Evil-Detecting Baby

Even though, as far as we know, babies are generally not considered as smart as children or adults, there is one thing that they can often sense: pure evil. If a baby is in the room when something bad happens, it will almost always start crying, even though there's no way it can know what's going on. As another often-used example, when the baby is picked up by a villain, it will automatically start crying regardless of whether the villain has done something to it or even looks scary. Makes a little more sense in cases where the villain in question is known to eat babies, though not much, given that the baby isn't terribly likely to be aware of that.

A sister trope to Evil-Detecting Dog.

Examples of Evil-Detecting Baby include:

Anime and Manga

• In Sailor Moon, during the Doom Tree arc the baby that Usagi is helping Mamoru look after is able to tell that "Natsumi" (En) does not mean well. As a result, En ends up receiving a Tinkle in the Eye.

Comic Books

• In an issue of the Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom walks the streets of New York in civilian clothes (with a less ornate mask replacing his usual one). He passes a baby boy, who begins screaming and crying uncontrollably. Doom apologises to the boy's mother for frightening the child; the mother replies that the baby is blind.

Fairy Tales

• In The Witch in the Stone Boat, when the witch takes the queen's place, the queen's baby begins to cry and can not be comforted by the witch.
• In The Wonderful Birch, when the Wicked Stepmother replaces the true bride with her own daughter, the baby begins to cry because he misses his mother's care.

Film

• In Sky High, the parents/superheroes-turned-infants begin to cry when being loaded into an "evil bus". Will's father especially when being spoken to by Royal Pain.
• When a TV news reporter updates on the situation of the soldiers in the first live-action Transformers film, William Lennox's infant daughter becomes fussy right after the report.
• In The Blair Witch Project, as a woman holding a baby tells the filmmakers about the legend of the Blair Witch, her baby repeatedly tries to put its hand over her mouth to get her to stop talking.

Live Action TV

• When Spike is rescuing the baby boy that the Fell Brethren want to make a holy sacrifice in the last epsiode of Angel, the Brethren surround him and order him to put the baby back in the bassinet. He looks at the baby, who shakes his head.
• Baby Wyatt of Charmed tended to put up a blue forcefield if something evil came too close.

Video Games

• In Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time, Baby Luigi starts crying in the presence of the Cobalt Star. None of the other members of the party can tell why, but this is one of the first hints that the evil Shroob Princess is sealed inside it.