone else safe from the horrors of the universe.
• Downplayed in Diaspora in the treatment of the statics, people who remain baseline humans rather than accept any Bio-Augmentation, cybernetics, or Brain Uploading. Their choice is respected and their communities protected, but most individuals disregard them as being backwards, short-lived, and absurdly limited in their capacity for experience. When the Earth is scoured by a gamma ray burst, a few AIs try to save them by forcibly uploading as many as possible, others offer assistance on the statics' terms, and many have no qualms about standing back to watch the organics' self-righteous principles come back to bite them in the rear.
• Discworld:
  • In Thief of Time, the character Myria LeJean is an Auditor, an enemy of humanity, but upon taking human form she realises what it is she seeks to destroy and becomes opposed to her own people, in defence of humanity.
  • In Snuff, the Dwarvish demonic entity The Summoning Dark, vanquished by Sam Vimes, becomes his ally in the cause of law and order.
  • DEATH himself is fond of people, and on more than one occasion actively defends them. His granddaughter, Susan Sto Helit, is a straighter example since she actually IS human, but inherited some of her grandfather's traits and abilities. She's also his most reliable ally in protecting the people of the Disc from the Auditors of Reality.
• In Echopraxia, Daniel Brüks is a biology professor who takes mental enhancement pills and uses lucid dreaming learning, but this to keep to up with his peers, as Daniel is an otherwise normal human in a world where transhumanism is running rampant. One other character consistently call Daniel "Roach", a term for baseline humans. It turns out that it isn't a slur, but a term of patronizing affection; while transhumans are typically stronger or smarter than unaugmented humans by an order of magnitude, they stay on the bleeding by constantly upgrading with experimental technology. The tradeoff is that transhumans are prone to hacks, buggy or manipulated biological and cybernetic enhancements, and exotic means of attack. Unaugmented humans, though physically unimpressive and/or kind of stupid in comparison, remain a fine-tuned survival machine, shaped by millions of years of evolution. By the end of the story, Daniel, and arguably Jim, are the only characters that survive, though Daniel's tenure as "human", even by the loose standards set by the transhumans, is clearly at an end.
• In Known Space, Pak Protectors evolved to be this, they are hardwired to protect their descendants no matter what, however they will attempt to exterminate any other sapients including other Paks (except for the rare few whose descendants are all dead and have dealt with it by protecting the whole species), and will even kill their descendants who have mutations. Humans evolved from a Lost Colony of Pak Breeders and have differentiated so far that Pak Protectors will destroy them if given the chance. However, humans can become Protectors and are intelligent enough to rationalize that they should protect all of humanity. Unfortunately, this includes using the virus that causes Protector transformation on an entire planet to kill off everyone too young or too old to become a Protector and create an army of childless Protectors to fight off the coming Pak invasion fleet.
• In Old Man's War, the CDF consists almost entirely of elderly men and women downloaded into genetically enhanced pseudo-clones (the rest are even less human). During boot camp one guy asks why they're bothering to defend baseline humanity when their new bodies are the next step in human evolution. Sergeant Ruiz tells him he couldn't be more wrong, all the alien DNA in their genomes makes them sterile and thus an evolutionary "dead end". In fact, one of the reasons for the advanced enlistment age is so most of the recruits would have grandkids back home they would want to protect from baby-eating aliens.
• In the Revelation Space Series, the Conjoiners are a faction of Transhumans who use advanced nanotech to enhance their minds and physiology. When they learn of the Inhibitors coming to destroy humanity they make preparations to flee, leaving the "baseline" humans to their fate. However, their nominal leader, Clavain, defects in an attempt to warn human space of what's coming. Captain John Armstrong Brannigan also became a pro-human transhuman after he becomes one with his starship and got over his repeated attempts to kill himself, cooperating with Ilia Volyova to try and save as many people from Resurgam as possible before the Inhibitors blast it with a directed solar flare.
• Rimuru Tempest in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, as the name suggests, Was Once a Man but died and was reincarnated into a fantasy world as a powerful non-humanoid monster. Although he originally hid himself from humans out of concern that they might attack him on sight, when he finds himself the ruler of a tribe of goblins that later grows into an entire nation of various monster species, the first rule he establishes is to never attack humans, though he is willing to let self-defense slide by. Things get more complicated as the nation of Tempest grows in power and begins establishing diplomatic relationships with the other kingdoms, human and monster. Rimuru freely espouses human-monster coexistence and means it, but he makes it clear that any kingdom dumb enough to punch first is going to feel his nation's wrath, as proven when he slaughters the army of the human Kingdom of Falmuth after they launch an unprovoked attack that leaves many of his citizens dead, all in order to use their souls to become a True Demon Lord with the power to revive his fallen.
• In Trinity Blood, Abel Nightroad is a Cruznik, a being that feeds upon vampires (and is thus two steps above humans in the food chain). That doesn't stop him from devoting his life to defending humanity, and using his relatively harmless default form to masquerade as a normal human. He is an interesting example of a Pro-Human Transhuman in that he was a Designer Baby and thus born a transhuman. He was also originally quite anti-human.
• In Karen E. Taylor's The Vampire Legacy series, Vampire Detective Dierdre prefers working with humans to other vampires, despite the Fantastic Racism that carries.
• The Witcher: The titular witchers are significantly mutated by potions and spells to put them on a more even playing field with the Continent's monsters, though Geralt's opinion of humanity can be strained at times. In the Netflix series, Jaskier (Dandelion) makes sure to include the line "he's a friend of humanity" in the song he writes as part of his role as Geralt's barker.

Live-Action TV

• In Being Human (UK), the three main characters are a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost who still care about humans and are trying to live as normally as they can.
• This happens a couple of times in the new Doctor Who:
  • This happens a lot with Cybermen who haven't been 100% perfectly converted.
    • In "Doomsday", converted Torchwood head Yvonne Hartman shoots a bunch of Cybermen while repeating "I did my duty for queen and country...I did my duty for queen and country..."
    • Cybermen who resist orders in the Series 8 finale include Danny Pink and The Brigadier.
  • Similarly, Oswin Oswald and Tasha Lem resisted Dalek conversion and helped save the day.
  • In "The Pandorica Opens", Rory Williams' Unexplained Recovery as a Roman soldier despite being erased from history is discovered to be because he was really an Auton duplicate and Manchurian Agent implanted with Rory's memories. Despite being forced to shoot Amy when his programming briefly took over, his genuine love for her allowed him to break his programming and he vowed to spend the next 2000 years protecting the Pandorica with Amy inside until she could be safely revived. And he did.
• The Kamen Rider franchise has this as a tradition. At the very basest level, in every series, the Rider's powers are somehow connected the bad guys (most often in the form of stolen technology), but the hero chooses to use his powers for good rather than evil.
  • The first Kamen Rider, Takeshi Hongo, was kidnapped by an organization of transhuman Nazis called "Shocker" and converted to be a cyborg super-soldier for their kaijin Master Race, only to escape with his free will intact and use his newfound powers to protect humanity. Later Showa-era shows (1971-1989) had their Kamen Riders follow suit in this regard, with some such as V3, Amazon and Stronger even willingly became cyborgs so they could fight the bad guys.
  • In Kamen Rider 555, Orphenochs are supposedly the next evolution of mankind, and the evil organization forces them to attack normal humans in hopes of siring more Orphenochs (however, about one in a hundred can be transformed; most just turn to dust). Some just go nuts on their own. However, there's a trio of renegade Orphenochs living together. The Rider suits were created by the bad guys, but are not themselves part of the transformation, though for the main Rider, it turns out that there's a very good reason why he can use a Transformation Trinket that isn't supposed to work for humans.
  • In Kamen Rider Gaim, both Kouta and Kaito end up willingly becoming Overlord Invase in their pursuit of the Golden Fruit. When Kouta wins, he Takes a Third Option and sends the Forest of Helheim to a remote planet on the edge of the galaxy, sparing humanity from near extinction. Though Kaito acts as The Social Darwinist for much of the show and follows a different path than Kouta, he is still well-intentioned and wants to help humanity.
  • In Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, Kiriya Kujo is killed fairly early in the series by Kuroto Dan, and much later on he's revived as a Bugster (essentially a living computer virus). While it looks like he's undergone a Face–Heel Turn at first, it turns out he was just faking it, and jumps ship to the good guys as soon as he steals something important away from the Big Bad. Kuroto is also killed and resurrected, but remains a complete prick with a major God complex; technically, he's on humanity's side, mainly because he hates the other side more. Together, they end up developing an important vaccine that helps bring down the Big Bad, and at the end of the series they're still Bugsters and still with the heroes.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Several seasons into the show, Dr. Julian Bashir is revealed to be a genetically enhanced human. He had been hiding that fact from everyone else, since such genetic engineering was illegal in the Federation, and historically associated with some very bad people. However, in defiance of the stereotype, Bashir doesn't have a superiority complex or any kind of evil ambitions, does his best to save the lives of anyone from any species, is treated as a valuable member of the crew, and is even best friends with the standard human Miles O'Brien.
• Supernatural: Sam Winchester is this trope during Seasons 1-5, where he's gradually revealed to be one of the demon Azazel's demon blood-tainted "special children", yet remains committed to fighting the demon and the other forces of Hell as well as monsters which threaten people generally. Unfortunately, the road to hell is paved with good intentions (pun intended), and Ruby's influence ensures that Sam tapping into his demon-derived powers with well intentions instead of locking them away entirely makes him increasingly inhuman (with Seasons 4-5 heavily implying Sam would have lost his humanity outright if not for God's intervention), and leads to him unwittingly freeing Lucifer.
• Sweet Home (2020): Hyun-su, despite being mistrusted and mistreated, decides to help his fellow survivors. It pays off as they make Heel Realizations and accept him over time.
• Teen Wolf: Scott cares deeply for humans and innocents, even trying to protect the Argents when possible. In contrast, Derek is fine offering the "gift" of lycanthropy to those who crave it, outcasts, the ones who are emotionally damaged and with health problems. Scott is particularly upset at this because of the active hunting werewolves face, making it that much more likely that the new converts die... assuming they don't kill someone first.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • Even though Stefan is a vampire, he still tries to retain his humanity as much as possible.
  • Elena as a vampire. She still retains her compassion and empathy even after she turned.

Tabletop Games

• Played with in Afterbomb Madness: the Tainted Commies are a regiment of the Soviet army that suffered a Teleporter Accident during the invasion of America turning them into horrifying amalgams of flesh and military gear. Despite this, they are still loyal to their unaltered comrades. However, since the communists are the villains, these creatures aren't your friends.
• In d20 Modern, there are a lot of transhuman options (of varying degrees of alteration from the base norm) available for good characters (good, of course, being by its nature opposed to a lot of the classic symptoms of a Super Supremacist).
• Deadlands: Hell on Earth: The Doomsayers are mutants with radiation-based superpowers, who walk the Earth preaching about how the Atom took Earth from the humans and mutants are destined to take over the planet. They are also generally kind and compassionate, and willing to help non-mutants in trouble. They still think they're better than you and that you are an evolutionary dead end, but see no reason to be assholes about it. That said, there are Dark Doomsayers, who are disappointed at the slow rate of humanity's extinction and are more than willing to help it along.
• In the Dungeons & Dragons supplement Knight of the Living Dead, a lich brings a paladin of Torm back from death as an undead creature. The lich orders him to gather magic items to help the lich conquer the city of Waterdeep, but instead he decides to fight against the lich's forces and protect the inhabitants of the city.
• In Eclipse Phase, virtually everyone who's not a "flat" (unaugmented human) is some shade of this by default. Not much of a choice since the vast majority of those who survived the hard-takeoff Singularity were transhumans (and the harsh realities of the setting will ensure that they stay the majority no matter what anyone has to say about it); in fact, the setting refers to transhumanity. Though there are exceptions such as the Exhumans (in particular the Predator sub-faction) and the Ultimates.
• Mage: The Awakening has the Free Council. While all the Pentacle Orders are ostensibly on the side of the Sleepers (with the exception of some very weird sub-factions), the Free Council believes that Sleepers are able to draw on the secrets of the Supernal Realms via their own works. Thus, where other factions like the Silver Ladder are in favor of leading humanity to Awakening via cloaked secrets, the Free Council are happy to study the works of human ingenuity and incorporate those into their magical practices... while, of course, encouraging Sleepers to Awakening in what, to them, seems like a less patronizing fashion.
• Siren: The Drowning: The Current of Lethe is a rare villainous example of this trope. The Hippocampi are those Sirens who chose Civilization over Nature, believing that the Earth is mankind's to do with as they wish without limits or responsibilities. Notably, they view their less pro-human kin as no more than animals, to the point of being willing to eat non-Hippocampi for the life-prolonging properties of their flesh.
• The Carthian Movement from Vampire: The Requiem aren't exactly advocates for humanity (some of their plans for alternative models of vampiric government rely on a steady supply of "cattle"), but of the various Covenants, they're the ones most likely to advocate for human ingenuity, believing that human models of civilization will point to a grand replacement for the standing model of praxis. One of their more radical factions, the Anti-Obstructionist Army, actually takes action against anyone who tries to Embrace a human, claiming that human thought is hampered by the somewhat cooling effect of becoming a vampire.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Every Space Marine is a bioengineered Transhuman, yet they serve humanity with zealous ferocity. It helps that the transformation, and the very reason they exist, is explicitly to protect humanity better. Of course their methods of protecting humanity include ruthlessly exterminating anything that isn't human. ^note Of course, they also gleefully exterminate humans that oppose the Imperium (heretics!) or those too deviated from the holy human form (mutants!). It does actually vary by Chapter to Chapter on whether they're the protectors of humanity or the executioners of the Emperor's enemies. Some of the nicer Chapters including the Ultramarines (who run a Lawful Good and comparatively pleasant sector of the Imperium), the Space Wolves (who pulled an epic What the Hell, Hero? on the Inquisition and actually had a small war with them at one point over it), the Raven Guard (who will save everyone or die trying due to their Tear Jerker past), and the Salamanders (who are the only chapter (other than the Lamenters) who actively protect civilians, making them something of an Ensemble Dark Horse in the fandom) count especially as this trope. The Flesh Tearers and Marines Malevolent, and especially the Chaos Space Marines, however...
  • Deconstructed with the Emperor himself. An astonishingly powerful psyker verging on Physical God, the Emperor was essentially on the side of humanity... at the expense of all other species, meaning that the Great Crusade was as much a war of extermination as it was an attempt to protect human worlds. Additionally, his vast power and long lifespan meant that he had great difficulty relating to the people he depended on to run his great empire, which led to a rift developing between himself and the Primarchs that ended in fully half of them betraying him and setting off a civil war that would ultimately burn the Emperor's goals to ash.
• In the MasterBook RPG The World of Species (based on the film Species), humans are injected with some of Sil's DNA, causing them to gain some of her abilities. This allows them to hunt down and destroy Sil's progeny, but they have alien thoughts and personality traits generated by the DNA in their systems.

Video Games

• All of demigods in Asura's Wrath are transhuman cyborgs, but Asura is the only one after 12,000 years that stands up against them for humans after they start slaughtering them to obtain their souls for more power.
• In BioForge, the Mad Scientist Dr. Mastaba hoped that you would succumb to Transhuman Treachery after he upgraded (and deformed) you, but instead made you into a vengeful Phlebotinum Rebel.
• The Exodii from Cataclysm became Full-Conversion Cyborgs in order to fight against the zombie apocalypse that's currently threatening to wipe out humanity. They're happy to talk to and trade with normal humans, but don't trust mutants because they believe mutagen has too high of a risk of making the user no longer consider themselves human.
• Crysis:
  • In Crysis 2, humanity's best chance at fighting off an alien invasion is a Dead Man Walking, kept alive by a semi-intelligent suit of Powered Armor based on Ceph nanotechnology.
  • Taken even further in Crysis 3, in which a protracted nanotech Fusion Dance has you playing as an amalgam of one dead guy's body, another dead guy's personality, and both of their memories, with an artificially intelligent suit of Powered Armor holding it all together. You're about as transhuman as it gets, but still firmly on the side of humanity and more badass than ever.
• Deus Ex Universe:
  • In the original Deus Ex, this advocacy is exactly why the Helios AI wants to fuse with J.C. Denton instead of Bob Page. Page is a power-crazed tyrant bent on world domination who would oppress and subjugate. J.C. has been a staunch proponent of the people, and Daedalus, an aspect of Helios, had been watching the entire time. The "Pro-Human" aspect of J.C. is what Helios wants, to understand the human condition so it can better function as a benevolent machine god ruler. Even without assimilating JC's insight, Helios knows enough about humans to know Bob Page is emphatically not a good choice for this. One of the three endings for the game involves J.C. volunteering and doing just that.
  • If one plays through Deus Ex: Human Revolution with a pacifist slant, this is how protagonist Adam Jensen identifies himself in any of the four endings. After all, he never asked for this. He does, however, admit that augmentation can be very beneficial.
• Dante of Devil May Cry is a half-demon who uses his powers to protect humans from demons that would torment and prey on them. While Dante is the son of the legendary demon Sparda, it is made clear that he holds his human mother Eva in far greater esteem and the Central Theme throughout the games is that humanity is a source of strength not weakness. Nero, Dante's nephew who debuted in Devil May Cry 4, Lucia the Deuteragonist and artificially created demon-human hybrid of Devil May Cry 2 as well as Nico, the daughter of the very much demonic Agnus in Devil May Cry 5 also qualify for this trope.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, part of the Joining Ritual to become a Grey Warden involves ritually drinking Darkspawn blood, where the Wardens willingly submit themselves to the Taint, becoming immune to its effects (for thirty years), gaining the ability to sense the Darkspawn and rendering them the only ones capable of truly slaying an Archdemon, thus ending the latest Blight.
  • The Architect in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening qualifies, although technically he's a Token Heroic Orc who is not so much concerned with preventing further Blights to help humanity as much as he desires to free the Darkspawn from the influence of the Old Gods. However, he's not been particularly successful so far, since the last time he tried to help he ended up accidentally causing the Fifth Blight.
  • On the other hand, the reason the Circles of Magi exist is because the Chantry, as well as a good chunk of the population, do not believe that mages can be reliably Pro Humans. This is mainly because of the Tevinter Imperium, which is ruled by powerful mages, and controlled much of Thedas centuries before. In fact, according to Chantry teachings, the Tevinter mages are responsible for creating the Darkspawn. There's also the little fact that every mage is a potential conduit for evil spirits of the Fade to enter the world.
  • A good example of a Pro-Human mage is the father of Hawke, who taught his mage children to use their powers responsibly and had his own Badass Creed where he reminded himself that his magic would "serve that which is best in (him), not that which is most base". Mage player characters can be this as well... or not.
  • The Tevinter of course consider themselves to be Pro-Human. It's just that their interpretation of the Chant of Light's decree that "magic is meant to serve man, not rule over him" is that the Magisters are duty-bound to rule over others responsibly. The Magisters who aren't just in it for themselves genuinely seem to believe that they are serving mankind's best interests as Magisters.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Dragonborn is a mortal with the soul of a Dragon, prophesied to protect Mankind by hunting down and consuming the souls of Dragons.
• Mr. House in Fallout: New Vegas is this in spades. While he claims to be "flesh and blood, not silicon," he projects his will through a brain-computer interface into an army of robots, all of which are functional extensions of his body when they're close enough to the Lucky 38, and any Courier who turns against him will probably see the extent of his cybernetics. His stated raison d'être? Nothing less than "[Give me] 100 years, and my colony ships will be heading for the stars, to search for planets unpolluted by the wrath and folly of a bygone generation." He's as cold as you like, but he does want to save humanity (though he doesn't respect most of it, much less trust it to govern itself).
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Venat becomes this after transforming into the primal Hydaelyn. While some of her decisions cause humans to suffer, she is a firm believer in humanity's potential to overcome adversity, and every action she makes is done to ensure that they have a future.
• The God Eater series features this trope more subtly in the form of the titular God Eaters. In order to use their God Arcs and defend humanity, they need to be injected with Oracle Cells that effectively turn them part Aragami. Otherwise, they would not only lack the strength and endurance needed to fight said Aragami, but would also literally be eaten alive by their own weapons. The use of a powerful drug called Bias Factor is the only thing keeping them from transforming fully into the same monsters they fight.
• In Infinity Blade, the Deathless are revealed later in the series to be normal humans from a bygone era, who technologically altered their Q.I.P.s and bodies to make them immortal, permanently at their physical peak, and grant them superhuman power. In the second game, it's revealed that Siris, the main character, is actually the Deathless Ausar the Vile, who lost his memories and lived on amongst normal humanity, but this fact doesn't stop him from fighting for humanity's freedom.
• Mass Effect:
  • Technically, Shepard becomes transhuman in Mass Effect 2, having been resurrected with cybernetic implants, as well as undergoing extensive genetic modification that not only gives them increased speed and stamina, but resistance to small arms fire and strong enough to wield weapons that when fired, would normally shatter every bone in a normal person's arm. Shepard is a Pro-Human Transhuman in either case; Paragon Shepard is a hero who protects all sentient life in the galaxy, while Renegade Shepard helps humans and nobody else.
  • In Mass Effect 3, if Commander Shepard chooses to control the Reapers in the ending, the Reaper Shepard — especially a Paragon one — vows to use them as a force for good.
• Mega Man:
  • The player characters Vent and Aile in Mega Man ZX are, like most people in this period, crosses of human- and Reploidkind, and fight to protect everyone. In the earlier series, Dr. Light is this, having become an infomorph and continues protecting humanity through aiding his "son" X.
  • In the Alternate Timeline of Mega Man Battle Network, MegaMan.EXE/Hub Hikari, an infomorph in the form of a Net Navi, is fully pro-human.
• Phoenix Point has the Disciples of Anu, a transhumanist cult that strives to use the mutagenic effects of the Pandoravirus to improve humanity and help them survive in the After the End new world. One of their core precepts is that the human spirit is pure and good, but that people are led astray by the impulses and instincts of the imperfect body. While they cultivate freaky-looking mutations, they are sincerely devoted to saving what's left of humanity.
• Stephen from Shin Megami Tensei may not be human anymore, but as the representative for the Neutral alignment, he wholeheartedly believes that the world doesn't need to rely on gods or demons to prosper. This reflects the ethos of the real Stephen Hawking, in that he didn't reject gods but didn't view them as necessary either.
• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, you eventually gain the technology to turn your people into transhuman "transcendii", who are basically Energy Beings via Brain Uploading. They're still loyal citizens, each and every one.
• Keine Kamishirasawa of Touhou Project is a were-hakutaku who's described as the safest person for a human to be around.
• In Warcraft III, Night Elf demon hunter Illidan Stormrage seeks demonic powers to prove himself to his skeptical brother and sister-in-law and ultimately fights against the genocidal undead Scourge. By the time of World of Warcraft, he's turned evil.
  • To be fair, his track record includes being subjected to rejection, distrust, betrayal, ten thousand years of incarceration, distrust and rejection... and even at that point, it was because he had no one to turn to when meeting Kil'Jaeden, that he at long last started his descent into darkness. It took meeting Big Bad while being systematically deprived of freedom, support and hope by the woman he loved and by the brother he trusted to get him to turn. Despair Event Horizon and Darkest Hour at their worst. And even then the task he accepted was arguably beneficial to the world of Azeroth — to destroy The Lich King, and he specifically attempted to turn away from Kil'Jaeden and create a place for himself after his first attempt failed.
  • After coming Back from the Dead, it's revealed that his plans were always to fight the Burning Legion and that any 'evilness' on his part up to the point of his death was him being an Unscrupulous Hero believing the Godzilla Threshold was in effect... and being really bad at explaining his actions to those who didn't believe it. By the point of his resurrection, the Godzilla Threshold truly is in effect, and so despite being more demon than elf and, you know, dying at the hands of the people who now resurrected him, he is still resolutely focused on the big picture: Demons bad; Leave No Survivors.
• Warframe: The Tenno are highly advanced transhumans who wield strange Void powers, but use them exclusively to protect civilians. Indeed, after they won the Old War by killing the Orokin who created them, they went into cryo-sleep voluntarily because they weren't needed any more, even though they could have probably conquered the entire Origin System without too much trouble. Of course, the rest of humanity is also transhuman at this point, but the Tenno are so much more advanced than them that they are occasionally worshiped as gods.

Visual Novels

• In the conclusion of the A route in Dead End Aegis, Minori becomes a true human/C.C. hybrid alongside her boyfriend Mitsuomi, recognized as a new type of being, and they decide to use this newfound power to stop Circe from wiping out humanity in her madness.
• Gilgamesh of Fate/stay night was created by the gods of his time to tie them to humans, ensuring the continued existence of the gods. Gilgamesh eventually came to love humans more than the gods and rejected his role in the gods' plan, choosing to rule over Uruk because it was worth ruling. Even Gilgamesh's attempts to unleash Angra Mainyu on humanity is driven by his belief that the best humans will survive and be worth ruling.

Webcomics

• People in Crimson Dark with lots of augs, despite often being less than 20% flesh, still act just like normal humans.
• The Bowman's Robots from Freefall arguably fit into this trope as a whole. Despite being designed as expendable labor, and the evident fact that no ammount of hard-coded safeguards can stand up to the full sapience they (accidentally) wound up with, they still want nothing more than to be of use to humanity. One (minority) faction even believes that the best way they can do so is by wiping themselves out wholesale, not just to ensure that they never become a threat to humanity, but also because the absence of adversity humanity would be stranded in, surrounded by millions upon millions of eager-to-serve robots capable of independent thought and action, would sap mankind of any philosophical impetus to continue pushing the boundaries of the cosmos — essentially rendering humans 'obsolete' amongst the hardier, faster-replicating robots, no matter how benevolent they may be.
• Genocide Man: Genocide Men believe that they are such, except maybe for Joey, using their ceramic skeletons, artificial glands, and suitcases full of ebola to hunt down and exterminate genetic deviants for the good of humanity. Though there are signs that their philosophy is flawed, and they turned most of the planet into deviants themselves in an attempt to make people immune to designer plagues and less violent, with a virus that killed over a billion people.
• The Kingfisher: Vampirism doesn't make one inherently evil, but the pro-human vampires are few: mainly Helen, Vitus, Jack, Tristan, and Darren. Notably, some of the least powerful characters in the story.

Web Original

• The protagonists of The Daily Grind are determined to bring the benefits of their dungeon delving, like improved immune systems and damage resistance, to humanity as whole.
• In The Magnus Archives, becoming an avatar of one of the Entities gives you superhuman abilities at the cost of an increasingly monstrous appearance and a hatred for humanity — except in the case of Jon and Daisy, and Gertrude before them, who, despite their unwilling patronage to an Entity, keep trying to protect humanity and destroy the rituals of other avatars. The series shows that this can't last for long, however. Jon eventually gives in to his Horror Hunger and is used by Jonah to set off a successful ritual. Daisy fully gives in to the Hunt to protect her loved ones and becomes a mindless beast. While Gertrude managed to avoid succumbing to the effects of being an avatar, she treated people like pawns and edged increasingly closer to the Moral Event Horizon in order to do so, to the point where before her death, she was almost as evil as the avatars she fought.
• The Sephirotic Archailects and their ancestors, the early pro-human transapients, from Orion's Arm are this. The Archai are not specifically pro-human as such (humans are but a fraction of the 10th millennium terragen populace), but generally benevolent towards lower toposophic lifeforms and promoters of sophont rights regardless of singularity level. This is as opposed to the solipsist AIs, who just don't care about anyone else positively or negatively, or the ahuman AIs who will, at best, kick lower beings off of their turf, or, for the less fortunate, Mind Rape them to death or worse.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time has Finn's mother Minerva, who used to be a doctor on the human islands. When a plague wiped out almost all the doctors, Minerva transferred her brain into robot bodies so she could cure the sickness and continue helping the people of the island.
• The titular character of Casper the Friendly Ghost is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Most other ghosts in the franchise are mean and just want to scare people.
• The female lead hero Cybersix from the animated show of the same name. While pretending to be a "normal" human by day and "becoming" the hero Cybersix and fighting monsters by night.
• In Justice League, Gorilla Grodd intends to publicly kill the League because they are transhumans fighting to protect humans, which, according to him, is contrary to natural selection.
• The Owl House: Discussed and averted during the latter half of the series. Warning for major spoilers! Emperor Belos, a.k.a. Phillip Whittebane, was a Witch Hunter attempting to commit Genocide from the Inside on the population of Witches and Demons amongst the Boiling Isles denizens. In his own narrative, he's a martyr attempting to cleanse the Bloody Bowels of Hell from the Always Chaotic Evil races that threaten mankind, tainting himself with their vile magicks in the process as part of a non-fatal Heroic Sacrifice to permanently save mankind from evil. This is complete nonsense — the human realm is in no danger from Boiling Isles, said Witches and Demons are mostly just regular citizens of an alien world with nary even a Smug Super amongst them. Tellingly, despite his posturing about "the good of humanity", he inevitably attempts to murder every actual human he encounters once they see through his lies. For all his grand self-image, Belos is just A Nazi by Any Other Name pretending to be a hero.

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